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// There Was a Decent Pun-y Title Here, But Sea Salt Ate It. 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Taking Life By The Horns 
// by Pokonic 
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You are a fool, to believe that the good die young. Fitting that your brother died from a gun his own people built, then.

You...you filthy mangy little varmint, how did you...how dare-

If that kernel of good ol' earth pony wisdom is true, than what does that say about Celestia?








I wish I could say that I was not affected by violence anymore.

Now, that sounds horrible and it really is, but it's true. In Fillydelphia, you never knew if the ponies you just talked to yesterday would come back from a mission, or if you would be assigned to be in a place that is patrolled by slavers or griffons. I wasn't a stranger to gunshot wounds or the charred flesh energy weapons made, and I had seen my fair share of equipment malfunctions and what happened when ponies were close to them.

I once saw a pony in power armor get drenched in flamer fuel, after being hit with a Anti-Machine rifle round. Parts of the armor was salvageable, but the pony wasn't. I don't even remember his name.

I once saw another Scribe's brains blown out by a Initiate who didn't know that the gun she was fiddling with was loaded. She got promoted to her father's old station five hours after she killed him, because that's how I got promoted to a Senior Scribe and we needed a new one to fill my spot.

I once saw a mob of ghouls swarm a slaver caravan that was in line of sight for a pony armed with rifles to be able to save the slaves, but no one dared to fire a single shot because of ammo shortages, even when the slavers fled and left a carriage filled with slaves chained inside to be ghoul-food. 

I wish I could say none of those things affected me deeply, because that would be easy.

But nothing's really easy.

I still didn't want to think of what happened to make Braymont the way it was. Half-tribalistic mutant cannibals just wandering around without a single pony doing anything about it just wasn't...right. I knew that ponies eat other ponies, but that was just raiders and the insane. But they were friendly. It didn't sit right with me.

Watershed was much worse, though. The ponies who attacked it reminded me too much of how Red Eye operated; shock and awe, kill the weak and blow up everything that they couldn't use. They had a mechanized armored infantry carrier, something that I only knew from pictures,with at least two big guns mounted on the front of it and surrounded with at dozen or so ponies in combat armor.

Normally, a raider group with military-spec equipment was a horrible thought in itself, but the ponies who attacked the town were not raiders. They had to have connections with one of the major power players in Caledonia, but who, that was the question.

That, combined with the griffons, made me think for a few horrible moments that Red Eye was around this far north. Nightcore's words on the matter were not very comforting, either.

But that's not important just now.

I thought I could say for sure that I wasn't scared of gore anymore, that I had seen the worst of what could happen to a living creature.

I guess I was wrong.





It took me a few moments for my brain to comprehend what was going on in front of me, and when it did, I didn't react how I thought I would have.

"Wow, brahman have a lot of blood in them." I said distantly, looking at the sight before me. I felt blood rushing to my head, making my legs feel like they were going asleep. I placed the book and my Amulet on a patch of grass a little way's away from me, not wanting to worry about keeping them close to me.

The brahman couldn't reply, considering that it's right head had been ripped off along with much of it's shoulder while other was half-crushed and pulpy.The huge creature that had pulled it halfway into the water and was propping itself on the corpse, however, paused it's feast. Raising it's huge head out of the dead beast's chest cavity, muzzle stained red with gore and a thick loop of intestine sticking out of the side of it's mouth, she gulped it down and blinked.

There was no comprehending in those almond-shaped eyes, big and green and innocent. The worst part was that they were pony eyes, but they were pony eyes in the same way a alicorn had pony eyes; they mocked them in their existence, just enough that was familiar with them that it made them that much worse. She had infant eyes, not really looking at things but categorizing them, no malice or hate or anything in them, just constantly looking.

Sea Salt was crouched over the brahman, elbows bent at odd angles as she kept hold of the sides of the poor thing as she went to town on it. When she saw me, standing there off to the side, she didn't say anything at first. She just stared at me, like I was the one who was eating a whole brahman that was half-soaked with water on a silty riverside, neck deep in meat, making bones break and sinews snap with every odd movement or so as she angled herself so that she could have the most food in her face as possible.

After staring at each other for a few moments, I thought that, for a few horrible moments, that she was going to rip off a chunk of meat and throw it in my direction before going back to her feast, like a peace offering. 

But she didn't do that.

"Er, hello. Sorry you had to see me like this." she said softly after swallowing the mouthful of meat she had managed to tear off. "I didn't know you were there."

I looked at the creature. The worst part was that, while her head had a undeniably pretty quality and her voice was melodious, they were all feeble trappings to a fishy hybrid beast with claws like a froggy hellhound and a body like a shark.

"It doesn't matter." I said, a little surprised at myself that I used its name, "It's the fact that you did it." 

