FoE: The Tartarus Contingency

CH2: All it takes is one.

--

In the years my brother trained me, I grew hearty, and grew well.  A drab brown coat like I was told my earth-pony mother had, a darker brown mane indistinguishable from most other ponies of that ilk.  The spattering of white dots on my flank grew slightly more dull, though shinier than the rest of my coat.  That, as with my violet eyes, I inherited from my crystal pony father.  With the food and exercise I got, I'd gotten stocky and short, but also strong; I might have looked fat, but it wasn't blubber padding me over.  No crystal pony is fat with the way the cold makes a body eat itself.

It was mostly thanks to my brother's way of teaching me.  He wasn't lying- he didn't relent, didn't treat me special.  Learn fast, or get wounded trying (I once attempted to fire his big rifle, without the bridling to handle it--learned how to drink potions with a broken jaw, and that they did not heal an ego).  When I got more durable, morale boosts came in the form of kicks from steel horseshoe boots with treads meant for ice, and only pats on the back when things started to go right.

I look back on it with some semblance of pride when it was decided I should be a spotter;  My knack for visual detail had made the choice obvious.  Sureshot said my old lust for short-term exploration would be great for mapping, and so had been sending me out to look around for scavenging opportunities.  It was a good balance against my tainted confidence with rifles- let the better ponies use them while I gave them direction.  I never did get over that.

The times between half-day excursions were spent in the tower hut turning back and forth, while through scratched lenses watching a world which never changed.  Like a picture, really, only it moved.  The placement wasn't much, but it was comfortable, and Sureshot and I did get closer.  For better, or for worse.

The years that passed once I was a tower pony were relatively uneventful.  I say that because watching bullets cleave through errant animals and ponies became commonplace.  Glancing from an external perspective to which I'm uniquely able to commit in Resilience... Well, I guess the southern ponies would call it “paranoid and buck-headed.”  If it was a white coat or moved strangely, it was a target.  If it had fat saddlebags, it was properly warned by one of the pickers well outside the gates.  We had too many raiders loading up with bombs and trying to blow a hole open in the walls.

The days leading to my original exile at least had some events that got me thinking outside of my then violent little frame.  I can recall it easily, though there was little in the way of pictures I could attach to it.  I doubt anypony would want to see that kind of unceremonious red from the teenage years anyway, besides the deranged.

That day, though... The first raider pony was tiny, in the binoculars.  The distance didn't mean they were able to hide.  Far from it; I'd laughed when they ended up standing, tall and proud, atop a crystal growth that placed their bleached coat against the blue mound.  As they looked about, I'd picked their length of their hooded head out against the color.  They were getting a lay of how the snow had shifted, thinking their camouflage kept them safe against their own stupidity.

It was a Resilience coat, altered as per the norm for the gang.  White, like the others I'd been pinpointing around  the city in recent days, with a black dot down on what I perceived as the flank.  A crude snowflake, usually drawn with liquid garbage, or ash.  I only knew, of course, because of how close I'd gotten from looting them in the years gone by.

“Smile for big brother...” I said to myself.  That had become a casual and satisfying phrase to me.

The deafening boom, the lift of his rifle. The flower of flame from it's mouth, and the rib-shaking thump of the weapons recoil.  As I watched from beside him in the tower, the bullet was punctual.  To my utter and grinning delight, there was a fat, red puff.

Sureshot brought the muzzle back down, nipped the bolt mouthgrip, and shunted the still hot casing.  It was a crass shell, clapping off the top of the tower encasement and jingling to the street below.  Sureshot swore.

“You need to stop taking such close shots with that.” I said.  I peered along the recent scrawl of paper. Adding a tick mark to the tally, I followed up by nestling the pencil tip into the parchment.  One dot, placed at a rough estimate of where the body had fallen on the map copy. “There's less to scavenge with a good hit.”

He just grumbled, and danced the bolt forward.  The magazine fed the beast, and into it's throat another lovingly polished shell was stuffed.  “Quit smirking over this shit.  It's not funny.”

“That's not why I'm smiling.”

“Right.” he said.  He used a forehoof to jab my shoulder, then pointed back out.  “Get another bead, something was moving behind it before I shot.”

When I found the rock again, I discovered he was right.  I could discern shadows, and a single black dot.  It was mobile, bouncing within the snow and kicking up divots.

A little more squinting and calm attention, I gleaned the shape of a muzzle opposite it.  It paused at a tall, oddly straight jut from the ground- it had one flat side, I realized, when the dots of the pony vanished behind the angle.  I could see the color of the muzzle -grey- sneaking a quick peek from behind it.

There was a tiny bit of a very strange color, which I at first thought was a blemish in the binoculars.  After a second or so of waiting, I realized the speck was not a scratch on my binoculars; it was cobalt in color, that had been exposed from the wind.  “The dark blue spot.  Aim for that.”

“You're sure?”

“It's a nine-hundred meter shot.  Looks metal or crystal.  You'll punch through it easy.”

He sighed.  Partially, in annoyance at my insistence.  The other half of the breath was that sleight-of-body he always did: emptying his lungs before tonguing the trigger.

BLAM!

Through the binoculars, I watched as a white pinprick suddenly appeared near the center of the fleck.  Something fell at the corner, and the snow began to blacken.  After a while of watching, I could reliably place the color.  The other spotters called it “Headshot red.”

I wasn't positive it was the right shade, though.  With what the Snowflakes tended to wear, it was hard enough to tell where they were.  There were tricks, certainly.  The piled snow had a sheen in what columns of sun briefly punctured the film in the sky; their coats were soft and didn't pick up light, framing them against the pools of light when they wandered.  The weather didn't move much on flakeless days like that; they did, and never moved from sky to ground.  And their breath, blurring a grey sky in the repetitive puffs from lungs...

Even with the arsenal, I couldn't see anything moving.

“You hit em.” I said, still smiling.

“But?”

“But nothing.  You probably tore em in half, again.”  Regardless of the admission, I didn't scribble down another tick.  I scanned, carefully, the ache in my neck likely leading to a sublime migraine later.  I didn't mind, if it got me killing more raiders.  Not one bit.

“Goddamn trick shots.” he mumbled to himself.  He said nothing as I continued to watch, and listened to him cycle the bolt.  After a clink, though, he swore again.

“Gotta stop wasting that rifle.” I said.

“It's not a waste if it's a hit.  Besides, hearing the thing is enough of a statement on what we think of them, let alone what it actually does.”  In went the fresh shell.  The gun was always hungry.  Especially in the past few weeks.  “So, why do you have that stupid look?”

Feeling that the corners of my lips were still tightly knitted into a smirk, the sudden consciousness of it didn't let it weaken.  I kept tracing the ridges and voluptuous curves of the white land unfolded before me, resting only upon sharp outcroppings or what I perceived as mobile.  Columns of sun went through the armored sky, turning milky and freezing once they spilled through the badly stitched blanket of clouds.  Scrutinizing little of “worth,” I allowed myself the distraction of a reply.  “Watching you shoot is fun.” I said.

“You've been giving me that excuse for... What? Ten years?  It was old by the time we emptied our first clip  together.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I'm really not that jaded over my big brother still being awesome.”

“Or maybe your big brother notices when you get those stupid looks.”

I stuck out my tongue past the mouthgrip.  “What's that supposed to mean?”  I fiddled with the focus disc.  Vision swam in and out of detail.  I zoned back in on the headshot red near the metal.

“The Snowflakes.” he said.  “You smile, when they die.”

Realizing exactly what he meant, I instantly frowned.  “And that's bad?”

“Most of em are from Resilience, Snapshot.” he said.  He tracked a little, the head of his gun moving in such a concentrated flow he appeared to be still.  “I don't like thinking I'm shooting somepony I knew as a colt or filly.  You shouldn't be happy for this... Situation.”  He was trying to voice kindly; he rarely did such.  He wasn't doing so for their sake.

