Fallout Equestria - No More Tears

by Darkstarr48

Chapter 10

Remember how when we traveled back to the stable and Ditzy had taken us in her cart? Yeah, I do. I also remember my hooves not aching, my throat being wet, and blood silently coursing through my head, not sounding like a hydroelectric water turbine. Yeah, basically the point I'm trying to get across is that it was very dumb not to have asked Ditzy to do the same for us again. Goddesses I was so tired, but it was only three in the afternoon and we were a long ways from Ponyville.

It seemed all of my companions shared the same thoughts, all of us were looking ragged and worn. Being stable ponies that wasn't a surprise. After all my years of physical inactivity, I'm surprised I'm so skinny. The only one of us that didn't seem overcome with exhaustion was Lilly, who hovered alongside my using her wings. Ugh, i suppose that even Enclave ponies have to do physical work. That explains why she hit so hard. Either way, she was still looking good, and probably fit to carry us in a cart if we ever came to one.

"How come neither of you are flying?" Lilly asked, motioning to both Rusty and Wendy, who were trotting along at a wobbly pace.

Wendy perked up to look at Lilly and opened his wings, "Stable doesn't give you much room to fly, plus, when I tried I crashed and burned pretty hard." He flapped the feathery appendages pathetically to show how weak his wings were.

"Sucks to have wings in a Stable, huh?" She asked smiling. Both Rusty and Wendy nodded.

"Yeah, but wings are somewhat rare in our Stable too." Yes, that was true, our family is... was the only family with Pegasus genes strong in our DNA, which explains why I was the first non Pegasus member of our family on over four generations.

"Ah, so you're something special huh?"

"Eeyup." He said with a cheeky grin. "And das whai I get all da Ladies!" He chanted, strutting and flapping his wings.

"Ladies? The only thing you've brought into our room at three in the morning are other stallions." I said, matching the cheekiness in his voice. He immediately snapped his wings to his sides and turned bright red, turning his head to attempt to hide his blush from all of us. He failed, as we all began to crack up. "I swear, you and Eye Drops kept me awake that night, damn, you two were loud!"

"Gears, stoppit, please." He said laughing nervously, but he was clearly grateful that I was breaking the news to our friends so he wouldn't have to later. Yes, yes, my brother was gay, but in all fairness, so am I. I wondered if homosexuality was a gene, hmm, I don't know. Technically I'm bi, but I prefer mares to stallions. And our parents... they did not take kindly to the whole, both kids being gay thing. And even the Overmare took an interest. She claimed that it would cause a tremendous drop in stable race diversity. Which I didn't understand why she would be trying to make us have kids, Less population meant better living conditions, and the fact that she hated our family with a passion didn't help my suspicions either. She always had something planned. Sneaky bitch. Back to the conversation at hoof:

"You're embarrassing me Gears." He said closing his eyes and looking away again. Also, In case this raised any questions, no, I did not enjoy listening to my brother getting buttfucked by a stallion in the other room, in fact, it emotionally scarred me, I went to therapy. Its bad enough if you were to walk in on your brother if he were straight, but its a whole new ball game when hes gay. And so, I saw this as the perfect opportunity to get revenge on my brother for all the trauma.

"Hey, none of us judge you." Rusty chimed in, his usually timid voice being harsh and scratchy due to dehydration. "In fact, I'm gay too." Wendy blushed even more and looked away from him.

"Really?" He asked again.

"Yeah, he is, I can tell by the way he looks at you Wendy." Lilly said doing a loop in the air, laughing. They blushed and began to trot apart, eventually reaching opposite ends of the lane. "Don't seem so shy." Lilly added, "I too find mares preferable." I blushed a bit and looked away, realizing that we had just been bed mates for the past couple days. Okay, while that was reassuring to me personally, that wasn't very good for my feeling of badassery. Four fags journeying through the wastes? Really? Who the fuck was going to take us seriously?

I voiced this concern to my comrades, "Guys, who is going to take us seriously, really?"

