//------------------------------// // Chapter 5: Into the Depths of Hell // Story: Fallout Equestria: The Dreamer // by fiendofthet //------------------------------// GDOOCS Fallout Equestria: The Dreamer Chapter 5: Into the Depths of Hell Darkness. The air feels good beneath my wings. I spin and do twirl, performing intricate stunts. I do all this with the widest smile on my face. This is where I belong. I haven’t flown in three whole days. The feeling I feel right now is a sense of freedom nonpareil. I do these stunts for a whole hour before finally landing on the top of a cliff overlooking a valley. The sight is breathtaking. There are trees strewn across the countryside with woodland creature running about. And by woodland creatures, I don’t mean those scary bloatsprites or manticores that are abundant in our wasteland. I mean the squirrels and bunnies from legend that only have peace in their hearts. I look up at the sun, a huge white circle in the sky and feel the warmth of its glow on my face. “I love the sun,” I say in the euphoria of the moment. “And the sun loves you back,” a booming, yet somehow still sweet voice projects over the land. “Who said that?” “It was I,” a pony flies from out of the sun and lands next to me. “I was very impressed with your flying and thought I would meet you, Icarus.” “How do you know my name?” I recognize this white mare from somewhere… “I know all of my subjects’ names,” she gives me the warmest smile. “Princess Celestia!” Upon my realization, I give short bow before continuing, “You really liked my performance?” “But of course. I have seen a flier as talented as you since the days of my splendor.” “Thank you…” Suddenly a question comes to my mind. “Princess Celestia, why did you leave us?” Her smiling face turns to a scowl. “YOU DARE ACCUSE ME OF CAUSING THE WASTELAND,” She speaks in the booming voice, only it no longer sounds sweet. “YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN ANTAGONIZING A GOD.” With these words, Princess Celestia shoots straight up at the sun. When she hits it, it extinguishes, covering the entire world in a blanket of darkness. Within seconds, I lose track of where I am. I take a step forward and plummet of the edge of the cliff. I am able to catch myself with my wings, but that does not solve the problem of not being able to see. Panic wells up inside of me. What if there is no more light in the entire world? What if I can’t find food? What if I die? The only solution to these problems is to fly around until I could find light and just hope not to crash into anything. I do this for a few hours, but to no avail. I am starting to get tired so I just have to find a nice soft place to sleep for the night. I take my chances flying straight down to the ground, where I land in a tree. The tree is a good enough place as any, so I choose this as my bed. I wake up. |><|-------|><| The sound of multiple voices yelling at one another can be heard in the distance. If I listen hard enough, I can just make out what they are saying. “I want to go toward the pretty sky,” The pony sounds extremely unintelligent loud, but there is also something else about the voice. It sounds as if somepony had taped the pony’s upper lips to their nose, and then plugged their nose. It is a very peculiar and uncomforting sound. “No, the mean pony said to go this way!” Besides this one having a slightly lower pitched voice, the voices are identical. “But it looks so pretty.” Is that a third voice or is it the first one again? “NO!” I want to talk with these mysterious ponies. After all, they might have items to trade and if they are as dumb as they sound, then I could get a good deal. My friends are still asleep, so it’s up to me to exploit the travelers. “Hay-” just then a hoof comes over my mouth. “Are you crazy?” Poultice whispers forcibly. “Are you trying to get us killed?” “What was that? PONY!” one of mystery ponies grunts. “Shit, we have to leave, now,” she insists in a panicked tone. “Why?” “You just alerted a pack of super mutants to our camp.” “Well, how was I supposed to know?” The impact of my simple mistake is starting to hit me. “Doesn’t matter, now. Just wake up the other two. I’ll pack up camp.” “Pony? Where are you?” The sound of the super mutants is getting closer now. The initial grumbled complaints of Enigma for interrupting her beauty sleep, are quickly put to an end after I tell them the situation. Enigma becomes extremely objective oriented, immediately requesting the full information and developing a plan. After Poultice is done packing, Enigma tells us the plan she made in the few seconds she had. “We have to run towards the vault,” she says, pointing a hoof in the direction of the disturbance in the sky. We oblige to her demand because neither of us have any better ideas. Still, running