//------------------------------//
// My First Gun 
// Story: Mane Six vs. Handsome Jack 
// by Newbiespud 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 1
My First Gun


"THIS IS INCREDIBLE! A SIXTH LIVING VAULT HUNTER?! CLAPTRAP, NOT ONLY HAS YOUR METAPHORICAL SHIP FINALLY COME IN, IT'S A FREAKING CRUISE LINER! METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING!"

The shrill, tinny voice speaking right into her ear was what finally roused Twilight Sparkle to wakefulness. The intellectual pony swiftly deduced that she couldn't have survived the blast on the train. This was clearly Tartarus, and she must have done something terrible in her life to deserve this cruel torment.

Then, once the overall numbness in Twilight's body began to fade, she had to amend her initial conclusion. Tartarus was many things, but it wasn't unbearably frigid.

Twilight was currently half-buried in snow, surrounded by what appeared to be human figures also half-buried in snow. Glancing around, trying to peer through the white winds that covered the landscape, Twilight saw the burning hulks of metal that were once the train cars they'd been riding. The bombs had derailed the entire train and torn apart the rails, spreading wreckage as far as the eye could see. Twilight had landed in the center of a massive clearing.

As the purple pony struggled to get her bruised body up, something moved from her side to her front. It was a yellowish robot, shaped as an inverted trapezoidal solid, supported by a single large wheel, and staring at her with one large optic eye.

"Allow me to introduce myself," the robot said, its voice not quite as loud now that it wasn't right next to her ear. It gestured at itself with its spindly, claw-like metal limbs. "I am a CL4P-TP steward bot, but my friends call me Claptrap! Or they would, if any of them were still alive. Or had existed in the first place! Oh, I've got something for you!"

Claptrap grabbed a couple of objects from one of the human bodies nearby and held it out to Twilight. "Here, take this Backpack and this ECHO communicator that I totally didn't loot from one of these corpses!"

She didn't have the willpower to really question much at the moment, so Twilight took the strange devices with her magic. The moment she took hold of the communicator, her vision flashed white for a second before the words BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED appeared in front of her eyes. The other device, the Backpack, looked nothing like a backpack or a saddlebag, but it attached to Twilight's side very easily.

As Twilight's sight was taken up by words like INITIALIZING... HEALTH DISPLAY MODULE, Claptrap continued to speak. "The standard Backpack comes with twelve storage decks and two weapon slots. It will even automatically pick up all money, health kits, and ammo you walk over! And the ECHO device has a class-twelve heads-up display, complete with a minimap!"

A heads-up display... Twilight had read about these in The Bookworm's Guide to Modern Technology. An information tracking and feedback system that was displayed right in front of your eyes. For the first time since she'd regained consciousness, something was starting to make sense.

There was now a red bar in the lower left of her vision, and a rather low number on top of it. If this was her Health as the device had implied, then it was currently abstracting the state of her bruised and disoriented body rather accurately.

INITIALIZING... DIGITAL MAP DISPLAY

A small rectangle appeared in the upper right of what Twilight could see. It had an outline of the surrounding area, an arrow showing Twilight's current location, and the letter N at the edge showing which way was north. When Twilight looked around, the map and the compass direction rotated accordingly.

This was all neat, Twilight thought, but it was just a distraction from what she should be really worrying about right now: Where were her friends?

Claptrap turned around and waved to something beyond the veil of snow dust. "I FOUND A SIXTH PONY!" he shouted, grating Twilight's nerves once again. "IS THIS YOUR FRIEND?? COME OVER HERE! JUST FOLLOW THE SOOTHING SOUND OF MY VOICE!"

Right when Twilight was about to find a way to strangle the little bot, five pony figures trudged through the snow in front of them. "Twi!" Applejack yelled. "You're okay!"

Twilight gasped and moved towards her friends, wincing with each step. "You're okay...!" she breathed. This was the good news she needed; everything else was manageable, so long as she had her friends.

INITIALIZING... TEAM STATUS DISPLAY

In the upper left of Twilight's HUD, five different, smaller health bars appeared. Each was labeled with the name of one of her friends. There was even a symbol of each pony's cutie mark right next to their health display, which was kind of weird. According to these new health bars, each of her friends was just about as battered as Twilight was - some more than others, but none of them seemed to be in optimal condition.

