//------------------------------// // 41 - Stranger // Story: Fallout: Equestria - War Does Change // by tom117z //------------------------------// Chapter Forty-One: Stranger “He was just here! You saw him, right?” We were now far away from the centre of Vanhoover, and thankfully far from the MAS hub and the Steel Rangers that were undoubtedly setting up shop. We’d moved back through the city one step at a time, navigating our way past the old skyscrapers and businesses of the pre-war world. The built-up remnants of the panicked traffic had long since vanished, leaving mostly clear streets aside from the odd vehicle hulk or collapsed building. Around us, the mass urban area was starting to thin out a little as we headed further away and towards the outer sections of the city, though we were still some time away from the Sky Bandit. Actually… I wasn’t even sure exactly where the Sky Bandit was. Somewhere in our trek back we’d taken a different turn, and now we found ourselves in unfamiliar streets. It would probably take us some time to get back to wherever it was we parked, and now it was also getting late. Maybe we should have stayed another night in Crossroads after all… “It’s getting late,” Cobalt said, almost as if he was mirroring my own thoughts. “We should probably pick a building to rest our heads in for the night.” Too bad I was picking up a fair few red bars from a lot of them. Probably vermin, but some of them could be raiders for all we knew. “I don’t think this is a safe place for us to stop just yet,” I said back to him. “Too much bad stuff around every corner. I’d like my E.F.S. to be clear before we bunker down.” “How about a medical clinic?” Altrix suddenly chirped, buzzing forward and pointing up at a road sign. “It’s only up ahead. Maybe we could find some goodies in there as well!” “I believe our healing potion and Med-X supply are sufficient for the return,” Xena noted. “Eh, too much ‘fix everything’ juice can’t really hurt,” Moon Blossom pointed out with a shrug. “Maybe they’ll have some more of that hydra stuff as well. We ran out back at the town, remember?” Makes sense that she’d be keen to find more of the stuff after it saved her face. “I agree. They may have certain medications I lack in my medical boxes,” Altrix agreed. “Hydra, buck…” “Buck?” I questioned with a curious glance at the changeling. Not what I expected to hear a doctor say… “Aren’t you meant to be the one telling us to, you know, stay away from drugs?” She gave me a deadpan look. “If you were taking it for recreation or otherwise regularly, yes I would. However, its original design was for combat medics during the war. When handled specially by a trained professional, it can be quite beneficial.” “So… no free hits?” Moon Blossom probed. “No.” “Aw.” “I still fail to see how it could help,” I muttered. “I’ve seen raiders strung out on the stuff, it never ends well.” “Isosteroprophenhol is an anabolic steroid.” What did she just call it? “It’s meant to help the critically wounded stay alive and… well, it was meant to keep them fighting too. But if I was ever forced to administer it, I would expect you to stay out of a gunfight… please.” I’ll bear that in mind. “Well, I suppose it won’t hurt to check it out.” We moved further down the block, leaving the red bars and their crumbling hidey-holes behind. As we got further down, I spotted the building in question sitting on a street corner. Or at least the entrance was, a closer inspection made it seem like the clinic actually extended all the way down the street, also being two stories in height. The great medical expenses of the Ministry of Peace at work, I guess. As an added bonus, I was no longer seeing any activity on my- Wait. A single green bar just blipped into existence on my E.F.S., not coming from the medical centre, but rather… It looked like it was coming from the building opposite the road. I stopped, looking up at the unmarked building I was getting the motion from. And right there, in a window on one of the upper floors, I swear I could just make out the shape of a pony. The darkness made it difficult to make out any features beyond the silhouette, but they were definitely there. Then they just moved back into the building, the bar disappearing as quickly as it came. “There’s someone up there,” I told the other, pointing at the window in question. “Friendly, apparently. But I couldn’t get a good look.” The others all took on an aura of concern at the news, but probably not as much as it would have been had the indicator been less friendly. Still, it wasn’t something we could just brush off… “Let us investigate the medical centre,” Xena stated. “But remain alert. If there is a stalker in these shadows, I do not want to be caught unaware.” Agreed. Moving back towards the medical centre, uninterrupted this time, we quickly came up to the firmly