Chapter 1: Out on my Own, Sort of

Tales of the Equestrian Wasteland: The Dreamer
Chapter One: Out on My Own, Sort of

Sleep.

It is often the happiest times I have. Growing up in New Appaloosa is difficult. As soon as I was able to walk, I had been set to work. My mom and dad own a rock farm just outside the city. I remember many a night spent chucking huge rocks at slightly smaller rocks just to see if they had jewels inside. Being an earth pony I did not have the ability to check the rocks beforehand. The work was grueling and most of the time amounted to nothing. I would work all day then come home to measly proportion of cold oatmeal.

But sleep, that is where my dreams would take me to better places. Away from New Appaloosa. Away from the Equestrian Wasteland. They would take me to wonderful places with green pastures as far as the eye could see and with loons and toucans and bitterns. Oh my! With Hummingbirds that can really hum and buzzards that can really buzz. I did not have to work. I could just relax as beautiful mares would happily feed me all kinds of exotic foods.

But the best dream of all is when I would “wake up” on the softest bed ever. There’s a clear blue sky and the sun peaking its head above the horizon. I would look down and realize that I was standing on a cloud. I’d walk to the edge not fully awake yet and without thinking step over the edge. Adrenaline would rush through my veins as I expected to fall to my death, but instead of falling, I’d just hover there. Looking over my shoulder, I would see that I had wings! I’d spend all day soaring around the clouds free as a phoenix. I’d try to pull off my signature move, the sonic spin-boom (like the sonic rainboom, you would go really high up, but on the way down you start doing barrel rolls). Funny thing is I never completed this move. Even in my dreams, I’m not good at anything.

But every time, the sun would go down, and I’d have to go to sleep on my cloud. Then I would wake up to my dreary world and have to work on the farm… again.

So you can’t imagine my excitement when I was approaching 18 years old and the chance to apply for the New Appaloosa guard. The guard was the force keeping the raiders and slavers and other forces from reaching the city. It wasn’t my dream of flying, but it was a helluva lot better than crushing rocks. The only problem was I couldn’t work a gun. All I knew how to do was crush rocks and I wasn’t even good at that either.

My cutie mark is a blob. A blob! It doesn’t even have a shape. At first I thought it was a rock, but even rock have more shape than it. It just is a malformed… well, blob.

So this is where I am now, the 17 year old gray furred colt, who dreams of flying, and whose apparent talent is being malformed. Oh! And my name is Icarus Stone, but most people call me “Ic”

|><|----------|><|

This time is perfect. I’m soaring through the air a mile above the Earth. Pointing my nose down and folding my wings under, I can feel that this is the time I complete the sonic spin-boom. I can feel the wind rushing by my face as I start my first spin. Slowly at first, but as my speed increases so does the number of my spins.

One…..Two……Three. I can see the sound barrier begin to form in front of me. Four…Five…Six. The world below is blurred beyond recognition. 7. 8. 9. The barrier begins to bend. 10 11 12. The barrier surrounds me as I am creeping through. 131415 All of a sudd-

“WAKE UP!”

I jump so far out of my bed that I end up in the Kitchen before reaching the ground. My dad never was subtle.

“Damn, so close,” I mutter under my breath.

“What was that Ic?” my mom asks while stirring some of her specialty, plain oatmeal.

“Oh, nothing” I manage to say in a calm voice, still upset about the abrupt end to my dream.

“Well here’s some food. Eat up, you got a lotta work t’do.”

Yay, the farm.

“But first can you stop by town ‘n pick up more ammo for the hunting shotgun? Your dad’s wasted it all shootin’ radroaches.”
I lift my head. Wow, something interesting today. She gives me 100 caps, way too much for just some ammo, but I ignore it. Maybe, she wants me to get something nice for myself.

“Have a nice day,” my dad says cheerfully as I finish my breakfast.

I grumble back something along the lines of “Buck off.”

Still upset with my parents and excited to finally buy myself something, I dash out of there in a dash. Taking a deep breath of the stale and stagnant Wasteland air, I begin to wonder how air can smell fresher inside. Before I realize, I'm at the next farm over. My best friend, Jet Caps sees me and comes over.

Jet is a deep black colt around my age with a cutie mark of a pile of bottle caps. He is skinny for being a rock farmer and has a short black mane.

“Hi, Ic!” he says cheerfully. Somehow in this drab and disgusting life he can remain as giddy as a filly.

“Hey, Jet. I was just going into town. Wanna come with?”

“Sure” he replies, happy to do something other than knock rocks together.

We walk along the road, talking again about my insane fantasy of growing wings and flying away from The Wasteland. We pass by a fresh carcass by the side of the road. Those things show up from time to time so we don’t pay much attention to it.

