Fallout: Equestria - War Does Change

by tom117z

13 - The Hidden

Chapter Thirteen: The Hidden

“We broke up into bands of talons and just kept doing what we’d done during the war: fighting for whoever paid us. That’s all we are. I’m pretty sure it’s all we’ll ever be.”

---

“You see anything?” Cobalt asked as I took a moment to peer out of the kitchen and into the main dining area.

Everything was silent, and my E.F.S. showed up clear. Nothing but the ghosts inhabited the rest of this place.

“Nope, nothing,” I replied back to him. “They probably aren’t far though.”

“As long as that horde doesn’t come in here, I’m fine,” Cobalt stated. “There’s another door back here. Might lead to some supplies.”

I pulled my head from the doorway and shut it behind me. Looking around the rest of the kitchen I could see Stripe searching through various containers for anything of use with seemingly little success. Cobalt, meanwhile, was examining the lock on the door leading further back into the building.

The unicorn tried to the handle, only for it to wiggle slightly in defiance.

“Locked,” he confirmed.

“There’s nothing of use in here,” Stripe spoke up, shoving a rusted old pan to one side. “Just ancient kitchen utensils. And I dare not investigate the foul stench coming from those fridges.”

“They would have kept their fresher ingredients in there,” Cobalt pointed out, before pointing at the door. “All the stuff pre-war companies pumped full of preservatives will be back there. “Dandy Colt Apples. Potato Chips. Things like that.”

“Let me have a look,” I said as I directed Cobalt to move aside.

I knelt down by the lock, biting my tongue a little as I studied it. I doubted it’d be too hard, given this was only a restaurant. Hell, half the safes I’d cracked during my scavenging days were probably ten times harder than this. Maybe. There was only one way to find out.

I lit my horn up and grabbed a couple of small items from the bottom of my saddlebags. A screwdriver and a couple of bobby pins floated out and positioned themselves by the lock. I took a few moments to experimentally probe the lock, seeing where I found the most resistance when I tried to turn it. On my fourth turn, I managed to turn the lock almost the entire way, but it suddenly locked up and snapped the pin in two.

Good thing I’d brought spares.

I retrieved a second pin and placed it into the lock where I’d almost opened it. I then gave it a little wiggle, adjusting its positioning ever so slightly as I peered in concentration. Small turns, seeing it begins to open… YES! The lock gave a satisfying click as it turned fully, and a pull on the handle allowed the door to swing open into the hallway beyond.

The hallway was dark, so I switched on my PipBuck’s lamp and let it shine into the passage. There was a door at the other end marked as ‘exit’, and it seemed to have a bar blocking it from our end. At least we now had another exit in case the main entrance gained somewhat of a ghoul infestation. The other two doors were on the left side of the hallway, one of them unmarked while the other seemed to lead into the bathroom.

“Storage, you think?” I asked Cobalt as he went to check the bathroom.

“Hopefully,” he responded as he opened the door and wandered inside. I shone the light in after him, illuminating a dilapidated room with a cracked ceramic toilet and sink. A box sat on the wall with a cross that had three pink butterflies in its centre. Cobalt opened it up and retrieved two healing potions as well as a single syringe of Med-X.

“Not bad,” I said as he levitated the items over and put them into my bags. “Let’s check the last room.”

We gathered by the doorway, my E.F.S. showing it was all clear inside. On trying to door I found it to be thankfully unlocked, and I let it swing open as I shined my lamp inside. The green glow illuminated over two rows of metal shelves propped up against both walls, all filled to the brim with rotten cardboard boxes. The far wall was bare, with the exception of a motivational poster with the picture of a smiling brown unicorn stallion I assumed was Donut Joe.

“Cobalt, check the left side. I’ll take the right, Stripe can keep watch.”

They both gave me a nod with no argument, Stripe taking position by the door as Cobalt began to rummage through the boxes.

