> Fallout Equestria: Project Equalizer > by An0nym0us Br0ny > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Chapter I: Introductions. > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- My name is Morning Star. I was born in Stable 202, I have a dark, silver and white mane, with a light silver coat, my foxy tail is the same pattern as my mane. Being very clever, I decided to study the stars at the age of six. Luckily, Stable 202, was partly above ground, having a beautiful lab, offset from the Atrium, for me to work in. Books, reading, and studying filled my young childhood days. Finally, after about two, to three years, when I was about nine, I finally earned my Cutie Mark. A telescope, facing a bright shining star. Back then, I actually enjoyed living in the Stable. It was comfy, safe, and, away from the real, terrible world. Until ponies started leaving. The first was Shadow Dust, he had been a close friend of mine, and when he left, I was devastated. I never really had too many friends, and really, Shadow Dust was the best. He was kind, smart, and somewhat witty. He had a black, silvery mane, and a dark black coat. His tail, was also a silvery black, he was a unicorn, but, he surprisingly didn’t use it much. When he was eight he earned a Cutie Mark that had a dust cloud in front of a New Moon, no one really knew what it meant. After him, one by one, ponies left. The second, was Crystal Clear, she had been a friend, just not that close. She was funny, a good singer, and was surprisingly clever. She had mint green coat with a darker green mane, and tail. She was a unicorn, and she knew how to use her horn well. Her Cutie Mark ended up being a glass crystal. Most likely because she sang pretty darn well. The third was Tornado, he was… a somewhat “friend”. We hadn’t really known too much about each other, but, we really didn’t care. He was security, and for some reason was always outside the door watching, for what, I don’t know. He had a dark brown coat, with dark, and light brown in his mane, and tail. He was a pegasus, which had been a pain inside of the Stable, since he able flyer, and the Stable wasn’t really big enough for him to actually fly. His Cutie Mark ended up being a tornado, as you’d probably expect. Finally, I left. At first I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. The first place I had encountered was somewhere called Ponyville. It seemed to be nice at first, until the Raiders, well… raided. Yeah, that didn’t go so well. Anyway after that experience I had done my best to teach myself how to shoot. It took about a year, until I finally was actually able to hit something. Anyway, now, I’m here. Surviving in the Wasteland, considering I’m not dead, I guess it’s been somewhat a success. And that leads me here, wandering a cracked highway, looking for some Traveling Merchants to trade with. That’s basically my life, well, I’m not always searching for some Traveling Merchants. I’m usually just walking around and seeing what I can see, trying not to get into too much trouble, due to the fact that I can really only hit things with S.A.T.S. (Stable-tec. Automated. Targeting. Spell). As I was reflecting, an explosion went off to the right of me, but it was too far away for any shrapnel to hit me. I galloped to a nearby hill to scope out the area. I climbed to the top and crouched down, staying out of sight as I looked around for anyone. Soon, thereafter, a trio of ponies came galloping down the road, a group of about four Raiders trailed behind them. I instinctively got a bit closer to the Raiders and went into S.A.T.S., levitating my 10mm pistol out of it’s holster. Aiming for whatever I could hit, I fired. I only hit about two of them. One, I hit in the chest, they dropped dead. The other got hit in their hind leg, and they tripped, and fell behind the rest of the group. Realizing that they had a chance to turn and fire, the three other ponies turned and rained bullets on the three confused Raiders. They, also soon dropped dead. I stayed hidden to see who the ponies were, crawling up on the ridge, I noticed that they were looking for someone, probably me, to see if I was a threat. Getting a closer look, I began to recognize them. Slowly, I climbed down to approach them, but they beat me to it. “Star? Is that really you?” Shadow Dust slowly trotted over to me. As my own memory began to click, I realized that the other two ponies, were Crystal Clear, and Tornado. “It is! Wow, we never thought we’d find you!” Shadow exclaimed. “You were looking for me? How’d you find out that I left?” I began to wonder if somepony had seen me leaving the Stable. Or, if they had some type of inside source. “We kind of just guessed, we weren’t exactly sure, but, it was worth looking.” Crystal and Tornado were at his side, Crystal had her usual wide smile, and Tornado had a sort of half-smile. “We’re glad we found you, and thanks for saving our flanks!” Crystal cheerily said, as happy as ever. “Nice shot, self-trained?” Tornado began to question. I looked over him and his gear, they all still had Pip-Bucks, and their Stable 202 clothes on, except with some extra armor. Tornado had his service rifle from the Stable. Crystal had a 30. magnum pistol. And Shadow Dust had a varmint rifle, with a blade taped to the end, most likely for close quarters. As I came out of my trance I started to answer his question. “Umm, yeah, how’d you know?” He gave a slight smirk and said; “It’s just something you pick up when you’re in Security. You