• Published 28th Jan 2019
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Fallout: Equestria - Resistance - tom117z



One small change can alter the course of everything you know. One small change, and the Enclave have won.

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5 - Catching Up

Chapter Five: Catching Up

“Welcome to Ground Zero.”


My PegWing’s alarm woke me up early the next morning. The sound got a few grumbles from other resistance fighters in the barracks, but I guess they just had to deal with it.

Coffin took seconds to grab both me and my stuff, with sleep still sealing my eyes half-shut, and thrust me in with the rest of the group as we prepared to head outside. I’d be leaving with my revolver, combat knife and that quad-shot shotgun I’d picked up from the Enclave soldier, along with my Enclave overalls with some leather barding strapped to it, alongside a couple bits of miscellaneous stuff. The rest of the guns I’d picked up had been taken from my PegWing’s inventory to the armory in the base.

That was fine with me, I’d make good use of my current loadout.

When I was able to clear the sand from my eyes, I saw that the group was gathering in the heavily fortified entrance zone of the resistance’s bunker. Two turrets hung from the roof, while two barricades had a single guard each sitting before an armoured metal door that was currently open, said door leading into the rest of the bunker where we’d just come from.

Ahead of us was another metal door that would lead into the factory’s sub-basement, where up above ponies of both Enclave and resistance affiliations worked, one of the two groups completely oblivious about what was beneath them.

Silver Bell and Life Bloom were also there to meet us, along with Steampunk who was packing some saddlebags.

“You have stealth cloaks, supplies, ammunition… Everything you need for the trip,” Steampunk announced, closing up the last saddlebag before hoofing over one to each of us. “Anything else you need I’m sure you can scavenge out in the wastes.”

“And take these,” Life Bloom interjected, hoofing over some odd little devices. “Stick them in the base of your ear and activate, they’ll automatically connect to your PegWings, or PipBuck, and give you a direct line to us."

I took mine, giving it a look over. It was a small thing with a single button and was shaped perfectly to fit in a pony’s ear. I gave the button an experimental push, and my PegWing lit up. Checking it, I saw a new radio station had been found.

“That’s the one,” Silver Bell confirmed, looking over my shoulder. “Just connect with it, and we should be able to talk via those earpieces.”

“Neat,” I commented, turning the device back off and pocketing it. “Any more toys I should know about?”

“Not as many as the Enclave, sadly,” Life Bloom replied with a shake of his head. “We can give you direction, but you’ll be alone against an army.”

“Yeah, what else is new?” Coffin said with a smirk I just knew he had behind his helmet.

What else indeed…

“Well, I think we have everything here,” Liberty Bell noted, rooting through her own pack. “Enough for the trip. And yeah, we might find some stuff… Maybe around the R-7 ruins?”

“Good thing we packed Rad-X if we’re heading through there,” Coffin mused.

“The radiation keeps other elements at bay, even the Enclave,” Stripe pointed out. “Despite the radiation, going around would be even more dangerous for us.”

“I know the reasons, Stripe,” Coffin shot back. “Just not interested in ghoulification is all. I doubt the Enclave would let me keep my job.”

“Wait, what does the Enclave have against ghouls?” I asked.

Coffin gave me another odd look. “What? You don’t know?”

I shook my head. Gah, I hated being in the future!

He just shook his head. “Right… Well, ghouls to them aren’t even ponies. And are treated the same as all other non-ponies.”

Not very well, if I were to guess.

I wanted to ask some more about the Enclave and their stance on non-ponies. But Life Bloom gave me a look that both silenced me and contained a promise to explain more later. I guess my ignorance on a lot of common stuff nowadays would raise questions…

I wish I could just tell them who I was. But Littlepip would just paint a giant target on all of our back, wouldn’t she?

“You really haven’t been around much, have you…?” Liberty Bell asked sympathetically, and I gave her a lying shake of my head. “Wow, you really weren’t kidding when you said you never left the area. Well, don’t worry. Just stick with us.”

“No shit,” Coffin drawled. “So I get you’re a good technician. But how’s your shooting?”

“Just fine,” I shot back. “I may not know much about what’s going on outside New Appleoosa, but I know enough to say it’s bad and we need to stop it.”

Coffin chuckled. “Fair enough. I guess we can fill in the blanks.”

“No experience like work experience!” Liberty Bell quipped.

Those butterflies Liberty Bell put in my stomach were an odd feeling mixed in with the frustration. You all try being an ice cube for four decades! Dear Celestia, I could tell being Sparkplug was going to drive me insane!

“So, uh… is there anywhere friendly we could stop off on the way?” I asked, swapping the subject matter and hiding my irritation.

“Not unless you come across one of the other cells,” Silver Bell noted. “And we only know where one of them is right now. And the Applejack’s Rangers are off the beaten path.”