Against all common sense, I walked closer to her, and was hit with the strong stench of blood. But I kept a brave face.

"...I did it because I was hungry." she said, after a while of looking at me, "I saw Ever Watchful near the river, and I said I was hungry. We didn't talk long, because he said he was busy. But then he brought this with him." 

She lowered her head a little, and licked a newly exposed rib on the carcass. "It tastes nice. He called it a brahman, I think? A cow? It looks like a cow, but it has two heads. Hmm."

I felt something churn in my stomach when I saw her nip on a exposed bit of meat near the mutilated stump that used to be a head, knowing that if she could just tear off the head of a strong animal just like that....

"What are you?" I said, after walking so that I was all but in front of her. If she wanted to, she could swipe a claw at me and split me in half. 

But, for whatever mad reason, I didn't think she would do that.

"I...I am me. That I am sure of by now." she said, sounding uncertain herself. "I was once a different individual, but only in body. In mind, I am still me, even if my body has changed. I don't...I can remember feeling that I was dying...a long time ago. But now, I don't."

She pulled the claws on her right hand out of the brahman's flank and brought them up to her face. "Yes, these are mine now, however, and I cannot do anything about that. What am I to act like, if not myself?"

"That doesn't mean you have to act like a animal." I said sourly, trying not to get angry at the creature before me. "If you were once a pony, you can try and act like one."

"But..." she stopped for a moment, and spared a look at her red-stained claws. "I don't think that is...Ever Watchful said I should try and be myself."

"Ever Watchful says stupid things sometimes." I said with a little more viciousness than I intended, "If being yourself means that you try an eat ponies, than you shouldn't be yourself."

A dark look flashed over the creature's long face, one that made me fear for my life for a few seconds before it's shoulders slumped down and it's head hung low. "But I was hungry, and he led it to the river."

I didn't show it, but I was startled. "He did?"

She nodded. "He did, yes. He told me what a brahman was earlier, in the docking area, and then, when I found him sitting along the shore, he was talking with a few ponies. One of them said they knew where two brahman were, and after a while they came back with them."

At that, she turned her head to the right, frowning. "Why are you cooking the little one?"

I turned around, seeing that she was just noticing the calf on the spit. "Brahman's good eating. Veal's good."

Her expression of confusion transformed into one of mortification. "You eat meat?"

I almost laughed. Almost. The giant monster pony that smelled like dead fish and blood,hunched over a animal carcass that it was gorging itself on, was scared of me.

"Yes." I said, "Of course. Why wouldn't we?" 

"I wouldn't have...you just eat them? Is that normal?" 

She sounded like I was the aberrant freak, and I chuckled even as she reared up slightly. "Why are you so upset? You keep eatin-"

A harsh gurgling sound rose up from the creature's gullet, turning into a wail of horror in due time.

"That's horrible! It was a little calf! It doesn't even look like it's a year old!" she yelled at me, pointing a accusing claw at my face.

I stared at the monster before me, talking about how cooking a animal was a terrible crime while using a corpse as a perch.

"Well, you are eating it's mother." I said, as calmly as I could. "You did eat ponies too. You tried to eat me too. I still have scars."

Sea Salt's reaction was strange. At first she just looked at the brahman under her, mutilated and missing nearly a quarter of it's flesh, and then at the smaller one on the spit. After she stared at the prepared calf, I saw her grip on the flank of the cow tighten slightly, as if confirming that it was, indeed, real. Then she looked at me the same way she looked at the corpse under her, like I wasn't worth giving thought about. She didn't look at me like I was dinner, but she didn't look like we were having a conversation. 

"I don't know what happened to this country, but I am quickly learning that I do not really care." she stated firmly, "It seems to have gone downhill in the past two hundred years. Tell me, who won that spat that caused this?"

"Equestria." I responded immediately.

"How wonderful. Is the government doing well?" she asked, leaning forward a little, expression the paragon of docility. There was a spark of curiosity in those saucer-wide eyes, a curiosity that seemed to overwhelm the fact that her muzzle was stained a light pink and her limbs were buried up to the wrists in brahman flesh.

"Well, no. There isn't a government." I said, trying to do my best not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. 

Sea Salt blinked. "I thought you said the Equestrians won?"

I didn't like how she said 'Equestrians'. Was she really so removed from what she once was?

"Well, we did. You don't hear much from zebra lands anymore because there isn't much of it that wasn't destroyed in the aftermath." I said, going off what little I knew about them. "Equestria got bombed too, but so did Caledonia."

"A pity. So, there is no government anywhere and everyone here eats meat. I think I had a nightmare about something like this once." said the giant nightmarish chimerical seabeast that was once a pony that once bit into my skull, the one currently half-resting on  a corpse.

"You just killed a animal and bit one of it's heads off." I mumbled. "And you are wondering about how the government is doing?"

