Fallout Equestria: Snowfall
By PeskyJewel
Chapter 1: Wasteland
Not many can survive out in the wasteland. Some go mad, and others wind up dead or worse. But a few survive. They make it to their destination or even start a new town. But even rarer is the pony that thrives in the wasteland. And just as they are not the same ponies that entered it, the wasteland is not the same when they leave.
These very gifted few have appeared throughout time. Even before the Great War ended and the wasteland was created, they walked this planet. They may not have thought themselves to be great, and they may not have always been heroic and pure, but they were great nonetheless.
Around two hundred years ago there was a rekindling of sorts, where several of these individuals stirred in the wasteland. Their stories have been long forgotten or twisted by those in power. A few more prominent stories survived and are still mostly the same, told only by their original authors and by the books they have written. The stories of the Light-Bringer, Security, and Murky have been told plenty, so much so that everypony has heard at least one of them. But there is another story that no pony has yet heard, one of cold and ice: the story of Project Snowfall.
* * *
“Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria…”
Dark clouds flowed like a river, guided by strong winds hidden within their greyness, and thunder roared in the distance as I watched lights and shadows move inside a small raider encampment. I hefted my railgun and peered through its night-vision scope at the raider encampment laid out before me. After making note of twelve raiders and their encampment’s layout I lowered my railgun, turned around, and slid back down the hill I had been scouting from.
At the bottom of the hill waited my compatriot, Dust, wearing my custom suit of S-24u power armour. I had originally designed the S series to be used for long-range scouting missions, but after a while I designed them more for stealth and assassinations. Even with armour on, Dust wasn’t much bigger than any other pony because her suit was one of the smallest designs of power armour. Even a unicorn could wear it. It featured a custom Series 15 StealthBuck, and it even has a magical talisman on the back that stores and unleashes magic in case of magical burnout.
I could see the dark outline of her power armour as I approached. “We going to do this?” Dust’s roboticized voice asked from the darkness.
“I saw seven on the wall and at least five more inside,” I replied.
“I’ll cause a distraction on the far side of the base, you sneak in and do what you do best,” Dust said as she turned to walk away.
“Dust,” I called out to her, “try not to break the suit again, alright?”
“I’ll try my best, but it’s pretty hard to do when I'm always saving your flank,” Dust replied as she activated the StealthBuck in her suit and disappeared into the darkness.
I took a moment to stare into the darkness before activating my own StealthBuck. I crept my way to the raider encampment as the storm in the distance flashed lightning, warning everypony in its path to move.
As I walked I got a feeling there was something else walking beside me, something bone-chillingly cold. It only lasted a moment, but it was enough to send a shiver down my spine. I looked around in the darkness, but didn’t see a single living soul. After the feeling passed I stepped into a puddle of water. The freezing temperature stabbed into my hoof as I yanked it away. The shock from the freezing water catching me off guard. It felt like I had stepped into a puddle of freshly melted snow. What made it weird was it hadn’t snowed in a month, and the weather was much too hot for any recent snowfall.
“Calm yourself Shadow,” I mumbled to myself, “it's nothing to be worried about. This is an easy job, just kill the raiders and save the hostages before the storm hits. Easy.”
Just before I reached the wall, a burst of light and a loud explosion rocked the opposite side of the encampment. The two raiders nearest me stepped down from the wall, leaving a perfect opening for me to slide over it. I pulled myself over and saw the carnage Dust had caused. She had detonated some of her explosives in what looked like some kind of armoury that rested on the far wall of the raider encampment, leaving a giant flaming hole in the wall. Most of the raiders had rushed over to it to put out the flames. I saw three yellow dots join the eighteen red ones already on my Eyes Forward Sparkle.
You know, I never could figure out how the E.F.S. worked. It wasn’t from a lack of trying: I destroyed quite a few PipBucks before I gave up. Needless to say, I still trusted the damn thing, I couldn’t count the times it’s saved my flank. The red dots were clustered into two groups: One near the fire, and the others in an old police station, a lone dot being separate from the two groups. The lone raider was in a garage, trying to free a fire extinguisher from its rusted frame.
