• Published 1st Apr 2016
  • 8,049 Views, 4,429 Comments

Group Precipitation - FanOfMostEverything



Stories set in the Oversaturated World, some silly, some less so.

  • ...
26
 4,429
 8,049

PreviousChapters Next
Fallout Girl, by ArtieStroke, FoME, and Masterweaver

(ArtieStroke)

Sweetie Belle landed with an 'oof', brushing her skirt as she stood back up. Dumb vision magic, making her mindscape feel real and stuff.

"Alright, what's wrong this time," she asked, mostly to herself. She never really got literal answers when seeing the future, just getting to witness the possible events as they might happen. Though she had to admit, this vision was... pretty boring. Metal halls and corridors everywhere, the flashing of backlit signs over heavy metal doors: Living Quarters, Engineering, Computer Repair. Huh. Must be quite a bit farther into the future than she thought. Maybe she was on a spaceship? That'd be pretty neat!

A figure rounded the corner, walking in a hurry. Sweetie could tell she was older than her, but she was still about her size. Clad in a blue jumpsuit with a pack over her back, the figure continued powerwalking down the hallway, and Sweetie's perspective followed her. They passed through a few more corridors, past places labelled Agriculture and Overseer's Office, until they reached one labelled Vault Entrance. Sweetie gulped; something about the door seemed imposing, even though it was hardly any different than the others. With another tap on the open button, the doors slid open, revealing a large room half-hewn out of stone.

"This doesn't look like a spaceship," Sweetie said, frowning. Her point of view continued forward, heading towards a pair of armed guards in front of a console.

"Ahem. Excuse me, sirs!" The girl said, nervousness in her voice, "I'm here on the, uh, Overseer's orders. Certified Vault-Tec technician. I'm supposed to be looking over the door controls, making sure they're still operating correctly after the, uh, incident."

The guards looked at each other, before one of them looked back, "Do you have requisition forms signed by the Overseer proving this?"

The girl blinked, "Uh..."

"Didn't think so," The other said, rolling his eyes, "Now beat it, pipsqueak."

Sweetie Belle frowned, crossing her arms. Those two were lucky this was just a theoretical vision of the future that she couldn't affect. They would be getting all kinds of talking-tos if she were actually there.

One of the guards frowned, "Hey, wait a minute. I recognize you."

"Huh?" said the girl.

The guard nodded, "Yeah. You're the one who let Velvet out of the Vault in the first place!"

The girl stiffened, and Sweetie Belle raised an eyebrow. She glanced over at the massive, cog-shaped door. How the heck could anyone break out through that?

"You know what?" The girl said, squaring her shoulders defiantly as her headgem started to glow, "You're absolutely right."

Sweetie turned back from the door, just in time to see the girl levitate a set of lockers, tipping them to the ground and trapping the guards under them. "WOAH! What the heck, that could've seriously hurt someone!" she squeaked, her words unnoticed as always by the girl whose perspective she was riding.

"And I'm also the one who's gonna get her back," the girl finished, jumping over the prone forms of the guards to the control panel, raising an arm with what looked like some kind of super-heavy watch attached to it. Sweetie grimaced, gingerly stepping over the guards as the girl typed on her watch.

"Alright, let's hope this works," said the girl, clicking one last button as an audio file popped up.

"The override code for Vault 2's door is DC3BFF."

Sweetie Belle's eyes widened. Though the recording was poor in quality, the identity of the voice was clear. "Apple Bloom!?"

Sirens began to wail as the girl typed in the code and a large, metallic arm swung forward and attached to the door. A voice on the loudspeaker crackled to life, "Stop! I order you to stop this instant!"

The girl jumped, scrambling away from the control panel and to the edge of the painted 'Stand Back' zone of the door.

"Guards! I want every guard to the Vault door. Stop that girl!"

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" The girl said, bouncing on her feet in anxiety. Sweetie looked nervously from her, to the Vault door, to the exit, back into the Vault itself. What even was going on!?

"You don't have to do this!" The voice on the loudspeaker seemed almost pleading, "Littlepip— It's Littlepip, right?"

Littlepip—apparently—stopped, turning towards the loudspeaker, "Miss Overseer... Listen, I'm gonna bring Velvet back, okay? I have to do this—"

"Littlepip, if you take one step outside of that door, you won't ever get back in again!"

Sweetie put her hands over her mouth. How could they do that? To someone who was just trying to fix their mistake?

Littlepip turned back to the door, now fully pulled out of its frame and rolled to the side. She took a deep breath, and walked forward.

"Sweetie Belle."

Sweetie jumped, and immediately the vision faded away into a vaguely orange liminal space. "Sunset? What the heck was that?" she asked.

Sunset's physical form manifested with a worried frown. "I don't know, but whatever it was, it was strong enough to register as something I should be checking out personally." She started walking, Sweetie moving by her side.

After they walked for a while, Sunset spoke again. "I don't think that future you saw was inevitable, but whatever it was, it drew you to it because of how involved you and the rest of the Crusaders will be with it."

Sunset waved a hand, summoning a window that showed a bubble topped by a large, crystalline tree, with several small, fractured bubbles on the sphere's surface. Next to it, a similar bubble wrapped in Sunset's many protective arms drifted closer. A single, similarly fractured bubble flickered on the surface of Sunset's world with a fizzle before fading away.

"Well... that seems ominous," Sweetie said.

