Fallout Equestria: Old World Dreams

by KDarkwater

Intermission 1: Blue Moon

Blue Moon

Darkness.

Heat, strobing her senses and leaving a wake of cold tendrils as it grew and waned to its own rhythm.

A chatter of crisp snaps and a low, steady roar.

A jolting of her senses, rough tilts and yaws that signaled movement despite the darkness before her.

The movement subsided, and her senses began to shut down once more.

A brain-freezing cold took hold on her, snapping her brain into a state of shocked numbness as her eyes immediately tried to locate the source of her discomfort.

She instantly regretted even trying. Every shape before her wore a blurred outline, masking finer details but leaving enough clues for her imagination to fill in the blanks. Chunks of charred concrete littered the ground in front of her, and that steady roar was revealed to be a growing, hungry fire that was gradually consuming the set of shop stands arrayed across a sidewalk. A harsh, teeth-rattling ringing in her ears overwhelmed most of her hearing, leaving her able to hear only snippets of the dying world and muted, almost dream-like voices.

Her body began to slide away from the fire, pulled across the broken asphalt by an unknown savior or opportunistic looter (or worse), but in her dazed state she could offer no resistance or warnings. Cold lines began to trickle down her face and neck, and her mane stuck to her coat instead of flowing about around her head. Gradually, the street began to recede from her vision, pushed away by an approaching darkness, and the few sounds she could hear grew muffled and stuffy, as if blocked by solid matter—

A second helping of that skull-killing cold sloshed over her head, some of it spilling into her dazed mouth, and what was left of her natural instincts swallowed it almost immediately, recognizing it as ice cold water. The liquid spread its rejuvenating temperature through her throat and stomach, quenching her dry tongue’s thirst for nourishment and allowing her brain to begin processing more complex details and events around her.

A small, plastic tube briefly intruded against her snout before finding its intended destination through her mouth, and as she began to suckle its cool, refreshing contents into her body, a throbbing ache began to press itself against the back of her head—

“Don’t move,” a pony’s voice whispered quietly, just before a rumble of thunder thudded across the world. Even in her present state, however, she could recognize it to be far too loud to have come from a thundercloud. “Just keep drinking and don’t move your head.”

The strawberry-flavored liquid’s rejuvenating effects made the advice a rather moot point. In fact, with each sip the pain in her head seemed to lessen and fade, so she continued to drink at her present rate. Quickly, her senses began to improve. The darkness began to brighten, revealing faint outlines of glass counters with unknown goods sealed within. The ground beneath her began to resemble a dark brown carpet, its rough texture pressing against the right side of her body. Her brain gradually recognized the cold, slick sensation on her face to be cold water, her mane slickened and hugging her neck. Even the ringing in her ears was waning out into a faint tingle.

The pressure in her head eventually faded into a barely noticeable buzz by the time the liquid began to travel in broken segments, her suction efforts beginning to bring in air as much as the tasty treat.

“Feeling better yet?” the mysterious pony asked as the scattered bits of liquid quickly fell onto her tongue, abruptly cut off from their source as it was taken away.

“…much,” she moaned in reply, shifting the tube around until it was clamped down inside her mouth at the side. “….got another one?”

Her request was swiftly answered—the tube in her mouth was physically re-positioned until it had returned to its previous spot, and upon sucking upon it a fresh stream of the liquid was invited into her belly. She said nothing more as she sucked the fresh container dry over the course of a short, blissful eternity. By the time she’d finished it off, almost all the pain in her head had vanished—only a miniscule scratch remained, tickling the soaked skin beneath her mane on occasion. Her eyesight had vastly improved, allowing her to finally recognize the interior of Clover Luck’s general goods store and the glass case of outdoor camping gear against the wall, right beneath the main window pane that showed potential customers a glance at the wares within. That faint, tingling ringing in her hearing vanished entirely, allowing her to at last take in the sounds of the world beyond.

It was, then, to her great embarrassment that she only now recognized the weight and pressure clinging to her side when it shifted about to get a better grip on her body. “Mommy?” her daughter’s voice cried quietly. “Are you okay now?”