closed front entrance and stopped in front of it. There was a plaque by the door with the faded engraving of a trio of butterflies, just like on Altrix’s medical boxes, though the name of the building had been obscured by time. I lit my horn, gently taking hold of the door and pushing it open. It did so without any kind of resistance, revealing a darkened reception area inside. There were several rows of chairs filling the large room, several desks sitting against the back wall with what was probably bulletproof glass separating it from everything else. Several long hallways branched off from the reception area, leading further into the clinic. There were also a lot of bodies. Young and old, skeletons were riddled on and between the rows of seats, a few beds on wheels also sitting here and there, some of them empty while others also held the skeletal remains of their former patients. “Oh dear,” Altrix whimpered. “They must have thought they’d be safe here…” “Safer than most other places, maybe less so than in the Ministry of Peace’s hub back at the city centre,” Cobalt noted. “But none of them would have been able to keep up with the casualties and lack of support for long. Not to mention the staff getting sick from all of the radiation…” I wonder how many days they managed to hold out before abandoning this place? Well, let’s hope that when they did, they didn’t have time to pack. Moving past all of the corpses and into one of the adjacent corridors, we could see a few more scattered beds and what even appeared to be… barricades? Yeah, a couple of the doors looked like they had been barricaded at some point but had then been broken open. “Maybe raiders used this place for a while, and got chased out by a rival gang?” Moon Blossom suggested as we walked past the defunct fortifications, the doors leading into various supply closets and examination rooms. “It happens all the time, we scuffled with one group that migrated into Prosperity this one time. Nasty bunch of asshats, they actually ate other ponies. Even for us, that was a fucked up.” “Maybe…” I muttered, though there was a distinct lack of graffiti or other distinct markers for raider territory. Either way, there didn’t seem to be anything around now. It was entirely silent and empty, just a few gently floating bits of dust kicked up as we walked through the building. We headed up through a door marked as ‘staff only’, moving up to the next floor and ending up in another corridor lined with doors. Several more appeared to be more closets, though they were just as empty on first glance as the ones downstairs. There was also a break room, a meeting room, another corridor marked as leading to a surgery and, finally, a single office at the end. “I think this belonged to one of the doctors,” Altrix noted on examining the door. “the Head of Medical in the stable has an office kind of like this one. You… didn’t want to end up there, it meant you’d messed up.” “Almost sounds like the office of a school teacher,” Cobalt noted with a hint of amusement. “Not really,” Altrix gingerly denied. “If you messed up in school, the nymph would get detention. If you messed up as a doctor, since we were all so weak from love starvation and really quite fragile, it could mean losing a member of the hive. You would be reassigned to another job…” “Ah…” Well, I’m guessing Altrix never ended up in there then. Thankfully. But while I couldn’t exactly compare it to the stable’s Head of Medical, on making my way into the office I found it to be quite sparse and professional. There were several filing cabinets around the room, a single window looking out on the street outside, a desk with a busted terminal on it… Oh, and another skeleton. Because there wasn’t enough of those in this place already. “Okay…” Moon Blossom muttered with some uncertainty. “What the hay happened to that pony?” Now that she mentioned it… Uh oh. Yeah, the skeleton, a mare by the looks of it, was strewn over the desk with red splotches all over the wooden frame. My gut twisted a little as my mind came to the conclusion of ‘blood’. Ancient dried blood, forever marking the wood. Thing is, the mare’s right hind leg was on the floor… in the far corner. On top of that, her rib cage looked like it had been smashed up. “Okay, now I’m freaked out,” I said, failing to resist the cold shiver down my spine. “What. The. Fuck.” Despite her own unease, Altrix slowly made her way over to the remains and started to study the bones. She picked up a stray rib in her magic, turning it over several times as she examined it. “Oh my.” “Altrix?” “It, um…” She swallowed nervously. “It looks like the bones were removed by some kind of instrument. A saw, perhaps.” “Hey, maybe they ran out of beds and were using the table for surgery or some crap?” Moon Blossom suggested. “It looks more like the scene of a crime,” Xena