When we make it into town, I head straight for Derp- I mean Ditsy Doo’s store. I buy the ammo for the hunting shotgun and just as I expected, I am left with 85 caps. So I spend 60 of them buying a nice hunting rifle and spend 10 caps for a few bullets. I pocket the rest.

“15 caps. Nice. That brings your total up to 50.” Jet had always been good with money and had an extremely annoying knack of remembering just how much a pony had.

I shrug him off, tired of hearing how little caps I had. “Let’s go.”

On the way back we pass by the dead adventurer and I take a better look at him. He’s a blue-coated unicorn with a map cutie mark (still better than mine). The fatal injury seems to be a crossbow bolt straight for the knee. It looks as if he hobbled over to the road as if to ask for help, but fell short and bled out. I search his bags and find a few caps (bringing my total to 63 Jet informs me), a sawed-off shotgun, and a couple shells. But the most spectacular was the contraption strapped to his leg, a PipBuck 3000, perfect for adventuring. I marvel at its design when Jet complains about me taking too long.

“But he has a PipBuck,” I whine.

But Jet has to get back to his “crops” so we head off.

On the road, I marvel at how beautiful the day is. The cloud cover ever present in the wasteland is thinner today, leaving a glowing halo where the sun would be in the sky. It is warmer than it usually is and the humidity is way down. This is a very unusual day.

But the pleasant day changes as we near our houses. I can sense something is wrong. We turn the corner and acrid smoke hits me like a baseball bat.
My house. It’s on fire.

“Jet! Quickly,” I motion to the dumbstruck horse as I charge inside. Smoke fills my lungs and I collapse into an uncontrollable coughing fit. Shit, I have to get to my parents and this isn’t helping.

I break through the door to my parents’ room and find them gagged and bound to the bed. Blood is streaking from their eyes, I mean where their eyes should be, and their mouth. A close inspection leads me to discover that their tongues have been cut out. And as if that wasn’t enough their stomachs have been split open and their entrails are spilling out. Needless to say, they were dead. Murdered.

I had to turn away, but I couldn’t. There was something off. And I don’t just mean that the ponies that had raised me my entire life were suddenly gone. Something else. Then I noticed the way they were positioned. My dad had turned as much of his body that he could to face Mom, a endearing final action. But Mom had faced away from my dad. She had somehow worked her hoof out of the constraints and had it splayed across her. This looked like a very uncomfortable position for a pony that had just been gutted alive. I followed her hoof across the room to the closet.

Wanting to honor my mother’s final request, I opened the closet and there sitting on the floor was… oatmeal? Was this her final request? No, it can’t be. I mean, Oatmeal, are you crazy? Then I noticed something on the shelf, 40 or so shotgun shells. But didn’t Mom say my dad shot all of these at radroaches?

This was puzzling so I headed over to the gun cabinet to find the shotgun. However, when I opened the cabinet there was no gun, just a note.

Pain seared through my left hind leg reminding me that the house was on fire and likely to collapse at any time so I pocketed the note and took the shells and bolted outside. There I found my friend looking relieved to see me.

“You were in there for like 15 minutes. I was scared you had been consumed by the flames!” Jet said panicked.

“Yeah, and I thought my friend would help me try to save my family!” Despair washes over me as the reality of the situation hits me. I would never talk to my parents. And even though my conversations with my dad were usually about how scrawny I was or the fact I didn’t have a girlfriend, it still devastated me that the last words I said to him were “buck off.”

I collapse there on the ground. “You’re on fire,” Jet states plainly.

“What?”

“You’re on fire.” He can’t help, but smile now.

With all the emotions overcoming me, I had completely forgotten about the searing pain in my leg. I glance quickly at my flank where there’s a surprisingly large fire engulfing my entire leg.

Frantically, I search around for some water. I don’t want to use any of the precious pure water in my canteen. I find my target a rather large puddle in the middle of the street. As I splashed around in the small pond, the remnants of my former home crumbled to the ground.

All the while, Jet just keeps laughing at me.

“Why are you my friend again?” I ask while slapping a bandage on my flank.

“Because without me, you’d have no friends.” Wow way to kick a colt when he’s down. “Sorry that was inappropriate… What d’ya see in the house?”

“Well my parents are both dead...” I stop and stare off into the distance for a while before continuing, “leaving me nothing, but a few shotgun shells and a note.”

“What’s it say?”

Suddenly reminded that I hadn’t actually read the note, I take it out. “It says, ‘Memory Tree.’”
“What’s that?”

“It’s a tree that my dad brought me to all the time.” It was the only time he ever spent with me. “It’s just on the other side of the farm. Come on.”

We walk across the huge field in total silence. I tried to focus on anything other than my parents’ death, but when you are walking through a field of rocks, there’s really nothing else to think about. A single tear rolls down my cheek as I remember Mom’s face with horribly empty eye socket staring at me with a look of pure horror. Why did this field have to be so expansive?