She instantly spat the tube out of her mouth and began to roll herself over into an upright position, tucking her legs in beneath her as her muscles began to seep relief into her tired senses. “…I’ll make it,” she gasped as her little girl’s forelegs found a new home around her neck and briefly interrupted her oxygen supply. “….how did we—“

“I found you in the street,” the pony’s voice answered before she could finish her question, and she carefully turned her head until she saw the mare’s body sitting several feet away to her left. A second clap of thunder shook the store, rattling glass and overhanging chandeliers of lights, and she began to recall the last few minutes of her life before now. She and her daughter, walking to the park, her saddlebags stuffed with their afternoon picnic lunch and blanket—

—a massive mushroom cloud of flame and ash, a spherical crackling of energy whipping through the smoke and tainting it red with its deathly glow—

“….it wasn’t a nightmare?” she managed to ask when the initial shock had taken its leave.

“Oh, it’s a nightmare all right,” the purple mare disagreed sharply, her watery eyes ringed with red. “Specialist Midnight Showers, Second Medical Regiment, Third Battalion, D Company.”

Medic pony, she noted with light relief, finally catching sight of the purple mare’s red cross leg band wrapped around her left foreleg, just below the cuff of her uniform’s sleeve. “….sorry, stupid question…”

“With the hit you took, no, it’s not,” Specialist Midnight replied, her voice strangely calm and devoid of the panic she was beginning to recognize again in the streets outside. “Your kid’s got some spunk in her. Bit me until I chased her around the corner when I wouldn’t listen to her. Good on you, squirt.”

She felt Star Shine’s hug grow tighter at those words, and her left foreleg managed to return the gesture with an awkwardly angled squeeze. “….what’s going on? I thought the battalion was out on training maneuvers this week.”

“We got orders from the brass at Fort Wiley to pull back into town,” Midnight answered with crisp tones. “Right before….right before things got bad. We arrived right before we heard the explosions, got split off by company to sweep the streets for casualties and damage. I was a block east, setting up a casualty collection point with my squad when your kid found us and led me here.”

Thunder rolled across the streets once more, but thankfully wasn’t quite as close as the last one had been. Only a thin layer of dust managed to flitter down onto the floor, eliciting a sneeze out of Star Shine’s tiny nose.

Any other day, she’d have laughed at it. Today, though….she didn’t know what to do about today. She wasn’t even entirely optimistic that she’d see tomorrow.

Midnight Showers, at least, was a better thinker under pressure than she was. Without waiting to be prodded or lingering to try and answer more questions with time they didn’t have, the military mare simply rose up to her hooves to resume her duties. “You guys wait here while I report back to my squad sergeant on Chester Street. I should be back in a few minutes.”

“And if yer not?” Star Shine blurted in a burst of fear, turning in her mother’s grasp to keep Midnight in her sight. “What do we do then?”

Midnight Showers’ trot to the broken doorframe paused for a moment, as if unsure if she should say something or simply keep going—

—and went with a few words of advice, her amber eyes finally showing a hint of terror and absolute fear in the mind behind them. “….whatever you have to do to get out of here.”

And without another word she broke into a brisk gallop, dashing out the doorway and into the ruined world beyond.

It was Midnight’s stark terror that finally spurred her into motion, her legs aching in protest as they assumed the weight of her body. “C’mon,” she commanded of her offspring in a firm tone—at least, she hoped she sounded firm and commanding. “We have to go, now.”

She should have known better than to her expect her intelligent star to know how to deal with this kind of stress right away, even after apparently rushing through shelled streets to find a medic pony. Star Shine’s forelegs wrapped around her mother’s left hind leg in an attempt to anchor the mare to the floor. “W-wait, Mommy!” she pleaded, her body scraping across the floor as her mother’s pace continued forward. “She wanted us to wait for her! What if she comes back and we’re not here?!”

The scenario played out in her mind in less than two seconds, alongside other less pleasant outcomes of staying in a place that had already been bombarded once before. “We can’t wait,” she said, coming to a stop at the door and poking her head out past its splintered, pointy edges. “We have to go. This street was already attacked once, it could happen again. We need to get home.”

“H-home?” Star Shine’s voice wavered briefly in disbelief. “W-what could we possibly need there!? We gotta wait for miss Midnight liked she asked us to!”