He really was making himself too easy of a target. I snuck up behind him and sliced his neck with the sword lying on the ground at his feet, leaving him to drop to the ground soundlessly.
Reaching into my saddlebags with my magic, I floated out three grenades and my two trusty, beautiful silenced laser submachine guns, Cloak and Dagger. I stealthily moved over toward the raiders extinguishing the fire, plucked the pins from the three grenades and tossed them into the line of raiders, taking cover as four red dots disappeared from the E.F.S. I cantered toward the survivors and finished them off with concentrated fire from my submachine guns.
Nine dots gone from the EFS, nine to go.
I switched off my StealthBuck to keep from using it more than I had to. I turned toward the police station to find a stallion with a combat shotgun on a battle saddle standing in the way. Before either of us made a move, the air right next to him shimmered and Dust materialized next to him, her two back hooves connecting with the side of his head and sending him sliding across the street.
“That was a little unnecessary.” I said to her as we met up in front of the police station.
“Were those grenades?” Dust asked, ignoring my comment. “You could have just used your guns.”
“The grenades were faster,” I said.
“Yeah right,” Dust replied. “How many are left?”
“Eight,” I said as soon as I had double checked my EFS, “but one of the hostages never showed up.”
“Right, then let's finish the job,” Dust said.
I pulled a pair of night vision goggles from my bags and slipped them on. Dust pulled out her sword and activated her own night vision. I motioned to the door with my hoof. “Mares first”.
The door to the police station made an awful creak as Dust slowly pushed it open, which alerted everyone in the building to where we were. The first room looked like a small waiting area with counter at one end a bunch of chairs stacked up against one wall, with two doors on either side of the counter leading out of the room. “Left or right,” I whispered.
“Left.”
“See you on the other side,” I whispered to myself as Dust and I parted once again.
As I crept over the threshold of the right door, the floor changed from old wood to dirty blue and white tile. The room was separated by two walls of iron bars with doors set into each of them,with a set of stairs that led down into the building’s cell block.
I stood up and walked over to the first door and tried to move it with my magic. It came right off its hinges and came crashing down with a very loud bang . “Good job Shadow, let them all know exactly where you are,” I mumbled to myself.
The other door proved to be a little more difficult as some pony had decided to lock it. Not like a rusty old lock was going to slow me down anyway. I floated a bobby pin out of my saddlebag and set to work on the lock. In no time the lock clicked and I pulled the door to the side with my magic. A trail of blood followed the stairwell down to the cell block. A bathroom weight scale with wires running out of it sat on the right side of the top step against the wall. I stepped around the scale and looked down the stairs to see some sort of improvised explosive taped to the wall.
I continued sneaking down the stairs into the cell block as I reactivated my StealthBuck and pushed my night vision goggles to rest on my forehead.
The stairs opened into a side of the cell block. Two sets of cells ran down both walls of the room, with a door at the other end. Half a dozen raiders waited in front of the door, their weapons at the ready. As I started to move out from behind the banister, there was a large crash from upstairs.
“Torchlight! Was that you?” one of the raiders called out, only to be shut up by his friend saying, “Shut up Spinner! Are you trying to get us killed?”
I reached down and pulled out a small dagger. Making sure not to use my magic. It would have rendered my invisibility useless, and I preferred to keep my exact location unknown for the time being. I crept around the raiders in front to the one in the rear against the door, a light-brown mare with a dirty white mane. I lifted my dagger up to the side of her neck and thrust it in, letting go and stepping away as she fell backwards onto her haunches.
Her colleagues turned around as she yanked the dagger from her throat and I reached their other flank. They all just stood there, hypnotised by their dying colleague holding a bloody dagger in her hooves. Maybe if one of them had turned around, they would have noticed me appear behind them. I floated Cloak and Dagger out from their holsters and pulled the triggers, unleashing a cascade of burning lasers onto them.
