//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 // Story: Fallout Equestria: A Child's Hope // by RLYoshi //------------------------------// “Coby! Are you still awake? “Uh...no? “Funny. You know Terminal’s gonna be pissed off if we leave late because you slept in, right? “Yeah, Force, I know...I just need to finish something up. “Alright, but be quick. A full night’s sleep doesn’t come along very often... “... “Whew. Maybe he’s right, though. I should go quick. Alright, I’ll just tell you about the important things that happened yesterday... Cobalt had many questions, but he couldn’t ask them. Looking around at the buildings surrounding him, he had lost his ability to speak. He had never seen an actual town; back in Stable 14, all he saw were a series of hallways and rooms, and the warehouse he had been in the day before was just a single isolated building. (And with how much it was falling apart, he had trouble calling it a building without imagining air quotes.) Force watched him with a chuckle. “What’s wrong, Coby? Manticore got your tongue?” He had picked up the habit of calling his newest companion by his nickname, as had Gentle. Terminal never addressed Cobalt by name in the first place. The purple colt began walking, continuing to look around at the structures. A few townsfolk were giving him odd looks, confused by the young colt who was walking in circles and looking up. Eventually, Force stomped a hoof in front of him, catching his attention. “Instead of just looking at everything, how about we show you around?” he suggested. Cobalt nodded, and followed the stallion as he began walking. Gentle walked alongside the young colt, occasionally waving to any bystanders. “Right there is Terminal’s house,” the tail-less mare explained as they trotted along, pointing towards a large but torn-up building. “He spends most of his time there, when we aren’t out hunting raiders. Force and I stay in that house over there.” She gestured to a smaller but cleaner house, almost directly across the road from Terminal’s. “Ain’t much, but it’s home,” Force chimed in. “You’ll probably be staying there for a while too, Coby. Unless you’ve got somewhere else to sleep?” Silence was the answer to the question. The unicorn turned around and saw Gentle walking beside empty space where there used to be a colt. The mare, who had been looking away for all of three seconds, turned back to notice the same thing. “...goddess dammit,” Force cursed under his breath. Buy, Try, Stay Alive That was the name of the house Cobalt stood in front of, judging by the sign above the front door. Why a house would have a name, he wasn’t sure. Then again, towns and Stables had names, so why wouldn’t houses? He had been walking with Force and Gentle when something glittering on the ground caught his eye, and without a second thought, he began trotting over to it. It turned out to be a discarded bottle cap. He had picked it up, even though he already had a few bags full of the things. When he turned around, Force and Gentle were gone; they had continued walking, not noticing his absence. It only took the young colt another couple minutes to wander over to this building. Unlike rooms back in Stable 14, where you were expected to knock on the door and await a response before entering, ponies were going in and out of this house without pause. Deciding that Sunsettlement - or this particular house at least - had exceptions to this rule, he pushed the door to “Buy, Try, Stay Alive” open and walked inside. A few mares and stallions were inside, trotting around and talking with one another. Being the smallest living being in the area, Cobalt had trouble seeing much of the interior. All he really noticed was a bored-looking stallion standing behind a counter. “Hello there, and welcome to ‘Buy, Try, Stay Alive’’,” the stallion said to Cobalt in a monotone voice. “Boss is out for a few hours, so I’m runnin’ the shop until she gets back. Now whaddya want?” This pony scared Cobalt, but he had asked him a question, so it was only polite to answer. “Um...I think I’m lost.” “Well, I just told you where you are. If that doesn’t help, I got nothin’.” He shrugged, uncaring. “Look, if you’re not here to buy somethin’, get goin’.” Even though he had no intention of buying anything (or, for that matter, any knowledge on what was available to buy), Cobalt pulled out his bag of coins and strained to drop them on the counter. The stallion looked at the bag with sudden interest at first, but upon leaving the young earth pony’s maw, the drawstring loosened and the bag opened up a touch, revealing its contents. Rather than look pleased at the sight of money, the stallion raised an eyebrow. “What the hell is this?” he asked rhetorically. “Well...money...?” Cobalt grew even more nervous. Did he do something wrong? “I don’t have a lot, but...is there anything I can buy with it?” The stallion opened his mouth to answer, but his eyes wandered to Cobalt’s saddlebags. Though they weren’t exactly bulging, he could tell they contained something else. “Whatcha got in those?” “Um...not much. Mostly just bags of useless