Fallout: Equestria - Records of Bone

by Philosophysics


Chapter One: Really, It's Just the Second Issue of the Origin Story

I don't focus on what I'm up against. I focus on my goals and I try to ignore the rest
Venus Williams

According to the text, The Pony Body In Health And Illness, 37th Edition, the pony body is made up of twelve individual systems. They are the integumentary,muscular, skeletal, nervous, circulatory, lymphatic,respiratory, endocrine, urinary/excretory, reproductive, digestive, and thaumic systems, all of which work in conjunction to keep the individual pony alive and functioning. To lose even one of the systems could wreak havoc on the rest.

Of the twelve officially recognized systems, I am missing ten of them. The rest were quite literally burnt to ash by the megaspell. All I had left were the skeletal system and the thaumic system.

While I do not miss the urinary/excretory system, have no particular need of the lymphatic system, and am firmly dispassionate on the issue of the reproductive one, I can honestly say that I would willingly kill somepony of the worst or even mildly offensive character for any of the systems to do with the senses.

I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel, couldn’t even breathe. To say that I was in total darkness would be a bit misleading seeing as I didn’t even have a concept of darkness to compare it to at that point. So much time has passed from then and now, that I look back with a strange detachment at my terror of the disconnect that I felt from the world.

Back then though, when the memory of having a near perfect body  was still fresh. I went from having perfect vision to nothingness, going from being able to hear all the sounds of Manehattan to the loudest silence ever, even the small sensation of wind on the skin, I lost all of it.

it was the most terrifying thing being a pile of bones and latent magic. Having lost all my senses, all I knew was that I existed in the Nothingness that was existence then. It became my mantra to keep from losing myself during the Nothing time. Just repeating mentally, “I’m Here. I’m Here. I’m Here.”

That time still has its effect on me today.

Of the two systems I had left, the one that truly saved me was the thaumic one. The thaumic system is the one that channels the flow of mana through the body of the pony. It is what reinforces the earth ponies musculature to its greatest strengths, the system that gives pegasi flight, and the secret behind the unicorn’s ability to manipulate the world around them. All three species of ponies have varying thaumic systems to supplement their known abilities.

I can safely say that mine is unique to myself. Over an unknown course of time, at the very least, a few weeks, I slowly built what was the beginnings of my body today. Using my bones as a structure to build off of, I slowly assembled a very realistic model of the average pony’s skeletal system, creating joints in the appropriate places and quite a few in what was not.

By all common sense, it should have been impossible. Thankfully, I have always been and always will be an idiot who ignores paltry things such as probability and possibility. My method of creating a body made out of bone and magic was repeated trial and error. I failed a number of times, accidentally explosively losing bits and pieces. I still have no idea where my tailbone went as of this entry.

As my efforts rebuild my body grew less explosive, I  slowly began my trials in adding some type of way of observing the world around me. Despite my many efforts, I did not manage success in recreating the original senses that my body had.

Instead I recreated the Thaumic Senses. Or rather I advanced them far beyond what most ponies normally have.

The Thaumic Senses are what allowed ponies of old to sing songs that were filled with harmony on the spot, with a music that would suddenly burst to life. It is what allows ponies to see magic when it is actively used and unfiltered  through a medium. A good example would be the magical grip of unicorns or the faint glow of a Sparkle-Cola Rad.

Just as there are the five traditional senses, there are five Thaumic Senses to correspond to them. The most commonly used are Thaumic Sight and Thaumic Hearing. According to the test, Miracles Of The Ancients, it was often noted that before the Celestial Diarchy’s time there were cases of blind ponies that could see what others could not and deaf ponies that could hear the spirits of the past.

Upon the completion of the creation of a body and a way of observing the world, I began my journey.

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When I “opened” my “eyes” for the first time, the very first thing I saw was green. A complete wall of green. If I had the ability to blink, I probably would have at the sight of so much green. Despite my young age, I still had access to one of the largest repositories of pony knowledge and it was in agreement with my opinion that it was simply impossible for there to be so much green and that toxic shade.

The green slowly faded as I instinctively adjusted my Sight to accomodate for the sheer amount of radiation in the area. What I saw was even more depressing. The clouds were a dreary greenish grey, the ground an equally dreary greenish brown, and the space in between a dreary green.

This was the Manehattan blast Zone. I visit my second birthplace from time to time and it is still that same dreary green. I could say there were husks of trees scattered about, but even the husks of the trees had been burnt away by the sheer heat of the Balefire Bomb. Not too far away, I could see large crater in what was presumably the crater left by the bomb.