I remember back to my childhood when my dad and I would travel across the field to the Memory Tree. Back then, I complained about how long this walk was too. My dad never liked my incessant whining and would calm me down by playing games. First he tried I Spy, but since there are only rocks and clouds to look at that game never went anywhere. So then we played the quiet game. He always bragged about how he was the world champ. Why would I think any different? He always crushed me.

We finally make it to the small patch of barren trees on the far side of the rock plantation. One tree, taller than the rest still has rusty orange leaves. “Welcome to the memory tree.” I announce substantially less enthusiastic then I meant.

“Why is it called the memory tree?” Jet asks.

“I don’t know. My dad never told me… but there has to be a reason Mom would send me here.” I look all around the tree searching for anything that is off. Then I spot it, a hole near the base of the tree. I reach my hand slowly into the hole preparing for an attack by whatever creature might be living in it. Instead, I find a box.
It is a brown cardboard box. The only thing usual about this box is its size. The box is rather large. In fact, I didn’t think there was this much room in the hollowed out tree. I slowly took the lid off the box, both excited and solemn, for this was my mother’s dying gift. The inside of the box is mostly empty for being such a big box. It contains the family’s single barrel shotgun, a few voice recordings, and most interesting of all was a smaller decorated box containing four pearly white spheres. Memory orbs.

Figures. My parents’ gifts to me were a crappy shotgun, four memory orbs which can only be used by unicorns, and a Stable-tec set of recording which I cannot use without a PipBuck. Wait, I did have a PipBuck. The adventurer lying by the side of the road had one! I put all of it in my bag, thinking that I should honor my parents’ last request and set back to the adventurer.

“You can go back to your farm, if you feel like it. I need to figure out what these say,” I say to my friend.

“Oh. Okay.” He sounds disappointed. “It’s just… It sounds like you are going to do something exciting and…” His speaks really slowly. “I was wondering if I could come with you.”

Maybe Jet is my friend after all, “Great! I was going to go back to that adventurer with the PipBuck. You go back to your house and get supplies. We’ll meet in town center before we leave.”

|><|----------|><|

“It’s gone!”

I had run straight body to the adventurer’s body, but the PipBuck wasn’t there. Not only was his PipBuck gone, but his entire leg. Someone must have torn off his entire leg to get that device. That is just wrong! Although I don’t know how I would have gotten it off, but I certainly wouldn’t have torn off his leg.

And just like that, my adventure is over. I might as well go tell Jet now.

But as I start to walk off, I hear a small crack in the woods next to me. I turn just in time to see a lone mare galloping away.
With my plans successfully ruined, I decided to follow her.

“Wait!” I yell after her.

She quickens her pace and I have to sprint not to lose her.

“Hold up! I just want to talk to you.”

I keep chasing her for a minute or two, yelling at her until finally, she stops to take a breath. She seems to accept that I have caught her. I catch up to her. “I just wanted to know whether you saw anypony messing wi-” She gives a hard buck to my windpipe. Unable to breathe, I collapse on the ground, staring right at her.

She’s has yellow coat and a white mane. Her cutie mark is covered on this side by a first aid box. Her expression is not one of fear like I expected, but one of amusement. She tricked me!

“Brick, Stammer, he’s down.” From behind trees appear two ponies. One was a large Red colt with no mane and a cutie mark of a brick hitting a pony in the face. I’m assuming this one was Brick. The other was a dumb looking colt that was much smaller than Brick. He had a cutie mark of a toolbox.

“M-my n-name is Hammer,” he managed.

“Whatever. Brick, would you like to do the honors?”

The big one just grunted and walked over to me. I am still trying to breathe. He stood right by my head and reared back, about to crush my skull. I close my eyes to brace myself.

Crack!

At first, I think the sound was my skull being split into a million pieces. Then, realizing how dumb that was, I open my eyes to look around. Brick’s body lies right next to my face. Where his head should be there is a bloody mess. The mare and Stammer are nowhere to be seen.

Having regained the ability to breathe, I slowly get up and take cover behind a tree. I realize that there must have been a sniper and if I wasn’t careful, I could be its next victim. I hide there for what seems to be hours, but was more likely only a minute. Then I hear a friendly “Howdy” from the other side of my tree.

Slowly, I creep out into the open to greet the pony who saved my life. Only when I look, instead of a battle-torn veteran with a scar, there is a petite mare with a smile on her face. She is an aqua green unicorn with flowing blue mane. My eyes quickly go to her flank, which has a crosshairs with a harp in the center as a cutie mark. The sniper rifle on her back proves she is the one who saved me, but I still can’t believe it.

