Fallout Equestria: Taking Life By The Horns

by Pokonic

She Isn't Either, But She's Pushing It At This Point

"Arn't you sure you don't want to sing something more lighthearted?"

---

Needless to say, I was slightly confused.

When I looked at all the little equines in the room, and saw that none of them were remotely surprised at Charity's words, I felt lost and annoyed. Mostly annoyed.

"If I am going to help kill a pony," I said finally, surprising myself that I managed to get the words out of my mouth, "I would want to know why he should be killed.."

Charity's big smile didn't falter at my question. "He's a nutter who nopony likes, and besides, Pyra's overdue to be killed anyway. Boffenspark doesn't want to be leader of the Pure, and he wants to make as many ponies in it as weak as possible before he eventually skip's town. He want's to see the Purebred weak."

I was getting a headache from trying to understand what the mare was saying. "So he is the leader, but he doesn't want to be the leader? Why?"

"No, Pyra is the leader of the Purebred." she corrected swiftly, "Boffenspark is just a insane stallion who somehow attracted Pyra's affections. He also has a small army of robots we've been paying him not to use for about six years, but now he's about to become king. Or grand duke or something." Charity paused, shrugging her shoulders and looking at me like I had a better idea what she was talking about then she did. "It's all pay grade stuff. But that doesn't matter, now does it?"

I looked at Rollcall, who, despite looking thoroughly stony and uninviting, looked like he knew just as much as what Charity was talking about as I did.

"So, instead of Boffenspark or Pyria, who would be in charge?" I asked, not really caring.

Charity shrugged. "Pyra does have two siblings, but one's a coward and one's too, ah, special to be a contestant. So, it would probably be Rimewind or Frostbite or another higher ranking pony."

"Not you?" I asked, wondering.

Charity giggled lightly. "Oh, no. I'm no fool; I'm happy right here, in this little domain of mine. I got mine, and all I want is to keep it."

To my surprise, the vicious little pony sounded honest. Another little pony seemed to be peeved that said little pony seemed perfectly happy.

"This 'little domain' will have my ponies in it for another day and a half." Rollcall spoke up, voice firm. "If my ponies are going to help some new regime get set up in this cursed city, I want it to be a good one."

Charity raised a eyebrow, but after a few moment's her eyes widened slightly and she let out another giggle. "Oh, right, that. Don't worry, I like brutal slavers as much as the next pony, but if a bunch of freedom fighters suddenly showed up in the middle of a firefight and shot up some ponies who are on the wrong side of a conflict, I wouldn't weep for them."

"Boffenspark has slavers for allies?" I questioned, moving closer to the table so I could feel like I was part of the conversation.

"No, Pyra does." Charity clarified. "Of course, most of Pyra's bodyguards are slavers, so there's not going to be some pesky moral issues when it comes to shooting at her, will there?"

It took a sorry look from Karen to realize that Charity wasn't speaking to me.

"My ponies will not have much issue in doing so, I would think." Rollcall answered tonelessly. "But before we get on with the specifics, I do not want any more third party's knowing about how my ponies will be placed."

Charity let out an exaggerated sigh. "So paranoid. I thought ponies like you were supposed to be trusting. But, if you insist..."

She then gave me a quick, dismissive sort of look. "Well, time for you to skedaddle. You're friends should still all be up on the roof, and you'll get briefed on what you'll be expected to do later."

I wanted answers from the little pony sitting in front of me, no, needed answers, but I knew that I was unarmed and outnumbered, so I turned to the door and left the room, upset at both myself and everything else around me.

---

The upper floors of the hotel were, for a lack of a better word, moldering.

I could only assume that the ponies only lived on the first six floors or so, because the seventh floor was slightly water damaged and the eight floor had a bleached femur in the middle of the hallway. The ninth floor seemed to have had a former Radroach infestation and the tenth floor had more of the same as the ninth with the added addition of more water damage and fungus.

The eleventh floor, thankfully, was bare of any carpeting and seemed to be a utility floor, and it was there that I found the spotter's nest that Gabriel kept talking about, the door of which was distinguished from all the other slightly rusty metal doors only due to the addition of the words "SECRET SNIPER NEST' written on it with bold green marker. After a few moments of thinking about what was the point of putting a sign on what was supposed to be a secret and simply deciding that it was some sort of pony joke, I knocked on the door twice and, waiting another few moments and not getting an answer, pushed it open and walked in.

The room, I immediately noticed, was missing the entire section of the wall that was the border between it and open air.

