Fallout Equestria: Dragon Her Heels

by Pokonic

Morituri Nolumus Mori

"Can't you ponies get some meat in here?" Iris whined.

For the fifteenth time that day, the doughy mare with overdone makeup behind the five-inch glass panel that separated her room from the main hallway made a disgusted sound and went back to reading some pony gossip magazine.

"Please? I know there are some sheep nearby. I saw them last month when we got that free day outside. Please, just one? They don't talk, right?" Iris continued, laying on her stomach on the flat concrete slab that took up half the room she was in that counted as a 'bed' as according to government standards.

The fat green winged pony, after huffing lightly, actually threw her little clump of plastic at the glass panel ineffectually and began cursing at her. Whatever she was saying was muffled by the glass, but Iris was sure that at least one insult against her maidenhood was involved.

Iris, in retaliation, forced herself up into a standing position and tried to look intimidating. She got a little bit of satisfaction from the pony's startled little scream, but she herself flinched when a great booming sound echoed down the hall and even rattled the thick glass slightly. Needless to say, the little green pony started running the opposite direction.

The dragoness frowned. The only other one's left in the place who had the gut's to cause something now, after the last round of liquidation that did in Razorwing, were Garble and Vorator. And if Garble was still recovering from the tranquilizers they put in his food last week, than that meant Vorator was trying to break out. She shuddered. The huge brown dragon wasn't the same after he visited the Zebra capital, coming back all quiet and solemn and, shockingly enough, serious. The fact he changed his name from Stoneback was enough evidence for her to believe that the Zebras did some sort of mind-altering experiment on the poor guy.

Regardless, out of everyone she knew, the thickly built drake was the last one she expected to mature, let alone become completive. Even worse, possibly, was the fact that he actually fought Garble for dominance, nearly won, and simply gave up when he was nearly dead. And then, of course, he told them about the fact that the zebra's would give them an adult’s weight in gold if they assisted fighting the ponies in there little war.

Sighing, Iris got as compfy as she could in the concrete bed and thought about when she screwed up in life. It seemed simple enough, really. Leave the cave, see the drakes, have fun, and find a chunk of land that wasn't owned by an adult and live there, and repeat the part with the drakes until she found a winner.

It sounded decent in practice, until she found that the biggest group of males in the area that hadn't fled elsewhere were a bunch of assholes, and the few individual's who were decent were the other females she came along with to the traditional meeting place who were, of course, utterly smitten with the brutes. Of course, she had the luck to be all but chosen by the utter prick known as Garble, who, to her dismay, also happened to be the one drake all the other drakes followed nigh-mindlessly.

After her own less then satisfying Great Dragoness Migration, life became a grey blur of constant travel and petty infighting, with her on the outskirts of all the conflicts. Garble's little gang of a dozen or so dragons slowly whittled to just five, not including her. Ending up as the only female of the group was a event she found oddly satisfying, with the other dragons never saying one word against her, on the off chance Garble was in hearing range.

That was another thing. Garble acted odd around her. It was clear to her within the first five seconds of meeting him that he was the model for the type of drake her mother explicitly said to cull for the sake of dragonkind everywhere, as he looked at other creatures with either vague acceptance of existance,explict loathing, or lust, as his interactions with other males in his little gang, other males not in his gang and everything else that could form a complete sentence, and female dragons showed. However, he got almost focused when he looked at her, like she was a baby animal that was separated from her mother. That scared her to no end, and she dearly hoped that she wouldn't have to deal with him if he got the urge to act on his ideas, which were presumably rapey in nature.

Sighing, Iris crawled off the bed on all fours and began to walk aimlessly on the hard metallic floor, flapping her wings lightly. They were smallish, yes, but they were big enough to fly with, which was enough for her to be considered responsible for her actions. Then again, that just reminded her why she was in this hellhole anyway.

It was Vorator's fault, mostly. He showed up one day nearly a year after leaving the gang out of the blue, and after beating the living crap out of Garble he said he had an idea for him. Of course, at first he was upset at being told what to do, but after a while he got used to the idea that joining the zebras was his idea, and was satisfied by that. There were seven of the gang left by then, but the seventh one, a black scaled one named Slipas, ended up on the wrong side of a Roc and presumably got eaten. Presumably, of course, because everyone fled like hell after the big bird swooped down on them and all but brained him with a single talon. Really, in hindsight, they shouldn't have been in that range of hills, but the gang was heading though zebra lands already and there was no other option but to pass it by, which meant almost no goats to eat, which would mean we would have had to risk eating Zebra, which long since stopped being a option when they started shooting at things that looked like they could kill them.