into an unknown area where the only description I can make is evil, doesn’t sit well with me. A small purple earth pony starts galloping into our camp and past us. From the look of him, it seems that he has been running for a pretty long time. He gives a scared, “Run!” We follow the pony’s command and not a moment too soon. Almost immediately, I hear a unpleasant scream, “DIE, PONY!” The super mutants have finally reached our camp. A whirring sound comes from behind us. “Look out,” I say, anticipating what is to come next. The loud gunshots and the bullets whizzing over my head confirm my suspicious. “BWA HA HA!” The super mutant seems to be enjoying himself too much to notice how bad his aim is. His friends finally show up as well. They add their quieter shots to the mix. A fierce pain erupts in my flank. Apparently the ones without an overly dramatic bullet waster actually aim their shots. I hardly notice as the dirt beneath my hooves slowly switches to sand. I am too worried about the three extremely large ponies chasing us. Somehow, the one with the minigun is still able to keep pace with us, unencumbered ponies. My legs are burning, and not just the one that has been shot. I’m a rock farmer, not a distance runner. I can’t keep this speed for much longer. Fortunately, a cylindrical tower comes into view. The aura seems to be emanating off of it. Upon this sight, I gain a second wind. I can only assume that the vault is beneath that building. The super mutants finally catch wind of our plan and slow down to shoot at us with more vigor. Their accuracy greatly improves after this, but so does the distance between us. Another bullet hits me, this time grazing my neck. Blood starts spurting out of my neck, casting out in a wide arc across the ground. I can’t stop to heal it right now. I need to make it to the tower. Even the power of my will cannot stop me from slowing down. The purple pony is slowing down as well, but the mares are still going strong. I want to say something like, “Guess there’s a reason I always listen to them,” but I don’t want to use up my breath. The purple pony keeps slowing down. Even I, who has brought up the rear every trip, am passing him. A quick glance away from the target to the new arrival confirms the worst. Blood is seeping out of a hole in his side. He definitely won’t make it the rest of the way to the tower. The mares had just entered the tower by the time he collapses behind me. Despite all of my instincts, I stop to help him. I grab his hoof and throw it over my shoulder, all the while encouraging him to keep going. Despite my best efforts, he begins to wheeze and starts to drag me down with him. “Come on, we have to make it! Only a few more feet,” I assure him, even though I am practically dragging him at this point. He is having an extremely difficult time breathing, but is intent on telling me something. He struggles to speak and after a few tries he finally manages, “Go on… without… me.” “No way man. I never let potential friends down.” We manage to get pretty close before the super mutants catch up with us. They have stopped shooting. They already know that they have us killed; even their small brains can see that. “HA HA! MEAN MAN WILL BE SO HAPPY WHEN I GIVE HIM YOU TWO.” The super mutant with the mini gun reaches down and picks the pony up in his teeth. He just hangs there limply, as if he were dead. “EW TO, ET MM,” the super mutant says through the pony in his mouth. The ugly one (or is the other one uglier) leans over to pick me up, when suddenly, his head explodes. The other two are so shocked by this that the big one drops the pony, who lands on the ground with a small grunt. I use this opportunity to take out my pistol and shoot a whole magazine into the big one’s head. I miss a few shots, but when you shoot eight bullets, it’s bound to do some damage. I get lucky. A bullet pierces each of his eyes. Surprisingly, that doesn’t kill him, but instead causes him to on an uncontrollable rage. He starts to spray his mini gun randomly, killing his partner and doing a ton of damage to the ground and sky. Once he runs out of bullets, he starts randomly kicking the ground. The purple pony, who had before fallen to the ground by his hooves, gets a hard kick to the ribs. I hear a small crack, as he flies over twenty feet, landing near the base of the building. I scramble to hooves to avoid his flailing limbs, but there was no need for worry because he also gets sniped. Thinking I am in a safe place, I loot the bodies. Other than the mini gun and a few caps, there is nothing useful on the bodies. I trot over to the building where Poultice is waving me over intently. I speed up my pace, trusting my friend to have a reason. When I finally get there, she says hurriedly, “Those little fuckers weren’t alone. Get in quick.” She