Fallout Equestria: Taking Life By The Horns

by Pokonic

Post Apocalyptic Pony Canadians Are The Friendliest

"Monsters?! That's a bit harsh, don't you think?"

"No, I do not!"

---

It took twenty seconds for Blueberry to tell me that she was going back down to alert the ponies downstairs about the corpses, seventeen seconds for me to get out of the elevator and sprint down two hallways, and another fifteen seconds for me to find the door that had the same room number on it that the desk-mare said was ours.

Then, after opening the door and rushing inside, I only held it open long enough for Candy Cane to walk inside before shutting it. I quickly dumped the bags that were strung along my horns and shoulders on the floor, moved over to the bed farthest from the door, and sat down, and took a few moments too look around.

The two beds were clean and large, the room was just cold enough to warrant the usage of blankets, and there wasn't any immediate identifiers of it being trapped or containing something that could kill me. There was what looked like a television set on a wooden frame, and a table off to the side seemed set up with a small beverage maker and a few bits of what could have been office supplies. There was a large window set in the far end of the room, cloudy but big enough to give one a good view of the street below if one was standing in front of it.

It didn't smell especially 'fresh', but it didn't smell like mold, blood, or dirt, and there was a shower installed in a small room right next to the door, or what looked like a tile room set up with a shower in it.

I was tired. I was upset. I was scared.

My back was one big sore spot and my head hurt and I just saw two dead bodies and something rather discomforting written in blood and...

Candy Cane was just looking at me oddly from the other bed.

It was a little jarring, actually. She wasn't as dirty as she could have been, as she had the good idea of dumping her boots and baggy clothing near the door, but she didn't look afraid. At all.

Also, I didn't see her get up on the bed, which wasn't helping me feel any better about the currant situation.

So, after a few moments of pause, I looked at her and cleared my throat, to try and sound more confident than I really was.

"Candy Cane, are you alright?"

In response, the filly blinked, as if surprised that I would ask such a thing, and tilted her head.

"Yes, I'm okay."

She paused for a few moments, frowned once, and looked at me again, the same puzzled expression on her face.

"Is Ms. Blueberry okay?"

She sounded sincere in her innocence, which scared me a little, because she was probably telling the truth. There wasn't any fear in her eyes. There might was well have been two live ponies standing in front of the elevator, because-

Wait, no, that's wrong, because if their were two ponies standing in front of the elevator, then she would have tried to say 'Hi' to them, or something. She just acted like there wasn't anything there.

A bit unnerved, I decided to tell the filly the truth. I didn't see a reason to lie to her, at the moment.

"I am not okay, Candy Cane. Neither is Blueberry. We are both a little scared, and I'm thinking of leaving now while we can."

She replied quickly, still looking slightly confused.

"Why? Is it the two dead ponies in the hallway?"

I forced myself to smile. I think my eyes were starting to water.

"Yes, Candy Cane, it is."

"Oh." the filly said lowly, looking at me like I wasn't speaking rationally. "Why are you scared, Mr, Watchful? You'r big and strong, and Miss Blueberry is a big pony too."

For a few moments, I tried to pretend that the filly in front of me wasn't acting abnormal, and she really was ignorant of the real implications of what was going on around her. But no; she knew what death was, at the very least.

But Umbra...

Ah, that was a thought.

"Candy Cane, remember when Blueberry and I first found you, where you were living?"

The filly's head bobbed briskly.

"Why were there two dead ponies in there?" I asked, voice a little strained.

"Um, uh..." she blinked a few times, like she had to remember which dead ponies she has seen in the last few days, "Miss Batsy killed them. They came in the building in the morning, so I hid and waited till dark."

She paused to breath, so I decided to press a question against her. I hardly knew how she lived before she joined our group, so now was as good a time as ever.

"How long was Umbra gone at a time?"

It hardly seemed prudent to leave a pony as small as she was alone.

"She went out every few days when she could. But she always came back with food nicer than green spongy gunk, like soda and candy! Sometimes she brought friends, like Mr. Bonesaw and Mr. Blister!"