After the last raider disintegrated into ash I took the time to check the cells. All four of the captured ponies were here as promised by the contractors, how the contractors always know stuff like this I have no idea, but they weren’t all alive. Two stallions lay in separate cells and two mares were in the others. The stallions looked fine; in fact, they had their hooves wrapped around the bars.
The mares, on the other hoof, were not looking so great. One was laid out on the floor, blood around her muzzle and her flank, and was clearly dead. The other was slumped against the far wall of her cell. The only reason I could tell she wasn’t dead like the other was because she still showed up on my E.F.S. Their cells were locked, as was the door the raiders had been guarding, but it wouldn’t be too much trouble for me to pick them. I started to pull out my lockpicks just as Dust came trotting down the stairs.
“Ah, you’re here,” I said. “Find anypony upstairs?”
“Not a soul,” Dust said as she walked up to the jail cells. “No living souls, anyway. Are they the ponies we are supposed be saving? Two of them look dead.”
“One of them is dead,” I corrected as I fiddled with the lock on the door. The lock was tough and I didn’t have the patience to unlock it. “Can you come kick this door in? We can attend to the captives in a bit.”
Dust walked over to me and stood in front of the door. “You ready?” she asked.
I looked around at the ash piles I’d left for a “surprise” to give to the last two raiders. “Ready,” I said once I spotted something suitable.
I floated a fragmentation grenade up from one of the ash piles as Dust prepared to kick the door in. She lifted her back legs, I pulled the pin on the grenade, and her legs connected with the door with a crack, sending the door flying inwards with my grenade following close behind.
An “Oh shit!” came out of the room followed by a bang and the disappearance of one blip from my E.F.S.
I stepped into the room and saw a stallion covered in blood standing in the back of the room, another pony lying at his feet. He looked stunned to have blood on him and his face was wet with tears, as I highly doubted he could hurt anyone else at the moment. I took one step toward him and he looked up from his dead compatriot, made some sort of whimper sound, and stepped back. I felt around his partner with my magic for a weapon, and jackpot! There it was!
I floated a little pistol up toward the terrified stallion, and he started to beg for his life. “Don't shoot!” He begged, “You can take whatever you want but please don't kill me! I've got foals to look after! A wife!”
I didn't move the gun away, but instead took several steps in his direction. “Please don't! I'll pay double whatever your contract was and I'll disappear! I won't be a slaver any more! I never wanted to be a slaver! It's just a job!”
I took one last step toward the stallion, standing right in front of him now, cocked the little pistol and put it up against his forehead. He was definitely crying now.
“I understand exactly how you feel,” I said, “but I don't get paid to be emotional. I'm sorry, but as you said, it is just a job.”
His brains went flying out the back of his head.
* * *
I could hear the wind howling outside the police station as I made my way back up to the ground floor. Water dripped through holes in the ceiling, cold air seeped through the walls, and thunder cracked in the darkness outside. I didn't have to open a door to know that the storm was here.
I turned around to see Dust walking up the stairs carrying the incapacitated mare. “This is going to be our home for tonight,” I said to her. “Best find a good corner to stand watch.”
Dust stopped for a minute and listened to the storm’s howls. “So it is.” She sat the mare down against a wall. “But while we may be fine for the night without any comfort, she won't. I'm going to see if I can find a mattress and some blankets.” Dust turned around and headed through the door on the left that she had explored earlier.
I floated a few chairs off a stack in the corner as the two stallions we’d rescued came up the stairs. The tan one looked over at me and uttered the first words any of them had said since I saved them: “Thank you for coming for us. I don't know what would have happened to us if you hadn’t. You know, ponies like you really are doing good things.”
“I didn't do it because it was a good thing to do,” I told him as I continued taking chairs from the pile, “I did it because I needed to.”
“I just wanted to thank you for helping us,” he said. “There’s not many ponies out there who are heroes.”