Sunset turned to her. "Someone's trying to mess around with fate, Sweetie Belle. I'd say that's a bit more than just 'ominous'."

(FoME)

Sunset very definitely did not think of her friends by any grandiose title. She knew if she slipped up and uttered some phrase like "Council of Harmony," "Circle of the Sun," or even just "Cosmic Balance Buddies," it would echo in the halls of every building that put her cutie mark in a prominent place.

So, it was just Sunset and her friends convening in Rarity's room, where Sunset displayed Sweetie's vision with what Twilight insisted on calling the holodeck spell. (It was nothing of the sort; there were much lower odds of any of the illusions becoming self-aware and trying to kill and/or seduce anyone.)

After the jumpsuited grey girl walked out of the Vault and the illusion vanished, Twilight was first to break the silence. "You do know that that was basically a riff on the Megaton games, right?"

Sunset blinked. "It was?"

Pinkie nodded. "Y'know, if Sweetie's going to date Button Mash, she really should brush up on this sort of thing."

"Sweetie's going to what!?" shrieked Rarity.

"It's especially bizarre," said Twilight, "because the Megaton games are built around a sort of 'retro-future' aesthetic, as if life really were how the 1950's imagined the 1990's before the bombs fell. Atomic-powered cars, robot butlers, individual transistors the size of postage stamps—"

"Could we get back to my darling little sister and the brute who wants to ravage her of her innocence?"

"Rarity, back before the Fall Formal, I didn't bother bullying Button Mash because he was too easy a target. Sweetie will be fine." Sunset gave Rarity a reassuring smile, then turned back to Twilight. "So, what are you saying?"

"Well, we don't have a lot to go on, but it doesn't seem terribly likely that our present would lead to that future."

"The resemblance could just be coincidence," said Rarity, who was searching MyStable for this so-called "Button Mash" on her phone.

"Giant gear doors, jumpsuits, multigenerational fallout shelters called Vaults led by Overseers?" Twilight shook her head. "There's coincidence, and then there's something that borders on copyright infringement. Something screwy is definitely going on."

"Well yeah," said Sunset. "I could tell that from how our world is listing in probability space."

Rainbow Dash waved a hand. "Uh, Earth to eggheads? Question from Ground Control."

Sunset turned to her. "Yeah, Dash?"

"What's this all mean, anyway?"

"Someone's screwing with time."

Twilight hummed. "You don't think..."

"Oh, come on. What are the odds that the human Starlight Glimmer would also be that reckless?" Sunset offered a wide smile. Twilight just stared at her, arms crossed.

Sunset looked around the room. "Guys? Little help?"

Applejack scowled. "Ain't Starlight Glimmer the pony what made you hurl 'cause she tried to ruin our lives?"

"Well, your analogues' lives, yes, but... Look, I'll check on her real quick, okay?" Sunset's eyes glowed golden. And stayed that way.

The others looked at each other nervously. This normally took less than a second. Finally, Fluttershy said, "Um, Sunset? Is everything okay?"

Sunset shakily said, "I can't find the human Starlight."

"Oh no. Is... is she—"

"That's the thing. I can't find any sign of her whatsoever. It's like she never actually existed."

Dash shrugged. "Maybe she doesn't."

Applejack nodded. "You never did track down your human self."

Sunset shook her head. "No. I considered asking her to help govern fate, but she panicked as much as she could when we changed the world. She's out there... except she isn't."

"So something's hiding her from you," said Twilight.

"Yeah." Sunset let her eyes dim, making the concern all the more visible. "The question is what. And why."

(Masterweaver)

The field of void raised. Coffee Swirl quirked an eyebrow, noting how the figure in the center sagged. "What just happened?"

"It is tedious but simple to hide from a god when they are not looking. When they seek one out specifically, measures must be taken." The figure nodded to the wide-eyed women on each side of him. "She sought them out specifically. I know not why, but—"

"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!" Sunset shrieked. "WHAT THE FUCK DID WE JUST SEE!?"

"The... the fire, and, and the bodies, and they, and they were all moving..." Starlight hugged herself. "I, that was, so much at once—"

"Different presents. Different nows. Might have beens and maybes." The figure shrugged. "This world is still fractured, plates of possibility sliding over each other like tectonics on Earth. I've been leading us through caves, but to make you invisible when she was looking, I had to shove you into the mines."

Coffee Swirl leaned back with a frown. He noted the new kid staring at their benefactor, wide-eyed. "So are they going to have to go through that again, or what?"

The women snapped up at that, Starlight nearly stumbling, but the figure rose a hand. "Peace. The godling is young, and has life elsewhere. She will try to seek why her vision is not working, and in that time she will not seek any of us, I hope. If need be, I will do it again, but I doubt it will need be soon."

He frowned. "Though I had hoped it would not need be now... there are not enough of us yet..."

For a moment, he stared into the campfire.

"...We must move more swiftly. Juniper?"

The new girl jumped. "Wha— Yes?"

"Ask your friend for more donations. Surrounding myself with spies is better than an empty force."

"I, uh, don't know what—"

"In the meantime, we head east. Something precious lies that way. Not useful to me, but one will seek it, and through her we may find enough."

"I'm getting tired of your cryptic nonsense," Coffee Swirl grumbled.

"The godling is not the only one whose eyes and ears we must avoid. Don't fret; you will soon receive that which you have worked for."

PreviousChapters Next