says all this while picking up the other pony and dragging him in. The inside of the building is different than I expected. The entire tower is one gigantic room. A spiral staircase climbs along the side of the circular room. The ceiling is at least five stories tall, but it is hard to tell because there is no light other than a few candles on the ground level. The candles themselves are on an alter which has wearily withstood the sands of time. It is a tired looking shrine respecting a weird looking amalgamation of animals. The creature in the carving appears to be laughing with a maniacal looking in its eyes. There are sticks of incense on the ground by four incense jars which are filled with used incense themselves. Being the thrifty stallion I am, I snatched all the incense and jars. A weird chill runs up my spine, causing the hair on my neck to stand on end. But just as it came quickly, it also left quickly. “Look, Ic,” Enigma says, panic starting to show in her voice. I hurry over to the doorway, where enigma is looking through her sniper rifle. “I’m a good shot, but I can’t take out that many.” She hands me her sniper rifle, which I peer through. Out on the horizon there appears to be an entire army of super mutants charging our tower. This stands up on the back of my neck again, this time in fear. “I don’t think-” I feel a little woozy. I can do nothing as my legs decide that they don’t want to work anymore and I collapse on the ground. I can vaguely hear Poultice shouting at me, “We have to get to the Vault. Get off your lazy ass.” But by this point my senses start to get fuzzy and I pass out. |><|-------|><| Suddenly, the spacious room that I was in has changed into a small cramped space with metal walls. There is a table taking up the far wall of the 6 foot wide room and two gurneys pushed against the long walls. There are also a few small tables on wheels to hold medical instruments. It is obvious that the designer of this medical room wanted to maximize the efficiency of the space. There’s a window opposite of me that shows an open room outside. Also, the room is covered in blood. I push myself up off my gurney. I run towards the door, only to feel woozy and fall onto the one next to me. This one is occupied, judging by the entrails now in covering my face. I back away in disgust. The remains of a violet hued pony lay on this table. The smell is overpowering now. I don’t know if it is just the connection of the smell to a body or if it’s because of the fact that I have his organs on my face, but I dry heave my nonexistent breakfast on the floor. The kill is fresh, within a few minutes. Whoever killed him will be back. I run out the door. I don’t know if it is because I need to get away from the corpse, or if it is to get protect me from the unknown assailant. I trip on my way out the door and fall on my snout (which is still sore from two days ago). I check the ground and see that the object I tripped on was another corpse, this one with three clean gashes down its side. Startled, I scramble backwards on the ground away from the corpse. I start panting and can feel my heartbeat in my ears. I bump into another body, again with the cuts. I look around the room in a panic. To my horror, it is littered with ponies killed in a similar manner. I put my hooves over my face and start to cry. I know I shouldn’t be crying at a time like this, but of all the stress I have had in the past week, I deserve a moment to let it out. After a few minutes, a warm hoof is put around my neck. It never even occurred to me beforehand that I was vulnerable to attack. Anypony could easily kill me now. But luckily this hoof is friendly. I look up to see the worried eyes of Enigma. The empathetic mare pleads to me, “Please stop crying. Because if you keep crying, I’ll start crying then only Poultice, here, will be able think straight.” Poultice adds to it by ordering in a didactic tone, “Stop crying, your body needs the fluids. You lost a lot of blood back there and crying will only make it worse.” I ponder this for a second. I can’t make Enigma sad, so there, it is decided. Even though being strong is the last thing I want to do right now, I still snap myself out of my emotions. As soon as I have composed myself, I ask them where they have been. They tell me how there is a horde of super mutants outside and how they had to drag that other pony and me down three flights of stairs to the vault. They had barely closed the door in time. Then, they had to drag us to the medical wing where Poultice stitched us up. “…but when I tried to remove the bullet from his heart, he went into cardiac arrest.” After a look of confusion from me, she clarifies, “He died.” “Oh,” I feel sorry for the colt. Then a repulsive thought came to my head. “Was he the one on the operating