Fallout Equestria: Influx

Epilogue

One Year Later

Manehattan: Tenpony Tower

Silver Disc smiled when a familiar group of ponies entered his studio. He pushed himself away from his broadcasting console and gestured with a hoof to a series of chairs opposite the console, with a microphone hanging over head.

“So, the Heroine of the West finally graces my humble abode once again after so long, I’ve been dying-” He stopped suddenly when he began to hack and cough violently into his hoof. Once he stopped, he gave an apologetic smile and finished his sentence. “Ahem, I’ve been dying to interview you again after my sources told me you were responsible for the destruction of a mountain back in the desert, leaving behind a huge crater.”

At that moment, a young, teenage slate grey unicorn filly with wild electric blue hair charged in through the door, with a bottle of water hovering in her magic and a look of panic on her face.

“S-silver, are you alright?” She asked shakily as she placed the water down beside him.

“I’m fine. Thank you, Homage,” The old unicorn said with an appreciative smile.

The young unicorn smiled softly in relief before she nodded and then left the room to resume whatever she was doing previously.

“Who’s that?” The pegasus zebra, Crystal, asked in curiosity.

“That sweet filly is Homage, poor girl was found out in the ruins a few weeks ago. She had recently lost her travel partner and was all alone. I think the scavenger team that found her thought she could be of use to me with her talent in sound magic, which is kind of true as I’ve made her my apprentice.”

“So she’s gonna take your place?” The purple pegasus stallion, Fruity, asked as he sat on a chair.

“The voice of DJ-PON3 has to keep going even if I can’t provide it myself, and I won’t be around forever.”

“That cough… you… are you dying?” Crystal asked in shock.

Silver just gave them a curt nod and a sad smile. “Can’t live forever, but enough about the doom and gloom. Let me hear about your adventures out west. It would make an awesome story to tell the ponies of the wasteland.”

At first the zebra and pegasus were reluctant to talk as they were more concerned about the sick DJ, but after some reassurances from him they relented.

“Well…”

For the next hour the assembled group of a pegasus zebra mare, pegasus stallion, young zebra filly and robot stallion gave their accounts of what transpired from when they left the train upon their return to the Marejave over a year ago. First there was finding the Alicorn Sanctuary where they met Dr Pear and received the answers Crystal needed. Next came the escalation with little Xian’s foalnapping, the search for a weapon best suited for handling Colonel Ironside’s defences inside the RMS Luna at Dr. Pear’s insistence, and Crystal’s maternal instincts and influence from Lightning Dust’s magic causing her to charge straight for the enemy afterwards. Then came the part that made Silver cringe more than he’s ever cringed during an interview: the graphic retrelling of Crystal’s horrific beating by Unit-1000, who was immune to the Pulse Wave Emitter and had packed a far stronger punch. It was only by sheer luck that Crystal survived her encounter. She told him that if the machine didn’t toy with her so much, she would have been killed at multiple different times throughout their encounter.

Silver listened to the whole story intently, unable to ask any questions during the tale because of the shock he felt over what Crystal had been through. Once it was over, he was then very interested to know what happened after.

“That was - wow, that was a tragic tale, but at least it resulted in a happy ending,” Silver said with a smile as Crystal and Fruity both gave the filly a hug. “So, what happened after you won?”

“Well I had to be repaired, and it took several weeks for me to fully recover since Unit-1000 had destroyed so much of my body. Dr Pear sacrificed her own regeneration talisman to replace the one the machine destroyed, and after the consumption of enough metal my endoskeleton had repaired itself in a matter of days.”

“Wait, so you can eat metal to help with your repairs?” Silver asked in surprise.

Crystal nodded in confirmation before she continued. “However, I needed to go back to Upgrade Station Alpha to get my wings back. Thankfully, Dr Pear came with us and was able to get the place to recreate just my wings and fit them to me herself. I really didn’t want to go through the whole being trapped in my head thing again. From there my regen talisman just had to regrow my flesh. It took a couple of months to fully recover, and I’ve got some wicked scars under my fur, like the one across my left eye.”

“It is good to know you recovered well despite everything.”

“My recovery was also filled with more heartache as time went on,” Crystal continued with a sad frown. Silver leaned forward with interest as he listened. “When we defeated Colonel Ironside and destroyed his facility, we had an alicorn ally with us that had helped us get there, and she had disappeared while we were in the facility. We unfortunately never found her, and when we made it back to the Sanctuary and informed her sister, she began to get more and more frantic as the days passed, until she finally left the Sanctuary to go look for her herself. Contact with Tratos was lost mere days after she left and she never came back either. Then Umagon left the Sanctuary to go look for them and just like Tratos and Oxanna, she disappeared, never to be seen again.” Crystal sighed with a sad look on her face at the memory of the loss of the three alicorns. “Dr Pear then forbade any other alicorns from leaving until it could be deemed safe for them to leave unsupervised. We didn’t know what was out there, but the likely culprit was an Alicorn Hunter as there had been some that have attacked in the past according to Dr Pear. It was very upsetting to lose them as we got to become friends with Tratos and Umagon before they disappeared.”

“What about any of those machines. Could any of them have survived?” Silver asked.

“No, Dr Pear did a scan to be sure almost immediately after we returned. Nexus, Pixie and Unit-02 are the only active Infiltrators now in Equestria… I mean the wasteland.”

“Who’s Pixie?”

“Huh? Oh, Pixie is Unit-03. She was the machine that was going to act as the trap if we got off at the train station outside of New Pegasus. However, the good nature of the pony she replaced rapidly helped her evolve to gain her own sense of independence and enough will to fight her programming in the end to prevent herself from executing my little filly.”

“Damn what!”