The second thing I noticed was that Candy Cane was sleeping on the right side of the room next to a pile of bags I was familiar with, using a leg as a rest for her head, curled into a ball under what looked like Blueberry's black robe. I couldn't help but feel a little sad, but my immediate thoughts on what could be sad or not were shot when I noticed that there was a large gun on a bipod sitting near the edge of the room, pointed downward at the street.

As I walked into the room, I couldn't help but wonder if Blueberry was on the roof or not, but I stopped wondering where she was when I heard a most unfortunate noise.

The sound of a laser pistol being turned on.

As I turned around, I saw why.

Blueberry was wearing her Steel Ranger robes, which were splattered with blood from her left front hoof all the way to her opposite shoulder, staining the dark blue fabric a dark, blackish red. The Alicorn Amulet was on her neck as well, and her eyes were glowing as deep a red as the ruby thing on her neck. She had Self Defence beside her, hovering in a aura of red magic, but also had another thing next to her I didn't recognize; a silvery half-circle with a clasp on one side, made of leather and metal.

I realized, quite abruptly, that I had a very good chance of dying that day.

"Blueberry, why are you bloody?" I tried to ask without sounding like I was panicking, which I was.

My question seemed to make her upset, and the scowl on her face turned into a sneer. "Do you know what you have made me do? Do you know how much you have fucked up today, Watchful?" she said hatefully before pausing, to roll her eyes.

"Get on your knees."

I took a step back, worried about the sudden change of topic. "Blueberry, please, take off the Amu-"

"No!" she yelled, and her magic grew a faintly darker shade of red. "I'm not going to listen to your shitty advice! You got us roped into some sort of...some sort of assassination attempt, and I'm going to have to fix this whole stupid thing! Get on your knees before I blow them off!"

I took a step forward towards Blueberry, stupidly. "What do think you are going to do, Blueberry?"

She raised the silvery thing beside her and waved it around, giving me a mocking look of false cheer. "Well, first off, this explosive collar is going around your neck. Then, we are leaving this place and I'm going to kill everything that tries to stop me. Then we are going to the Crystal Empire."

"Why?" I asked, trying to figure out a way to grab the Amulet without her getting a shot off.

A pained look passed over her face, but she pointed the gun at my head and moved it around a bit in the air. "Just put on the damn collar!"

I looked at the collar, wondering if it could even fit around my neck, and then down at Blueberry, who was looking rather petulant about the whole thing. "I'm not an animal, Blueberry. I don't think I need a collar."

A fascinating array of emotions passed over the crazy pony's little face, and after a few moments she shook her head and lowered her gun slightly. "Put it on right now, or I'll treat you like an animal for the rest of the trip until we are done in the Crystal Empire. Do you want that to happen, Watchful? Do you want to be treated like a dog?"

I eyed the collar, trying to make it seem like I was considering it. "I will put it on if you tell me where the blood came from, Blueberry."

I suddenly realized that my idea of antagonizing of the crazy pony enough to get her guard down was a folly when she pointed her gun at Candy Cane.

She didn't need to say what she was doing, and she grinned when she saw the look on my face.

"This entire trip has been stupid and pointless and we should have never have come here." she continued, sounding confident as she grinned triumphantly up at me, "But I don't blame you for it. Really, it was my fault for listening to you."

"Blueberry." I croaked out, "Don't do what you are going to do. Don't shoot her."

At that, she laughed. It was a spiteful, false laugh, probably because it was being made by a spiteful, false pony.

"What, Watchful, do you care? Umbra's a no show who probably dumped the brat on us anyway. She's a slaver's spawn too, so she's probably just going to get some sort of nasty special talent. Besides, really," she paused, and for a few moments she looked like she felt pity, "It would be best for her to go when sleeping, while she's still innocent."

When I kicked Blueberry Cream in the jaw as hard as I could and watched as she hit the wall, the back of her head connecting with it first, I felt the strangest sort of catharsis, like a weight I had carried for years had finally lifted off my shoulders.

Without taking a moment to pause, I picked up her dropped gun and her slave collar, tossed the two objects off to the side of the room, and walked out to the hall to get the damned Amulet off her. Blueberry grunted slightly when I leaned a knee into her chest, but didn't seem to have the strength to do anything but kick her legs hopes of getting up.

While she didn't hold back on trying to pummel me, I had dealt with baby lambs that could kick harder than what she was accomplishing and didn't feel the need to budge. When I saw that she was trying to use her magic, I just flicked her horn, which made her wiggle and spout curses at me that I didn't really take the time to hear. She bore a torn lower lip and a bloody nose so poorly that even her red eyes weren't having the same effect on me as they normally did, and another punch to the forehead after an attempt to bite off one of my fingers off ended her attempts of resistance.

