Fallout: Equestria - Forgotten

by CoolBreeze

Chapter 2

Fallout: Equestria
Forgotten - Chapter 2

It was a sight I never imagined could come true, Canterlot had been the nexus for most of Equestria, the princesses lived there. The pink cloud was very familiar to me, I had encountered it on the battlefield when Zebra’s retreated from our greater forces they gassed the area with the flesh eating magical cloud.
I had witnessed first-hoof the effects of the clouds, treated patients who broke down before my eyes.

Sweets followed my gaze to the city, “Canterlot, I’ve heard stories of the undead walking its streets.” she said with a distant tone.

That was something I hadn't heard, nor witnessed.

“The undead?” I ask tentatively.

She nods, turning her gaze back down to me, her cheery smile gone, replaced by a concerned frown. “Ghouls, but they don't die, when you knock ‘em down they just rise back up.”

Now I was even more curious, what was a Ghoul? But stored that question away for now and chose another.

“Has anypony been there and back before?”

“To Canterlot? A few, most of them come back disfigured from the cloud, claiming that they found a city of peaceful ghouls in one of the old ministry hubs. Of course how can you believe somepony who's half out of their mind?”

I think for a moment as parts of my old self begin to surface, and I remember the effects of the war on ponies. I could easily believe them, I'd fought alongside ponies who had half a dozen screws loose.

“Look, once we reach the settlement you can ask all the questions you like there, but we should probably get moving, somepony will have seen that explosion and will come to investigate, all we need right now is for some Steel Rangers to come up and kill us for our weapons.” She says thoughtfully.

I inspect the bandoleer and find that the healing potion broke during my tumble from the explosion, I remove the shards of glass and toss them aside, freeing the pocket up for something else instead, checking the two magazines for the zebra rifle I find them to both be fully loaded.

“Sweets, do you have some rope or a strong thread of some kind?” I ask.

She rummages through a saddlebag and pulls out, with her teeth, a sturdy looking rope and passes it to me. I use the serrated edge of the combat knife to slice an appropriately sized length of the rope before passing the rest of it back to her.
I fasten both ends of the rope to the strap rings on the rifle and sling it over my back.

“I'm all set, which way Sweets?”

Sweets tells me a little about herself as we walk between the twisted hunks of dead wood that once were trees. She is a travelling merchant who scavenges specialist items for her clients. In return they pay her handsomely or trade an item she needs equally as much as they need theirs. She's been travelling along the coast for a long while and had been as far as the mountain ranges in search of things she could recover to sell in the growing settlements.

She also gives me a brief rundown on the groups that live in the wastes, referring to a group of savage, pain loving drug addicts as ‘Raiders’ and the deadly ‘Steel Rangers’ whom I quickly realise are the remnants of the Equestrian Army, equipped with the experimental Power Armour.

Recently there had been rumors of creatures called ‘Alicorns’ that looked like Princess Luna, whom Sweets referred to as a “Goddess” not much was really known about this new group but they were usually given a wide berth when possible.

On top of these groups there were smaller groups usually referred to as gangs, groups of ponies and the like who typically kept to themselves, or not, depending on their disposition and the situations they were in.

And then there were the settlements that line the coastal region, Sweets was leading me to a merchant trading outpost, simply called “The Outpost” where she intended to meet with a client and collect payment for some Sparkle Cola Rad she had collected.  Once there and after she had sold her goods she would help me get my bearings.

To be quite honest, I had no idea where to go now or what to do.  Most of my previous life I fought the Zebras, defended Equestria... now there was no war to fight, no princesses to fight for.  There was no need for a military and worse still Sweets told me that the entire Hoofington region was basically a no go zone, the entire area was affected by something called enervation which broke you down from the inside, reducing you to a lump of useless flesh.  There would be no returning home for me, heading into Hoofington was completely out of the question.

I shake my head to clear the repertoire of thoughts bouncing around as Sweets points a hoof at a building that’s crumbing somewhat at the back.

“Might find something to drink in there or somepony to trade with.” she says, before urging me along.

On instinct I unsling the assault rifle, checked the magazine and flicked the safety off, having the weapon ready gives me a sense of false security, but a welcome one all the same.

We cautiously approach the building, climbing up a slope to stay out of view of the windows, then slink right up to the corner before peering inside through the cracks in the boards of the windows.  After a moment of gazing in and waiting for our eyes to adjust we sigh in relief, the building is abandoned.

