//------------------------------// // Chapter 6: To Kill A Pony // Story: Fallout Equestria: The Rangers // by Tytan //------------------------------// Chapter 6 To Kill A Pony Have you ever woken up and wondered to yourself, ‘Gee. My bed really smells like urine today.’ You haven’t? Then you can understand my confusion. An alarm clock right next to my head was going off, my face was buried in a bed that stunk of bodily fluids, and I wasn’t done sleeping yet. I reached out to push the snooze button, but that just seemed to make the clock mad. I pushed it again. Same reaction. Before I could try a third time I found myself and my bed to be airborne. Suddenly the bed was above me and the only thing bellow was air and floor. Pretty quickly the first one was replaced with pain. I was face first on the floor and a bed was on top of me. Not exactly on my top ten list of places to be. I attempted to crawl out, but I was pinned under the bedframe. I decided to call out for help. The edge of the bed lifted and Imp was looking down at me, single hoofedly lifting the bed. She leaned down and talked into my ear, “Please don’t touch my face.” I looked up at her, “I can’t decide if you’re the best alarm clock or the worst.” Imp flipped the bed up onto its side, “Considering it’s almost noon, probably not the best.” I stood up and shook my head, “I don’t know. Don’t think I’ve seen a clock do that before.” She smiled. “If you want, I can make you one that does when we get back to 33. Come on. Everypony’s waiting downstairs.” I followed her downstairs to the table where the rest of my team was sitting. Pin nudged a box of Sugar Apple Bombs my way along with a bowl and a bottle of milk. I poured the appropriate items into the appropriate receptacles. The cereal was as sugary as it claimed and the milk was liquid. It’s hard to complain about a free meal. I downed the last of the milk and looked to the rest of my team. “We’ll be leaving in about a half an hour. If you have anything to take care of before then and we’ll meet at the gate. “ They looked to one another with questioning looks. They looked back to me and gave a simultaneous shrug. “Then let’s go.” We left the bar and went to the gate. The guards winched the slab of a gate out of the way and let us out. I brought up my EFS and started walking in the direction of Railrights tag. Luckily for us it led down a mildly destroyed paved road. It was a couple of hours before we found anything worth looking at. Turns out the wastelands boring! Who knew? We came across a restaurant. Pony Joes, if I was reading the sign right. The windows and front door were boarded up and we couldn’t see inside. I brought up my EFS, but it only showed that my friends didn’t intend to kill me. “Hey Boss. Let me take a look.” I looked back at Pin as her horns started to glow bright red. Her eyes started to glow the same color. “What are you doing?” “One of my many talents, I’m seeing if there’s anything warm inside.” “Why? EFS would tell us if there was something.” “Apparently not, I see something around back. Something big,” Her eyes stopped glowing and came back into focus, “I don’t think it’s moving.” “Everypony, ready weapons.” I took my battlesaddles bit in my mouth and walked around the side of the building. There was a tall wooden fence around the back of the building. We hugged the wall until we came to an opening. I kept one eye on my EFS, but it still wasn’t picking anything up. I peeked around the corner, but I couldn’t see anypony. I risked peeking out a little further and I finally saw what Pin had seen. I stepped out into the open. “Nice job Pin. You found a campfire.” There was a smoldering pile of charcoals in the middle of a ring of cinderblocks. “Hey, I said ‘warm’ not ‘alive’. For all you knew it could have been an invisible mutant pony that can’t be detected by pipbucks. So, you’re welcome.” “Yeah, thanks.” I looked around the fenced in the backyard of Pony Joes. There were a few dingy tables with dining ware on them, some shelves, and a few rather disgusting beds. “If the coals are still warm that might mean they’re close by. They might not be raiders, because this place looks fairly nice.” Imp sniffed loudly. “Does anypony smell that?” I had a smell too. Something was rotten, and I thought it was coming from inside Pony Joes. I checked my EFS but it was still clear. “Pin, do you see anything?” Her eyes flashed red for a moment. “Nope.” I tried to push the back door open, but it seemed to be locked. “Trauma, wanna help out?” Trauma grunted to the affirmative around his hammer. He lined up his swing, pulled back, and… BAM The doorknob and lock were gone, replaced by a neat hole. The door slammed against the inside and a wall of stench rolled out and hit us. By Celestia I could taste it. My eyes were watering and we were all hacking and coughing. I don’t think I’d ever smelled anything like it before. I managed to get my eyes open, and I wish I hadn’t. Bodies were everywhere. Some were on the countertop with all their limbs removed, charred pieces were on the grill, and one was hung by chains with its own decaying entrails hung around its neck. Amber blared from Imps pipbuck, “Sergeant, I count seven incoming hostiles approaching from all sides.” Time seemed to slow down. My eyes still burned but I managed to grab my bit. I whirled around to face the way we’d come in just as a pony with a pistol in his mouth came crashing in. I yanked my bit to the right and felt the kick of the shotgun at about the same time as a dozen pellets tore a hole in his chest. I heard the crack of Pins rifle and the surprisingly gentle thump of Imps launcher. One of the bastards must’ve hopped right over the fence because I felt her land on my back and start strangling me. I felt something whoosh past my head and