//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: A Blast of Cold Air // Story: Fallout Equestria: Broken Hearts // by The Suave One //------------------------------// “The higher you go, the chillier it gets.” The door to the Stable finished locking itself back into position as I turned on my PipBuck light. The device released a soft glow, not enough to pierce the blanket of black, but enough to illuminate a small circle around me. If not for that, I would have tripped over all the skeletons in the cave. There were piles of bones slowly rotting away and the occasional sign, covered in scrawled profanities aimed at those fortunate enough to make it to a Stable. I crept past the bones, careful not to touch them. I looked behind me for Click, but she was nowhere to be seen. “Click? Where are you?” I called into the shadow. “Octavius! How do you turn the that light thing on? I’m stuck in something!” Came her panicked reply. “Just press and hold the button on the side.” I replied, slowly making my way to where her voice was coming from. In the darkness, I saw dim light suddenly appear and made way towards it. As I approached the light, I could hear Click’s fast, shallow breaths. I lifted my hoof to get a better view of what she was caught in, then dropped my hoof with a gasp. Some of the bodies in the cave were fresher than others, and Click had tripped over one such body and landed in the half rotten stomach of another. Being the reasonable pony I was, I leant to the side and vomited as hard as I could. Once my stomach had kind of settled, I reached down and helped Click back up, her barding stained red from the blood, with patches here and there from liquefied organs, and her own vomit. Then we set off to find the exit together. We walked slowly uphill, and the air got colder with every step. We walked up that slope for what felt like hours, until we saw a small makeshift door, and a harsh white light leaking through the gaps. We stumbled up to the door, only to discover it was locked. I knew it was possible to pick locks, but had never invested any time into it, so I had no idea what to do and was ready to quit when Click pulled out a screwdriver and one of the bobby pins out of her mane. She carefully unfolded the pin slightly before jamming both into the lock. Within seconds she pushed the door open and we stepped outside. The bright sunlight temporarily blinded me, causing me to trip over a rock and land face first in something cold and soft. I lifted myself back to my hooves and looked around me at the landscape. A thick layer of snow coated the earth like a jacket, only with the opposite effect. The glare from the sun made it hard to see and hurt my eyes. I looked around me until I saw Click. She had fallen on her flank, seemingly frozen while looking up. My eyes followed hers and I saw one of the most wonderful sights I had ever seen. The wide open sky. “Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked her, breathlessly. “Please tell me you are joking. It is literally scaring the shit out of me right now.” She replied, not looking away. “I’m sure you don’t mean literally.” I said in a half-assed attempted to reassure her. “No, I actually do. I just wet myself.” )))))))((((((( It took a lot of convincing, and all of my strength, to get Click to move. Once she was certain she wouldn’t fall into the sky, we started to set out to find some shelter. Click trudged through the thick snow for ages while I effortlessly flew around in the sky, no longer restricted by a roof. I had never felt truly free in the Stable, but it wasn’t until I first took off into the open air that I realised how restrictive it was. Out here, the world looked to go on forever, as cliché as that saying was. I was brought back to earth when Click shouted up at me, causing me to lose track of where I was going and to hit a lamp post that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. “Octopus, there’s some intact buildings here.” She said with a slight snicker as I rose, rubbing my sore head. I looked around the small town in front of me, no more than some rickety looking shells of buildings and some smashed up cars. “Two hundred years didn’t do this place any good.” She stated, looking at the mess in front of us. “You know, these cars look burnt. So do these houses. Maybe the town’s citizen went rioting when they couldn’t get to the Stable?” “Possibly. Still, that’s a lot of damage, even for an angry mob.” I replied as I looked for a relatively sturdy building in which we could hunker down. The only building that still had all its walls (though no door or windows), was what appeared to be a small shopping complex. A quick look on the E.F.S showed that there wasn’t any form of life in the building, so we entered carelessly. In doing so, the floor gave way beneath us and we wound up in the building’s basement. Down here there were a couple of beds, a fridge, a