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// Prologue: Waking Up 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Fleeting Memories 
// by RevenantHunter 
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(Expect some heavy editing. I still need to fine tune the story, cause I'm pretty sure that it will seem typical and stereotypical at first, but there's a good storyline behind this. It'll just take some editing to get that threaded in.)

Memories.

Even thinking back to where we have heard the word before is a memory. It's an unconscious motion that we all do, no matter what we do. Of course, everypony should have memories. The memories of a beloved family member, the memories of your favorite food. Those usually qualify as common memories that your average pony, or zebra, or even griffon usually have. You even have memories of your first kiss with that one you loved, which fills you with the feelings of warmth, love, and happiness, or you can can have a precious memory of being married with that one you love.

But there is also a side of memories that many of the cheated, heartbroken, and breaking individuals are all too familiar with. The image of catching your lover in bed with your best friend, accompanied by the feeling of betrayal and broken trust that you experienced, the remembrance of a mother or father or even child that passed away before there time was up, with the result being that you feel sad, empty, and alone.

The Ministries had played with the notions of memories, using technology and spells to play with them as though they were some sort of storybook. The Ministry of Morale had even used their resources to copy and even extract a memory. Some called this a revolutionary movement, being able to scan and take the memory of somepony accused of a crime in order to get a conviction. They could even store them for later viewing, calling them 'memory orbs'. But those that had this process done to them without their consent and against their will have called this stealing and an invasion of privacy that everypony is entitled to. It's too bad that nopony had any rights where the Ministry of Morale was concerned.

These are what a memory can be, good or bad. But what happens when you are a fresh slate, not remembering what you were before. Foals have the added benefit of not knowing their first memories and living a comfortable life of love and care, and they just draw on common sense that they experienced when younger to solve a situation.

How about an adult? Somepony at that age where you are regarded as being something of notice? What can they do when they are expected to act on something and to carry out the consequence on their shoulders, when they don't have those memories to fall back to?

Can they survive in the world? Can they protect the ones they care or love for?

Sometimes the Wasteland can be a strange place to practice such unusual circumstances.


XXXX


"Hey.....Hey Mister...."

I felt a dull throbbing in my ears as though my senses were turning on for the first......maybe they were.

"You okay mister?"

Who's trying to wake me? I actually feel rather comfortable lying on my stomach, a heavy weight pressing into my back. Not sure why my back burns though. Maybe it's the weight.

"I know you're awake mister. You're breathing. And you aren't bleeding anywhere either."

I might as well try to open my eyes, if I can. No point in keeping the one talking to me waiting. I grunted and slowly opened my eyes. My vision was all blurry, the only thing standing out of the greys, blacks, and glowing green was a white mass that had greys and blacks coming out of it. The figure moved and my vision filled entirely with white, two blobs of icy blue staring into me. I tried to pull back, but only felt resistance from the weight on my back. My eyes started to clear up better, now that I had a chance to blink them a few times.

The two insistent blue orbs were still looking into mine. "Hey mister. You alright? It must really hurt being under all that.....floor."

Floor? I shifted my head, hearing the popping of my neck as I looked at my back. My eyes may have been blurry, but I could still make out the huge clumps of wood and beams on my back. I turned back at the white mass, blinking my eyes to clear them better. I shifted and moved my forelegs, relieved that they weren't trapped. I rubbed my eyes and squinted.

Standing before me was a little filly, covered in a coat of dirtied white fur with a shaggy black and gray striped mane, with her bangs pulled back and making it look like she had a long mohawk. Her eyes were the orbs I saw. She had on a pair of tattered brown saddlebags that looked out of place on her. She was smiling at me. "Hey mister, glad you're not dead. But just in case...", she reached into her saddlebags and brought out a bottle of swirling purple liquid.

Before I could voice a 'what', she bit off the top and shoved the opened end into my mouth, making me choke down a bottle of a bittersweet liquid that made me cough once she pulled it away. "Whoa, careful mister." I grunted, but then sighed. I could feel my body energizing and all my sores get better.

My vision was now stark and I could see clearly. I was in some sort of room, the walls of concrete lacking any real decoration. There were some desks and, if I'm guessing right, some terminals.

How did I know what they were?

The filly was still watching me curiously, the smile still on her face. It relaxed me for some reason. "What's your name mister?" The question caught me off guard as I looked back at the filly. "My name?" She giggled and her smile widened. "Yeah mister, everypony has a name! What's yours?"