“How is it bad?” I repeated.  “They knew what they'd be getting into, if they stepped outside the walls.  Especially without any intent to come back inside.  They abandoned us, they're no longer welcome.”

“Don't put it like that.” he retorted, the wind picking up to a soothing whine.

“Okay, then.” I said.  The coat fuzz around my cheeks and ears felt all the hotter.  “Then how would you have me put it?  That they knew they'd be castrating the caravans just for the sake of first dibs?  Picking each other off just to stay warm?  Goddess damned leeches...”

There was a loud pang, and the shriek of a ricochet.  The sound of the gunshot followed quite shortly after.  Skimming off the metal pipe that made up our tower, only a few inches to my side, the feel of the impact made me flinch.  There was little space to use- I couldn't dive, so I simply let myself fall back.  I clutched possessively at the binoculars, an instinctual motion that reminded me of something.  To the rest of the ponies in Resilience, the device I held was probably more important than I was right then if I happened to “lose my mind.”

Sureshot already had his rifle propped, the huge thing impossible to completely hide.  He had dragged it back, the length of it still leaving a good head-long jut resting on the edge of the tower window.  Not budging, he groaned, and tugged his hood down.  Behind the plates, we'd be relatively safe; the towers were too tall to toss a grenade inside, too close to the city to get a reasonable shot without retort.  Whomever had fired at us was likely doing so for the sake of some revenge.  And, already drawing the... Unfriendly response of the other Tower Ponies.

Distant yells rattled off from the towers around us.  Another zip of a poorly aimed bullet followed, while Sureshot and I shared glances.  He rolled his eyes.  It wouldn't be the first time that the Snowflakes tried keeping us out of play, especially with Sureshot and I in a tower.  Did they know our names, or had we been given monikers?  After another shot, I stopped thinking it mattered.

I rolled to my belly.  I had to grind and wriggle a bit, compacted tight next to my similarly retreated brother, and pulled out my pistol from the shoulder holster.  Nudging the mouthgrip with my tongue, I let the magazine slide halfway out.  Filled to bursting, I showed him a little surprise I'd been saving- tracer bullets winked from the stamped out holes in the clip.  I bobbed my brow toward him after flaunting them, and slid the clip back inside.

“Don't-” he tried to say.  By the time he would have continued, my head was already over the left side of the elevated box, swiveling on my sore neck in a second-long glance.  I could hear another bullet whip past just before I retreated, the sound of the gunshot arriving late.  It was a dumb thrill.

I scooted back toward where the first shot had hit- lightning, after all, never struck the same place twice.  Especially with aim that bad.  I peeked up, sighted in on the vague area of that distant blue spot, and fired off a single round before crouching back down.  The hot bullet singed the air, leaving a streak of orange-red light that vanished after several meters.  I knew it wouldn't hit.  It was enough, though.  For our snipers, tracers always were.

I heard more than a few of the other towers a couple seconds later.  It took them some time to actually find where I'd shot- aiming for a dot in binoculars with a pistol was a fools errand, likely leading their precision astray.  With the way the sound of gunshots bounced off crystal and snow, however, it was better than searching from where a targets shots were coming.  Three separate rifles snarled at my attacker. The first one was to my left, then the other two in almost instant succession to my right.  The one to my left fired once more, followed by a wary yell.

Sureshot held his hoof up to me, and gestured down with it.  “Give it time.” He said.

Buck.  That.

Not caring much for my skull (would it hurt if I lost it so suddenly, anyway?) I gently placed my pistol on the hut floor.  My ears tried to flick in the little hood pockets, brushing against the soft, filthy lining.  Seeing the boxcar's dot, feeling the drumroll in my chest, I pushed the binoculars so tight to my face the cushioned rims bruised the flesh around my eyes.  My heartbeat made the wandering view pulsate.

When I found where the fleck disappeared into the snow, I saw more headshot red.  A long, dark line was near it- I recognized it as the shape of a rifle akin to what some of the tower ponies had.  The contours of a white body was well above the blue, on the corner.  There was more cobalt visible, too; apparently in trying to move, they'd brushed off a good chunk of whatever they'd been aiming from.

“Wounded, crawling.  Can you take the shot?”

“You know I can.  But-”

“WILL you take the shot?”

“What happened to wasting it?”

“Well then, don't miss.”

Sureshot grunted.  He shouldered the rifle, lifted it by the mouthgrip.  Despite listening to him heft the weight and plant it upon the hut edge, I jumped the instant the gun went off.  

When I returned to look back at the body, it had stopped completely.  Shards of (what I hoped was) brain, and  annihilated clothing peppered the sky around it with still airborne color.  Elated and energized, I sucked in air through my teeth.  “Yes!” I hissed, stomping a back hoof hard enough to vibrate the hut.

Sureshot, against what I was expecting, planted his own rear hoof into my ribs.  The thump against me hurt- the feel of an oncoming bruise only had me giving him a confused glare.  Before I could even say a word, he rested the rifle, put a forehoof atop my head, and shoved me back down.  His face was so close I could smell the cloud of his breath, his nostrils flaring.  “The shift is over.” he whispered.

“We still have an hour-”

“Not after that.” he said.  “Mark the kill, get down the ladder, and go back home.  I'll send you out to pick again.”  He sat back, sighing.  His eyes closing, his head lowering, he put a hoof to the bolt.  He waited some time, before waving me off.  “Ever stop to think that the attitude you have in killing shit,” he began. “Is the same kind they had, before they left?”

“That's crap and you know it.” I said.  Shrinking back from him, insulted and disgusted, I sneered. “Since when have I stolen or shot somepony just for what's in their saddlebags?”

He shoved the bolt up, hooked around, and tugged it back.  Clink.  He swore, yet again.  “We shoot them because we knew they'd shoot first.  They do the same thing to us.  Then what do we do? We take what's in their goddamn saddlebags.  I'm not asking you, I'm telling you- you need to respect one fact as all that matters.”

He clopped his hoof against the magazine release, and caught the bottom of the clip.  bracing it up, he examined the shell still in the magazine from several angles.  “For you, for me, for everypony,” He leaned in to expose the magazine to me, the huge bullet shining.  “Everypony out here gets to thinking they may only have one last shot.  That's what scares everypony into doing the shit they do.  It shouldn't ever have to be that way.”

My lower lip stuck out toward him, I put the binoculars down.  My neck stiff, it was hard to get the pencil into the proper place.  The corners of my jaw searing hot, the pressure in my neck finally settling into the expected headache, I dropped it and let it roll. Scooping up the paper with my teeth, I tossed my forehooves over the back of the hut.

Shouldn't have to? I thought.  I wanted to scream at him.  He was paid by kills- What would WE do without it?

Below, the streets were silent.  Shining with poorly powered, flickering lights, the cracked crystal roads were awash with amber light from the scavenged Stable-tec floodlights.  The ladder, ragged horse-hair, was nothing more then interconnected ropes. It was made of varying colors; everypony in the city contributed to them, eventually. It swung mindlessly in the wind, and for a moment, I paused to realize some of the darker parts might be my own.

I stewed.  Chugging down an argument I knew would only be easily defeated verbal flailing, I hopped the rail, and began the descent.

“And pick up the casings.  Line em up at one of the tower legs.”

I'd done so many shifts, had so many landed shots I was responsible for.  Not one of the “last shots” did I see him respecting.  Especially the ones that had murdered Book Worm.  Shouldn't happen? I thought again. Then why do I have to collect your kill cases so you can recycle them? Why not just let those ponies back in? Have a little house party.  I'm sure they wouldn't take absolutely everything we have.

Halfway down, I held myself in the air.  It was habit that prompted me that time. I'd dropped the conscious craving, once my old scrapbook had been misplaced.  There wasn't much point to pictures of a landscape, if they couldn't be saved and seen...  Or if I was too busy helping shoot and loot to take them in the first place.  Up on those ladders though, It was the only place to get a view of either of Resilience's two sides.