I set down the chairs before saying anything else. “I didn’t save you because I needed to help somepony, I saved you for my own personal gains.” I scoffed. “And being a hero? There are no heroes, just ponies who try and do the right thing, and make life worse for somepony else in the process.”
I shifted my gaze away from him and over towards the mare slumped against the wall. “We aren’t heroes. Just a couple of bounty hunters.”
The stallion stood there for a minute looking at me. Eventually, he spoke up. “You can think what you want, but there are heroes out there. And today, you're one of them.” Nodding to me, he walked over to sit by the mare who was still unconscious.
Dust came walking down the stairs dragging three mattresses and an enormous box of blankets behind her. I stepped over to her and helped lay the blankets onto the three mattresses. After we had carefully moved the mare onto a mattress and covered her with blankets everyone else settled in for a long night. It was nice having Dust, because with her I never had to stand watch. It was a nice luxury that I never had back in my military days, but tonight, I wasn't going to get much sleep anyways. With the storm raging outside, who could?
* * *
I must have fallen asleep sometime in the night because I awoke to Dust prodding me with her big metal hoof. “Wake up,” she whispered to me with every poke.
“Dust, why did you need to wake me up? I had just gone to sleep,” I whispered back. I had no idea why we were whispering, it was hard to hear much of anything over the roar of the storm outside. But then I heard it.
A roar. Not one a storm would make; this was different, something else. It was followed by the harsh scream of gunfire and metal being torn. I looked at Dust, knowing she saw that I’d heard it, and if she had had a visible face I'm sure she would have been terrified.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked her, not really bothering to whisper anymore.
“Yep,” she said nervously.
I walked over to her and grabbed her helmet. “Disengage Dust, I need to put the suit on.” There was a soft hiss as the pneumatic locks in her suit disengaged and the entire suit opened up. I walked around to the open backside and climbed in as the suit closed up behind me.
“Are we really doing this?” Dust asked.
“I am,” I replied. “You just have to come with me.”
“Sometimes, I really hate being in a suit.”
I walked up to the door of the police station. Was I really about to walk out into a storm to investigate a noise that may or may not be something that could kill me on sight?
I didn’t even need to go outside to look. Even if it was what I thought it was, we could just stay in the building and take precautions. But no, I couldn’t just sit here and wait for it to kill us, I needed to know what it was.
Wind and rain flooded through the gap as I forced the door open, droplets pelting the visor of the helmet slightly obscuring my vision, but the noise was unmistakable now. I had only heard that roar a few times in my life, but it still chilled me to my core. I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from, so I started to scan the area looking for any sign of the beast.
However, I didn’t see the beast first. Instead, I saw what it was roaring at.
One of the Pegasus Enclave’s Raptors came falling, tumbling down through the cloud layer. One of the cloudship’s engines was burning and a series of small explosions rippled across the hull as it descended. The other engine flared to life, and the cloudship stabilized in the air as its guns began firing up into the clouds. A dragon hurtled downward through the clouds, slamming into the top of the cloudship as it opened its maw and unleashed a bout of blue colored flames on the cloudship.
I used my magic to wipe the rain off my visor in an effort to see more clearly what was happening between the raptor and the dragon. The dragon grabbed the last working engine on the cloudship and ripped it clean from the ship, sending the cloudship spiraling down to the ground.
“We should go back inside before the dragon sees us,” Dust said.
“We need to go check that wreck once the storm lets up,” I replied. “But yeah, let’s get back inside.”
I turned around and trudged through the rain back up to the police station and pushed my way inside. Once I heard the door shut behind me I let Dust open her suit up and I climbed out. The tan stallion looked at me and asked, “Is everything alright outside? Are there more raiders?”
“No,” I replied, “there aren’t any more raiders, and there’s nothing to worry about. We’ll get moving in the morning. For now, just go back to sleep.”
