After leaving my Stable and walking a few miles in the direction of the location marked on my Pipbuck as "Shady Sands", I reached the location. To my surprise, there were large walls separating the houses from the outside, built like a protective barrier. I didn’t even expect something like that in the equestrian wasteland. I was expecting something rude, poor, but the ponies up here seemed to handle themselves pretty well.
At the large gate of the small town there were two ponies, a female unicorn with yellow fur and and green mane levitating an old revolver; and a stallion, an earth pony to be more specific. He had a black mane and grayish fur and was using some kind of apparel that had two rifles in both sides of his body. I started levitating my 10mm pistol as I approached them. The closer I came, the more they glared at me.
When I was very close to the pair, the stallion shouted, “Halt! Holster that weapon before you enter Shady Sands or else we will shoot!”
Quickly, I put the 10mm pistol on the holster of my security barding. The mare slowly stopped glaring me in an expression of relief, while the stallion was still pointing his two rifles at me.
When I approached more, the mare said, “Welcome to Shady Sands Traveller! We are a small town based on farming and brahmin kettle. So please, whatever business you have in town, feel free to attend it, but don’t cause trouble or else we will shoot you on sight.”
“Don’t worry, I came here with peaceful intentions.”
“Hmm, you may have, but we got our eyes on you.”
When the mare finished speaking, she examined me from the hooves to the horn, looking at my Stable barding and Pipbuck. When she had finished, she made a curious expression and asked, “You are from a Stable, right?”
“Yes, from Stable 13, a few miles to the south. And you?”
“Yes me and my brother—” she motioned to the stallion that was with her “—were born and raised in another Stable nearby. Stable 15 was our home.”
“Wait a second…these two ponies were from a Stable? Why did they leave the Stable? And why didn’t they have any Pipbucks?
“So, what happened to Stable you used to live in?”
“Well...There was a landslide that caused a collapse inside our Stable that forced the Stable to be abandoned since the power structures and the solar farms inside were sealed by the rocks that had entered Stable 15. Everyone left the Stable, and while some of us had become villagers of this town, others had turned into raiders or worse, I don’t know.”
“Hm interesting, but don’t all Stables have Pipbucks? Because if you were from a Stable you might have at least a model of a Pipbuck.”
“In our Stable, the only ones who had Pipbucks were the security team and the Overmare. That’s why me and my brother don’t have Pipbucks.”
“I see, well I need to get going then.”
As I started to enter through the gate, the mare stopped me and said, “Oh and by the way, my Name is Dusty Bells, and he is Hard Head.”
“Well my name is Wild Aces.”
“It was nice meeting another pony from a Stable.”
“Yeah, by the way I need some help for my task.”
“What task?”
“I need to find an water chip, but I need somepony who can guide me through the wasteland. Do you know anypony?”
“Well, Aces, you can try speaking to Iron Powder. He Travelled to many places and is a hell of a sharpshooter. If you want to see him, he may be at the inn at the center of the town.”
”Thanks, Dusty.”
As I left the gate and entered the town, my eyes were greeted by houses built with some kind of white stone and wood. There were small farms with strange plants that I had no idea of what they were. Heck, they really knew how to manage their survival on these harsh lands.
As I walked further into town, there was some general stores and clinics, but I didn't come for these. I had to go to the inn to speak with somepony called "Iron Powder" and see if I could recruit him. I didn’t know if I could get him to come along. It would be a lot safer to search for a water chip with somepony that knows the wasteland than search alone without any knowledge of the wastes.
When my eyes met a metal sign with black paint ing the words "INN", I knew that was my first stop. I used my magic to open the door. The Inn looked to be a meeting place for hunters, trappers, and other ponies that used guns for a living. I approached the bartender, trying to ignore all the hostile looks the other not so friendly ponies were giving to me.
When I got up to the counter, the bartender said, “So what you want, freshmeat?”
“Freshmeat?”
“Yeah, your Stable suit and Pipbuck and your clean smell are a dead giveaway that you are new around these parts.”
Heck, he was right. I just got a few hours away from my Stable and there he was talking about how I was clean compared to the other ponies.
“I’m looking for a pony named Iron Powder, have you seen him here? I need to speak with him.”
“Heh, he is in the basement. First door to the left on the corridor.
“Thank you, sir.”
