//------------------------------// // Ch. 2 The Kindness of Strangers // Story: Fallout Equestria: Thorncroft // by ErrantIndy //------------------------------// Thorncroft Chapter Two: The Kindness of Strangers Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something... I had decided to die. I didn’t know where I was supposed to go from here. I didn’t know who I was, and death preferable to what was happening. “I know you couldn’t have fallen asleep that quickly.” I opened my eye and rolled it in the small equine’s direction. “Leave me alone.” He frowned at me and unhitched himself from his wagon. “Now, now. Molly, what’s the matter?” I lifted my head quickly. “Do ya know me?” The stranger cocked his head. “I think I’d remember someone with a...distinctive coat like yours.” It was my turn to frown, looking back over my hide. Nothing was special about my dirty grey coat. No, what was special was where there wasn’t any fur, my wounds. I lowered my head again. “I thought you knew my name.” He froze for a moment. “Knew your...” He took another couple steps towards me. I could almost feel his eyes on me. “Sweet Mares above, those are fresh!” I sighed. “They’re not. They’re days old.” “How long, molly?” I looked back up at him. I could see the pity in his eyes. I sneered. “Days. Longer. None yer business. And stop callin’ me that.” I closed my eye and grit my teeth as I got to my hooves. I didn’t want to see him looking at me like that. Although, mostly, moving hurt like hell. My joints groaned and my scars burned as I started to get up. I stopped when I felt a hoof on brushing along my cheek, moving my unruly mane out of my face. I opened my eye and found the other creature staring at my other eye, the missing one. He was silent. Pity had disappeared from his eyes. His face, blank for a moment, just looked over mine. I tried to pull away. His forehoof moved under my chin and pulled me to face him. “Who did this to you?” Blank was gone. Anger remained. It looked so out of place on the little creature. It looked so out of place. It looked so familiar. My legs felt wobbly all of suddenly. My hooves scrapped against the gravel in the roadbed, and I fell down... ~ ~ ~ ...on to a wood floor. The grain was so close. I could feel it under my chin, my hooves, my chest. I could see it with my own two eyes. Anger remained, as did Pain. I couldn’t scream anymore. I wouldn’t allow myself. Not when they’d cut me. Not when they’d burn me. Not, Not, Not when they’d...surround me. I couldn’t scream. There had been enough screaming in the house. I wouldn’t scream. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I looked up from the wood. I saw him. Him. That bastard. That short, Kansass motherbucker. The donkey sat in my father’s chair. He’d hadn’t participated in the ‘festivities.’ He’d just watched. All the screaming, all the sobbing, all the pain, and he’d just watched with that smug, self-satisfied smile. He hadn’t reacted any other way. Any other jack would have gotten a rise out of of all this. Not him, he couldn’t. A weight, a creature got off me. My teeth grit against each other. I wouldn’t let my body betray me. The donkey got up and sauntered over to me. He put a hoof under my chin to tip my head up towards his. I didn’t move. I wasn’t going to give- “Red, Saltlick, a jaw please?” Teeth closed on my ears and hauled back on my head. I went with them, hissing through my teeth. The donkey made as if he was pushing my chin up. He looked me in the eyes. “The other families, I told them this wasn’t personal. It was politics. With your family? With you? It is personal and has been a pleasure.” One of the ponies let his grip on my ear slacken for the barest moment before jerking back up sharply. His head jerked to the side. I could feel my ear tear, and a warmth began to trickle down into my inner ear. I sagged down only held up by one ear and hoof under my chin. That...that...ass looked down at me. “I wish I could hold on to you, cousin. I wish I could keep you and teach you your sins exquistely. However, you would kill me one day. I would lower my guard for instant, and you would kill me.” I wrenched my teeth a part. “I’ll kill you now, you bastard.” That smile, so damned smug, didn’t twitch. “Were I to give you the time...” He simply shook his head. “However, I’ve learned not to allow you that.” He turned away. I glanced around as much as I could dangling by one ear. I couldn’t see her. Where was Bonny? I hadn’t heard her screaming. Momma’s...Momma’s I’d heard. They’d been intent on her. I couldn’t see Momma, but I had heard her. Bonny had been missing since...it had all started. The donkey