heard something snap. The pony on my back went limp and I bucked her off. I spared her a glance and saw that her head was twisted at an odd angle. And like that it was over. It couldn’t have lasted longer than twenty seconds, but it’d felt so much longer. And I’d killed a pony. I know I’d trained for it, spent countless hours at the firing range, but now I’d actually done it. You know what scared me the most? It was easy. One little pull of the bit and somepony was dead. I looked at him. He was dirty, brown, and most of his mane was gone. He was incredibly thin; if I’d wanted to I could have counted his ribs. His body was covered in scars, some from blades others from bullets. The gun he’d dropped was a little rusted up revolver; I doubt it would’ve fired even if he’d had time to pull the trigger. The wound in his chest was about the size of an apple. Blood leaked from it and pooled on the ground. Somepony gently shook me. “You okay Boss?” Pin stood beside me, and she looked concerned, “Boss?” I snapped out of it. “Y-Yeah. I’m fine. Let’s get out of here.” I walked out the opening in the fence; I didn’t think I could handle seeing what Imp and Pin had done to the diner. I had to step over the buck I’d killed; his eyes looked like they were following me. I leaned up against the side of the diner. I felt numb. Both physically and emotionally. It’d never occurred to me when I was studying the wars of the past that it was ponies dying. At the time they were just numbers on a page. Now I knew what a paradigm shift felt like. Imp came tearing around the corner lugging a green metal box. She dropped it in front of me. “Woo! That was awesome! I never thought I’d actually get to use this thing! I mean I knew what to expect, the firing system was designed to use most of the recoil to feed the next round, but wow it still kicks like a mule! And the modifications I made to the exo worked perfectly! I was worried it might accidentally interpret the recoil as one of my movements and throw me against the wall or something but it-“ I interrupted her by kicking the box. “What’s this?” She looked down at it as if she was noticing it for the first time. “Oh, that? Ammo box we found. I can’t get it open. Can you?” “Why would I know?” “Because I figured with all your spare time before the Ranger Program you’d have taught yourself to pick locks or something.” “I spent my time studying. Why would I need to know how to pick locks? If something was locked then I probably wasn’t meant to look in it.” “Oh… That makes sense too.” “Go ask Pin or Trauma, I’m trying to have an existential crisis.” “Oh, suck it up. They tried to kill us, so we killed them.” Pin and Trauma came around the corner. Pin must’ve overheard the conversation. “If it’s any consolation Boss, they definitely looked like they were trying to shoot us in the face and eat us.” Imp picked up the box and took it to Trauma, “Can you open this?” Pin almost looked insulted. “Why not me, I might know.” Imp cocked an eyebrow. “Do you?” “Well no, but…” Imp looked back to Trauma. “So can you open it?” Trauma picked up the box with his magic and considered the lock, “Hmm… Maybe.” “Wait. Seriously?” He put the box back on the ground with the lock facing up. “Maybe.” His horn glowed the same color red as both his mane and his sister’s magic. A solid block of crimson energy appeared in the air above his head. It quickly reshaped into two thin strips that slid neatly into the slot. And in a single smooth movement the lock yielded. Traumas horn stopped glowing and the strips disappeared. He used his hoof to right the box and kicked open the lid. Inside was a hodgepodge of ammunition. Those raiders had obviously been ambushing ponies for a long time. I dumped the lot into my saddle bags and checked the inventory on my pipbuck. A couple dozen rounds for my assault rifle, half that number of shotgun shells, almost a hundred rounds for the pistols, but only a hoof-full of ammo for Pins rifle. I doled them out appropriately. “Sorry Imp. Looks like your brand is rare around here.” She shrugged. “It’s all good. I can make more.” I looked to the big guy. “Where’d you learn to do that?” He blinked. “Book.” “What book?” His horn glowed and he produced a copy of Tumblers Today. I took the book from his magic and flipped through the pages. There were cut away diagrams of the inner workings of various locks, examples of tools, and techniques. “Where’d you get this?” He looked at the diner. “Why would psycho killers have a book on lock picking?” Pin sauntered to my side to look at the book. “I’d wager somepony they killed had it. I’m surprised they weren’t tearing pages out for toilet paper.” When I got to the end of the book we both saw that a hoof-full of pages had been torn out. “Ew.” “Ew.” I passed the possibly soiled book back to Trauma and he put it in his saddlebag. I took a deep breath; the smell of cooked gunpowder clung to the air. “Let’s get out of here.” The road ahead looked a little darker all of a sudden. Literally. I’d have to wait till later to get all emotional about my first kill. It was starting to get dark so I shoved my introspective feelings into a dark corner of my mind. We moved a respectable distance down the road until we were out of sight of the diner. We set up camp off the road and behind a rise to keep out of sight of anyone traveling the road. We spent the night taking turns getting some shuteye. Even after my watch was up I had trouble getting some sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I kept seeing that pony looking back at me with dead eyes. I eventually drifted off into a, thankfully, dreamless sleep. *** The next morning was very relaxed considering the previous day’s events. I came to a sudden realization as I munched on my freeze-dried oatmeal. And that