Fallout Equestria: The Daily Unlife

by Nyerguds

Introduction - When Life Gives You Lemons

Lemon Frisk looked at the large open Stable Door.

Well, this was it. This was the day he'd finally leave the Stable, and find a new life out in the Equestrian Wastes.

The others said he was mad, of course. Rotted in the brain. Nopony in their right mind would go out there. Ponies out there shot at you just for looking a bit weird. And if the ponies didn't get you, there were all kinds of other monsters that wouldn't mind taking a bite, no matter how much you looked over your due date.

Lemon Frisk didn't think he looked that bad. Plenty of ponies in Stable One looked a lot worse. Well, for ghouls.

Canterlot ghouls were a class of their own. Some of them, even in the Stable, were not much more than mindless drones fulfilling the same dreary task day after day, barely aware of who or what they were. It was like dementia, in some way. Lemon had seen one of his aunties go that way, during the war. Really sad. But overall, even the more cerebrally active amongst them were creatures of habit. They liked the Stable, and they liked their daily routines, whether they involved scavenging Dead Canterlot, or cleaning air filters nopony really still needed.

Lemon Frisk had been a scavenger from the moment they'd managed to reopen the Door. He'd always been an active pony, even before the Cloud, and that hadn't stopped now. In fact, his lack of habitual mindset seemed to have been set in stone even more when he became a ghoul. It was just one of these ghoul things... it froze you in your last state, like death, only more... alive. Sort of. So in his own odd way, Lemon Frisk was trapped in the habitual state of being someone who disliked habits.

He liked his ‘job’ in Dead Canterlot. Being a ghoul, he was completely unfazed by the deadly Pink Cloud, and the feral ghouls didn't mind him too much, as long as he shuffled quietly along with them. It was kinda like those comedy plays during the war, where someone snuck in the back of a line of Zebra soldiers, marched into the base with them, and then quietly snuck out again. In fact, it was exactly like that.

But he'd seen the Ministry buildings, the University, the Library, and even with his rather adventurous job, he was getting restless. Lemon Frisk wasn't very good at picking locks, and after two hundred years of wandering around the Dead City, he could safely say he'd seen all of it. Well, except for the Palace. After that encounter with that overzealous shouting guard with the bat wings, he'd decided to stay out of there. And then there was the alicorn situation, of course. Scary things, those mares. Popped up out of nowhere, then started wandering around as aimlessly as the ferals. Everypony preferred staying away from them; they were known to kill ghouls that showed too much initiative.

And so, he decided to leave the city behind, and wander into the wastelands. He felt fairly confident about his decision; whatever was out there couldn't be that much worse than the stuff he'd seen in Canterlot, and he'd read the good old Wasteland Survival Guide at least a hundred times since it was released. The only thing that really scared the hay out of him were these 'raiders'. From the descriptions, he'd take feral ghouls any day of the week.

So there he was, looking out the Door, for the last time. He had packed his meagre belongings into his trusty scavenging saddle bags, found himself some barding that wasn't permanently fused to its original owner, bought a 200-year old map that was unfortunately mostly fused together by Pink Cloud, and walked out of Stable One, out of Dead Canterlot, and into the Wastelands.

Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk: Brain Knot: Rotted or not, something strange must be going on in that brain of yours. When faced with unexpected situations, you may act in even more unexpected ways. This perk gives you more dialogue options in hostile negotiation situations.