Sweets kicks in the door with a powerful buck and I make a personal note to not get on the receiving end of an Earth Pony’s kick, before following her in.  As our eyes readjust to the abrupt change in light, I sweep the room for any threats, satisfied that there isn’t even a mouse, I lower the weapon and follow Sweets as she begins to rummage through boxes that had been packed and left by the front door.

I inspect the furniture and conclude that it had once been somepony’s house, a photo frame hangs on the wall, the photo within faded so badly that it’s impossible to make out who was in it.

“Aha!  Sparkle Cola!  Here you go Aid,” Sweets cries out before tossing it in my direction.

I drop the rifle in surprise and catch the bottle with my telekinesis.  The carroty liquid inside looks pretty good to me despite its age and I pop the cap off of it before pressing the lip of the bottle to my mouth and tilting my head back and guzzling the entire contents.
Just as I remember, there’s a carroty aftertaste and the drink is still somewhat refreshing.  As I set the bottle down on a shelf, I get a shock as images flicker in my vision and a lot of text scrolls.

In big bold letters, directly in front of me and obscuring most of the scrolling text reads a message:

And then underneath:

As the text flickers and vanishes from my view, an image pops up on my lower left labeled “Health”  Under it is a compass that adjusts as I turn my head, I gaze towards Sweets, a green bar appears on the compass, right where she is.

I start to remember using the Eyes Forward Sparkle before, back when I was just an average medic on the battlefield.  We called it an EFS for short, the green bar in my compass indicated a supposedly friendly, red would indicate enemies and yellow would indicate unknown alignment.  On the right side of my view another bar sits expectantly, labeled “Stamina” the bar filled to the brim, above it, another bar, very familiar to me, “Magic”  The bar is only a fifth full however and doesn’t seem to be rising at all.

In the upper right there’s little meter indicating Radiation exposure, it ticks idly and underneath it is a box with the number five in it, labeled “RADs”.

“Hey, Sweets.” I call out.

She turns from her box and looks at me, “What’s up?”

“My PipBuck just booted up its EFS.”

She moves over to me and watches my face closely, “I’ve heard about those before, little images in your eyes?”

I nod slowly, taking in the information at a trickle.  I cast my gaze around the room, allowing the EFS to give me detailed information on the area around me.  A message appears in the upper right of my view,

That’s when I notice the four red bars approaching the house from the north-west, heading straight for us as the colour becomes more and more opaque.

“Get down!” I hiss to Sweets, casting my telekinesis out to get the assault rifle.

She drops instinctually and reaches into the smaller of her saddle-bags, recovering a large revolver from within and drawing the hammer back with her teeth before looking over at me and raises an eyebrow questioningly.

I point my hoof to the door and whisper, “Four things approaching the house, don’t know what they are, EFS says hostile!”

I expertly draw the slide on the rifle back, checking to make sure the gun isn’t jammed up before leveling it on the doorway.

The bars are bright red now and I can hear hushed voices followed by light hoof-steps.  I lay in wait, ambushing our enemies seems the best tactic here despite them trapping us inside the crumbling house.  I edge closer to the furniture, trying to minimize my profile.

Then one of them trots right through the doorway, the buck is immense his coat is a dull red and he grips a great big shotgun with a drum magazine in his jaw.
He sweeps the room, muzzle flashes lighting up his face as the weapon thunders.
I open fire, the rifle roaring as it spits out bullet after bullet.  As our first assailant is blasted back by the powerful rifle in my magical grasp, one of his comrades rushes in, wildly firing, Sweets surprises me when her revolver barks a report and the top of the attacker’s head is blown clean off, his gun clattering to the floor near me.  Sweets then gets up, punches her hoof through one of the boards and fires the revolver again, getting a satisfying cry of pain.

I leap up and out the door in one swift motion, my rifle roars again peppering the pitiful leather that covers the already wounded brown buck.  His blood sprays as he is thrown head over hind hooves in a flip before my rifle chokes up on an empty chamber, the magazine spent.  I drop the magazine but am knocked aside by the fourth attacker, an olive mare wielding a nasty looking knife in her teeth, trying to slide it into my the soft tissue of my throat.
Struggling against the mare, I grunt and cry out in surprise as dirty, white hooves connect with the olive green mare’s head.  She is thrown several meters back into the dirt, Sweets spins around, levels the barrel of the revolver and bites the bit hard, the revolver kicks up and the olive mare stops moving, blood spattering a neat line behind her head as it begins to pool under her.