A muffled whump! in the far distance preceded another round of deep thunder, somewhere off to her right, and she began to wonder at the sudden change in volume in the explosions. What little she remembered of the thirty seconds before she’d been knocked out hadn’t been much, but she thought she could recall the megaspells being quite a bit more….enthusiastic, for lack of a better term. Their power was immense, considerable, and immediately familiar. But these last few explosions lacked that level of oomph!, and perhaps most importantly, she and everypony around her were still alive. A megaspell would have simply vaporized them and flattened everything in its blast radius.

“We have to go!” she insisted again, putting a more forceful emphasis into her command as she cocked her head right, down the other side of the street, as her ears picked up the clomping of several sets of pony hooves running their tails off in the streets. Their rumbling, panicked stampede quickly rose into a deafening orchestra of fear as they popped out into view from the intersection several dozen yards away, their faces wild with panic and confusion. She thought she spotted a couple of armed unicorn ponies in police uniforms trying to herd the small group of nine into a directed gallop, but they were failing miserably. Nopony seemed capable of even comprehending the two mares in their current state of mind—the instinctive “fight or flight” response. And their minds had chosen “flight” to the exclusion of everything else.

Star Shine was not encouraged. Not one bit. “….mommy, can we please just wait…”

Yet another explosion lashed out, somewhere close by—she could hear the concrete being ripped from the ground and the windows shattering from the shockwave of the blast. The event only spurred the panicked herd even harder along, and even began outpacing the two cops who had tasked themselves with trying to knock some sense into their charges. If they’d thought they had a challenge before, they were likely cursing at themselves for just how much harder their work had become.

She couldn’t comprehend the yelling and screaming with complete clarity. She could only make out parts of it amidst the explosions and their galloping hooves upon the concrete, but several variations of curses involving the Princess Sisters’ backsides were definitely among the words she could pick up in-between the expected cries for help, mercy, or simple wailing at the end of things to come.

She stayed inside the doorway, intending to let the wild herd of ponies rumble by so as not to get trampled by them in their mad quest for safety from wherever they wanted to be away from. One of the mare cops finally trotted to a stop, exhausted beyond immediate relief and fighting to get some air into her lungs—

—pink and red beams of light lanced into the street around her, taking the cop completely by surprise, and not even a moment later a rapid series of thunderous booms followed behind them—

—the stallion at the head of the herd crumpled into the asphalt, his body tumbling over itself as red splotches began exploding across his sides—

—she dove back into the shop, shoving Star Shine onto the floor and against the wall beneath the shattered window pane before throwing herself on top of her, throwing her back into the wall and pulling the filly into her body with her forelegs. The little one clamped her forehooves down over her ears to drown out the sound of the gunfire as it erupted into a deafening shower—

—amidst the screams and wails of pain, the bullet ricochets and the M.E.W. fire, the clunk of a hand grenade falling onto the street somehow managed to announce itself in the chaos a split second before it went off into her dampened hearing—

--a head-sized chunk of concrete tore through the wall right in front of her face and sailed on by, smattering her with bits of wood and plaster and nearly scaring her into emptying her bladder onto the floor behind her, but she thankfully maintained enough self-control to avoid such an embarrassing—and messy—give-a-way of her position.

She began to inch forward across the floor as the dying screams faded and waned in the murderous hail of bullets, to see who or what could possibly be interested in waging a street battle in such a final, apocalyptic exchange of megaspells around them….and whether or not they saw Clover Luck’s shop as an inviting looting opportunity—

She managed to get an eye out in front of the hole and stopped, keeping Star Shine pinned to the floor beneath her, though she worried that her rapid heart rate would quickly beat the little filly up if it didn’t slow down. Breathing became a mentally taxing exercise as she sought to slow her lungs down into a quieter rhythm and not gasp out every third breath she took—

—and then sought to simply get them to work again as they were shocked into stillness at the horrific sight the hole revealed. Four ponies were strewn about in a cluster, their blood slowly seeping out into pools beside them. One had lost a foreleg and wasn’t even breathing, a terrible, ragged chunk of his face having been torn off in the explosion. Another lay gasping and wheezing, his side riddled with torn pieces of his flesh and coat spilling crimson rivers down across his belly. What little she could make out of a pastel green mare made her thankful she couldn’t see the rest—all she could make out was the front half of her body, blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth as her lifeless eyes gazed slightly upward towards Clover Luck’s store sign.