mused. “I… I don’t think this could be surgery, not really…” Altrix said quietly, looking now at the discarded leg. “The bones look fine, I don’t see why amputation was necessary. And the way the ribs were removed… it’s not very well executed, I don’t think any patient could survive whatever the procedure might have been.” “Welp, thanks for making this even more creepy!” Moon Blossom proclaimed with a fake smile. “I might have just developed a fear of doctors!” “But… I’m a doctor…” Altrix muttered sadly. “…Pony doctors?” she amended. Though, it seemed to do little to brighten the changeling mare’s mood. Moving around the desk, I found the chair strewn aside as if it was shoved. There was also a stray holotape on the floor, maybe ejected from the terminal when it was destroyed? It also, unlike the terminal, looked to be in good shape. “Maybe this can tell us what happened here,” I stated, picking up the holotape and inserting it into my PipBuck. And then, upon loading, a log began to play. “Alright, my journal for the day. Great. Ugh, why did the shrink say I have to record these? I haven’t got Wartime Stress Disorder, dammit! I’m just under a lot of stress, there seems to be more and more patients every day!” There was a thump on the recording. “Ugh, whatever. Well, here we are. Today I’m going to be dealing with multiple general health check-ups as well as one patient who has a history of chronic headaches and seizure. I might refer him up to the hub, see what the guys up there think. Speaking of the hub, I have to pen a report to- Wait.” There was a pause in the recording, which was then followed by the subdued sound of shouting in the background. “What the hay…? Well, the log can wait. Something is happening outside.” The log abruptly ended then. But, before any of us could so much as comment on what we’d heard, another recording began. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” the mare began. “The noise I heard was my staff reacting to the balefire bomb detonation in Manehatten. The stripes actually did it, they let off the first megaspell. And then Cloudsdale… Celestia, there wasn’t anything left. Some of us were terrified, others were raving about how we’d get them back… And then we were hit. Not as bad as the other two, but… Fuck.” There was a heavy sigh, followed by several moments of silence. “The flash was so sudden, we hear more than a few city blocks were caught in the blast. We were fortunate, but it’s chaos here. Ponies are going insane, either rushing to flee the city or take shelter where they can. Our staff are doing our best to care for everypony walking through those doors, but we can only do so much until we either get Ministry of Peace relief efforts in or the military restores some kind of order to the streets. We can’t rely on the hub either, news out of the city centre is… bad.” “Doc! We got a family in; their foal was buried under some rubble!” a stallion suddenly shouted. “Fuck. Alright, gotta go. Duty calls.” The second log ended, but it didn’t seem like it was quite done. If I was reading the screen right, there was one more log yet to play… “I don’t know how much longer we can hold out,” the mare rasped, sounding tired and about fifty years older. “It’s been days since the bombs hit, and we’ve stopped getting news from the rest of Equestria and… even the city. Refugees still arrive every hour or so, but there’s less of them. It’s also getting a little cold outside…” There was a pained fit of coughing on the other end of the recording, the mare giving several gut-wrenching breaths as she tried to bring her breathing back to normal. “Haven’t seen a hair of the Steel Rangers since this started. We got a few standard soldiers here to keep the peace, but even they can’t get anything on the radio. What’s happening in Canterlot? The Princess? The Ministry Mares? What happens to us now?” “Doctor?” the same stallion from before interrupted. “Ms Caramel would like to have a word with you.” “Ah, and we’ve been losing people too,” the mare added into the log. “Between the injuries, dwindling resources and radiation… Remember that foal we took in, folks? Seemed stable after the surgery, before he started coughing his guts up. Literally.” “Doc, this isn’t the time,” the stallion stressed. “Come on, we can still save a few. The Miss Nannies can’t do all the work.” “Alright, yes. Give me a moment.” Several moments of silence, and then the sound of hooves departing before there was another long sigh. “I hope some ponies made it to the stables. Had a cousin in Stable 9, at least one of us will hopefully outlast this mess. The whole world might very well be ending, and yet we keep chugging on. The robots are being put into overtime, some of our resident mechanics think we need to run a full maintenance cycle after observing some glitches. But we can’t afford it, not now. We