Applejack’s Rangers? Okay, I had to visit there when I got the chance. If any group was going to have familiar faces…

If Homage was going to be anywhere, I’d think it’d be there. I hope.

“So, do we all know what we’re doing?” Silver Bell asked, getting only looks of confirmation in reply. “Good. I’m going to make this brief, and then you’re hauling your flanks up to Fillydelphia.”

She took a breath. “For the past forty years the Enclave have ruled Equestria with an iron hoof, and in order to maintain that grip, they have invented weapon after weapon to try and pacify us. But what the Enclave don't know is that we can deal with a new rifle, cannon, or a new model of power armor, that only means that we are much stronger than they realize. But these tanks, they could change everything. The entire future of Equestria may ride on this, and it’s going to be dangerous. But that never stopped Littlepip, did it?”

Real subtle, looking at me when you said that! I mean, come on! Ugh, fortunately, I think the others were too busy listening to notice my blush.

“The Stable Dweller also faced difficult odds. Deadeyes, Topaz, the Goddess. The reason for her good deeds was to not only make things better for the ponies she helped but to make a better future for all of Equestria. Unfortunately, in an instant, the Enclave smashed the future she was building and replace it with their own future ruled by them. But just because something is smashed doesn't mean it can't be put back together, right now, the ideals of the Stable Dweller guides, even now…” Luna damn it, Silver Bell! “Fights with us. And with her spirit and her tenacity fueling your own, I know you can stop these things from rolling on over us. I know that now, more than ever, the Enclave has a reason to be scared because we are going to bring back the Stable Dweller's future.”

“Damn straight!” Coffin proclaimed in agreement. “So, we getting this show on the road?”

“Yes. Good luck, you four,” Silver Bell replied, pressing a button to open the metal door in front of us. “Goddesses guide you.”

And with that, I was forced from an underground bunker into an unforgiving and entirely hostile wasteland. The story of my life.


If there was any nostalgia to be had travelling the wastes with two ponies and a zebra, it was short lived. That was probably partly to do with it only being a couple days ago from my point of view, and partly because it was still a massive shithole.

But Goddesses, I was glad to be on the move again.

We’d left the sand of the Appleoosian Desert behind, returning the dried dirt of the rest of the wasteland. It would be a few days of travel before we reached Junction R-7… or where it used to be, I guess. And some days more after that to get to Fillydelphia.

Fillydelphia. Last time I was there, it was a slave run hell lorded over by a mad pony with an admittedly cool metal eye. I had to wonder how much of Red Eye’s legacy remained, and what the Enclave had done with the place in his absence.

But I guess it doesn’t matter. Even if they’ve replaced the slaves with their machines of war, one hell has just replaced another.

I always visit the nicest places…

Since leaving the city we hadn’t seen many of, well… anything, really. The usual critters. Radroaches. Bloadsprites. That sort of stuff. But there weren’t any traders roaming with their caravans, or even any raiders looking to take your stuff. It was eerily empty even by this place’s standards, the only pony life we’d seen so far was the occasional Vertibuck flying overhead.

We just hid and waited for those to pass us by, and then it was back to walking.

There were plenty of ruins as well. A few that ticked the back of my mind, so I think I must have passed at least a few of them back when. Old towns the Enclave hadn’t bothered rebuilding, I guess they focused only on the large cities for the most part. Coffin seemed to indicate as such in our talks.

Manehatten was also a big hub for the Enclave as I found out. I suppose it had to be if they had Celestia One under their control. Friendship City had been turned into a massive military base, and they even had a statue commemorating the Enclave on it.

But what made my blood boil the most was the idea of some Enclave jerk sitting in Homage’s radio station and speaking their bullshit over her channel!

Something on the list of things to fix.

Aside from that, they had rebuilt a lot of Baltimare, Trottingham, Vanhoover. Any major city that was remotely fixable, they did. At least according to my new friends.

“There’s even talk lately of a ‘New Cloudsdale’,” Liberty Bell had mused during one part of our trip. “Not sure how’d they manage it, though. They haven’t finished rebuilding their current lot yet.”

So yeah, a lot of Manehatten was apparently also still rubble, just as I remembered it. I guess it takes more than forty years to rebuild a country in its entirety.

Goddesses I’m glad I woke up when I did. I mean, earlier would have been far better. But could you imagine what I would have found if two hundred years had passed me by?

The shudder down my spine was cold and foreboding. I did not want to see what these bastards could have achieved in that time.

I mean, just look at Canterlot.

The very city that the Enclave had blown off the side of the mountain at the start of all this… They’d rebuilt it. After they’d murdered all those innocent ponies. Destroyed Stable City. Murdered Twilight Sparkle’s mother. They’d rebuilt it on the corpses of everypony they’d slaughtered.