desk and a light. I walked over to the desk and opened one of the draws, finding a pair of polarised sunglasses and a small bag of bottle caps. I placed the bag of caps in my saddlebag and put the sunglasses on, deciding they might help with the glare of the snow. As soon as the glasses were settled on my face, a small notice flashed up from my PipBuck reading “Compatible Device Detected”. A small load bar appeared, then as quick as it appeared, it disappeared. Then I noticed all the red bars on my E.F.S. “Click!” I whispered urgently to the sleeping unicorn, shaking her vigorously. She opened one sleepy eye and moaned. “Click, we’re surrounded!” “Don’t be an idiot. I can’t see any bars on my E.F.S except for the orange one. Is orange bad or good?” “Good. That would be me it’s picking up, and mine is picking up a whole lot of red.” “Don’t be stupid.” She responded. “There’s nothing there.” As if on cue, bullet bit into the bed head, only missing Click by centimetres, flinging chips of wood up into my face. I quickly ducked under the bed, and was soon joined by Click. Her horn ignited in a dark blue glow the same colour as her mane as she pulled out her 10mm. “Where are the red marks?” She asked me, braving a quick peak from behind the bed. She duck back as a shot tore through the air, barely missing her. “There one that way, that way and that way.” I said, pointing in the corresponding directions. She quickly ran from behind the bed to the desk before running straight towards one of the red dots, shooting wildly. She then quickly turned to another red dot, repeating the same practice. Deciding I would help, I ran out from under the table and pulled out my laser pistol before a sharp pain in my leg made me tumble and fall flat on my face. The second red marker on SATS disappeared and Click ran towards the final one, before it disappeared as well. She walked back to me as I sat in a dazed heap, my foreleg hurting, and crippled limb warnings flashing in my vision. “What happened?” She asked me as she approached. “I just shot myself in the leg. And it fucking hurt!” )))))))((((((( One Stimpack later, and I was able to use my leg properly again, though it would still need some time to recover. Once Click had sat back down on the bed, she had muttered something about killing other ponies before lying down. The sun was starting to set, so I decided to look at the bodies, to see if they had anything useful on them. I managed to snag myself some more Stimpacks, some RadAway and a bottle of vodka, as well as some more bottle caps. Each body had a fair few on them, so I collected all of them. They must have some form of importance. One in particular caught my attention. It was an old Sunrise Sassperella cap with a blue star on it. Each of the ponies also had a gun, but all the guns where in such bad condition, that it was not wonder they missed all their shots. I did however pull a neat scope off one, which I attached to my pistol. Once I had finished scavenging around the bodies, I returned to Click, now asleep on the bed. I slumped down on the mattress next to her. Closing my eyes, I reviewed the day’s events. I had left my home, helped my worst enemy out of the remains of a half composed body, shot myself and scavenged dead bodies for useful items. Too much, too fast. I felt my eyes tear up. I had witnessed the deaths of two ponies before raiding their bodies as easily as if they were trees filled with fruit. I hadn’t really thought about what I was actually doing at the time. Tears rolled down my face as I tried to get to sleep, to escape from the guilt that now hit me. I didn’t kill them, so why did I feel like I was responsible for their deaths? Slowly, sleep overcame me, and I fell into the bliss darkness. )))))))((((((( I woke to find myself alone in the basement. After a quick freak out, I smelt something horrid drifting down the stairs, followed by a long string of profanities that may have ended with a lesbian threesome with the princesses. I followed Clicks voice upstairs to find her near a stove with a pan full of goddesses know what. I looked at the bench next to her to see an assortment of Nuka-cola bottles, Cram and some Sugar Apple Bombs. Not the usual breakfast for somepony from a Stable, and from the smell, anypony else either. “I cooked breakfast for us, but burnt myself on the oven.” She explained, easing my confused look. “That’s nice. Why are you cooking us breakfast?” “I aim to get back to the Stable alive. With the processor. You seem to know your way around a PipBuck, so I need you too. Otherwise I would take your gun and leave you.” That shut me up. After a quick breakfast of Fancy Buck Cakes (Click had tried her meal and decided it wasn’t worth eating), we grabbed our stuff and headed out again. For a while we didn’t speak, but the silence was broken when Click brought up my gun skills. “How do you freaking shoot yourself?” “I