Introduction
Imagine a long and lonesome road cramped with deception and obsession; a life of adventure we can all relate to. All the ordeals we struggle through to get to its end forge us, mold us to a unique behavior, and teach us who we really are. Yet, the question whether this trail is ours or not is what breaks us all in the end.
“You okay, boss?” a mare’s voice echoed, probably calling from the bottom of a wishing well.
If an era of constant wars showed me something, it’s that only one thing always remains the same; Pain. Atrocious and unwavering pain… and the blade in my chest, piercing through my back and pinning me to the ground, agreed with me. Yeah, she was nodding, that fucking bitch. Take your time fucking me… you weren’t even patient enough to go through the right angle….
My eyes jerked open, blurry with blood, mud, and motes of dust. A dark grey ceiling seven feet above my head from which dangled roughly torn wires cracked with electricity. Sparks burst from tapered tips, lighting the vision of apocalypse around me. It had all gone briskly... broken furniture, disemboweled bodies, broken machines, loose wires, and blood… lots of fresh and ugly blood, steaming in the cold air.
I focused, my mind fighting back in all the thoughts pouring out of my bleeding wounds. My skin and flesh was flapping around the blade, small jets of dark red spitting out at regular intervals.
“I-…” I gasped. Blood flowed out of my mouth, bubbling with my raspy and hurting breath. “I-…”
“Oh, shit…” the mare appearing in my range of vision hiccupped, hauling herself over my body.
Her old and teary eyes shook, oh come on… they never blended well with her tanned fur and red-wine mane. Oh… low shivers writhed in the tips of my hindquarters, gaining momentum as they crawled in my backbone up to my neck. My fur raised on my wrinkled skin as something dripped on my face. It couldn’t rain inside, could it? Were those tears?
“Are… are you crying?” I hissed at the frightened mare.
“You’ll survive,” The promise flew out of her quivering lips, unconvincing. “You’ll-!”
I put a hoof on her shoulder and gave her the broadest smile I could muster… damn it was hard to smile with the pain…
“It’s too late,” I confessed with a broken gurgling voice, my eyes blinking haphazardly. “Where’s Lil’Filly?”
“Why do you care?” the mare cried at me. “She killed you.”
“How’s she?!”
“She killed you…” She blurted, her confidence slowly fading away under my repeated assault.
“’Cause she’s mah daughter!!” I screamed with authority.
I felt the mare tensing, whining, fighting back… But in the end she would give in. She had to….
“How’s she?” I breathed smoothly. “You don’t want me to call Gate, do you?”
The mare petrified on her legs, her eyes bloodshot in the terror the name represented. She looked at me with those now pinprick-sized pupils, pleading and bending at the same time. I smiled, showing teeth that I’d guess were broken. Damn, it hurt.
“How is she going?” I asked again, getting on my nerves.
“She’s passed out…” the mare blubbered, growing sobs hacking her speech.
Inhaling slowly, I tried to lower my heartbeats. With time, my eyes adjusted and met my friend’s. Her expression, a stirring mix of fear, stupor, disgust, and obedience, struck me in my retching guts. Friends weren’t supposed to act like that…
“I want to hug her…” I paused, thoughtful. “Ah… and don’t try to take the blade out. It’s good where it is now…”
It was difficult to speak, or to breathe. I contemplate the mare as she complied and disappeared beneath this eerie fog of war thrust over me… was that it, dying? Being slowly swallowed in darkness… gulped by an endless sleep. Close to the mare… I pictured shadows… many angry, teary, or shocked eyes. I heard whimpers… damn bunch of sissies… what had I taught y’all?
Like a ghost, a stallion slithered out from beyond my vision. In response to his step forward, ponies gasped in terror around me, muttering as they backed away. His flaming blue eyeballs stared down at me, contrasting with his pale grey blue skin and his dark grey locks. He had once worn a pair of sunglasses, but the tainted glass had shattered away a long time ago, leaving only a broken frame behind. Over his shoulders stood a long, torn, and bleached coat, falling over his hooves smeared with mud. Snickering at me, he walked further, tilting his head until our two noses nearly touch.
“You’re always waiting,” I complained.
“I’ve just always been there,” he claimed smoothly.
“I’d have preferred to see that damn old buck, personally.”
“Well, let’s say that I’m far better being here than Gate.”