Rusty and my brother drooped, nodding in agreement to what I had said, but Lilly had entered thought. She flapped along and finally smiled, "Hey, If nopony takes us seriously, they don't see us as a threat, and so they wont send out their stronger guys to grind us into a pulp on the ground. It would be a much easier fight."

"Rather than avoiding the fight altogether through intimidation?" Wendy asked looking at Lilly.

"If we survive the fight, we get the loot to help us live out here longer." That. That was the kind of wasteland mentality that I hated. Yes, it was survival of the fittest out here, she made a good point. Killing someone for their things just seemed... wrong. It sounds like being a bandit, especially when there was an alternate, nonviolent way through this situation, and that was to be as intimidating as possible.

"Maybe we're over-thinking this, we have no reputation yet."

"Granted that we couldn't be intimidating if we tried." Lilly said chuckling to herself. "Not to mention how stupid most of the ponies out here are, they're likely to charge you, no matter how much better equipped you are."

Another good point, but that still didn't change my stance on pointless bloodshed. Killing was killing after all. I looked up at the darkening sky, we were all exhausted, but we still had ground to cover. "Lilly, how far til we reach Ponyville?" She looked at me and motioned to my Pip Buck. "Oh, duh." Is what i said out loud, inside, i was beating myself over the head with a pipe, 'Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! stupid!' I tabbed over from my inventory screen to my map screen. Not too far from us was a blank map marker, flashing rapidly to emphasize our proximity. "Not far at all actually." I said, everypony perked up, realizing that we were finally going to get a break from the walking. I motioned to the top of the hill. We all picked up the pace and crested the hill, out faces going from ones of hope, to ones of awestruck horror.

I had expected a destroyed town, with toppled statues, crumbled buildings, and radioactive air blanketing the streets, what we found instead, was much worse than anypony could have predicted. The smell alone was enough to stagger most everypony, except Rusty who just wrinkled his nose and stared down at the town in awe. The gore spread all around the valley town, topped Rusty's episode by at least forty score, profane graffiti littered the walls, and organs were strewn across the town as if this were a Hannibal Lector welcome party. I was sure that It was designed to be as visually offensive and appalling as equinely possible. All of us looked at each other and then back at the gory spectacle.

"Welcome to Ponyville."Lilly said with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

"Uhm... ladies first?" Wendy asked, motioning his hoof down the hill into the town.

Lilly snorted, "Wendy, your sister and I have more testosterone than you and Rusty combined, you should go." They began to bicker as we all began heading down the hill, advancing towards an old justice building. Lilly and Wendy argued in front, while Rusty kept his head on a swivel, searching for anything hostile, unfortunately, his eyes weren't trained on his E.F.S. when the shot rang out. I was spattered with blood as the bullet clipped Rusty's neck and he dropped like a rock, screaming and pressing his hoof to his neck to stop the bleeding, he forced himself to be silent and still, probably to trick the sniper into thinking he had gotten a kill.

"FUCK! SNIPER!" Lilly yelled, hauling us behind the facade of the justice building, leaving the unmoving Rusty out in the open.

"What do we do now?" I asked frantically, "We can't leave him out there to bleed to death or get shot again."

"You're the unicorn right, don't you know any spells for this kind of thing?" I thought for a moment, the only spell I ever used was the old levitation spell, which was legally the only spell I should know in my stable, anything much more than that would need to come from a gifted unicorn. Fortunately, I had something that nopony else did: books. I had taught myself a few spells when I got bored, first, there was a spell that could charge electronic devices, which I was somewhat proficient at but rarely used, next, a spell that made a pop like a firecracker, which I never practiced, and finally, a shield spell. I could only hold it for about a minute last time I tried and it was very taxing, I almost burnt myself out. But I didn't see much of an alternative.

