Fallout: Equestria -- Baltimare Blues

by No one is home

Mare Out of Time Pt. 1

I remember last Hearth’s Warming as if it were less than a year ago. How could I forget the day I opened the best present my Blueberry ever gave me. It was the longest, most painful, and absolutely the most joyous day of my life. We named her Strawberry Diane Shortbread, because he came from a family of rock farmers, and they have strange naming customs. And as much as the war had torn us both apart, this was something, this was an accomplishment that couldn’t be taken away.

This was my special day that melts away as I wake up. The first thing I feel is cold. The first thing I see isn’t darkness, it’s light. My eyes were already open. Everything is so…old. I only passed out for a moment! I’m in decontamination. Something is wrong… my daughter’s been taken. My Husbands been shot; Everything is wrong.

There’s a sterile hiss followed by the smooth hum of well oiled gears as my decontamination unit opens and ejects me into Tartarus. And there’s my Blueberry, frozen in time. Three holes, three explosions. It wasn’t a dream.

My hooves fumble beneath me as I fall across the narrow aisle into his tube, and run my hoof across the frost covered glass. He’s still there. He’ll always be there. He’ll never be there again. And my little hearths warming miracle is gone forever. I scream. I scream, and I throw things, and I break things, and I read words that don’t make sense on every pod. “Cryogenic Failure”. I recognize the faces. Each little monitor tells me the names I don’t remember. All my friends, all my neighbors. Everypony I know is dead.

What damage can I even do anymore? Everything in this damned stable is broken… except one “Cryopod”. Mechanisms are far too rusted to ever open again. Frozen even in death… upwards of seven decades the nonsensical dates on all the monitors insist. That’s how long it’s been. She wasn’t even a year old. She’s probably already dead from old age. A logical part of my brain tries to understand it.

Everything in this Luna be damned Stable is broken… except for one cryopod. On every console screen is the same story with a different name. All of them my neighbors in Sanctuary. All them the families of war veterans. All of them dead in rusted, compromised pods, untended for… that date can’t be right?

It doesn’t matter. Nothing is right. Nothing will ever be right again. They came in and took everything. That means there’s way out…

I’m only dimly aware, as I stumble through the broken stable. The air is stale. Every door I open just reveals more of the same horror. Ponies in pods. They froze us all here. Veterans and their families. They said they were going to keep us safe. But the only ever intended to keep us. And then not even that, because all the pods were turned off and left to thaw and rot. All but one.

I wander the decaying halls of the once pristine stable for… I have no way of knowing how much time, as I shake off the effects of my involuntary cryostasis before I find a working office terminal. A glance through it’s contents reveals it belonged to a pony named Boysenberry Surprise. I remember talking to her at the Red Rocket Diner up the road. She seemed nice enough. Apparently she was a Stabletech Researcher. A glance through her email log tells me so much more.

-|-|-|-|-

From: Cryo Belle
To: Boysenberry Surprise
Welcome to Stable 111 Ms. Surprise. You have been chosen by Stable Tech to help to transition our residents into their automated cryogenic sleep in these trying days. Know that should the worst come to pass, you are ensuring that these great war heroes shall live on to advise us when the dust finally settles and ponykind emerges triumphant.

Truly I envy them, they will not suffer the trials and tribulations that likely soon face us all. Rather we shall awaken them as living reminders of the greatness that was once Equestria.

Author's Note:

I stopped at exactly 688 words according to GDocs. In honor of the legendary punk rock night spot in downtown Atlanta... that didn't have a vampire ttrpg named after it. :D All the cookies if you can figure out the reference.