Fallout Equestria : Zepheyr Skyport.

by PonyBlue

Chapter 2: Manticore.

Fallout Equestria : Zephyr Skyport

Chapter 2: Manticore

I didn’t ask for this.

I was hooked alongside my baby brother to a Vertibuck, if you were feeling generous enough to call that old skywagon a Vertibuck. Damn near every talisman has been stripped from it. Even the levitation talisman had been replaced with a civilian model, and that thing must have been nearly two hundred years old.

Black dangerous clouds swirled around us, like a deadly fog. There was no horizon. No sense of altitude, of up or down. The air pressure could not be relied upon to gauge altitude as it changed from minute to minute in the rough winds. The clouds were solid shifting masses which ever way a pony looked. It was like we were flying in a box. A pegasus would have quickly gotten lost up here as she was spun about by the shifting winds. Only our pipbucks gave any indication we were on the correct course. In the distance I saw massive lightning strikes that arch through the clouds in great fans of light. A lost pegasus wouldn’t be long to live before encountering a stray bolt of lightning.

This terrible, dangerous place was the Cloud Curtain; the barrier that stood between the toxic radiation of the ground below and the sky cities of the Enclave above. This was our protector and it was bucking me in the wings at the moment. Access Talisman or not, flying through the Curtain was rough but it beat being hits by lightning defence system.

Winds buffeted our wings and the air currents were unstable under our hooves as we flew. Behind us, in the Vertibuck were ten volunteers, supplies both for ourselves and that to be distributed to the ground sods and equipment to repair the skyport.

I am Lieutenant of the Enclave.

I did not ask for this.

I never asked to baby sit volunteers.

It was not long ago, barely a week ago when I was summoned to the Zephyr City Council building. I wore my dress uniform and a stern expression on my face. I was an Officer and Lieutenant of the Enclave. A pony had to keep up appearance for the civilians but in my head I was pacing back and fro, throwing my mane in the air in frustration and trepidation. What did Granny Rain want that she had to see me in person? Was I going to be married off into some herd just as my cousin Rain Bow?

“Senator Rain will see you now, Lieutenant Rain.” One of Granny Rain’s underling spoke.

I nodded to the mare and began walking after her with as much dignity as my twisting insides allowed. I followed the personal assistant until I reached Granny Rain’s office. Then with a sharp nod I dismissed her.

I took a deep breath and opened the door.

Granny Rain’s office was spartan, austere and unembellished apart from for a single large family photograph that hung on the wall. It was a picture of my family. Granny Rain stood in the centre, the matriarch of the Rain Herd. The old mare was flanked on either side were her four daughters, my mom and her three sisters. Around them were the grandchildren. I stood three pegasi from the right, on the second row. If anypony took the time to count, a total of 32 pegasi stood in that picture. It was a symbol of course, one far more powerful than any ostentatious office decoration. The Rain herd had wealth. We had power. We had enough of both to buy the costliest of luxuries in the Enclave, birth permits, that little piece of paper which allowed you to go off the mandatory contraceptive implant. Granny Rain was a buyer of pony flesh.

I caught Granny Rain looking out of her office window.

“Good morning Rain Drop.”

“Morning Granny Rain.” I replied and hung as close to the door as possible.

“Sit.” She turned and beckoned me to a fluffy white cloud pillow. Her tone was kind, but it was anything but a request.

I sat.

“The next volunteer Corps mission is in week.” Granny Rain continued. “Rain Storm will be on it. While I have every confidence in him, I would prefer if I had family watching over him.”

You mean spy. I kept my mouth shut.

“I have made a few changes to the oversight officers that will accompany the VC.”

Fear gripped me. “You shouldn’t have.” I heard my voice speak. What have you done Granny Rain?

She opened her table drawer and laid two pieces of paper in front of me. “Now, be a dear and put your little hoof prints on those documents.” Granny Rain smiled.

I looked down at the documents in front of me. One was a request for duty reassignment to Volunteer Corp Oversight and the other was acceptance of my new position as Senior Administrator of Zephyr Skyport. My heart stopped.