have never used a gun before. I guess I just got a bit twitchy.” I replied lamely. “You are fucking retarded. I should just take your weapons and go.” At that comment, I flapped my wings and started to fly off. “Where are you going?” Click yelled after me. “I’m leaving you. Screw the Stable!” I yelled back. I was finally free from that hole in the ground. No more rules, no more restrictions on flying. I could just find a high peak and live on that. I had read that Pegasi could also live on clouds, but I wasn’t too sure about those just yet. “Please come back!” Click cried out. “Why?” I yelled back, not even looking, but slowing down enough for her to catch up. Once she had caught up with me, she promptly shot me in the wing. My barding had been designed for a unicorn, and so my wings were uncovered and the shot went straight through. I fell from the sky like a bag of dead cats thrown out of the window of a tall building. I landed in a groaning heap on the ground. “I’ll take your guns, ammo, food and water.” She said, pointing the gun between my eyes. I had learnt in my years in the Stable that being a hero was bad for your health, so I handed everything over to her, excluding my recollector, memory orb, Sunrise Sassperella, vodka, Stimpacks, RadAway and my growing collection of caps (I had snuck the caps off the Nuka-cola bottles Click tried cooking with into my bags) before she stood up and walked off. As I watched her walk away, I grabbed a Stimpack and injected into my wing, which dismissed the crippled limb warning on my PipBuck. As I wasn’t a hero, and wasn’t stupid, I didn’t follow her and instead went a different way. I was, after all, the only one with the location of the Stable-tec office on their PipBuck, and she was heading in the wrong direction. I walked back to the super market and grabbed the guns from the dead bodies. They were similar enough models, and each still had an array of decent parts. So I set about pulling the guns to pieces and swapping out parts until the gun was working as well as it could. Thanks to Bluebuck, I knew how to disassemble and reassemble machines well enough. Maintenance, what would we do without them. I quickly grabbed whatever ammo I could from the bodies, before grabbing some of the still edible packs of food off the shelves, and raided the tills, finding some good solid bits like the ones that could be found in the Stables. Once I was satisfied with my loot, I set off in a roughly south-west direction according to my PipBuck, and didn’t stop walking until I reached the next city. )))))))((((((( Apart from a group of weird mutant Parasprites, and a hungry dog (I had finally figured out how a gun works), I reached the city walls of New New Newtown without much action. The cities walls were a hodgepodge of wooden planks, old signs and vehicles. The gate was guarded by two stallions not much older that I was. A quick check over proved I wasn’t a raider, and they let me into the city. New New Newton was the first town I had come across in my life, and I was impressed. The housed were made of a variety of old pre-war buildings, buses, train carts and shacks made of debris. Buildings were built on top of other buildings, all connected with and intricate cobweb of metal walkways, all crawling with ponies. As I stood there with my mouth open, a mare walked up to me. “Pretty impressive, isn’t she?” She asked, standing next to me, looking over the town. “Eeyup.” I replied slowly. “She started as just some old buildings that were barely standing. Now everything is so reinforced, it’s probably stronger than the original structures were.” She turned to face me, so I turned to face her. “The name’s Rosewater. I own the local pub, The Thirsty Brahmin. Feel free to swing by and get a drink, or bed, anytime. We have a bit of everything, and some of our produce is even radiation free.” With that, the white mare with the pink and red mane left me standing there. Once my eyes had finished feasting on the view of the town, I realised how tired I was. I walked down the slope into the town centre where there was a signpost with signs pointing in every direction. I looked over the signs trying to find where The Thirsty Brahmin was, while also taking note of some of the other shops I might need to visit. There was an armoury, weaponry, a blacksmith, a silversmith, a wordsmith (??) and a general store. A sign also pointed to the church of the local cult. Finally I saw the building I was looking for. The pub took up a whole two story building, the beds on the higher floor, and the actual pub on the ground floor. The pub was busy, empty enough to make moving around easy. I saw Rosewater behind the bar, so I strolled up and took a seat. “Oh, howdy again.” She said as she came to serve me. “What’ll it be? Whiskey? Vodka? Scotch? Or maybe an atomic cocktail, or Nuka-cola Victory?” “I’ll have a whiskey please.” She grabbed a cup in her