Sea Salt stared at me for a few moments.

"Well, yes." she said. "It is in my best interests to, anyway. I would think I am stuck here, in this country, anyway, considering I have yet to get out of this river entirely."

"Oh, really?" I said, trying to not sound happy, "Why is that?"

She looked uneasy, and raised a forlimb, limp wristed and stiffly. "I do not have the upper body power to drag myself out of here. And my tail gets in the way, and there's almost nothing to," she paused, looking at her claws, "grab on to. I would think that I am waterbound."

I felt a twinge of pity strike me, one that left immediately after she started to lick her claws, cat-like in the worst way possible. "And there's no fish in these waters, or none that I have seen, and while I do like the weather, it's chilly, and so is the water."

She coughed in embarrassment, even bothering to cover her mouth with the claw she was trying to get all the nibbly meat chunks that were caught in the webbed abominations that should have been hooves.

Then I heard a deep gurgling sound, like thick mud with bubbles coming up through it. 

Sea Salt looked at her belly, unsure if it came from it or not, while I tried and see if something was behind her.

Then the brahman head that was left started to moo, what was left trying to angle itself so that the side that still had a eye on it could get off the ground. 

It was trying to get a better view of the roasting calf that farther along the shore.

"Oh," she said softly, raising herself, hands and all, off the not-really-dead livestock like she was caught with a hoof in a cookie jar, "That's not good."

I expected her to do something, like bite into it's spine, or slice its throat and be done with it. Or even just finish the job and rip it off, like it did with the other head.

But she just leaned back, settling herself on what could have been haunches at one point in time, looking at the gasping brahman like a foal who is trying to figure out a puzzle.

"Are you not, well, going to do something?" I said weakly, feeling like I was going to faint. 

She did nothing, and stared at the already-dead cow that just kept mooing, staring at the little one on the spit, crying out in pain.

My stomach turned. This was sick and wrong.

"Put it out of it's misery, Sea Salt!" I yelled, close to screaming, "Just kill it!"

The giant seapony shifted around in the water, and I could see a giant grey fishlike tail stirring up the stilt. Her limbs were shaking feebly, and her mouth was just open enough that I could see her lips trembling. She was afraid.

The animal that didn't know it was supposed to be dead started to bray, in a way that reminded me of a donkey. Or a pony. It was a mother that died before it's child, and here it was, it's last moments being strung out by it's killer.

"Finish the fucking job. you stupid monster! Screaming never stopped you before, kill the-"

Sea Salt slammed a fist into the head, and I heard a sound like a wet treelimb being snapped in half, followed by a spray of blood hitting her in the face because of the head being severed.

The mooing stopped.

I closed my eyes a few seconds too late to be free from seeing Sea Salt kill the brahman as she did, but I was glad I did in the end, because I heard something else crack a few seconds later, and tried not to scream when I felt a small splash of something warm hit my face.

I couldn't close my mouth in time, though, so I knew it was blood.

"Oh...oh." I half-heard Sea Salt mumble, her already quiet voice muffled by the sound of something thick and wet hitting the ground. "I did not...it...that has never happened...it shouldn't have happened."

I did not open my eyes, preferring to lay down on my side, legs huddled close together, head hung low. I couldn't cry, but I just did not want to open my eyes. I smelt blood and guts and dead cow and, worst of all, cooking meat, and for whatever horrible reason, I was starting to regret not eating the cheesy soup that was waiting for me in the room I woke up in, because I was starting to get hungry, and it was cold and I was not in a good mood anyway.

I couldn't risk snapping at her. I couldn't risk getting mad now.

"This isn't....an' jae'...ana mareed."

And the creature that was causing me to try and retreat from the rest of the world sounded so pathetic and distressed that it wasn't even saying real words, and just kept making weird breathy sounds.

"Aasef. Aasefaaseftaaseftaaseft..."

"Shut up." I said. "Just shut up. Stop whining."

I curled into a smaller ball as I felt some wind pick up.

"It's not like I...I didn't want to do that." she said weakly, sounding closer to me than she did before.

I opened my eyes. The cow was gone, or well, half of it was in the water and the rest of it was in chunks, and Sea Salt was resting her upper body fully on the newly wetted ground, huge me-sized head just a few feet away from me, big green eyes wide and pity-inducing. I did not smell blood any more than I did before, but I could tell from a casual glance that she was covered in it, head a pinkish color and red bits all along her gore-covered left arm.

"How can you say that. You...you went for it. You killed it. Like those ponies on the bridge." I said with little emotion in my voice. At this point, I had little emotional strength left to spare, anyway.

At this angle, I could really only see her gigantic head, as big as my actual body and a just slightly thinner at the neck. She looked at me with a face that shouldn't have belonged to something that had a creatures lifeblood smeared all over it because of it's wanton feasting.