She obviously sees my surprise and says, “What never been saved by a mare before?”

“No, I haven’t,” I say dumbly. “I mean, you look so cu-, I mean, innocent,” I try to recover.

She giggles. “You’re a laugh.” She’s she laughs. “What were ya doing chasing that mare. Are ya that desperate?”
I blush. She must get off on making ponies feel uncomfortable. “No, I wanted to know if she had seen something.”
“Seen what?”

I tell her everything that has happen this morning, (sweet Celestia, was it still morning?) and she listens with more interest than I would have expected a complete stranger like her to have. In the end her smile was gone.

“Were your parents good ponies?”

“Yeah,” afraid if I said anymore I would cry again.

“I’m gonna help ya,” she asserted.

“Really? Thanks. I could use all the help I could get.” Just then I remember that I was supposed to meet Jet back in New Appaloosa. “Crap! I have to go back. Want to come with?”

|><|----------|><|

“Jet!”

The obsidian pony has filled his bag to the max; in fact I can see his legs trembling under the weight of his pack. He looks confused as I walk over to him with a mare. “Who’s this?”

“This is…um…” I don’t recall her ever telling me her name.

“I don’t give my name to strangers,” she informs us.

“Then what do we call you?” Jet says cautiously.

“Call me… Staff Sgt. Max Fightmaster.”

“No”

“Alright. How about Enigma?”

“Fine”

“Now onto important business,” I offer getting more and more uncomfortable that my friends aren’t getting along. “I was thinking we could find a way for me to listen to the recordings my parents left me. My plan was to use the PipBuck on that dead adventurers leg, but seeing as his entire leg was torn off I don’t know what to do.”

“Wait, what? His leg got torn off? Is there anything else you forgot to tell me?” Jet is fed up of sudden surprises.

“I almost got killed by a yellow mare and her two henchponies.”

“And I saved him.” Enigma announces proudly.

“See I feel like you should have told me this.”

“Moving on, do either of you have any idea how I can find the people who stole that leg?” I ask, trying not to fight before we even start our quest.

Both ponies standing in front of me shrug. I sigh. Back to square one.

“Okay I guess we should ask those ponies who tried to kill me. Enigma, did you know them?”

“I know the type. They were slavers. They probably thought you were too weak and not worth the walk back to Fillydelphia.” Wow, I never thought I could feel insulted by not being enslaved. “There is a small camp that slavers like to use. We could
go there.”

“Great. Lead the way.”

|><|----------|><|

Small camp was an understatement. I’m not sure this was even qualified to be called a camp. There was one makeshift shelter that could house only one pony and a fire pit that was just a blackened spot on the ground. One pony was lying on the ground near the tent, this was Stammer. I assume the mare was in the tent.

Stammer was fast asleep. It was well past midnight. I snuck up on Stammer. I doubt it would have worked if he wasn’t asleep, but I still did it.

I nudge him with the tip of my shotgun to wake him. He wakes in alarm and tries to let out a scream, but instead he goes into a fit of stammering followed by complete silence. This was going to be easier than I thought.

“Where’s the PipBuck?”

“W-w-w-what P-pipBuck.”

“The one on the blue pony adventurer by New Appaloosa”

“O-oh th-that P-pipBuck. I-it’s a-”

Bang!

Stammer’s head splattered all over my face. I look up to see the yellow mare with the white mane holding a pistol to my face. If she was this close why didn’t she shoot me?

She laughs. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to do that. That colt’s voice annoyed the hell out of me.” The look of shock must look really funny on my face because that’s the second time in the last 24 hours that a beautiful mare laughed at me.

Unable to make sense of the situation, I begin to stutter as much as Stammer did. “Bu-wha-how-why did you do that?”

“I just told you. I hated his voice. Now I hear you’re looking for a PipBuck.”

The mention of a PipBuck breaks me out of shock. “You know of where I can find one?”

“Yes, but that information comes at a price.” Great what now? “I… would like to join your group. I see you have at least two ponies covering your tail and what I did there was abandon the largest force in the Equestrian Wasteland, so having three people with me would benefit me… even if that one seems to be holding the wrong end of the shotgun in its mouth.”

“Deal” She had me at PipBuck. “One more thing, what’s your name?”

“The Name’s Poultice.”

|><|----------|><|

My first day in the Equestrian Wasteland and away from the confine walls of New Appaloosa was pretty successful. I made two friends, only one of which tried to kill me and only came close to dying once. I’d like to see a small gray unicorn beat that… I don’t know why I said that.

Tensions were high as I introduced Poultice to the group, but probably because of exhaustion, the fights didn’t last long. I had volunteered to take the first guard shift.

Eventually, I wake up Jet. Unhappily, he agrees to take the next shift. I lie down on the ground. It’s not very comfortable, but I don’t care. Bliss awaits me. I quickly lose consciousness.

