6 bodies lay on the floor, each one wrapped in it’s own sleeping bags. Each of their torsos slowly moved up and down in cadence with their breath as they slept. They were arranged in a circle surrounding the embers of a dying campfire that had earlier in the night been the only thing keeping the cold out of the damp cave the explorers currently called home. The only other light came from the headlamps of the 2 Applejack’s Rangers who had stayed awake to guard the group throughout the night. The pair were sitting away from the main group, towards the mouth of the cave. The one on the left was an average sized orange earth pony with a scarlet mane that had been cut as short as possible to fit comfortably under his armor, which at the moment obscured him from view. He had unhooked the minigun from his power armor’s weapons rack and disassembled it. Before him lay an array of tiny screws, springs, and other gun parts, all grouped by size and function. He held in his hooves a tiny brush, normally used by foals to tidy the hair of their dolls, and was using it to scrub down one of the gun’s 6 barrels.

His companion had his helmet off, exposing his shiny silver coat and white mane, and had positioned it next to him on the ground so that it’s lamp was directed onto the checklist in his hand. This Ranger was much more visibly aged than his partner, giving him a traveled and wisened look. With a pencil held in his mouth he went over the list for the third time that night, making sure all their gear was in order.

“Silver, I think I heard something outside,” said the one on the left.

“It’s the rain.”

“No, no, something besides the rain. There’s something outside, you should put your helmet on.” He stood up and prepared his second minigun, which was still attached to his side.

“I’m not putting my helmet on kid. And sit down before you get us all killed with that gun of yours. You’re just hearing things.”

“You should put your helmet on anyway. It’s protocol.”

“Thunder Gun, look at me. I’m an old stallion. This is probably going to be my last mission. Do you think I give a damn about protocol? Besides--”

Lightning flashed outside, illuminating the cave for a split second. That short moment was enough to reveal a silhouette in the mouth of the cave. This figure stood so that the two guards could see it’s profile, and what they saw terrified them. It appeared to be a twisted amalgamation of an enormous lion with some type of head sticking out of it’s back and a tail with a mouth at the end. The cave then lit up again with the brilliant light from a blast of fire that erupted out of the beasts mouth.

The sleeping adventurers who hadn’t been woken up by the intense heat and light that had all of a sudden engulfed the cave were startled to consciousness by the roar of Thunder Gun’s six-barreled killing machine. It was soon joined by the the repeated thud-thud-thud sound of Silver Luster’s custom grenade machine gun and the now-awake Sea Foam’s twin rocket launchers. The trio of rangers all blindly firing at the mouth of the cave became a duo as the creature leaped forward, striking at Thunder and cutting him down with it’s alicorn-horn-sized claws. By now the five remaining ponies had all grabbed their weapons and joined into the fight, pouring extra grenades, plasma, and lead into already impressive stream of ordinance that was flowing in the direction of the hell-beast.

Pickaxe hung off to the side, crouched and ready to buck incase that thing came her way, unable to add any extra projectiles to the fight. Unluckily for her, the creature decided this meant that she was the easiest target and rushed her. Instead of attacking directly, a move which would surely end up with her leg being sliced off, she rolled to the side just before the still unidentified creature swiped at her. As it overshot her she gave it a sharp power hoof jab in the flank, causing it to stumble. As she pulled her hoof back she felt a sharp pain and then a flush of heat engulf her leg. Refocusing her eyes onto the source of the pain, she saw the creatures tail retracting from her foreleg, only this wasn’t a tail. It was a snake. And that snake had bitten her! The creature reared itself around to line up another shot at pickaxe, but it never got the chance. It was suddenly turned into a cloud of pink ash, which silently fell to the floor. Where the creature had stood only a second prior was Cherry Pie, her pink magical energy blaster held in her mouth.

“I told you I made a few improvements”

Cherry looked up from her fresh kill. Before her lay a scene of utter destruction. Large portions of the cave wall had had been chipped off and now took the form of sizable boulders that had settled on the cave floor. To the left of the cave Thunder Gun lay on the floor, the metal plating covering the left side of this neck and upper torso slashed wide open, blood seeping out of the hole. Pearly Buck, Sea Foam, and Silver Luster were already rushing towards him, Pearly warming up his horn to perform some basic medical spells. In front of her Pickaxe sat up against a wall, eyes on the verge of tears as she held her hoof into her chest, screaming obscenities as loud as she could. Cherry knelt down in front of her as Cloud Runner and Crystal Spell ran over to their fellow Follower of the Apocalypse.

