Fallout Equestria: Jakintsu

by Clint Ambrose

Chapter 3: Soul

Somewhere in Equestria

“Hoy, vessel!” somepony was shouting. “Anypony in there?”
I opened my eyes groggily. I was at the bottom of a steeply slanted metal tube lined with busted displays and filled with debris. A large metal support beam lay upon my chest, and my EFS was flickering in and out. My saddlebags were missing, and I couldn’t remember how I had gotten here. I cast my gaze around, trying to find my possessions when a spotlight illuminated me from above.
“Oi! You alive down there?” Somepony—a mare by the voice—encased in metal armor called from the top, the spotlight emanating from her helmet. I shifted my right wing and tried to speak, but I could do no more than squeak.
“We got a live one!” The metal-clad mare said.
“Big deal,” said a buck’s voice outside of my sight.
“Quiet, Spitzer,” the metal-clad pony said.
“We should try to rescue them,” came a deep, gravelly voice. “Before we harvest the technology inside.”
“Agreed,” the mare said. “Spitzer, ‘Hooves, Maraca, attach tow lines to me and winch me down.”
“My armor does not have a tow winch,” said the gravelly voice.
“Oh, right. Here, give me a moment… OK, I’ll winch for you, you just make like a paperweight, understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Gravel Voice.
The metal-clad mare pulled herself onto the edge of the tube backwards, then extended her wings and started to rappel down, three inch-thick cables supporting her. She came down about thirty meters, reaching the top of the debris pile—still several meters away from me.
“OK, we’re gonna start pulling up debris,” she said, and a magical glow surrounded two of the cables. The cables snaked themselves around a beam, fastening themselves tight. “OK, Spitzer, Maraca, hoist!” A magical field enveloped the beam, and the cables went taught as the beam rose upwards.
I examined my immediate surroundings, knowing that my rescue was still a long time coming. I placed my forehooves onto the beam pinning me, and once I found some purchase with my rear hooves, I pushed with all the strength I could muster. It was slow and it took several attempts, but I finally wormed out from under the beam.
“Who are you?” I rasped.
Spotlight mare swung her head down. “Hey, don’t move anymore! This whole thing could come down on you at any second.” I nodded my head. “Anyhow, my name’s Sparrow, First Lieutenant, Eleventh Power Armor Cavalry Regiment. The Blackhorse”
“Steel Ranger?” I asked. I’d heard of them in pre-war articles—magically powered strength-enhancing steel metal-matrix-composite armor and heavy weapons battle saddles. A real game changer in the war.
“Indeed, but I’m not a veteran of the Great War,” she said. “So, who are you?”
“Flag, Security Chief, Stable 68,” I said.
“Your Stable just open up recently?” Sparrow asked.
“I was trying to keep it sealed,” I answered.
“And got trapped on the outside? Figures. Well, the Rangers could use somepony like you. We found an abandoned Stable not too far from here, but we can’t get the security system to recognize us as friendlies. Mayhaps when we get you patched up, you could help us.”
“Where am I, exactly?” I asked.
“The Hoofington no-pony’s-land, right in the middle of the New Equestrian Army and the Zebra Remnant’s firing lanes. Luckily, both sides have learned to leave us Rangers alone.”
“Who’s casting the levitation spell? Or is that a talisman of some kind?” I asked as another piece of debris was raised.
“I am,” Sparrow said, flapping her wings. “Good ole TK.”
My first memory from the memory orb sprung to mind.
“If this is Sparrow, I’m sorry, honey, the spell must have locked onto you instead of your brother, Flag. Get this to him, but know that much of what I say is meant for both of you.”
“Are you an alicorn?” I asked.
Sparrow sighed. “Yes I am. Natural born, unlike those mindless creatures we keep encountering.”
“Oh, come on, Sparrow, we don’t know the origin of those things,” somepony said outside the tube’s mouth.
“Alicorns are an extremely delicate genetic mix,” Sparrow said to whoever was at the top. “There is no way that the one hundred and seventy-three catalogued meta-ponies are natural offspring of the five known alicorns left unaccounted for at war’s end.”
“Unless there was an unknown male,” the topside pony countered.
“Doubtful he’d be that promiscuous,” Sparrow said. “But possible.”
“Sparrow, who was your mother?” I asked.
“Princess Azienda, child of Princess Cadence of the Crystal Empire.”
“Any siblings?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“A twin, from what I’m told,” Sparrow said, then paused in the middle of hooking up the next piece of debris. “Funny, I seem to trust you a little too much.”
“Not too much,” I stated. “I am Flag, child of Azienda, child of Cadenza. I am your brother.”
Sparrow was silent for a moment. “We’ll confirm that later. Right now, we need to get you out of there.”
I sighed. “Agreed.” It was another hour before debris was cleared and the Steel Rangers were hoisting me over the lip of the shaft.
And the memories came pouring back in.