I cantered over to the shelves alongside the right wall, setting my sights on the first box. When I tried it lift it with my magic, however, it began to fall apart and crumple into dust. I guess the last two hundred years hadn’t been kind to them, though, hopefully, the contents had fared a little better. It was easy enough just to push the disintegrating cardboard to one side, exposing said contents.

Well, it was a start.

I dumped the singular box of preserved canned food into my bag before moving onto the next box. A lot of the boxes seemed to be empty, though several did contain a fair amount of food that we weren’t in a position to say no to.

The last shelf was separate from the others. Instead of cardboard boxes, it contained a couple of metal ones with a couple of wonderglues and turpentines inside. I collected them as well; the wonderglue, in particular, would be helpful in repairing our stuff.

And that was that. I had cleared everything from those shelves and even checked underneath them just to be sure. Everything seemed to be cleared out, and I’d come away with a little more food than I’d come in with. Small fortunes, but in my line of work, every find was a gift from the goddesses. Even if I probably wouldn’t be bartering that stuff, but rather using it for myself and the others. Still, it was a help.

Just a little further, and then I could get out of the scavenging lifestyle. I hoped, at least.

“You good?” I called back to Cobalt, seeing him checking over the last shelf on his side. “I got some food and wonderglue.”

“Same this side,” he responded, turning to show a bottle of the stuff. “I’d say we have enough to the trip to the stable. If it’s empty, we might be able to get extra from that places own storage too.”

“If it’s empty,” I muttered. Would changelings share? Still wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.

“Stop,” Stripe suddenly stated from behind us. “Remain still.”

I didn’t move, though I did turn my head to get a look at the zebra. A quick check of my E.F.S. showed no red bars anywhere in the area… and she seemed to be staring at the floor like it had insulted her stripes.

Okay…

She seemed to see the question in my eyes. “The floor, doesn’t something seem strange to you?”

I looked at the floor, which was old and tiled. Beyond that, I didn’t see anything of note.

“Uh, no?” I replied slowly. “Are you alright?”

She gave me a flat stare, before kneeling down and pointing at a specific point. “Can you not see the line. A tiny gap that separates one part of the flooring from the rest.”

Now that is squinted, I could see a small gap. But… so? “So it’s a crack. What about it?”

Stripe shook her head. “Follow the line, it’s perfectly straight up until a point.” She traced along it with her hoof on demonstration. “And then it turns at a perfect right angle.”

She continued to trace her hoof around the perimeter of the room, following the crack in the floor until she returned to exactly where she had begun… Wait. It went cleanly around the entire room?

“A complete rectangle around the room, with but a small gap to walk around next to the shelves,” Stripe observed. “This is by design, not decay.”

“She’s right,” Cobalt confirmed, examining the floor for himself. “Looks like something might be underneath us. This might be a doorway.”

“What the hay would a place like this be doing with secret passages?” I deadpanned. I mean, I could imagine a ministry building having all kind of weird stuff in it. For all I knew, Tenpony Tower had that kind of stuff used by the Twilight Society. But this place? Seriously?

Well, maybe it was an extra storeroom or something? A basement filled with more food? If that was the case, I wasn’t going to argue.

“There has to be a button somewhere…” Cobalt muttered to himself. “But I don’t see one…”

I looked towards the poster of Donut Joe. I had to wonder…

I pulled at the edges of the poster with my magic, pulling it from the wall and letting it crumble to the ground. And I’ll be damned, behind it was a small alcove with a yellow pox attached to the wall. The yellow box had a red and green light on it, the former being lit up, and a lever screwed onto the box’s side.

“And my weirdness scale is rising again.”

“Hey, at least you found it,” Cobalt commented, trotting up to the lever. “Don’t stand on the passage.”

We all made sure we were skirting the edges of the room before pulling the lever down. And when we did, the green light on the box blinked on as the red ceased, a whirring sound reaching our ears before the floor dipped inwards and then slid out of sight.

We all peered inside, seeing a metallic staircase leading down into a barely lit corridor. Flickering light along the staircase and the ceiling seemed to be on the verge of failure, but two hundred years later they still continued to shine the way for any pony that would pass through. At the end of the corridor seemed to be a metal, industrial-looking door leading off to Celestia knows where.