But I wasn’t so sure it was a city anymore…

The entire complex where Canterlot used to be seemed to now be industrial, the structure that replaced the city containing docks for cloudships reaching out around it. And even from here I could spy dots around the former capital that were undoubtedly Enclave Raptors.

“How many ships you think they can pump out in a year?” Coffin asked casually, seeing where I was staring. “I mean, I know you’ve been living under a rock your whole life. But please tell me you’ve at least heard about the Canterlot Shipyards.”

“O-of course!” I lied. “Who wouldn’t know all about where the Goddesses used to live?”

The stallion snorted. “Yeah, and imagine how they’d react to it now. Raptors always in and out, not to mention whatever new class their eggheads and engineers can come up with.”

“Like what, exactly…?”

The stallion shrugged. “Eh, they still maintain Raptors for the most part. But every now and then you’ll see ‘em fixing up a scout or one of those Victory Class warships. Now those are mean puppies…”

“Good thing they don’t have many of those, huh?” Liberty Bell chimed in. “They always seem overeager, the Enclave. I mean… cities, killer tanks, new ships. They can’t just settle on one thing for five minutes.”

“And they have more behind the scenes, I’m sure,” Stripe spoke for the first time in forever. What is it with zebras and not saying much? Or was it just me?

“Sure gives them a variety of things to smash us with, though. I wouldn’t dismiss what they have managed to build,” Coffin pointed out. “Imagine how many more they’ll make in the next Celestia knows how many years. Bet they’d phase out Raptors entirely for those things given the chance.”

“I mean, they can’t be as bad as, say… a Thunderhead…” I said with a not at all nervous chuckle. “Right…?”

“Naw, I don’t want to imagine them making more of those.” Oh, thank Luna for that. I guess those titans are still a little beyond their ability to reproduce. I hope it stays that way. “Still, with the way their construction methods seem to get better and better each year, especially with these new Hades tanks, I wouldn’t bet against them trying to produce some soon.”

Thanks for immediately bursting that bubble.

He caught my glare. “What? You want me to sugarcoat it? No point lying, there never is. Just another reason to hit ‘em now. Might delay things a bit, yeah?”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Still, Canterlot is a big no-go zone for us,” Coffin continued. “Before even building their shipyard the Enclave raided it and sacked the place for all it was worth, including the existence of Celestia One. Then they blew it to hell, a blank slate for them to work with.”

Yeah, I’d never forget that day. Just as we had been saying goodbye to Steelhooves, the great crash of a city collapsing down a fucking mountain. And with it, my last promise to Applesnack went up in flames.

“There might be cell up there though,” Liberty Bell stated.

“Bell, you know that’s just hearsay,” Coffin rebuked. “No way there’s a cell in that place. Next to Neighvarro or Death Scythe’s fortress, it’s practically Enclave central.”

“Which would make it even more amazing if it’s true!” she responded optimistically, her bright and cute eyes shining with hope…

It made me want to believe it too.

Coffin, apparently, didn’t share that sentiment. “I’ll celebrate if there turns out to be any truth to it. But as of right now, I doubt there’s anything up there that doesn’t want to kill us.”

Right, because nothing wants to kill us down here…

With that depressing thought in mind, we continued on. The day began to set, and we could see the orange glow of the twilight begin to appear even through the ever thick layer of clouds the blanketed most of Equestria. Nothing of note really happened in that time, not so much as a mutated insect crossed our paths. At some point, we transferred from the cracked wasteland ground onto an even more cracked and decayed road leading in the right direction.

We stopped speaking around that time, all we could hear was the clopping of our own hooves on the concrete, and the occasional bird chirping and squawking away somewhere out of sight. We passed by a flat area of old fields of irradiated, dead wheat not too far from where Ponyville sat. After that the hills began to become more frequent, darkness coming in and drowning us in the familiar wasteland night. The land became cool, a soft wind blowing as we walked.

I remember my first night under the wasteland. It had been so dark, I’d honestly thought I was in an endless void that stretched on forever. Still do, in a way. Then my eyes had adjusted when I’d turned on my PipBuck light. I saw how it illuminated the decrepit old barn and the orchard around it. How long it took to convince myself that I wasn’t going to fall off into space. Still, there was a beauty in the night. It was so calm, peaceful. Even with the dead wheat felt at peace.

We took a rest, keeping lights low and began to eat some food. Coffin opening up some canned beans, and most of everyone else having canned corn instead. I, meanwhile, had some canned tuna. It was new actually a new can, which I could tell that given the image of a pegasus mare emerging from the water, a fish in her mouth and a smile on her face. Accompanying the image was the brand name, which was in bold blue letters: ‘Enclave Tuna! Ready to cook and prepare for any meal!’