Sleep.

Footnote: Level up!
New perk: Independence - your parents are dead and that sucks, but you finally get to go on that adventure you've always wanted to go on. Survival +10

Chapter 2: Betrayal

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Tales of the Equestrian Wasteland: The Dreamer
Chapter 2: Betrayal

Fear.

I find myself standing in at the end of my parents’ bed. Their eyes and tongues are cut out, and their faces stare blankly into my soul. I start cry in the corner of the room. The house isn’t on fire this time, so I just sit there, crying.

This goes on for what seems like hours before I lift my head. I see my parents sitting up in their bed, blood oozing out of their eye sockets. They start to get up. Thoroughly freaked out I sprint out the door to the kitchen where Jet is standing with a knife in his hoof. He has a crazed expression on his face. “Oh hay no!” He charges at me. A quick sidestep allows me to be able to get make a break for the door.

Looking outside I see I’m on a cloud. Finally, my escape from this world. I step outside expecting my favorite dream to commence, but instead I fall through the cloud. The ground below seems miles away and I’m falling towards it. The ground jumps up to engulf me. As I hit the ground it turns into a funnel. I slide helplessly to the center. I fall for a few seconds through darkness only to arrive suddenly in a pitch black quiet space.

The sun rises to show me sitting in the middle of my rock farm. Am I safe? I stand up and look around. Never before had I ever been excited to be in the middle of my field all alone.

CRACK!

The noise echoes across the field. What was that? Why did it sound so familiar? Unable to place the sound, I take a step forward only to fall flat on my face. My leg gave way. Looking down at my leg I see that it has a hole the size of a quarter in it. Just then the pain hits me.

“MOTHER FU-” I scream at the field, but instead of seeing the empty field, I see all of my friends walking up to me.

“Thank Celestia. I’ve been shot and you got to help me?” The last few words trail off as I take a better look at my companions. They all are trotting up to me with a malicious smile on their face.

“Guys?” I’m starting to panic.

They reach me where they proceed to start stomping me into the ground. Unable to put up a fight, I succumb to their violence. Jet, my longest known friend appears with a big tooth-filled smile on his face as he drives his hoof right into my skull.

|><|-------|><|

What was that? Was that sleep?

I have always known sleep as a way to escape the horrors and hardships of my life, but instead that amplified them.

I try to tell myself that it was only a dream, but the possibility of it actually happening is too upsetting to ignore and in the darkness all alone, it’s the only thing to think about.

I look around for anything to distract me. Jet fell asleep on guard duty. Remind me never to trust him at guard duty again.
Trust. In order to survive, I have to trust my friends, but I can’t in fear that they will stab me in the back. I don’t even know these people! But that’s crazy. I slept in front of these people and they didn’t kill me. Or are they just biding their time?

|><|-------|><|

“Wow, you look like Hell.” Poultice informed me.

“Thanks, just the pick me up I needed.” In fact, I had not slept at all that night. I was too worried about what my “friends” might do. “Speaking of me needing something, you said something about knowing where to find a PipBuck.”

“In good time. But now, breakfast. I saw a small caravan pass by here while you were sleeping. I was thinking we could go in showing off our guns and force her to give us some food.”

Words could not express my disgust with this plan. So Jet helped me, “No. Bucking. Way.”

Enigma offered another plan. “Maybe, we could buy some food from the caravan. I do happen to have a few caps.”
Jet’s ears perked at the mention of money. “Really?” He paused before awkwardly continuing, “How much?”

“Not much just five hundred caps,” she said nonchalantly.

“Woah, with that kind of cap-age we could buy a nice zebra carbine,” Poultice marvels.

“Yes, but right now we’re getting food. So, vamoose.”

|><|-------|><|

After we piled our money together, we had a total of 623 caps. So after paying for enough food to last us a few days, we still had a lot left (“580” Jet informed me). It was enough to replace the crappy single barrel shotgun for the best gun in the caravan’s wares, a 10 millimeter pistol. Having bought that and a respectable amount of bullets, we still had 534 caps.

Now that breakfast was done, I needed to know where I could find this PipBuck. When I asked Poultice about it, she spun around in a circle pointed in front of her and said, “This way.” I was starting to think she didn’t know, herself, but I didn’t have any other plans. So, we set off. I made sure to bring the rear. I couldn’t have one of those ponies behind me.

|><|-------|><|

A lone figure stands less than 25 feet away.

Yet even with the proximity, I cannot identify what it is. It looks loosely like a pony, but instead has huge forelegs and seemingly no snout. Its skin is stretched tight against the muscles in its forelegs and neck. It has no lips, making it seem like it is always snarling. Its proportions are completely off.