“Okay, I’m starting to think this is not related to selling sugary snacks,” I commented. “Cobalt, what’re you thinking?”

“I could make a few guesses, but nothing for certain,” he responded. “Access to the subway tunnels. A listening post for the Ministry of Morale. Who knows?”

“But the question is, do we traverse it?” Stripe questioned. “Or do we leave it be?”

Now that was the question, wasn’t it? Then again, my E.F.S. was still clear and we were wanting to wait a while anyway on account of the ghouls…

“We could take a peek,” I decided. “There might be something inside we could use. But we should stick together, and if we see a Sentry Bot we get the fuck out and never touch it again.”

“Prudent,” Stripe agreed.

“Yeah, well. I’ve never met one of those death machines, and I’d like to keep it that way,” I said dryly, hopping onto the staircase as the others made to follow. This was not what I expected when taking shelter in the old restaurant, but again I hadn’t expected any of what had happened the past week and a bit. What was a little more?

Should I have been worried that I was getting used to all the bullshit?

The doorway at the end was also unlocked, and it slid open with a violent shriek and a hiss. I kept an eye on my E.F.S. at all times as we slowly trotted our way inside, examining our new surroundings. The room has all metal, the floor was grated and the walls were thick enough to survive some serious damage. I couldn’t tell you if it was stable level of protective, but it was still some heavy-duty stuff.

Something else that was strange? The two turrets hanging from the ceiling… or at least what was left of them. They were trashed, surrounded by bullet holes from whatever had annihilated them. A few bullet holes lined the doorway we emerged from as well, likely from where the turrets had tried to return fire.

“So… what happened to them?” I asked towards nopony in particular. “Was some other group here before us or…?”

“It might be pre-war damage,” Cobalt noted. “Nothing was taken upstairs. Maybe some zebra infiltrators if this is a ministry or military bunker.”

“Why build a bunker under a place like ‘Donut Joe’s’?”

“You did not suspect a thing, did you not?” Stripe pointed out. “Hiding in plain sight. An old tactic, and always an effective one.”

“She’s right,” Cobalt supported. “How many ponies do you think came and went with no idea as to what lay under their hooves.”

“Right…” What had we just walked into?

The room was almost entirely empty, the only exception being a second door at the other end of the room with a terminal flickering on the wall next to it. There were also a couple of metal crates stacked in a corner by the door.

I hit the crates first, most of which were empty. Though there was this one at the very back…

“Ah ha!”

“What did you find?” Cobalt asked as he turned towards me from the other doorway he’d been examining.

“Sparkle-Cola!” I announced victoriously, popping the cap and downing the carroty goodness.

He gave me an unamused look. “Really?”

I finished the drink quickly, feeling warm as it made its way into my stomach. Really, Cobalt should just learn to enjoy the little things in life…

At this point he seemed to be doing his best to ignore me, examining some symbol on the door intently. “If you are finishing messing around, this is important.”

“Why? What is that?”

He pointed at the symbol, and for a moment I swear his eyes lit up like a foal. And now that I looked, the symbol was that six-pointed star backed by the wings and horn and an alicorn.

“This is the symbol of the Ministry of Arcane Sciences!” he announced excitedly, rubbing his hooves together like a child on a pre-war Hearth’s Warming. Seriously, I had no idea he could even get excited before now. “This is a ministry facility, our ministry! There could be all kinds of great marvels of magic inside this bunker!”

“Or dangers,” Stripe interrupted in an attempt to temper the unicorn’s glee a moment. “We know nothing about this facility.”

“Well, I can change that…” Cobalt muttered as he activated the terminal. I saw dozens of lines of text appear on the screen as it booted, before logging into a screen asking for a password.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “I don’t suppose you actually have the password, do you?”