turned back, hefting a large revolver. He set it down, leaning against a forehoof. “Any last words? Insults to my heritage and yours?” “Where. Is. Bonny.” I ground out. He nodded. “One last good-bye isn’t out of the question. Gentlecolts, drag her outside.” The two creatures behind me each grabbed a leg and dragged me across the wood floor. I was pulled out the front door onto the porch and then bounced down the porch steps, my teeth snapping as I hit each one. They dragged me through the dirt in the yard, stopping to pull me around to face away from our small wooden house. My torturers dropped my legs and stepped around in front of me. Ponies. Buckin’ ponies. They moved to join their friends, collected around a small grey molly. The mule wept as she hung down at the extent of the leash and collar they’d fitted on her. The other molly opened her eyes as she heard me come to a rest in the dirt. “I’m sorry. Celestia, I’m so sorry.” She...she hurt worse than anything I’d felt so far, seeing her like this. I unclenched my jaw again. I needed to talk to her. “Bonny, I’ll come for you. I swear it.” I felt as much as heard the ass come up behind me. He rounded in front of me. He set his large pistol down again. “No, cousin, She’s headed East. You are headed down.” His smile broadened. It wasn’t smug anymore. He was proud, proud of what he was going to do. “And I’m going to put you there.” He bent his head down and picked up the revolver. He pushed the barrel against my eye. It hurt like hell, but I wasn’t gonna flinch not now, not at the end. I looked at him with my other eye. “I swore, bastard. I will come for her, and I will come for you. If I gotta pick my bones up out of this yard to do it, then I will see you in hell.” He didn’t say anything. He squeezed the trigger back with his tongue. I closed my eye and readied myself. I’d see Daddy again. I could feel him now. Howdy again, Dadd- The pistol roared. It echoed, and all was black. ~ ~ ~ All was not black as I awoke. The flames of a fire danced beyond my eyelid. I groaned as planted my hooves pushed my front half up so I could look around. I noticed my forelegs were bandaged up. I pulled my right hoof up and looked at it. There was a crack that I hadn’t remembered. Someone had filled it with something clear. I looked back over myself. I looked like...a thing..a thing that was wrapped in bandages. Why did the word Mau seem to come to mind? My back, my flanks, my rump...there was hardly a bit of me that wasn’t covered in whi...well white-ish cloth. I could feel it wrapped up around my neck as I turned. I raised a hoof and felt more up on my head, over my useless eye and the back of my head. “Welcome back to the land of the living, miss.” I looked up from myself and across the fire. The small...he was a donkey. I waited for that to mean something, to drive me to my hooves in anger, but I was too wrung out. I looked up at the donkey. He was across the fire, atop his wagon, and tending the fire with a long pole. A rifle lay beside him. He was looking at me out of the corner of a very swollen eye. He’d had two good eyes just a... The uncertainty began to knit together as I realized I had more unanswerable questions. It’d been twilight when the donkey had arrived. Now it was firmly night now. The donkey looked like he’d insulted somebody’s mother. I was bandaged. I didn’t remember anything. Again. I squeezed my eye shut. “What-what happened?” I felt my voice catch. I felt helpless. I didn’t want to feel like this. He snorted. “You happened, miss.” I opened my eye and blinked up at him. “Me? What did I-” The donkey looked at the fire. “Well, I touched your face, and then...then ya tried to smash my face in.” “I did? Mister, I’m so sor-” He stopped me with a waved his very small hoof. “I managed to roll away from you quick enough. You cracked your hoof on the pavement trying to squash my noggin. I was able to get the cart between you and me, and then it was just a matter of running fast enough to keep away from you until you fell over.” He shook his head. “I don’t hold it against you, not after what you yelled at me.” He turned to face me. “I’m not one of those Kansasses.” My look of confusion must have been very clear in the firelight. “I’m not a donkey from Kansass. I’m from way out West; I thought you should know.” He looked down into the fire. “It’s assholes like that make me ashamed to be a jack.” He looked back up at me. I was still so damned confused. He looked at the ground and then me again and slid off the top of the wagon. He landed and walked over to me. “I don’t think you’re liable come for my skull right now.” He stopped and extended a hoof to me. “Name’s Bob. Hope you’ll be able forgive my kind, your kind too, I suppose.” I looked at the hoof and stretched out my own and shook his. “What do you mean, my kind and your kind?” Bob cocked his head to the side. “Don’t remember a thing?” I squirmed under his gaze. I shook my head. I didn’t want him to know, anyone to know, how helpless I was. He just smiled warmly. “Okay, so you remember a thing, but not many I take it?” I glared at him. “Why does it matter to ya?” Bob sat down. “Because I was raised better than those asses around here, your father excluded of course.