• Published 1st Mar 2013
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Revelation 21:6 - Silent Scout



A malfunctioning device sends the Lone Wanderer to the land of Equestria. How will she react to a land filled with happy niave ponies?

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Chapter 3: Taking Back What Is Mine

“By Celestia, its finally quieted down out there. I thought I would never hear myself think again,” exclaimed the rookie Lunar guard standing by the hospital door.

“Quiet, you’re on duty and at your post,” growled the rookie’s more experienced companion.

“Sorry Sergeant, it won’t happen again. I was just...”

“You were just what Private?”

“Do you hear that Sarge?”

“Hear what,” he went quiet as he listened closely to the things around him and sure enough with the thunder dieing down he was able to hear the sound of a monitor that had flat-lined. “Don’t tell me the damn thing died because of a little storm,” the guard huffed in irritation.

The private stepped to the side as the Sergeant pushed the door open and froze in place. Dangling from the metal railings were the set of hoofcuffs, that he personally placed on the creature, open while the bed itself lay bare of said creature. There was a pool of water over by the open window in view of everypony.

“Private go get the rest of the guard and that includes the Solar guard and I don’t care if they complain about it being too early, just get them,” shouted the sergeant as he made his way over to the empty bed. As the private ran off to get the others he looked over the hoofcuffs and found a paper clip firmly jammed into the locking mechanism. He knew everything he needed to know and now only needed to help hunt down the creature again. Who knows how far it got during the storm.

----

Twilight Sparkle had just barely made it back to the library before the downpour started and was met by a very distraught baby dragon. A certain grey earthpony cellist had not left after repeatedly being told of the storm and the library closing for the day. The reason could easily be figured out from the music bleeding through the basement door. The pony, Octavia, had been pretending to read while her ears were directed towards the door. Not wanting to send a pony out in the middle of a storm like that, she let Octavia stay for the night while Twilight worked.

After heading down into the basement she looked around at the many devices that had been removed from the creature at the hospital. There were some that had an obvious purpose while others she couldn’t make heads or tails of without seeing them being used. She wanted to be cautious with these things after she saw what a few of them could do to a pony or a manticore for that matter. A shiver ran down her spine as she recalled the effects the laser had on the manticore, turning it into ash before being blown away in the wind. Twilight would want no such fate to befall anypony no matter what they did.

It did not take long for Twilight to find the device that was playing the music and levitate it beside herself. Out of everything that they had recovered it was this device that interested her the most, it was similar to her own computers but on a much smaller scale. On the screen was a small cartoony figure, similarly proportioned like the creature in the hospital, scratching his head with a confused look on his face. There was some sort of text on the screen as well but she couldn’t read it, probably in the native language of its owner. Twilight did not fear this device doing anything harmful to her or anypony else, having had to remove it herself from the creatures arm, she doubt it would keep something attached to its limb if it was dangerous.

With it levitating right next to her, Twilight made her way back up the stairs to the main part of the library to a patiently waiting Octavia. She seemed to be enjoying the music that was coming from the small computer and was even playing an imaginary cello when she saw her again.

“Well at least I will have company while I’m working on finding out the secrets of this thing, Spike wouldn’t have made it through the night even if he tried.”

Octavia giggled at this and replied, “Quite, I have never seen him to ever be much of a night pony like Vinyl, but then again not many ponies are.”

They shared a laugh at the thought of Octavia’s roommate’s nightly activities.

----

She was cold, wet and hungry. It had been a couple of hours since the Lone Wanderer had left the hospital, the bed sheets and full body bandages did not last long in the amount of rain that had been pouring down on her, this caused most of her discomfort. She was on the search though for Dogmeat and her gear, so she paid as little attention to those things as she could. The search was proving to be fruitless though after leaving yet another unlocked building that held no clues to where any of the things she was looking for might reside. She would not give up and pushed forward to the next building, this one looking like she could eat it if she so chose, just adding to the list of weird things she had seen since coming to this place.

Entering the building the first thing that she saw was the wide assortment of sugary delights that lined the walls. Her stomach used that moment to remind her of its need for nourishment, it had been six days since she had last eaten anything, thanks to her ghoulification it reduced her need for such things. She had always been a firm believer in the effects of karma and didn’t think that taking from these ponies would be such a good idea but her stomach was having other ideas. Going against her better judgement she took one of the cupcakes that sat out ready to be consumed and took a bite.

----

Pinkie Pie awoke with the sensation of her hind hooves itching like crazy, it was something she had long grown used to, her Pinkie Sense, and she even knew what this one meant. Somepony was stealing cupcakes. Nopony steals cupcakes on her watch. Narrowing her eyes she got up from bed and went to her closet to get her stealthy suit, she was going to catch this thief.