“Pegasi eat fish?” I know I’ve eaten meat out of the stable, but this was news to me.

“Yeah, something about being good for their wings,” Coffin said. “After the Enclave took over, they headed for the nearest ocean that had semi-non-tumorous fish and started up their fishing operations. The tuna’s not bad, but you rarely see non-canned fish outside the innermost sections of the city or the smaller towns that fish them. I once heard zebras can prepare raw fish in a special way that’s amazing.”

“If you’re Atori,” Stripe mumbled off to the side.

This was peaceful. Calm...

And then the red bar appearing on my E.F.S. was accompanied by a scream. We ran up the hill and all stopped dead in our tracks.

We’d first heard it through the loud crashes of gigantic legs and the grinding of internal gears. This was mixed in with gunfire and panicked shouts from an unknown source, one which became apparent as we hit the top and hit the dirt to avoid being seen.

And what a scene it was. There was a group of ponies… Raiders? Resistance? Judging from Coffin and Liberty Bell’s grimace, and even Stripe’s narrowing of the eyes, I guess the latter. But whoever they were, they were in the middle of a fighting retreat against something that I really didn’t want to see, a Hades Tank.

It slowly thudded along the landscape, each individual step causing a small tremor in the ground that sent my stomach into a deep pit. It was approaching the ponies under escort from about half a dozen Enclave soldiers in power armor, firing their weapons at the fleeing freedom fighters. The latter were all diving for cover into some kind of pre-war bunker, a security checkpoint maybe. But it didn’t really matter all the much, the building being dwarfed by the monstrous tank’s shadow.

And they were being slaughtered. Butchered. Their assorted arms did nothing against it as it unleashed what looked like minimal firepower upon the crippling group. Many began retreating away from the bunker as they began to fire a single balefire egg mortar, ripping the base to pieces as my PegWing began to detect the rising radiation levels from here. Twenty rads a second…

The ponies still outside began choking, dust and radiation that close to one another killing those who didn’t make it into their bunker or chose to flee from it, the rest being cut down by magical weapons fire.

The Hades Tank then fired it’s railgun, aiming low at the bunker as it fired, the whole ground under it practically caving in and unearthing a lower area of the small, now vulnerable structure. Some ponies, somehow, survived and tried crawling away only to be shot by the machine’s railgun yet again, the entire complement being eviscerated to the point of no remains being left behind. Like they’d never even existed in the first place.

Just as the Enclave would like it.

I here I was, just like a statue I was frozen in place as they were just… just...

“Sparkplug, come on!” Coffin yelled, snapping me out of my trance. “We have to move, now!”

“B-but...”

“Spark, there’s no chance anypony survived that thing’s attack, and if we don’t get a move on and out of the line of sight, we won’t be alive must longer either,” he stressed, and- Ouch! He hit me!

Well, more like a light tap. But still!

“Get your head in the game, we can avenge their deaths by fighting and destroying the factory making them. Now come on!” he said, almost pulling me with him as I gave one last glance back. That machine was just walking along, over their dust and corpses.

Those who hadn’t been hit by the railgun were strewn all over the place, in so many bloody chunks from the explosions that they’d practically painted the now ruined bunker a crimson red.

Almost like how raiders decorate.

Not that different are they, Enclave and raiders. Just one group is a junkie tribe of degenerates, and the other is a racist murder machine that has enough firepower to wipe all life from Equus. Forty years, the world hasn’t changed at all.


More days of travel passed, and the image of the Hades Tank slaughtering those ponies stayed with me.

Stayed with us all.

Between that one and the one back in New Appleoosa, I hoped to Celestia that the other hundred and ninety-eight were still in the factory. I mean, I killed a dragon back before all of this, and the thought of fighting one of those actually scared me.

If you were to cover a dragon in several metres of armour plating and cover it in balefire egg launchers, however…

Let’s not even go there, I wouldn’t put it past them.

If I’d learnt anything from watching those ponies get slaughtered, it’s that Silver Bell was right. Bullets had just pinged off the armour like they were cotton buds, and even an underground bunker was fucking dug up by that thing and shredded! It’d probably be a complete bitch to take down one, but two hundred?

Yeah, right…

Maybe if I had my friends.

Ugh, I need to find them. I really need to find them.

First, we still need to make sure the rest of those things don’t make it off of the production line.

How could I have let this happen?

“Stop making that mopey face,” Coffin light scolded. “You’ve been making that face since we ran into that tank. We couldn’t have done anything.”

“It always feels like we could have, though.” I am the Stable Dweller! I am supposed to save everyone! “If we’d done more than just… wait and see.”