I followed the directions the bartender had given me and opened the first door on the left. Inside was a medium sized room with other ponies doing maintenance on their guns and armor, but among these ponies one had called my attention. It was an earth pony with gray fur and black mane with a cutie mark of gun being filled with gunpowder. Once more, I ignored the looks that everypony was giving me as I approached the pony. He turned to me, pointing his saddle that, again, had two weapons attached to it.
I said, backing away a little, “Excuse me, sir, but are you the pony that goes by the name of Iron Powder?”
He glared at me and recognized my Stable suit and Pipbuck
“Heck, yes I am. What is your business with me, Stable-dweller?”
“Well, Dusty Bells, the mare at the front gate said that you are a very experienced traveller and that you have a vast knowledge about the wasteland.”
“I’m listening, Dweller.”
So I thought that your experience could help me with the task that I have.”
“And what is in it for me? Caps?”
“Well, you will have some action and a share of the loot we find. Please, I really need someone who knows about the wasteland.”
“Hmm, sounds good to me, but what is this "task" you are talking about?”
“I need to find a water chip for my Stable before the drinkable water reserves run out, and I have five months to find it.”
Iron Powder then started to examine me from the bottom of my hooves to the tip of my horn, then he stared into my eyes and said, “From the looks of your eyes, you look desperate for help to find the chip. I will help you, but to trust me just make sure you aren’t the backstabbing type of pony.”
Then I smiled. Finally someone to help me on this journey! Somepony who actually knows the wasteland like his own hoof.
With a smile, I said, “thank you, Iron. I promise that I won’t cross you.”
“That good to hear, colt.”
“Oh, and by the way, my name is Wild Aces.”
“Iron Powder, but you already know that.”
“So, let’s get going then?”
“Not yet. We got a problem in Shady Sands and we are the ones to "solve" this problem. We are gonna speak to Aradesh first ,then we go back to your Stable problem.”
I sighed. “Okay then.”
Iron Powder opened another wooden door that led to the outside of the Inn. I followed him towards a two-story white hut.
I felt curiosity building up and asked, “Iron…who is Aradesh?”
He looked at me with a confused expression and said, “Aradesh is kinda like the mayor of this town. He takes care of most of the business and other stuff that goes around here. I thought you had already heard of him.”
“No I didn't, I just went straight to the Inn to talk to you.”
“Well if you say so.”
“But what is this problem, Iron?”
“It’s something related to Radscorpions. Aradesh will give us more details, so hold your curiosity till we talk to him.”
“Okay…”
As we entered the large hut’s door, a brown old stallion with a white mane greeted us with his old and calm voice.
“Hello, Iron Powder and Stable dweller.”
Iron went straight to the point. “Aradesh, we need to talk about the Radscorpions.”
“Ah yes, large herds of radscorpions are attacking our town. No matter how many we kill, there are always more!”
Aradesh’s expression turned grim. “And now they started to kill our brahim! Without them, we aren’t able to sell the milk and hide from them.
I put my hoof on his shoulder and said hey, “Don’t worry, we came to take care of them.”
As he smiled somewhat and said, “Thank you. We located their nest just a mile from here. Talk to Dusty Bells and her brother. She can guide you to their nest.”
“We’ll take care of them, sir, you have my word.”
I finished when I said that with a little more enthusiasm than I expected, but nevermind. Iron powder followed me while we were going to the main gate. While walking, I thought of something…about Iron Powder. He seemed like a grumpy pony compared to the others I have met till now. What did he do before going to Shady Sands? Where did he live before? And one question…would he be as loyal to me as he requested of me?
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After talking with Dusty and Hard and a mile walking from Shady Sands, we finally reached the nest of the feared Radscorpions. The nest was a cave, just like Stable 13’s entrance. There were bones of ponies that had tried to go here and the fetid smell of decaying meat and organs of dead ponies. There was another set of bones of some strange animal, that had four horns. I couldn’t make out which animal it was, but I’m guessing that it was that two headed cow that they call "Brahmin".
We entered the cold and dark cave. I activated the flashlight function of my Pipbuck, and the blue light of the electronic bracelet illuminated around me. As we went further into the cave, iron got ready his two rifles mounted on his saddle and spoke to me.
“Be careful with these things. They are big and fast, so you might not wanna get stung by their stinger.”
“There isn’t an antidote for their venom?”