table?” “Yeah, why?” “No reason,” I want to puke for the second time today. I fell face first into his guts. “Where were you guys, anyway?” “Well, we went exploring. I left you in stable condition so we went to find the water talisman.” “Oh?” “The water talisman, the magic device that creates clean water. We searched for it, but didn’t find it,” Poultice says, looking me dead in the eye, daring me to say something else. “Okay, I’m coming with you,” I stand up, immediately feel light headed, and fall back down. “Just give me a second,” I try the same thing over again and find that it has the same result. “Yo, dumbass, didn’t I tell you that you lost a lot of blood? You are gonna sit here and not try to do anything,” Poultice gives me the same stare as before, and I let it go, just as before. “Enigma, stay here with him. I’m going to find that talisman.” She leaves the room through the leftmost of the four doorways. “Once she walked out of sight, Enigma grins at me, “Which way do you want to explore?” “But didn’t P-” “Please, if you listen to everything everypony tells you, you’re going to end up bored or dead.” I can’t argue with that logic. “Let’s go.” I finally concede, “Okay, let’s go this way.” I point my hoof at the rightmost door labeled “Maintenance.” Steadying myself against the wall, I push myself up slowly. The dizzying feeling I get is as bad as the first time, but it dissipates quickly, and I am able to carefully walk towards the door. |><|-------|><| The maintenance wing as one would expect was just a series of closets. There’s a broom closet, a mop closet, even a “Vacu-closet,” but the most interesting closet of them all is the PipBuck closet. It isn’t any different in design than the other three rooms in this hallway, but the things within it are way more interesting. There is a small work bench on the wall in front of me and a hammock set across the small room on the right. On the left, there is a rather sizeable box. I start there. I’m surprised to find the box nearly empty. The box, big enough to fit an entire pony in it, only holds three PipBucks, all of which won’t turn on at my command. I toss those back, moving to the workbench. The workbench has another Pipbuck, also broken, and a plethora of tools strewn about it. The number of tools overwhelms me, but I guess it makes sense. After all, the PipBuck is a complicated machine. It would need a large number of tools to fix it. This would be the perfect time to fix my PipBuck. Now, I’m no engineer, but how difficult could this be? |><|-------|><| “How difficult can this be?” I mutter to myself on the edge of breaking down. “Well, two hours later and I still haven’t opened it.” At this point, I’m practically screaming. Now, I just pick up a random tool and shove it into a random slot. It fits! Turns out the square peg fits in the square hole. With a twist of my neck, the PipBuck pops open. I squee, a smile lighting up my face. I slap my leg into the PipBuck and lock it. I lift my leg in victory and imagine rays of light coming off of the PipBuck in a dramatic fashion. Giggling, I try to see what this puppy can do, only to find me staring hard at the words THE BOSS on the bottom of it. “Shit,” I put it on backwards. I look over at where I put the tool that opened my PipBuck, only to find it hidden in the pile of tools. “Ugh! It’ll take me another hour to find the tool again.” There is a whirring noise emanating from deep within BOSS (for that is what I am going to refer to it as). BOSS started rotating on my leg until it righted itself. Apparently, staring at something intently can actually do something. After BOSS had picked a spot to sit, the screen became alit. A message pops up saying, “Is this orientation adequate for your needs?” I move my leg around to check and, of course, BOSS had done its job well. I click the yes button, and a message pops up. This one displaying, “Initializing Magic Injections™” “Magic Injections?” My inquiry does not go unanswered for very long. A splitting pain comes from beneath BOSS. It spreads all the way up my leg and starts to attack my chest. From my vast knowledge of medical practice, I know exactly what to do in a time like this. Flail around like a madmare, until the pain goes away. The weird thing is that this did not help the pain. In fact, it made it worse. Plus, the bruises I got from hitting my limbs against various pieces of furniture didn’t help. When I finally regain my senses, I see Enigma standing over me. She looks at me with a combination of worry and disbelief, “How can you even hurt yourself in a small room by yourself?” I look her in the eyes, raise my two forelegs out in front of me, and say, “PipBucks.” She giggles at this, “Come on, Poultice still hasn’t come back from her expedition. I’m starting to get worried.” I follow her out of the