Granny Rain wanted me to sign this? She wanted me to sign the death warrant of my career with my own hoof? You can’t do that Granny Rain! You simply can’t. You can’t make me do this. Can’t you make exception for your own blood? Aren’t I your granddaughter? Damn you, you heartless mare! I had to be breathing hard. Any other pony would be hyperventilating. Why do this to Storm and then throw me after him to be sacrificed for his safety.? Isn’t he your favourite?

For the briefest of moments I looked up to my grandmother. Her eyes were of a similar hue with mine, a bright sea blue. They were family. The only differences were the wrinkles at their corners. It even made her look the part of a kindly grandmother. Yet there was a cold hardness in them, an alien edge of cold-blooded Zebra steel.

The same steel which gave the order of ‘No quarter and No mercy’ even as she came across the griffin rookery. It was the same eyes that looked upon an entire griffin city and its peoples and with one breath had its people decimated to the last chick.

It was the same steel that branded her second in command, her lover, the father of her foal, my grandfather, Radar, a traitor. He had his Cutie Mark torn from both flanks and branded a Dashite because he dared disobey her orders.

I looked down at those papers. Commander ‘Firestorm’ Rain waited for her answer. There could only be one.

Water was in my eyes. I kept looking straight ahead. Fly straight. Officers of the Enclave did not cry.

“Are you okay sis?” Baby brother looked to me

“It’s nothing.” I said. Grandpa Radar would have been sad, another spineless pony. I signed those damned papers. Granny Rain had put her wings around me after it was done. I felt like I was hugging a manticore.

“Just some moisture built up in my safety goggles. Keep a weather eye out for air vortexes. We don’t want the vertibuck tipping over.”

He nodded and went back to flying the Vertibuck.

“Just some moisture.” I said to nopony.

I don’t know how long we flew without exchanging words. I do know I slipped several times on the turbulent wind. I must admit, even though I have flow half a dozen patrol missions ground side, I have never done so with a Vertibuck in tow. Baby brother caught me each and every time. He flew the Vertibuck like an experienced wagon driver. I guess I should have been curious how a musician, even a big one could become so proficient at flying with a skywagon, instead my thoughts were on this mission and how baby brother fit into it.

What did Granny Rain have on him?

I looked at the lightning blue stallion flying beside me. Without the make up, he wasn’t the Rain Storm, music superstar. He was just a normal looking stallion, good looking enough perhaps. I could not imagine him hiding a terrible secret. He didn’t have the eyes but he was granny’s favourite. I could be wrong. Did little brother hide a terrible secret, one big enough that Granny Rain could hang over his head like a Zebra sword? Did I even want to find out? Or might little baby brother actually have been telling the truth and he really did believe in helping the sods on the ground. If so what would make a pony decide one day to throw his entire life away?

The compass of my EFS flashed. Zephyr Skyport loomed ahead. We had arrived and what passed for evening on groundside was fast approaching.

“Take the lead.” I said to baby brother. “I’m having a last minute talk with the pegasi in the back.” I then slipped out of the harness and let myself fall in the Vertibuck.

Ten pair of eyes looked at me. I never cared much about volunteers. Not even when baby brother signed up, it was all a publicity stunt anyhow, until now. Now it was real.

“Alright everypony,” I began. The winds outside were easing and my voice carried across the Vertibuck. “We are nearing Zephyr Skyport. Keep calm and remember your training.”

What was I saying? By Celestia’s white wings! Two weeks. That was all the training volunteers received before they were shipped ground side. What were the higher ups in VC thinking? Where they even thinking? The volunteers were dumb pegasi for wanting to go groundside, but they were still citizens. Dumb as hay citizens. What could anypony learn in two weeks? Basic training in the Enclave took nearly a year.

At best, I think the ten volunteers in front of me knew which end of a laser pistol you held in your mouth. I don’t even want to think if any of them could change the spark battery in their pistols while under fire.

“I want every pony to work in groups of three. If you get into trouble, one pony shoots while the two others will keep watch for any opponents creeping up on them. When a battery runs dry, the next pony starts shooting, while one pony reloads and the third continues keeping a look out. This way, there will always be a set of eyes on the look out.”

This was a damned suicide mission.

I was flying down to the Wasteland of Equestria with these pegasi, wearing nothing but a pair safety goggles and public security barding. We all were. The barding might stop a bullet or two from small guns fire but anything more or anything heavier and the pony being shot at would be glue.