To make a long story short, Iris half-thought, amusing herself by tearing at the metal with her pinkie claw, they all fought some ponies, got shot down, or, she thought, a little blush forming on her cheeks, surrendered, and they were promptly bound, put under with some potion or another, and shipped seemingly across the country to the little slice of Tartarus she was in. As far as she knew, it was down to her, Garble, and Vorator. Whitebreath, the odd albino one with the raspy voice, got shot when he tried to bite a pony in half, Slinkshift, the odd nerdy dragon with the hair, had a reaction to a drug that caused his brain to get messed up to the point his eyes were looking in different directions, to which the pony response was to have him put down like a animal, and poor Rainbreath. That poor blue-scaled bastard got the worst send off of them all.

He got chosen for one of the night time inspections by that group of ponies who never showed up anytime else and always carried a few crates full of drugs. No one knew what they did, exactly, but she once talked to one of the youngest one's in the center, a little grey drake named Stormscale who looked like he barely hatched a few years ago, swore he saw several carts trailing black objects in and out of the center. He clearly didn't know what he was seeing, but going from what he said, they clearly were coming from Rainbreaths room. She couldn't know for sure if the little drake was telling the truth, but everyone was up that night, considering the shear volume of his screams. She never heard anything scream that loud before, besides Garble in one of his rages and the Roc that killed Silpas.

However, Iris's grim reminiscing of the past was interrupted by a tapping on the glass. Groaning, she lifted her head off the ground, and blinked slowly. On the other side was a pony she had yet to see in the facility, which was surprising, considering how many were apparently leaving because of the supposed risks. To her further surprise, she took out a set of keys and shakily opened the door on the far right of the room. Getting up, Iris saw that the purple pony with the green hair had almost no signs of age or regret most of the other ponies wore on there faces like perverse badges of honor.

When the pony took a position near the far end of the room after shutting the door, Iris was shocked to not see any sort of protection on her, not even the standered tazer everyone else wore on there sides.

"You got guts coming in here without any protection, pony." she said slowly, trying her best to sound slightly intimidating. She personally believed she failed.

The pony, as expected, looked slightly scared when she looked up to meet my gaze, but shakes her head.

"No, I just need to...well...you are Nm. 45, right?" she said almost confidently.

Iris looked at the pony with suspicion. She was one of the one's without horns, which usually meant they were not one of the doctors, but rather one of the security forces. But this one didn't look as tough as the ones who were part of them, and more importantly she hardly looked threatening.

"Yes, but my name is Iris."

She nodded, and to Iris's surprise did not dismiss the last part of her sentence.

"Okay, Iris, my name is Fragrance, and you are leaving now." she said, shattering her expectations in a few simple words.

Trembling, Irises knees nearly buckled. "You mean, it's...there really are bombs that can blow up whole cities?"

The pony, whose name was apparently Fragrance, nodded. "Yes, it there is, and one is heading here soon."

Iris sat down on the floor, uncertain of her ability to stand. "Well, shouldn't there be a warning...an alarm or something?" she questioned. Then her senses took control. "Why are you telling me? Shouldn't you be running away?" she accused.

The pony looked hurt at that, and frowned slightly. "If you must know, I was going to give this place an inspection, but as it turns out the pony in charge flew away half a hour ago without alerting the staff. Also-"

Outside the glass, the lights in the halls turned red, which was basically code for a break out. Someone roared, and the faint warble of a screech echoed throughout the building.

Wincing, the mare tried to put a hoof on Iris's shoulder, but ended up touching the small of her left arm. She shifted slightly at the new, unexpected, and unappreciated gesture.

"I read your record, and you seem to be the only one with little history of violence. I need your assistance to get out of here." Fragrance said pleadingly.

Iris, however, was slightly more concerned with the noise outside. "Who is that? Did you let someone free?"

The pony let out a little exasperated sigh. "Yes, number 29. Now, will you please assist me in return for what I have done?"

Iris raised a scaled ridge. Number 29, or Dursi, also known as Slickscale, was a mean bitch who could spit acid and looked more like a overgrown serpent with wings and legs added on as a afterthought than a normal dragon. Furthermore, she was in the highest security part of the building.

"Your not from here, pony. Where are you from?"

Fragrance gave Iris a tired look, before trotting to the door and opening it.

Only to immediately shut it to escape being roasted by a burst of dragonfire.

Scrambling to the back for the room, Fragrance suppressed a glare at Iris and faked a smile. "If I am correct, dragons are resistant to each other's flame, yes?"

Iris simply opened the door without answering, and without looking back, began walking down the hallway freely for the first time in nearly a year, ignoring the panicked shrieks coming from either direction or the red lighting. In fact, she kept walking in the slightly scorched hall until the dragon on the other side of it began speaking.

