Fallout: Equestria: Scootaloo's Pre-War Blues

by oki_all_day

Chapter 2: When You're Smiling

Fallout Equestria: Scootaloo's Pre-War Blues

Chapter 2: When You’re Smiling

By: oki_all_day

<)-------(>

As I arrived home from the grocery store I was greeted by my lovely robot (which I had reprogrammed with more recipes), and he notified me of a missed call. I walked over to the phone and activated the answering machine.

"You have one new message, and no saved messages. Message one: 'Hey Scootaloo, It's me, Sweetie Bell. I brought up the stable ideas to Rarity, who brought it up to the Ministry Mares, who brought it up to the princesses, and guess what? We're being funded! We have basically unlimited resources, and money to buy any equipment needed! We can make this happen! We'll be saving lives! Talk to you soon!'" The answering machine buzzed, and I took my hoof off of the button.

I placed a call to Apple Bloom, and waited.

After a few rings, she answered, "Hello?"

"Did you hear about what Sweetie Bell did?"

"Mother of the princesses, did Ah! Can you believe it! We'll have this dream come true in no time. Ah have so many plans! We need to get together soon!"

"Can it be later than three in the morning next time?"

"Of course. How does four in the morning sound?"

"Oh shut up."

“We'll see when we can meet up. Ah hope that it will be later, 'cause Ah'd hate to hear your whining."

"Okay, see ya soon."

She hung up, and I turned around to find my robot's main 'eye' just about two feet away. I jumped a little.

"I learned how to not sneak up on you, Miss Scootaloo!"

I smiled at the cute little thing. It had the programmed accent of a Canterlot pony, but the true heart of a Ponyville pony.

<)-------(>

“But we can’t do that!”

“We can do anything we want.”

“Scoot, this is a horrible plan.”

“This will reshape the future! This is gonna teach the inhabitants how to act properly. If you count the years it would take for the fallout of magical radiation to disappear, and the amount of generations to go through what gets taught in the stables, then the new people will know how to act. They’ll be better than us. They can learn so much after a few centuries underground. There might not be anymore wars after this one when they emerge!”

<)-------(>

I was seated at my dining room table, eating my newest treat that the robot made (a daffodil sandwich), when suddenly, the wall to my right ripped open in a large flame filled explosion. Now, I know you’re thinking, “But Scootaloo, aren’t the walls made of cloud?” And the answer to that would be yes. Tightly packed industrial grade cloud. This cloud is packed so tight, that it is more solid than wood. The lethal cloud of cloud shrapnel ripped through my nightgown, and found a home in my hide. Thousands of pin-pricks buried themselves into my right side of my body. “SHIT!” I screamed out in pain. After what felt like hours, but was only seconds, I turned to look over to where the explosion came from. As I hid my face between my hooves, I found huge hole in the wall. In the hole, I could see two pegasi stallions, a white one with a yellow mane and blue eyes, and a charcoal one with a dark grey mane and light grey eyes.

The charcoal one turned to the white one and said, “Damn. You suck at cooking, bro.”

<)-------(>

I awoke, in my comfortable bed. I figured it was just a bad dream, but milliseconds later, the pain under the new bandages on my right side told me it wasn’t. I rushed to the main room to check the damage, and found the two stallions I saw the night before sitting on my couch.

“Why the hell are you in my house?” I asked, weak from pain.

“Hey, you said she wouldn’t be able to walk in the morning.” The white one said to his friend.

“Maybe she’s a strong mare,” he replied, as he got up. He started heading my way, as he spoke, “Ma’am, I am truly sorry. Last night my roommate here decided he’d try his hoof at cooking.” He then lifted a hoof towards the gaping hole in my wall. “As you can see, he sucks.” He paused, and looked me over. If in any other situation, I would’ve figured he’d be staring at my flanks, but then I realized that he must’ve been checking on my injuries. “Please take a seat. You need more rest.”

I sat, in the same chair that I was sitting in when the wall ripped open the previous night.

He sat across from me, and started talking. “I’m Lightning Runner, and this is Cloud Chaser. We are truly sorry for your injuries, and your wall.”

Cloud Chaser came up to me, and told me, “I was the one that patched you up. Lightning over here had to remove all the cloud shrapnel from your side. It was one helluva night, but our training in advanced first aid helped.”

