//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 // Story: Fallout New Vegas: Unexpected Friends // by Sleepyted //------------------------------// Twilight’s horn was aching, and her was head throbbing from the continuous use of her horn. Even if the object was light, it still took a lot of energy to keep up. Each time Twilight hit all three of the sarsaparilla bottles, Anne picked her up much to her discomfort and placed her at one of the other sticks father back. When Twilight asked why, Anne just shrugged and said simply “I need to know if I’m still sane.” After an hour or so, Anne only had a box of fifty bullets left for the 9mm pistol and deemed that they shouldn’t use any more of the ammo if she was going to give the gun to Twilight. “Okay, that’s enough, we don’t want to use it up, do we?” Anne said, grabbing the floating pistol from in front of Twilight. Twilight slumped over with a sigh and began to lightly massage the area of her head around her horn, trying to do anything to stop it from aching, Anne of cause caught sight of this and decided to point it out. “Is the princess tired?” Anne said in baby tone with pouted face. “Do you need me to rub your footsies?” Twilight’s face went up with a blush as she shrunk down a bit more. “N-no, I’m fine.” “Good, Get up! I’m not paying you to sit on your ass,” Anne said slapping her hands onto her thighs. “Paying me for what?” Twilight asked with a raised eyebrow. Anne gave an over exaggerated shrug “How the fuck should I know?” “But you- you know what, I don’t really care anymore,” Twilight said, face planting into the dirt. A cheesy grin became plastered on Anne’s face, “You know, the dirt around here is radioactive.” Twilight raised her head off the ground and looked up at Anne with a raised eyebrow. “Radioactive, what does that mean?” Twilight asked. Anne’s grin only got bigger. “Radioactivity causes stuff like un-natural growths and mutations.” Twilight looked a little scared now. “What do you mean ‘un-natural growths’?” “I’ve heard of stories where people have grown a second head.” Anne barely caught what happened next. One moment Twilight was lying down in the dirt then the next Twilight was nowhere to be seen and Anne stumbled back for an impact into her chest. Anne looked down to see Twilight had hooked herself onto Anne’s torso and held herself off the ground, letting out little whimpers every once in a while. Anne placed a hand on Twilight and started to slowly pat Twilight’s back, not really knowing what to do with the reaction she got. “Umm, you alright?” Anne said hesitantly. That just let out a slightly louder whimper from Twilight. Anne let out a long sigh. “Look, I’m not gonna lie, radiation is a thing around here and it is fairly common but the thing is that it isn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be.” Still, Twilight said nothing and still held onto Anne’s torso. “Radiation is all around us, even before it was thrown into our atmosphere, it would take you about a decade if you avoid radiation hot spots for anything to happen, and we have stuff to reverse and prevent the effects like Rad-X and Radaway,” Anne explained. Twilight finally spoke up. “H-how will you know where a ‘radiation hot spot’ is?” “Strapped onto my arm is a Geiger counter, it starts making an annoying clicking sound when there’s radiation in the area, and if you fear for your safety, I would like to let you know that it’s gonna be the last thing to kill you around here.” Twilight let go of Anne and fell to the dirt, landing on her hooves, looking sadden and still didn’t say anything. Anne now felt awful, she was only trying to joke around but it seemed that her unicorn friend didn’t have the sense of humor as her. “Look, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that,” Anne said in a serious tone, something she doesn’t do that often. Twilight looked up at Anne with eyes that were brimming with tears. With quick wipe with the back of her hoof and a quick inhale through her nose she put on a faint smile. “I-it’s alright,” She said weakly. “No, no it isn’t, I behaved like a dick and just because you’re trying to put on a brave face doesn’t make it better,” Anne said sternly. “I-I didn’t know male reproductive organs behaved poorly,” Twilight said weakly. This caused a slight chuckle from Anne. “It’s a figure of speech here Princess.” “That’s fairly odd,” Twilight pointed out. “I bet a lot of stuff her would be odd to you, like the radiation we were just talking about not a minute ago,” Anne said. Twilight nodded. “That does seem to be the case it seems.” They stood there in a silence, Twilight looking around unsurely while Anne was swinging her arms back and forth while changing where she stood from her heel to toes until Anne remembered something and clicked her fingers. “That’s right; we just finished your shooting lesson, and I was about to give you something,” Anne said, taking the 9mm pistol and its holster from her thigh along with the fifty spare bullets it came within clips. “I’m giving these to you; you don’t seem to have one of your own, so doing my good deed of the day, I’m you this,” Anne continued, holding the equipment out in her hand. Twilight picked it up in her magical grasp, having it hover in front of her. Twilight eyed the holster uncertainly, seeing how Anne had it clipped around her thigh and not knowing if it would work with her. She was going to ask Anne about it, but saw she was reaching into her bag. After a few moments Anne pulled out a thick brown loop from the bag, which was even thicker at one point. “There’s also this, I made it for you while you fell asleep, well, when I say make it I