“Super mutants,” Poultice says, answering my unasked question. “Best to kill first, ask questions never.”

She fires three shots from her rifle in quick succession right into its skull, killing the beast.

I go over to loot the body. It was holding a sledgehammer in its mouth. The weapon is heavy and impractical. Melee weapons are terribly useless anyways, so I leave it.

Jet stares at it suddenly realizing he has no weapons. “Um Ic, can you carry some of my stuff. I need that sledgehammer.”
“That piece of crap? No, no, no, no, I will not let you waste your bag space on that. Here have my shotgun.” The pistol is a more versatile weapon anyway.

“Really? Thanks.”

I stare back at the repugnant beast, lying on the ground. It is actually easier to look at without its head. “I have a feeling we are going to see a lot more of these.”

|><|-------|><|

Two hours of uneventful walking followed. We saw a few more of these super mutants, but we kept quiet enough that we snuck right past them. I am bored out of my mind. For some reason I thought that becoming an adventurer would be, I don’t know, adventurous? But instead, it is long walks interrupted by avoiding conflict.

Mostly just to relieve the boredom I ask Poultice about super mutants. She responds with an angry, “Buck off.”

So I trot over to the only other knowledgeable pony in our group, Enigma.

“What’s the deal with super mutants?” I ask her.

Her face hardens before saying, “What’s there to say? They are ponies who have been through a combination of radiation and taint and because of that have lost most of their brains. They’re not as gone as zombies, but still aren’t ponies.”
“What does that mean?”

“It means that they can still use their brain to speak, shoot, and even devise simple plans, but they have lost the ability to control their emotions, or should I say emotion.”

“Which is that?”

“Rage”

“Well, why don’t we shoot them?”

“They like to hunt in packs, so if we shoot one we risk upsetting the pack. You saw how it took three shots to the head to kill it. And that was just a drone. There are others that have thicker skin and even some with the ability to use more powerful weapons like battle saddles.”

That shut me up. A super mutant using a minigun. Just the thought of that made me scared.

|><|-------|><|

“What is that?”

“The Stable-Tec Regional Production Office” Poultice reads off the sign standing no more than four feet away.

“Oh, right.” I blush at my inability to read a sign. Trying to cover my embarrassment, I say “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know. I’ve past by this place a few times, but I never went in. I just figured that since this says Stable-Tec and that is the same as the company that makes PipBucks.” Wow, and here I thought she was just leading us in a random direction.

We walk over to the door. It seems like the only part of this entire building that isn’t falling apart is the door. The ceiling is sagging. The walls are crumbling. The windows are overgrown with plant life, but the door looks as if it was made yesterday. This is probably because of magical enchantments on the door. I look at the door. It is a giant gear fit perfectly in a gear-shaped hole in the wall. In fact, I don’t even see how it could open. A quick look at it shows that it is locked. A single terminal is attached to the wall. The monitor is completely smashed probably due to somepony’s frustration at his own inability to hack it.

“Yep, it’s broken,” Jet points out the obvious. “How are we gonna get in?”

I scowl at Jet for voicing the question already on everyone’s mind. But still, how are we going to get in? The computer is smashed so there was no way to get access through that. The windows are all covered with wired glass and the many openings were all filled with large vines pushing their way into the building. Why are the plants so eager to get in? Finally, there is a small section of the wall that had collapsed leaving an opening large enough for a pony to get into. However, it’s three stories high and unless one of us has been hiding wings, there is no way up there.

Unless…

|><|-------|><|

“Oh no. Nononononono. I am not gonna be thrown from a tree.” Jet was emphatically against my plan.

“Come on. It’s simple. All you have to do is climb up the tree. I’ll pull back the rope which you are going to tie on the tree. Then I’ll shoot you across the ten-foot gap between tree and the building where you will land in the crevice barely big enough for a pony into the inside of a mysteriously locked building.” Now that I said it aloud I am beginning to understand his problems with my plan.

“That is the worst plan ever.”

“Poultice, Enigma, care to back me up?” By this point I am just trying to salvage a little bit of my pride.

“I’m sorry honey, but that plan sucks more than Nightmare Moon at making night eternal.” My heart sank with those words.
Enigma thinks I’m an idiot.

“Yeah. I mean, those trees are dead, they probably won’t even bend,” Poultice added.

“Really? That’s your problem with the plan? How about everything is wrong with it?” Ouch.

Seeing that this plan was bringing the nightmare of all my friends betraying me to life, I conceded. “Do any of you have any better ideas?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Enigma boasted. “That hole looks to be about twenty feet up, far out of reach by any… normal method.” She stares at me when she says this. I blush again because of my stupidity. “So my plan is simple. We pile up the debris into steps so we can reach it.”

We take all the parts of the building that have fallen off and pile them up. We also take a felled tree and put it on top. However we are still six feet away from the opening.