The fourth pony, the blue-coated police mare that had been targeted by arcane weapons fire, was struggling across the street in a will-fueled crawl towards her pistol, her left foreleg now little more than a blood-ringed, cauterized stump just above the knee joint. A second cauterized burn in her left hind leg made moving it painful, forcing her to pull herself forward with one good foreleg and one that was barely there. For whatever reason, she was having trouble focusing her telekinesis spell on her pistol and was trying to get closer to it so it could take better hold.

The poor thing was dying, right in front of her, and all she could do was watch her struggle to strike back at her killers—

—one-and-a-half feet later her spell finally had the pistol in its hold, and the mare turned over onto her back, the large gun hovering above her head as it rapidly tracked its target in the skies above her—

—she managed to get off one shot before her attacker swooped down on top of her—a griffon almost twice her size, bearing a large, dull stainless revolver in one talon while the other casually slapped the mare’s pistol out of the air before lashing down into her chest, digging its claws into her flesh.

Her pained howl echoed into the store, forcing a gasp out of Star Shine’s mouth that the mother quickly smothered with a hoof lest they become this griffon’s next victim. The cop continued to scream and cry as she was tossed back onto the ground, behind an overturned and smashed shop stall that had been thrown off the sidewalk, and the griffon strode forward, his right talon cocking the hammer on the large gun and lowering it down at the helpless pony below—

Even at the end of her life, the cop still had fight in her as she fought back her tears for whatever life and loved ones she was about to lose. “I-I hope you burn for this, motherfu—“

—her curse was cut off with the massive, window-rattling boom from the griffon’s gun, the muzzle flash illuminating the front of his body for a brief instant. A splatter of blood exploded from behind the overturned shop stand, leaving little doubt about the mare’s fate.

As the griffon bent down behind the stall, disappearing from sight, two more griffons touched down onto the street around him clad in black armor covered in magazines, grenades, and other assorted gear. One carried a blocky-looking SMG, complete with a ribbed barrel and wood furniture, which he quickly leveled on the dying stallion and fired twice into his head, turning it into a bloody pulp and creating a ragged, meaty exit wound just behind his jaw. The other carried a weapon somewhat similar in appearance, but heavily modified with M.E.W. technology. Amidst the new ringing in her ears, she could make out soft thuds as more griffons took to the ground, out of sight, and three more singular gunshots announced their executions in brief, chest-shaking roars.

Now frozen in place by fear rather than desire, she couldn’t bring herself away from the hole and the small view of the massacre in the road as the griffon with the revolver rose back up from behind the stall, the mare’s barding in his left talon as he pocketed its gear for his own use. “Start pickin’ these mucks clean, one of ‘em might have one of those Stable-Tec letters about where they were supposed to go.”

Her heart turned to stone inside her chest, lodging against her ribcage and lungs. If these griffons were hunting for ponies with Stable passes….

….oh Luna, this is bad—

A set of paws and talons began making their way across the ruined streets, growing louder and firmer as the seconds passed, and a new, different kind of fear jolted her insides all the way into her intestines. “Hey, look at this place,” a griffon female’s voice exclaimed with joy. “I bet there’s tons of good stuff in there. MREs, ration bars, water purification tablets, I think we just hit the jackpot here!”

“Forget that shit, we got a mission to complete!” the griffon with the revolver roared with the grace of his lion half, tossing the barding behind him once he’d stuffed three pistol clips into his armored vest.

“Yeah, and what do you think happens to us after we’re done!?” the female roared back, stopping her progress and turning towards the revolver griffon. “You think those damned zebras got a fallout shelter all ready for us!? We’re mercs! We’re tools, we’re being used in some last-ditch petty effort to stick it to these lame-o ponies while they all burn the world to ashes! The war’s OVER! It’s time to take care of ourselves!!”

The revolver griffon’s reply was to turn his gun on his compatriot and squeeze the trigger, the tongue of flame obscuring his face and the gunshot mercifully drowning out the impact of the bullet into his latest victim. The female griffon’s body slumped onto the ground a few feet away from the storefront, her angry voice now a gurgling, pained mewing of confusion—

The revolver’s aim shifted lower, and flared again with a second shot that ended the female’s suffering and drove home the rapid new reality of the world even as it died around them.