“Buzzard, the doctor of Shady Sands is developing one, but we are not sure if it works. And also, when you kill one, take their venom sacks so buzzard can give us some caps for them.
“Got it.”
Okay, kill them and somehow extract their venom sack. I levitated my 10mm pistol when we heard some sounds…sounds of something crawling, closing in on us. As I looked on the Eyes-Forward-Sparkle, there were six red bars and the blue one indicating Iron. From the darkness, one of the radscorpions tried to jump Iron powder from the left. With two shots of his rifles, the creature went down to the floor, dead. Another one tried to sting me from the behind on my flank. As I dodged the large stinger, I fired four shots to the body of the radscorpion. One of the shots had blow its head to a gruesome paste.
The further we ventured into the cave, the more cold it was. Two more radscorpions were crawling into our direction, one of them doubled size of the other. Powder fired three shots and hit its legs, one having decapitated its tail. I followed up and fired two two shots, one hitting its head and the missing. When we finished killing the large one, the smaller one was about to sting me! I quickly jumped to the left side and saw a combat knife on the saddlebags of Iron Powder. I immediately removed the knife and entered SATS. I selected all of my AP points to the head of the creature and swung away. The knife tore into the creature's head and sunk in its carapace. Each stab, the creature lost strength, and after five hits to the head, the creature had finally gave up and fell down to the floor, bleeding.
Iron Powder stared at me, surprised, and said, “You can keep the knife, if you want.”
“Why”
“You are an unicorn. You can use it much better than I”
“If you say so.”
“You can use it now for the venom sacks.”
Another weapon to my small armory. I looked at the knife and noticed that the blade of the weapon was well kept. I put the weapon on my saddlebags and we went hunting down the last ones.
After walking more, we reached an oval chamber with a large egg at the end of it. No doubt it was a radscorpion egg. Maybe buzzard would pay extra for the egg? Who knows? But it’s better to take it with me. As I approach the egg, the scorpions get one more jump on the both of us. One radscorpion had dug out of the ground and went for powder. He shot four rounds into the creature and it went down. Meanwhile, the other one had gone in my direction. I drew my handgun and fired the last remaining shots in the clip (five rounds) and the creature died before even getting near me. Finally after clearing the cave, I snatch the egg and get to removing the venom sacks of each Radscorpion we had killed.
After returning to Shady Sands we went straight to Buzzard's clinic and sold the venom sacks. Each one had garnered a total of 400 caps and 100 extra for the egg. Later, we entered Aradesh's hut. He was sitting in an old rocking chair.
He looked up and asked, “So, did you eliminate them?”
“Yes, they are dead and they won’t cause anymore harm to your town.”
Aradesh made the happiest expression that the old muscles on his face could make. He got up from his chair and shook my hoof enthusiastically.
“Thank you, Dweller! There is no way the people of Shady Sands can ever properly show you their appreciation, so please take this.”
As he stopped to shake my hoof, he pulled two medium size sacks and gave us one each. Inside the sacks, he claimed was 700 hundred caps. Wow, he really was desperate to get rid of the scorpions to give this reward to somepony.
“It was nothing. Oh, and by the way, my name is Wild Aces.”
“Thank you, Aces, and may you travel safely on your journey.”
“If you need anything else, just find me.”
We left Aradesh’s house and had gone through the main gate out of Shady Sands. It was already night, my Pipbuck saying it was 20:00 PM. We still had time to search there, and a plus for being at night, it might be safer to go there than at day, wouldn’t it?
After more walking, we arrived at an old hut made of rusted metal materials. On my Pipbuck it was indicating that this was Stable 15…strange. Wouldn’t it have an huge mechanical door in the shape of a gear and not some old hut? If this was to disguise the entrance, Stable-Tec had hit the mark on that. We entered the old small house and inside was actually nothing else other than an old shuttle entrance. I enveloped the small shuttle with my magic, and slowly the entrance opened to reveal a ladder leading down to another Stable cave entrance, Ha! I knew it, they had exactly the same entrance as Stable 13. Just the front is disguised as house!
Just as we got down from the ladder more dark surrounded us. Once again I activated the flashlight function of my Pipbuck. When the light showed up, one of the signs that the Stable was deserted for a while was the huge gear door on the floor of the cave. It appeared that somehow the inhabitants of Stable 15 had managed to blow the door off. There were markings on the door that confirmed that.