“And what? Die with them?” Coffin snapped back at me. “We wouldn’t have stood a chance. None of us are the Lightbringer.”

Fuck, why did he have to go and say that!?

He spotted my increasingly glum mood, his expression softening. “Hey, come on. We can still make a difference here. We’re still alive to stop the rest of them.”

“I guess.” I knew he was right. It just… fuck…

And then his expression hardened again. “And just so you know… something you said has bothered me.”

Uh oh.

What had I said? Shit. I hadn’t given myself away, had I? I wracked my brain to try and think of any time he could’ve have figured out the truth but… How could he have?

“I don’t like liars, Sparkplug,” he said. “And you’ve lied at least once.”

“Coffin!” Liberty Bell protested. “Leave her alone. Besides, you lie to the Enclave all the time!”

“Not true, I simply keep my mouth shut,” he retorted. “But even so, I’d certainly never lie to my friends.”

“I-I haven’t lied!” Sorry, Homage…

“When we first met, you told me that you’d grown up ‘around and about’, travelling and the likes.” What does that- Shit. “Then, when you knew next to nothing about beyond New Appleoosa, you go and claim you’ve never left the city. What’s the truth, Sparkplug?”

Uh…

“If she wants to keep her background private, then that’s her business,” Liberty Bell defended, walking herself in between me and Coffin. “Do you, Sparkplug?”

“I’d… rather not talk about it.” Because I can’t.

“You won’t even tell us why Life Bloom had Steampunk recruit you out of the blue?”

“Sorry…”

He sighed. “Fine. At least tell me this, are either of those two stories you’ve told me the truth?”

I… Gah, I just shook my head. I mean, it wasn’t all lies but… Well, just most of it.

“Well, at least you were honest about that.”

“Silver Bell and Life Bloom would an aneurysm if I told you, sorry.”

“So they put you up to this, huh?” He sighed again. “Alright, fine. I can understand that. I’ll be having a word with those two when we get back, though. Count on that.”

Great. Couldn’t wait…

More hours passed us by, and I kept mostly in silence from there. I couldn’t help but notice some suspicious glances Coffin wouldn’t occasionally throw my way, but he’d always stop when Liberty Bell would shoot him a glare. I couldn’t blame him, though. I wasn’t built to be a liar.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons our stealth missions always turned into shooting galleries…

Still, with the occasional look at my PegWing’s map, I saw the site where Junction R-7 used to be coming up soon. Last I saw it, it’d been a small settlement with a big magical turret on top that Calamity had painstakingly set up. The other dwellers from Stable 2 had been setting up there with Gawd’s help, finally emerging from our isolation…

That image was promptly shattered when I saw the present reality.

Dead. Everything was dead. As we came across the landscape where Junction R-7 should have been, all I saw was a desolate wilderness filled with pools of undoubtedly irradiated sludge and a thick green haze surrounding everything.

Almost like some kind of glowing sea.

“Welcome to R-7,” Coffin muttered, standing by my side as we looked over the landscape. “Or what’s left of it.”

“How many nukes hit this place…?” I’d never seen anything this bad…

“Only one, a direct hit more or less. Or so I’ve been told, seeing as I hadn’t even been born yet,” he replied. “But that’s all it took. Imagine it, back two hundred and forty years ago, most of Equestria probably looked like this. The worst off areas, anyway.”

Fuck…

“Now this is what the Enclave does,” Stripe said bitterly, coming up beside us. “Death and radiation. And ponies get is easy.”

“How much easier, exactly?” I asked. “I mean, I figured they’d be a bit xenophobic, but…”

“Not much better than the ghouls,” Coffin answered for the zebra. “Death is usually the punishment for not being a pony. There are even rumors around the Enclave for an invasion of Zebrica… If we weren’t around, anyway.”

Liberty Bell snorted. “And if they get the S.P.P. working for them.”

They’re still not in that thing, huh? Good to know.

“Hell, I’ve also heard other rumours saying they’ve got deals with some shadowy elements in the old Empire,” Coffin added. “Some Legion or other, real shadowy though. Nopony knows if they really exist.”

“My people exist on superstition. But Equestria wasn’t the only one with secrets in the war, I’m certain of that much,” Stripe mused before there was a flash of… something not unlike lightning, and the sudden increase in clicking from her battered PipBuck coincided with our PegWings having the same reaction. “But enough, I would recommend we take Rad-X.”

Yeah, that was probably a good idea. Better listen to the scary zebra lady.

Liberty Bell hoofed us all a dose or two of the stuff, and we quickly swallowed the pills to lower our radiation intake. Good thing our RadAway was also good to go, I had a feeling we were going to need it.

And then into the sea we went.

