> Fallout Equestria Ghoul in Disguise
>  by True_Yoshim
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Rebirth
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Most ponies don't know what it feels like to die. They don't like the thought that one day they might lose a fight, or just end it all. There are some few who know exactly what it's like. They can't explain what they saw very well, but they damn sure know what it felt like. I'll just go with the old cliche of darkness. All you can imagined is darkness. No life flashing between your eyes, no going back and thinking about your past mistakes. Just darkness. Then a feeling. The most unbearable pain you could ever imagine. You wonder when it will end, when will you be free from the pain. It never seemed to stop.

Now imagine that the pain was pulling you back. Back who knows where, but you could feel it. The pain washing down your back to the bottom of your hooves was just the smallest of hints. Then you feel something else. Like wind, the pain starts to slowly blow away. After many minutes of pain the sudden, even if slow, relief is welcomed. After about an hour or so it’s slowly ebbing away, then a final release. The pain has ended.

Then something else happens. Slowly you start to see a light. Not a heavenly white light like you'd think, nor a hellish red. Just light. The sight of your deathbed slowly returning to you. First you see the cloud filled sky, then the buildings. Finally you can see two hooves in front of your face. This is what I saw. After I could see again, my feeling started to return. Not quite the blood pumping one would expect, but it was noticeable.

First my eyelids returned, finally letting me blink off the dust that coated my eyelids. I quickly closed them though, the soft light being to much after the complete darkness. After that I felt my front hooves and moved them, first to a twitch and then slowly beginning to drag them around. The feeling of my back hooves never came though. Despite how much I tried to move them I was unable to feel them or get up. After my front hooves came back I could slowly turn and drag my head along the ground. I couldn't look back though, something in my mind was blocking the movement. I licked my lips, coating the cracked and dried skin in a thin band of saliva. I breathed slowly out my mouth, dust flowing out with each gasping breath.

Once my motor skills came back my ears followed. The soft ambience of the city I seemed to be in was more than enough for me though. I closed my eyes and tried to block out the seemingly loud sounds, but despite it all I could still hear it. An occasional loud boom and ground quivering rocked my little area. I could only assume a building was collapsing to produce that much sound and seismic force. I sighed a bit letting more dust out my lungs before opening my eyes and letting them adjust before looking around.

It seemed like I was in a city. Maybe Manehattan. Large buildings all around, some collapsed on the ground, and some still pointing into the air, large and proud. I didn't know quite where I was, but I knew it was a city. I tried to crawl forward, but something was kept me pinned down. Not wanting to assume the worst, I could only hope a wall had fallen on me and pinned my legs down.

Unable to do anything, I laid waiting.

And waiting…

And… waiting…

As I laid there I could slowly hear a buzz… slowly eating away at my mind.… One day I stopped blinking and just stared… stared at the building in front of me.…The dust caked over my eyes as I stared into the nothing. And then, unexpectedly, I just snapped. The buzzing was at its all time high when it happened. I started screaming. Screaming to nothing, the sky I guess but I couldn't really face it. Once I started screaming, I started to struggle. I didn't find it strange that I didn't feel the least bit hoarse after screaming and struggling for a countless time. But eventually I heard a noise behind me.

I stopped, my eyes wide. I heard a crack, then a pop, pop, pop as a rock fell and rolled in front of me. Then all of a sudden I heard a rumble. More rocks started falling down until metal bits had started to fall on top of me. I continued to try pulling myself forward, away from the avalanche of yet another building collapsing. I heard a loud crack that seemed to come directly from behind me and then all of a sudden I was crawling forward.

Sensing that I was moving from the spray of rust and debris on my back, I quickly crawled forward. With my eyes shut tight I crawled a good bit aways from what use to be my prison before running into a wall. I kept my eyes closed and covered my ears, waiting for the noise of the falling building to stop.

After some time the crumbling and collapsing ended. I slowly peeked an eye open and looked around. The buzzing had stopped, and the building that imprisoned me had finished collapsing, now just another pile of rubble in this forsaken city. I stared at it a bit before remembering that I was now free.

Grinning I tried to stand, only succeeding in pushing my head up with my front hooves on the ground shakily. I still couldn't feel my backside. Trembling, I slowly turned around to look, the block keeping my eyes forward now gone. What I saw made me scream again.