The area seems awfully quiet, I can even hear blood dripping from one of the ones we dealt with inside as it patters onto the floorboards.

“Thanks” I say, retrieving my rifle as I get up from the ground, slipping a fresh magazine home and retrieving the empty one for later use.

She gives a snort in disgust, “Bandits, they must’ve been tracking us, saw I’m carrying a load and wanted to cash in on the goods themselves.”  She turns to me, “They didn’t count on a war pony now did they?”

I raise an eyebrow but nod all the same.

“See what I mean by kill or be killed, Aid?  These ponies had no problem blowing holes in us or slitting our throats, that’s what its like mostly everywhere now, very few ponies are actually, genuinely good.”

She leads me back inside and inspects the first Bandit’s gear.

“Nice work with those two, you just went all cool and calculating, blowing holes in them left right front and center.  Might be that my gut feeling about you was right after all, you’re a pony capable of surviving out here.”

I lift the shotgun and inspect it, it’s an Ironshod riot shotgun, the drum is usually loaded with fifteen, twenty gauge buckshot shells, the weapon wasn’t in all that bad of a condition.  I carefully unload it, eject the shell and put it aside.

The smell quickly builds, one of the bucks had a bowel motion during the attack, likely as they were dying.  Sweets strips them all of their valuables and stashes them into her saddle bags.  I scavenge a pack from the male I shot outside and place the riot shotgun into it.  I feel calmly disconnected from the entire situation, the death I caused isn’t really eating at me as much as I thought it would.
Sweets pushes a rifle into my view, interrupting my internal reflection.

“Care to dismantle that for a mare in distress?” she half jokes before attempting to do the same with the assault rifle one of the Bandits had used.
I examine the long range weapon momentarily before stripping it right down to its rotting, timber stock and bundling all the components into one of Sweets’ saddle bags, I then help her with the assault rifle, placing that in the pack as well.

“Thanks,” she says dejectedly, I realize I showed her up but don’t bother apologizing, it would only compound the problem further.

I take one last look at the house, filled with four dead ponies, Bandits I remind myself, before I trot up beside Sweets as she begins heading North once more, following a trail I couldn’t see, probably using the mountains on our left as a guide.
She flicks part of her orange mane from her eyes and glances over at me.

“So, how’s your first day in the wastes going for you?” She asks.

I don’t answer, having seen Canterlot in ruins near the horizon was horrific enough, all the rest of it was too much to even comprehend.  Foal steps was how I was going to tackle the situation.  Scanning the hills around us for any kind of activity, I sigh when there’s no hint of even a bunny.  Somehow I believe that what I was used to before, was not how it was now.  Even a harmless bunny could have turned into something horrible all these years after.

It certainly seemed like the wastes did everything they could to make your life miserable.

We hunker down for night under an overhanging boulder, Sweets refusing to make a fire, worried we might attract unwanted attention, instead she passes me a rusted, dented tin from her pack and places her own tin in front of her before sealing the pack once more and placing it against the log I had dragged over to the cover.

I pop the tin open and see the contents within.  Hundred and forty year old beans.  Yum.

“Eat up,” Sweets says before upending the can into her mouth and chewing.

I tentatively sniff at the beans before pouring some out into my mouth and chewing, they taste a little stale but otherwise aren’t worse for wear.  I finish my tin and crumple it, placing it beside the log.

“So who’s this client you’re meeting?” I ask, striking up some conversation.

She seems to consider the question for a time before answering, “Old friend, she loves her Sparkle Cola Rad, I asked a favor of her and she agreed as long as I brought her some Rad back in return.”

I nod, “What was the favor?”

“Just needed her to put her talent to use...”

Before I can press further, she lays down and rolls over, facing away from me.  Question time is clearly over fillies and colts.  I bite my tongue and lay down myself, rifle only a meter away in case we get ambushed again before closing my eyes and allowing my mind to wander down dark paths.

Foot Note

Level Up!
Survival + 10

Perk: Situational Awareness
With your EFS active you always know what’s going on around you, some might even think you can see the future and even sneaky ponies find it hard to get the drop on you!