“Great we still can’t make it” Jet states.

“Then we will have to use somepony as a step” Enigma explains, rather annoyed that her plan didn’t work perfectly. She thinks for a bit. “Okay. Ic and I will go in the building and go around to the entrance and open it from the inside. Jet, you will be the step and Poultice, you guard him while we open the door.”

“Why do I have to be the step?” Jet whined

“I don’t much like you”

|><|-------|><|

The dank interior of the building is much the same as the exterior. The walls are water damaged and crumbling. The room is a corner office that looks like at one point had a fantastic view into the forest. Now the only thing you could see is the blackened twigs we call trees and a spritebot buzzing along.

We walk into through the door. The next room is a large room with the same boring white walls, asbestos-covered ceilings and boxed cubicles that you would normally find in an office. However something is weird. The vines I saw outside are growing over the entire floor. But I guess that makes sense. They were pouring in through the windows so the fact that they are inside is not surprising.

It is still dark and if we were ever going to find our way to the entrance, we are going to need light. Neither Enigma nor I have a light on our leg so we need to find a light switch. It’s too dark to simply scan the walls, in fact the only reason I could see at all is because of the hole in the wall in the room behind me.

“Oh, a-doy,” Enigma says as she facehoofs, “unicorn.” She focuses her magic to hold up her weapon, a Barrett 50 cal. sniper rifle. It looks sleek and in good condition. I look at my 10 millimeter pistol. It is horribly beaten up and not nearly as impressive. And I haven’t even used it yet!

The light pours over the room coating it in a dull layer of gold, giving it an even spookier vibe. The next thing I notice is that the vines not only crawl along the floor, but also creep up the walls, covering the windows. That certainly explains why it is so dark, but makes me wonder. What caused the vines to grow all over the room?

I shove that to the back of my mind. I have to focus on getting the door open and that means getting downstairs. “This way.” I lead Enigma to closest corner of the building, hoping to find the stairs. Instead there is an unmarked door. I try the handle. “Damn, it’s locked.”

We begin to trot the opposite direction when I get an idea. “Wait, I wanna try something.” I walk back to the door, stopping two feet away from it. I look it over. Yeah, this is going to work. I walk backwards a few paces before sprinting at the door, spinning around at the last second and giving a hard buck straight to the center of the door.

Smash! The door gives breaks open. Or rather, it breaks apart smashing to a hundred little pieces strewn about the room. The door was very weak, but I guess two hundred years will do that to a door that looked like it was originally pretty flimsy. The room itself is a small dank office just like the one we entered the building from. There is a working terminal on the desk in the center of the room and a few cabinets in the corner of the room.

“I can’t believe no one else has thought of that before.”

“Well, the main entrance has been closed, so no one has had the chance,” Enigma says condescendingly. Great, I’m being an idiot again in front of Enigma.

I flip the light switch, but nothing happens. I trot over to the terminal. There is a small light flashing. The label explains that this means insufficient power. Darn. There is a small safe hiding underneath the desk. I try to open it, but predictably it is locked. Note to self: learn how to pick locks.

“Oh well. I guess we should let the others in now.”

|><|-------|><|

BEWARE THE HYBRIDS.

The message was written on the wall opposite to us in huge drawn out letters. The letters got smaller and closers to the ground as the words progressed. By the end, the letters had fallen to ground, landing near a pony’s skeleton. I felt sick as I realized the pony had written it in his own blood.

This floor is disturbing. The last one was peaceful; a little weird at first, but it just seemed like everyone had gotten up and left. With cubicles set up and ready to work, it felt safe, as if the bombs never went off. But this floor was completely different. The cubicles had been torn apart and there were long dead ponies strewn about everywhere.

“Stay alert,” Enigma said. “There might be something down here.”

We creep around the corner. The rest of the room looks the same. Nothing is moving, so we assume the “hybrids” must have left, however the bodies on the floor remind us of the seriousness of the situation.

I take a harder look at these pony skeletons. They are concentrated at the window, as if they were staring at something when they died. And they all had holes right through the top of their heads, all in the same spot. The vines had grown through their ribcages and into their skulls, exiting through the hole. Plants have no respect for the dead.

I realize that I am searching through the pocket of a dead unicorn’s clothes while thinking that. I realize that I am doing the same thing. I shake that thought. After all, I need to do this to survive. I find nothing useful, until I reach the pony who had been writing the message on the wall. I search his pockets and find a voice recorder with a recording in it. The recorder looks long broken, but the recording itself looks pristine, being inside the recorder for protection. Man, I wish I had a PipBuck.

“All clear,” Enigma says. Oh yeah, I was supposed to be on high alert. “Whatever killed these ponies is long gone.”
She stares at the massage on the wall. “What do you think the hybrids are?” I ask her.