We were quickly engulfed by the haze, and it obscured the wastes behind us. In combination with the Enclave’s cloud cover, things got real dark in here real fast. Worse still my E.F.S. would occasionally have red bars appear before vanishing just as quickly, using accompanied by a shadow in the corner of my vision the went just as fast.

I really didn’t like what the Enclave had done with the place…

And through it all, directly ahead of us in line with my objective marker, was an ominous shadow lurking within the fog.

“I think that’s the old Enclave base,” Liberty Bell announced. “It should be a gutted ruin, but we might as well see if anything survived the blast. I doubt this place sees many scavengers.”

I was about to respond but stopped as I felt my hoof hit something hard. I looked down, and saw…

Oh.

It was a pile of desiccated old bones, blackened and charred from the balefire. Its shape was vaguely that of a griffon, and the tatters of old talon mercenary combat armor supported that. I leaned over to get a better look, spotting an old gun under the ribcage. Levitating it out, I saw an old and rusted hunting rifle, one I barely needed to check over to know it would never fire another bullet.

I put the rifle back where I found it, giving the dead griffon and apologetic look before moving to catch up with the others.

“You’ll find plenty of those out here,” Coffin commented as I reached him. “Those who weren’t completely incinerated, anyway.”

They were probably the lucky ones.

We were now close enough to the wreck to make out details. It had been a large metal building, and some twisted junk piles outside the mains structure suggested other buildings and a wall. But they were all gone, and only a shell of the base itself remained.

The base also seemed to be sunken into the ground a little. It was tilting rather dangerously, and I couldn’t see any entrances remaining above ground. Actually, scratch that. I did spot the corner of a doorway as we got close to the building’s outer wall, but only the corner was sticking out of the ground, and when I ducked down to take a peep inside all I saw was dirt and more twisted debris filling any kind of entranceway that was once there.

“No getting in this way,” I told the others. “Actually, I’m not sure we’re getting in at all. This place looks pretty fucked up.”

“Check around the other side. If there’s nothing, oh well. We can just move on,” Coffin suggested.

I moved away from the buried doorway and followed the others as we circled around the left side of the building. There were more scraps of old armor and weapons lying around, some submerged in radioactive sludge pools while other half stuck out of the ground. There wasn’t even an inkling left of the home we’d built at Junction R-7 before all of this. No train car wall, no sign of Calamity’s turret, not even a tattered remnant of an old Stable 2 jumpsuit. Nothing but the cold metal of the Enclave where one of my homes used to be.

Home…

Stable 2. R-7. Even Tenpony Tower, since that was where Homage lived.

Two of them are gone. One no longer has the mare that made it worth considering home.

Would I ever have a home again?

We rounded the base until we came across something… interesting. One corner of the base seemed to have collapsed, and as we rounded it that assessment turned into the entire back of the building. While it looked relatively intact from the direction we’d come, now that we looked from the opposite side we realised that the entire side of the building directly subjected to the blast had been flattened completely. All the floors had caved in on themselves, and now formed something of a jagged incline all the way up to what was probably the top floor of the base once upon a time. I couldn’t even see if any of the actual roof remained where it was supposed to be.

“So... “ Liberty Bell stated. “Who’s up for climbing?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Coffin deadpanned. “No way we’re getting up that thing.”

“Don’t be like that, it’ll be easy as long as we’re careful,” she rebuked. “And I think at least some of the top floor more me intact closer to the more intact side. Could be some goodies there.”

“Don’t be-”

“I’ll go,” I volunteered, getting a bright-eyed look from Liberty and a deadpan one from Coffin. But to be honest, I was curious to see if anything had survived the blast. And when my curiosity be twitching, there was only one thing to do! “I’m pretty good at telekinesis, I can move any rubble that gets in my way.”

“See?” Liberty Bell said, moving to stand next to me as she offered Coffin a faux pout. “Come on, Coffin. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. But let it be noted that I think this is a very bad idea.”

“Consider it noted!” she proclaimed, and then she turned to climb. “Come on!”

And so up we went.

We gave the rubble some experimental steps at first but found it to be quite stable to stand on. From there it was just a matter of slowly ascending the pile while avoiding the sharpest pieces of debris in the mix. As we got close to the top I also saw a couple of twisted chairs and even a large scorched conference table just about visible among the wreckage. I swore I even spied a formerly emerald green Enclave power armor helmet just by said table…

And then a couple of red bars appeared on my E.F.S. that didn’t vanish moments later.

Liberty Bell yelped as the rubble in front of her exploded outwards in a cascade of rock and metal!

“Radscorpion!” Coffin shouted, pulling out a rifle and taking aim.

