Fallout: Equestria - Allegiances Reviews: Prologue and Chapter 1

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The Wasteland has many stories.

I don't mean that in the whole, there are a lot of Fallout: Equestria fics way, even though there are, I'm looking at this practically. Every faction, every pony has its own story to tell, and each of them contributes to the overall story of the Wasteland.

Today we're looking at one such story, the story of an Enclave soldier that was sent down to the surface to scout out the wasteland for colonization. What he finds is not quite what he expected, and it will change his life forever.

Welcome to Fallout: Equestria - Allegiances by Fair Play.

---Prologue---

Our hero wakes up in his home above the clouds to the feeling of the sun on his face. Then he realizes that he had slept late and that he now has 15 minutes to get to his meeting with the General.

You never kept a general waiting, not if you valued your assignment in the Enclave.

He gets a quick shower and gets dressed in his dress uniform, we also learn his name at this point Updraft. He takes off and flies off to his meeting with General Cirrus. He rushes through the building before getting stopped by a Sergeant who naturally wants an explanation for why he was running. As he explains that he was on his way to talk to General Cirrus, the general himself shows up and calls off the Sergeant.

We learn that Cirrus is in charge of special operations for the Enclave, its not quite clear exactly what that meant, other than that a pony who was assigned to Special Operations had a tendency to disappear. This of course raises the question about exactly what Cirrus wants from Updraft, and our hero is certainly wondering that. It seems that Updraft is a pretty average soldier according to the General, and he says that Updraft doesn't really have much chance of promotion, so he's going to make him an alternate offer.

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It turns out that Updraft comes from an old Enclave military family, going back 200 years, so for obvious reasons he's not excited about the idea of not making Officer.

"Of course not. No one knows what Special Operations really does. I am in charge of all the missions that the Enclave doesn’t want to, and shouldn’t, publicly acknowledge. If the general population heard about what we were doing, then they’d riot and we’d have trouble on our hooves."

So, basically Special Operations is the Enclave version of Section 31.

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He basically gives Updraft the usual job offer in this kind of thing, saying that the conversation can only continue if he agrees to keep it secret from everypony else, and Updraft agrees. We get a brief overview of what the Single Pony Project Towers are used for by the Enclave and the situation with them and the Dashites. That's when Cirrus drops a bit of a bomb on Updraft and tells him that the Enclave had been sending ponies down to the surface for a long time.

Updraft is of course surprised by this idea, nice to see the Enclave's propaganda machine is still alive and well, Cirrus corrects him by telling about the settlements and ponies just trying to survive. Updraft questions whether or not this means the Enclave is wrong, and Cirrus admits that they are, but it has to be kept quiet so that order is kept. It also turns out that Special Operations is scouting the Wasteland, and the General wants to send Updraft in order to spy on some of the settlements.

Video Belongs to someone.

Updraft agrees to the assignment, Cirrus then asks Updraft what he thinks of the name Dust Cloud.

A year passes after this, and the next day Updraft will be heading down to Coltington in order to start the mission. We also get the first mention of Clear Skies, who will be Updraft's partner for the mission under the code name Muddy Waters. He gathers up his things and it turns out that his armor is made specially to conceal his wings so that he can integrate better into the Wasteland below (though I do want to point out that the fic said there are Pegasi on the ground, but I'm nitpicking).

He finishes getting everything together and looks back at his room one last time before leaving and heading to meet up with his parnter.

---Chapter 1: The Fall---

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I bucked open the door to the shack that I had called home for the last year. I stomped in and bucked the door closed behind me. “Screw the Wasteland. I am so done with this. I am done with the dust. I am done with the radiation. I am done with the mutations. Done, done, done, done, and done!”

You know, I think Updraft doesn't like it in the Wasteland.

As it turns out Updraft has an affinity for technology in the Wasteland, which means he has the unenviable task of being part of a reclamation crew sent into the nearby ruins of Horseton. We get a brief description of what that means, which is pretty standard, they have to go into buildings and find whatever equipment they can find from them.