realization is… Army food sucks. Compared to yesterday’s breakfast of two hundred year old cereal and milk of questionable source my two hundred year old dehydrated oatmeal was nasty crap. I think the reason I didn’t come to this realization sooner was because the only other food I’d ever had was Stable food, I’m not a hundred percent sure where we got our food but its taste had been on par with the packets of military stuff. And there you have a sterling example of my brain at work trying its best to keep me distracted from the fact that I killed somepony… And like that it failed. I should be okay with this. I mean. They were cannibals or something. Right? They attacked us. Right? That makes it okay to kill them. Right? WHACK Somepony smacked the back of my head. “Ow! What was that for?” Pin had a very serious look on her face. “I’m going to take a shot in the dark and say you’re trying to feel sorry for yourself.” I had to wonder if her propensity for pitting the ace extended to my thoughts. “What gave me away?” She kicked my meal packet which had fallen on the ground at some point. “Dropping your food, failing to pick it up for ten minutes, and staring into oblivion seem to be pretty good indications.” I couldn’t stop myself from face-hoofing. “Oh, Celestia, I’m stupid.” She picked up my breakfast with her magic. “Yes, you are. Now eat.” And she shoved the packet into my chest. I ate in silence and pretended nopony was looking at me. The silence continued as we packed up and started on our path again. Imps pipbuck blared without warning, “Congratulations, I think you guys have set the new record for awkward silences! I’d give you an award but incorporeality makes that a little difficult. If anypony cares at this point we appear to be nearing our objective.” Amber was right. On the horizon there were a few low buildings and one taller one, all of which were surrounded by a security fence topped with razor wire. The fence wasn’t a problem because sompony had left the swinging gate slightly ajar. The buildings had a very solid utilitarian feel to them; each was blocky and had hard edges. I got the impression that the architect had been designing a model that she could beat her boss to death with. The smaller buildings lacked windows; the big building had windows, but they were all covered by metal shutters. If we were going to find anything important it was probably going to be in the largest building. As we approached my EFS flashed the words, ‘You have discovered M.W.T. Mining R&D’. Pin made it clear that we’d all gotten the same message. “Ministry of Wartime Technology Mining Research and Development. I can see why they used an acronym, that’s a bit of a mouthful.” I was confused. “How did you get that from M.W.T. Mining R&D? I thought it was Ministry of Technology.” “It’s both. Supposedly the ministry mare of the M.W.T. didn’t like the wartime part of the name so she’d always call it the M.o.T. instead. I guess both names caught on because I heard both a lot in history class. I thought you were the history buff Boss.” “I am, but I didn’t really study our side in the last war. Truth be told, with the exception of the first megaspell and Steel Rangers, we were really uninteresting. The Zebras on the other hand, wow. Subterfuge, infiltration, massive warbots, invisibility cloaks! The only reason we lasted so long was because we had pegasi and unicorns. Pegasi owned the skies and the only ones who could match them were dragons and gryphons. And the unicorns have inherent magic while zebras had to create theirs with potions and talismans. Our only real chance was the invention on megaspells, but the zebras got ahold of those too.” My team stared at me with varying degrees of surprise on their faces; Traumas eyes had widened slightly so he must have been absolutely stunned. Pin couldn’t help herself. “Fillies and gentlecolts, we should stand in awe. We have been blessed with the rarest of all things. A history nerd just geeked out.” “Please keep in mind that I’m armed.” Pin shifted the rifle slung across her back, “So are we.” “But I’m actually considering shoot you.” “You’d just get all weepy like you did yesterday, only worse because we aren’t crazy cannibals trying to eat you.” I smirked because I finally thought of a clever comeback. “I don’t think I can see you at the bottom of that hole you’re digging anymore.” Pins razor wit took my comeback and turned it on me in an instant. “Well, when I find diamonds you can’t have any.” Imp thoughtfully tapped her chin. “I wonder what a diamond studded grenade would do?” “How ‘bout you bro, need some diamonds?” Trauma gave her a noncommittal grunt. “Oh, don’t be like that. Because of the Sergeant we’re all gonna be filthy rich!” Trauma gave her a slightly more positive grunt. “That’s more like it.” I squeezed my eyes shut trying to delay my rapidly forming headache. “Okay, whatever. Can we end the weirdness and go finds those stupid plans.” Pin grinned from ear to ear. “Don’t forget the diamonds.” I was about to shoot her a look, but instead I gave up and sighed, “Can we go inside now?” “Why are you asking me? You’re supposed to be the one in charge.” “Fine. Go inside, that’s an order.” Pin positioned herself in front of the door and attempted to applebuck it open. All she achieved was stumbling. “I think it’s stuck. Not locked, cause the doors gave a little.” Imp hopped in place a little. “Oh, let me try! I’ve always wanted to do this.” She positioned herself in front of the door just as Pin had. She gave double doors a solid kick and they flew open. In the light let in through the door we saw that she’d scattered a pile of bones blocking the door. And behind them… Darkness. *** Level Up: New Perk - Intense Training - You’ve gotten better at noticing the little things. Perception +1.