need-” “Doctor?” a female voice with a very posh-sounding foreign accent called out. It sounded… tinny. “Mr Blackberry has had another fit, he requires urgent attention.” “Thank you, I’ll be right-” her sentence was interrupted by another coughing fit, spluttering audible along with a severe gagging sound. “Oh… that’s blood. Guess the radiation might very well claim me too.” “You are sick, do you require medical attention?” the robot asked. “No thank you, I will manage.” “As you wi- wi wiiiii- Unknown error.” “Heh, maybe you’re the one who requires attention.” “You are sick,” the robot repeated. “Immediate surgery required. Please remain calm.” “What? I have radiation poisoning, there’s not much you can do right now. Give me a RadAway if you must but leave me be!” “You are sick. Please remain calm.” “What are you-” There was a crash, followed by a terrified scream. All we could do was listen with our ears fully upright as the sound of a violent struggle occurred long in the past. And even as the doctor struggled with the robot, renewed screams could start to be heard in the distance. There was a thump as something hit the table. “No! No! Stop!” the mare screamed as the sound of a spinning sawblade started to be heard. “NO! PLEASE!” The sound of further flailing as the saw assumedly got closer, before there was a loud bang that marked the end of the tape. The moment the terminal was destroyed. The moment the doctor was brutally murdered by her own robot. “Fuck,” Moon Blossom aptly summed it all up. “She did mention some glitches,” Cobalt noted sadly. “She should have listened to the mechanics and placed them into a maintenance cycle. Still, at least we know what happened to these people.” “It explains the barricades,” Xena mused. “They must have tried defending themselves, only to be defeated and slain.” Altrix sniffed. “How horrible…” As if there wasn’t enough for those ponies to worry about between the balefire bombs and the entire end of the fucking world, they also had their own medical equipment turning on them. They’d held out here, not knowing that help would never come, only to reach a gruesome end. I was suddenly feeling rather uneasy about staying here for the night. “You are sick. Please remain calm.” “Uh…” Moon Blossom started, and I realised that I should really have been keeping an eye on my Eyes Forward Sparkle. “Did you restart the recording or something?” No… I bloody well didn’t. All our eyes turned to door in what must have been a simultaneous movement. And you know what? I can’t even be surprised anymore. And yet, despite that, I still felt my heart sink at the sight of the all-white Mr Handy robot, the Miss Nanny I would guess, floating idly in the doorway. “You are sick. Surgery required. Please remain calm.” NOPE. Out came Venomous and three shots to that tin can’s face! Or eye stalk, it doesn’t really have a face… Whatever! And truthfully, three shots may well have been overkill, as one was enough to eat through its non-combat-oriented shell and scrambled the inner circuits. The Miss Nanny fell to the ground with a loud ‘thunk’, going silent. And rattling the honey beast hive. Red bars started to appear all over my E.F.S., the entire system had to have been waking up! And you can bet every single one of them was wanting to ‘help’ us! “We’ve got more coming our way!” “As it stands to reason,” Xena remarked, drawing her sniper and standing up onto her hind legs in readiness. “We shall need to clear them!” “There can’t be too many,” Cobalt noted. “This isn’t like the MAS hub, and these aren’t military robots. Just don’t get in range of those sawblades.” “Wasn’t planning on it!” What did he take me for!? I was the first to exit out of the office, and the first to see a Miss Nanny emerge from the top of the staircase. “Implementing medical procedures.” Still not happening. I fired another bolt at the robot, letting it melt as we moved away from the staircase and retreated down the corridor leading to the surgery. Wait, that’ll be home to even more of them. Gah, was there even a place we wouldn’t find them? Cobalt took hold of several stray beds with his magic and tipped them over, moving them all behind us to momentarily block the way. “It’s times like this I wish Robronco had made all their machines with full AI!” the stallion commented as he quickly followed on after us, several robots encountering his makeshift blockade. “Then we wouldn’t have this issue!” “Can we talk about robotic rights later!?” There was a smash as the barricade was broken, right as two more appeared out in front of us from one of the rooms! I fired a shot at one of the robots while Moon Blossom wasted no time in tacking the other, despite the whirring saw that tried to steal her intestines! With one melting and the other being torn to shreds, Xena raised her rifle and fired a shot at one of the