The creature immediately swung its tail and whacked Coffin with the blunt side of its stinger, sending him tumbling a little ways down the debris pile. I fumbled a moment with my magic, grabbing onto my revolver in its holster, the same gun I’d previously found in my PegWing’s weird pocket dimension thing, and pulled it free!

As I did, several more explosions occurred around us as three more of the bugs all came out to play.

“They must reside here!” Stripe shouting in alarm, her sniper rifle extracted and firing on the first creature with a loud CRACK.

Alright, let’s see if this still works!

Aha! S.A.T.S. ignited just as I hoped it would, and my perception of time slowed to such a slow rate that everything appeared to be standing still.

I targeted the tail of one of the radscorpions as it made to sting a recovering Liberty Bell, and lined up two subsequent shots straight into the face of a second. Once I released the spell, almost in autopilot my gun rang out as one bullet bit into the first scorpion’s stinger and blew the tip right off amidst a shriek of pain, before I turned and put two bullets between the second creature’s many eyes. That one instantly went limp, the corpse tumbling back down the rubble to the ground below.

There was another crack of a sniper as Stripe put more rounds into the first creature, which soon succumbed to its injuries as the last two both jumped at me!

I ducked, allowing both to sail over my head before they landed among the debris a little lower down the pile. One of them came right back at me and started striking its tail towards my face! I scrambled across the rubble, doing my best to avoid the incoming stinger as the other creature turned towards Stripe only to be shot from three directions at once! Bullets from a sniper, a rifle and a revolver akin to my own all tore the creature to bloody shreds before it fell down to join the other bodies.

Before I could admire their work, another stinger strike impaled the rubble inches from my head as I slipped down some debris and got a whole bunch of scratches for my troubles. I lifted my revolver and put two bullets into the tail before it could be pulled away, the scorpion hissing as it quickly backed away from me.

It didn’t get very far before the others all ran to my side and took aim at the mutated monstrosity, all opening fire on it as they had its buddy. It tried to dig back into the rubble for safety but barely had made a dent in it before its carapace was torn apart and the bullets hit all the mushy insides of the creature, killing it.

And then everything was silent.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Coffin muttered.

I slowly got up to my hooves, looking myself over to see whether the radscorpion had managed to get me without me noticing. It hadn’t, but I had cuts and tears in my barding from where pieces of rubble had cut into me during the scuffle. A few of them were bleeding quite badly.

“Here,” Liberty Bell offered, levitating a healing potion in front of me. “Get that stuff cleared up.”

I gave her a nod of thanks before taking the potions and taking a swing, gritting my teeth as I felt the sharp pain of the potion at work. Still, it closed the wounds up nicely. Though it did leave me with my black Enclave overalls being all torn and tattered, even some of the leather barding I’d strapped to myself before we left had gotten a bit of a beating from the tearing.

I’d have to make sure to repair those when we got out of this place.

After I was good to go, I led the way back up the debris pile and all the way to the top. As Liberty Bell had predicted, while much of the top was still tattered debris, towards the more intact wall there was still some visible flooring and even a few intact walls the made up some old rooms. Many of the walls had holes in them though, allowing access from one room to another without the use of a door. Most of the roof was gone, though one corner did have a little bit remaining, dangling down like it could cave in at any moment.

We headed straight into the more intact part of the top floor, looking around the remaining inner walls and into the rooms they once enclosed. They looked like old offices, though they had been torn asunder in both the blast and probably from years of exposure to the elements, seeing as there was no roof and half the walls were full of holes. Nothing of use seemed to have survived, beyond a couple stray bits and even some bottlecaps, which we made sure to bag for later use. All the terminals were blackened and busted beyond repair, so we left them alone.

We finally went to check out the one remaining corner that had a roof still hanging over it, even one room with all the walls perfectly intact and without a single hole nestled right against where the building angled around. The door was open, fortunately, so I carefully made my way inside.

Colour me surprised when I saw it led to a staircase downwards.

“Huh…” Liberty Bell muttered. “I wonder if something has survived further down after all…?”

“Only one way to find out,” I replied, and pressed a hoof experimentally against the first metal step. Seeing it was stable, I began to make my way down to the next floor.

One floor down was locked off, recognisably Enclave doors were sealed shut without power to slide them open. The floors after that had walls that were worryingly bulging inwards, probably from the strain of rubble pressing against them on the other side, confirmed by some bits of concrete and metal spilling in through the bulging doorways.

We quickly left those be, and then made our way down to the very bottom.

And here we found another open door and an intact corridor beyond it.

Since it was pitch black down here, both Liberty Bell and myself had our horns alight and illuminating the area alongside the lamps from all our PegWings and on PipBuck. The corridor led straight onwards to another collapse, preventing access further in. Not that there would be much to see behind there anymore but more rubble. Some of the roof was also bulging downwards from the weight of the debris above, but it was holding it for now.