My comrades had me hoisted up over the lip within minutes of black out from the Fury attack. Hazard started working his medical magics on me as I coughed up water and blood.
“What was that thing?” Shasta asked. “We got a pretty good look at it, but I ain’t never seen a fish like that.”
“A Fury,” I sputtered, then heaved to empty my stomach. “That’s what my PipBuck called it. Tough as fucking hell. It’s still alive down there. Let’s move before the water level reaches here.”
“One problem, we can’t open the door,” Brindle said.
I sputtered what I thought was the last of the water out. “I’ll handle it,” I said as I staggered to my hooves. “I’ve got a cracker module on my PipBuck. It might take a while, but it’ll work.” After several shaky steps, I slumped against the control panel and levitated the datacords from my saddlebags. Stable-Tec had wisely produced datacables with amorphic photonic/magnetic/electric plugs that could fit into any data port and configure themselves to match. Even with the alien tech, I could set my cracker module to remove the door’s firewalls and access the control systems.
“OK, so now we wait,” I said, three seconds before the door irised open. “Well, waiting time over. Let’s go!”

My mind rushed back to the present, reeling and setting gears in motion. Was this memory problem a side effect of the heirloom memory orb that left to me by Mother? Or was this a sign of physical damage from my (presumed) escape?
“Hey, you’re back,” Sparrow observed. I was outside of the metal shaft, which had apparently recently buried itself into a crater about a hundred meters across. I was laid out on a cot in a command tent erected on the crater lip. My armor, chem suit, weapons and personal affects had been stripped from me. Several armored ponies were clustered around the metal cylinder, the exterior of which was scorched black by intense heat.
“I think I went unconscious,” I stated. “I just hope this isn’t permanent. If Mother did this to me…”
“I doubt Mother would do such a thing on purpose,” Sparrow said, her purple magic field wrapping around her helmet’s neckseal.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Looking upon you with my own eyes,” Sparrow said as she lifted her helmet off her head.
She was beautiful, but more than that…
She looked a hell of a lot like my mother, Azienda.
Her crimson mane with streaks of gold and silver was cut short, and hung flat against her royal purple coat. Her eyes were silver instead of gold, and she had a short snout and horn like me. The latter was so short it didn’t interfere with her helmet. Unlike mother, her eyes were silver, not golden, and her facial structure was more angular, more like my own.
“Shit,” Sparrow said, her alto voice smooth and silky without her helmet’s amplification system. “Just my luck that the first cute buck I meet is my brother.”
I laughed. “Sounds like my luck, too. Damn, there’s no denying you’re Mother’s daughter.”
“I have gotten that before,” Sparrow said. “Usually followed by ‘I wonder if you’ll turn against Equestria, too.’”
“Not a very trusting bunch, I assume?”
“Ah-nope,” Sparrow said. Her drawl was less pronounced than my own, but definitely there.
“Ah, the tribal is awake,” somepony said next to me. I turned my head to see a pasty-colored mare in a set of filigreed power armor, her helmet removed to show fairy-like pink eyes. She was definitely a looker, but her angular, ethereal beauty didn’t hide the fact that…
Oh, dear. She had cut off her own horn to wear power armor.
“I am Limburger Cheese the Elder,” the mare stated. “Senior surviving member of the Ministry of Wartime Technology, and leader of the Steel Rangers. Although I doubt that means much to a tribal like yourself.”
I sat up on the cot and swung my rear hooves off the edge. “Tell me sister,” I began, hocking up a load of phlegm from my throat and spitting to the side, “Are all Surfacers inconsiderate, or are they just stupid?”
Limburger Cheese’s expression soured as Sparrow chuckled. I hadn’t realized mares could chuckle.
I lowered myself to all four hooves and stretched my wings and legs tentatively. Looks like the forelegs are still attached. That’s a good start. Wings are still intact. Wiggle the hindlegs, yep, they’re functioning fine. Yup, I’m fine.
“I am Flag, Security Chief of Stable 68,” I said. “I hear that I might be of assistance?

