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Prologue549 words
Chapter 12,990 words
Chapter 22,423 words
Chapter 33,621 words
Chapter 42,807 words
Chapter 54,916 words
Chapter 64,019 words
Chapter 72,095 words
Ending 1261 words
Chapter 82,109 words
Chapter 92,553 words
Chapter 10 (Part 1)2,798 words

Chapter 2

*sniff*

“O-Okay...I think I’m f-fine now...just a little c-cold...

“So t-today...it...it...

“It was horrible! I...I don’t know all the details...I just know that I was only awake for two minutes before it all went crazy...

As Cobalt’s consciousness traveled from the dream world to reality, his eyes fluttered open. He yawned and turned over in a futile attempt to get more sleep. He did this every day, and he was never able to manage to get the five extra minutes of rest he desired.

Finally, he sat up, stretching his front legs and letting his joints crack and pop. Jumping off his bed and leaving the blankets in a messy heap behind him, he went over to his small desk, picking up the bottle of pills he kept there. He had just popped one in his mouth and dry swallowed it when there was a loud crashing sound from outside.

Jumping, he looked around, at first thinking the sound had come from inside his room. It hadn’t, so he crept to the door and slowly opened it.

“...gone! He must have left the Stable!”

“Forget about him. She told us to get the kid, not the father.”

“Right. Where is he?”

Holding back a frightened yelp at the gruff and unfamiliar voices, Cobalt quickly shut the door. It didn’t make much of a noise, but he knew that even if he was completely quiet, they’d still find him soon anyway. Whoever “they” were. He could still hear them talking, though they were muffled:

“...punishment...blocking the vents...Overmare...”

“...father got out...big trouble...Wasteland...”

Hoofsteps. Coming closer to the door. Not even thinking, Cobalt ran to his bed. But rather than hiding under it, he jumped to the other side and started pushing.

He moved just fast enough. He pushed the bed up against the door less than two seconds before the handle turned and the ponies on the other side tried to open the door. He heard their conversation stop, turning to cries of confusion and anger.

“Hey! Open up, kid! You’ve already got the death penalty hanging over you! Don’t make it any worse!”

What could be worse than death? the colt thought to himself. Never mind! I don’t want to know!

He knew the bed wouldn’t hold up forever. Grabbing an old pair of saddlebags - one of the many gifts his mom supposedly got for him one birthday - he started throwing in everything he could find in his room that would fit...of course, that wasn’t much. He grabbed his Bitalin, a few books, a small sack of pre-war money (he hadn’t ever asked about there being a war; he just knew that his dad called it that), a blanket, his screwdriver and paper clips, and his PipBuck. He attached the PipBuck to his front left leg the way he had seen other ponies wearing them, rather than putting it in the bag.

He hesitated as he reached for one last item: a toy gun that his father gave him on his eighth birthday. The day he should’ve had his cutie mark. But his dad never brought it up. Just said that he’d get it someday. He remembered thinking that day that his father would be disappointed in him, but instead, he smiled and hugged him. Of course, his mom didn’t even show up.

He never used the gun - never had an interest in firearms. He didn’t even know if it worked. His dad said it fired little pellets, but for all Cobalt knew, it didn’t fire anything.

The sound of the door cracking made up his mind for him, and he grabbed the toy gun, tossing it in his saddlebags. Before the door could be completely broken down, he jumped through the crack in the wall he had frequently used to sneak around, just barely getting out of sight before the door crashed inwards.

Quest Added
RUN, PONY, RUN
Leave Stable 14.

Most of the disabled vents were inaccessible now due to the cargo Cobalt had on him, but there was still one large shaft he could use. Sneaking inside, he crawled along for several long moments until he found an exit. He quickly knocked down the vent cover and hopped out, not bothering to take the time to put the cover back.

He knew this hall well. It led to the Stable door. He remembered how he once tried to open it, his dad just watching in amusement.

“You can’t leave the Stable, Coby. It’s against the rules.” Those words rang in the young earth pony’s mind. Well, some rules have to be broken.