"Okay, lets do it." I began to focus all of my energy to my right side, the side where the sniper was watching from. I felt the energy begin to build as the shield formed a dome, covering only my right side, I took more time to thicken it, and then took off full sprint out to Rusty. I knelt by him and used levitation to bring him onto my back. Damn he was heavy! His bleeding had slowed to a trickle as I carried him back towards the saftey of the building, and suddenly out of nowhere, a bolt of extreme pain lanced through my horn as my shield rattled. "Holy hell, did that just block a bullet?" I yelled, still walking towards my friends. I glanced up towards where the shot had come from, balcony, third floor, and there were two snipers, well, they appeared to be arguing, the second one shoved the first out of the way and brought a much larger, more menacing rifle to bear. I added more layers to my shield. Fuck. This was going to hurt. A lot.

She shot was almost drowned out by the intense searing pain that shot through my head as the shield shattered like glass and the bullet punched through, slamming into my ribs. I felt a rib crack, but the bullet was slowed substantially and hadn't penetrated my skin. I cried out in pain as the shards of my shield fell to the ground, beginning to evaporate into a fine blue mist. Luckily, I was close enough to make a dive behind the building, where my friends were waiting expectantly for my return or my demise.

I dropped Rusty on the ground, and began digging through his medical boxes for something to stop the blood that had began steadily trickling from his neck. I levitated out a couple healing potions and his only roll of gauze, which I quickly wrapped around his neck semi-tightly, and after a few seconds, the blood seeping through began to slow, Rusty however, was already unresponsive, so I wrenched his mouth open and poured one of the potions into his mouth, hoping that the liquid wouldn't simply drown him instead. Fortunately, he swallowed the potion rather than letting it go down his wind pipe, and the bleeding stopped, so I removed the bandages. His neck was still bloody, gashed deep by the bullet wound skimming his throat, the sniper had hit something vital. Luckily, I had nutted up and saved him and closed the potentially fatal wound. But now, there was the second problem to deal with.

"We can't fire back Gears." Wendy said, grabbing my arm and holding me behind the safety of the wall. I believe we were imagining the same thing, both snipers aiming their rifles at the clear area beyond the wall, wishing and waiting for us to jump out and do something stupid, which is exactly what I had intended to do. The attempt at Rusty's life had pissed me off, nopony hurts my friends, and I had hoped that the bullet was meant for me, but what was more likely was the snipers being bloodthirsty assholes. Either way, that didn't stop me from trying something stupid.

I stepped out into the open with my gryphon knife and kicked on S.A.T.S. As I had predicted, the two unicorns up in the loft were silhouetted in green, I only had one knife, and a 10% chance of hitting something vital, but I threw the knife anyway, and as I somehow watched from a cinematic view in slow motion, I watched the targeting spell work its magic as it pierced the pony with the larger rifle in the eye, dropping him almost immediately. Great, I had thought this through, but not well enough. The second sniper was still up there and I had no weapons. Luck played out for me as he threw his rifle off of the balcony. I smiled, until he levitated up the much larger rifle in his telekinetic grip. I said a prayer to Luna, cause I knew I was fucked. The shot came and my eyes bolted open, a bit of concrete chipped away from the building to my right and ricocheted away and struck the ground a foot from me, I was paralyzed as I waited for the second shot, but the sniper was wobbling on the platform, trying to hold the enormous rifle in his magic. I watched him tumble off the balcony, releasing the rifle as he landed on his head from a two story fall. He didn't get back up.

"Three." I said trotting over to the dead pony on the ground. He looked like a train wreck, His armor was patched together out of various pieces of rubbish, none of them looking like they could protect him from much more than a penknife, but I looted him anyway, despising myself the whole time, especially since he had nothing of value on him except for his rifle, and the much larger rifle that I could barley lift. I assumed the ammo would be up in the tower, but before I could fill my daily quota of bad decisions, Lilly caught me by the shoulder and took the heavier rifle, in her hooves nonetheless. I went from feeling bad, to feeling insignificant. Lilly was much stronger than myself, even when I used magic, given that my magic was weakened by the whole shield spell, but I still wouldn't want to fight her again. Last time she was half asleep, and she still almost had me.

