Fallout Equestria: The Dreamer

by fiendofthet

Chapter 2: Betrayal

I personally like Google Docs more so here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KxHD5ZBhbKCXLTBXclEmNocAaKsQFYekfzae-STS7Q4/edit

Fear.

I find myself standing in at the end of my parents’ bed. Their eyes and tongues are cut out, and their faces stare blankly into my soul. I start cry in the corner of the room. The house isn’t on fire this time, so I just sit there, crying.

This goes on for what seems like hours before I lift my head. I see my parents sitting up in their bed, blood oozing out of their eye sockets. They start to get up. Thoroughly freaked out I sprint out the door to the kitchen where Jet is standing with a knife in his hoof. He has a crazed expression on his face. “Oh hay no!” He charges at me. A quick sidestep allows me to be able to get make a break for the door.

Looking outside I see I’m on a cloud. Finally, my escape from this world. I step outside expecting my favorite dream to commence, but instead I fall through the cloud. The ground below seems miles away and I’m falling towards it. The ground jumps up to engulf me. As I hit the ground it turns into a funnel. I slide helplessly to the center. I fall for a few seconds through darkness only to arrive suddenly in a pitch black quiet space.

The sun rises to show me sitting in the middle of my rock farm. Am I safe? I stand up and look around. Never before had I ever been excited to be in the middle of my field all alone.

CRACK!

The noise echoes across the field. What was that? Why did it sound so familiar? Unable to place the sound, I take a step forward only to fall flat on my face. My leg gave way. Looking down at my leg I see that it has a hole the size of a quarter in it. Just then the pain hits me.

“MOTHER FU-” I scream at the field, but instead of seeing the empty field, I see all of my friends walking up to me.

“Thank Celestia. I’ve been shot and you got to help me?” The last few words trail off as I take a better look at my companions. They all are trotting up to me with a malicious smile on their face.

“Guys?” I’m starting to panic.

They reach me where they proceed to start stomping me into the ground. Unable to put up a fight, I succumb to their violence. Jet, my longest known friend appears with a big tooth-filled smile on his face as he drives his hoof right into my skull.

What was that? Was that sleep?

I have always known sleep as a way to escape the horrors and hardships of my life, but instead that amplified them.

I try to tell myself that it was only a dream, but the possibility of it actually happening is too upsetting to ignore and in the darkness all alone, it’s the only thing to think about.

I look around for anything to distract me. Jet fell asleep on guard duty. Remind me never to trust him at guard duty again.
Trust. In order to survive, I have to trust my friends, but I can’t in fear that they will stab me in the back. I don’t even know these people! But that’s crazy. I slept in front of these people and they didn’t kill me. Or are they just biding their time?

“Wow, you look like Hell.” Poultice informed me.

“Thanks, just the pick me up I needed.” In fact, I had not slept at all that night. I was too worried about what my “friends” might do. “Speaking of me needing something, you said something about knowing where to find a PipBuck.”

“In good time. But now, breakfast. I saw a small caravan pass by here while you were sleeping. I was thinking we could go in showing off our guns and force her to give us some food.”

Words could not express my disgust with this plan. So Jet helped me, “No. Bucking. Way.”

Enigma offered another plan. “Maybe, we could buy some food from the caravan. I do happen to have a few caps.”
Jet’s ears perked at the mention of money. “Really?” He paused before awkwardly continuing, “How much?”

“Not much just five hundred caps,” she said nonchalantly.

“Woah, with that kind of cap-age we could buy a nice zebra carbine,” Poultice marvels.

“Yes, but right now we’re getting food. So, vamoose.”

After we piled our money together, we had a total of 623 caps. So after paying for enough food to last us a few days, we still had a lot left (“580” Jet informed me). It was enough to replace the crappy single barrel shotgun for the best gun in the caravan’s wares, a 10 millimeter pistol. Having bought that and a respectable amount of bullets, we still had 534 caps.