I looked down at the floor. My name? I tried to think back, but I couldn't bring anything up. It was nothing but blackness and words, words I couldn't understand, as though they were being whispered from another room.

A pony. A petite mare to be exact. A petite mare being shadowed by the bright lights ahead of her. I couldn't see where she was, who she was, but all I could see was the mare and the light. 

I was brought back from my thoughts by the filly sitting next to me, resting a hoof on my head. I couldn't complain, it actually felt a little nice... "I...I don't know." I choked out, my voice sounding like rough sandpaper on a tin can. 

She was tilting her head as she looked at me. "You don't know? But everypony has a name mister." She was giggling. I wasn't feeling the same though. I felt, like something in me was missing. She tapped me on the head to get my attention. She was wearing a sad smile. "If it helps mister, I don't know my name either. Last thing I remember was waking up at what I think was my mommy's and daddy' house. I got up and walked around, then stayed there for a few days until I ran out of food. Decided to explore and look for food. That's why I'm here right now. It said 'restaurant' on the sign, so I thought there would be food in here. I've been doing this for weeks now."

She started playing with my ear, flicking it between her hooves. I wasn't really bothered. The filly was growing on me actually, because her cheery attitude felt like a breath of fresh air in this damp and grey basement. She continued,"That's when I found this big hole in the floor and found you. You looked lonely, and hurt, so I decided to stay when you woke up." That part made me stop. She waited in this possibly dangerous area, just for me? I couldn't stop myself from smiling.

That seemed to relax her, because now she looked to back to herself. She said,."Well, now that we got all that out of the way, I think we should get you out of there." I grinned. "My thoughts exactly, young one." She pouted at me in an adorable way as she moved over to a desk with a shattered terminal sitting on it. That's when I noticed her wings, and the strange burns on her flanks. A pegasus. I don't know why I knew that, but I did. Dashite. I knew that that's what she was, but I didn't know why. I felt the voices and words getting louder, making me fold my ears down in an attempt to block them.

"Hey, you alright mister? You don't look so good again." I looked back up at the filly. She carried a worried expression as she held a crowbar in her right hoof. I shook my head and gave a small smile, "Yeah, I'm fine, just...not really sure about myself is all." She gave me a skeptical look, but just shrugged as she slammed the crowbar into the wooden beams and began to pump the bar up and down. A few pieces of rubble loosened, causing the debris on my back to shift. I put my hooves under me and started to push up as she worked harder. The weight was heavy, but with all the pieces of wood and drywall that were falling from around me, I was getting out much more easily by the second.

With one final grunt, I pulled myself out from under the debris as the filly was knocked onto her back, the sudden weight making the crowbar fly up and knock her away. I chuckled as I finally stood up, groaning and stretching my limbs as the familiar sounds of my joints popping filled my ears. I stopped and took inventory of myself.

I had all four limbs, which was good. The protruding point on my forehead showed that I had a horn, meaning I was a unicorn. My coat was a pale tan and my mane and tail had grown long, with my mane being shaggier and greasier than than my tail. They were both a mixture of white and silver. I looked at a terminal monitor. I was tall, like REALLY tall. I stood probably a foot and a half higher than a normal pony. My eyes were a bright red, making me look like a spirit.

I chuckled at myself. Me, a spirit? Only in crazy stories told by others...I think so anyways.

"Wow, you're taller than I expected." I glanced down at the filly, a mixture of awe and something else in her eyes. I gave a small laugh, which resulted in her pouting again. She started for the stairs that were ahead of us, the aging steps made of stone and wood groaning underneath her hooves. I quickly followed after her, my steps unsteady from laying on the ground for too long. The steps groaned louder under my hooves. I may have been built lithe, but I was still carrying more weight than a normal pony.

The steps ended in a thin and short hallway that was made of aging plaster and drywall. We exited the hallway and came into a kitchen that likely belonged to the restaurant. It was stained and covered in debris, from discarded plates that were shattered into pieces on the floor to old moldy food that had gone bad a long time ago sitting on the tables. The filly was running around the kitchen, looking through cabinets and pulling out drawers, scattering more debris onto the floor and shifting through it. Every time she came across something that looked interesting, she would put it into her saddlebags and move on.