room and back to the atrium, where the bodies have been removed and in their place is a single incense jar giving off a small wisp of smoke. It smells like nothing that I have ever smelled before. It smells like I have always imaged flowers covered in dew droplets to smell like. It smells… calming. Noticing my discovery, Enigma says, “Sorry, I couldn’t stand the smell in here so I borrowed one of your jars. I hope you don’t mind.” “Not at all. I don’t even know why I took those.” The truth is I felt like I needed to have them. Enigma walks through the doorway Poultice had entered hours before. I turn to follow her, but catch something out of the corner of my eye. It is a pony, but not really. He certainly has the shape of a pony, but definitely is not a pony. He is an all white, misty form in the shape of a pony, but where his hooves should touch the ground, there is nothing. In fact, he doesn’t have hooves at all! He just floats everywhere. Although the rest of his body is a foggy form, his head is perfectly clear. It is the skull of a pony. It is as if that part is only there to scare the living Celestia out of ponies. The pony floats over to the incense in the center of the room and picks it up. Since he does not have any hooves, it appears to be floating there. It seems at this moment that the ghoul finally realizes that I am there, for her looks at me with those empty holes and whispers in a raspy voice, “3.” He then lifts the incense over his head and drops it into what his mouth would be. He vanishes from sight after this. I stand there stunned for a few seconds before Enigma comes back into the rooms saying, “What’s taking you so long?” A shiver runs down my spine as I say, “Nothing, let’s go.” |><|-------|><| Enigma is the first to see her body lying limply on the blood soaked floor. The tough-as-nails pony is no match for whatever hit her. Even her thick leather armor did not help Poultice block the bullets. Her gun is still in its holster. “She didn’t even get off a shot,” Enigma says, sighing and shaking her head. “We better keep an eye out for the pony who did this. We are not alone.” She nudges Poultice at these words. A small groan can be heard coming from the pile on the floor. Enigma’s familiar smile comes back to her face. “Thank Celestia. You’re alive,” I say letting out a sigh of relief. Enigma rushes to take out a health potion and forces its contents down Poultice’s throat, a look of worry on her face. “I was saving this for an emergency, but for Poultice I guess I can use it.” A realization hits me as the last drops of liquid pour into Poultice’s mouth. “That was our last vial, right?” The look on Enigma’s face says it all. “Yeah, I figured.” The lights flicker a few times, causing me to look around the corridor. It’s a simple T-junction, where you could turn either left or right. A soft murmur can be heard down the hallway to my left. I approach the source of the noise slowly, aware that it may be the same pony who shot Poultice. I hold a hoof up to me lips, motioning to Enigma to stay back and be quiet. As I get close, I can make out some of the mare’s muttering, “All dead… Why can’t I be with them...Little foal, Fodder… run out of time! Ha, Ha!” I carefully draw my pistol to be on the ready for any possible reaction from the obviously insane pony. Somehow she hears me, “What was that? You doggies aren’t back again, are you?” I hear a whirring noise of which I had heard before. Just as I remember what it was, the bullets flying through the air make it redundant. "I wont go down like this. I can't go down like this! Die dogs!" The mare's crazy rant flies by me like the bullets that I'm trying to avoid. I somehow manage to make it back to the conjunction. I take cover around the corner, pressing myself against the wall. "Did that pony just say 'dogs?'" Poultice says between the moans and groans. "Poultice!" "Yeah, yeah, I'm alive. Now on to more important things, Did she say dogs?" "Yeah," Poultice winces at this word, whether from the pain or the word itself is unknown. "But I don't know how-" "Don't you get it?" This sentence seemed to take more out of her, as she is gritting her teeth, unable to speak. The effort causes her to pass out again. Enigma fills me in, "The only dogs in the Wasteland are the hell hounds." "Oh," then I realize the power of these words, "Oh! So that means that we are trapped in this stable with-" "Yes, a whole pack of hell hounds." |><|-------|><| We sat in silence for an unknown amount of time after that. It could have been days for all I cared. There is a pack of hell hounds down here! We can't beat that. We were nearly killed by a few unhappy plants. But then something interrupt our silence. The crazy mare had stopped shooting. I make the decision that if we want to survive, we need all the help we