Each volunteer was given a laser pistol and three spark batteries. It wasn’t enough and that would have been all we had if I didn’t traded in every favour any pony ever owed me. It felt like I was cashing in chips before my final goodbye.

Maybe it was.

Few pegasi were even willing to give me anymore favours. Partially because some stupid sods actually thought I willingly joined the VC, and partially because many didn’t think I was getting back. Pegasi died in the VC. Nopony knew the actual number but the rumours spread down the grape vine. For now it didn’t stop pegasi from signing up, but it was poison to senators like Granny Rain, who rode the ‘we must help our fellow pony’ sentiment. What was I thinking? Granny Rain could choke on poison for all I care.

I got three battle saddles, six dozen more spark batteries, two plasma riffles and a little extra… a black market Pipbuck upgrade. This jewel would give civilian model Pipbucks S.A.T.S, Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell. I hoped it would make a difference. It would have too. I needed every edge to get these volunteers thought this mission tour.

How different your priories in life could change. Two weeks ago I would have argued the VC didn’t need power armour. If volunteers wanted to risk their lives on some foals errant, let them do it without wasting Enclave resources. Now that the shoe was on the other hoof, I wanted power amour support. Without it, I simply didn’t have the strength to use the plasma riffles and likely none of the mares could either. I had to leave the plasma riffles to Baby Brother and the one other stallion in the group, Warm Chocolate.

“I don’t expect much trouble,” I said to the group of ten.

It was a blatant lie. I had every expectation that the groundside ponies would shot at us every chance they got because they were bored sod with nothing better to do with their lives. But panicked pegasi were of no use to me. And neither could I afford pegasi shooting blindly. The pass talisman on this Vertibuck was a one way ticket. It was a basic quarantine procedure to prevent groundside ponies from carrying contaminants into the Enclave should they steal a VC wagon. It was a sensible idea, but it also left us without a way back until the supply wagon came next month. The spark batteries had to last till then.

“Keep the safeties on until you need to use your pistols. Don’t want any accidents. There are 12 shots to each battery. If you must use your pistols use them sparingly. Shoot only when you have a clear shot.”

More heads nodded. I hope they understood, but I knew they didn’t.

“I am sure you have all read The Wasteland Survival Guide.”

I saw a few head nod. That file was yet another oddity. Once news got around that I had ‘requested’ a reassignment to the VC, Baby Brother appeared at my door step. We didn’t say much. It was an awkward meeting. Baby brother and I never quite saw eye to eye once we grew up. It was an intangible something that separated us. But he did leave me with a file on my Pipbuck.

‘The Wasteland Survival Guide’ was a book of sorts, part survivalist guide, part tourist guide, part encyclopaedia and part personal diary. The author was unfamiliar, a pony named Ditzy Doo. But given the contents of the file, Ditzy Doo was probably a pseudo name. But if I had to guess, Ditzy or what ever her real named might have been was probably former black ops. What else could she have been? No pegesus would have gathered such intimate knowledgeable of groundside without actually being there. This Ditzy Doo didn’t just fly sky patrol. I am not sure how she avoided contamination, or maybe she didn’t.

I wondered where baby brother had obtained that file. It increasingly felt as if I have sunk below the cloud deck and emerged to see the strange underside of a familiar cloud, a strange world that had always been there but had gone unnoticed.

“Our first problem,” I said to the ten volunteers. “won’t be unfriendly ponies. It is manticores.”

Yes, I said that right...I reminded myself. Big carnivorous manticores with their damned stinging tails filled with venom. How did I know this fact?

Not from the Enclave Intelligence.

Nope, no intelligence there at all.

The Enclave, as best as I could uncover, knew next to nothing about the land beneath our own hooves. Nothing more recent then reports two hundred years old. Nonetheless, I down loaded everything I could about Zephyr Skyport and the groundside city that was once part of Zephyr. It would take months to read, I had only days. The Wasteland Survival Guide was had provide me with that horrid answer. It had a single entry on Zephyr Skyport… Heavy manticore infestation.

*** ** ***

“So how do we get to you house? Is it far?” The blue colt asked.

“A little.” She said and dropped onto her hunches.

“You’re tired already?”

She gave him a look, one that was rather crossed followed by a drained huff. “Earth ponies are better at this endurance stuff.”