Candy Cane, abruptly, frowned.

"Is she coming back soon, Mr. Watchful?"

"Soon." I said reflexively. It wasn't a lie; she can fly fast and she knew where she was, and probably didn't trust us with her charge anyway. Then again, she didn't say anything to either me or Blueberry before she left. I hope she wasn't going to bring 'friends'.

"She's going to come back soon." I repeated weakly.

Or, of course, Umbra could be in the building. That was a option I was considering, at this point.

knock knock

Hearing something beating at the door, I suddenly realized I didn't lock it when I entered it. It wasn't a paranoid thought, just a rational one.

Standing up, I walked over to the aged door after motioning for Candy Cane to be quiet, hoping that it was Blueberry on the other side, as apposed to a dozen or so armed guards.

knock knock knock

Huffing lightly, I didn't bother to look through the little peep hole near the middle of the door and just opened it, hoping that it was Blueberry.

Needless to say, it wasn't. For instance, Blueberry didn't have a beak. Or wings. Blueberry also didn't have little teardrop tattoos on her face, as far as I could tell, and Blueberry didn't walk around with a big wooden handled rifle at her side.

I blinked when I saw that I was staring at the only griffon I could recall having an extended conversation with in my life.

"Gabriel, right?"

The griffon looked shorter than I remembered him, but that might have just been because I was looking at him from a better angle. How tall he appeared hardly mattered, though, considering that he was wearing what resembled black-on-yellow shiny light armor and still would probably brush the sides of the hallway if his wing's were outstretched, not even mentioning the gun on his back.

...

It was probably the beak.

"Yeah, still is. Mind if I get in there and out of this hallway?" the griffon replied, sounding slightly hurried.

I opened my mouth to say something, but I wasn't sure what I could have said. I don't think 'No' would have been a good answer, and he was easily one of the more pleasant individuals I had met so far, even with that category being unfortunately tiny.

After a few moments of deliberation, I shrugged mentally and walked back into the room, giving him room to pass through.

"Ooh, Mister Griffon!" Candy Cane squealed at the sight of him, bouncing slightly as she jumped up once on the bed. I couldn't' tell if the light squeaky sounds were coming from her or the elderly mattress.

"Wha?" the griffon said, not really yelling but presumably raising his voice out of pure reflex. After a few seconds of pause, he noticed Candy Cane staring at him, wide-eyed and grinning. "Oh, hey kid." he mumbled. "Call me Gabe. Mr. Griffon was my father."

Candy Cane just nodded in response, but I didn't know if that was a joke or not, so I just hung close to the door while he undid the battle saddle on his back and stretched a bit on the far side of the room. If he thought that was a good way to make me comfortable, he was wrong, because one of his claws could still wrap around Candy Cane's torso and, if anything, the fact he looked less restrained with twenty or so pounds of metal on him made me slightly more conscious that my knees were very much unprotected by, say, two and a half inches of keratinous claw.

"I guess you saw us coming here?" I said slowly, trying to seem like the one in charge here.

"Kind of." Gabriel said, voice clearer then it was before, more casual and less monotone, "The mare in charge of the sniper nest on the top floor of this place said she spotted a minotaur and two ponies heading over here."

I breathed in shakily, but no so much that Candy Cane would have noticed. Being aware of a pony armed with a large gun waiting for big targets to get close to her would have useful about twenty minutes ago.

"I suppose you stopped her from killing us."

"Sort of." he said, looking at the cloudy window next to him; he sounded like he was making a joke.

"Comet Kicker wasn't about to shoot you guys, but she heard me talk about Watershed, and, heh, I couldn't resist not talking about the big minotaur who offed Cheesecake Crumbles, so she got me in there and showed me you were coming down the street."

I looked at the griffon, thinking about how I could approach this situation. Candy Cane seemed content in just looking at the griffon, but I wasn't about to lower my guard with him, friendly or not. He was still someone I barely knew.

"So, the murdered ponies. I suppose you don't know who did it either."