Now that breakfast was done, I needed to know where I could find this PipBuck. When I asked Poultice about it, she spun around in a circle pointed in front of her and said, “This way.” I was starting to think she didn’t know, herself, but I didn’t have any other plans. So, we set off. I made sure to bring the rear. I couldn’t have one of those ponies behind me.

A lone figure stands less than 25 feet away.

Yet even with the proximity, I cannot identify what it is. It looks loosely like a pony, but instead has huge forelegs and seemingly no snout. Its skin is stretched tight against the muscles in its forelegs and neck. It has no lips, making it seem like it is always snarling. Its proportions are completely off.

“Super mutants,” Poultice says, answering my unasked question. “Best to kill first, ask questions never.”

She fires three shots from her rifle in quick succession right into its skull, killing the beast.

I go over to loot the body. It was holding a sledgehammer in its mouth. The weapon is heavy and impractical. Melee weapons are terribly useless anyways, so I leave it.

Jet stares at it suddenly realizing he has no weapons. “Um Ic, can you carry some of my stuff. I need that sledgehammer.”
“That piece of crap? No, no, no, no, I will not let you waste your bag space on that. Here have my shotgun.” The pistol is a more versatile weapon anyway.

“Really? Thanks.”

I stare back at the repugnant beast, lying on the ground. It is actually easier to look at without its head. “I have a feeling we are going to see a lot more of these.”

Two hours of uneventful walking followed. We saw a few more of these super mutants, but we kept quiet enough that we snuck right past them. I am bored out of my mind. For some reason I thought that becoming an adventurer would be, I don’t know, adventurous? But instead, it is long walks interrupted by avoiding conflict.

Mostly just to relieve the boredom I ask Poultice about super mutants. She responds with an angry, “Buck off.”

So I trot over to the only other knowledgeable pony in our group, Enigma.

“What’s the deal with super mutants?” I ask her.

Her face hardens before saying, “What’s there to say? They are ponies who have been through a combination of radiation and taint and because of that have lost most of their brains. They’re not as gone as zombies, but still aren’t ponies.”
“What does that mean?”

“It means that they can still use their brain to speak, shoot, and even devise simple plans, but they have lost the ability to control their emotions, or should I say emotion.”

“Which is that?”

“Rage”

“Well, why don’t we shoot them?”

“They like to hunt in packs, so if we shoot one we risk upsetting the pack. You saw how it took three shots to the head to kill it. And that was just a drone. There are others that have thicker skin and even some with the ability to use more powerful weapons like battle saddles.”

That shut me up. A super mutant using a minigun. Just the thought of that made me scared.

“What is that?”

“The Stable-Tec Regional Production Office” Poultice reads off the sign standing no more than four feet away.

“Oh, right.” I blush at my inability to read a sign. Trying to cover my embarrassment, I say “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know. I’ve past by this place a few times, but I never went in. I just figured that since this says Stable-Tec and that is the same as the company that makes PipBucks.” Wow, and here I thought she was just leading us in a random direction.

We walk over to the door. It seems like the only part of this entire building that isn’t falling apart is the door. The ceiling is sagging. The walls are crumbling. The windows are overgrown with plant life, but the door looks as if it was made yesterday. This is probably because of magical enchantments on the door. I look at the door. It is a giant gear fit perfectly in a gear-shaped hole in the wall. In fact, I don’t even see how it could open. A quick look at it shows that it is locked. A single terminal is attached to the wall. The monitor is completely smashed probably due to somepony’s frustration at his own inability to hack it.

“Yep, it’s broken,” Jet points out the obvious. “How are we gonna get in?”

I scowl at Jet for voicing the question already on everyone’s mind. But still, how are we going to get in? The computer is smashed so there was no way to get access through that. The windows are all covered with wired glass and the many openings were all filled with large vines pushing their way into the building. Why are the plants so eager to get in? Finally, there is a small section of the wall that had collapsed leaving an opening large enough for a pony to get into. However, it’s three stories high and unless one of us has been hiding wings, there is no way up there.