bottle caps.” For some reason, the room got quiet as soon as Cobalt said that. The stallion behind the counter looked interested again. “...I’m sorry?” Deciding to show rather than tell, the colt withdrew the five sacks of caps. He didn’t count them - even if he was interested in doing so, he’d likely get bored of it quickly - but he knew he had to have at least a couple hundred of those things spread throughout the bags. Even though he firmly believed in the saying “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it”, he was beginning to wonder why he felt compelled to carry so many bottle caps around. “...well, Celestia stick the sun up my anus and call me a candle,” the stallion muttered. “That’s a lot of caps.” He cleared his throat. “Er...you said these were useless?” “Yeah. I found them in some old warehouse.” He left out the part about them belonging to now-dead raider ponies. The stallion thought for about five seconds before a wicked grin crossed his lips. “Well...you know, carryin’ all these around is gonna do a wonder on your back. Might wanna get rid of ‘em. How about I take ‘em off your hooves?” “Really?” “Sure! Not a problem!” Taking the colt’s silence as an affirmative, the stallion swept the sacks of bottle caps behind the counter. He seemed a lot cheerier now than he was when Cobalt first walked in. “So, anyway...you gonna buy somethin’?” Cobalt walked out of the store feeling both confused and pleased. The stallion had been in a much nicer mood after taking the bottle caps, and while he seemed a little irked by it, he agreed to accept the pre-war coins to buy things. Apparently the coins were outdated now, but the young colt didn’t have any recently issued currency on him. He’d have to ask Force or Gentle about that later. It took some bartering, but he gave up half of his remaining coins in exchange for some extra revolver ammo (the stallion was nice enough to pinpoint the type of ammo he needed upon seeing the weapon), some paper clips, and replacement pellets for his toy gun. With the trade completed, Cobalt had left and returned to looking for Force and Gentle. “There you are!” They found him first. “Cobalt, you can’t just go wandering off like that!” Force scolded, using the colt’s full name for emphasis. “Sunsettlement may be home, but for strangers like you, it’s not a fun place to be stuck in.” Cobalt looked down, feeling guilty. The unicorn sighed and put a hoof on his back, leading him away. “Alright, come on. I’m guessing you were just inside the store, so we can cross that off our list of places to visit.” “Which is pretty much the only place here aside from houses to go to,” Gentle added, walking up to stand on the opposite side of Cobalt from where Force was. “I bought some stuff,” the colt suddenly said. “The pony inside was really nice and helpful!” Force couldn’t help but smile. “Nice and helpful? That'll be the day. What’d you buy?” The three of them sat against a wall and Cobalt pulled out his recently bought goods to show them. Gentle seemed shocked that this young pony was already buying ammo without having even fired a real gun, but before she could say so, Force made a statement of his own. “You know, you probably don’t need that many paper clips,” he chuckled. In addition to the ten that the colt had bought, he had eight from home. “You gonna save the Wasteland by keeping all of its paper neat?” Cobalt laughed a bit. “No. It’s a trick I learned to open vents from the inside.” Gentle and Force looked at him like he was crazy. He continued. “Plus, I heard you can pick locks using paper clips and a screwdriver, so that might come in handy.” “Well, do you have a - yes you do.” Gentle’s question was answered before it was even fully asked when Cobalt pulled out the screwdriver he had been carrying all this time. “Well, if we ever need to open locked doors or get out of air vents, we’ll call you.” She giggled. The colt couldn’t help but feel that her giggle was at his expense. “Well, it’s gonna get late soon,” Force noted, looking at the setting sun. “Let’s head to the house. We’re gonna be resting up tomorrow, then the day after we’re going on another little trip.” “Trip?” Cobalt inquired as he put away his belongings. “Hunting raiders and slavers. There’s always a few camps set up within walking distance from here.” “Walking distance over the course of two or three days, you mean,” Gentle muttered. Force shrugged. “The more you travel around the Wasteland, the longer you can go before reaching your limit and thinking you should’ve stayed at home.” His face grew slightly dark. “And when you’re motivated like I am, that limit might as well not exist with how rarely you’re gonna hit it.” He turned and began heading to the house he shared with Gentle. The medical mare followed, keeping Cobalt at her side. “What got you so distracted, anyway?” she asked the colt curiously. “I saw something on the ground,” he answered. “Turns out it was just a useless bottle cap.” “Oh, trust me, even one bottle cap can have a use.” She smiled. “For one thing, you apparently bought a bunch of paper clips with it.” The little pony looked