can get, even if the help is crazy. "We're not hell hounds. We just want to talk." "That's exactly what they would say. Prove it!" "Okay, I'm going to come out nice and slow and you're not going to shoot me. Okay?" She stammers before replying, "Okay." I turn the corner and am surprised to see an undersized mare toting an oversized battle saddle. She is a purple pegasus with a grass green mane. I can't tell what her cute mark is because of the minigun. In fact, the only reason I could tell that she was a pegasus was that she had to flap her wings just to keep from collapsing. "Stand back!" she grows at me. "I'm not going to shoot you." To show my sincerity, I take out my rifle and place it on the ground. "Now you do the same," I say this slowly and calmly. She take off the saddle and drops it on the ground with a resounding thud, all the while keeping her eye on me. Without her saddle, I can see just how small she is. She can't be more than a teenager. She tries to fold her wings under, but twitches in pain and unfolds them. "Are your wings okay?" Silence. "You want me to take a look at them?" "No," she says, backing away from me. “Okay, then will you at least tell me your name?" "It's...Arpeggia.” She calms down at saying this. “Mine’s Icarus. Will you tell me why you shot at me?” “I thought you were one of them, one of those dogs,” she shivers Enigma, noticing that there is no more threat, approaches us and asks, "What happened?" Arpeggia jumps in the air in fright and tries to fy away, but her wings seize up and she falls back to the ground. "It's okay, Arpeggia. She's with me." Keeping her calm is a very delicate process. "This is Enigma. Enigma, this is Arpeggia." Enigma holds out a hoof for a hoofshake, but Arpeggia just cowers away. "Okay, then will you tell me why you're doing this?" She hesitates, but then, deciding that she trusts me, says, "I was on my way to school, when the drilling stopped." Drilling? "Then everypony went to the drilling room to see what was happening. That's when they came. Those ferocious dog killed everypony." She starts crying again and it takes a few minutes before she composes herself enough to continue. "Then, my brother and I were the only ones left alive. He l-left yesterday to get help. I haven't seen him since. I-I don't know what happened to him." She sounds like she is on the verge of crying again. "I'm so sorry," I say lamely, as if my being sorry could change the fact that everypony she knows is dead. "But now that you guys are here, I don't have to worry anymore." She gets really close to me as she says this, making m uncomfortable. An angry look appears on Enigma's face for just a second, so short that I'm not even sure if it actually happened. "Yeah, you're grateful. Now go tell that to Enigma," I say, awkwardly pushing Arpeggia off of me. With an unusual grin, Enigma adds, "We still have to find that water talisman, so you go find that, while Arpeggia and I guard Poultice." "Sounds good," anything to get away from the tension between Enigma and Arpeggia. |><|-------|><| Using my vast knowledge of stables and their layout, I decide that the water talisman has to be in the overmares office because it is the most important room in the facility. It seems like the makers wanted no confusion that this is the most important room. They put all the signs for the room in large font and all caps. The sign above the door looks a little like this: OVERMARES OFFICE That added to the fact that there is a window overlooking the main atrium in the room, means power. The only problem is that the door is locked. But, much to my relief, there is a terminal by it, which I assume will unlock it. This is the perfect time to try out the advanced hacking feature of my PipBuck. I quickly hook up the PipBuck to the terminal and a screen pops up saying: "PickBuck Terminal Disablement Program “Please assure that you are doing this in completely legal means described in the document below." I scroll through the document. It would take me three hours to read this. I don't have that kind of time. Luckily, there is just a simple "I accept" option at the end. It doesn't check whether you read it or not so... yeah, I'm just going to hit that. The screen changes to a "possible passwords" page where it lists a few options with long strngs of random character in between. I choose one of those, "Vault." It displays an "incorrect, two tries left" just as it did before, only now it tells me that two of the letters were in the right place. So that allows me to figure out the actual answer of "value." Just as I expected, the terminal brought up a screen with a single option: unlock door. With a simple click, the door opens, showing me a small room with a U-shaped table in the center. "Welcome, the overmare isn't here right now. Please come back later