Hypocrisy against me wasn't something I was used to with him.  I should have known then, that he was planning to give my flank one hell of a well deserved wake-up buck.  In that silent, strolling frustration, it never did register.  Not until I messed up hard enough for him to commit.

[***]

The walls to Resilience had only gotten more massive when looked at from the ground.  I hadn't grown desensitized to them; I'd grown with them as much had been added to thicken them.  I still had to crane my neck to see their tips, and even then only got a worms-eye view.  Only the towers were tall enough to see over those walls, and whenever I was up there the alabaster world beyond stretched farther than even my eyes could discern.

The doors boasted a similar height.  Made of several layers of disassembled boxcars, the innermost being hastily attached panels of whatever my ancestors could locate after the last day, they'd been welded together long ago.  

They had a stigma attached to them.  Inside, the air was warm enough to let yourself exist.  When the snow fell, it turned to rain; once it hit the invisible bubble of heat the combined warming talisman's provided, the streets would turn slick and wet.  It tended to drizzle quite often in Resilience, and that too I'd grown up with.

Outside, though.  That was a whole other can of worms, when you were experienced enough to have that place galvanized by the memory of surviving it.  Even getting outside had it's own mood, one I'd never noticed until after Book Worm.

The doorman was the most massive stallion you could imagine.  Clad in in a hodgepodge of bent metal armor atop his coat, the scavenged pieces curled over his frame in intersecting, offset squares of varying size.  Thanks to the “rain” he never needed to clean it. He merely replaced it.  He always looked like he was covered in rust-flecked chrome, strapped to his body in the the symbolic binding that could hold such heavy sheets aloft.  Chains.

Whenever he pressed that button, half-broken klaxons heralded the opening of the doors.  Lights near the gateway edges, three to a side, spun and glowered from within thick glass domes.  It was a nice touch, a clean warning.  He always gave a nod- a perceived farewell- to those he was ushering out of the city's confines.

The doors would always sputter and grind.  Against the sound of the alarms and clattering chains, muffled by the cables and pulleys that swiveled to peel them apart, he had no distinguishable reception.  He opened the door so often with the full knowledge he may never again open them for the same pony, that I thought his voiceless attitude was more to keep himself sane.  Hell, maybe he was deaf and mute. I sure didn't know.

The edge of the organized talisman's effects, though.  It stopped at the doors.  It created a vicious threshold, like stepping into a sea of perfectly frozen air.  If one is unprepared for such, the cold takes your breath away like a sledge between the legs.  Your blood feels like it sinks straight to the ground through your hooves.  If you've been in one of the cities “rains,” you hear your clothing crack when you walk.

Your hooves greet the snow and the wind begins.  Whichever direction it is blowing, the chill is immediate.  No matter the thickness of the coat, being aware of how it encroaches is the worst part.  First, the skin goes numb. Then, the meat and bone.  Every warm part of you starts to feel like it's solid and simply stopped existing.  Feeling the thicker spit crackle, like a solid film on the lips and tongue, was the worst to me.

The doors never opened enough for more than one pony to go through.  As I crossed the threshold that time, though, something was different.  Normally, the body pickers would be in single file.  The number was usually six, and they worked in trios to cover the area.

That day, though, I was sent out alone.  So long as I was with others, and I could remain in the scoped tower view, I would be a lot safer from the protection of the Tower Ponies and friends.  Being by myself was a tidy discipline on Sureshot's part, for certain, though I could be sure he was watching me.

Still filled with that sleeping rage, I didn't care what he'd done.  The anger was all that was on my mind- mostly, trying to burn it off, or properly contain it.  As I stepped into the snow beyond the doors, however, the outside gnawed at me with creeping whisper of a frigid death.  There was no heat of immature anger outside Resilience.  It was a simple physical impossibility.

Whenever the real doors squealed shut behind me, its blaring yell always reawakened me to the noise that our homeland had.  There was none.

The white hills rolled like the surface of water that had suddenly stilled.  The soft quilt was marred with cracking juts of frosted crystal overgrowth, colored blue or completely clear, growing from the ground in keen but small formations that had too many angles to count.  A pony could see for miles, had the snow not gotten so steep in sudden drops, and had not so many taller things been buried deep enough to be mistaken for real land.

It was all cast in roaming pools of silver sun, through miniature tears in the clouds that had grown thicker than what I remembered from childhood.  That anemic light still held no warmth, passing too quickly to enjoy as the fissures stitched themselves up almost instantly.  Because of it, everypony else had also claimed that the outside had become somehow colder in the decade past.  

You know what?  They were bucking right.

I had been throwing blame around a lot in the past hour or so before my excursion.  At that point, it was the sun I tried mentally accosting.  I didn't have anypony else to talk to- maybe that's why I'd taken notice of all those glorious things that sought to drive me to a slow panic, especially the attempts of the sun falling so flat.  No goddess had the power to help me, then, so they deserved every bit of insult I could give them.

Past the goggles and through the fuzz, I looked toward where I thought the marked kills should have been.  I trotted off in the general direction, trying to spot one of the towers.  Of course, I didn't have any peripheral vision while equipped with goggles, and had to turn to see the tower.  Poking out of one, I could see the thick wedge of Sureshot's rifle; he'd been assigned another spotter in my absence, as was standard if somepony was otherwise occupied or killed, and all I saw was the sparkle of the the binoculars reflecting the snow.  I wanted to give it a rude gesture, but thought better of it.  It did, however, let me get a good reference point of where to start.

I took to a brisk trot.  Getting slogged was one of the more dangerous things outside of the walls in those days.  One might never catch their breath again, unless they dipped into one of the heated bunkers, or took to reclining at a hot barrel with it's talisman.  Both were equally dangerous- one for the fact you were a sitting duck until you could feel your legs again, the other for the fact the most traversed barrels were often booby trapped by the malicious.

I'd found that latter part out on one of my first exploits.  Ever seen a pony, grateful at the promise of warmth,  suddenly burst into flames?  Amplifying runes are a hell of a thing, even for warming talismans.

The more I recalled that fire and heat of the incident, the faster time went.  I arrived at the outskirts of where the dead Snowflakes rested, the echo of headshot red lingering on the land.  I fell to the snow, purposely, peering over the compacted ivory as it clutched around me.  I waited, ever so still, and watched.  There was no movement.  No noise, not even a mourning wind.

I decided to go for the furthest kill first.

I could see it had been a mare.  What was left of her was too small, too round in the backside, to be otherwise.  Her tail hair had been white, which explained why I hadn't been able to pick it out when I'd targeted her.  Ribs peeking from shredded, grey flesh and a torn coat, her entrails and last thoughts extended for several red meters.  They had already frozen, crystals of ice making the spread appear to be glassed paint sinking into cavities within the snow.  Her saddlebags were still intact.  Had Sureshot meant to save her supplies?

As I rifled through them, I found little of worth.  A pair of healing potions, a 9mm pistol (though spiced with rot and barely seeming of use), and a few boxes of paltry ammunition for it. The weirdest things, though, were the twist n' burn emergency hoof flares.  The paper on those was old and had begun to peel, but they were still rather heavy and their alchemical powders perhaps retained some value back home.  

When I was finished, I stripped what was left of her white coat from her body.  There was a particular value on them, to the ponies in the city.  They were a different cloth, thinner but just as well insulating.  They made good patches, and deserved some scrutiny on just how the hell they worked.  Resilience ponies had plentiful rumors (usually thrown over alcohol and food) for the material.  We never did take prisoners to find out.

I turned to the side after balling up her clothing into my left saddlebag, looking back to the other kill.  Glancing down, I saw the hoofprints that had been made so short a time before. They had already been polished by the wind, smoothed into dimples in the snow.  I traced them back to where my brother had ended them.