Dust walked back to her corner of the room and sat down. “You’re gonna want the rest,” Dust told them. And with that everyone turned around and walked back towards their beds as one of the stallions knelt down to check on the unconscious mare.
I walked over to my own bed and reached into my saddlebags and pulled out an old towel I kept fairly clean. I wet one end of the towel with rainwater dripping from the ceiling before walking over to her and cleaning blood and dirt from her coat.
It didn’t really need to be done, I just couldn’t go to sleep at the moment. Cleaning the mare up, that was just busy work, a distraction. Dust walked up behind me while I was attempting to work a few knots out of her mane.
“Why are you, of all people, cleaning someone up?” she asked once the stallions had fallen asleep.
“Because,” I replied, “I can’t treat her wounds if I can’t see them.”
“It couldn’t have been just because you felt sorry for her?” Dust pressed. “This can’t be the first time you actually put a bit of care into your work, can it?”
“I only get paid to keep them alive. Past that, there’s not a need to care.” I turned my attention back towards the mare.
“Sooner or later your gonna have to care about somepony other than yourself.”
“I care about you, don’t I?”
“I’m not a pony. Robots don’t count.”
“Is that because I could always just reprogram you not to ask whether I care or not?” I said as I finished cleaning the upper body of the mare and began working on her torso.
“It could be something like that, why don’t you at least try and get to know a few ponies better? What about Marigold? She always seems to be trying to talk to you when you're in town.”
“You know why I don’t get too involved with other ponies lives.”
“Well, at some point or another you're gonna need somepony other than me.”
“Are you implying that I’m gonna outlive an immortal AI?”
“An immortal AI that can very easily be smashed into a thousand pieces, yes. And nothing seems to have killed you yet.”
Our conversation of immortality and friends continued on into the night as I finished cleaning the mare and cleaned and dressed her wounds to the best of my ability. I took a step back, checking over to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.
She was odd looking, and familiar. She had a very pale yellow coat and a lemon-colored mane with a single streak of white through it. She looked a lot like a glass of lemonade, which made her cutie mark fit her perfectly. Her cutie mark was a glass of lemonade with a white straw and three hearts that had replaced the ice cubes in the glass. I looked up to her face and saw a small little horn perched on top of her head.
Suddenly, I wasn’t standing in an old police station, but a cold metal room. Cold air pooled visibly around my hooves. I looked up, and there she was, that yellow mare sitting just beyond the glass, encased in an icy tomb, waiting to be awoken.
I felt a hoof on my shoulder and turned to see who it was. When I looked back my eyes fell upon a face I hadn’t seen in so long: Her light blue coat, her white mane with little streaks of blue, her wings resting at her side. Only Celestia knows how much I missed her.
She spoke: “Stormshadow.” But that wasn’t her voice, that was… that was Dust. No. I could feel the world started to slip away. The world I wanted back. No! I saw her face, her smile fade into something else. The mare I knew changing into something unfamiliar. NO!
The world came rushing back to me and I saw Dust standing behind me with her metal hoof on my shoulder right where her’s had been. A small whisper escaped my lips: “No...”
“Hey, are you alright? You got this weird look on your face and your eyes glazed over.”
“Yeah, I just… I remembered something.”
“Looked more like you were tripping on something to me. Are you doing Jet again behind my back?”
“Yeah, sure, wait no I…” I was stumbling through my words, my mind not knowing what to think.
I had seen her, back there, back home. But she couldn’t possibly be there. The last time I dared to venture back, everypony was gone.
Why must my brain torture me so?! It was a place of bad memories, old friends, heartbreak, and betrayal and I was doing so well at forgetting it, until now.
I looked back at the yellow mare. “I think she’s gonna be fine. I couldn’t find anything life-threatening, anyway.” I turned around and walked over to the mattress I had been sleeping on before. “I’m gonna get back to sleep. Wake me up when the storm’s over, alright?”