"If you're going up there, I'm coming with you." She said trotting ahead of me, pulling the bolt back on the enormous rifle with relative ease, ejecting a cartridge about as big around as a small bottlecap. Let me re-iterate on my point, I still don't like guns. Either way, I pulled out the smaller rifle that he had originally dropped, and I knew from my books that it was a ".556 lever action repeater." I aimed down the sights experimentally, before sliding it into my pack, and dragging the dead raider into the open door and dropping him in the corner, already panting from exertion. Lilly was already up the stairs. Damn you pegasi and your endurance. I followed her up, tripping on the last stair and face planting into the ground.

"Ow, dammit." I said, lacking any edge to my voice because I was so tired. Lilly just giggled at my pratfall. Dammit, if I weren't tired and you didn't have that big ass gun I'd... wait, she had just giggled at me. Maybe I wouldn't strangle her for that, dammit, that was cute, now I needed to find a way to vent some of my embarrassment. Instead, I smiled dumbly while staggering up to my hooves.

"This belong to you?" Lilly asked as she yanked the gryphon knife out of the pony's eye, and pitched it over with out cleaning it off, i caught it in my magic and gagged, looking at the deep red blood and sticky pits of brain matter on the end of the blade. I shook the blade furiously at the wall, spattering it with a messy red paint job, leaving a splattery streak over the existing bloody graffiti.

"Ugh." I said with a deep shudder. "So.. bloody."

"Hey, from what I hear, this is nothing compared to what Rusty did to those slavers. I think he has a bit of a crush on you to have snapped like that." Lilly said digging through some unmarked ammo bins and pulling out enormous rounds that I assumed went with the rifle now slung over her shoulder. She also threw me a box of .556 ammo.

"I would have thought the same, but he's gay, I just chalked it up to him snapping at the best possible time."

"For no reason at all?" She asked, ejecting the bolt of her rifle and loading in 5 new rounds. For the sake of occupation, I started reloading my gun as well.

"He's the friend of both me and Wendy, and he didn't want that gryphon to touch me, i assume cause my brother was also in the room, and that was just.. too much. Besides, he needed a reason to vent."

"If you say so." She said setting her gun in the corner. "If I can tell you something embarrassing, I thought you and Wendy were a couple when you came into town before you told me."

"Ewww, even if he wasn't my brother, no way!"

She began to laugh and fell backwards, clutching her waist and laughing hard enough to bring out tears. I just shuddered at the thought. It didn't help that I had walked in on my brother before, and that had mentally scarred me, it maybe wouldn't have been so bad if they weren't so... ugh,, I'm done thinking about this now! then I realized I was still loading my full magazine and dropping bullets to the floor, I stopped and looked away, giggling a little myself. Wasn't I the one in my family with the highest perception score? Luckily, Lilly was too busy laughing her flanks off to notice, so I silently scooped up the pile of rounds and slid them back into the box.

The moment was saved by my brother, helping a very wobbly Rusty up the flight of stairs into the room where we were sitting. "Miss anything?" He asked.

I shook my head, "No, no no, just some... fairly disturbing girl talk." Lilly began to laugh harder and I looked away, and then he said it, he fucking had to ask.

"What about?" He asked shouldering the pale Rusty to a chair. And then she said it, through all of her laughing, she managed to choke it out.

"Your sister's uncontrollable attraction to you." Lilly said with a huge grin spread from ear to ear. Okay, I dont care how cute she is, I'm going to strangle her.

Luckily Wendy was sensible enough, and with a roll of his eyes, commented, "Seems legit." I was a good actor, and kept a straight face.

I could imagine how hilarious this was from Lilly's point of view, but man, what a fucking low-blow! "That would have been funny had it not been so wrong. Is incest not frowned upon in the Enclave?" I asked starting to grin. The words hit her like a sledgehammer ans she quivered a but, but began to grin again, i returned the smile and we both fell back laughing our lungs out. And then I remembered my broken rib when it shot a bolt of pain up my side and I immediately stopped laughing, and replaced it with a pained gasp and curled up. Wendy was beside me in a second, with a syringe. FUCK NO! I started scooching away from him frantically, but he caught me by the arm and jabbed the needle into my ribs and injected it, even against my audible protests. I sighed as the pain ebbed away and he withdrew the needle, throwing it into the corner where it shattered. Yet another relief. Despite the fact that I experienced much more painful injuries, I still hated needles.