I found, to my surprise, a symbol.  It was sticking out from the snow, and spread across a wavy, thick piece of blue alloy that formed a wall I was all too familiar with.  It was that of a train car.  There was the emblem of something I'd not heard much of back then- that of a Ministry.

M.A.S. was emblazoned arrogantly in tiny and clean font beneath it, tilting as it stuck to the angles of the metal.  So many of them had been hidden across the landscape beneath ice, they might as well have been considered treasure troves.  Full of supplies, cold corpses, old world things that could be stripped and used...  Sometimes, just full of dust.

There was no body below the logo.  There was the blood, of course, which had already melted the snow from body heat and then hardened, making an organic and pretty splatter pattern.  An empty healing ampoule, the contents having been swallowed in a gulp.  Feeling rather proud I had known they'd survived, at first, I found a long ditch that lead along the back of the boxcar.  It ceased halfway along the boxcar's side.  To my right, there was another fairly steep hill; swept down into a nook that continued onward, eventually melding with the rest of the snow.

The other body rested motionlessly within the snow atop the car.  It was inside a dark, red gristle.  With no solid head to speak of, the pipeline that had made it's throat and spine were in full view.  One foreleg was draped limply over the side, the other crumpled beneath it's chest in a way that would have been painful to anything that still had a brain.  

The rifle, a rather wonderfully preserved specimen of one, was close by and already partly consumed by windswept snow.  I dug it out, nipped it up by the mouthgrip, and rested it by the corpse.

The saddlebags were filled in a very similar manner.  A rusty 9mm, one healing potion she hadn't used, and that strangeness.  Flares.

On top of it, though, there were two magazines of .308 rounds.  Those sure wouldn't go unappreciated.

After prying away her coat, I came to realize it was another mare.  Grey hide.  When I looked, I saw that her tail was also white.  Had they been siblings?  That was a gut-wrenching thought.

I tried to pick out the tower hut against the sky.  I stood there, rather dumbfounded I'd even come to the idea.  I shook my head.  If they were, it didn't matter then.  It wouldn't matter if I brought it up.  Right?

Like I'd done to the other Snowflake, I stripped her of her clothing and stuffed it into my left saddlebag.  The weapons and oddities went into my right.  I tried to give myself an excuse to busy myself further, as I'd done the first time I'd cleaned my pistol.

I hefted the rifle, and hesitated.  I hadn't seen her silhouette with it before.  Where had she gotten it?

The only place that held the answer was right under my hooves.  Stomping along the covered boxcar, over and over, I confirmed it was nicely hollow.  Peering over the edge I was on, the realization that the little ditch she'd carved in her escape stopped halfway along the tilted cars edge...  I hopped down, finding the snow beneath the first layer compressed and hard from repeated hoofsteps.  Sure enough, I saw a crack of buzzing green light coming from inside a divot, and tiny piles of snow to either side of the opening.

Dropping the rifle, I nuzzled at the holster for my own pistol.  Yanking it free, I put both hooves against the rung of the door, and pulled against it with my weight.  My pistol tugging me forward, I quickly spun my head side to side, looking for any tell-tale shapes amidst what I had first thought would be pure darkness.

To my left, there were wooden boxes.  Marked with the same logo as the boxcar, a thick needle of light pushed through the hole Sureshot had punched.  The first was large; after passing through whatever was in the boxes, the second was much smaller.

To my right, atop another one of the boxes, there was a console. Curious, I dragged the rifle in with me, and started to examine the device.  It was active by virtue of a cobbling of sparkle breeders, connected at either end to stripped wire.  A box of .308 rounds, an empty rifle magazine next to it.  Besides that there was a white-painted metal case, and stenciled on it was the sign of the gang.

Not being good with the old Stable-Tec consoles (the keyboard buttons were far too small), I decided to ignore it.  I found that the case was filled with a burst of hot air and provisions.  A medley of 200 year old food boxes, their adverts faded but visible.  Several bottles of water.  A warming talisman had been inside of it, too, keeping the water from freezing and splitting the containers.

I couldn't think of how lucky I was to have found that many supplies.  Instead, I was furious.  How the hell had they set this up within walking distance?  The hill it was on had given them the means to stay low and out of sight when they approached the door, but...  I could only think they'd done so at night, and with more than one pony.  Those consoles weren't, by any means, easy to carry.  The fact that it existed pissed me right off, but it was mostly over my own worries about it even being allowed.  I kicked myself with mental vulgarities.

Had I been lazy on one of the night shifts? Had the others been paid off somehow?  Was there an untouched bunker I'd missed, with a nearby tunnel connection that led to one the Snowflakes had found?  As I thought to check the area a little more thoroughly (perhaps the hatch was near the boxcar?), I was stopped in my tracks.

Conversation drifted from afar.

It wasn't the first time I had hidden from the Black Snowflakes.  It was, however, the first that I would be discovered.  The moment I realized they were heading for the boxcar, and quite out of view of the tower snipers thanks to the hill, my reaction was simple.  Silent panic, hoping that the two mares I heard jokingly insulting each other were about as well armed as their peers. Especially when they quieted themselves as they walked up the hill, and one mentioned the blood and fresh tracks.

I tested the door a little.  It felt loose.  At least I had that going...  I had to rustle about for my pistol, awkwardly tugging it free of the holster while trying to avoid making noise.  I never thought that I'd actually need it on yet another outdoor run like that... I never had needed it like that, up until then.  Their crunchy hoofsteps only grew closer in the interim.

I turned around, and took a bucker's crouch.  I aimed my one leg at the bar of the door, peering back over my shoulder.  I waited.

There's a trick, to an ambush.  It's just like my camera.  Patience, placement.  Planning contributes nicely, but when all hell breaks loose... It's all about the timing and luck, weather or not you actually accomplish what you prepared for.  Skill only makes it look good.

I saw the gun barrel first.  It peeked in, carefully angling to the corner furthest from me.  I kept waiting.

As the head swiveled, starting to aim the weapon at me, I saw her muzzle- a pale green.  I reared up, and the way my heart bounced against my ribs allowed the blood to grant me an omniscience to my own body.  I felt every wire of muscle tense, and as the front half of her face came inside, the kick made me ripple as I bucked the door handle.

The door tried to slide shut in an instant.  Her flesh and bone cushioned it, and I heard her jaw shatter in a damp crunch.  She was stuck there a moment, pinned and broken, the fallen 9mm sliding down to meet my other back leg as I pivoted.

With one forehoof, I curled a foreleg through the door's bar and yanked it open.  Resting the broken chin on my shoulder, I squeezed at her injured head to hold it aloft against my own with my free hoof.  I let myself thump down to the ground with her weight.  I lowered the mouth of my 10mm as the world came into glaring view, the door slinging open.

Her partner's gun fired.  Not even seeing the make of my attacker, whose bullets dimpled the metal behind me, I returned my own shots at the sound and light.  With a heavy swak! The rush of light was shaded by splintering flesh, and I heard a yelp.  The broken gleam of the weapon, pulling up from a red spot in the snow, resumed tracking up toward me.  She had a red hide, muzzle hidden behind a poor face wrap that clung to her pistols mouthgrip, and blue eyes slitted in pain.

I threw myself upwards, just to try and throw away the mare I'd been cradling.  The effort tossed her, blood slinging from the holes of missing teeth.  My meat shield staggered and tried to stand.  She was still aware.

I hopped beside her, keeping the view against me broken by the recovering, green-faced mare.  The wrapped one had no intent to shoot through her jaw-busted friend- unlike me.  When I fired another round, nearly point blank with my closest attacker, it took her out at the knee and she collapsed.  I kept my aim solid, firing over her at the red face behind her, the recoil punching at my teeth and neck.

Greasy chunks erupted from where I had shot.  I heard panting, and wet grunts.  I saw breath clouds and steam from warm, exposed muscle, and my  vision cleared from the the burn my readjusting eyes had given me.  I could see her wide, blue eyes blinking, as darker crimson began to spread through the snow and clothing from the glistening trio of staggered holes.