“Sure thing,” Dust said. After a moment, she asked with what sounded like a worried tone, “Are you gonna be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said as I lay down on the mattress and willed the dark world of sleep to take me, before my mind could conjure up any more memories I didn’t want to see.
* * *
I sat up and looked around me, and noticed the quiet dripping of water and the eerie silence that always follows after a storm. I then noticed that I was the only one in the room. I stood up and realized I had gone to sleep with my barding still on, oops. I walked out of the police station and almost right into the back of a raider.
I stumbled back, drawing Cloak and Dagger from their holsters before I realised it wasn’t a raider, just one of the stallions we had saved dressed up in a raider’s barding.
I regained my composure and walked past him, saying as I walked by, “You should really change into something else. Wearing that is just going to get you shot.”
“But, but,” the stallion stuttered, “I need some kind of armour, don’t I?”
“Old rags are better than armour that’ll get you shot by anyone with a gun!” I called back to him as I walked towards the smoking remains of the raider’s armoury.
Dust had really done a number on the place. The small building was built right up against the camp’s exterior wall in the middle of the street. One side of the armoury hut had been reduced to nothing more than a low wall and the smoking remains of some shelves.
The other side was more intact but the roof had caved in toward the middle of the building. As I walked up to the remains of the armoury I saw a large chunk missing from the exterior wall, and inside the breach I found Dust.
“Hey,” I said, walking up behind her.
“Hey yourself.”
“Was there anything left here?”
“No.”
We stood for a moment in silence enjoying the soft morning sunlight that managed to pierce the thick clouds.
Dust’s slightly robotic voice broke the silence. “That mare…”
“What about her?”
“Did you help her because-”
“No.”
“I mean, her coat and-”
“I said no, Dust.”
“Not even a little?”
“No, we’ve got a job to do. What mares look like doesn’t matter. Whether they live does.”
“So you’re sure there wasn’t-”
“I’m sure.”
“Fine, have your secrets. But I will find out eventually.”
“I’m sure you will,” I said, “but right now we’ve got a wreck to look through and a few other ponies to look after.”
I turned back around and walked back through the remains of the armoury, Dust walking beside me. As much as I hated the banter Dust liked to engage in, I really didn’t know what I would do without her. And I couldn’t remove the banter from her code because... then she wouldn’t really be Dust anymore, just another computer program in a suit. Losing Dust, even by my own hoof, was something I could almost not even consider. She had been a friend of mine for the majority of my life, somepony who had always been by my side, even at my lowest points. She convinced me to put down my gun, to not jump, to not go striding into an Enclave Skyport and start blowing off heads.
Well, maybe not that last one. I’ll just say the Enclave really don’t like me, or at least they wouldn’t if they knew I was there.
Either way, as much as I joked about it, I couldn’t have changed her programing even if I knew how.
“Hey, Shadow, are you even listening to me?” Dust asked, waving a metal hoof in my face.
“Huh? I yeah… what were you saying?” After losing my train of thought, words were just falling clumsily out my mouth.
“I was just telling you where your new mare was.”
“Dust, she’s-”
“Upstairs, inside the police station. Went up there with one of the stallions. I’d hurry if I were you.” Despite her complete lack of facial expression I could still make out the teasing in her voice.
Dust went on to explore the rest of the encampment as I walked up the stairs of the police station I noticed the stallion had changed out his raider armour in favor of some hardened leather patches and straps he put on over his clothes. As I pushed the door open and stepped inside I was greeted by the sound of raised voices. I trotted over to the stairs while listening to conversation going on above, which really wasn’t hard considering how loud they were being.
“I don’t care what he’s here to do! As soon as I find my shit, I’m gone!”
“Lemon, he’s going to take us home!” said what I could only assume to be the stallion’s voice. “our stuff probably isn’t here anymore. We need his help to at least get to the nearest town.”
“Look at this! Why did he bandage me?! Why did he clean my coat?! I was asleep and he cleaned my coat! What else did he do while I was out?!”
“Lemon, he’s just trying to help, and from what I’ve heard about him he’s not going to just let you go. He takes his jobs seriously.”