robots behind us, giving the others pause when the round ripped right through their thin plating, and Cobalt fired two bolts of magic at the other. One hit a Miss Nanny directly and disabled it, the second taking a chunk out of another but leaving it floating. But more were on the way, there had to have been a room full of them somewhere in the back, and Altrix attempted to slow them again by using her own magic to rearrange our barricade. I contemplated us making a stand in the surgery the two ahead of us had come from, but another side door opened, inside of which I could just spot another row of beds and mutilated skeletons, and another three emerged! At least the Ministry of Arcane Sciences had more space to fight in! I fired again at two of the robots as they charged, downing another while blowing off the sawblade appendage of another. As Moon Blossom got to work on the third, the one I’d damage lunged at me with its pincer arm! I tried to bat it away with the butt of Venomous, but the machine just grabbed the weapon and threw it aside! At that moment, the pincer wrapped around my neck as it brought up its third limp, a very nasty-looking needle being at the end of the appendage! Then both a sniper round and a bolt of magic slammed into the machine, Cobalt and Xena each offering me a quick glance before returning to the other machines. I drew my pistol while attempting to retrieve my rifle, only for a Miss Nanny to violently batt one of the beds aside and have it land on top of Venomous. Another robot made a strike at Altrix, but her wings brought her into the air where she flipped and stuck to the roof, standing upside down. That robot was then shot by Xena as Moon Blossom charged into yet another robot, getting to work in dismantling the machine. I aimed my pistol and fired at another one, the bullets chewing into the armour as Cobalt backed my shots up with a burst of his magic. Two more came streaming around the corner, Altrix lighting her horn and propelling a bed into the two robots, pinning them against a wall as Xena finished the struggling things off. And then another one rushed in straight at me, blowing past the others as they dealt with their own malfunctioning medical bots. “You are sick! Please remain calm!” With its sawblade gleaming at me, I engaged S.A.T.S. and got to work targeting the machine. Engaging the spell, I let my bullets fly and hit the machine! Only for it to keep coming despite the damage, the saw coming down towards my skull! BANG. The saw jerked and went wide, clattering to the ground next to me alongside the smoking robot. I looked up at the new green bar that had just saved me from a haircut and mothering session from Altrix, the others making quick work in finishing the final Miss Nannies as my eyes rested firmly on the unknown pony. He was a stallion, his features hidden behind a large hat and a tattered trench coat. A smoking .44 magnum was held in his mouth, the bullet of which had just finished off that robot. We seemed to just regard one another for several moments, things falling silent as the last of the Miss Nannies fell and the others all started to take notice of the mysterious stranger. And then he turned. And he ran. “Hey!” I called out after him, keeping my pistol firmly in my grasp as I galloped forward in pursuit of the pony. I rounded the corner, catching a brief glimpse of his coat vanishing through the door leading into the staircase, and I bounded towards the door myself and flung it open. Seeing no sign of the pony, I all but jumped my down the stairs and back into the hallway below. And yet, he was gone. Both any sign of the pony in question and the green bar on my Eyes Forward Sparkle. “Dammit…” The fucker was fast. He must have slipped away and ran back out into the night. He’d also just helped us out. “You got him?” Cobalt asked as the others all emerged from the door behind me. “…I take it you haven’t got him.” “He slipped away,” I told him, grunting. “He was fast.” “Maybe you need to work out a bit more,” Moon Blossom quipped. Has she noticed what we do for a living? “Here,” Altrix said, Venomous levitating over to me in her magic. I took it into my own, holstering up both of my weapons. “I knew you wouldn’t want to lose it.” “Thanks, Altrix.” I offered the changeling a smile, getting one in return. Well, I guess that was that. The stallion was gone, Celestia knew if he’d show up again. The Miss Nannies wouldn’t be hurting anypony ever again at least, another one of the Equestrian Wasteland’s many problems solved. But after all of that… “Screw this place,” I said to the others, who all seemed to be of the same mind. Things had been weird enough for one night. “Let’s find somewhere else to sleep.” Footnote: Max Level New Perk: Mysterious Stranger - Gives you your own personal guardian angel... armed with a fully loaded .44 Magnum.