“Wait, but why are you still in my house?” I feebly asked.

Lightning Runner answered, “Well, if you haven’t noticed, with the hole over there, we can walk straight through, and after we patched you up and set you down in your room, I figured we should stay, and check on you in the morning.”

Cloud Chaser continued his friend’s sentence, “And neither of us got work today!”

“Thanks for helping me after you blew me up,” I muttered. “What about my robot?”

Cloud Chaser answered. “Some shrapnel took out one of the spark batteries. An inch higher, and it would’ve hit the combat inhibitor.”

“And that would be really bad.” Lightning Runner added. “The thing probably would’ve killed us, with that flamethrower, and that saw. I keep a lot of spare batteries, and I got him ready to run again. He got pretty annoying calling out ‘Have you seen Miss Scootaloo?’ every five seconds, so you’ll find him disabled on the kitchen counter.”

Cloud Chaser scoffed, “Yeah, this guy has heaps of the damned batteries. Always afraid that he’s gonna fall out the sky while working.”

“Wait. What is it that you guys actually do for a job?”

“I’m the pilot of the Sky Bandit!” They said simultaneously.

Cloud Chaser turned to his friend and said, “No, you're just an assistant.”

“Wait, I’m pretty sure he was flying it when I rode the Sky Bandit a few days back,” I said.

“He probably was in this rain. That’s why they call him Lightning Runner. He flies for me in the rain,” said Cloud Chaser.

“Yeah, only because you’re too wimpy to fly in the rain.”

I started to smile at their childish argument.

Cloud Chaser shot back “You only got the job because of these official training exercises messing with my schedule, and the fact that I’ve known you forever.”

“Shut the hell up!” I joked with a smile.

The two looked at me, and then each other, and laughed. After a few minutes of some medical blabber from Cloud Chaser, I walked over with these two, and activated my robot.

“Bring me some water. We got company!” I commanded to him, and then proceeded to walk into the living room, and collapsed on the couch.

Cloud Chaser and I held some small talk about business. It appeared that Lightning Runner felt left out, since he was only a worker, and not a pony of business like myself or Cloud Chaser. I looked at him, and asked him what he thought about these training exercises.

He laughed and said, “I couldn’t care less. Now I’m employed because of them, so that’s good enough for me!”

As we ran out of water, I called the robot over. After getting three more bottles, I finally looked at the clock. It was still early, almost dawn, but not quite there yet.

Why must the most fun I’ve ever had in the morning involved an explosion?

<)-------(>

“Can any of you explain what happened here?” the officer asked.

Lightning Runner stepped up, “Well, sir, my friend here had a cooking accident, and...”

The police officer raised his voice as he cut off Lightning Runner, “Now listen here slick, I don’t know who you’re thinking you’re fooling, but that doesn’t look like a ‘cooking’ accident to me.”

Cloud Chaser backed his friend, “Sir, it was. I left the can of kerosene on the stove, while I went to go and get the broccoli I was going to steam, when,” he pointed a hoof at the hole in the wall, “that happened.”

The grumpy officer lifted a hoof at me and asked, “And where were you at this time, lady?”

“I was right here in this chair, when the shrapnel from the explosion hit me.”

“Are you alright?” The officer asked.

“Well, I passed out,” I said blatantly.

“And then we patched her up.” Cloud Chaser said.

“We’re both trained in advanced first aid,” Lightning Runner added.

“Okay, whatever. Lady, would you like to file any charges against these two?” The grumpy officer asked.

Cloud Chaser and Lightning Runner shot looks of worry at me.

“No, not at all. This was probably the most fun I’ve had in a while,” I answered.

A sigh of relief came across the two as I smiled at them.

The officer spoke up again, “I gotta do a damage assessment and take some measurements, so if you could give me some time...”

“Oh no problem,” I told him. I turned to these new friends and asked, “You guys wanna go for a walk before I have to go to work?”

“You’re gonna go to work in this condition?” Cloud Chaser asked.

“You just got blown up, and now you want to go and clock in?” Lightning Runner added.

“Absolutely, I’m the boss.”