“Don’t need it,” he smugly responded, pressing a few keys on the keyboard and watching the screen shifted over to another menu. More lines of text began to flicker on, random nonsense mixed in with the occasional word. “Just need to find the real password from the dump of falsities. Four tries… If I get this thing open, I should be able to open the door. It might even have some information about this place.”

“Well, have fun.”

I left him to it, Stripe watching him curiously as he got to work sifting through the many fake passwords to find the single real one. Meanwhile, I returned to the box I had found the lovely Sparkle-Cola in, where a single other item sat in the corner of the box. It was a small rag of cloth, though it seemed to have something inside it. I picked up the rag, ripping it away until I lot the inside contents fall into my hooves.

Luna… was that what I thought it was? There was no mistaking the smooth rounded surface or the magical aura that made my horn tingle. The memory orb shimmered gently, unveiled to the world for the first time in who knows how long.

“Hey, uh… look what I found.”

Cobalt glanced towards me, and then down to the memory orb I was holding. His eyes went wide. “Be careful with that! Stick it in your bags for now, gently! We can have a look inside after we’re done here.”

I complied, making sure it was safe and sound. What memory did it contain? My curiosity was flaring… until I noticed a light above the doorway change.

We hadn’t noticed it until that point, but there was a lit-up section above the doorway with an arrow on it. Or at least there was now, before it had just been an empty glowing spot. But now an arrow had appeared, and it was pointing upwards.

There was a ding from the terminal and a shout of victory from Cobalt. I could see over his shoulder as a new menu appeared, the title of ‘Ministry of Arcane Sciences Haven Research Facility’ at the top of the screen. Beyond that there was only a single option, ‘call elevator’.

The door was actually an elevator. And it was coming up.

“Guys!” I shouted in alarm, drawing my shotgun as I took a step back. “Something is already coming up the elevator!”

“What!?” Cobalt stepped away from the terminal, finally spotting the arrow for himself. His horn lit up as Stripe drew her rifle, and we began to move back towards the exit.

And then the five red bars appeared, heralding the screech of the elevator coming to a halt the hiss of the door as it opened.

Revealing the power armour.

The metal clad creature took a single step out, and I was already in S.A.T.S. as time slowed to a near halt. Next to me, I could see Stripe’s rifle already amidst a flash as she fired a bullet, Cobalt’s horn flickering as he prepared some spell. I then glanced towards those coming from the elevator, taking the moment to examine them.

Griffons. They were griffons.

There were at least five according to my Eyes Forward Sparkle, though I could see the two immediately behind the first power armoured one. The power armour was completely black, as was the combat armour of the griffons behind him. Each had a small symbol on the front of their armour, showing a red eye staring directly at me.

Red Eye’s Talons.

I queued up three shots, one for the power armoured griffon’s head and one for each of the griffons I could see behind him. I had no idea what Red Eye was doing all the way out here, far from Fillydelphia or any settlements they could plunder for slaves. But what I did know was that they were pointing their weapons in our direction, and they didn’t seem to be interested in sending us to work at the steel mills!

The spell activated and, in quick succession, I fired three shells from the shotgun. The first shot was absorbed by the helmet without barely causing him to even stumble, as did Stripe’s bullet ricochet uselessly off the armour. My second shot hit the power armoured griffon’s shoulder, once again barely causing a scratch. The third streaked just past the talon, hitting the griffon I had been aiming for.

The mercenary gave a pained squawk as he fell backwards, not dead but most definitely injured.

And then the power armoured talon opened fire.

Red beams of pure death shot from his battle saddle, striking directly towards us as we could only watch. And it would have hit us too, if it hadn’t been for the shield erecting in its way.

We didn’t need any more prompting as we backed away through the doorway as quickly as we could! And as we did I saw the three other griffon mercenaries all file through the door and point their weapons in our direction, leaving their injured comrade be.

Cobalt released his shield as we turned and bolted back up the stairs, not having time to even close the passage up again as we made a left turn and barged our way out of the back exit!

We didn’t stop, passing through the gaps between houses as I swore I saw flashes of red out of the corner of my eye. But the five bars all blinked out as we exited their range… leaving only two persistent bars remaining.