He blinked and straightened himself out, pawing the carpet slightly. He didn't look like he wanted to talk about the bodies laying two hallways to the right. "Nope. Couldn't be a Reaver who did it, though. You couldn't get a ghoul in this place if you had all the caps in the world. It's not your problem, though."

Indeed, it wasn't.

Gabriel caught my soured look and lifted a wing and used it to motion over to the window, as if he was pointing to a chart. "Bodies are still fresh, and blood's still pooling out of them. Ten minutes dead, tops. There's about thirty ponies here, and they all live on the upper floors and none of them look like the two who got killed."

While his voice was light, I could tell he was unnerved. Two dead ponies in a semi-isolated community who no one recognizes, killed brutally and swiftly by something that could dispose of ponies with unnatural ease.

I looked at Candy Cane pleadingly, hoping that she wouldn't say anything about Umbra. To my relief, she didn't look like she was going to say anything incriminating, content in observing the griffon. A thought came to me; perhaps Gabriel was the first one she had ever seen.

So, after thinking for a few moments, I spoke.

"You're not here to just talk about nothing, though. You don't seem to be the sort who track down everyone you have a talk with, and unless something changed in the last few days, I thought you told me that you don't work for the Purebred."

The griffon stared at me for a few moments, eyes widening just a hair, and nodded briskly. "Heh, don't worry, I don't. I was staying here for the night, just stopping by on the way into the inner city."

I narrowed my eyes slightly, and Gabriel hesitantly continued, filling in the gaps that were obvious in what he was telling me.

"Comet Kicker's a friend of a friend. She's good for stuff; I was just hanging out upstairs. But enough of that, yeah, I think we need to talk."

My mouth formed a thin line, by reflex. I wasn't sure where he was going with this, but by the way he was talking, I wasn't sure if I was going to like what he was going to say.

"About what? Is there more corpses in the area I need to know about?"

Gabriel stood up straight as he could so he could look at me straight in the eyes as well as he could, from where he was in the room. He was doing a pretty good job at it, too. I could swear that he almost looked half my size, the way his feathers puffed up a bit.

"Well, no, there's-"

The griffon was interrupted by the sound of a mare screaming, almost directly outside the room, followed by a knock on the door-

"-ah, crap." he muttered-

-followed by the door opening from the outside.

I turned around to see who it was. It had been about twenty fifteen minutes since Blueberry went downstairs, so it was quite nice to see that she was very much alive.

But, there was also a stallion next to her.

He wasn't especially intimidating, actually. He was a bit on the short side, bluish-white coat with a brown curly mane. While he was a unicorn, I could barely see the stubby horn on his head from underneath his hair, and he didn't look especially stuck up at the moment. Heck, he was levitating a little basket next to him.

Blueberry looked almost shocked when she looked passed me at Gabriel, while the curly haired unicorn just blinked once when he noticed me and the two others in the room.

"Hello!" Candy Cane spoke up excitably, making the stallion look at her attentively.

He let Blueberry pass before he walked right in, basket still held in off-white magical light. With the two of them out of the way, I closed the door. As crowded as this room was getting, I wasn't sure if I wanted my back exposed to the open floors of this hotel.

I looked at Gabriel, who was staring at Blueberry, and I then looked at Blueberry, who just sort of wavered between staring at me and the griffon. Candy Cane just sort of wiggled in place, as if the newcomer was the greatest thing she had ever seen.

The stallion just sort of stood in the far corner, basket placed on the wooden desk set in it. He looked at me and Gabriel with equal concern, but I couldn't blame him for that. There was a rather large gun laying across the radiator, after all, and if I wasn't here, I would have thought that Candy Cane was sorely out of place, between the griffon mercenary and myself. Then again, I didn't know who he was, or why Blueberry didn't seem too worried about his presence.

Heck, I didn't really follow the sequence of events that made half the people in this room come in it!

"Oh, excuse me for barging in like this, but giving recent events;" he paused, wincing lightly, "I wish to warmly welcome you all to our establishment, and hope that you understand that horrific events like what happened today are not the norm for what usually happens here."