The problem was that, as he later learned, the only way to open the Stable door was through a password, which only the Overmare was permitted to know. Changing course as he ran, he began heading for his mom’s office.

“Hey! Stop right there!”

Oh fuuuu...dge!

Whipping around, Cobalt was greeted by the sight of two earth ponies and one unicorn charging down the hall towards him. The unicorn was levitating a pistol in her magic - and not a toy pistol like Cobalt had. A real, deadly one.

Not even thinking, Cobalt pulled out his own toy gun, holding it in his mouth. It was obvious from the orange trigger that it wasn’t going to shoot anything lethal, but the three ponies still hesitated. That split second was all the earth pony needed to line up his shot, his tongue moving over the trigger.

BA-PING!

The unicorn cried in pain, and her pistol fell to the ground. The pellet had soared through the air and hit her horn, disrupting the flow of magic without causing any permanent damage. The two earth ponies with her turned towards their injured partner, and Cobalt ran.

A couple gunshots went off behind him, and he knew they were still after him. He was running fast enough and was a small enough target that he didn’t get hit, but even so, every shot was a loud reminder that he was being hunted.

He got to his mom’s office, jumped inside, and went to shut the door...only to realize that this wasn’t like his bedroom, where the door could be pushed closed and blocked with a bed. The door in this office slid out from the wall, and doing that required using a terminal.

Running to the first terminal he saw, he plugged in his PipBuck, breathing quickly. He scrolled through everything, looking for the password, or at least a clue. He thought he found something when another gunshot rang out. It barely missed, running right by his ear.

With a cry of surprise, the colt turned his head around to look at his assailant. A dark red earth pony was smirking at him, a pistol similar to the unicorn’s from earlier present in his maw. In the second it took him to line up another shot, Cobalt turned and hastily selected the file on the terminal labelled “Stable Door Password”, causing it to begin downloading to his PipBuck.

The whole process took two seconds, but to Cobalt, it felt like several minutes. A cry rang out from behind him, and he turned back to see the reason why the earth pony with the pistol hadn’t shot at him again: several Radroaches had crept into the room, and were going after him.

Gunshots fired wildly as the pony’s attention was directed from the colt to the Radroaches, and a couple of them fell. However, he soon ran out of ammo, and didn’t have the time to reload before he fell to the ground, the creatures swarming around him.

BA-PING! BA-PING! BA-PING!

The Radroaches screeched as they felt pellets dig into them; none deadly, but all painful. They turned to the purple colt and identified the weapon in his muzzle. Unable to recognize its non-lethality, they shrieked once more and crawled away.

Cobalt watched as the other earth pony stood back up, grabbing his pistol as he stood. He turned, and for a moment, they were looking each other in the eyes. The younger of the two shut his eyes, waiting for the other to raise his gun once more.

Instead, he heard slowly fading hoofsteps, then voices from around the corner:

“Parsnip!” A mare’s voice. “I heard gunshots! Did you find him?”

“Just some Radroaches.” A stallion. “Not a trace of the kid. Let’s check the reactor level.”

The hoofsteps resumed, growing quieter. For a brief moment, all was silent.

Cobalt opened his eyes. He was alone in the room now. Not questioning what just happened, he turned back to his PipBuck, which had long since finished downloading the password. Disconnecting from the terminal, he headed back out into the hall, plugging one earbloom in to play the audio file he had just received:

“The override code for opening the door to Stable 14 is...CMC3BFF.

As much experience as Cobalt had with sneaking around inside walls and vents, hallways were not his forte. He learned this when he suddenly had five ponies chasing him and he wasn’t even halfway to the door out of Stable 14.

Moving as quickly as he could and darting left and right to avoid gunshots, he felt more alive yet more exhausted than ever before. Fortunately, the Eyes-Forward Sparkle generated by his PipBuck kept him from running into any dead ends. He hadn’t even known about the E.F.S. until it popped up suddenly, but now that he knew it was there, he found himself thanking it every five seconds.

“Get the Overmare!” one of the ponies behind him yelled. “He’s heading for the door out of Stable 14!”