----

Finished with the first cupcake the effects of it were immediate as some of her discomfort was gone. It wouldn't help with her being wet and cold but it was a start. She reached out and grabbed a second cupcake and looked at its colorful frosting that covered it for a moment lost in thought over the current events. Without the sound of generators running all the time she could hear everything going on around her, even the sound of that box falling over behind her. Realizing the danger she spun around to confront the threat that had snuck up behind her and was surprised to find a pony, dressed in full black clothes and a pair of night vision goggles, in mid flight right for her.

The unexpected attack left her unprepared and unable to react in time to stop the pony from wrapping its legs around her and clamping her arms to her body. The pony was now nose to nose with her, the flight even knocked loose some of its mane from its suite, giving her a clear view of its bright pink fluff that she had seen once before at the hospital. No matter how much she struggled she couldn’t get the pony to loosen its grip on her, only proving to make it try harder to hang on.

“Now that I gotcha there's no way I’m letting go.”

The Wanderer needed to get out of there and quick, the commotion would no doubt cause a lot of noise that would attract even more unwanted attention. Glass was broken on the ground from her attempts to get it to let go of her, but was only able to free her arm holding the cupcake and even that was only enough to bend it at the elbow. Bringing her hand up, she smashed the cupcake into the pony’s face stunning it momentarily from the blow. It was all she needed to force the pony off of her and hurl it across the room away from herself.

Not wasting her chance she bolted for the door and left the stunned pony. Now that she had been seen in the open it was only a matter of time before word spread of her escape. It was not her main concern, as she ran full steam around corners and down alleys, at the moment though as it was to get as far away from that pony as possible before she was able to catch her again. She didn’t like how easily it had caught her off guard and only made her feel even more vulnerable without her things in this strange land.

It was only after she had taken shelter in the shadow of a large tree, far away from the candy house, that she was able to catch her breath again. The sky rumbled but gave no evidence of it raining further, now that she was in the shelter of a tree it didn’t really matter. The tree itself was the largest she had ever seen before in her life and she had seen a forest before. Music could be heard coming from somewhere on the other side of the tree, which confused her as it must have been sometime early in the morning.

This music however wasn’t any old music, if she listened hard enough she could hear a very familiar voice, "Because one dog ain't enough, and two is too low, it's me, Three Dog!" She could recognize that voice anywhere, even if it didn’t just say who it was. Her curiosity got the best of her as she slowly worked her way around the base of the tree to the other side, making sure to stick to the shadows that it created.

It took only a minute to stealthily work her way around the tree until she was, at what she could only guess to be the front of it, standing in front of a door and windows with light flooding out of them. She had never seen someone build their home out of a tree before and for it to still be alive for that matter, it just wasn’t possible. As she hid in the shadows she took a look inside and saw what she expected yet didn’t expect at the same time, her Pipboy.

Though it was a relief to have found something that belonged to her it also infuriated her to see it in the hands or in this case hooves of one of the ponies of this backwards world. It would normally be simple enough for her to get in there and take it back but with the presence of another grey pony she didn’t want to push her luck, hand to hand combat had never been her forte.

As she examined the room she could see that it was some sort of library, if the amount of books in the room was anything to go by. A set of stairs could be seen in the back of the room and a plan started to quickly form in her head.

There was three outcomes that she could foresee from this plan:

1. She gets her things back with little conflict

2. She has to kill one (or both) of them

3. She screws up so bad that she is either killed or captured again

She was really hoping that things went her way without having to kill these ponies, but if they gave her no choice then she would.

Stepping away from the window she searched for a low hanging branch to climb up. From what she had seen at the other homes in this town, no one locked their doors or windows. All she had to do was climb up to a window or balcony and from there she could enter in and sneak around. It didn’t take her long to complete that portion of her plan as she now stood on a balcony with an unlocked door.

----

It had been a few hours since the rain started and Twilight had come up from her basement with a strange device held aloft in her magical grip, music flowing out of it. The device was the very reason why Octavia had stayed behind even with the storm approaching. This device held music she had never heard before in Equestria and she would be damned to let an opportunity to write it down and record it now that she had the chance.

While Twilight had a stack of notes from her examination of the device, Octavia had her own stack but instead of letters that one would normally see, the lined paper was covered in a variety of musical notes. She was forced to come to a stop when the recordings stopped and a voice of a different creature began to talk. They had listened to the older feminine sounding voice that had played in between songs earlier but this one sounded much more masculine in comparison. Though she couldn’t understand what the voice was saying, just from the way it spoke reminded her of her housemates, Vinyl Scratch. The thought brought a smile to her muzzle at what Vinyl would think of another creature that acted like her.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden urge to use the restroom but her glances around the room did not reveal the location of any on this floor.

“Um, Twilight.”

Twilight lifted her head away from her notes that she was studying and looked at her companion and asked, “Yes Octavia, what is it?”

“Well, I don’t mean to interrupt your studying but could you please tell me where you restroom is at.”

“Oh, its no problem. All you have to do is go up the stairs to my room, then go down the hall and it will be the first door on the left.”