Unless…

“Oh no. Nononononono. I am not gonna be thrown from a tree.” Jet was emphatically against my plan.

“Come on. It’s simple. All you have to do is climb up the tree. I’ll pull back the rope which you are going to tie on the tree. Then I’ll shoot you across the ten-foot gap between tree and the building where you will land in the crevice barely big enough for a pony into the inside of a mysteriously locked building.” Now that I said it aloud I am beginning to understand his problems with my plan.

“That is the worst plan ever.”

“Poultice, Enigma, care to back me up?” By this point I am just trying to salvage a little bit of my pride.

“I’m sorry honey, but that plan sucks more than Nightmare Moon at making night eternal.” My heart sank with those words.
Enigma thinks I’m an idiot.

“Yeah. I mean, those trees are dead, they probably won’t even bend,” Poultice added.

“Really? That’s your problem with the plan? How about everything is wrong with it?” Ouch.

Seeing that this plan was bringing the nightmare of all my friends betraying me to life, I conceded. “Do any of you have any better ideas?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Enigma boasted. “That hole looks to be about twenty feet up, far out of reach by any… normal method.” She stares at me when she says this. I blush again because of my stupidity. “So my plan is simple. We pile up the debris into steps so we can reach it.”

We take all the parts of the building that have fallen off and pile them up. We also take a felled tree and put it on top. However we are still six feet away from the opening.

“Great we still can’t make it” Jet states.

“Then we will have to use somepony as a step” Enigma explains, rather annoyed that her plan didn’t work perfectly. She thinks for a bit. “Okay. Ic and I will go in the building and go around to the entrance and open it from the inside. Jet, you will be the step and Poultice, you guard him while we open the door.”

“Why do I have to be the step?” Jet whined

“I don’t much like you”

The dank interior of the building is much the same as the exterior. The walls are water damaged and crumbling. The room is a corner office that looks like at one point had a fantastic view into the forest. Now the only thing you could see is the blackened twigs we call trees and a spritebot buzzing along.

We walk into through the door. The next room is a large room with the same boring white walls, asbestos-covered ceilings and boxed cubicles that you would normally find in an office. However something is weird. The vines I saw outside are growing over the entire floor. But I guess that makes sense. They were pouring in through the windows so the fact that they are inside is not surprising.

It is still dark and if we were ever going to find our way to the entrance, we are going to need light. Neither Enigma nor I have a light on our leg so we need to find a light switch. It’s too dark to simply scan the walls, in fact the only reason I could see at all is because of the hole in the wall in the room behind me.

“Oh, a-doy,” Enigma says as she facehoofs, “unicorn.” She focuses her magic to hold up her weapon, a Barrett 50 cal. sniper rifle. It looks sleek and in good condition. I look at my 10 millimeter pistol. It is horribly beaten up and not nearly as impressive. And I haven’t even used it yet!

The light pours over the room coating it in a dull layer of gold, giving it an even spookier vibe. The next thing I notice is that the vines not only crawl along the floor, but also creep up the walls, covering the windows. That certainly explains why it is so dark, but makes me wonder. What caused the vines to grow all over the room?

I shove that to the back of my mind. I have to focus on getting the door open and that means getting downstairs. “This way.” I lead Enigma to closest corner of the building, hoping to find the stairs. Instead there is an unmarked door. I try the handle. “Damn, it’s locked.”

We begin to trot the opposite direction when I get an idea. “Wait, I wanna try something.” I walk back to the door, stopping two feet away from it. I look it over. Yeah, this is going to work. I walk backwards a few paces before sprinting at the door, spinning around at the last second and giving a hard buck straight to the center of the door.

Smash! The door gives breaks open. Or rather, it breaks apart smashing to a hundred little pieces strewn about the room. The door was very weak, but I guess two hundred years will do that to a door that looked like it was originally pretty flimsy. The room itself is a small dank office just like the one we entered the building from. There is a working terminal on the desk in the center of the room and a few cabinets in the corner of the room.