I leaped over the green, fallen mare.  Putting a forehoof to the red one's nose, I pressed her head into the snow, and my pistol just beneath her ear.  One turquoise eye shivered at me.  Without another thought in my mind, other than she might get up, I tongued the trigger.

I stepped back.  Streams of breath condensed on my gun, frosting it.  Her opened skull provided the sight of the sloppy mess inside, the black hole cradling it, and her ear flimsily clinging to her scalp.

As I turned to finish off her friend, there was a pained, wet scream of rage.  I tumbled, surprised, as weight hammered into my side.  With barely enough time to react, I slung my head backwards, tossing my gun away.  She wouldn't be getting it.

The other weapon the red faced one had was still close, though...

Seeing her crazed face through the fur of the coat surrounding it, a few things remain with me to this day.  The bloody gaps between teeth, spilling salty wine to spatter on my face and neck. The way her tongue puffed out against the empty parts during breaths.  The mindless murder lust in her eyes.  The last though, was just how pathetic she looked with what I did to her just a scant half-minute later.

I had enough space between her body and mine that I could coil up.  Using my back hooves, I kicked upward at the joints of her back legs.  I connected one hoof with the flesh wound I'd caused in her leg; hearing a vicious snap and gurgling scream, I rolled with and rested atop her.

I stood, and leaned away.  Bringing my forehead back onto her already cracked jaw with all the weight I could reasonably muster, I connected off-center.  Though her snaggle-toothed face cut a groove into my forehead, her jaw completely unhinged.

I left her there, wallowing with her face in her hooves, and looked about.  There were the guns, but with the stupefying pain then in my forehead, I just didn't care.  

My head was bleeding.  I was scared.  I had been hurt by these outsiders, again.

I went to her dead friend to rustle around in her bag.  Finding more of the flares, I took one out.  Holding the cold end with my teeth, I twisted and yanked the ignition end away with my front hooves. The thing sizzled to orange life behind that boxcar...  And well out of sight of the tower ponies.

I had her to myself.  The kind of useless, leeching cunts that had killed Book Worm.

I returned to her.  I waited, until her eyes opened from behind her hooves.  I stabbed at her neck with the hot end, and an acrid, vile smoke burned my nose.  It seemed to stick to her, as if glued, and when I pulled it away a bubbling mass of steaming liquid flesh stretched with it.

She tried to scream, pitifully.  I pushed one of her forehooves away, and put a corner of my hoof against the lower jaw.  I pried her mouth open, with ease, while she whimpered and tried to jab at me with whatever working and unrestrained limb she had.  I thrust forward with the flare again, and managed- with some effort- to cram half of it into her grossly open mouth.

I pushed, and pushed, and pushed.  I didn't let the fizzling cylinder to rescind it's approach until I felt it at the back of her throat.  I was nose to nose with her, staring her straight in the face, as I felt the heat burrow an unseen hole and allow the flare to sink even deeper into her gullet.

I looked her deep in those pretty eyes the entire time.  Desperation satisfied, and amidst the blind antipathy I had not realized I was capable of, her life faded in front of me.  There were soundless tears in her eyes, her weak legs trying feebly to bat me away.  Eventually, the blood vessels in her eyes ruptured after her throat cauterized against the front of her spine, dusting the flesh around her sockets apple red.  Her eyes rolled back, and she was gone.

I had come back down from the clouds at that point.  I fell back on my haunches, holding my forehooves up to try and push the scene away as it suddenly conceived.  Stars floated toward where I was focused, my brain drowning from taking one too many deep breaths.  The stars moved to highlight her smoking head, her nose and distended mouth billowing the stink of overcooked meat.

I'd shot ponies.  Well, shot at them.  The wrapped one was the first one I'd actually killed with a bullet of my own.  That was clean, fast, impersonal.

I'd just murdered a wounded mare.  I'd never realized that I had been waiting for that opportunity.

I was alive.  Two on one, and I was alive.  Why wasn't I proud?  I'd smiled so much behind the binoculars...

As more of my brain rebooted, the blood chiming through my ears drained back into my neck.  I was able to look around, take in more of the scene with every one of my senses.  I hadn't thought there were more of them lurking around; when the idea reemerged, I frantically started to scan.  I reminded myself that they were there for a reason.

As I scuttled to find my gun (which had been well down the snow dune leading up to the train car), the already frozen mouthgrip stuck to my tongue. In the middle of trying to pull my palette away from the trigger, I looked up.

I'd been wondering why there were so many scouts that day.  My concern had only grown with what little they carried.  They were featherweighted, for speed.  The flares had no purpose, or so I'd thought, unless they wanted to say a very dumb hello to the tower ponies.

There was a storm coming.  When I realized the type I understood the flares were probably meant for a path, or to mark safe points.   Maybe fire a warning shot with the flare guns.

It was the sort of flurry that most of the sheltered Resilience ponies only heard about, since the warming bubble always made them swirl on the outskirts.  One of the cursed ones, from which the Black Snowflakes had taken their name.   I had never actually seen one so close until then.

Ebon snow was fast approaching where I was in what Resilience called a Dervish.  A thick, dancing set of dark cones that tossed around frigid necromantic filth, the tips of which had their points siphoning air, snow, and rocks into an upward spin and leaving a deep scar in the snow that allowed me to see permafrosted ground.

As if the corruption in the world had condensed amidst the sky and given itself form in a low-hanging, demure dark cloud, the shards of ice sparkled with miniature razors. They were known to leave nothing more than the irradiated ribbons of unlucky ponies widely sprinkled in it's wake.  They were so small, so quick, seeing one while in the open meant you were probably dead.

The Snowflakes hadn't been trying to attack or scout the city.  They were returning to a shelter.  There I was, out in the middle of all their fresh corpses.  I did not dwell upon it beyond a few more moments, as the Dervish rushed to meet me.

I knew I didn't have time to escape.  That was what made them so dangerous, after all- they were fast and attentive.  That didn't mean that I was out of luck, though.  The Snowflakes had prepared, no matter how stupid and desperate they had been in it's placement so close to Resilience.

I put both forehooves to my gun, and painfully yanked a small patch of frozen tongue with it.  I ran back up that  incline, pausing at the mare- I dropped my pistol, and wrenched the still burning flare out of her mouth.  I winced at the worsening local odor.

I ran to the train car.  I jumped atop it, and hoped the brazen display wouldn't be seen as some kind of taunt by a poorer spotter.  I stood on my back legs and waved the flare about, before spitting it to tint the snow orange.  I pointed down at it, still completely uncertain if they saw my details.

I screamed at the top of my half-empty lungs as I waved.  “In here! I'm waiting it out in here!”  I gave overdramatic points and jumps atop it, praying...

I waited for as long as I thought I could.  Thank goddess, it was enough.  There came the sound of a single gunshot, loud and ringing off the hills, that momentarily drowned out the wind.  There was no mistaking what it was- Sureshot's rifle.  He'd wasted a shot, just to acknowledge me.  

Alright you glorious flank-hole, I thought.  I'll be back soon, weather or not either of us want me to be.

I dove off the train car.  I galloped to collect my pistol, kicking up wet dollops of flattened snow. The angle and grip I had on the thing didn't matter, only that I had it.  

As I looked back at the Dervish, the shrill storm had already covered half it's distance to me.  It turned in flight, precisely aiming, as if it had spotted me.  Gallivanting like a predator, it's icy teeth compressed as if it were imagining how delicious I'd be.

I ran into the train car.  Dropping the pistol to meet the 9mm on the floor, I used both hooves to shut that door.  Realizing the wind might well slide it open, I used some of the empty wooden boxes to wedge it so it was locked closed.  Not a flake or grain of that stuff could get inside, I'd been told, or I would take the chance of feeling it for hours to come.