"I did, but I didn't do that because I wanted to. I did this, though," she waved a claw vaguely over to the corpse,"-because...I am hungry."

A great pause overcame the stillborn conversation we were having, choking it to the point it seemed like it never existed at all.

"I don't like this." she said, giving me a oddly reserved look, "I hate this weather. I miss a roof over my head. I miss my fish. I miss my home. But not just that one, but the one before, too, like...I miss my dorm room. I miss my friends. I miss my family."

She sighed. It was a knowing sigh. "But I have to accept that this is reality. Denying the truth wouldn't work, really."

"You've thought about this, then." 

"Well, yes. I have had a long time to think about this." 

There was another pause.

"I am sorry. For biting you on the head."

I almost laughed. She sounded sorry. Like that meant anything.

"I am sorry for yelling at you." I lied. "I really am."

"Don't be." she said, raising her neck just a little off the ground.

"Okay."

I realized I might have said that a little to fast, going by how Sea Salt's eyes narrowed for just a few seconds, but in moments her face returned to what passed for normal for her.

"I don't expect you to like me." she said, sounding like she actually felt bad about it, "But I don't want us to be completely against each other. If you want to say something to me now, please say it."

I stared at the strange mutant before me, and the scene of utter horror around the two of us.

"You have a bit of cow on your face." I said.

Sea Salt's face made several funny contortions, eventually ending with her looking at me with a slightly open mouth and raised eyebrows. Her hair was just now starting to dry out, making her look like she had a large mop of green moss on top of her head, one that trailed onto the ground.

"Thank you." she said politely, if sounding completely lost. 

She looked around slowly, as if she was making sure that we were the only living creatures in sight. For now, anyway.

"How well do you know Ever Watchful?" she said questioningly.

I blinked, and rolled over into a true sitting position. The grass was slightly wet and cold, but it was better than it being wet and warm. "Well enough, why?"

She gave me a sad little excuse for a smile. "Well, I know there are plenty of things I should be talking about, like what happened two hundred years ago, or how did I get like this, and stuff like that. But I don't think I care about those things, really."

For a split second, a look of sudden realization passed over her face, and she reared up on her legs, making a wet slorpsh as her belly tried to stick to the bloody mud under it, and slowly, painfully, almost, lowered herself back into the river.

After a few moments, her head poked out of the water, now only slightly pink-tinged, and gave me the most pathetic grin I had ever seen in my life. 

"I...I know you don't want to talk to me. But, can you please just...stay here?" she said pleadingly. "I don't want to be alone out here. There is nothing here. Nothing here at all."

I walked around the bloody remains of the cow, trying to ignore the book and Amulet sitting two dozen feet away from me, along with the barbecue and the house. And the wasteland around me.

I did my best to ignore life, I guess. 

Talking to creatures that could have been figments of my imagination, presumably, could help me do that.

I was too tired to be angry. I was too tired to be enraged, insulted, or offended. I just wanted to live.

So I settled down on a soft, firm patch of soil near the edge of the river, and sighed. 

"I don't have many plans right now, actually." 

Her look brightened up considerably. 

"So, what do you want to talk about? I have plenty of time."

"Well, it's about Ever Watchful," she said, before pausing sharply.

For whatever reason, she started to blush. I was starting to get a little concerned as her face started to turn red.

"Are you okay?" I said, honestly worried. Well, not too worried, but still worried, and that meant something in this day and age.

At that, she bit her lip. I was a little freaked out at first because of the fact her upper teeth were triangle shaped and sharp looking, but she was still biting her lip.

"Oh, well, in a sense, yes, but, oh, this is odd, I don't know if it's my place, but, ah, well, um, I couldn't help but notice, ooh, this isn't..."

She sounded like she was a innocent little filly, and out of those three she was none. I said nothing, however, interested in what she was saying.

"I mean, I don't know if it's usual among minotaurs, but it would be rather, erm, interesting, but I would think that, for the sake of, well, mares, and I would guess a few stallions..."

I wasn't sure if I heard that right, so I tried to make sense of what she was saying.

"Well, it might not be a big deal, but it's still something that's, well, no, it is rather lar...but the main thing is..."

I did so again.

"It's not like I don't want to, well, it's not a matter of object...oh, this sounds awful, doesn't it?" she stuttered out, voice going up a few octaves. 

I did so several times, in fact, and each time I tried to make out what she was talking about gave me a growing sense of mortification.

"Well, given your height differences, it must have surely come up at one point, but forgive me dearly if I am wrong, but I would just think..."

My left eyebrow twitched uncontrollably.

She let out a tense giggle. "Could you tell him to find a loin cloth?"

I groaned into both my hooves when I saw the look on her face.

This day was getting weird.