He ran faster. All around him, the Stable seemed to be falling apart. Radroaches crawled out of holes in the walls that were never there before. Ponies of all ages were yelling and arguing, occasionally joining in the chase. Disabled vent shafts were suddenly active again - likely done by the Overmare to keep him from using those vents to hide.

Not that he would’ve used them anyway. He had somewhere else to go.

“Stop him!”

He did not stop. One more corner, and the door was in his sight. He knew he wouldn’t have time to put the code into the terminal before he was grabbed or shot, but it wasn’t like he had any other options.

Dashing to the terminal, he quickly began moving his hooves around it, trying to input the sequence of characters he remembered from the audio file. He barely got the second C in before a bullet dug into his left saddlebag and came out the other side.

Jumping to angle his body a different way, he was barely able to keep going before another bullet whizzed by - this one going right through his tail. He jumped a bit.

“Stop shaking around and just shoot him already!”

Finally, he finished putting in the seven-character password. One final click, and the Stable door began to creak and move. Everypony else present stopped what they were doing and stared, watching the door open for the first time they had ever seen rather than shooting the colt responsible for opening it.

After several long seconds, the gear-shaped door was opened, and the outside was revealed: a dirty, underground tunnel. Faint light was visible on the ground, likely coming from an entrance or gate further up the path.

The first to move was Cobalt, darting away from the terminal and through the opened doorway.

“Hey!” Another gunshot. This time, the bullet actually grazed Cobalt’s hind leg, but he ignored the burning pain. He knew that if he fell or stopped, the pain would only multiply.

He kept running, leaving behind the only place he had ever called home. The gunshots grew quieter and less frequent, and he knew nopony dared to follow him.

After all, leaving the Stable was against the rules.

Quest Complete
RUN, PONY, RUN

“A-After I left...they closed the Stable door...I was - I AM - locked out. Forever.

“...I thought I’d be angrier...I don’t even know what’s out here. The Horseshoe Wasteland is what they call it. I haven’t really gone that far, though...I walked down the tunnel from the Stable, opened the gate at the end, and...well, now I’m just sitting outside it.

“I don’t really know what I’m waiting for...maybe for somepony to find me? I’m not sure if I really want anypony to find me, though...I don’t even know anypony out here...

“...

“W-Wait...there’s something on my PipBuck...I didn’t see that before. It’s...a new audio file?

“...‘Coby’...

“I-I’m gonna play this...hang on...

“...impressive. You’re quite the little rogue, Coby. Heh. Got yourself a real PipBuck...I won’t even ask how. I don’t think I have the right to ask...and I don’t have the time to wake you up.

“Coby, something’s come up. I don’t want to go into details, but I need to leave. Leave the Stable, I mean.

“Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. Your mother will look after you...I know you don’t particularly like her, but trust me, she loves you. Deep down, she loves you...just like I do.

“I’m going to be blocking up the ventilation shaft with some old things to cover my escape. They’ll be able to fix it, but it’ll cause enough of a panic that I can slip out. They won’t follow me, and neither should you.

“Coby...stay in the Stable. You’ll be safe. Your mother’s the Overmare; she’ll take care of you.

“I...I don’t know when I’ll be back. Or IF I’ll be back. I probably won’t be, honestly. I’m sorry.

“Goodbye, Coby. Stay safe. I love you.

“...

“D-Dad...

“...I’m coming for you, dad. I’ll find you.

*sniff*

Footnote: Level Up (3)
New Perk: Homesickness. You miss the Stable, but some places remind you of home, and you feel more comfortable within them. You gain a +1 to Strength and Charisma in any underground area.

Author's Note:

For those unfamiliar with the perk above, don't worry if your massive Fallout knowledge fails you. The perks gained at the end of even-numbered chapters are things I have made up that fit with Cobalt and the story, while odd-numbered chapters will have perks from the actual games (albeit possibly tweaked slightly to fit better). This is because there are a lot of perks that just wouldn't work with Cobalt, such as "Lady Killer" and "Mysterious Stranger" (the latter because I can't think of a reason for a random pony to save Coby, and the former because...well, he's ten years old), so I'm making my own here and there that fit.

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