The Amulet came off with a few strained minutes of fighting with the small pony, and when I undid the clasp on the back of her neck and stood up, she laid there on the floor, unmoving, blue-eyed and looking dead to the world.

Then she she took a breath of air, struggling out a few gasps for it in between spitting out little flakes of blood. I felt a passing bit of worry over the state of her jaw.

"Fuck." she said raggedly after a few moments of consciousness, "I'm sorry."

I didn't feel the need to question her if she remembered what she just did after she said that, so as I stood there, I just shook my head. "Who's blood is that, Blueberry?"

"The dead ponies." she rasped out, pawing at her dirtied cloths as she did, "From the hallway. I helped moved them. Gaugh, did you have to flick my horn, too?"

I was an unsympathetic listener to her plight, but an understanding one. "I could have picked you up by your horn, probably."

That made her shudder slightly, and bunched up in her bloodstained robes that were a size too big for her it was almost hard to forget that she was ready to kill me a few minutes ago. "That's not fair. Goddesses, that's not fair."

"What made you put on the Amulet, Blueberry?" I asked.

"What is this, an interrogation? Why aren't you telling me what was that farce downstairs!" she quipped, sounding like she was trying to not cry.

"It was that or getting killed." I said, but it sounded like I was trying to reaffirm my own choices, and Blueberry looked at me with distaste before her eyes softened on the sight of the Amulet.

"Gabriel told me that you got us in a murder plot before he left." she said quite suddenly. "And I found an old case of memory orbs that belonged to me. I watched one to pass the time, and it wasn't..."

When she looked at me and turned away from me, I felt slightly worse than I did before.

"You...you know exactly what I am talking about." she muttered, giving me a scathing look when I didn't say anything.

"Yes." I replied, not leaving any doubt for her, "I know."

Since the day I found that collection, I wondered when I would have to talk about them with Blueberry. This wasn't how I was imagining it would be like, anyway.

"How is it that Candy Cane's asleep?" I said, suddenly realizing that the filly really should have been awake, from the coffee.

Blueberry let out a tense bit of laughter. "I got her to drink a sleeping potion; Gabriel gave me it before he left. She's going to be out for the rest of the day, probably."

I frowned slightly at Blueberry, who just seemed shameless about knocking out a little filly.

"Do you me to help to get up, Blueberry?"

"Yes." she replied quickly, so I took one of her forehooves and pulled her forward, letting go quickly when all four hooves touched the ground.

When she looked at me next, she was wincing. "I think I have a tooth loose." she said, before suddenly looking embarrassed.

Neither of us spoke for a few moments, and it was Blueberry who decided to keep talking.

"I'm going downstairs to get a healing potion and to see if I can't get my robe cleaned," she said after a while, "Hide my Amulet somewhere while I'm down."

"What are you going to say, Blueberry?" I asked, " 'The minotaur I was with kicked me in the face, but I was trying to kill a sleeping filly, so it's no big deal?' "

She shrugged. "I don't care. Where's that explosive collar? I found that up here, but it's worth a few caps. It'll pay for the potion."

I motioned over towards the room, and she entered it without speaking. When she came back into the hall, she looked slightly less unstable on her hooves, like she didn't just have the crap beaten out of her.

"I grabbed those food cards, too." she said, holding one of the pieces of plastic Temperance brought with him in the hotel room, "I'll see if they are still good. Are you hungry?"

"I am." I replied, suddenly realizing that I hadn't eaten that entire day.

"K'ay, I'll bring you up something. We can talk about how doomed we are over food."

Blueberry left for the stairwell only a few minutes later, leaving me alone with a thankfully sleeping Candy Cane as my only companion.

I looked down at the Amulet in my hands, wondering what I should do with it. It was a horrible, evil thing, but I couldn't help but think about what I do with it. Hiding it wouldn't really work in the long run to keep Blueberry away from it, but that was the real problem, because I didn't know what would happen if Blueberry lost it permanently.

And so, after a few moments of thought, I went back into the room and laid down on the floor, next to the edge of the room. After a few bored moments of complicating the cursed object of doom and evil, I put the Amulet under my back, which, at the very least, Blueberry would be unable to immediately grab from me.

And so, I waited for blissful sleep to overtake me, where I escape from the insanity around me and have a few hours of peace.

It took a few minutes, but I managed to doze off.

The breeze helped, anyway.

Comments

[RevelRomp]

Unfiltered first-glance opinion:

16:09 <Get_Bonus> https://www.fimfiction.net/story/74941/fallout-equestria-taking-life-by-the-horns I enjoy the chapter titles on this one
16:10 <Get_Bonus> With chapters like "She DIES" and "He's not the main antagonist, but he's close enough where it counts"

So uh. I guess I'm reading this now.