I stood there for a while, calculating the numbers of the amount of heat needed to do such a thing and trying to reverse engineer the size of the bomb. Not once did I wonder how many ponies died to such a thing. I was purely concerned with how it happened and what the exact effects.

I was a bit of a sociopathic fucktard back then. I blame the lack of love and care I received from my mother, Tav.

Having satisfactorily calculate the yield of the bomb, 63 Terajoules or 15 kilotons of TNT if you were interested by the way, I then began figuring out my new joints. Several falls later, I figured out how to place my hooves in a pattern to generate forward locomotion.

Slowly, the bright green tint dimmed to a duller one and I saw the warped and twisted fence of the park. Grinning as I have been forced to do ever since my rebirth by balefire, I tried a gallop towards one of the gaps large enough to fit my body through.

I made a few meters in before I tripped on nothing, flipping sideways into and through the gaps of the gate.

It was odd seeing my own boney ass. White is the first color I saw that was not tinged by the perpetual green radiation in the Equestrian Wasteland. A momentous occasion, but I’ll be honest. I wish it wasn’t my boney ass.

Focusing intensely, I reassembled my body and immediately fell on my face. One of my forelegs had not rejoined the main body and was lying a good three meters away. It had somehow gotten stuck in a trashcan.

Hobbling over to it, my limb leapt straight out of the can before reattaching itself with a pop I wriggled it before trotting aimlessly into the suburbs. Despite the terrible events that had just happened to me, I was surprisingly not bitter at all and was having a jolly good time.

Ah. Innocence. It’s like a kid who bursts into tears when they scrape their knee, but forget all about it as soon as something cool comes along. Except in this case the scrape of the knee is the lost of most of their body. I was a screwy kid back then.

Everywhere I looked was outlined in green. Before I improved my Thaumic sight, the green silhouette of objects was the only way I could see, so I guess I should thank the pervasive radiation that still lingers today for allowing me to see objects with no natural magic.

Rubble of broken buildings were everywhere. On the few walls that were left standing, I could see charred silhouettes of those unlucky enough to not find shelter in time, tinged with the remnants of their soul, a mural of the final moments of the victims of the Balefire bomb.

It felt wrong, so wrong to be the only thing moving in what I had experienced and knew was once a busy section. The whistling wind through the buildings was a small comfort to remind me that I was here and not in the Nothing.

Even as I strained my Thaumic hearing to hear for even the slightest sound  of life, all I heard was a dull pounding. Rhythmic and determined in its monotony, it repeated its desire to kill everything within that heard it.

Naturally, I didn’t like that one bit. The poisonous green, the life killing pounding of the unseen drum, didn’t like that one bit. So I traveled away from where it was strongest, in search of anything.

The further I traveled from the center, the more I grew terrified.. The pounding of the drum remained as did the green tinge a constant reminder that death was coming for all. It terrified me. And since I had lived with terror during the Nothing, I got pretty pissed at being terrified.

So I began searching for life. Just to be petty to my own fear. And I did it, by wandering aimlessly through the ruins.

Access to the greatest library known to ponykind, filled with literally hundreds of ways to do search and rescue, several dozen blueprints for tools tailor made for searching, and every single spell to scan for life and/or sentience.

And my idea of searching was to wander.

I have a confession to make. While younger me was lovely, little bundle of sociopathic innocence as all babies are, younger me was also one dipshit of a moron.

As I wandered aimlessly in search of life, you can probably guess that I would find nothing of note. Radroaches weren’t even a thing at this point. I quickly grew bored of the emptiness and began galloping to end the monotony.

Compared to the stillness of the Nothingness, galloping was everything I could’ve asked for. It was movement of the finest sort, with all the colors of the world moving to bledd together into a wonderfully quick yet slow tapestry, and when I moved fast enough, I could even imagine that I could feel wind on my non-existent skin. I will never grow tired of galloping.

Quite literally. Stamina is based on the body. My body is made of bones and magic. My stamina will only ever run out when my mana is exhausted. And if my mana should ever become exhausted to that point, I’ll just be a pile of dead bones, so the point is moot.

Broken buildings slowly blurred to whole ones and I only sped up in excitement. Then I saw a winged figure land in front of me, about 50 meters away from me. I was both excited and terrified. I had found somebody still alive, but at the speeds I was going at, I was going to hit them at a speed that was likely to kill them.

