//------------------------------// // Flashback! Pt 2 // Story: Fallout: Equestria - Lovely New Pegasus // by No one is home //------------------------------// Flashback! Part 2 -=-=-=-=- “Rosie?  You’re the oldest, right?”  The little pink filly nods with more maturity than she should have to.  “You just bite my tail like it’s a snake wanting to bite your baby brother and you walk behind me.  Every other one of you bite the tail of the next biggest and you walk behind them.” “The grown-ups are throwing fire!” I hear a panicked voice. “The big walk ahead of the small.”  I shout back. “I know the way out, and we gonna walk out.” “What if they don’t let us out?” A frightened filly asks. “Then we gonna break everything between here and out.” z?z?Z?z?z “Is he always like this?”  Princess don’t know I can hear her. “You’ve known him as long as I have, Sugar Cube.”  I can tell by the way Jackie’s talkin’ that I did something wrong.  “He’s still walkin’ to Primm like he said he would.  I reckon he’s my responsibility, given that I dug him up and set him loose.” There’s too much in the past I don’t remember anymore to care about that right now. z?z?Z?z?z “None of it was ever even real?  You all voted to send my daughter in that damn safrice chamber two years two years ago, and now, what?!?! It was all some big prank?!?!” The turn from panic to stampede surprises me. Thirteen generations of choosing a sacrifice every year.  It was all just a lie.  Nopony ever had to die.  They just wanted to see how much murder we would commit over an empty threat.  I saw ponies lose all reason to guilt and grief. And anger.  When I pushed my hoof to that sensor and said, “No,”  I thought the Vault Mainframe was going to kill us all.  Every mare, stallion and foal in the vault would be free from making that horrible choice.   Sacrifice one of your own, or die, or just walk out in the wasteland and die.  Instead we got told it was all just a “test” we took way too many generations to pass.  I don’t think there is an adult pony from that pit of tartarus that doesn’t hate the other,  and we all got good rights to it. z?z?Z?z?z “Does he know we can hear him?  Does he even know he’s talking out loud?”  Princess picks up on my sudden back scramble, and holds up a cyan and magenta hoof.  “Whoah big guy!  I didn’t mean nuthin’ by it.” “Radscorpian’s, up by the bridge.” Jackie see’s it.  Sense’s it?  Does she actually have video sensors?  I feel like a bad friend for asking that.  “There’s a nest of ‘em up north of Hidden Valley.  Sometimes the smaller ones like to bathe by the bridge at Taint Creek.  This is part of my ‘observe and report routine’.  I patrol Good Springs and report to the nearest authority.  Which is currently the Prim sheriff.” “Go around.  Swing a wide berth and they’ll leave us alone.”  Honestly I have enough to worry about.  But it would be even more awkward to not say anything.