“Yeah, Ironside wanted her to kill Xian but she resisted long enough for Nexus and Fruity to get to her and stop her. Nexus was then able to free her of his control entirely by removing her remote signal transmitter.”

“So where is she now?”

Fruity added to the conversation. “Heh, living the dream dude. She felt guilty and real bad for what her programming had her do when she was to acquire a disguise. This pretty much led to her killing the original Pixie Lulamoon, so she decided she would go back to work in entertainment and try to achieve the things the original Pixie dreamed of; she felt she owed it to her to use her magic and memories to their fullest, so that they weren’t in vain.”

“Well, that was nice of her to do,” Silver nodded in approval. “And Unit-02?”

“This one… we don’t know what’s become of him,” Crystal said with a tilt of her head in thought. “I remember Unit-02 being with another, Unit-01. They worked together and cornered us in Paradigm Cybernetics where your friend gave his life to save us. It would seem that one of them survived Quartermane self-destructing his armour, but we have no idea what this machine is doing now. From the last scan it was still here in Manehattan. Dr Pear theorises the magical surge from the explosion may have scrambled its Neural Processor.”

“Well, as long as you don’t have to worry about it for now.” He then looked at the mare and stallion with a serious look. “So, after everything that has happened, how do you feel about things?”

Crystal sighed. “I originally felt angry and deeply disturbed that my life had been stolen by Colonel Ironside. He prevented me from dying under natural causes, which I would have done back then because of my original body’s frailty. My feelings of anger for that were put on the backburner when I found out I woke up here, in the Wasteland, then I felt horrified and scared beyond description, and then I felt sorrow when I realised everypony I ever knew was dead.”

“Yeah, I bet that sucked.”

“You have no idea, but…” Crystal smiled warmly. “then I met my first real friend in the Wasteland. We had a rough patch when he found out I was mostly machine, but after we sat down and talked it out, he became my best and closest friend and eventually my lover and…” She turned to look at Fruity, who was also looking right at her with a goofy smile on his face. “My husband.” She finished by leaning forward and giving the pegasus stallion a passionate kiss on the lips.

“Aww, that’s beautiful,” Silver said with a smile as he observed the happy scene.

“Despite everything, I have a family I would not trade for the world. A loving husband, a beautiful daughter and Nexus, our loyal friend stroke butler.” Crystal then chuckled. “It’s funny, if it wasn’t for Colonel Ironside I wouldn’t have all this right now, so despite what he tried to do to me, I kinda have to thank the deranged stallion,”

“Hah, the irony and butler, him?” Silver asked as he pointed to the still skeletal robot in armour.

“Heh, yeah. Numpty here posed as a service droid while on the train back to New Pegasus, and he simply stayed in that persona. He seems to like serving,” Fruity laughed.

“What, serving you keeps you out of trouble, sir. If you didn’t have me you would have been stuck in the backdoor until Ma’am returned home with young miss Xian that day,” Nexus snarked.

“Ha, ha, I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Fruity laughed in embarrassment while he looked at everypony around him. Crystal snickered behind a hoof with Xian looking confused, but Silver leant forward with a raised brow.

“Oh, do tell,” He purred.

Fruity whirled around at Nexus and jabbed a hoof at him. “Don’t you say a damn word.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt again Silver, but I just received this message from one of your mobile sources,” Homage said as she hoofed the stallion a slip of paper.

“Thank you again, Homage.” He opened the paper to read the message. As he read, his face twisted into shock and surprise.

“What is it?” Crystal asked as she saw his facial expression change.

“I’ve been getting more and more reports of a white alicorn over the past few months. Thankfully, the reports have been nothing bad, but the information has been vague at best. Most I’ve been able to attain is that she is white, has a red mane and tail, purple or magenta eyes, seems to be as big as Princess Celestia, an extremely powerful magic user, and has been helping ponies here and there. But according to this, she and a unicorn accompanying her have begun to attack Sparkle World of all places.” He looked up to Crystal and her companions. “Have you seen or heard anything regarding this white alicorn?”

“I’m afraid not, we know just as much as you do. Stories about a white alicorn began surfacing in the Marejave about… what five, six months ago?” Crystal asked as she looked at her husband for confirmation to which he simply nodded. “I think the only thing we can add is that her first sighting was in the Marejave at least but other than that, she’s a mystery.”

“Huh, she’s larger than those manufactured alicorns since they are about as big as what Princess Luna had been. She’s also white, not blue, purple or green like the manufactured ones. Could she be Equestria’s first new legit alicorn in two centuries?”

“You mean a new princess?” Fruity asked.

“Well there’s no pony to crown her to make it a legal thing if she is so, heh, she’ll be Equestria’s False Princess.” The old stallion chuckled. “I like that, I think I’ll use that when I talk about her in the future, False Princess, has a nice ring to it.”

XXXXX

Somewhere between Manehatten and Fillydelphia: Sparkle World

“Are… are sure about this, Princess Solaris?” A white unicorn with a brown mane done up in a bun and wearing a pair of black-framed glasses resting on her nose asked as she looked up at the massive white alicorn.

The alicorn smiled down at her little friend, her flowing red mane billowing across part of her face and hiding one of her magenta eyes. “Of course, my dear friend Raven. If we are to fulfil our purpose on restoring the peace of this world, we must destroy the vileness that plagues it, but Sparkle World also offers a large and secure location for our ponies to live safely. If my research on the theme park is accurate, the place was built like a fortress, so once we clear it of the raider groups and take control of it, we will have a place to conduct our work while offering ponies a safe haven.”

Raven nodded in understanding, but the smaller unicorn still looked uncomfortable and afraid as they approached the theme park.

“Time to clear out the trash and begin Ironside’s last wish,” Solaris said as her horn began to glow with a golden magical light which turned to a threatening crimson as the power grew lethal.