“I’m still fine. I think you just don’t have much stamina.”

She turned her head sharply away. She tilted her head up.

Was she ignoring him? What was she five? He sat beside her. “So we sit around, until you get your legs back under you?” He looked to her expectantly. Her face was illuminated in the dim light of Pipbuck.

“Nope, we ride.” She answered him then with her head still tilted back, she let out a whistle. It was not just any whistle, it was a sound given birth by pegasi lungs that could move clouds.... the shrill sound seemed to thunder over the landscape.

“Oww…” He held his fore hooves over his ears. His ears ringed from the thunderclap of the brown filly’s whistle. “Give me a warning next time,” he muttered.

Her reply was as childish as it was irritating. She grinned and stuck her tongue out at him.

The blue colt was about to say something in retort when he felt the feathers on his back quiver. It was stir of warm, wet air. It felt like somepony was breathing on him, a somepony that was nearly two pony heights tall. He didn’t want to look, but his eyes did.

The shadowed creature that loomed over him was huge. Something in side the blue colt let out a scream, something from old and long ago before the time the alicorn that remembered teeth and hungry jaws. A paw swung down to catch him. But the blue colt was faster, he was a pegasus, the most nimble of the three pony breeds. He darted to the side and ran. The massive paw missed him but only just. He ran as fast as his four legs could carry him. He ran on raw instinct.

He had to go faster, his wings started to open up readying for flight. But the small rational pony inside him pushed aside the wild instinct for just the briefs of moments. ‘Where was she, the brown filly?’ The rational little pony inside him demanded. He didn’t see her. Not in front of him, not beside him, nor was she in the corner of his eye. She wasn’t with him.

She was tired.

Realisation was a cold frightful thing. The colt glanced back. The creature was on her. It had caught her! The light of her Pipbuck flickered as the night beast closed a massive paw on her. It was an orange paw and a rather strange thing to notice.

What should he do? His heart was racing. Turn back? He didn’t want too but… but she was his friend?! The last thought made the blue colt plant his hooves in the ground. He would run no further. His mother had once told him, a pegasus who abandons his duty was trash, but a pegasus who abandons his friends was worse than trash.

He turned and charged at the massive carnivore, screaming at the top of his lungs.

The charge of an enraged Earth pony stallion was a powerful sight to behold. It had the power to threaten all but the five largest top predators on Equestria. Unfortunately for the blue colt, he was neither an earth pony nor quite old enough to be called a stallion. The orange beast regarded the changing colt with a cold detached eye. It reached out with its one empty paw.

The colt dodged. The claws just passed over the fur of his back. He was too small and too agile to be caught in the first swipe of the orange monster’s clawed paw. He threw his blue feathered wings open and leapt into the air, aiming his hind hooves for the side of the monster’s head. He planted his hoof on the monsters with every ounce of strength in his body.

It would have been a stunning blow. But all his hind hooves had contacted was a wall of iron muscle. His leg was numb from the force. The great beast had moved faster than the blue colt imagined possible. It had turned it massive body away from the blue colt, presenting its side.

The blue colt bounced off the wall of muscle like an elastic ball. He flipped in midair trying to steady himself for another pass when a paw batted him from the air. The blue colt crumpled onto the ground, dust kicked off in his face. His chest hurt. It felt like his breath had been squeezed out of his chest. Coughing he tried to get up. But a giant paw had already begun to cover him. It pinned the blue colt to the ground, squeezing him even more. He had been caught. Quickly he was lifted off the ground, his body enclosed in the shadow’s paws.

The giant maw of the great orange beast opened, illuminated by the stray light of the brown filly’s pipbuck. Teeth, many the length of his own leg hung inside the creature’s mouth like stalactites and stalagmites. A sandpaper rough tongue set at the floor this cave, no double ready for a sample taste of the blue morsel it just caught. The tongue, he imagined would have been wet and chilly in the autumn night. He didn’t have time to be afraid.

A warm breath blew over the blue colt. This was it? How could it be? Pegasi always won, they always did in every book… yet now he faced eternity in the warm wet mouth of predator. It couldn’t be. Somehow he had to escape. He strained hind leg trying to pry open the monster’s paw. Somehow he had to rescue her. Somehow he couldn’t let it end this way.

