//------------------------------// // Prologue: Cold Heart // Story: Fallout Equestria: Heartless // by dmgd_mind //------------------------------// Prologue:Cold Heart A tan earth pony walked down one of the ruined roads on the outskirts of the Manehattan ruins. Behind him walked a Brahmin, saddlebags packed with energy weapons and other pre-war tech, and an armored unicorn guard. At his side skipped a blank-flank colt of the same color. "Dad! Dad! After we sell this at Arbu are we gonna visit mom?" dust billowed across the road as the group kept walking. "Sure Kip," the earth pony said with a slight grin, "we'll probably have enough money to stay with mom the rest of the year". "Really?" the colt asked, hope emanating from his question. "Absolutely, this pre-war tech sells for a lot, since the Steel Rangers take most of it". "Steel Rangers?", Kip asked, confused. "They're technophi-...ponies who really like technology. And don't like sharing it with others", his father answered, grin fading. "But sharing is a nice thing...why wouldn't they like it?" "Some ponies never learned to be nice", a hint of sadness traced the tan pony's voice. A quiet crack echoed through the air, causing the guard to perk up, looking for its source. Less than a second later a hole larger than a hoof punched through the unicorn's chest. Blood and viscera splattered onto the road as the dead guard crumpled into a lifeless heap. Kip turned and screamed as he saw the pony's body. His father grabbed him and started pulling him towards a ditch at the side of the road, shouting at the colt to move. Another shot pulped one of the brahmin's heads as it began to gallopo away from the sudden danger. The mutated cow fell to the ground and slid for a few feet before coming to a stop. It gave one long bleating cry as it tried to pick itself up before expiring. Kip felt a sudden impact and wetness hit his back, the weight almost knocking him down. He turned as his father's body slid off him and into the dirt, leaving a trail of blood. The colt looked at the body in silence, trying to understand what was happening. He opened his mouth to scream but was stopped by a strange feeling coming from his left foreleg. He looked down and noticed a bloody stump where it should have been. He swayed and fell to the ground, opening and closing his mouth in silence as he bled out. His last thought before he died was why? ===== A mile away I set down my rifle and ejected the last shell. The fifty-caliber casing hit the floor of the ruined apartment with a hollow ping. I looked back through the rifle's scope one last time, seeing a half-dozen metal armored figures approaching the bodies of the caravan. They begin pulling items out of the dead brahmin's saddlebags. I put the rifle away in its sling on my back, then pulled out a worn knife from its sheath across my chest. I dug it into the flesh of my left foreleg, a fresh cut joining the tapestry of scars covering the limb. One. I didn't grimace as I finished the cut and set the knife against a different part of my leg. Two. Blood began matting what little of my black coat was left on the foreleg as I moved the blade again. Three. One last cut. To remember what I had done. Four. I wiped the blade clean against the fur on my chest and returned it to the sheath. I let the blood run down my leg as I left the room, a trail of red dots behind me. I passed over a ministry of peace poster that had fallen to the floor of the apartment hallway. It said the same thing they all did-War, Fear, Death? We must do better. My blood now stained the picture of the yellow pegasus on the poster. I briefly felt her lifeless eyes were looking into him, looking for a soul. It would not find one. I drifted down the apartment's stairwell, effortlessly moving without a sound. I reached the bottom and made my way into the ruined streets of Manehattan. A trio of ponies stood waiting for me outside. Two of them wore the same heavy metal armor that I had seen through my scope. The third, a blue unicorn mare, wore a robe of some sort. She was looking with badly veiled disgust at my scarred and bloody leg. I stood silently in front of the three, my face expressionless behind my mask. A minute passed before one of the ponies next to the mare coughed into his hoof. She looked briefly startled by the sudden noise, then reached inside her robes with her magic and pulled out a leather sack that jangled as it was moved. "I believe you'll find the agreed upon payment inside...Void, was it?" I nodded silently as I briefly opened and looked inside the sack. Five hundred caps, the agreed upon payment. I turned and began walking away. "Umm...it's been a, uh, pleasure doing business with you mister Void. The Steel Rangers will make sure to look you up again if we need your services!" I didn't turn around, our business was done. I just kept walking, leaving droplets of blood drying in my wake. ===== "So that was really Void?" the unicorn mare, Brooke, asked as she looked at the colt's body. His dead eyes were staring back at her. She shivered. One of the Steel Rangers looked up from where he was cataloging the technology taken from the brahmin's bags, "No normal pony could've made that shot. Hell, even Farsight would have trouble with it. Not to mention he took out four targets within ten seconds". Another turned to the pony that had just spoken. "A normal pony couldn't have killed a colt and his father", she said quietly. Brooke stopped talking and looked back at the colt's wide, sightless eyes. A tear quietly slipped down her cheek and into the puddle of blood soaking into the pitted pavement below.