confused. “Huh? No, I bought them with coins.” “Really? I thought ‘Buy, Try, Stay Alive’ only accepted bottle caps as currency.” Cobalt stopped walking. “...what?” “Currency...you know, money?” She looked at him, worried. “Coby, is something wrong?” “...no. I’m fine.” He kept walking, but didn’t speak up again. Terminal’s words echoed in his brain: “All I'm trying to get across to him is that if he doesn't know things, he's gonna die. Plain and simple.” Well, he had already gotten cheated due to not knowing one thing. Who knew what other things he lacked knowledge of would come back to bite him in the flank? The house was slightly bigger on the inside than the outside gave the impression of, but not much. There were only three rooms: a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The door to go inside led right to the kitchen, and the bedroom and bathroom were accessible via doors on either side of the room. The kitchen was small; Cobalt recalled his own bedroom being bigger. There was a single small table, a cupboard, a stove, and a pile of boxes in the corner. The boxes, according to Force, were empty, but made for good chairs. The bedroom had a mattress, a cot, and a single blanket on each. It was even smaller than the kitchen, and aside from the sleeping arrangements, had no furniture whatsoever. Only the bathroom had less furniture, and that’s because it didn’t have any; just a sink and a toilet. Despite the entire house paling in comparison size-wise to even just a classroom from Stable 14, Cobalt found it had a pleasant, cozy atmosphere to it. Almost like his room from home. Force decided to let the others have the bedroom, while he went over to Terminal’s place for the night. Gentle let Cobalt take the mattress while she slept on the cot, and before the moon was fully visible, everypony was in bed. She had been asleep for a couple hours when a noise woke her up. Roused from her sleep, her ears flicked, trying to figure out what the sound was. At first, it sounded like the squeaking of a Radroach, but once she had woken up more and her brain was back to full speed, it began to sound different. Lifting her head and turning towards where the sound was coming from, she noticed Cobalt on the bed, tossing and turning. The noise she heard was actually a combination of the mattress squeaking under the colt’s weight, and him whimpering in his sleep. “Coby?” she whispered, slowly getting up and walking over to the side of his bed. As soon as she got there, his eyes shot open and he yelped. “Coby! What’s wrong?” The colt just stared back at her, breathing quickly. He couldn’t think of anything to say, and just whimpered again as he lay back down. Gentle extended a hoof, brushing his mane tenderly. “Did you have a bad dream?” she asked quietly. Cobalt only nodded. “Do you want to talk about it?” Cobalt didn’t respond with words. Instead, he sniffled, then began loading up a recording on his PipBuck. Gentle watched curiously as he did so and was soon surprised when a piece of audio began playing. “Ugh. Cobalt’s tenth birthday is in three days, and he still hasn’t earned his cutie mark... The audio diary entry finished, and Gentle could only sit in shock. Cobalt hadn’t said anything about his mother, aside from her being the Overmare of Stable 14. Now she knew why. “Did...did you dream about her?” she asked hesitantly. Cobalt nodded. “Th-that message...it was playing over and over...and she was chasing me...” Gentle looked at him sadly. Being afraid of one’s own mother...it wasn’t something that should happen. Slowly, she leaned forward and enveloped him in a comforting embrace. “Shh...it’s okay...” He hugged back, shaking noticeably. For a few minutes, they just stayed like that, sitting on the bed and hugging each other. Finally, Cobalt’s shivering had dulled, and he looked up at Gentle. “Thank you...” he said quietly. She smiled. “Are you okay now?” He nodded. “Can you...stay with me tonight?” Surprised, Gentle looked down at him and blinked. After a second, her warm smile returned. “Of course.” Crawling into bed beside him, Gentle kept the colt in a hug. He didn’t resist, and after a few minutes, both of them had dozed off into peaceful dreams. “We slept in pretty late...Force came in and woke us up at almost noon. I stayed in the house all day while the others went around buying supplies. I didn’t want to get distracted again and end up wasting more time and money. “Tomorrow we’re heading out again...hopefully we find Force’s sister. I can tell it’s been bugging him that he can’t find her...and really, it’s been bugging me too. The whole idea of slavery... “... “I should get going now. I’ll try to keep you updated on how it goes... “...if this is the last audio diary entry on my PipBuck, then you can assume I died. Quest Added MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU Help Force locate his sister. Footnote: Level Up (5) New Perk: No Refunds. Now that you know how the money system works, your Barter has increased by 5. In addition, you can convince shopkeepers to let you buy things with pre-war bits if you lack the necessary caps.