Rarity trotted forward carefully and embraced Twilight in a quick hug. The others quickly came around and turned it into a big group hug.

"Okay, cool," Claptrap remarked. "Looks like you all know each other. ...That's good." He stood by awkwardly as the ponies had their reunion.

Twilight noticed that her friends also had Backpacks and ECHOs like the one Claptrap had given her.

"What's with the new equipment?" Twilight finally asked, pulling away from the group hug. "Did everypony lose their saddlebags?" It hadn't gone unnoticed by Celestia's star pupil that her own saddlebags - and the books contained within - didn't seem to be anywhere nearby. It wasn't like she had any rare or valuable books in there, or any from her own personal collection, but she lamented the loss of the tomes all the same.

"More or less," Applejack reported. "Nearly lost my hat, too." She was holding a hoof over her head to prevent the wind from blowing her Stetson away.

Rarity responded with a shrug. "I managed to keep my supplies with me, but these new devices are more compact and convenient, wouldn't you say?"

"Yeah, look!" Pinkie said, reaching back towards her own Backpack. With a flash of blue light, Pinkie's Party Cannon appeared. Then she put it back, making it disappear. The pink pony did this several times. "Party Cannon... No Party Cannon! Party Cannon... No Party Cannon!"

Rainbow facehoofed. "Pinkie, you do that all the time anyway."

"I know!" Pinkie exclaimed, a mad grin on her face. "And now everypony can do it!"

"Well I'm glad I had all those on hand and didn't have to loot nine bodies for them!" Claptrap interrupted suddenly, forcing his way back into the conversation. "Now come, come, let's get you all inside." The robot turned around and started rolling forward through the snow. The Mane Six had little choice but to follow him.

"Man, this is great!" Claptrap continued. "Now that I've met some mighty Vault Hunters, I can finally join the resistance in Sanctuary, take vengeance against Jack for killing my product line, and repair my central processor so I stop thinking out loud! ...I wonder why these ponies can talk."

The group kept trudging through the snow for a while, moving against the freezing winds. Then, something appeared in front of their eyes, on each pony's heads-up display. As if breaking through the fabric of reality, a vision of a smiling young woman appeared before them.

"I'll explain everything soon, but know this - you're alive for a reason, and I... am here to help you."

The woman's voice and the vision faded as suddenly as they had appeared. Applejack looked at the others and muttered, "Did that jus' happen- Okay, I'm guessin' everypony saw that."

"I think... she was talking through our communicators," Twilight hypothesized. "Was she in your heads-up display?"

Applejack nodded. "Did she say somethin' like 'we're alive for a reason and she's here to help us'?"

"Mmhmm," Rarity murmured.

"Yep," Pinkie agreed.

"That's what I heard," Rainbow Dash said.

Fluttershy didn't say anything.

"Shy?" Applejack asked, looking at the yellow pony. "Are you okay?"

As if slightly startled, Fluttershy broke out of her reverie. "Oh, um... yes. Sorry. This is just... moving way too fast... But don't mind me, it's okay..."

Pinkie Pie silently reached over and gave Fluttershy another hug.

Twilight Sparkle mulled over the mysterious vision for a moment, but then shook her head. There wasn't much to go on. "For now, let's just keep moving."

The group agreed and continued to follow Claptrap, who had gotten a small distance ahead of them. The snow dust lightened up as they got closer and closer to the robot. As the visible distance extended further in front of them, they saw a sizable... pile of trash and scrap metal resting against an icy wall. The robot stopped in front of it and waited for the ponies to reach him.

When they arrived, Claptrap clapped his little claw hands a couple of times and declared, "Well done! Your ability to walk short distances without dying will be Handsome Jack's downfall!"

Rarity quirked an eyebrow at the annoying little robot. "Is that supposed to be sarcasm?"

"Of COURSE it's sarcasm!" Claptrap replied without ever changing his enthusiastic tone. "It's going to take a lot of guns, murder, and general badassery to take down Jack! I thought this was already established!"

The ponies exchanged uneasy looks. "I don't know if we fit the part," Twilight admitted.