<)-------(>

As we walked, the wind started to pick up. There was a lot of debris around. Ever since the war started, the streets in all cities were a huge mess. Ponies were too busy to pay attention to stuff like clean streets. Cloudsdale had gotten pretty windy since many of the weather specialists had gone to join the military. As we walked through the empty streets, with the debris flying around us a full-sized poster found a home on Lightning Runner’s snout. As he pulled it off, he got a better look at it.

“VICTORY” Was written across the top in the colors of the rainbow. Under, the sentence continued, “JUST A WING’S BEAT AWAY” The poster showed none other than Rainbow Dash in her Shadowbolt Flight suit, backed by two silhouettes of other Shadowbolts. In the background there were eight more Shadowbolts flying patriotically in opposite directions. On the bottom of the poster was Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark, separating the only other text on the page from the rest. “JOIN THE R.E.A TODAY!” was on the left side, and on the right was “Fight With Honor, Fly With Dignity, Kill With Vengeance”

There was an indescribable look on Lightning Runner’s face, similar like a foal in a toy store, but something was different. He seemed more... intense. He quietly rolled up the poster and held it to his side with his wing. Nopony said a thing, as we continued our quiet morning walk.

<)-------(>

Do you know what it means to fall in a rut? It means to be stuck in the same daily cycle, day in and day out. Even if you’re the boss of a company, you’ll always find yourself in a rut. Sometimes I find myself out of that rut, like when something new happens. Like meeting some old friends and conspiring live saving ideas, or making some new friends after they blow a hole through your wall. All in all, however, I found myself in the same rut again. Hail a chariot, head to Manehattan, walk a block north to the Red Racer HQ, check in with my secretary, and then walk to my office. Then, I’ll sit back in my chair, and do... nothing. Sometimes I’ll find myself out of the rut again. Maybe a meeting, a performance review, sometimes I might have to lay somepony off (that’s one thing that’s always tough to do). Red Racer is not thriving in my eyes. Ever since the war, metal is sent to help the war effort. Not to make scooters. Today, I found myself out of the rut. A manilla folder that I had to look at awaited me at my desk.

COMPLAINT FILE: HIGH VELOCITY WIND DANGERS was the title stamped on the folder.

“High Velocity Wind Danger? What the hell does that mean?” I muttered. Curious, I opened the file.

I skimmed it, knowing that most of the complaints never got resolved and that I’d probably throw it out anyways. Most of it was math and graphs of Manehattan’s average uncontrolled wind speeds. There was something that caught my eye though. A watermark. Three balloons, two light cyan blue, and one light yellow. Pinkie Pie’s cutie mark. My eyes instantly jumped to the bottom, and found the signature. ‘Pinkamena Diane Pie, Ministry of Morale’ “What do they need to complain about? Now I actually have to read this whole file,” I muttered. After reading it multiple times, I found out that they were afraid of my scooter on top of the building falling onto their building and causing a lot of damage. They had sweet talked it so much, and put so many fancy graphs on the paper, that I didn’t even understand what the point of the letter was until re-reading it for the third time. Pinkie Pie is so random. I chuckled, knowing that I designed it myself and nothing short of a megaspell shock wave could knock it over.

<)-------(>

I left work later that evening. Such a long time working, but nothing gets done. I responded to the complaint file from the Ministry of Morale, just because it seemed like somepony who I’ve known since childhood deserved some recognition. As I was waiting at one of the chariot stops, I heard a child crying. I looked towards the source of the noise, and found a zebra foal being held by its mother, while a policepony was putting hoofcuffs on its father.

“Do not cry little one, they do not know what they have done,” he assured his crying child.

I wanted to say something. I wanted to help, but just before I could decide in my head what to do, a small taxi chariot stopped in front of me.

“Need a ride, ma’am?”

Almost paralyzed by what I was seeing, I replied, “Uh-huh," and climbed in.

“So where to, ma’am?”

“Cloudsdale,” I said, with my mind somewhere else.

After a few minutes of silence, he asked me, “You see that train there? That’s all military recruits.”

I looked down, and saw the long line of olive drab train cars heading out onto the horizon, away from Manehattan.

“My son wants to go to the recruiting depot, and sign up to help Equestria. I support him, but, well... my wife thinks differently.”