“What happened!?!” Crystal shrieked. She coerced Pickaxe’s hoof away from her chest and saw the twin puncture wounds where the creatures tail had bitten her. “What caused these?”

Pickaxe was barely able to get out a few words through gritted teeth; “Tail was actually snake. Snake bit. Think poisoned.” After that last sentence fragment, she slumped over against the wall, the last thing she saw before closing her eyes being the glow of her friends horn as she began performing her healing art.

Eight hours later Pickaxe stirred. She could hear the soft voice of other ponies, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. She also couldn’t understand the constant ringing that was playing in her ears, nor the sound of what she thought was music. What she could understand was something that she didn’t hear. She could no longer hear the pitter-patter of rain outside the cave entrance.

She looked towards the source of the voices and saw the rest of her team, Thunder Gun excluded, sitting around a fire. As her senses began regained their sensitivity she began to make out what the voices were saying, all though she still couldn’t tell who was saying what.

“So you’re saying that thing came from...”

“Yep”

“How is that even possible? I thought it was guarded by-”

“Normally it is, but-”

“Hey, I think Pickaxe is waking up.”

Crystal Spell got up and walked up over to where Pickaxe was laying, swiftly followed by Cloud Runner. Cherry Pie, Pearly Buck, Sea Foam, and Silver Luster merely turned around to look at the now awake expedition leader from where they were already sitting. Next to them was a radio that appeared to be turned on, no doubt the source of the music she was hearing.

“How’s our patient doing?” Crystal said in the motherly tone she took on when talking to her patients.

“I’ve been better” Pickaxe responded. She slowly sat up, taking in the scene around her. She saw a large pillar of wooden crates that had been stacked up at the front of cave and large rocks scattered over the battlefield. As she continued to scan the area, she noticed an empty suit of power armor with three eight inch long gashes sliced clean through it. Never in her life had she seen or heard of anything doing that much damage to a suit of power armor with just it’s claws, and in only one hit. Maybe a dragon or Star Spawn, but she wasn’t even sure those mighty beasts could make that big of a hole. As she continued looking around, she saw the body that had previously inhabited the shredded suit of power armor. Thunder Gun lay on a makeshift cot comprised of a pile of bloody sleeping bags, slightly glowing from the healing magic that was still working on him. Near the sleeping Ranger was a rather large pile of sopping red rags and bandages.

“Is he going to be okay?” Pickaxe asked, giving a slight nod in Thunder’s direction.

“He should be.” Crystal responded. “I currently-”

“We! We currently!” Interrupted Pearly.

“Oh, shut up. All you did was administer an anesthetic spell while I did all the hard work.”

“That’s still helping!” Pearly said with a conviction that would make Discord himself accept the argument’s logic.

“Whatever. WE have him sleeping right now. The sleeping spell is linked to the healing spells, so whenever he wakes up we’ll know he is fully healed. Luckily his power armor absorbed most of the damage. If he was wearing anything less he’d be dead.”

“What about the rain? When did it stop? When did the radio start working again? What was that thing that attacked us? How did it slice through Thunder’s armor so easily? Where-” All the questions Pickaxe had yet to get an answer to all burst from her at once. As if to plug a dam, Cloud Runner put his hoof over her mouth.

“There will be time for answers later. Right now you need to sleep.”

With that, Pickaxe gently laid back down and floated back into the dream world that she had emerged from only minutes earlier.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Expedition to Stable 34, Day 31, 7th day of the 4th moon, 24 ASR, Morning

I don’t normally write journal entries in the morning, but since I was incapacitated last night and yesterday’s events are fairly important, I felt the need to do this now. Yesterday, while we slept in the early morning hours in our cave, we had a run in with a creature that can only be described as demonic. I had the body of a lion, with a goats head sticking out of it’s middle back, and a venomous snake instead of a tail. Oh, yeah, it also breathed fire. In it’s attack it took down Thunder Gun. Cut right through his power armor. I also got poisoned after being bit by the thing’s tail, but it wasn’t anything Crystal couldn’t fix. We through pretty much any type of ordinance we had in fighting the beast. We were only able to bring it down when Cherry vaporized it with her souped-up Magical Energy Blaster. The fight almost brought the cave down on us, but afterwards Pearly came up with the idea of using our supply boxes as pillars to stabilize the cave. Worked like a charm, if only temporarily.