The stallion paused momentarily, looking around the room, as if to gauge reactions to what he was saying. Gabriel looked reasonably bored, Blueberry almost looked giddy, while Candy Cane just sort of stood on the bed and stared at the stallion.

After a few moments of quiet, he chuckled nervously and continued speaking.

"As an apology to you, um, two for seeing the crime scene first, I would like to inform you that you do not have to pay the fee for staying here for five days."

I blinked. I didn't actually recall Blueberry shelling out the caps at the front desk, so not having to pay at all is nice.

Blueberry, for her part, sort of avoided looking at the stallion for a few seconds.

"Also," the stallion's horn lit up, and three small, flat, green squares floated out of the basket, landing quietly on the table. "if you are hungry, you can present one of these cards to the pony in the dining hall and get a free meal. It's the least we could do, as I expect you found this place seeking a fine place to stay, a place where the violence outside is left behind when you enter it. I am sorry for what you saw today, but I assure you the perpetrator is being tracked down as we speak."

Free food and board? I was starting to like this stallion.

"I suppose you are the pony in charge here?"

The stallion blinked when he heard me speak, and for a few seconds I didn't think he was going to answer back.

"Why yes, yes I am. My name is Temperance, and I am the mayor of this town. I suppose you are Ever Watchful?"

I looked at Blueberry, who was now not looking at me. Figures.

"That is my name, yes, The donkey guard outside, Karen, said you were a good pony to talk to."

A genuine smile grew on his face. "Well, isn't that nice of her! To be fair, I am in charge of this little community, so I can't say that I am not a good pony to talk to."

He didn't sound very confident talking about himself, which surprised me. This was what the leader of the town looked like? He sounded more like Dawn then, say, the Elder.

Ah, that was something to bring up.

"We just visited Nightcore and Dawn."

Temperance tensed up slightly, and I had a feeling that I was going off-script for him. His smile was struggling to survive, and his eyes were rapidly moving back and forth, scanning the room more intently.

"Ah. Nightcore and...her." he said slowly. "Well, that changes a few things. I suppose you wish to see the armory, then?"

I narrowed my brow, not having a single clue about what he was talking about, but I couldn't question his words, because that was the moment that the window suddenly shattered and Temperance's head exploded in a shower of bone and meaty bits.

Several things happened at once after that happened.

Blueberry ducked next to the television set, as far away from the window as possible, screaming something I didn't make out over the sound of a bullet hitting the roof of the room.

Gabriel let out a panicked squawk before grabbing his gun and setting it next to his side, not bothering to put on the battle saddle and looking like he was getting ready to move towards the window.

Candy Cane stared at the space where Temperance was standing for a few moments, wide-eyed and speckled with red, before getting off the bed and hiding behind it.

But me?

I just stood there for a few moments, still trying to comprehend why I had little bits of wet stuff on my front body and why I suddenly tasted iron, and it was only after a few moments of silence did I crouch down and try to spit out the giblets of pony brain out of my mouth.

When I hit the ground, I realized what just happened, and I became acutely aware that someone just shot at us from the second floor of a building with the intent to kill. It might have been me or Blueberry or even Temperance himself, but at this point, it didn't matter.

Then I heard the pitter-patter of a gun being shot, far away enough that it was probably coming from downstairs.

Then that was tuned out by the dull roar of what had to be five different guns going off at once, and the sounds and screams of panicking ponies.

The hotel was being attacked.

And we were covered in the blood of the guy apparently in charge.

And, if my ears were not deceiving me, if my brain wasn't playing tricks on me, I just heard something outside make a very ominous sound. It sounded like clink-wirr.

Comments

[The Good Brony]

this is getting intense! i like it!

[Oubliette]

Now it gets bloody.

[Pokonic]

3752304 Remember, the Purebred do horrible things, the Reavers are horrible things, and the Scions are probably all horrible people.

[PinaEnchilada]

Cliffhanger.... damnit why is this story so good?