I leaned back and panted.  The wind struck the doors with a lethal affection.

What did that thing have at its helm?  Whatever that was could go and get bucked- for a single pony like me, all that energy was more than overkill.  It was graveyard quality entertainment.  Maybe I deserved to be the butt of that joke, but I wasn't about to be walked into the punchline.

All around, the slamming tinker of tiny blades clanked like loud static.  I sat back in the green glow of the monitor, the only light source, and stared at the door.  It jostled a little, but didn't move enough to open.  I let out a relinquishing sigh.

By Celestia.  What kind of luck did I really have?  I had more than enough time to ponder.

Surrounded by green “light,” I just sat there.  The cold and violence had taken it's toll, but not nearly as intensely as the suddenness of my quarantine there.  Confident I was safe for the time being, I did what I could to make myself comfortable.

I took the supply case, and the warming magic in it went through my veins like a wonderful poison.  I had to use one of the Snowflakes bloody, ruined coats as a pillow.  Watching the door, tugging at my pistol to keep it close, I smacked my lips at the realization my tongue had been ever so slightly bleeding. I used one of the Snowflakes water bottles to wash it away.

I had to watch that door for hours.  I had to listen too, quite carefully, against the noise of the Dervishes persistent, shredding howl.  The clattering of old wood, frozen and fragile, had to be readjusted every few minutes.  Even with the talisman it felt difficult to breath, and an odor of ashen, ghostly carrion began to hang in the air.

Having an imagination is a bad thing when you're alone like that.  It didn't take long for my mind to start playing tricks.  False hoofsteps, the snorts of ponies three times my size, and the stretching metal baying in my head like a monster squealing to get inside. The thought of eyes, staring at me, peering through the gap in the metal that Sureshot's rifle had left...

The bullet hole.

Son of a bitch!

I grabbed one of the coat tatters from my saddlebag.  I ran to the entry point, and found my hooves slapping inside a sticky, dark puddle that had hidden in the shadows.  Some of the black snow had clustered around the hole, the fuzzy crap melting down in a thick and zig-zagging stream down the inside wall.

Through the puncture, the putrid air of the Dervish had been pouring into the car, and I got a cleanly focused breath of it before I could plug the gap.  I took one of the remaining boxes, tilting it to hold the cloth inside.  I repeated the exercise on the opposite wall, and found that the wind had shifted; the Dervish had changed it's spin, consciously, pushing the air inside again from the opposing aperture.

When both were corked with quickly blackening cloth, I trudged away.  I retook my place near the door, imagining that the terminal was putting off some kind of fake firelight.  Even as the far corners of the cart began to ice over, a solid encasement forming to fill the empty corners, I kept thinking about getting home.  What it was like to be warm without magic or a terminal.  Heat itself was an addiction all it's own to Resilience ponies.

It took an hour or so to sink in.  I'd screwed up, in one little detail; a dot of light escaping through a sheet metal wall.

I threw up.  Twice.  I retreated to the corner behind the terminal to do it.

A nimble disease marched to delight my heartbeat into skipping.  I grew numb, while well heated by the talisman.  Like a drunken stupor, yet remaining aware, I was thrown into fits of twitching, random chills.

I couldn't help it.  I kept arguing with myself, reciting one thing. “Don't sleep.  It'll get you.  Don't sleep.  It'll get in and it'll end you.”

I repeated that until the last moment I remember inside that convenient little tomb.  I recall the far wall freezing solid behind an inch thick layer of fragile ebony.  I remember the smell of regurgitated food and a sense of real, consuming hate, focusing in on me with all the subtle and patient intensity a colt like me could muster from behind a set of binoculars.  With all of it closing in around me, centimeter by centimeter, I was thankful for my next failure.

I did not dream.

[***]

The memories were just feverish hallucinations.  A swirl of crippled thought, the tastelessness of cold air a passing and jaded familiarity.  The dervish had weakened and dissolved, and I had left the car for home through the shattered remains of a black ice shell on the train car door.  The snow crept up to congeal on my hooves and coat in a flimsy crust, and I remember how I shook it off before ogling the Doorman again.  He had apparently been informed of what had transpired, and hadn't expected to see me.

I had tipped.  The sky and walls twirled.  Sounds made me sick, forcing my stomach to try and vent in violent and dry gags.  I thought it was kind of humorous at the time, laughing at the fact I'd long lost whatever food I'd had not halfway back to Resilience.

Time darted past like a curious insect. It stopped to buzz in my face occasionally, and gently tumble in the air around my head.  I remembered instants before they occurred, and was surprised by things that happened hours before.  Pillows, actual pillows, made the bones of my skull hurt.  Whenever I was lucid, however many seconds or minutes or hours it was, the marrow and jelly of my body felt like flowing sand.

After one long, amber view from behind my eyelids, the room bleated into form.  I awoke with pair of hooves slamming into my chest, making me gasp like I had dry gills, and with a syringe jabbed between my ribs.  When the needle left with a flit, I listed every nasty syllable I could come up with.  The words you can fabricate when you're half asleep can turn out to be gruesomely artistic.

With a whistle from the “doctor,” he stared at me with wide eyes and a mournful laugh.   He said nothing, merely pushed me back down into the bed.  With the pain hammering to escape the prison my skull was, how it burnt the back of my eyes and threatened to pop them, I was still pissed off enough to disregard it.  It took all my strength not to just coil up a foreleg and clock him in the throat for bringing me back into the world like he had.

What the hell had he given me?  Buck, maybe?  Stampede?  I'd let myself suffer that a couple of times.  It never ended without broken things and fuzzy memories like what I had been experiencing- bones and dazed but grateful mares, respectively.  Why I was taking it well enough to think then, brought me pause.

Just how far gone was I, if only that crap was able to wake my flank up?

A while of sweating through my eardrums and cheeks, I was deemed fit to visit.  What they hadn't known, though, was that I was also up.  I had been pacing for a long time in the nude, listening to my hooves click along the amber crystal floor, before Sureshot swung the door open.

Even from across the room, I was in his face and snorting like a bull.  Like always, he didn't budge.  He met my eyes with a slow squint, the power of that calm will walling him off from that incomprehensible chem-rage I was trying to drown him with.

“You alright?”

“No.” I said, barely before he had time to finish. “No I'm not.   What the hell happened? What was I doing?”

He drew his tongue over his teeth, behind closed lips.  “You... Walked back.” he said.

“... That's it?  I walked back?  That's all that goddamn happened?”

He finally took to shoving me.  Even with the fact I was thicker than him, my pain trained instincts knew my place against his.  He pushed twice with his shoulder, the last giving him a bit of breathing room against my weight. “You walked back.” he said, again.

“Yeah, but what-”

“You walked back from a gunfight, from exposure, and from a dervish.” he listed.  “And the first things out of your mouth were mutterings of what you brought back.” He shook his head at me.  “Not a single buck for yourself, you only wanted us to get the supplies.”

“Why does that-”

“You don't get it.  You weren't supposed to, I guess that's my fault.”  He nuzzled a cigarette free from the tin he had, sitting on his haunches to clap the button on the side with his hoof. A little flick later, and the tiny hood at the side had the stick lit.  “Didn't want to short change you, but...” He trailed off, streams of acrid smoke escaping his nose and lips.

“So what the hell does it matter?  Did you get what I found?”

“Yeah, and we used some of the meds on you.” he said.  “But you don't know what you stirred up for yourself, do you?”

I sighed over my teeth, and sat down.  Feeling like I was burning a hole in the floor, I also thought my hooves were cracking the crystal with the weight I believed myself to have.  “I didn't screw up. I know I didn't, if I'm still standing here.”  I'd said that a lot with him, and whenever I did, he usually gave me the what for.  I was ready for the discipline.  Take a hit, take a few insults, and after a little simmering we'd both be right as rain.  That's what a brother like him was for.  Maybe the drugs would mix things up a little, but...