We continued further into the abandoned structure and encountered rats and some other kind of rat that was some kind of mix between mole and rat. When I killed one of them with my knife, I skinned them and got their meat. The Pipbuck labeled it as "mole rat meat" along with its value of two caps. Hmm, so I was right. Nevermind that.
Further into the Stable we came across the elevators. They were destroyed, meaning we would have to take the auxiliary stairs to go down to the atrium level. A sign on the wall by the elevator listed living quarters, security office and the overmare central base of operations. If we could get to the central, then we could get the chip.
When we got out of the stairs, my bad luck had fallen upon us again. The rockslide that Dusty Bells had told me about blocked the living quarters, and that meant the medbay and the rest of the other sections of the Stable were blocked by huge and heavy rocks, meaning that the only sections available for us to search were the security office and the Overmare's sector.
While on our way to the security office, I noticed lots of skeletons of ponies who had stayed here and tried to have an normal Stable life even after the rockslide. That wasn’t the worst part. The worst was thinking of other ponies who got stuck in the other sections. Poor souls. They were, trapped to die in a underground hole. I had to stop thinking about it and focus on the task at hand!
The security office had its own skeletons. The ponies that died here still had their barding on and their Pipbucks were still glowing, indicating that the rockslide had occurred not so early. As I went searching for ammo for my primary weapon in the lockers, I found something sweet, a 10mm submachine gun, just like the one I saw on the target range. Cool, now I could turn my enemies into swiss cheese with this beauty, and found some clips to boot.
As I levitated my new weapon, I called Powder’s attention, saying, “Looky what I found here!”
I waved the weapon while it was floating in my telekinesis.
He responded with a wide grin. Lucky bastard! I wish I had grabbed that before you!
“Too bad.”
Powder was putting some stuff into his saddlebags, of what I guess he qualified as valuable, and said that if we want to have supplies and ammo we would have to keep selling stuff we find around for caps. Nice: robbing the dead for wealth.
After we finished with the security office we headed to the Overmare's base. The large space was filled with computers and other high technological machines. I immediately went running to the water administration computer. Ignoring what my "friend" was doing, I looked at the panel with various buttons and levers for controlling the water. When I looked at insides of the computer, to my shock the chip there had suffered the same fate as the chip of Stable 13.
Seeing that this chip too had “given up the ghost”, I said to Powder, “The-the chip….is”
“The chip is what? Say it already!”
“Broken!”
As my eyes filled with tears, powder came closer to me and said, “Don’t cry. You didn’t seriously expect to find the chip at the first place you looked, did you?”
“I did, Powder. The Overstallion said to me that the chip was here!”
As I cried more, Powder put a hoof under my chin and lifted my head til my eyes met his, “Look not everything in life is guaranteed, and not everything is 100% true and confirmed. The things we look for in life aren’t always in the first place to look.”
“But—”
“I know you must be missing the Stable life you had, but to save your Stable you must be persistent and strong.”
I stayed silent upon hearing these words coming from him, he sounded so...grumpy like a old grandpa that doesn't like his own family.
“I know other places that we can look for this chip. Don’t worry, you will find the chip and go back to your Stable.”
As I stopped crying and rubbed my hoof on my face to wipe my tears, I said to powder, “Thank you. You sound like my dad right now.”
“I take care of who I like, and I like you, colt.”
“Heh, so where is the next stop to search for the chip?”
“General Atomics Production Center, just up to north of here.”
As I stopped being sad and stood up with enthusiasm, I said, “General Atomics Production Center, here we come.”
“That’s the spirit, colt!”
As we climbed the stairs and got out of Stable 15 through the small shuttle hut, we headed North to the next location marked on my Pipbuck.
FOOTNOTE:
Leveld Up! You are now Level 2
New Perk:
-Exterminator(Rank 1): because you are learning about the creatures of the wasteland you now do 15% more damage against them (Radscorpions, mole rats, rats, Hellhounds…)
Current Level: 2
Next Level: 3
STATUS
Caps: 1200
Level: 2
KARMA:
Shady Sands: Liked
Stable 13: Idolized
TEAM:
Iron Powder
Fallout Equestria Unity
Written by Sparking Bolt and brought to you by Team Cloud9, come join us at our chat if you produce brony content or like brony content or would like help with your projects feel free to join!
Huge thanks for Somber and Kkat for inspiring me to write this!