can tell how someone was trained, most times, it’s self taught” I just shrugged it off and everyone went silent. I sighed and said; “Well, this is awkward.” Everyone sort of nodded their heads. “What do we do now?” Crystal said. Everyone looked at me, expectantly. “What are you looking at me for? I don’t know.” Everyone turned their heads to Tornado. “Umm, well, I think there’s a shipment of supplies going to Ponyville that we might be able to get our hands on. Although it’s protected by Raiders.” I began to think, I wasn’t much of a good shot, but, if we got the jump on them, we might be able to take enough out to get to the supplies, and take whatever we needed. “Well, I’m in. I really don’t have anything else to do.” I said, everyone else agreed that they would join too. Before we left, we searched the bodies of the Raiders to look for ammo and supplies. We found ammo for me, a couple sticks of dynamite, and some ammo for Crystal. We finally began our trot down to Ponyville, following the Highway. The Highway was dangerous, but, not as dangerous as wandering off. I had learned that the hard way. Entering the Wasteland had been a challenge, at least learning about the dangers. When after leaving, I had begun to wander off. Not a good idea. Radscorpions, Radroaches, etc., almost anything you could imagine. I wasn’t exactly ‘acquainted’ with the Wasteland then, but, now that I have a few friends to go with along the way, it seems that it’ll be a lot easier being out here. I snapped out of my thoughts and galloped to catch up with everyone else. We all smiled as we trotted casually down the Highway, life out here might be tough, but, together, we could make it. > The Things We Do > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- As we made our way to Ponyville, we took notice to the broken down houses. Whenever we found one, one of us went in and would see what they could get. After about twenty minutes, we had found about thirteen houses with nothing in them. The only thing to see were some Merchants, looking for traders. We looked over their stuff, and only got some ammo, and some dynamite for Tornado and Shadow Dust. We continued on our way, luckily not encountering any stray Raiders, or any danger at all, really. It took a few hours until we could see the rolling hills that surrounded Ponyville. We had Tornado up front, me to the left, Crystal to the right, and Shadow Dust scout ahead. A few minutes later, he reported back that there were a lot of Raiders, not being specific. “How many?” I did my to whisper, and still be loud enough to reach his ears. He peered back into a pair binoculars we had also found in one of the destroyed homes. “Ummm, about twenty or so. Again, a lot.” He put the binoculars down, and crawled over to me. “Alright, I need you to sneak behind those buildings. Stay there and don’t move until Tornado starts firing. Okay?” He carefully explained. I nodded, and silently began to make my way down to the row of houses, forming a circle around what seemed to be the town square. I could see the Raiders and where they stood. Most of them stood around the broken down Town Hall. That was most likely where they were the supplies were. I stopped behind a small, yellow house. It was about four, or five minutes I sat there, waiting for Tornado to make the first shot. Finally, I began to hear consistent sound of bullets, speeded towards the Raiders. I peeked around the corner, his aim was deadly, and killed about six of twenty. I galloped towards the house over and went around the corner, planning my attack from behind. About three of them were near enough for me to be able to hit them. I went into S.A.T.S. and aimed for their chest, right around their center of mass. Every bullet hit, and they all fell, with the other six. “Nine down, eleven to go.” I thought. I quickly galloped across over to the Town Hall, taking cover. The other raiders were now up front, focusing on Tornado. I waited a moment to see if Crystal was going to do anything, sure enough, two other bodies dropped. I rounded the corner and aimed for another Raider, hitting them in the chest, they fell. “Twelve down, eight to go.” I counted. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Shadow Dust shoot four raiders with his varmint rifle, hitting each in the chest. Only four other Raiders in front of me remained. None of them firing. They cowered and sat down on their haunches, covering themselves with their hooves. Crystal approached them, her face was soft, and kind. “If you tell us where the supplies is, we won’t hurt you.” Her voice felt calming, and sincere, it was clearly working on the Raiders who didn’t want to die, for some stupid supplies that they had no need for. “I - I - it’s inside.” The Raiders voice trembled, slightly with fear, and slightly calm. Crystal went to the door and pushed it in. The first thing we noticed, was that there was no one inside. We slowly walked in, checking every shadow, just in case the room ended up being a minefield. We searched all over the building until finally, on the top floor, was a big crate full of weapons, healing potions, and etc. with labels on them. Looking at a few of the labels, I noticed our names were on them. “What the heck?” I rummaged through the supplies, each item either had a Crystal Clear, Shadow Dust, Tornado, or Morning Star on it. When I got down to the bottom of the crate, I notice a glowing hexagonal orb with my name on it. I levitated it out to observe it. “What do you guys think it