mean ripping it from something else but that doesn’t matter now, I never used the jumpsuit anyway,” She said, holding out the strap. Twilight also levitated the second thing over to her, but unlike the holster, she had no clue what this new thing was used for. Seeming to sense that Twilight had no idea about what to do, Anne stepped in to provide some help. “The leather strap was a shoulder pad from an old jumpsuit I never used, so I cut it off of it and used some pieces of the cut up jumpsuit as some padding, if you pass it over to me, I’ll help you put it on,” Anne said holding out her hand. Twilight, confused, floated the shoulder pad back over to Anne. “Why would I need it may I ask?” Anne grabbed the leather shoulder pad and kneeled beside Twilight and began to fasten the straps to Twilight. “Cause something is better than nothing,” she reasoned. Anne stood up and looked at her handy work. She spent all of half an hour while Twilight was asleep to take the pad off the jumpsuit and modify it so it would fit onto Twilight safely like adding padding and an extra few securing straps. The pad sat on Twilight’s right shoulder, a strap going on either side of the leg and one going around her torso and around the other foreleg. “I think I did a reasonable job, it should stop small arms fire,” Anne said, placing a hand under her chin and thinking about it. Anne held out her hand again. “If you could pass over the holster, I can put that on you as well.” Twilight floated the holster over to Anne, and she began to secure it around Twilight’s right fore-hoof, pulling a black strap to make sure it was tightly secured before putting in the 9mm pistol along with the spare clips into the holster’s straps. “There, I think I did a good enough job as any,” Anne said satisfied, dusting off her hands on her armored thighs. Twilight looked to her shoulder, trying to see the new addition to her body. Like Anne said, the padding she put on made it reasonably soft to wear, even though it was on extremely tight, she could feel the straps of the ‘leather’ pushing into her skin. She could feel the unfamiliar weight of the pistol holster, and the extra ammo on her upper leg. “Now, the matter of food and water, you’re gonna have to get it yourself, I don’t really have any more to spare,” Anne said with a shrug. “What do you mean?” Twilight asked. “I mean that I don’t have enough food to give ya for the road at the moment, I need to buy some more along with some medical supplies, and I ain’t got much of that left either,” Anne explained. “Oh” Twilight said crestfallen. “I thought maybe I could go with you,” Twilight mumbled. Anne jabbed one of her fingers into her ears and twisted it a few time. “What was that? I think I might have something in my ear.” “I said maybe I could go with you,” Twilight said again. “Yea, it’s definitely you, there’s nothing in my ear.” Anne said tilting her head and giving it a few good smacks. “I thought that I might be able to go with you,” Twilight said meekly. “Why do you want to come with me? I’m not the best company ya know,” Anne said. “I wouldn’t say that, you’re the nicest alien I’ve ever met,” Twilight said. “Alien? If you want to get technical; you’re the alien, this is my native planet,” Anne said with mock offence. “But to me, to me anything that isn’t from my planet is considered as an alien,” Twilight pointed out. “Yes, but at the moment, you’re not on your home planet, meaning that you’re the alien here,” Anne said ,and before Twilight could say anything, she continued. “We’re getting off topic, why do you want to come with me?” “Well, umm, you’re my only friend here, I don’t know anypony else,” Twilight said sadly. Anne looked taken aback. “Friend… you think I’m a friend?” “Well, yea, you’ve been really nice to me. You healed me, you fed me, you talked with me, and you helped me. I think of you as a friend,” Twilight asked confused. Anne donned a small smile. “Thanks, that means a lot to me.” Twilight wanted to ask more, but she felt like it wasn’t something Anne wanted to talk about. “You can come along with me if you really want but don’t feel like you owe it to me,” Anne said. Twilight had a massive grin on her face, and began to jump around Anne, making little ‘sqwee’ sounds. “Thank you thank you thank you thank you-“ Anne grabbed and stopped Twilight by putting a hand to her mouth. “Please. Stop.” Twilight had a slight blush and she lowered her ears in embarrassment “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “It’s okay, I just don’t think the Mojave can take anymore adorableness than you already brought to it,” Anne said, causing Twilight’s blush to intensify. “Anyway, I’ll be heading off now, so if there’s anything that you need to grab go get it,” Anne said waving her hand at the shack. Twilight looked to the run down wooden building, then looked back to Anne. “I didn’t really have time to pack anything before coming here.” “Good, that means ya got everything. Awesome,” Anne said sticking up a thumb. Twilight smiled. “So, where are we heading off to?” “Well in the end, I hope we’ll get to a city called New Vegas, but right now, we’ll be going to a town called Primm; it’s the place with the roller-coaster off in the distance,” Anne said, pointing off in the distance where Primm’s outline was. “Is it an amusement park?” Twilight asked. “No, some numb nuts thought it would be a smart idea if they built a roller-coaster in the side of casino to get more money to come in. I ain’t got a clue if it worked or not, but I do know that it sticks out like a sore thumb.” Anne said. Twilight didn’t know what that meant, but she didn’t push it. “Sooooo, let’s head off.”