"...I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that! Anyway, we won't know until we try!" Claptrap rolled over to a door embedded in the wall of trash. "Aaaaaand open!"

A robotic eye within the door cast a scanning light over Claptrap for a few seconds, before the door clicked and swung open. "Just a little added security," Claptrap explained. "Gotta keep those Bullymongs at bay, or they'll rip your eyes out!"

Fluttershy squeaked.

Beyond the doorway was a icy cave with a downhill path. On each side of the path were other Claptrap robots resting on blocks of ice, all deactivated. The ponies followed Claptrap through the tunnel until it opened up to a large abode built out of the ice, furnished on all sides with old couches, tables, and scrap. Littered around the area was all manner of junk, Claptraps, and... dead human bodies.

Twilight's minimap, which had previously covered this section with blackness, suddenly revealed the whole area and declared it to be "Claptrap's Place."

A short distance in front of the ponies was a large burning furnace with a chimney. Claptrap stood in front of it and faced the pony group. "Sorry about the mess," he apologized. "Everything Jack kills, he dumps here - bandits, Vault Hunters, Claptrap units... If I sound pleased about this," - which he did; there hadn't been any change of tone at all - "it's only because my programmers made this my default tone of voice! I'm actually quite depressed!"

Twilight stared at the bodies. "W...What kind of monster is this Handsome Jack guy?" she demanded. "He just... kills people left and right?!"

"Uh, hello?" Claptrap queried. "Have you been living under a rock for five years? Yes, Handsome Jack is a big-time bad guy. But right now, he's the least of our worries."

"We've got BIGGER worries?" Applejack groaned.

"Yeah, like getting off this glacier, and surviving!" Claptrap said. "The creatures around here are dangerous, none more than this Bullymong named Knuckle Dragger - killed everyone I know." There was a miniscule pause. "Anywho, I keep a pistol in the cabinet over there for emergencies, but in here we should be pretty safe!"

Immediately, they heard a beastly roar. A hulking monster dropped down from the open space above the chimney, grabbing onto the metal cylinder to slow its decent. It was a great ape-like creature with a blue body and spiky white fur in patches, and it had four hugely muscled arms with claws.

Before the ponies could react, the creature moved quickly and snatched up the relatively diminutive Claptrap. It climbed partway up the chimney again, then used two of its free arms to hold Claptrap up and yank his eye out, right before ponies' eyes. After that, it dropped Claptrap and climbed out of the cave, taking Claptrap's eye with it.

The ponies were frozen with fear. They'd faced monsters before, but they'd just come out of an explosive encounter with a mass murderer. They simply weren't ready for this.

But Claptrap was still operational. He rolled forward and tripped, blindly reaching around to get his bearings. "The gun," he said weakly. "The gun in the cabinet."

INITIALIZING... OBJECTIVE INDICATOR

A diamond-shaped marker appeared on the minimap and before Twilight's eyes, pointing in the direction of a small cabinet on the ground in a corner. While Claptrap stumbled and bumped into things, Twilight went over to the cabinet. Her horn glowed, and the tiny cabinet doors swung open.

Out from the cabinet spilled a number of contents, including a bunch of trash, old food, some hypodermic syringes filled with bright red liquid, and a gray pistol.

The syringes moved towards Twilight automatically, self-applying into the pony's body via the Backpack's manipulation. Instantly, Twilight felt a little better, her wounds noticeably healing by some small measure with each syringe that was used on her. Her Health bar moved over to the right some more, and the number increased to a more comfortable amount.

Twilight was somewhat familiar with the subject of instant healing. These weren't as effective as high-level healing magic in Equestria, but they did their job. And right now, here on Pandora, it was a welcome boon.

Finally, she looked down at the gun at her hooves. Ponies didn't really use guns very much, but the rest of the universe used them a lot. There were entire intergalactic corporations dedicated to manufacturing weapons, and those weapons came in a bazillion different shapes and sizes. This gun, what her HUD was calling a Basic Repeater, would be the first modern killing machine a pony ever used.

Twilight Sparkle levitated the gun up with her magic, aimed it forward, and looked down the sights.



You just moved five feet and opened a locker.

Later, when you're killing skyscraper-sized monsters with a gun that shoots lightning, you'll look back at this moment and be like, "heh."

Next mission: Blindsided