Apparently my PipBuck was able to get an ID on the creature in all the chaos. It says it was a “Chimera--Classical.” I know what a chimera is, and that wasn’t it. The chimeras were little cat-lizard things LittlePip ran into in the vault outside of New Appaloosa. However, Pearly Buck was able to give some insight on that matter. According to him, long before the war there was a species of creature called the Chimera, now referred to as the Classical Chimera. The CCs inhabit the realm of Tartarus, the gates to which are guarded by the three headed dog Cerberus. According to legend, Cerberus is suppose to ensure that nothing gets in or out. I don’t know why Cerberus let this thing out, but somehow it got here, and that means there could be more.

In other news the rain finally stopped. According to the rest of the team it stopped about three hours after our fight. I couldn’t witness it first hand though, as I was still unconscious from the snake-tail bite, but according to Cherry immediately after the clouds parted there was a rainbow.

Whatever was interfering with our radio signals apparently disappeared with the rain. When I woke up the radio was playing loud and clear.

We should be getting moving as soon as Thunder Gun is healed. Can’t wait to get out of this damn cave and actually get going again.

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Expedition to Stable 34, Day 31, 7th day of the 4th moon, 24 ASR, Evening

Me, CR, Sea Foam, and Cherry went to scout out our path towards the Macintosh Hills. A few miles out we found our first signs of raider activity. No actual hostiles, but a camp with a fire that was still smoldering. From the empty food containers, it looked like there were about seven of them. We also found some sort of note, which I’ve transcribed below. It appears to be just a receipt for some chems. It includes the typical raider writing style of barely comprehensible grammar, abhorrent spelling, and illegible hoofwriting, but I’ve tried to copy it as faithfully as I could.

When we got back to the cave around sundown, we found that Thunder Gun had already woken up. Apparently Pearly convinced Crystal to try some less-than-safe spells to get Thunder to heal faster. Chewed him out for a good hour about that. At least we can get moving again, which is good. We’ve run through far too much of our supplies being cooped up in this cave.

The Raiders Drug Receipt

Feends has receev caps for 4 barel of dash 5 boks rage 3 kace buck.

721 caps payd.

And here’s my translation/interpretation:

The Fiends (probably the name of a raider gang) have received payment in caps for 4 barrels of dash, 3 boxes of rage, and 3 cases of buck.

721 caps were paid for the dugs.

It’s worth noting that that is a shit ton of drugs. Probably means that there’s quite a large gang out there. Or just a smaller gang hopped up on a ridiculous amount of drugs. Either way, we better keep our guns loaded.

One last thing: where the hell did they find that many chems? And for only 720 caps? That’s cheap as fuck! Not that I would know or anything. Anyway... there has to be some large group somewhere supplying those chems, so we better watch out for them as well.

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Expedition to Stable 34, Day 32, 8th day of the 4th moon,

Once again got on the road today. Despite the worries raised by our findings yesterday, the road has so far been raider-free. Can’t say the same for other creatures though. Seems like every radscorpion for a thousand miles has made up it’s mind to have us for dinner. they’re easy enough to kill, so I’ve been taking care of most of them with my power hooves to save ammo. They haven’t really caused us much trouble besides just being annoying. Only time I ever felt in actual danger was when six of them tried to gang rape me (hopefully only figuratively). One of them managed to tear a hole in my armored Followers lab coat with it’s claw and give me a minor flesh wound. I was fixed up inside of five minutes with a few magically imbued bandages. The worst part was that it stained my lab coat blood red.

Speaking of the lab coat, might as well say a little bit about that since I have nothing else to say today. The Armored Followers Lab Coat is the standard dress for all traveling Followers of the Apocalypse missionaries, archeologists, and doctors. It consists of an off white colored light trench coat (similar to my natural coat color, but a little lighter). It has sleeves for you forelegs, but is open in the back like a dress that’s been altered for greater mobility. It has a Followers cross on both sides of the flank, right over your cutie mark. For protection it has extra layers of leather underneath, along with pieces of plate armor covering your torso. Overall it has some decent protection. Not quite as good as combat armor, but decent. Even though the FoA armored lab coat is standard dress on these type of expeditions, Me and Crystal are the only ones who actually wear it. Cherry doesn’t like to wear armor and CR has some Enclave tech flight suit his parents gave him.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Our newly-working radio was able to get us some news from back home. Apparently the storm that hit us also moved up into the Civilized Lands, making it as far north as the Ponyville ruins. Freaked a lot of folks out. Apparently it caused some civil unrest when an angry mob blamed it on pegasi. Even after almost 25 years, some of the older ponies still hold grudges against the pegasi, even though virtually all denounced the Enclave long ago. Racism at it’s finest.

I guess that’s it for today. If we can keep up the pace we made today we should make it to the base of those hills in about three days. Only a month after we had originally planned.