"At least you're in one piece you big baby." he said with a grin. "Rusty is so lucky, half an inch to the left and that would have been fatal." I frowned and shuddered a bit, I had already lost my parents, and my home, I don't know what would happen if I lost my friends, nevermind my brother, all I can say is, heads would roll. A lot of them.

Speaking of killing, I had already killed four ponies. One was already unforgivable, I mean, what about their family, friends, relatives? Their childhood, any education, memories, I had stolen them away from them. And it was getting easier to as the body count rose. As a side note, I hadn't counted the feral ghouls at the train station. I had come to be able to tell the difference between ghouls like Ditzy, and others like the hoards that we slaughtered. It didn't bother me as much, considering they had already lost everything, and I guess I was doing no more than putting them out of their misery.

I looked at the surrounding room, ugh, it was filthy, bloodstained, and generally uninhabitable, but it would have to do, we were in no state to travel, we were too exhausted to carry Rusty around and needed to give him time to recover. If there were more of these damn... psychos throughout town, I certainly couldn't handle another fight like that one. I looked around at the room, Wendy had shouldered Rusty off somewhere where he could lay down, which just left Lilly and myself. I looked over at her, she was maintaining her new rifle, and it suddenly occurred to me.

"Nineteen huh? How did somepony as young as yourself become head of the Enclave intelligence?" She paused a minute and leaned her rifle in the corner again, taking a deep breath as I sat, waiting for a response.

"So, I guess you will want to hear the whole story, huh?" I nodded. "Well, long story short, my dad, General Swift, had me appointed as the head of communications, for good reason. My cutie mark used to be a radio. As the Enclave's order giver to outside units, I was to give orders precisely as my superiors directed me to." I nodded when she paused. "It was about a week ago, my father had told me to convey an order, and I didn't." Okay, it seemed a little much to banish her for disobedience.

"And that was when I saw the Enclave for what it truly was. I was to pass on the order to troops that a small settlement was to be wiped out so the Enclave could possess the technology. I had heard the reports about that town, about how it was peaceful, which is a rare find in the wasteland. I wouldn't send the order and my father became infuriated. He had no misgivings about burning off my cutie mark and dropping me on the surface to die." Damn, that's still not worth banishing her. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks and she looked away. "To him, I wasn't a daughter, I was just an underling, a grunt. So, always remember, the Enclave are opportunists, manipulators. They are never to be trusted, Gears, Because they will always stab you in the back." I frowned a bit at her tears and once again realized the similarity of our situations.

By now, she was starting to whimper to herself as she let tears drip off of her face onto the floor. "I'm sorry, I know how you feel, we're all in the same boat; stabbed in the back." She nodded but still cried. I stood up and walked over to her. She looked up at me with those sad green piercing eyes, I gave a sad little smile and leaned forward to hug her. She paused for a moment before suddenly darting her head into my neck as she began to cry aloud, her free flowing tears starting to trickle down my shoulder. Oh goddesses, no, must be strong, must be strong, must not think about it, fuck... now I'm thinking about my home. I did the same with her and we sat there, helplessly letting out muffled cries into each other's shoulders. I think that night was the longest time I had ever spent crying in one sitting.

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Footnote: Level Up
Perk Added: Loyalty - Your good deeds, patience, and support for your companions make you an excellent leader figure, any followers in your service will follow you to the bitter end, likely whether you want them to or not. When your health drops below 50% all followers damage resistance goes up 50% and any shot to the body will be a critical hit.
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I'd like to thank KKat for writing the original Fo:E for writing an unbelievably great story, and Somber, for writing Project Horizons, the story that pushed me over the edge and forced me to try my hand in writing.

Comments

[BoneCruncher47]

Snazy chapter....

[Darkstarr48]

1947372 ah, but the whole thing is set up to be one wad of awkward meandering through the wastes, i havent decided if any of them will hook up, but there shall be a lot of bitch slapping