“Two are following us!” I shouted at the others.

“Take cover here!” Stripe shouted as we burst from the alleyway into a small foal’s playpark, dragging us quickly behind one of the climbing frames.

Two of the mercenaries were right on our tail, flying over the buildings and easily spotting us among the rusted playground. Each one had a battle saddle and a pistol in each claw, equalling four rifles and four pistols all laying down fire on our position!

“You never should have stuck your noses into shit that don’t belong to you!” one of the talons laughed as he began to strafe in the air to get around our cover.

CRACK.

He screeched as one of Stripe’s bullets went right through his wing, and he tumbled from the sky into a hard landing below.

“Fuck!” the other shouted, dropping down to a lower position to avoid Stripe’s next shot.

And then he grabbed something stuck to his armour, flinging it in our direction.

“Jump!” I shouted as the grenade pinged into the climbing frame, and we dived to the side just as the rusted pile of metal was torn to shreds by the explosion.

Crap, we were now separated! And the griffon Stripe had injured was not out of the fight yet.

I found that out when he pounced on me.

“Stupid pony!” he growled he dug his talons into my neck, trying really very hard to crush it!

Any help from the others was cut off as the other griffon continued to focus fire on those two, leaving his friend to deal with me.

How wonderful!

I lit up my horn to try and grab my discarded shotgun, but just as I was raising it he gave a shout of rage and punched the base of my horn, not stopping there as he effortlessly picked me up and hurled me into a nearby swing set! Still, I coughed for breath as my airways cleared, though the gashes in my neck were gushing a bit too heavily for my liking.

A third red bar appeared, and another as I saw the rest of the able griffons enter the park.

My attacker saw his power armoured buddy walk onto the scene, laughing as he did. While he was busy, I tried to rise to my hooves and rush away. Towards my gun or towards the others, I wasn’t really sure. Just… away.

He wasn’t having any of it, though I was able to raise my PipBuck up in time to block his claw as he went for my throat again. I ended up in a grapple with the griffon, though there was no denying he was far stronger than I was. Though I didn’t have time to wish I went to the gym more often as he forced me back.

And then there was an undead scream.

The griffon gave a shout of panic as a blur of dried and slightly frozen flesh headbutted into him, tackling the griffon to the ground amidst the wild snapping of feral teeth.

When had so many red bars appeared?

I quickly grabbed my discarded shotgun, spinning around to see countless feral ghouls spilling into the playground. The griffon who had grappled with me through off the ghoul he was fighting with and fired three rounds into its head, the red bar blinking out. He got back up, several new bite marks bleeding heavily from every part of his body without armour.

I finished him with a shotgun round to the face, his head exploding into gore as his severed beak bounced off one of the rusting metal structures before being lost amidst the approaching hooves of the undead horde.

This just left the power armoured mercenary and two of his companions, all three being surrounded by the feral ghouls. Three of them all pounced on the armoured talon at once, and he began flailing wildly to shake them off. Another was holding his own pretty well while the third found himself quickly overwhelmed and torn apart by the horde.

“Scrap Heap!” Stripe called out as she and Cobalt quickly rushed up to me, the former unleashing a bolt of magic into a ghoul who thought it’d try its luck. “The horde descends, but they are focused on the talons. We must leave!”

“No arguments from me!” I shouted back, quickly falling into step with them as we fled the scene.

They were both slightly burnt where the weapons of the armoured griffon had barely missed them and were otherwise cut up from the scuffle. But we’d deal with our wounds later as we elected to get as far from the fighting as possible, killing any ghoul who decided to go for us rather than the griffons the rest of the ferals were focused on.

And we kept moving until the town was left far behind us. No ghouls. No griffons. Just the sound of us and our breathing, with more than one extra mystery added to the pile.

---

Footnote: Level 12

New Perk: Life Giver - +30 Hit Points.

Comments

[Hades Shadow 92]

Red eyes Talons, what were they doing? Also Scrap sure likes his Sparkle-Cola.