I approached the door slowly, I found myself unconsciously hiding the sound of my hoofsteps. “Trap… I just don’t like the feeling coming from this pony. It’s almost like I-”
I pulled open the door with my magic as I calmly stepped into the room and was met by two slightly startled ponies standing on either side of a table.
“You two,” I said coolly, “get your stuff together. We’re leaving.” I then turned and left the room closing the door behind me. As the door shut I heard Lemon say, “See?”
I headed back downstairs and joined Dust in waiting for everyone to gather their few surviving belongings. The stallion came downstairs first, wearing some leather barding with some kind of mace-like thing slung over his back.
I noticed the mare didn’t follow him down. “Where’s your friend?” I asked him as he walked up to us.
“She’ll be down in a minute, she just needed to grab something,” he said back to me with an almost sad look on his face.
“Well, we need to get going,” I replied, checking my PipBuck. “It’s a long way back to Megamart.” It was only a four-day journey, but the railway passed right by the old Fluttershy medical center and the giant radscorpion nest.
It was then I noticed a red dot had appeared on my E.F.S.
“Dust, cloak for me.” Dust disappeared in a shimmer of light.
I could see the yellow mare crouching by the stairs, attempting to stay hidden in some shadows. She was trying to hold a hunting rifle with her hooves, which really only works if you’ve been properly trained, rather than levitating it.
“You don’t have to make this hard,” I said in my most compelling voice. “Put down the rifle and come with us. I’ll make sure you get to Megamart safely. Nopony has to get hurt.”
“Who are you?” She called back.
“The Shadow.”
“No, I know your name. I mean, who are you?” she asked.
“Look, put down the rifle or I’m gonna have to take it from you. I’d prefer you to walk with me there because I really don’t want to have to drag you.”
Who was this mare? I just saved her flank and she’s not the least bit grateful? She looked so much like… someone I used to know. The memories of ice and acidic odors started to sweep over my mind.
I did my best to push them away. “If you have a death wish then you can kill yourself once I get my money.”
Her magic enveloped the gun and she pulled the trigger.
The bullet would have flown straight and true had it not ricochet off of the invisible form of Dust. Sparks flew as Dust darted forward and brought her hoof down on the barrel of the rifle, bending it as the bolt slid back.
The mare tried to flee up the stairs but tripped as my magic enveloped her back leg. “Dust, open up, but don’t let her control anything,” I said as I slowly dragged her back down the stairs. Memories of dragging bodies, the acidic smells still prevalent in the air, came back. Once again I tried to push them away, ignore them.
I dropped her behind Dust. “You don’t get to decide where you go right now. I am being paid to get you to Megamart, and that is where we are going. Don’t want to get to Megamart? Deal with it when we get there. Now get in.”
I closed my eyes for a second as Dust’s backside closed up around the mare. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, the acrid smell in the air, I could almost… This mare…
The sooner I could get rid of her the better. But for now she stays put away, so I don’t have to see.
I floated my last bottle of Smyrnoi vodka out of my saddlebags. Stuff was hard to find, but it was oh-so good. I looked around at our group; the stallions were looked eager to get moving, Dust didn’t really have expression, and her metal frame hid the mare from view.
I snorted. Once again a group ventures out into the wastes, and sure, many do it everyday. But with recent events in the hoof, it just keeps getting harder and harder to avoid danger. I looked back over at Dust. “Let’s get moving. We’ve got a crash site to look over.”
End of Chapter One.
______________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: No Level Gained
No New Perks
(Huge thanks to Kkat for creating this wonderful sandbox and allowing us all to play in it. And a huge thanks to the readers who took the time to read this story. And a huge thanks goes to my editors for sorting through the filth and making it better.)
(Author’s note: Stormshadow was originally conceived to be a character left to the author by an older sibling or a friend. You may not join him at the beginning of his journey in the wastes, but I guarantee you will see the end.)