when she has returned," an automated voice tells me. "You have ten seconds to comply." "Oh really, what are you going to do?" To answer my questions two large turrets drop down from the ceiling and aim directly at me. "Oh, shit!" I fumble around, trying to take out my gun. Meanwhile, the automated voice started counting down. "5...4...3" I hold up my gun and try to pull the trigger, but instead of grabbing my gun, I grabbed a banana. "2...1" In my panic, I throw the banana. It hits the turret just as it starts shooting, causing it to turn and shoot the other turret. This gives me enough time to take out my 10 mil and shoot the remaining turret. "Guess this turret... has gone bananas." |><|-------|><| This exploration has been less fruitful than I had anticipated. The only thing in the room is a fried terminal and a locked safe. I still don’t know how to pick a lock, but I just got through a door that I would have never been able to before, so I’m pretty confident. I take out a bobby pin and screwdriver. Then, I insert them both into the safe and twist. The safe opens with a click. Wow! It’s that easy? The hardest part of that was finding a way to turn them with my mouth. I open the safe to see my reward. I am delighted to find three voice recordings and a gun. But it’s not just any gun, it’s the most beautiful gun that I have ever seen. It’s a sleek ten millimeter pistol just like my other gun, only this one is in perfect condition and has a cracked glass pattern covering every inch of it. A small piece of paper is on it with the words “Lyra’s Fist” on it. I put the gun in my mouth and wave it around a few times. It feels nice. Actually, it feels like it was made for me. I point the gun at the doorway. I point the gun at one of the broken turrets. I point Lyra’s Fist out the window and what I see scares the living Celestia out of me. There, in the atrium, is a great looming beast wandering. From my vantage point high above the beast, I can see its red eyes, huge muscles, and, most intimidatingly, its sharp claws. The stories about the hell hounds have not given justice to their bloodcurdling form. The hell hound leans over and picks up something small and sniffs it. My Incense jar! This excites the fiend and he runs down a hallway. The same hallway as Enigma. I don’t even give it a second thought; I just sprint after it. |><|------|><| As I gallop down the long hallway, the only thought I have is of the safety of Enigma. I turn the corner to where I left the group, but instead of finding my friends, I see a confused looking hell hound also looking for Enigma. He readily abandons his search at the sight of me. "Oh, buck me with a croquet mallet." I sprint as fast as I can the other way. When I make it back to the intersection where we found Poultice, I gallop past the turn towards the atrium and go down the way I haven't been yet. I make it ten feet before I am forced to tun left down another hallway. At the end of this hallway is a door marked drill room, oh and all my friends. "Go!" I shout, motioning toward the door behind them. They all look at me with a confused expression (all, but Poultice, who is still unconscious), but that expression changes to fear as the hell hound barrels around the corner behind me. "I'll hold him off. Just go." Enigma looks at me, worried, but still picks up Poultice with her magic and enters the room. When I finally get to the end of the hall, I turn and take out my new gun. I look right into the charging hell hound's eyes. I shoot four bullets out of Lyra's Fist and into the dog's chest. Despite the thick hide of the hound, the bullets still punch right into his heart. His body collapses, sliding to a halt at my feet. I loot the body where I find some sunglasses. I put them on and say, "It looks like the dog days are over." I can't leave off the fact that when I shot the hell hound, my Lyra's Fist felt perfect in my mouth. There was an imperceptible amount of recoil and I could fire way faster than I could with my other 10 mil. It feels like a perfect gun...except for the flaws all pistol have, such as a short range and a semiautomatic firing system. "We're safe." No sooner had I said this, than three new hell hounds bound around the corner. "Buck, no. Oh, hayl no!" I charge into the door screaming, "Run!" Little do I know that the room is practically just a giant hole in the ground surrounded by only about two feet on any side. I try to catch myself as I teeter on the edge, but to no avail. I fall right into the pit. The last thing I hear is Enigma screaming something at me, before I fall into the Darkness. Footnote: Level up! New Perk: Gunslinger - who needs those big bazookas? Not me! The best weapon is, of course, the pistol. +10% damage with one-hoof weapons (Why do they call it that if you shoot with your mouth?)