Instead, he brushed a hoof through his mane.  “You walked back from it all.”  he said.  “That's the problem.”

[***]

It wasn't more than a few hours after the chems initial rush had faded that I was dressed up in a fresher coat and placed in what we called the auditorium.  The name was laughable.  It was an old stable-tec projector on a table, surrounded by mostly broken stools, pointed at a wall covered in patchy cloth.  Overplayed entertainment tapes were jumbled in piles about the small room.  The place had once been a large pet kennel, and the bolts and drains of where the cages had once been remained in the tile floor.

There were two other ponies there, about my age.  One colt, with a far-too-short yellow mane and green-blue hide poking from the neck of his coat.  The other was a mare, just a little shorter than me, brandishing the same garb.  She was a pretty little thing- gold crystal eyes that jittered nervously against Sureshot as he paced in front of all of us, a blue tint on her white hide and a well kept deep blue mane.  She nibbled at her lips over and over, looking at me like I'd been her accomplice in something.

Don't blame me, I thought to her.  Whatever I did, it was all my OR your fault.  I wasn't about to accept any blame for what she may have done, especially if that's what we alone had been called up for.

Sureshot took another smoke.  I hadn't seen him indulge himself so much, and couldn't fathom why.  He eyed the ashes indignantly in the old tray by the projector, and cradled it before giving me one long and very similar look.

“The city is dying.” He said.  “It's slow.  It's a goddamn disease.  It's... Well, it's been a long time coming, and we're in no way to stop it without some help.  It's why you're here.”

He sat back and rolled his head, both hooves at the back of his neck.  Looking to the ceiling, he laughed while clenching his teeth around the cigarette.

“Ever since the whole incident with a certain trader,” he said, looking back at me.  I visibly grit my teeth at him.  “There have been less and less of them.  Her getting killed scared a lot of them.  The way we have to handle letting them in recently has scared off even more.  The way the outside is getting, they can't really be blamed for wanting to stay away from this place either.  That'd all be fine, but...”  

I wanted to remark, but whatever I could contrive would have probably been meaningful only to me.  My brain was still working off chems.  My body still felt mostly empty, half-filled with bland food approved by the doctor, and only a few thoughts could properly articulate through the combination.

“The raiders have gotten braver, the storms are doing nothing but spreading.  The cold is getting so bad we're running out of talisman's, and we can't recharge enough of them reliably to stop the hydroponics pipes from freezing and breaking.  A full supply route needs to be established, before we need to leave.”

“Leave? What leave?  Nopony said anything about leaving.” The little mare was a flurry of quick, barely intelligible speech.

“We have plenty of reasons to stay.” Sureshot replied.  “Not enough of the resources.  Hell, the brass the tower ponies use is most of the same stuff we've been using for years.  We're running out of ways to clean syringes and synth up potions...” He laid it out in unflinchingly plain speak, his knowledge far more thorough than what a normal stallion of his caste was.  With his kill count, he really was well liked by the ponies in higher places than the towers.

With that, though, it meant the elders had made him a part of whatever that meeting was supposed to represent.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, under my breath.  “Here it comes.”  The other two peeked at me, as if what I'd said was some kind of blasphemy.  To hell with you, I thought.  He's my brother, I've got that right.

“If we don't get a steady resupply,” he said. “We're going to have to pack up and head south.”

“How is that even possible?” I asked him.  Not once had he spoken up about that to me.  Not in private, not in the towers.  I did not appreciate being out of the loop, and he knew that.

“It isn't.” he said.  “We've gotten too soft staying here.  Not many of the ponies know how to travel in the cold.  Fewer still are capable of putting up a fight like some of us can.” He rubbed out the cigarette, and before long, had another one smoldering in his lips. “Most of us would certainly die in the exodus.  Goddess only knows what kind of reception we'd get in the south.  A good chunk of them stopped believing we even exist, with the few traders that do show up to carry stories back.  Can you imagine what would be said about us if a few hundred just suddenly showed up with a need for food and water and homes?” he laughed again.

“W-well what are we supposed to do about it?”  The mare asked again.  The colt was oddly quiet, as if paying attention was consuming all his mental fuel.

Without missing a step, Sureshot answered.  “We need to get more ponies coming here.  We need to let them know, and not through some caravan rumor, that we're still here and can sustain. Or, just make a few ponies rich in other supplies.  Somepony needs to make the Long Trot south to do it.” he said.

“Yeah.” I told him. “Because that's going to go so well, right?” I shrugged. “You just said, we got soft.  What makes you really believe we can do anything?”

“You're the pickers.” he said.  “You've all survived out there.  You know what to look for, you know where you should go to try and stay safe.  Best of all,” he peered between us all, resting that unrelenting gaze in each our faces.  It made me sneer back at him. “You can give that to southern ponies.  You can be living proof that the Long Trot is still possible and worth it, and you can tell them how.  We can stay, they can profit.  Everypony wins.”

“Oh buck off, Sureshot.” I exclaimed.  “What are you gonna do without us right where we are, huh?  No matter how weak the city got.  If anything it's just going to make things worse here while we get picked off.”

“Maybe.  But that last part is mostly going to be your own fault, isn't it?  Besides, you don't have much of a choice.”  He held the tray close to his face, using his lips to slap the cherry on the side and dust it off.  “I suppose you've seen a distinct lack of familiar faces in the past couple days.”

I couldn't agree with that.  Though, I didn't know how long I'd been out.

“You're a late wave.” he said.  “The others are already gone.  We're scattering out as many as we can, with one goal in mind.  Getting traders to come here.  Bribery, inspiration, blackmail. We don't really care.  What matters is Resilience needs it.  If we don't get a concrete trade started, well,” he shook off the cigarette one last time. “A lot of us are going to die.  The walls are going to be abandoned for the rest of us trying to make the Long Trot, and this place is going to be just another hole in the ground.”

“Is this the best you could come up with?” I asked him.  He looked back to me with one open eye, slitting it toward me.  “If anything, it's only going to make certain ponies want to stay.  There have got to be more ponies willing to see the bitter end with high heads than what you're suggesting.”

Sureshot waited.  He wanted to stay smart.  To stay the logical one.  I, however, knew exactly how to piss him off.  I'd exercised it quite a lot, too; just question what he thought was right.

He gave a point to the others.  “You two.  Get out.  Ask the door stallion for your supplies.”  He began to walk toward me.  Though the mare was mumbling nervously to herself, she did as she was told. The colt had lowered his head.  He was crying.  Crying!  “I said,” Sure shot smacked his shoulder.  “Get. Out.”  It took a couple weak bucks to his flank, but it got him moving.

It left me alone with my brother.  My stubborn, pain-in-the-ass brother, who'd I'd just found out had been keeping secrets from me.  The instant the door was closed, he found himself against it.  Lifted entirely from the floor, it was the first time I'd ever used my strength against his.  With the residual drugs still in my veins, the extra pounds I had over him despite the inches in height I lacked, I found out something I never allowed myself to believe I should have abused.

I was stronger than him.

He sneered. “That's right. Get it out of your system.”

“You think this is good shit, don't you?” I asked him.  He made a move only to brace himself against my front hooves, stopping him from being strangled.  “Why would anypony here want the pickers to get killed off?  What did you say to get my ass sent off, huh?  What are you pulling?”

I knew what I wanted him to say.  That he hated how I acted, no matter how good it was for the city.  That I was right for once, and it needed to be done and it was all for the politics.  And so he did.

It's one of the things I regret most in my entire life.

“Yeah, that's right. Blame me all over again.” he said.  “Do you even remember when the pickers started?” he asked me.

“Yeah.  Right after Book Worm.”

“No.” he said. “No!” he yowled again.  “They started a year after that.  When they saw your flank running around in the white shit, still a kid, prying through the garbage.  Sitting next to your brother in the meantime, no matter what that meant.” He didn't struggle, merely pressed both front hooves around one of mine that had him pinned.  “Not even the tower ponies had your nuts, or your energy.”