My hind legs were mangled to Tartarus. But what scared me more wasn't just my legs, it was the sight of my once dark grey coat, my sleek coat, now wrinkled and browned. I started to breathe erratically. Soon after I found a worser cruel joke had been played. I couldn't feel the pounding of my heart in my chest from the new experiences of excitement, horror, and panic.

I sat there holding my chest, hoping to feel my heart pounding away. Not even noticing that I wasn't even breathing. My heart was racing fast, or at least I wanted to think it was. I held my chest to feel the familiar thump of my perfectly working heart. I waited and waited, laying on the ground for the thumping to calm me. It never arrived.

I stared down at the ground in front of me, coming to the conclusion any sane pony would. I was dead. I stared for who knows how long. Not knowing how I was still alive but that I was also dead. Was this a cruel trick by the chaos god? I don't know. But what I did know is that I could still feel the ground. The dirt beneath my face and the dust on my eyes were real enough.

I pushed myself up on my shaky front legs. It was now morning when my mind was finally done with surprises. I was dead and my back legs were completely unusable. I looked around, scared of what else I might see. I looked up to the building that I had crawled too.

“Ministry… of Arcane… Science…?” My voice was raspy, my throat must've been caked with dust that was thrown loose from all the yelling I did. I looked around again for any clues as to where I was, but found nothing.

I started to slowly crawl away from the building of science and my prison. Looking down the roads for anything that could help me. A pony, some water, anything at all. The more I crawled the more I felt something in my mind. I had no idea what it was, so I ignored it. I crawled and crawled and crawled.

Nothing prepared me for what I saw though. I had turned a corner after the feeling stopped, but the rest of the street wasn't there. I appeared onto a crater the size of a hoofball field. I stared with my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open. The pit was glowing green and had small fires at the bottom. “W-what... in the name of Tartarus…?” I had never seen anything like this. I stared at the pit before me wondering what could've caused this much destruction. I didn't have to long however before I heard more cracking and the side of the pit’s edge started collapsing from the new weight on top of it.

Unable to get away in time the ground tumbled and took me into the deathly pit. I rolled down the side of the cliff, unable to plant my hooves into the ground to stop or slow my descent into the sickly green pit.


****


I don't know when it happened but somewhere in the tumble a rock must've hit my head and knocked me out. I slowly came too at the bottom of the pit. I put a hoof to the back of my head and felt no bumps or dents from where a rock even could hit me. I sighed and looked around the pit. I tumbled down almost to the center, the magical yellowgreen flames not to far away from where I laid. I stared at the flames and they seemed to whisper to me, begging me to enter their embrace.

I shook my head clear and looked out to the edge where I was pulled in. It was a pretty long crawl… some spots would be to high for me to carry myself up. I sighed and looked at my back legs again. My eyes went wide with disbelief, my legs looked fine! I decided to test them by standing. I lifted myself carefully off the ground with my front then move my back legs carefully so as to not damage them, just in case.

I stood up on my shaky back legs, grinning the whole time. I'm sure if somepony had decided to look down into the pit they'd be pretty creeped out by the sight of a zombie pony slowly standing and smiling creepily. Not to mention the fiery yellowgreen background behind me makes it any less creepier. I tested my legs making sure they could still support me before starting the much easier climb back up the cliff.

Once back on safer roads I went behind one of the buildings, hiding myself from the pit. The whispers that had seemed to continued the whole time seemed to stop once line of sight was broken from the flames. Now I just sat, my back to the wall, as I tried to think of what could've happened to me. My legs were broken, beyond repair. Yet here they are, sitting perfectly fine.

I sighed, chocking it up to I just seemed to be in Celestia’s favor. Now I was just left with the more important things to remember. Who was I? I racked my head searching for the answer. I could see all my memories, back to when I was just a foal running and playing in a greener Equestria, but words blurred and I seemed to keep changing between Pegasus, unicorn, and earth pony. I moved a hoof to feel above my head, no horn. I did the same down my back, no wings. Well I guess that clears that. Unless I happened to lose one of them in the tumble and hid it extremely well from myself.

My name… I kept trying to remember but it refused to return to me. I sighed unhappily before getting up again and looking around. I looked at the crumbled building in front of me, feeling a slight familiarence before turning around to looking at the building behind me. “Huh… back to you…” I was back at the MAS building. I looked around the wall before walking to a door and checking it. Unlocked… I pushed the door open and entered the building.

Inside it seemed like a tornado blew through. Although with the giant pit outside I wouldn't be surprised if one had blown through. There were papers blown everywhere, glass from a broken window laid on the ground. I walked through the waiting room and into the halls, searching for whatever called me subconsciously back to this building.