is?” I asked, Tornado came forward and took a look at it too. “I’m pretty sure this is a memory orb. Back in the Stable, we would use things like these to send messages, or keep tabs on, “suspects”. Tornado took hold of it and examined it closely. “It’s powered by magic, and when you use it once, it’s gone. I don’t really know what happens when you use it, because I never really have myself. I’ve really only seen it. Although, it looks like it sort of hurts.” I took hold of the orb, examining it once again myself. “Well then, lets see what this thing holds.” I magically activated it, feeling the click of it working in my head. Pain raced through my veins, white stripes slowly enveloped my vision as I began to go unconscious. I finally faded away, leaving me free to finally open my eyes, and look around. I seemed to be within someone’s mind, no wonder the orb was magically powered. The mind that I was in, seemed to be wide, completely calm, yet so… anxious. Whoever’s mind I was in began to speak to me. At first I was confused, as I slowly grasped what was happening, I began to wonder how it was possible. I finally began to listen. “... let me repeat myself, since you clearly weren’t listening, as I expected. My name is Twilight Sparkle, I’m the Ministry Mare of the Ministry of Arcane Sciences. Now, you may have heard of me before, or maybe not. Either way, I have a proposal for you. Now, this may seem out of the blue, and completely random to you, but I’d like to offer you a position to own your own Ministry, the Ministry of Astronomical Study, a.k.a. MAS number two. Yes, now you're probably surprised, but, before you do anything let me explain. Me and the other Ministry Mares, have been thinking. If we could find a planet that was habitable for Ponies, we might be able to start anew. Now, you’re going to be asking, ‘why me?’ well, that’s because you’ve already got a good sense of the stars, you alone accomplished much in the Stable where you grew up in. So, we’d like to go back to the roots. Meet us, you know where.” The Memory concluding, again, whites stripes enveloped my vision, taking me back to my own body. The pain that met me, was at least bearable. My head thumped in my ears, and my brain felt like jello. I attempted to get up only to have every limb of my body in searing pain. ‘I’m paralyzed’ I realized. I could barely move my head to figure out where I was. I was still in the Town Hall room. Crystal sat next to me, her face was written with wor. She was looking towards Tornado, who had his head hung down. Shadow Dust was in the corner, on the verge of crying, for a reason I didn’t know of. “What are you doing?” I croaked out. It was barely audible, but they could hear it. They’re heads snapped towards me. They’re faces widened with surprise, they looked like they were seeing a ghost. I was pale, although you couldn’t really tell, because I was already grey. They rushed towards me, tears of joy in their eyes. “Y-y-you’re alive!” Crystal began to sob uncontrollably. “Y-your heart, it stopped, a-and you weren’t breathing, a-and we thought you were d-dead!” They all caught their breaths, and stopped crying, allowing me to process what had happened. I was still a little bit confused, but I worked out the kinks in my mind. I attempted to get up again, this time, successfully standing up. I was still a little bit shaken so I fell on my haunches catching my breath. “Well… I guess I should explain what happened on my end.” Everyone came over and sat down beside me, listening intently. “Well, you already know it hurt, bad. But, beyond that, I was basically transferred to someone else’s mind, specifically, Twilight Sparkle, the Ministry Mare of the Ministry of Arcane Sciences, as she put it. She apparently knows a lot about me, about us, that she was able to determine that she needed to get the memory orb into the supplies so that we could get it. Anyway, the actual thing she wanted me for, was that her, and the other Ministry Mares were offering me a position to have my own Ministry, the Ministry of Astronomical Study. And, she want’s to meet me at Stable 202 as soon as possible.” The surprise on their faces was clear, as I spoke. “Although there are a few suspicious things, like how did she know that we would be here, and that we would actually find the orb, I’m going to have to at least see what she’s talking about, for all we know, that could have been recorded a long time ago. But, anyways, to the real question for you guys. Will you come with me?” Their faces changed from surprised to contemplation. It took about three minutes of waiting until someone finally spoke up. “I’ll go, I’ve got nothing else to do, and I’ve got no one to do anything with, so, I’m in.” Shadow Dust, trotted over to my side and waited for everyone else. “Ugh, the things we do.” Crystal sighed, and also came over. Tornado was the last pony standing. Finally he sighed, and said, “Fine, I’ll go.” He came over and sat in front of us. “Well then, here we go, now we’re all sitting here, doing nothing, my suggestion? Get on the road.” Tornado flatlined, with a bit of sarcasm. We all giggled as we got up and out of the Town Hall. My thoughts went back to what Crystal had said. ‘The things we do’ I was familiar with the phrase, though I had no idea what it had meant, but, now I had a clearer meaning of it. No matter what, the things we do for our friends, reflect on ourselves, but, how we react to that, is really what tells what you will become, and I have a good feeling.