mouth, than filled it up with a hose of sorts, before handing it to me. “Enjoy. It’s on the house. Anything else?” “Yeah, can I have room?” “Sure. That’ll be ten caps a night.” I reached into my bag to pull out some of the pre-war bits to give her, before I registered what she said. “Caps? What’s a cap?” “What is a cap? Do you live under a rock?” “Well, it’s more of a highly fortified hole in the ground, but sure.” “Caps are the main currency of the wasteland. Their just bottle caps.” Now I understood why the raiders had so many caps on them. I reached into my bag and pulled out an assortment of Nuka-cola and Sunrise Sassperella caps. “Your room is the first one on the left when you go upstairs.” She said as she gave me a key. The room was small, but nice enough. The bed was soft, and that was all I really cared about. I dumped my saddle bag on the floor, shrugged of my barding, and then fell onto the bed. My wing was still sore from where Click had shot me, and would need time to heal properly before I could fly on it again. I flicked some of my purple mane out of my eyes as I lay on my back, and looked at my PipBuck. According to the item sorted, which had sorted everything in my inventory alphabetically, I still had a decent supply of Med-X and Stimpacks. I also still had the tube of RadAway. Why anypony would need to carry around Radiation sickness medicine confused me. Still, you never know when such a thing may be useful. In an extreme case, it could be used to help fix sun cancer. I checked my Stats and saw the small picture of a pony with a frowning face, with a crippled limb warning next to its wing, a small bar under the wing completely empty. Deciding to listen to some of the Overmare’s recordings, I pressed the button labelled data. A map appeared on the screen, showing my current location in New New Newton. I also noted small markers that showed the locations of Stable 27 and some Super Duper Mart. I opened up the folder with all the downloads and flicked through until I found one that was sent to the first Overmare of the Stable from Stable-tec. With nothing else to do, I selected it, and the recording started to play. “Hello, my name is Scootaloo. I am one of the three founders of Stable-tec. You have been appointed as Overmare, or in the case of Stable 24, Overstallion, of a Stable-tec life preserving Stable. You have been chosen for your sense of loyalty and duty, so on so forth. These things are so boring and tedious. Your Stable has been selected for a social experiment, yarda, yarda, yarda. Ahh, here we go. Inside your Stable, you will find a set of instructions and stuff that will help you with running the stable. These are in the safe in your office. If you do not obey these instructions, you are putting the lives of everypony in your Stable at risk. So on, so forth. Can we just mass produce the first one of these? They’re all basically the same.” The track cut off, leaving me with more questions. What were the instructions given to the Overmare of Stable 27? What was that about a social experiment? I scrolled through my data, but didn’t find anything that might have provided an answer. A wave of tiredness overcame me, and I shut my eyes. All the questions could wait until the mornings. )))))))((((((( I woke the next day when I rolled off my bed and onto the hard floor. After a two minute struggle to extract myself from the blankets, I slipped back into my barding and grabbed my saddle bags before heading back down into the pub. There was a different pony behind the bar now, a stallion with a rick brown coat, and a black mane. As I approached, he grabbed a menu and handed it to me. There were all sorts of meals available from Brahmin steak to Bloatsprite sandwiches. I found it odd that the was a radiation free option for each meal, at a rather inflated price. I ordered a toasted cheese sandwich with a cup of purified water for a small fee in caps. After I had finished my meal, I left the pub to explore New New Newton. Finding the signpost, I soon set off for the armoury. It was a small shack made out of two train carts on the third story of Newton that had been roughly wielded together. The stallion behind the desk introduced himself as Steel-plate, and claim that his good were the best you could find in the wastes. I left the armoury with a few less caps and a new suit of lightweight metal amour. I had also sold my Stable barding, as I wouldn’t be needing it anymore. Satisfied with my new armour, I decided it was time to hit the wastes again. I headed in the general direction of the Stable-tec facility, deciding it was my best shot for answering my questions about the Stables Finding an intact working water processor would be an added bonus. I came across the occasional little shack or hamlet here and there, but decided against scavenging in most of them due to the red marks on my PipBuck. They were probably just radroaches, but