//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: Fallout New Vegas: Unexpected Friends // by Sleepyted //------------------------------// Twilight slowly regained consciousness, her ears were thumping with the sound of her heart beating and her whole body ached, but mainly around her horn. She could feel a cool breeze on her coat, she was laying on something course and dry which had the faint smell of metal. With a groan she rolled over to get more comfortable on whatever she was sleeping on. When she did, something small and sharp jabbed itself into her side making her decide to finally wake up as she grudgingly opened her eyes. She saw sand. Sand, sand and more sand. She slowly propped herself up with her forehooves into a sitting position to take a better look at her surroundings. From what she could tell she was in a large area of dirt and sand filled with large rocks, but it was rather hard to tell due to it being deep into the night. In the far distance she could see the outline of mountains along with the faint glow of something large. Not too far in the distance was what appeared to be a small camp fire with large blocks around them. Closer was a small wooden shack that looked extremely run down with strange metal things slightly buried in the sand around the shack. The things looked like elongated pills with wings, on those wings were cylinders with machinery spewing out, and all of them had faded and peeling coats of paint with large amounts of rust surrounding its surface. She looked down to what she was laying on to see a small rock. With a sigh she stood up on unstable legs and instantly started feeling light headed and she stumbled a bit. “Where am I?” she wondered to herself. The last thing she remembered was trying out a new spell that would help transport ponies and items larger distances without the need of trains and carriages. All in all it would improve the ability to trade with other nations at a faster pace, but she couldn’t remember anything after that which worried her greatly. After a while of not knowing what she should do, she decided to go towards the campfire to ask somepony where she was. A campfire can’t stay alive without somepony fueling it right? She took longer than she would like to get near the camp, but one of her forehooves hurt a rather large amount. Once she got closer she could hear mumbled talking, confirming her suspicion that somepony was keeping the fire up. The block she saw from a distance was actually large metal trailers that looked as run down as those strange metal birds and had their wheels taken off, only leaving an axl. But something seemed off to Twilight, she couldn’t put her hoof on it. Once she was close to one of the metal trailers she saw something sitting by a table close to the fire, or should she say two something’s that looked like they were playing cards. They both were taller than her and from the way they were sitting looked like they would be bipedal, they were holding the cards in long appendages that looked like the claws Spike had. Next to one of them was a long wooden bat and the other had a long metal stick with a large piece of wood at the bottom. One of them was wearing something short around its hind legs and a strip of fabric with metal rods all round it over its torso, on its feet were large brown shoes. Its face was mostly flat with a small nose protruding from the middle, its eyes were on the front of its face and its ears were on the side, its mouth was under its nose and had something pink surrounding them. On its head was an extremely thin mane, its skin was a dark tan and had no coat. The other had the same almost the same facial but had a light shade of skin and had a longer mane, it wore something with a light cyan color and wore the same thing the other did but longer on its hind legs. On the back of the thing on its torso were the letters ‘NCRCF’. They both looked dirty, grubby and needed a bath or something to get themselves cleaned up. Twilight was a little shocked to say the least to see a new creature for the first time and from the look of things looked like they were sapient if they were able to do something like playing cards. She watched them play cards and sit there in silence, sometimes throwing a card onto the table. She was fascinated by the alien creatures and didn’t know what to do. After watching them play cards for what felt like hours the one with the most cover on their body threw down a card which made the other to jump out his seat, causing its chair to go flying behind him. “YOU FUCKING CHEAT!” It shouted, pointing at the other. Twilight’s eyes went wide ‘They speak Equestian?’ They both had deep voices making it sound masculine. “I DIDN’T DO A FUCKING THING!” the other responded, jumping from the table as well. Twilight was taken aback a bit at the open use of vulgar swear words. “SINCE WHEN ARE THEIR FIVE ACES?” the first one shouted moving its claw like appendage towards the table. “ONLY FOUR HAVE BEEN PUT DOWN YOU FUCKWIT!” the other said pushing the table over. The first one picked up its strange metal and wood thing and started to move something around at the back of it while the second pulled something from its middle section and pointed it at the first one’s head. The first one only had time to widen its eyes before…. ‘BANG’ ‘BANG’ ‘BANG’ In three small explosions the first one’s head was reduced down to a small meaty stub, spraying the rest behind it onto one of the trailers walls before the animal to fall down limp to the ground. The thing the second one used which looked like a small ‘L’ had smoke coming out of the front of it before he put it back onto a strap on its side. “FUCK YOU!” it yelled before running over to the dead creature before kicking it with its long hind legs in the side a few time before spitting on the corpse. Twilight was disgusted by the cruel display of these creatures to the point it caused her lunch to make itself known again. She vomited behind one of the trailers, she vomited, a lot ,and while chucking up she heard something that made her blood run cold. “WHO’S THERE!” she heard the remaining creature shout out. Her eyes widened and her muscles went rigid and tense. She held in a breath and tried to be as quiet as possible, hoping that she didn’t alert the creature any more than she already has. “I can heeeear yoooou!” he said in a tone that scared Twilight close to death. With that she bolted away from there, not caring how much sound she made, just wanting to get as far away as she could from the creature. She ran as fast as her legs would carry her. “FOUND YA BITCH!” Twilight heard being yelled from behind her. She heard a familiar banging noise and small little explosions of sand in front and besides her. After a few more of the bangs she felt an extreme burning sensation in her flank, causing her to stumble then fall over. With all the energy she could she crawled behind a large rock as more bangs were sent off towards her. Once she was behind the rock the explosions stopped which let Twilight give out a pained breath. She looked down to her aching flank to see a bloody hole in it, it was quickly oozing blood, her breath caught in her throat as she saw what was done to her. She was frozen solid before her survival instinct kick and she placed both her forehooves on her flank and press down hard to try and stop the bleeding, trying her hardest to hold back the pain. After a while Twilight realized that nothing was happening just before she heard a light sizzling sound caught her ears before a small red stick with a sparking string coming out the top landed next to her. Twilight didn’t know what it was, but she didn’t like it. Biting through the pain she got up to her hooves and started to limp away from whatever was thrown at her. After a few moments, she heard a massive explosion, and in that instant she felt herself getting knocked off her hooves, and her hind legs sent red hot lances of pain up her back. She was dazed and heard only ringing. She looked up to see the wooden shack not too far away from her. In her dazed state she used her front hooves to slowly drag herself towards the shack. After what felt like an eternity of pain, she made it to the front door. The door knob was higher than she could reach, and whenever she tried to open it, she fell back down to her stomach when her hind legs failed on her, and pain shot up her back. With all the concentration she could muster, she used her magic to give the door knob a quick twist while pushing her upper body up against it. It opened with a high pitched squeaked and quickly opened, causing Twilight to fall forwards and making her lower half start burning in pain even more than before. Twilight was slowly starting to lose consciousness and with the last of her energy she used her magic to push the door close before dragging herself under a rotted and rusted table in the center of the room before losing consciousness altogether. Only one thought going through her mind. ‘I want my friends.’