“You need to rest,” Hazard said for the umpteenth time.
“We need to save Reggie,” I said as I limped down the hall. “His PipBuck tag shows he’s still alive and nearby.”
“Flag, you took quite a thrashing back there,” the medic argued.
“I know. I had front row tickets,” I quipped.
“You’re damn lucky the thing didn’t chomp you in half, much less to be alive, much less to have no spinal damage,” Hazard stated. Again, for the umpteenth time.
“After we find Reggie, we rest,” I insisted, and turned down a hall. “About a hundred yards left. I’m not stopping now.”
“Alright, 100 more yards, or I use my anesthesia spell and you don’t have any muscle control,” Hazard stated.
“Now that we’ve almost found your pal Reggie, how do you plan to get off this ship?” Shasta asked.
“Dumpling, any ideas?” I asked.
“Well… We could go to the bridge and take over,” Dumpling said. “Then we could land wherever we want to.”
“Or crash wherever we want to…” I said, palming the unencrypted controls for the next door. “Alright, Reggie, then rest, then the bridge. Let’s move.”
An oodalekka fell backwards through the doorway as it irised open. I reflexively fired into it with the fullmen karabin, blasting a large crater in its armored carapace. The propulsive force of the blast threw the beast forward and sprayed me with steaming hot gore. I charged into the room, sweeping from left to right, pumping a bolt from the fullmen karabin into each Cylonic drone I saw. Then I assessed the room.
We were in some kind of observation room that looked over three bays of some sort. Each bay had two beds with a machine between them. I watched as three Cylonic drones wrestled a screaming pegasus mare into one bed as an oodalekka laid down in the other. The walls had to be soundproofed to deafen her pleas. Once the pegasus was restrained, the machinery started. Electricity crackled along the cables as an ominous voice filled my mind.
<<Desegin kateak behar dela beti eutsi indartsu! Doan berri bat etxean jarri ahal izango da, bera!>>
“Who’s talkin’ in such a creepy manner?” Brindle asked.
“The machine,” I said as tendrils of golden light began to coalesc above the mare. “It’s the machine.”
<<Askatzea da, beraz, argia izango duten desagertzen! Askatzea da, beraz, iluntasuna duten guztiak kontsumitzen! Askatzea da, beraz Jakintsu hori sendo hazten dira!>>
“Don’t watch,” Bumpkin warned, curling into a fetal position of the floor as the tendrils flashed from gold to blood red.
<<Hartu hau arima eta doan! Hartu hau arima eta harrapatu! Hartu hau arima eta lapurtuko!>>
“We have to do something,” Shasta said as a vortex of deviously arcane energy encapsulated the mare.
“You’re right.” I drew the fullmen karabin and fired at the glass seperating us and the chamber. Their was a flash of light and a puff of smoke, but the window held, a shallow crater three inches across the only evidence of the strike.
<<"Lapurtzen da! Lapurtzen da! Lapurtzen da!>>
An inequine scream erupted from the mare, driving into my skull like a railroad spike. I collapsed to the ground, dropping the karabin from my telekinetic grasp as I drove my hooves into my ears to no avail. This was not a scream of the flesh, but of a being's core essence. Their very soul cried out in agony.
But some part of me wanted to see what was happening.
I wished I’d never looked.
The pegasus mare... Her heart was beating so hard in panic that amidst her convulsions, the blood arteries in her eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and nethers—where the vessels are closest to the surface—had burst under the pressure. Her convulsions had snapped her leg bones and ribs like twigs.
I have to break style here and say something. I’ve seen a lot of bad things in my time. But nothing puts shivers down my spine like revisiting that.
Damn iedetic memory.
Wait, how have I not mentioned that before? Yeah, I’m cursed to be an nigh-omnipotent immortal with flawless memory of all my failures. Seriously, no sarcasm—it freakin’ sucks. The bad way. And no, ponies don’t actually do that kind of oral sex—that’s something we humans...
Uh, forget that I said that. Yeah. Just... don’t ask.
Zero to awkward in three words or less, guaranteed, that’s me!
Oh, by the way—immortal means I’ll never die of old age. I could still be murdered. Bullets, artillery shells, spells, something like that could kill me.
Anyhoof, back to the gore show. The chanting kept going as a sphere of light rose out of the mare’s chest.
<<Lapurtzen gure Jaunaren Jakintsu aintza eman! Aintza eman! Aintza eman! Aintza eman!>>
I remember thinking that I was going to kill every single oodalekka and cylonic in the universe for what they were doing as the sphere traced lines of conduit and wiring in the machine to the oodalekka in the other bed.
<<Jakintsu aintza, beren gorputza eta hil behar du bere arima, bizirik iraun!>>
The sphere immersed itself in the oodalekka, and the monster’s eyes blazed brighter. The mare’s heart exploded out of her chest in a final self-destructive heave. The arcane energies in the chamber faded, and I managed to raise myself to my hooves.
“This ends now,” I said. “Everypony, get to the bridge and crash this ship. Try to get off if you can. I’ll get Reggie and draw their fire for you.”
“That’s suicide,” Shasta reminded me.
“These machines must be destroyed. We cannot risk the enemy recovering them,” I stated, picking up the fullmen karabin with my telekinesis and drawing another from my saddlebags. “But the same is true for the ship, and it likely will require several individuals to operate. There is no debating this. Now go!"