There was a single door remaining to the right, and it was also wide open.

Heading inside, we saw what appeared to be an old generator that was as silent as the grave. Other bits of old tech was scattered about the room, lifeless. More importantly, though, the roof above was completely open just above the main generator and showing another intact room above.

“I’m heading up,” I said to the others. “Keep an eye out down here.”

I hopped up onto one of the old consoles and from there I managed to scramble on top of the generator. In the back of my mind I half expected it to start up and fry me then and there, but luckily that didn’t happen.

There was a bit of the floor above I could just reach, and placing a levitation spell around myself I was able to drag myself onto it and into the room.

Getting to my hooves, I saw an old armoury. Most of the weaponry was gone, and what was left had long fallen from their racks and were twisted and broken. All four of the walls around the room were bulging inwards along with the ceiling above, the room probably only surviving the collapse because the Enclave had maybe extra reinforced the room containing a lot of their big guns. It felt kind like being inside a can that had been partially crushed by a hoof.

I really didn’t feel safe inside this place and was all too aware that at any moment the debris could shift and the entire room could flood with rubble. Still, I spotted a safe behind some old weapon racks that I decided to quickly see if I could unlock and have a look through.

I carefully made my way around the hole in the floor, moving between the old racks and shelving until I was in front of the safe.

And I saw the griffon skeleton hunched over it.

And I’d known her. The partial set of rusted griffon power armour covering the bones, and the oversized anti-aircraft gun that sat discarded in front of the safe, were both big giveaways as to who this was.

“Butcher…”

Makes sense that Blackwing’s Talons had been with Gawd during that fateful day, even if Blackwing herself hadn’t been present, considering that Crainlift exists. I wonder if she’d survived the initial blast, raiding the Enclave’s armory for supplies. Was she locked in? And if so, what got her first? Thirst, hunger, or radiation?

I gingerly detached Little Gilda from Butcher’s power armor, checking it over for damage. It surprisingly seemed in decent condition, though it could use a clean to wipe away the radioactive muck. I brought up my PegWing, scrolling to the inventory menu. I located the gun with the device and, in a flash of light, it was sucked into whatever dimension it sent my stuff to.

I could carry my shotgun and revolver on my person for quick retrieval, but that thing was far too large to carry without the PegWing’s weird storage system.

She had offered Little Gilda to me once. Back when we’d saved Blackwing’s Talons from an alicorn ambush. I’d refused back then, and now…

The world has a sick sense of humour, huh?

I gently levitated Butcher’s remains off of the safe, laying them down next to the old box. Part of me wanted to cremate her, as I had done for Princess Luna. But I didn’t want to do anything to risk this place coming down on our heads.

Sorry…

Next, I retrieved a bobby pin and a screwdriver I’d brought along, which I’d also kept in my saddlebags over the PegWing. I think I’ll only be using that thing for the big stuff, like Little Gilda.

The lock on the safe was pretty basic, nothing I hadn’t done before. I gently bit down on my tongue in concentration, finding that right sweet spot as I steadily turned the lock until I heard that always-so-satisfying ‘click’.

It opened up, and I was welcomed by treasure!

Well, ammo. But that’s practically treasure in the Equestrian Wasteland.

There seemed to be a few different types inside the case, including some for my present revolver. I bagged the lot of it, I could sort through what we needed with the others later. But once I got through all those boxes, I spotted something right at the back. I reached in and dragged it out, studying the object curiously.

Actually, objects. Plural.

They appeared to be parts for a gun. A magnum revolver I think, not unlike Little Macintosh. It was definitely bigger than the smaller revolver I was currently utilising, and they included a few small parts and even a cylinder that seemed designed to carry higher yield bullets than even Lil’ Mac. It was just parts, though, no gun to go with them.

And as I said, they were a bit too big for my current revolver. I don’t think the parts would be compatible. If I had Lil’ Mac, though…

I grabbed the parts and put them safely away, just in case…

After that, seeing that there was nothing else to grab, I gave Butcher one last parting look before heading back down the hole and into the generator room. After informing the others of what I’d recovered, Coffin had been all too happy for us to finally go back up the stairs and leave what was left of the old Enclave facility far behind us.

The moment we were out, the ammo I had found had been distributed between us before we made ourselves scarce, returning into the hazy green fog of the sea until the building was lost in it far behind us.

A few RadAways later, and fortunately without any more encounters with the local wildlife, and we emerged from the fog and back into the cloudy skies beyond. Finally free of the silent grave that was once Junction R-7.

Free to walk a less lethally radioactive by no less deadly wasteland, heading in the direction of Fillydelphia.


Footnote: Level 3

New Perk: Gun Nut - +5 Small Guns, +5 Repair.