On this particular trip however things didn't go quite according to plan because they ran into Ghouls, that's always fun isn't it? So, basically it was a typical Tuesday.

Video Belongs to someone.

Yeah, I don't think either of them really expected this when they signed up for the job, but you can't really blame them since they had no real knowledge of the Wasteland. Then there's a knock at the door and its a pony named Brown Root who came by to check on Updraft to make sure he was okay after the day. He also invites our hero to join him for poker that night, apparently Updraft has been winning caps from them, and he's up for winning a few more from them.

After Brown Root leaves we learn that its been a year since our two Enclave spies came down to the Wasteland and the armor is working pretty well. He gets ready and heads out of the house, he seems to be impressed with Coltington and the skill of the ponies of the Wasteland in building the settlement.

Updraft heads for Horseton House, the town's bar, after a brief interaction with Pot Luck, the town's one eyed bartender, he gets his drink and goes to sit down. It seems that the Steel Rangers at this point have overrun a Stable to the north, though we don't know much about what's going on with that. That's when a pony named Last Stand came in, and tells Updraft that tomorrow they would be investigating a newly discovered Stable in Horseton.

Shit, a stable. Stable work was never good. Every stable we ever went into ended badly. Stable 32 was filled with a raider gang who had claimed the place as their new base of operations. Stable 103 was filled with ghouls. Stable 199 was my personal favorite. It had a malfunctioning, but still active, security system that had no targeting parameters. As such, it fired on any pony that got in range. Guess who got chosen to go first and disarm the turrets to make it safe for the other teams. Yup, you guessed right.

You get sent to such nice places in the Wasteland don't you?

So yeah, no Poker tonight, so he goes off to talk to Muddy about what's going on. There's not much intel on what's in the Stable and they'll be going there at dawn the next day. Updraft also wishes that he could fly again, something that he can't do except under extreme circumstances because of his cover. With that he falls asleep.

When he wakes up, Muddy is all ready and had prepared Updraft's stuff. There's a definite excitement about going to the Stable on Muddy's part, mostly because he wants to get some action. With that they go to meet up with the others, after a bit of chastising to the pony that had released the Ghouls from the cafeteria the day before, and its made pretty obvious that this is a very dangerous job even when you're not going into a Stable.

And that's when we meet the manager of the scavenging company for Coltington, Big Boss.

Video Belongs to Konami, but frak them still.

No, not that Big Boss... wow I'm making a lot of video jokes in this review aren't I?

Anyway, Big Boss gives the assignments and goes over what little they know about the Stable. Apparently a scouting team had breached the entrance before hearing some sort of movement inside. With everypony ready to go, they leave for the Stable.

For the second time in a row we have a Stable that seems, ominous as the main character prepares to enter it, though this time he seems to be the only one who feels it. The teams enter the Stable and start to split up to search it, it seems to be abandoned seeing as how nopony is eager to jump out at them. Updraft's team is investigating the administration wing, and after getting a door open is sent to investigate the Overmare's office.

Since, apparently our hero can't have an easy time, there's a Ghoul inside one of the rooms, and its probably feral. Updraft's escort takes out the ghoul after a couple of tries, and they go into the Overmare's Office. It seems that most of the systems n the Stable are down, with the exception of backup power and air handling for some reason. It also turns out that the Ghoul that they had killed was actually a Wastelander, not a Stable Dweller, interesting.

Updraft hacks into the Overmare's computer, and we get some intel on the Stable:

FROM: SCOOTALOO, STABLE-TEC VICE-PRESIDENT
TO: OVERMARE SAFE AND SOUND, VAULT 148
RE: STABLE EXPERIMENT
OVERMARE SAFE AND SOUND,
AS YOU HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY INFORMED, SOME STABLES ARE CONTROL STABLES AND OTHERS WILL PERFORM EXPERIMENTS FOR THE GOOD OF THE WORLD WHEN IT COMES TIME TO REPOPULATE. YOUR STABLE HAS BEEN SELECTED TO RUN AN EXPERIMENT TO TEST THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTION TO REPEATED, UNEXPLAINED DIFFICULTIES. IN SEVERAL DAYS, YOUR STABLE COMPUTER WILL START TO RANDOMLY SHUT DOWN ACTIVE SYSTEMS, OR ACTIVATE DORMANT SYSTEMS. THE PROGRAM WILL SHUT DOWN PRIMARILY BENIGN SYSTEMS (E.G. LIGHTING, MUSIC, PA, ETC). HOWEVER, OCCASIONALLY, OUTAGES OF CRITICAL SYSTEMS(E.G. AIR HANDLING, FOOD PROCESSING, WATER PROCESSING, ETC) WILL BE ENACTED, BUT FOR LIMITED DURATIONS OF TIME. YOUR TECHNICIANS WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DETERMINE A CAUSE AND ALL ATTEMPTS TO REPAIR WILL FAIL. YOU ARE NOT TO SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH ANYONE BUT YOUR SUCCESSOR.
GOOD LUCK AND CELESTIA’S GRACE.

Yeah, looks like that went really well for... uh, Vault 148? I'm pretty sure that should say Stable, but I'm assuming that was a mistake on the writer's part.

Anyway, it turns out that the experiment didn't quite work out as planned according to the Overmare's logs, apparently the systems like Air Handling are shutting down for too long... way to go Stable-Tec, really great job. Anyway, they have gotten more of the supplies from the Stable... also they found a Scootaloo medical bobblehead, which now I wish I had, that would be cute.

They go back to exploring the Stable as they move farther underground. Apparently the inhabitants of Stable 148 have also figured out how to draw radiation out of soil and water, and then Updraft hears a mare's voice calling for help. He's surprised to find a Pegasus dressed as a typical Wastelander, and she's terrified. Updraft manages to calm her down and offers to help her, but it looks like Muddy got to her first and she's afraid of him , because he had attacked her.

And then Muddy says this:

“You had to come interrupt me. I was about to get my revenge. Don’t you see it, Dust? We were lied to. Manipulated and lied to! I was promised things. Things I won’t ever get now! And all because of the fucking Wasteland! They took everything from us, played us like puppets, and left us here to die! To die! They will pay, Dust. THEY! WILL! PAY! You could have joined me. I would have taken you with me, but you had to choose to believe her. Now you’ll pay also, but it’s all going to start with this bitch.” He turned his head to look for the pegasus, but she was gone. My vision was starting to darken around the edges. “Speaking of which, where did she…”

Yeah, something is definitely going down here.

The Pegasus mare attacks Muddy while Updraft recovers. There's a brief fight between the two and Updraft tries to shoot his "partner" only to miss. Muddy attacks Updraft, and like what seems to happen a lot in fics I'm reviewing, the chapter ends with him falling unconscious.

---Character Analysis: Updraft---

Here we have a character that I haven't seen very often in these reviews, he's not a character that's inherently a Stable Dweller like character. Yes he was from the Enclave, so he's not familiar with the wasteland like a Stable Dweller, but he is more an experienced soldier, compared to others at least.

Its a really interesting idea for a character, and a different way to explore the Enclave. There are a lot of ways you can do different kinds of characters. Also he doesn't entirely act like a villain, he's ultimately a good pony who finds himself in a difficult situation to survive through.

It would be hard to explore him at this point, but I do like him as a character. Just keep an eye on this one, that's all I have to say.

---Final Thoughts---

This is a really good fanfic, there's not really much else I have to say about it, its just amazing.

The concept is interesting and the characters are enjoyable. The idea of working with the Enclave like this is interesting and not something that's always explored. Its a good concept and it does really well in this way. The challenge is being able to figure out what is going to happen next, Muddy's betrayal is certainly unexpected but still well done.

I highly suggest reading this fanfic,I wish I could say more without spoiling it, read it, you won't be dissapointed.

The Prologue gets a score of 5/5.
Chapter 1 gets a score of 5/5.

Original Fanfic.

Fallout: Equestria belongs to KKat.
Fallout: Equestria - Allegiances belongs to Fair Play.

I have just one more requested review to go, look forward to it tomorrow, hopefully.

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