“You’re back,” Sparrow said.
“Yeah, another memory flash,” I said. “I still don’t have it all pieced together yet, though.”
“Well, perhaps you could enlighten us as to what occurred aboard the ship,” Limburger the Elder said/implied.
“Certainly,” I said. And I relayed the events aboard the alien ship as best I could, purposefully leaving out most details on I had come to be aboard the ship or on my Stable. I’d been running non-stop, as best as I could tell, since I still couldn’t figure out what had happened to Reggie. And Amy... No, I didn’t want to hurt right now.
“So these creatures were called Oodalekka?” Limburger Cheese asked after I had relayed the tale of my time aboard the alien vessel.
“And Cylonics,” I said. “They appeared to be biomechanical robots—no indications of intelligence, but better combat skills than your average pony.”
“How did you get into the escape pod?” Sparrow asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “My memory’s spotty. I might have taken a knock to the head or something. I am recovering bits and pieces. I just hope Reggie got out ok.”
“We didn’t find him in the pod,” Sparrow said. “The debris field is hundreds of miles across. If he’s alive, his PipBuck will lead him to safety.”
“Miraculous things, PipBucks,” I said.
“Indeed. Which is why we’ll be confiscating yours,” Limburger Cheese dead panned. “Ponyvois technology is remarkably advanced... and rare in Equestria.”
“Ponyvois?” I asked.
“Your PipBuck rests over both forelegs,” Sparrow said.
“Yeah, lets it do mirrored computing and have equipment redundancy,” I said. “Of course, the redundancy is pointless—PipBucks are nigh indestructible. Uses a fiber-optic cable wrapped in a titanium sheath for data interlink. Mine runs across my back.”
“True Gamma-series PipBucks are worn on one leg,” Sparrow said. “Double processors indicates Ponyvois origin.”
“Ponyvois?” I asked.
“A backwards nation in the Western Sea,” Limburger stated. “Barbarous cannibals... and the best warriors on the planet. They always had a technological leg up on us, though. But with your PipBuck and technician goggles, we can upgrade the spell matrixes on all our Steel Ranger armor to match. That’ll make us potent enough that the nem-gee will fall in line behind us. Insolent welps.” Whatever ‘nem-gee’ was, Limburger Cheese the Elder did not like it.
“They are not part of our pre-war command structure,” Sparrow countered. “Nor were we part of theirs. While hegemony would be preferrable under present conditions, we must respect their decision to keep fighting the war.”
“Who’s this ‘nem-gee?’” I asked.
“New Equestrian Military Goverment,” Sparrow said. “The remains of Equestria’s armed forces and the government officials not wiped out by the balefire or the Partypooper Contigency."
"Elder Cheese," said the Gravel Voice pony from before. I turned to see him standing outside the tent. I thought it strange that his armor seemed... fused together in some places. Maybe he'd been in a fire or something. "Star Paladin is requesting reinforcements. The Stable seems to have activated another layer of security systems and is fighting back."
"Alright, Lieutenant Sparrow, Sergeant Steelhooves, take the alicorn and six Rangers to Stable 202," Cheese ordered. "Break through that security system and strip that Stable. Use him for help. We'll figure out what to do with him later."
"Yes, sir," my sister and Gravel Voice answered.
Limburger turned to me. "Now, you listen here, tribal," she said. "You will not attempt to hinder our operations, or you will be terminated. Understand?"
I rolled onto all four hooves and nodded. I wanted to come up with some whitty comeback about that tribal comment, but I held my tongue, determined to show her up when I was in a position of strength. "I need my saddlebags and weapons in order to assist you."
"Granted," Cheese said, levitating my gear from a trunk before exiting the tent.
"You don't have to come with us," Sparrow said. "You could just fly away and we'd never be able to catch you."
"True," I said, seriously tempted by the idea. I stood for a moment, deep in thought. "But it's not like there's anything here for me right now." I levitated out my SPAT armor, staring at it. It was a reminder of home. Of a major part of me that was now an open wound.
"We aren't exactly an order of paragons here," Gravel Voice said. "We're survivors, so if you have some 'I'm here to right wrongs and kill law breakers' mentality, we're going to have problems."
"The Law is indifferent to good and evil," I said. "It merely ensures order. And out here..." I smirked, gesturing a hoof to indicate the world around us. "Time to toss the refuse overboard, haul anchor, and set sail for tomorrow. I'll find safe anchorage out there somewhere, but it ain't here in the present."
And so I tossed the refuse. My chem suit and SPAT armor, my citation notebook, the few personal mementos I had, and then I donned my web belts and holsters.
And I cast off into the storm, somehow knowing that on the other side was my safe anchorage. I cared not it my anchorage lay in the fires of hell.
I started trotting right for it.
Note: Level up!—Rapid Reload—All weapon reloads are 25% faster. That makes you 20% cooler. Yes, the math does add up.
Quest Perk Added—Xenocidal—You cause 20% more damage against targets not of your homeworld.
Spell unlocked—Rend—[Details Redacted]