Fallout‽ Equestria: Console User Manual
(Stable 45)
Chapter 1 - First!
“Explosions of power. Or something”
Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria there lived two maximum level immortal goddess regal sisters. One ruled over the day, and the other ruled over the night. And then one night, the alicorn goddess of sunlight and rainbows and happiness and all things pleasant had an accident. It was an accident so big and so nasty that nopony was able to clean it up, even if they wanted. And then everypony died! Happy end!
Except, of course, not everypony died. Ponies are hardier than some bombs. A lot of ponies were hidden away in ‘Stables’, vaults claimed to protect and preserve life. Some ponies left to take the full brunt of the accident had their bodies mutate into horrible monstrosities. Some ponies gave up hope on everything in existence and turned into total monsters! ...But those total monsters looked like normal ponies. And so years later, after the monsters and mutants cleaned up enough of the accident that the Stable ponies could come out again, the new ponies found it hard to tell the monster ponies from the other new ponies! And so with great swiftness, the monster-ponies slew several of the new ponies, and the monstrous-not-monster ponies slew several of the monster-ponies, and the new ponies pretty much flailed wildly at anything and everything they didn’t crawl out of the stable with. It didn’t go well.
Fortunately, all of the horrible suffering encouraged ponies to do more fun things with each other when they could. Through the amazing and mystical arcane powers of Friendship and Love, the population of ponies and pony-shaped things was kept at an equilibrium, and everything was happy and miserable all at the same time. Yay! And that’s the timeframe this story takes place in.
o.oO.o0o.o0o.o0o.Oo.o
So, remember those Stables I told you about? It turns out there were also some super top-secret Stable-Labs, too! They were just like normal Stables, except a whole lot more obnoxious about lying to the inhabitants about them actually being safe. And to make things extra confusing, the inhabits of Stable Labs were never told there was any difference between Stables and Stable Labs. So there were often cases of ponies from Stables and Stable Lab with the same number. Nopony thought any better of it.
Right. So in Stable Lab Forty-Five Of Six- Yes, there were only Six Stable-Labs; I don’t know why this one was named Forty-Five- there lived lots and lots of unicorn stable ponies and earth pony stable ponies. Every now and then there was a pegasus too, but that was a byproduct of silly Pony genetics- they didn’t intentionally bring any pegaponies into Forty-Five. The point is: There were lotsa little silly ponies who loved fun more than almost anything else in the world. Most of these ponies were also some of the most technologically gifted of their kind. So like ponies tend to do, they followed their butt-stamps-of-destiny and starting putting their technological expertise to use in the pursuit of making fun.
In the years not long after the adventures of the Lightbringer, a set of Stable Lab Forty-Five ponies found themselves ready to test their newest creation!
o.oO.o0o.o0o.o0o.Oo.o
Hard Reset stared. And stared… And stared. “So… Is it working?”
First Post shrugged. “Heck, I dunno. Just go ahead and shoot ‘im.”
Hard floated a plasma pistol from his belt, and pointed it at the tester. Emmy’s blood ran cold, and she fell to her haunches. “Wait, what!?”
Pew! Pew!
“Oh no, I am killed to death! Goodbye cruel world, and all those who inhabit it!” Emmy’s body exploded into a shower of vivid, shiny, colorful streamers, balloons, confetti, glitter, and gumdrops.
Reset frowned deeply. “I dunno. That didn’t feel right. Maybe we should have just given her the paper quiz instead?”
First shrugged. “Well, he could cheat on a paper test. It’s pretty hard to cheat death.” She plopped her rump down on a red balloon rolling her way eliciting a groan from it, and raised a forehoof to her chin. She sighed, and started dancing her silky smooth tail about. “I guess we should find another test subject?” She gave a momentary glance to the globe beneath her, then flashed a toothy grin Reset’s way. “After we clean up the mess, of course.”
Her companion gave a bemused stare.
“Fine, I’ll clean it up on my own, Grumpy McGrumpy-Rump.” She looked down and the globe beneath her, and firmly prodded at the bulb with her forelegs to force out a piercing series of squeaks.
“You’ld be grumpy too if you had to fill out paperwork each time your experiments exploded into party-bits.”
First squealed in delight, and gave a bubbly giggle. “If my experiments exploded into party, I’d never have to do anything unfun ever. I’d be free to spend the rest of my days in a wonderland doing what I do best!”
“Nothing?” Reset droned.
“Silly. Of course not.” First huffed and started bouncing.
“Why are you even in this department?”
“For the cleanup. Best. Job. Ever!” Boom! First’s seat exploded, dropping her to the ground and showering her all over with confetti and glitter. A pink streamer fluttered to a rest across her nose, and she couldn’t stop giggling.
o.oO.o0o.o0o.o0o.Oo.o
With two bright flashes, Emmy didn’t feel anything anymore. He couldn’t move. She couldn’t breath. He couldn’t hear. Everything around him seemed to lose color, turning into a blobby mass of honey on amber. His vision started to slip from her eyes, and his was looking at his own body, now a plastic pony toy with soft brushable hair. In his vision, glowing letters faded into view.
New Game
> Continue
Load Game
Options
o.oO.o0o.o0o.o0o.Oo.o
Hard Reset stared. And stared… And stared. “So… Is it working?”
First Post shrugged. “Heck, I dunno. Just go ahead and shoot ‘im.”
Hard floated a plasma pistol from his belt, and pointed it at the tester. Emmy’s blood boiled, and he leapt to a side. “Wait, what!? Starless hells, not again!” He slammed a hoof into First’s face, knocking her to the ground.
Pew! Pew! Pew-pew-pew!
“Owie.”
New Game
> Continue
Load Game
Options
o.oO.o0o.o0o.o0o.Oo.o
Hard floated a plasma pistol from his belt, and pointed it at the Emmy. Prepared for it this time, Emmy pounced forth and flicked Hard’s horn, immediately dispelling the tangerine starfield that held the weapon aloft. “Okay, Okay, I get it. It works! If it’s supposed to make a pony die over and over, it definitely works.” He punted the plasma weapon away. “Stop shooting me, and I’ll call it a kindness. Capiche?”
o.oO.o0o.o0o.o0o.Oo.o
“Okay. Well. Great. So, how do I work this thing?”
“Well, you see, we were going to include a manual, but there we some complications.“
---
Ten minutes ago:
Reset waves a hoof, not even needing to turn his head from his terminal to guess what his assistant was up to. “Stop staring at the button.”
“But I want to press it.”
“That’s the delete button. This is the only copy of Tilde’s operational guide that we have. And I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember all of commands and instance IDs, let alone try to explain it to somepony else.”
“So? Then you could make another, simpler one”
“Do not press the button. You’ll delete the file. Do. not. press. the. delete. Don’t press delete. Do not. Press. Delete.”
“Okay, I’ll press confirm instead!”
“I said don’t press delete sweet celestia why did you press delete you insufferable foal!”
“I didn’t press delete! I pressed confirm! Totally different!”
“It was to confirm the deletion, you dimwit!”
“Oh. Well you should have said not to press the confirm button.”
Reset grabbed the monitor and tossed it out the window.
Where we left off:
“Oh. Well, okay. Bye.”