“I was only trying to eat.”

“Aren't we all.”  He kept on going like he hadn't even heard me. “And your pictures!” he tried to laugh, but his compressed chest couldn't.  “You don't even know what you had there, did you?  I don't think anypony did but me.”

I was alight with contempt.  “Don't bring those into it.  You never looked at them.”

“Of course I didn't.” he smiled at me.  “I never cared you could snap copies of a map that led us to some of the biggest scavenging finds ever.  I never cared that they showed other ponies that the inside of bunkers weren't so scary, and that they could come back alive if they just-”  I dropped him.  I just wanted to shut him up, to hit him, over and over.  The pull of dissonance kept my hooves still.

He rose to stare into my eyes.  “Looked at your pictures, and learned from them.”

“Bullshit.” I replied.  “I haven't taken a single good one in years, and you sure didn't try to help me set up for more.  The towers were more important.”

He walked back over to the projector, and from beneath one of it's corners, produced a book.  The flaking cover was green, the pages thickened by several pages of parchment.  It was familiar- I'd “misplaced” it a long time ago.

“You call them scraps.” He held it up with both hooves, in a stark jolt that kept it upright in front of me. “The other pickers called them education.”

I put a hoof to my head.  I'd been just a teen when it vanished.  How could he?  Those were his brothers.  They were MINE.

Sureshot marched back to me, stuffing it into my face.  “You never had to learn, because you were just doing it.  You didn't even care.  You didn't even stop to look sideways at what you were doing, not once, and ignored everypony else but me and you just to did it.”  He sighed. “Do you know how hard it was to keep the rest of the tower ponies from sending you off when you hit mating age?  To do this exact bucking thing?  You were a natural at it, and all you wanted to do was,” He laughed once more. “Stay here, and help us, without even being told we needed it.”

He started to cry.  Sureshot, crying.  I thought I'd seen everything.  “You've done so much more for us than you know, because you're so tunnel visioned.  Stay with family, keep the town around at whatever cost to your life that could mean.  You're still that stupid, which makes you perfect for this.”

“So why now?  If I'm such a damned burden being around, then why the-”

“Because you were the inspiration a crystal pony can make the Long Trot.  None of us have been south- none.  You're the first pony to head out willingly and come back.  You walked back from the worst of it that we know, without greed from a good cap run fueling you.”  He scooped up my scrapbook and waved it about. “What's more, you can prove it.” He shook his head with another morbid laugh. “Not just to us, either.  To the traders.  The other waves might have guts, but they sure don't have pictures...”

“Then it means I shouldn't leave.  Send the book off with one of the others.” I stumbled for excuses.  I tried to convince myself I was afraid, but terror had no say.  I was sick and angry and reeling- but not scared. “I could teach new ones.  Make some runs, get more pictures. Give us a better chance.  Besides, if there are so many others, why me?”

His chuckle festered the longer it played out.  He lowered his head down, and inhaled through a wet and dripping nose.  “We got some word from the early waves.” He said.  “Death notes brought by cowards who just didn't cut it, mostly.  This is the last wave I've been able to convince the others to send.  Do you really think those other two are up to it?”

He slapped the book into my chest.  I caught it, and looked down at it.  I brushed it off a little, across the dimple of where the broken leg of the projector had been resting atop it, sinking halfway into the material it was made of.

I was still unconvinced.  Though the words had flawlessly gouged a hole deep in my soul, one I still haven't covered, I was undeterred.  “I'm not leaving.” I said.  “You know you can't make me, now.  You need me.”

“Yeah we do.  We need you out there, on the other end of the Trot.  Doing what you've been doing all the while.” He pointed to the scrapbook.

“Buck off.” I said, slapping the forsaken thing to the floor in a crisp clap.  I pointed at him.  “You don't own my flank any more, and if what you said is true I can do more for this city than... Than...”

Sureshot smiled.  He put his back to the door, and stood up against it.  One long gaze toward the ceiling, he lit one more cigarette from his tin.  “Not up to me.  But colt, did I ever try.”

He pointed toward the projector.  On one side, there was a saddlebag I hadn't noticed prior.  I went to it, slowly upon his behest, and nosed it open.  Inside, there were unfamiliar things.  A pair of syringes, filled with a clear fluid.  Small, metal cylinders, tiny dots meant for the needle to pierce, at their head.  There were many of them, too numerous to count right away.

Sureshot put a hoof to his head.  “You try to stay, I promise.  We'll kill you.”

“You're sick, then.” I disregarded him, rolling the many trinkets around with a hoof.  I knew what he'd just said was a complete load.  I closed the pack back up, still unawares of what they even were. “I'm not going.  Burn me if you want, but I'll do better for you when I'm here.”

He kept right on laughing, and had to catch his breath behind sniffling breaths.  “Nopony else is going to need that stuff.” he said.  “Not me, not the ones walking the streets, not the other pickers with you.  Nopony else but you.”

“Why not?”

“The numbness in your skin?” he said.

I nodded.

“The jab the doc had to give your heart?”

I nodded.

“You didn't survive the Dervish, Snapshot.”

What?  I put a hoof to my own chest to prove I had a heartbeat.  I traded my eyes between the saddlebag and my brother, and took to jostling the contents once again.

His voice drew across a polished razor.  The words bled to death comfortably in my mind.  “You walked back, but not in time.” He said.  “The doctors couldn't purge the corruption from the storm.  You're turning Wailer.”

“Bullshit.”  I said.  “It kills first.  Reanimates.”

He shook his head.  “Not for a crystal.” he whispered.  “You know, like dad?  Remember how he always just... Smiled, through closed lips? Started wearing that facewrap all the time?”

I started to inhale lung-popping breaths.  I shoved the saddlebag, and it clattered when it fell to the floor.

“I guess I remember it better.  It's nice and quiet.  Comes from the heart.” he tapped his own chest with a hoof.  “Think happy thoughts... Right?”

Or else...

I turned to look at him again.  I started a slow and viciously intended return.

“That'll slow it down even more, or so the doctors tell me.”  He put both his forehooves forward toward the bag, as if presenting a grand and fantastical artifact.  “Turn off parts of your brain.  Make you a little happier for a while, so the corruption can't get it's pilot light going.”

Even as I closed in, he didn't budge.  He never budged.

“It was the Trot,” he murmured.  “Or throw you to Sorrow.  Put another name on the incinerator wall after popping your feral skull.”  He consigned his eyes behind his hooves.  He squeaked when he talked.  “You have to understand.  You have to forgive me.  I just couldn't do that.  I just...”

My lungs and heart reached a hammering crescendo.  The next thing I knew, he was on the ground, his cigarette bouncing amidst small orange flakes.  I could taste his breath, reeking of smoke.

“So that's what it's down to!” I screamed.  “Get a liability out of the city!  Hope that maybe the one guy you want gone would save your pathetic flank?!”

“Yeah.  For everypony else, maybe.” He shook his head, breaking into a despondent cackle.  “I trust you.  You did so much without giving a buck. You've gotten so strong without accepting or even realizing a moment of praise because you just thought it needed doing.  But you're an asshole, Snapshot.  That's what makes you perfect for this in everypony else's eyes.  You're a bastard without a life to lose, but you're too stubborn to give up.”

We shared tears, one set of mourning, one of rejecting, speechless animosity. “I tried to tell you, Snapshot.  Sometimes...  Things get so bad that it really does come down to one last shot.”  He rested his hooves, giving me the ideal, unfulfilled opportunity to break him in half.  “It shouldn't ever have to.”

[***]

Level up!

Improv: Conventional weapons are expected, so you've learned to switch things up in order to retain the element of surprise.  If you pass a perception check on mundane items, you can use these normally non-lethal items as close combat weapons, modified by your melee weapons skill.