better safe than sorry. Occasionally, if I got close to a shack, my PipBuck would bleep and tell me the name of the location. It was like this for most of the day, the only threats I encountered being bloatsprites and the occasional dog. The sun was setting as I found a small shack with no signs of life inside. I opened the door and stepped inside, getting a noseful of the musty air. There were serious signs of decay on the walls, and the whole house swayed with the wind. There were some filing cabinets and a bed, but not much else. I opened the filing cabinets and found a stray 20 gauge shot, some caps and a bag of RadAway. I scooped all of them up into my bag before lying down on the bed. I pulled the crystal shard necklace out from under my barding and looked at it. Bluebuck and I had annoyed some of the school bullies, and decided to hide from them down in the maintenance tunnels. Whilst we were down there, we stumbled across a small crook in the pipes, just big enough for us to fit through. There, we found a small nook filled with Mintals and Buck. While Bluebuck admire the large collection of drug, I spotted a small shard of blue amongst the boxes. It was the gem. As soon as I picked it up, I felt stronger. It was weird, but whenever I had that necklace on, I felt stronger and more powerful. But that wasn’t the only reason I kept it. When I picked up that shard, my cutie mark appeared. For my cutie mark party, Bluebuck and my dad had made a necklace for the shard, and I had worn almost every day until I move out. I thought I had lost it in the packing. Somehow, I had found it in my last minutes in the Stable, a small reminder of the life I had left behind. As I lay on the bed, I gave the room a quick scam, trying to see if there were any lootable containers that I had missed. My eyes stopped on an unusual bulge in the wall. Getting off the bed, I walked over to the wall, then scraped off the outer layer of fading wallpaper. Underneath was a terminal, screen glowing like a bug zapper light, luring in its prey. I clicked a key on the keyboard, and the terminal asked me to type in a password. I brought the cable Bluebuck had given me out of my saddle bags and connected my PipBuck to the terminal. I then selected the program ‘Blue’s Skeleton Key’. A series of numbers flashed on the screen, then the terminal opened to its home page. There wasn’t a whole lot of links on the screen. Just some mail and link to open a safe. I downloaded the letter into my PipBuck before clicking on the safe unlock. The terminal folded away into the wall, revealing some energy cells for the energy pistol that Click had stolen from me, some pre-war bits and a shard of light blue crystal, almost identical to the one in my necklace. I placed everything from the safe and into my bag, then went back to the bed. For some reason, I felt luckier than before. Maybe it was the safe in the wall, or the uninhabited house, but I felt like my luck had greatly improved. )))))))((((((( My stomach woke me early the next day, so I walked into what I assumed was the kitchen, and started to root about for any food. In one of the cupboards, I found an unopened box of Sugar Apple Bombs, and some water that looked clean enough to drink. I even found a toilet. I ate the cereal as fast as I could, before gulping down a bottle of the water. Now that I had eaten and relieved my body of unneeded fluids, I started on my way again. There was a light snow falling when I exited the house, though being a pegasus gave me a greatly increased resistance to the frost. I trudged through the bleak white landscape, feeding the occasion bloatsprites a lead sandwich. There was also the occasional dog, and some hideous creature that looked like a giant zombie mole. The trip was once again, uneventful, until I ran into another pony. He was a tall and well-built earth pony stallion, with a dull golden mane, and a pale blue coat, both barely visible from under his thick insulated barding. His eyes covered in a strange pair of goggles. But the important thing was, he showed up as friendly on my Pipbuck. I gave him a small wave, and he walked over to meet me. “How’re you?” He asked, pulling down a scarf from over his mouth. “As swell as I could be in this frozen shithole.” I replied. My answer seemed to humour him, and he held out his hoof as he gave a little laugh. “The name’s Red Snow.” “Mine’s Octavius.” I took his hoof and gave it a small shake. “What brings you out here to the frozen north?” He asked me, pulling the scarf back over his mouth. “I’m just exploring. How about you?” “Not a whole lot. Just trying to find my way around. I come from a small town down in Equestria. Arbu, it’s called.” My next sentence was cut off as a gun shot hit the snow between us. I reached for my gun, quickly using my wings to hold it, while I aimed at the red dot on my PipBuck. Then, in a quick explosion, the dot was gone. I