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I think I...” I frowned and narrowed my eye. “How do you know my daddy was a donkey?” “It’s a guess. You are a female mule, a molly.” He waited for me to nod that I understood that. “Mules are the kids of a pony and a donkey. Judging from your size, your father was a donkey, and your mother was a pony. The bigger the mother, the bigger the mule.” He shrugged. I’d give him that one seeing as I was looking down at him even half reclined. “Now what do you remember?” I opened my mouth. “They-” Again Bob cut me off with a wave his hoof. “You don’t need to go into it, Miss, not if you don’t want to.” I swallowed and nodded back. He probably already knew. I’d yelled things he said. It was both relieved and mortified. I didn’t know what I yelled. I didn’t want to know. I guess I’d just have to take what small reliefs I could. “There was another mule, Bonny. She’s...I don’t know.” I growled in frustration. “Ponies were taking her.” Bob straightened up, sounding incredulous. “Ponies AND Kansasses?” “What do ya mean?” I stared blankly at him. He stared at me and then slapped himself in the forehead with a hoof. “Sorry, I forgot your amnesia, give me time.” I stared at him some more. He sighed. “Amnesia means you’ve lost memory due to something. In your case knocks to your head.” I nodded. “The bullet.” Bob shook his head. “Bullets, two of them. You got hit in the eye and back of the head, neither penetrated your skull.” My remaining eye widened. “How do you-” “I’ve treated more than a few injuries in my time.” The donkey ran a hoof over his short black mane. “When I was patching you up, I checked your head injuries...and well, I was as shocked as you. Both shots messed you up superficially but didn’t do anything more..” Bob shrugged. “Anyways, from what I was told about the Far East is that you have the donkeys of Kansass and then you have the ponies of Missurrey. Everyone I talked to made it clear that they do not like the other breathing the same air. So them working together...something isn’t right about this.” I just gave him a blank stare. Really? Something’s not right about this? “I promised I’d find her. I think I was following her. I lost her trail here at the road.” He glanced over his shoulder for a moment at the road we were camped beside. “Well, I came from the west, and I didn’t see anyone. They must have gone East along the road...either for speed or to cover their tracks.” I nodded. “Thank you, mister. I’ll head that way tomorrow.” He shook his head. “I can’t let you go on alone.” I furrowed my brow and opened my mouth to speak but stopped. I looked at the donkey again, a bit more carefully. Could I trust him? He waited patiently, raising an eyebrow. On my left hoof, I knew jack spit nothing about this donkey. On my right hoof, I had tried to kill him, unsuccessfully, and fell unconscious afterwards. He’d have plenty of chances to kill me, tie me up, do horrible things to me, or all of those in any order he’d wished. That I was free, bandaged, and being treated politely did say something for him. I looked down at my right hoof. It was the cracked one, the one I’d tried to murder him with. I seemed to favor it, good enough for me. “Thank you.” I whispered. I glanced up at him. He was smiling. I tried to return a weak one. “You remember a name?” He asked. I shook my head. He rubbed his chin with a hoof. “Hmm...can’t just call you molly, or even miss, all the time. Do you figure it had to do something with your cutie mark?” My cutie mark. What in Celestia’s damned flank was a- I sighed and rolled over. My left flank was all bandaged up, so I was laying on my right. My right was relatively untouched. I must have been laying on the side when when they’d...well, I seemed to like laying on my right. I’ll take that as good news. On my flank was a green...I turned back to Bob. “What the hell is it?” “It’s a bush, a hedge to be precise. Were you a gardener?” I shrugged. “How many di fferent ways can I say: I don’t know?” The donkey chuckled; his dark eyes