As I walked through, most of the doors were locked or completely blown off their hinges. I picked through whatever offices I could, scrounging a dirty white coat off a dead skeleton… not exactly proud of myself, but hey, he wasn't using it anymore. I checked the pockets of the coat and found a key inside one. I held it and inspected it MAS #328… I shrugged and put it back in the pocket before walking off again.

Eventually I poked my head into what seemed like a lab room. I walked in and took a look around the room. Broken beakers and test tubes laid across the ground, along with even more papers than the front room. I poked around for a bit, looking at some of the papers that weren't on the ground. I learned that this hub was in a city called New Buck, explains all the towers actually. The papers all didn't make much sense though, switching from one project to another at seemingly random times, some of these projects only had one page to go off of. I searched around the papers trying to find some that connected to the others, but I didn't find very many.

I got up and sighed. Most of these projects just started before a new one blew them off… I wonder who would keep something so disorganized like this… I looked around again at the now somewhat cleaned lab. I spotted a terminal in the back, walking over to it I clicked its keyboard to turn it on.

Enter Password:

I sighed. “Damn… I don't know any passwords…” I tried to type something random from the papers in and hit enter.

Wrong Password
Please Try Again: 
Hint: Mark’s favorite game

“Mark? I think I saw that name…” I went back to the papers and checked around for a bit before finding him again. In the margins of one paper it listed team names, right in it was Mark “Roulette”. He’s on all the weapon projects it seems… Why was he in Arcane Science? And what kind of name is Roulette? I thought it over for a bit before walking over and typing again.

Password: Roulette

I hit enter and the terminal gave a happy beep as it entered. Huh… guess that solves that… I searched through the terminal, learning it belonged to a mare named Bubble Trouble. I even found a picture of who I assumed Bubble was, along with some others. Attached to the picture was a file.

Bubble, I found this picture while looking through my memory box (don't judge me). Thought you might like it so I scanned it and sent it to you. You looked happy on that day, you really should tell him eventually how you feel.
-Fizzle

I went back to the picture it was attached to and looked around, it seemed like a team photo, maybe of everyone that worked in this sector. I eventually found who I assumed to be Bubble, a light blue unicorn smiling very happily. She was standing close to a stallion. The stallion was a light grey earthpony who wasn't smiling at all. I looked at him for a bit, staring at his yellow eyes. They seemed very familiar.... I looked around the room and quickly ran over to a cracked window. It took me a few minutes of staring at my brown wrinkled face but I eventually saw it. In the quiver of my pale eye I saw the faintest of yellows, a mere memory of their true color.

“Mark…. My name is Mark….” I think I cried a bit. The fact that I had been this close to my identity for however long I laid out there seem to hit me. I laid my head on the desk before realizing that even though I felt like I was crying, nothing came out. This saddened me a bit, the fact that all my bodily functions seemed to have stopped was peculiar. I could still move around, I could still talk, and I thought just fine. What could have done this to me?

I sighed a bit before looking back at the terminal. I feel bad for Bubble… I have no memory of her but yet it seems like she enjoyed being around me… I shook my head before exploring the rest of the terminal. Nothing important seem to stick out of everything.

I shut the terminal down, mainly out of habit, before getting up. As I stood I heard a faint jingle coming from my pocket. I put a hoof in the pocket and get the key. I looked around the room before entering another door.

This door led to a locker room, where workers kept personal belongings. I took a look around the room before looking at each locker. Some numbers were faded but others seem to be just fine, I quickly realized that each row had a hundred lockers, and the next row started up the new count up.

I pulled out the key and stared at the number before heading to row 3, locker 28. The number was faded like most others but locker 327 sat readable on top of it. I pushed the key into the socket and pulled it open, the rusted hinges protesting after years of disuse.

Inside was quite the sight. Nearly everything was covered with dust, but inside was a simple revolver, some ammo, what seemed to be expired candy, and a coat.


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End of chapter 1: Rebirth

Level up: 

Quest perk attained: 

(Thank you Kkat for making this wonderful world. Thank you Somber for intriguing me to write. Thank you FuzzyVeeVee for giving me ideas to make this interesting. And thank you Mimezinga for giving me the idea for making a story with a ghoul as a main character. All four of these great writers inspired me to make this FoE, and I hope I can at least obtain a tenth of the level they have reached.)