“Thank you.” Octavia immediately stood up and made her way up the stairs in a hurry, the sound of rain wasn’t helping her in the slightest.

As she stood at the top of the stairs she could see the door to the hallway that lead to the bathroom that she needed. Making her away towards the door she soon stopped after stepping in a small puddle of water that had formed by the balcony doors.

The winds must have blown the doors open and Spike just never cleaned it up. I’ll just tell Twilight about it and worry about it later.

Pushing that to the back of her mind she opened the door and quickly found the next one further down the hall. With an increase in her trot she made her way over to the door and opened it to find what she was looking for.

----

As she opened the balcony doors she used the moment to take in her surroundings. From what she could see this had to be one of the ponies downstairs bedroom and they must have really like to read. There were books everywhere that could put the collection of books kept in vault 101 a run for its money. After closing the balcony doors behind her she quietly made her way to the door that would take her to the stairs. Her progress came to a screeching halt when the sound of loud snoring filled the room. Having nearly jumped out of her bandages from the scare she went about the room to find the source of the disturbance and was rewarded with a basket with a strange mutated gecko that she had seen something similar once in one of her trips to the Mojave.

With her lack of weapons, she definitely didn’t want to wake it up and took careful steps away from the thing and back over to the door. Her journey was interrupted yet again, to her ever growing annoyance, as the grey one stood up and started walking over to the very stairs she was just about to sneak down.

Shit.

Quickly she backed away from the door and searched for another door in the room, finding only one on the other side of the room. Briskly walking over to the door, so as not to wake the sleeping gecko, and opened the door. The door led to a hallway that also held two more doors, one on the left and the other was further down. She wouldn’t make it down the hall fast enough before the pony was upstairs. She made up her mind and opened the door on the left and swiftly entered, shutting it behind her.

Her heart dropped into her stomach when she realized what kind of a room she was now standing in. It was a bathroom. Not wanting to waste any more time than she already had, she opened the curtain that separated the shower from the rest of the room and stepped behind it. Her hurried actions were rewarded with the sounds of the bathroom door opening and quickly closing again.

I would say this would be a funny situation if it wasn’t so serious of a problem.

Not wanting a creak from the tub she stood in from giving herself away, she stood as still as possible until the sounds of a running faucet could be heard followed by the sound of the door closing again.

A sigh of relief escaped her lips as she eased her posture now that she wasn’t going to caught in that instant.

After exiting the room she returned to her position at the door at the top of the stairs planning her next move, now that she was actually inside. She watched as the purple pony stood again but instead of making its way to the stairs like the other, this one went to a door on the other side of the room. The pony left the room but returned a short time later holding a small pouch and another small device that she recognized all too well. In that pouch was all her caps that she carried on her person at all times and the device was none other than the transportalponder, her only means of getting back home with Dogmeat.

If my bag of caps were in there, what else could be stored in there?

The pony emptied the contents of the pouch on the table and lifted up a few of them holding it close in examination. A knock on the door distracted it from the examination of the caps, as it stood to answer the door, a curious look on its face as it was just before dawn and too early for visitors. The look of surprise when it saw guards standing outside could be seen as plain as day even at the distance she was from them. A brief discussion could be seen between the two parties before the purple one closed the door but this time locking it behind her.

If she was going to get her things back, it was now or never. Slowly she descended the stairs making sure to stay out of sight and as silent as the night. She was relying on all the years of experience she had gained during her travels across the Capital Wasteland to make her way to the door and slip inside. This door lead her to another flight of stairs that went further down into a well lit basement. From where she stood she could see multiple tables covered with different types of computers and chemistry sets that put her small set up, in Megaton, to shame.

Her spirits soared when she caught sight of her things sitting on the last table in the room farthest away from her. She had hoped to find some of her things but not all of it and it only proved to her that her luck and good karma was still holding true. Grabbing the under-suit she stripped off the bandages and then began the process of suiting up in her custom designed power armor, pausing only when she reached her right leg. The servos in the joint where blown apart and would not be able to make use of its strength augmentation. She would have tried to fix it but had none of the parts to do so.

Well at least I don’t have to worry about my leg, there are some benefits to being a ghoul.

Now that she was armed and ready to go there was just three more things she needed to get back before she could get Dogmeat and they sat just up those stairs. The Lone Wanderer didn’t need to worry about being quiet anymore, with her power armor that was no longer an option and she would have to confront the two ponies anyways. Unholstering her Blackhawk she opened the door and walked into the room, her approach was being drowned out by the loud music playing from the Pipboy, until she stood just behind them. Standing there she leveled her revolver at the two ponies sitting at the tables mere feet away.

The sound of two gunshots could be heard as the first rays of light rose above the horizon.

Author's Note:

Hey is that a cliff well I guess you better hang on then... But in all seriousness leave a comment about what you all think and like always I would like to thank my editor, MasterBrony2012, for preventing me from possibly going OOC with any of the ponies that made it into the chapter. Hope ya'll enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it.