I sighed a giggle, the sword rubbing my chest shooting down my mood with explosion of pain. “Yeah… guess you’re right.” I paused. “Well, seems it’s the end of the trip. I failed.”
“Are you so sure?”
I raised my eyes to the ceiling, my tears falling down my cheeks.
“Don’t ramble that fate thingy discourse of yours… it’s sooo boring.”
He laughed, “What I mean is that your objective is fulfilled. As intended.”
I shook my head dismissively, “You’ll never change,” and coughed over my bloody lumps.
“Because you never did.”
“Stop trying to speak,” the mare came back to me talking in my ringing ears, avoiding to glance at the stallion… my head was all fuzzy. “Here’s your daughter.”
My chest jolted. Spits of blood splattered the crying mare’s tired face. Some found their way to her eyes and. Shrieking, she dropped the young mare right onto me. A massive series of cough wrestled out of my shredded lungs. My legs hacked aimlessly, shushing me again in a stupefied stance of utter pain.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry…” The mare fell back, fearing a retaliation that was never to come.
Calming myself with only scared ponies trying to hide around in the shadows of the corners, I slowly glanced at the young mare resting onto me. Petting her mane, I studied her features, thrown in stark relief by the fires and sparks decorating the room. She was so beautiful; an indigo fur and a light blue mane, covered in scars, burns, and wounds… Her eyes closed tight… a star among the swine. Her lips, stuck into a half grin of disgust and joy, remained unwavering. I spectated that unconscious face, magnified with a pure and unaltered disgust of myself and a beaming joy of the earlier fight. I taught her very well. She was magnificent.
I smirked. It had been a hell of a battle; and I had lost. But now that it was over, why should I care?
“Because you’ve still got something to do,” the stallion weaved his words in my mind, his two pairs of hooves stomping the cold metal used to build the floor.
I growled, trying to stretch my hooves. The blade stopped my attempts, excruciating claws of pain wracking my body from the inside… I staggered and let my head fall on my side. My hoof, or was it my prosthetics, slowly crawled to my torn out saddlebag. Piercing in, I grappled out a pack of med-X, a healing potion, and a tin of mint-als. Well, not that risking an overdose was of any importance now.
The sudden lucidity and feeling of restoration invaded my body, battling back the dolor the alien sword rubbed in my wound. In a softened hiss, I called back the tanned mare, now closely followed by four other ponies… just mere shadows to my eyes.
A PipBuck was still attached to Lil’Filly’s leg, eh… Nice. It’d be easier. Tapping clumsily on its broken screen, I switched on the recorder. My jaded eyes moved between the mare, the shadows, and the stallion, slowly gathering around me. I chuckled. Those dumbstruck faces… priceless. I lied in my own blood, my skin ripped apart and my bones crushed by my own thoughts, remorse, and wounds. I might suffocate, but I would talk. You needed to experience what I’d done, and why I did so. I just hoped you would approve my choice, or maybe lack of choices. Just… don’t be too hard on me. History had always been its own judge and executioner.
“You’ll listen to me carefully, for I will tell the tales of my life… only once. It'll be your lesson and binding. You will maybe… probably hate me after that. But I will be long dead before you shut my mouth up. But if you understand why I did it, and why I had to, I hope you’ll continue the duty I’ve put in each one of you. Because we’re needed. Because we’re are the smugglers of a bridge Equestria has to go through... And this is why that once I’m done, you won’t kill Filly… and you will leave this room and me behind to never return. You will leave me with her.
And if you don’t catch my point yet… You will. And if you still refuse to see the truth, then you’ll accept it… whether you like it or not. Because it’s the only thing you truly have left as your own. You’ve lost everything… but my words.
If I am to narrate you my tale, to show you what I had to do… was forced to do… I hope you’ll find a way to make yours the reasons behind all the mess that happened recently. There won’t be any ‘Once upon a time in the magical land of Equestria’ with me. I’m sorry. We’re just ponies who gave in the abyss.
My name is Vault Skin, and I’ll show you how I fucked up the Wasteland.”
ⱴ ⱷ ꜠ Ω ꜡ ⱷ ⱴ
Footnotes; Vault Skin, Class: Wanderer
Specials:
Strength, 6
Perception, 4
Endurance, 10
Charisma, 5
Intelligence, 5
Agility, 6
Luck, 4
[Welcome to Fallout:Equestria – Wish Machines]
[Enjoy your stay]