"Iris, yes?"

Iris's eyes widened, and she slowly turned around.

Vorator must have taken a sleep in past month or so. He was still a juvenile as dragons went, but she was one too, and furthermore he was twice her size and nearly half again as tall. He was on fours and still taller than her, and his bulk, which at one time could have been just fat, was now purely rippling muscle, and his head was a slab of brown crowned with two conical horns with the slightest hint of a spiral at the top. The red light really didn't do him any favors in making him seem less scary, either.

He was also filling the entire hall, and looked angry. Understandable, as the world was ending.

"Err, yeah, Vorator, it's me. It's about time, right?" she said weakly, waving a hand as oddly as possible, given the time.

He snorted. "This is no time for jokes. Soon, the cursed city nearby will be destroyed, and we will be free." He swiveled his great head to the side and tilted it slightly. "Why is there a pony in your room?"

Iris chuckled lightly in an attempt to not run away as quickly as possible. "She let me out, why?"

He turned to look at her, and Iris felt her blood run even colder.

To her surprise, Vorator raised his tree-thick club like tail and slammed it against the wall, and like a wave, the entire wall shattered inward into itself. Iris felt her jaw slacken slightly.

Fragrance, after she stopped begging for mercy, slowly trotted over broken glass and stood between the two dragons.

"Well, you are mister...Stoneback, I presume?" squeaked Fragrance. Iris realized that, if she read on her record, than she would have at least glanced at Vorator's.

The behemoth of a dragon, however, continued to give the pony that was barely the size of his head a judging look.

"Yes."

Gulping, the mare continued. "Before this...thing blows over, I must ask, did you really learn from zebras in there homeland?"

Slowly, he nodded. "I did. Enough of this." he said, shifting his bulk onto his back legs, head nearly reaching the ceiling "We are to go before a less kind comrade of ours comes to kill us."

On cue, someone far off roared, and that roar was responded to by a pained scream and a few gun shots.

Iris knew that roar. "Garble."

Fragrance’s eyes went wide, while Vorator simply sighed.

"He is of little concern. He is a fool who thinks he is a king. Let him die." Vorator said before looking at Iris with something close to amusement. "Unless you want to save him."

Iris blanched, and Fragrance was trying to take deep breaths to help her ignore the fact they had wasted a decent time in the middle of a hallway talking about nothing of importance.

"Excuse me, but perhaps we cou-"

He voice was cut out by a low rumble, and the feeling of something utterly unnatural passing through the air.

The lights flickered for a moment, and that was it.

The silence in the structure was deafening for a few seconds, and then the few inmates continued there riot.

Iris was the first to speak, albeit somewhat weakly. "That was it, wasn't it? The bomb?"

Fragrance was surprisingly calm. "Yes, it seemed to have hit closer to the Empire closer than I first thought. I would think the surface is an irradiated hell right now, however."

It was Vorator's turn to be surprised. "How far underground are we, exactly? Two, three floors?"

"Five." Fragrance said simply. Vorator blanched.

"The younger ones are going to die, correct? With there cells being on the first floors?" he said slowly.

Fragrance shrugged. "I suppose. But right now, there are tunnels, and one of those tunnels has the hibernation chambers."

Iris blinked at that. What now? "Hibernation chambers?"

Fragrance chuckled. "This place has a lot of stuff just sitting around, and one of those things is a set of four hibernation chambers. I assume that, at the very least, one is still working." she smiled awfully at the huge male. "Sorry, but I don't think you could fit in one."

The silence in the reddish hall was palpable. Finally, the dragon shrugged. "I plan on going to the Crystal Mountains. Pure wilderness. I suspect Iris is heading there as well."

Conflicted, she looked at both of her possible choices for survival. Finally, but surely, she ran down the opposite end of the hallway, head cloudy and limbs feeling like lead.

Comments

[Prince_Staghorn]

Good chapter, love the story, but one question keeps nagging me...

...what happened to Crackle?

[Pokonic]

2520977 The Equestrians had rumurs of a great many legged war-beast that had a hide that gleamed and glittered like gems. No bullet could pierce it's scales, and it rampaged the pony forces until the day the bomb dropped.

Dragons live a long time, so there is probably a fifty foot long dragon thing roaming about in the wasteland.

[Prince_Staghorn]

2521734 Alright, steady, you never know exactly... WHAT THE FCK IS THAT!?!

BLAAARGH!!!!

[Dawn Darkling]

This story is quite good so far. Also, I have never seen an FoE sidefic starring a dragon before. I am excited to see how this will go.

[Dismay]

Suddenly Dragons are in FoE and they will kill them all.