Have I mentioned younger me was an idiot? I know I have, but let me reiterate. Younger me was an idiotic dumbass whose only saving grace was that he was so dumb, he didn’t know how to die properly.

My body, unhindered by useless muscle and organs, was quite light. The average pony weighs about a 85-90 kilograms. Bones make up about 15% of the body’s weight. Doing some basic math, my body weighs on a good day 14 kilograms. A bale of hay weighs about 30 kilograms for comparison.

Using all the knowledge built into the back of my mind, I had subconsciously designed the fastest possible running method possible based on earth pony training regimes and magic techniques. A well trained earth pony can reach speeds of 100 kilometers an hour.

Now imagine a very light object traveling at that speed trying to brake suddenly by digging their hooves into the ground.

I’ll tell you what happens when a bone pone does this. For one thing, all four legs of the bone pone get stuck into the ground in large furrows. In this case, they don’t snap because they, along with all the other bones in the skeleton pony’s body, were magically reinforced to be some of the hardest things to destroy in the world.

But all that tension has to go somewhere.

So it goes to the next worst place. The joints. In the average bone pone, i.e. me, all the cartilage was burnt away and is now replaced by magical energy. Being held in magical energy in this case is similar to being held by very strong magnets. Normally, it would stick close together, but there’s a whole lot of kinetic energy being redistributed all of a suddenly.

The magnets snap apart which in this case meant that the bone pone loses all four legs to be posts in the ground, learns to fly without the aid of wings at a very low altitude, and learn what the world looks like when your skull is literally filled with dirt.

It’s brown. A really shitty shade of brown. Not quite as bad as the darkness of Nothing, but a bit worse than the green tinge of radiation, all in all, it’s just as shitty as all the colors I hate the most.

Before I could lament the humiliation of such a fate, I heard the angry strumming of a metal guitar being played with a knife. The dull pounding of the drum of death was ironically being killed by what I can only  now call death metal.

“Don’t know what the fuck you are,” a scratchy voice, filled with buried anger, said softly,”But I think the Enclave will pay a nice bit for whatever the fuck you are.”

My skull popped off as a claw pulled it off my main body. A few nauseating shakes after, my vision cleared and I looked into the fierce golden-white aura of Gilda the Talon. Not that I knew her name back then, of course, but memories make fools of us.

She shook my poor skull slightly, barking,”Oi. Anything in there?”

I didn’t say anything in response. Didn’t know how to at this point or even why I should. At this point of time, I was still basically a child in my mindset. A very clever child who knew damn near everything, but still a stupid dipshit of a kid.

Gods above, I hate younger me SO much. I think I would try to kill him out of sheer frustration if I ever did meet the bastard.

The gryphoness looked side to side before lifting my skull, reciting,”Alas, poor Yorick!”

My head was swung to the side as Gilda indulged in her hobby of screenplay. My sockets faced her as she continued dramatically,” I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!”

“My gorge rises at it.” she snarled,” Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft”-here she pantomimed a kiss with me before continuing-”Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?”

Yes. Gilda, one of the most ruthless mercenaries in The Days After, Hunter of Rainbow Dash, and founder of the organized Talons that we know and tolerate today, was a huge dork for Shakespearean drama. I curse my youthful naivete for the many missed opportunities on this piece of information.

“Not one now to mock your own grinning?” Gilda’s aura flickered warmly as she finishedd her powerful soliloquy,” Quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.—Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.”

Looking back, I wish I could say that I was trying to say something profoundd or witty in response to that. In truth, what I was trying to say was that I was getting dizzy and sick from all the sudden flinging around.

I also failed at communicating that, on account of having no lungs or even a voice box. I just kind of chattered my jaw a bit, making a clacking sound.

It is to my eternal pride that I am one of the few beings to have ever made Gilda, feared Hunter of the Wastelands, shriek in a girly pitch.

Unfortunately, Gilda responded to surprise as she did with most things. By shooting it aggressively with her signature anti-air cannon.

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Perk: Bare Boned Bandit: You’re a skeleton. Nothing much to say, but you’re a walking, talking skeleton of a pone.You should really be quite dead, but since you’re not, it’s safe to assume that it’s going to be quite hard to kill you. Do bone pones even need anything to function? All survival skills maxed out. All Resistances Maxed Out. Diplomacy takes 75% penalty if you do not have a prior relationship or a disguise on.