looked over at Red Snow, and saw his weapon of choice. A grenade launcher, much like the one I left the Stable with, but was robbed of. He started to walk towards the smoking crater in the snow, so I followed him. As we reached the crater, I saw bits and pieces of pony spread around in a large circle. I had never seen a pony in so many piece before, so I leaned over and threw up my breakfast. One my puking episode was over, I looked back at Red Snow, just in time to see him putting something in his bag. “Feel free to raid the rest of the corpse. I’ve got my share.” He said, patting his bag. That’s when I was hit by an idea. “Do you want to team up?” I asked him. He looked at me curiously. “I gathered that you were a city pony from the Pipthing, but you must be really fresh out of the city to be so keen in teaming up. Rule one of the wasteland is trust nobody.” Red Snow gave me an evil grin, making me back away slowly. He then burst out laughing. “You seem decent enough though, so yes. I don’t have any plans for my life. I just wander. So maybe I will tag along, see what happens.” He gestured for me to start walking. “So, what brings a cloud pony such as you out here?” Snow asked, sparing me a slight glance. “I’m not from a cloud. I’m from a Stable. My Stables water processor has broken down. I have been sent out to find a new one.” “Wait. Are you telling me there are functioning Stables still out there?” “Well, yeah. Aren’t you from a Stable?” “Not specifically. I am the great something descendant of a Stable pony. Most ponies out here are. But most Stables that were successful opened over a hundred years ago.” “Successful? What do you mean by that?” “Being fresh out of a Stable, I suppose it isn’t something you’re familiar with. Stable-tec used the Stables as social experiment, trying to produce The best society for the future, and to limit the chances of another war.” “Another war?” “Well, yeah. Had you never thought it may happen again? There are that many gangs and tribes at war out there in the wasteland, that a massive war doesn’t take that much to imagine. I have heard there are still a number of functioning war heads scattered around the wasteland.” Warheads? Like, giant bombs?” “What else would they be? Haven’t you been taught why the Stables were built in the first place?” “Yeah. To help preserve equinity from the killer virus that wiped out most of the life on the planet.” Red Snow gaped at me, before tripping over a rock. “You mean, you were taught that bunch of crap? And you believed it?” He asked, not bothering to get up. “Well, yeah. I was brought up being taught that that was the purpose of the Stables.” “Take a look around you, at the burnt buildings, the radioactive landscape, the ghouls and other mutated life, the lack of plant growth. Does that look like it was caused by a disease?” I looked around the wasteland, and remembered what I had seen in Newton. And what I had heard. Back then, I had barely paid any notice to it, but now it hit me in the face like an angry girlfriend with a toaster. And it hurt. I fell to my flank and looked around. My entire life had been based of a lie. All that torment in the Stable for being a pegasus was lie. My reality cracked, and so I sat there, staring ahead. After what felt like a couple of seconds, but was two hours according to my PipBuck, I finally finished processing the news that my life had been a lie. I turned to Red Snow, who was cooking something over a small fire. I noticed I was in a building I didn’t remember from before. “So, if the whole disease thing isn’t true, that means Pegasi didn’t betray Equestria.” I said slowly, trying to make sense of the whole nuclear war idea. “Ahh, finally back to the world of the living. As for your question, no. In many ponies’ eyes, the Pegasi did betray the nation. They flew up into the sky and sealed it up. Only a few Pegasi ever come back down the wasteland. They’re called dashites. I presumed you were a dashite at first. They haven’t a clue about what is happening down here on the surface.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a bloody hunk of meat, throwing it onto a rack in the fire next to another. “What is that? I asked, curiously. “Just some, um, radroach meat. I think. It could be mole rat. You probably wouldn’t like it.” “Can I have a try of it? I might like it.” “NO! Um, trust me, you won’t.” “If there aren’t any plants out here, then I’m gonna need to try some other foods. Can I just have a little bit?” “Okay, I was hoping to avoid this, but there is a little something you need to know about me. Like you say, to survive, you need to expand your diet. I come from a town of ponies who have developed a particular liking for one type of meat, rarely touched by other ponies, but in mass supply in the wastes.” I didn’t like where this was going, but pressed him for more details anyway. “Well?” “Where I come from, we eat ponies.”