A laugh tore through that desperate moment.

He turned to the filly in the night creature’s other paw.

The brown filly was laughing at him. He was dumb fold. The dim light lit her face and her wide smile.

“It’s not funny!” He shouted. What kind of last words was that? The giant predator was bringing them close to its unseen mouth. He could feel its hot breath on the free end of his wing tips.

“Yes it is.” She answered.

Yes, he was about to die saving a crazy filly. Great….

“You should have seen you face. You were all like Ahhhh.” Her eyes went very round and very wide in a comical fashion.

“I came back to rescue you and we were going to be eaten!” He screamed.

“Eaten? Don’t be silly. What would want to eat a Super Awesome Shadowbolt?”

“That thing.” He pointed with his one free hoof.

“Mr Socks?” She waved a hoof at the shadow. “Mr Socks is my pet.”

“That isn’t a sock!” He stared into the dark. He should only see glimpse of the dark creature from the dim light of her Pipbuck It had big, big teeth. A mane, an immense stinging tail, and paws with razor sharp claws that pricked at his coat. A memory came to mind from the puzzle of disjoined images. “It’s a manticore.” He gasped. “Your pet is a manticore!”

“Oh you.” She wave her fore hoof at him… he could see that because it was the hoof she wore her Pipbuck on. “Mr Socks is harmless. Besides he likes you, even if you made a lot noise and tried to hit him. Mr Socks thinks you smell nice.”

“Probably because he wants to eat me! Manticore’s eat pegasi!”

“Not Super Awesome Shadowbolts.” She replied with a tone of easy confidence.

“Why is that?” Was he actually holding this conversation?

“Cause we are just too Awesome!”

She then tilted her head and level a unblinking gaze at the orange manticore, then as if on command, the manicore let the blue colt back onto the ground. “Mr Socks is a good kitty!” She cooed and closed her fore hooves around the top of the paw that gripped her.

The blue colt could only stare. He steadfast refused to think that giant predator as Mr Socks. The name belittled the danger posed by the creature. What if it felt a little hungry? A single bite would swallow an entire colt or filly whole.

“Do you know how to ride?” She turned her head to ask him the question.

What reply he was about to make became stuck in his throat. Behind her, the monstrosity of a manticore opened wide its fearsome jaws. His eyes went wide. She was not going to be eaten in front of him. Not after all that talk. ‘Move,’ He wanted to say. But it was already too late. A tongue had shot out and… and … she was being licked clean like…. like she was a manticore cub or something.

She didn’t seem to mind. The giant predator purred. “Well?” She asked as sand paper rough tongue licked the side of her face.

He just couldn’t make his mouth work.

“I guess it is a no then.” She hopped out of the Mr Socks’ paw. Confidently she strode up to the side of the large manticore. It was only then in the dim light of her Pipbuck that he saw the manticore was wearing a saddle!

It was a strange saddle, but he could see large saddle bags on its side. She flipped herself in the air and landed with all four hooves on the saddle. Then she did something, in the shifting light of her Pipbuck.

“Get on!”

He didn’t know what else to do so he did as she said. Once he was on the monster’s saddle, he found there were strap of sorts for his hooves. The manticore really was her pet.

“Strapped in?”

“Yes.” He nodded his head

“Then lets go!” She pulled back at the reins with her teeth. “Yeah!” She shouted. Mr Socks rear back and let out a mighty roar that shook the night. When the great beast finally fell back onto it paws, it sprinted into the night, carrying the two young ponies upon its back.

*** ** ***

Footnote: Level up! (1)

Rain Storm

Companion Perk Unlocked:: Did you know manticores could be tamed? No, you didn’t and neither did the manticore. Mr Socks and just about any manticore is well behaved in the presence of your new super awesome friend. With a manticore mount you can now carry four times more baggage without lost of speed.

Rain Drop

VC Baby Sitter:: Your life as you know it is ruined. Your fellow Enclave officers now think you have bubbles for brains…. not that bubbles are bad, they are just mostly empty and full of air. Your Will-toLive has decreased to10%. You have a 10% chance to cry yourself to sleep. Only a stiff upper lip prevents this 10% from become an overwhelming 100%. Sometimes you tell yourself that you can recover from this horrible turn of events. Sometimes you even believe it.

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