“I can’t believe no one else has thought of that before.”

“Well, the main entrance has been closed, so no one has had the chance,” Enigma says condescendingly. Great, I’m being an idiot again in front of Enigma.

I flip the light switch, but nothing happens. I trot over to the terminal. There is a small light flashing. The label explains that this means insufficient power. Darn. There is a small safe hiding underneath the desk. I try to open it, but predictably it is locked. Note to self: learn how to pick locks.

“Oh well. I guess we should let the others in now.”

BEWARE THE HYBRIDS.

The message was written on the wall opposite to us in huge drawn out letters. The letters got smaller and closers to the ground as the words progressed. By the end, the letters had fallen to ground, landing near a pony’s skeleton. I felt sick as I realized the pony had written it in his own blood.

This floor is disturbing. The last one was peaceful; a little weird at first, but it just seemed like everyone had gotten up and left. With cubicles set up and ready to work, it felt safe, as if the bombs never went off. But this floor was completely different. The cubicles had been torn apart and there were long dead ponies strewn about everywhere.

“Stay alert,” Enigma said. “There might be something down here.”

We creep around the corner. The rest of the room looks the same. Nothing is moving, so we assume the “hybrids” must have left, however the bodies on the floor remind us of the seriousness of the situation.

I take a harder look at these pony skeletons. They are concentrated at the window, as if they were staring at something when they died. And they all had holes right through the top of their heads, all in the same spot. The vines had grown through their ribcages and into their skulls, exiting through the hole. Plants have no respect for the dead.

I realize that I am searching through the pocket of a dead unicorn’s clothes while thinking that. I realize that I am doing the same thing. I shake that thought. After all, I need to do this to survive. I find nothing useful, until I reach the pony who had been writing the message on the wall. I search his pockets and find a voice recorder with a recording in it. The recorder looks long broken, but the recording itself looks pristine, being inside the recorder for protection. Man, I wish I had a PipBuck.

“All clear,” Enigma says. Oh yeah, I was supposed to be on high alert. “Whatever killed these ponies is long gone.”
She stares at the massage on the wall. “What do you think the hybrids are?” I ask her.

“They could be super mutants. I mean these ponies have been dead for a while, probably right after the bombs went off. Super mutants do look a bit like they have been fused with a beast so…” She sounds so confident. I should trust her opinion. Trust. That brings memories of my nightmare back. I shudder a bit.

She notices, “What’s wrong?”

I shrug, trying to play it off, “this place just feels so… cold.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Every time I get a glimpse of pre-apocalypse life, I get the same way.” She stops talking then shakes it off, saying, “Come on we have to let your friends in.”

The ground floor is just as dark and covered with vines as the last two. There are bodies littering the floor just like the floor above it. The only difference being that they weren’t huddled around the windows. There was a small reception desk in the middle of the room where a skeleton of a pony sits in front of a terminal.

We do a quick sweep of the room, remembering to keep my guard up this time, where we find no threats.

I jump back to the terminal, anxious to see what is on it. Unlike the terminal upstairs, this one has a full battery. To my joy it is happy to give its secrets freely. There are three entries, the first of which says “Open Vault-Tec Vault Door.” I quickly click that button before reading the other two entries.

There is a loud hissing noise as the door slides out of its slot and rolls open.

My cheery-faced friend pokes his head in. “Yay! I knew you could do it, Ic.”

“As if! You were whining ever since they went in,” Poultice says following him in through door.

I wasn’t whining. I was complaining.” I smile at the sight of my friends. There is no way this group could stab me in the back.
Now ensured that they are safe, I check the other two messages: one labeled “New Project!” and one labeled “defective supply.” I click on the first one which says:

4.13.77

The big ponies up at corporate have assigned us a new project, to work on underground plant growth. Apparently, they have given this assignment to all offices to get many creative solutions. What does this mean for you? It means we will have a building-wide meeting to discuss this tomorrow at 8:00 A.M. so don’t be late.