Beneath her body, Star Shine’s quiet sobs began to seep into her chest cavity, her tears soaking into her mother’s forelegs.

“We have a mission,” the murderous griffon declared furiously, stuffing his revolver into a holster strapped to the left side of his body. “We complete the mission or our word as griffons is worth nothing. Anybody with objections to that had better get the hell out of my sight before I can get a bead on ‘em. Otherwise, search these worthless heaps of meat for any clues about the Stables!”

Talons and paws began to pilfer through the corpses in the streets, pulling at pockets and tearing off shirts and dresses in search of their prizes as their leader began to stomp his way out from behind the stall to collect the policemare’s pistol. The SMG-armed griffon kept his eyes on the road out to the right and his weapon ready, as did the M.E.W.-armed griffon—

—her eyes locked onto a pair of dangling, pineapple-shaped objects hanging from the front of their vests, each topped with a metal cap and a ring pin that rattled against each other, and her ice-cold fear was suddenly a distant memory as she began to focus almost exclusively on the grenades—

—a fourth griffon walked into view, his bolt-action rifle slung over his back between his wings as he started poking at the corpse of the lifeless-eyed mare. His grenades dangled from a belt that hugged the back of his body, near his hind legs—

—she added his explosives to her attention, reaching out with a multi-pronged telekinesis spell and latching each spell field as gently as she could over the arming pins—

Don’t look down—

—the first pair fell into her mental grip, barely a tingle in her horn, but the SMG Griffon’s focus on providing security blinded him to her efforts—

—Luna’s grace don’t look down—

—the M.E.W. Griffon’s focus was likewise occupied. Four down. Four left—

—Celestia help me don’t look DOWN—

—Bolt-Action Griffon’s brow furrowed, slightly puzzled at what felt like movement on his belt, but a saving grace of wind blew through the street at that exact moment, and he shrugged it off as mother nature’s touch and went back to his grim task—

—One more left, by Celestia please let this work—

—the barely visible glow of her spell fell over the leader’s grenades, tugging the arming pins in a snap test of their hold—

—his head cocked downward, having felt a slight tug on his vest, just in time to see the pins yanked free of the fuse cap—

—three other pairs of arming pins sailed into the air, the popping clicks of the spoon handles flying off finally drawing the four griffon’s attention to the grenades she’d taken possession of—

—she yanked four of them free from their owners and tossed off towards the left, hopefully towards the other griffons, and left three nestled against SMG Griffon, Bolt-Action Griffon, and M.E.W. Griffon. The last one she let clatter onto the street, right next to the leader.

“Oh SHIT!” Bolt-Action screamed in horror, rearing up on his hind legs as his arms scratched at the grenade still tucked into this belt—

—she threw a second telekinesis spell around her daughter, bolted up from the floor and zipped across the floor towards the counter—

“Stars-damned BITCH!!” the leader cursed at her back, his rage drowning out the terrorized yells of his compatriots—

—she leapt up and over the counter in a single bound, taking Star Shine into her forelegs and once more shielding her little body with her own as they came down hard onto the floor—

—six explosions filled the world, sending concrete, shrapnel, and what sounded like griffon limbs out across the street like confetti. Two more followed behind almost immediately, somewhere in front of the store, bathing the interior with rock and blood in their destructive wake.

Had she not been staring at the griffons for forty terrifying seconds, she would’ve mistaken the screams of the mangled survivors for those of the ponies they had callously slaughtered a minute earlier.

When the last grenade had performed its horrific purpose, she released her daughter from her grasp and bolted off from behind the counter, straight towards the back door leading into the alley behind the shop. “RUN!!” she screamed as loudly as she could manage. “Don’t stop, and don’t fall BEHIND!”

Adrenaline in her veins allowed her to crash through the door with the strength of three stallions and brush off her collision with the brick wall of a bakery shop behind the store with nary a loss in her step as she burst through the twisting alleys, desperate to escape the hell behind her.

Star Shine was never more than four steps behind her.

Comments

[Deathpony]

good chapter again looking towards the next one with Star Shine

[KDarkwater]

1561289

This mother/daughter pair won't be seen again for quite some time, unfortunately. I'm rather slow with my writing/typing. And I STILL haven't figured out a name for the mare! @.O