twinkled in the firelight. “How about I call you Hedge until you remember?” Hedge. It was good as name as any. It didn’t feel right, but I could make it work, for now. “Yeah, call me Hedge.” He nodded and got up. “Get some rest, Hedge. We’ll leave in the morning. I promise we’ll find your Bonny, somehow.” He started to walk away when I heard a noise. It was...I can’t explain it. Wind blowing, creaking wood...explosion? I guess he heard it did too because he stopped. He looked down at this leg. It was then I noticed the weird metal cuff on his left foreleg. “What was that?” I asked. He was fiddling with the thing for a moment. “It’s my Pipbuck, great little thing. It’s got maps, music, looks after your health, organizes your things, and it even keeps your list of things to do.” “Sounds hoofy, but what was that noise.” He grinned. “The last thing. Sometimes when I say I’m going to do something it updates my list. It makes that noise, have no idea what it is, just call it ‘that noise.’ But other than make odd sound effects it does something better.” He moved closer and turned around so I could see the tiny screen. “Something else you shouldn’t ask about...but it knows where to go. Look here.” I craned my head down to look closer. I could see a green picture. There were shapes I didn’t recognize and names over things I didn’t know. Bob pointed with the tip of his hoof at a long line that moved left to right across the screen. “This is the road we’re on, the Long Forty. And this,” he sketched along a dotted line to a flashing arrow, “is where we need to go.” I squinted at the screen. “Kan-Miss Station.” Bob nodded, pressing buttons “Yep, let’s see here. Thing also give hints about what you’re supposed to do. Uncanny, give it a fuzzy objective, and it tells you what you need to-” He stopped and looked at the new page after he’d changed it. “That’s a bit morbid.” On a page marked “Quests” was two phrases at the left. First was “It’s a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door...” Second was “You Can’t Go Home Again.” The second seemed to be selected. On the right it offered the direction, “Ask around Kan-Miss Station for a clue to Bonny’s whereabouts.” “So just ask around?” I looked up at Bob. He was frowning at the PipBuck. “Bob?” He was frowning at the left hand column. He snorted and set his hoof down. He turned away without a word to me, walking back towards his cart. “Yeah, Hedge, we’ll go there tomorrow. It’s about a day away. Get some sleep.” I didn’t understand his sudden change. He’d been all smiles and grins before. Another thing to confuse me, well they hadn’t killed me yet. I sighed and laid back down next to the fire. I watched the small donkey clamber back up onto the cart. His small tail wagging furiously as he pulled himself up. He moved back to next to his rifle and sat down. He rooted a hoof around under the edge of the tarp covering the cart and pulled out a pendant on a silver chain that shined in the firelight. He looked at it and sighed. “Just a little longer, I hope.” He kissed the pedant and slipped it over his head. It hung down low on his neck, too big for him. He sat faced away from the fire and looked out into the night. I lay there and watched him for a bit until I fell a sleep. The first good sleep I’d ever known. Footnote: No new level... Skills Remembered! -Speech: 10 No new perk... Companion Gained, Bob the Donkey! Companion Perk Gained! -Hoof in Mouth Disease: You’ve never been good with folk, and EVERYBODY knows it. After failed Speech checks, Bob has a chance to intervene on your behalf with kind words and a hoof to stop yours. This fanfiction is based on Fallout Equestria by Kkat; a familiarity with the source material may aid your understanding. You can read Fallout Equestria by Kkat on Equestria Daily. The Fallout: Equestria logo used above was designed by DotRook, who, according to the original deviantArt page, allows usage in supplementary materials created for and associated with the series. Images really do make a difference, so he has our eternal gratitude and respect. If you enjoy Fallout Equestria Side Stories, you will want to check the Fallout Equestria Side Stories post on Equestria Daily and the Fallout Equestria Side Stories thread on Ponychan The Ponychan group is also a hatching ground that you can join if you want to share your experience, writing, or comments with us. A grateful thanks goes to all the folk at the FOE protodoc hatching ground for their help and review, especially No One and littlekittenmittens. Much of this could not have been possible without all of them. The rest of it is all my doing...mostly the bad.