Signed,
Mellon Shimmer

This must be what the vines on the ground were. I click on the next one.

6.7.77

I know a lot of rumors have been spreading so I will clarify things. The rumble you all felt yesterday was in fact the factory downstairs malfunctioning again, but there was no explosion this time. Instead, the factory for some unknown reason started to speed up and put too little energy in the spark batteries it was making before sealing them. Technicians from headquarters will be in tomorrow to repair it so look your best. As such, the factory will not be running for the next couple of days so those of you who work the line can take the next two days off.

Furthermore, the corporate big shots up in headquarters did not want to ship a defective group so we will be replacing the one in our offices with the defectives (you can’t just throw them away). That being said, as a backup in case the defective batteries fail, we will be hooking up the network to the generator in the basement. So you don’t have to worry about the
computers crashing in the middle of a project.

Signed,
Mellon Shimmer

That explains why the computer upstairs didn’t work, while the computer down here does. It’s funny how the wasteland likes to explain your misfortunes after you have them.

“Hey guy, you’ll never guess what I just…” I look up to see no pony there, “…found.” I knew I shouldn’t trust them. They’ve gone and abandoned me.

“What was that, Ic?” Jet say, walking back around a corner.

“Where’s Poultice and Enigma?”

“Looking at the map.”

I follow Jet to the map. Like I suspected there were three floors and a basement. The basement contained three rooms, the factory, the research wing, and the generator room. I wanted to search through each of the rooms because they seemed like they were the most important.

“We’ll go to the generator room first. I’m tired of seeing only by Enigma’s horn.”

The basement consists of a short hallway with three doors: one to the left, research, one at the end of the hall, the factory, and one to the right, the generator room. We go into the room on the right.

Unsurprisingly, in the generator room, there is a generator. It takes up about three quarters of the small room, leaving a pony wide gap to the left and right to access the machine. There is a single terminal sitting at the front of the machine. It, like the one upstairs, is off, with the blinking light. Why would they waste electricity to tell you that there isn’t enough electricity? It seems to me that that is unneces- “WOAH!”

I fall on my face. In the dim light and my thoughts I completely missed the fact that there are no vines in this room. I had just assumed they would be everywhere.

“Watch the step,” Enigma says cheerily as I pull myself back up.

“Focus you two,” Poultice says. “You can flirt with each other after the mission.”

I blush, but Enigma, unfazed says, “Calm down, Poultice. We searched this place from the top down. Besides these vines, it’s empty.”

“Fine, but still let’s get this generator on, search this place, and get out. There’s something of about this place.”
We flip the on switch. It sputters a bit before eventually roaring to life. The lights flicker on with the terminal.

Curious, I look walk over to the terminal. It has the same two messages as the one upstairs along with two more. They were named “Exciting Competition” and “Unforeseen Complications.” I open the first one which reads:

10.10.77

So you all know that I got a free PipBuck from headquarters. That is why you had no boss yesterday. Well, they told me that it sticks little needles into my skin to monitor my health. I can’t stand needles.

So I had a great idea. Since I cannot use it, I’ll give it to one of you. The next employee of the month will get my PipBuck. So everypony start kissing my ass.

PS. I had a safe installed in my office so don’t even try to take it.

Signed,
Mellon Shimmer

That must have been that room, where I kicked down the door before. I am getting excited. A PipBuck is in this building. I jump out of my seat, exclaiming, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

The quizzical stares of my friends prompt me to say, “PipBuck, upstairs” before sprinting out of the room.
I dash up the stairs in a dash, not caring if my friends are following me. I need that PipBuck. I run through the main hall and climb the stairs. The lights make it so much easier to traverse the lumpy vine-covered ground. I make it all the way to the third floor with haste; after all I had just cleared this entire building on the way down.

I am running through the cubicles when I my hooves slip out from under me. I fall flat on my face for the second time in five minutes and let me tell you, experience does not make the pain less.

I look back rubbing my snout. What did I slip on? The only things on the ground are more vines.