I nodded. I was still somewhere else in my head. I wanted to scream out I HATE THIS DAMN WAR, and many more obscenities at the top of my lungs, but what good would that do? I felt for all of those mares and stallions on that train. Good ponies at heart trying to help their land. I felt for that zebra father. Arrested by paranoid cops, who were trying to help their land, but didn't understand. I wanted to hate the cops, but I knew that they probably had their heart in the right place, but their minds were in the wrong one.

“You’re not the talkative type, are you?” the chariot driver asked.

“It’s just... everything that’s going on. It’s a little much,” I replied.

“Well, alrighty then.”

<)-------(>

I unlocked the door to my house and stepped in. I walked over to the giant hole and called out, “Hello, neighbors!”

Lightning Runner walked over to the hole, and invited me in. “I wanna talk to you guys about something.”

I sat with the two on their couch, as Lightning Runner calmly started talking. “I’ve been thinking," he began, "I found this poster this morning when we were walking.” He unraveled the poster on the coffee table, and continued, “and, I really want to go and see this recruiting officer. I’ve looked in the phonebook, and found the address and hours of operation. He closes soon, and I’d like to see him before he leaves work.”

“Are you sure, man? Military doesn’t sound like you,” said Cloud Chaser.

“No, it doesn’t, but helping ponies is something I’d like to do, and this is it.”

“Well, maybe you can just go and see what they have to offer,” I said.

“Then let’s go. He won’t be open for long.”

<)-------(>

The recruiting officer was a older brown and grey pegasus. He was wearing an olive drab suit-like uniform, and his olive drab cover sat on his desk next to him decorated with a brass pegasus in flight on the front, just above the brim. He had multiple medals and ribbons across his chest. He seemed to be showing them off as he slouched back in his chair, belly and chest up towards the ceiling.

“So you wanna come and help fight the good fight?” His voice sounded very deep and rough.

“Sir, I’d like to see if I could do anything to help Equestria.”

“Hell, we could use more kids like you in this army! Here, I’ll contact you when I can if you leave your name and number on this note. I gotta head home, I don’t get paid for overtime.” He laughed a gravelly laugh, and tossed a pencil to Lightning Runner. He turned to Cloud Chaser and me, and asked if we were looking for any military jobs.

“No, sir,” I said.

“We’re business ponies, sir,” Cloud Chaser answered.

Lightning Runner handed the note to the recruiting officer, and we all left the the building.

<)-------(>

After I arrived home, I headed to my bedroom, and just sat down. What a day. Twenty four hours before I had almost been killed by two stallions I’d never met before in an explosion, and then made friends with them. I received a letter from a Ministry Mare, somepony who I hadn't heard from in years. I watched as an innocent zebra stallion was taken from his family, and I watched as hundreds of ponies were shipped off to go fight for their land. One of my newfound friends was planning on joining the fight from the air. And as I sat here, pondering my thoughts, I got the sudden feeling to turn on the radio.

“Thanks for tuning in kids! You’re listening to the Adventures of Daring Do! In this quest, our intrepid heroine is on the search for the Diamond Snowball!

<)-------(>

I enjoyed the story. The action packed thrill of adventure was all I'd ever wanted as a kid. I felt carefree and young again, floating on a cloud of nostalgia, but I was suddenly kicked off of that cloud when the phone rang.

<)-------(>

[NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR]

Okay, I’d like to throw out some more thanks here.

‘sargecadet’ for being a totally rad editor, and helping me get past my procrastination.

‘good-nut’ for giving me the ideas for Cloud Chaser and Lightning Runner.

‘okii95’ for looking over and helping me improve my work, especially improving dialogue.

‘Kkat’ for creating this amazing universe to add on to.

I’d also like to thank Louis Prima, aka ‘The King of Swing’, for creating the inspirational song ‘When You’re Smiling’ which is what the title is named after. Go look him up if you get the chance.

Also, if you haven’t read Honest Herds by ‘sargecadet’, you’re missing out.

And if you haven’t read Fallout: Equestria by Kkat, you should.

Comments

[Arcane Scroll]

Good job on the story so far, I'm looking forward to the next chapter.

[oki_all_day]

920469 Thanks, glad you liked it. The next chapter could take a while if my brain continues to persist on being lazy.