"What are you doing?" She looked at me as though I just asked why she was a filly and not a colt. "Scavenging, duh. A caravan route goes by my house, so I find what I can and sell 'em for caps. You see," She grabbed a large kitchen knife and waved it in front of me. "A knife like this will sell twenty caps, easy." She swung it and it went cleanly through a chunk of rotten vegetables on a tabletop. "Especially one this sharp." She deposited it in her saddlebags and went on with her scavenging. I simply followed her, not sure what to do with myself. 

It took her awhile, but we were finally able to leave the kitchen and out to the eating area. The area was trashed as well, upturned tables and discarded food and dishes everywhere. I was surprised that none of it had fallen in the giant hole that was in the middle of the floor. I almost didn't notice the filly go over to a large vending machine that looked very old, rust growing on the metal parts and the logo faded with it's light flickering. Sparkle~Cola was displayed on the front. The filly tapped the front a few times before pulling the crowbar out again. She grunted and slammed the crowbar into the side and began pumping it side to side, hoping to open the machine. I couldn't help but grin at her lack of progress. "Need some help?" She glared at me. "No." She grunted more and her movements became much more desperate. With a clang and a yelp, the crowbar slipped out of the wedge and she fell back onto her rump with the metal tool resting on the other side. I grinned wider, and she pouted, her cheeks puffing out in a really adorable way. 

She mumbled something and waved a hoof. I grinned and went over to the crowbar. It felt awkward to grab it with my hooves, and there was no way I was going to use my mouth, because I didn't want to know what the filly's been stepping in. The tan protrusion from my forehead reminded me that I had magic.

Okay....how did it work again?

I grumbled and tried to remember, but again, all I got was nothing coherent. Guess I had to try to learn myself on how to use telekinesis. I closed my eyes and concentrated. 

Nothing.

I grunted and tried again to think of a way to activate my magic, but nothing was working. I opened my eyes to see the filly leaning against the machine, her forelegs crossed and a smug grin on her face. I narrowed my eyes. "What?" She just looked somewhere else, whistling a little tune to herself. I said in a rather loud voice,"You think this is easy?" I stamped a hoof and glared at her. "I may not remember how the hell I got down there, but I KNOW that magic isn't easy!" I snatched up the crowbar and waved it in her face. "It's not like 'poof, here you go'. It takes concentration and focus to do it!"

She was still grinning smugly at me. "Why are you smiling like that?!" I yelled indignantly. She pointed at the crowbar that was coated in a tan aura. 

I blinked, then felt my ears burn as she still flashed that smug grin, her eyes half-lidded. She tapped the machine. I grunted and slammed the crowbar's end into the wedge that separated the machine's front cover. I grunted and began to work on the crowbar, until a clang and snap sounded and the cover flew open, the insides showing. The inner workings had either rusted over from disuse or something else, but there was still some bottles of some kind of soft drink in a glass bottle. The labels showed that these were bottles of Sparkle~Cola, just like the machine had advertised.

The filly took the five remaining bottles out of the machine put them in her bags, but kept two of them out. She pulled of the caps, putting them in a separate pouch on her saddlebags, and gave me a bottle. She gulped down a mouthful and sighed. She looked up at me expectantly. I gently took it in my hoof and lifted it, taking a sip.

My mouth was filled with a lukewarm, yet sweet and flat carroty flavor that made me gulp it down before taking another and another. I was panting by the time I finished the whole bottle. The filly spoke,"That good huh? Well, if we come across anymore, I'll share with you. Just don't drink them all." My ears burned again as she gave another smile, giggled, and practically skipped away. She may have been older than a usual filly, if her somewhat awkward looking legs were any sign, but she still acted like one.

I placed the empty bottle back into her saddlebags, with her not seeming to mind, and we both walked into the entrance of the restaurant, the door completely gone. I had didn't really have to shield my eyes this time from the light, but I still had to squint. 

All around us, nothing but runes and collapsed buildings, the wreckage of sky carriages littering the road. A small wind blew as I gazed out into the decimated environment ahead of us. It was the apocalypse's aftermath, and I was dead-on with the guess.

"Where the hell are we?"

The filly still grinned at me. "You really do have amnesia if you can't even remember all of this. Even I knew what this blown up hell is called." She waved a hoof in a grandiose fashion at the world ahead of us.

"Welcome to the Wasteland! Hope you survive your stay!"