Oh well. I have a PipBuck to scavenge. I turn and trot more carefully to the door which I had knocked down, before.
From this angle I can see that the terminal has been turned on, drawing power from the generator.

Giggling crazily, I march over to the terminal, “Come on PipBuck.” Damn, it’s locked.

“No,” I will not let my chances of getting a PipBuck be ruined this easily.

I examine the screen. It kindly tells me I have three tries to find the password. I have no idea what it could be. I stare at the screen as it stares back at me. I look at the words closely

In a fumble attempt to guess it, I type in password. ”Incorrect.” Darn. Well that would be a dumb password.

“Alright focus,” what do I know about Mellon Shimmer. She has a dumb name, but that’s not going to help me. I try to remember the three messages about her. The first one was about underground plant growth. The second was about defective batteries. The third one was about the PipBuck. What did they have in common?

I stare at the terminal itself this time. It is a regulation terminal, with its short screen, monitor encompassing the entire CPU, and its keyboard built in. The logo in the top right corner of the monitor simply says: Stable-Tec™. Stable-Tec. Stable-Tec! That’s it! Each message complained about corporate, using that exact word. Corporate has to be the password.

I type that in. Wrong still.

With nothing else to do, I stare at the screen for a whole minute. I can feel it suck the soul out of my body, taunting me with the perfect prize, but not giving me the answer. Eventually I get so frustrated I flip the entire desk.

I stand there fuming over the now broken monitor. “Screw you password.”

In my rage I almost don’t notice a small note attached to the bottom of the desk. It read: tr0ub4dour. No. Bucking. Way. The password was on the bottom of the desk the whole time!? And I destroyed the terminal!

Fuck me all the way to Sascanterwan!

Staring at the broken torture device, my resentment rises. The faint flashing light stares me down. All the pain this machine has caused me and even broken, it doesn’t have the reverence to stop taunting me.

The light. Maybe the machine is not broken. I had disconnected the computer from the wall in my rage, so the “insufficient power” light came on. But that couldn’t happen unless the computer still worked.

I rush back over to the terminal picking it up and bringing it back to the wall and plugging in the cord. By my guess it would bring up the login screen immediately so I typed in tr0ub4dour and hit enter. Again I have to assume that it worked and that unlock safe was first.

I hear a creaking noise. I look up at the doorway. Nothing’s there.

I hit enter again and I hear the most satisfying sound ever, a click as the safe unlocks.

There’s that creaking noise again. But still nothing’s at the doorway.

I open the safe and there sitting in pristine condition is the sought after PipBuck. I pick it up. It’s a special edition PipBuck with the inscription, THE BOSS 8/10, on the side. Other than that it looks the same as a regular PipBuck only bulkier, very fitting of The Boss.

I look up and there is a smiling face staring back at me. “Oh, Celestia!” I jump from both surprise and familiarity. I put the PipBuck in my bag.

“What’s up Jet?”

He just smiles back, staring at me. “Okay, that’s getting creepy.”

He says nothing. Instead he raises a hoof.

“Jet, what are you doing?”

He strikes his hoof out and hits me right in the face with a ton more force than I thought could be possible from him. It knocks me down. He moves over to body and raises his hoof again. I try to move, but my I now have a splitting headache.
“Wh-What are…” I say groggily.

He pounds my head again. I can’t take any more of this. As I slowly drift to blackness, I look at Jet to see that horrible smile on his face.

My best friend just betrayed me, but I’m not angry. I’m not disappointed either. There’s only one emotion I have as Jet rears back for a third blow.

Fear.

Footnote: Level up!
New perk: Terminal Technician - you have a natural knack for computers. All you have to do is throw one across the room and it tells you its secrets. +10 science

Quest perk: PipBucking -You are a real adventurer now, with a real PipBuck. You have gained all the abilities of the PipBuck, including bag organization and a radio. However you do not have access to the more crucial features, such as, S.A.T.S. and E.F.S.