“They could be super mutants. I mean these ponies have been dead for a while, probably right after the bombs went off. Super mutants do look a bit like they have been fused with a beast so…” She sounds so confident. I should trust her opinion. Trust. That brings memories of my nightmare back. I shudder a bit.

She notices, “What’s wrong?”

I shrug, trying to play it off, “this place just feels so… cold.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Every time I get a glimpse of pre-apocalypse life, I get the same way.” She stops talking then shakes it off, saying, “Come on we have to let your friends in.”

|><|-------|><|

The ground floor is just as dark and covered with vines as the last two. There are bodies littering the floor just like the floor above it. The only difference being that they weren’t huddled around the windows. There was a small reception desk in the middle of the room where a skeleton of a pony sits in front of a terminal.

We do a quick sweep of the room, remembering to keep my guard up this time, where we find no threats.

I jump back to the terminal, anxious to see what is on it. Unlike the terminal upstairs, this one has a full battery. To my joy it is happy to give its secrets freely. There are three entries, the first of which says “Open Vault-Tec Vault Door.” I quickly click that button before reading the other two entries.

There is a loud hissing noise as the door slides out of its slot and rolls open.

My cheery-faced friend pokes his head in. “Yay! I knew you could do it, Ic.”

“As if! You were whining ever since they went in,” Poultice says following him in through door.

I wasn’t whining. I was complaining.” I smile at the sight of my friends. There is no way this group could stab me in the back.
Now ensured that they are safe, I check the other two messages: one labeled “New Project!” and one labeled “defective supply.” I click on the first one which says:

4.13.77

The big ponies up at corporate have assigned us a new project, to work on underground plant growth. Apparently, they have given this assignment to all offices to get many creative solutions. What does this mean for you? It means we will have a building-wide meeting to discuss this tomorrow at 8:00 A.M. so don’t be late.

Signed,

Mellon Shimmer

This must be what the vines on the ground were. I click on the next one.

6.7.77

I know a lot of rumors have been spreading so I will clarify things. The rumble you all felt yesterday was in fact the factory downstairs malfunctioning again, but there was no explosion this time. Instead, the factory for some unknown reason started to speed up and put too little energy in the spark batteries it was making before sealing them. Technicians from headquarters will be in tomorrow to repair it so look your best. As such, the factory will not be running for the next couple of days so those of you who work the line can take the next two days off.

Furthermore, the corporate big shots up in headquarters did not want to ship a defective group so we will be replacing the one in our offices with the defectives (you can’t just throw them away). That being said, as a backup in case the defective batteries fail, we will be hooking up the network to the generator in the basement. So you don’t have to worry about the
computers crashing in the middle of a project.

Signed,

Mellon Shimmer

That explains why the computer upstairs didn’t work, while the computer down here does. It’s funny how the wasteland likes to explain your misfortunes after you have them.

“Hey guy, you’ll never guess what I just…” I look up to see no pony there, “…found.” I knew I shouldn’t trust them. They’ve gone and abandoned me.

“What was that, Ic?” Jet say, walking back around a corner.

“Where’s Poultice and Enigma?”

“Looking at the map.”

I follow Jet to the map. Like I suspected there were three floors and a basement. The basement contained three rooms, the factory, the research wing, and the generator room. I wanted to search through each of the rooms because they seemed like they were the most important.

“We’ll go to the generator room first. I’m tired of seeing only by Enigma’s horn.”

|><|-------|><|

The basement consists of a short hallway with three doors: one to the left, research, one at the end of the hall, the factory, and one to the right, the generator room. We go into the room on the right.

Unsurprisingly, in the generator room, there is a generator. It takes up about three quarters of the small room, leaving a pony wide gap to the left and right to access the machine. There is a single terminal sitting at the front of the machine. It, like the one upstairs, is off, with the blinking light. Why would they waste electricity to tell you that there isn’t enough electricity? It seems to me that that is unneces- “WOAH!”

I fall on my face. In the dim light and my thoughts I completely missed the fact that there are no vines in this room. I had just assumed they would be everywhere.

“Watch the step,” Enigma says cheerily as I pull myself back up.

“Focus you two,” Poultice says. “You can flirt with each other after the mission.”

I blush, but Enigma, unfazed says, “Calm down, Poultice. We searched this place from the top down. Besides these vines, it’s empty.”

“Fine, but still let’s get this generator on, search this place, and get out. There’s something of about this place.”
We flip the on switch. It sputters a bit before eventually roaring to life. The lights flicker on with the terminal.

Curious, I look walk over to the terminal. It has the same two messages as the one upstairs along with two more. They were named “Exciting Competition” and “Unforeseen Complications.” I open the first one which reads:

10.10.77

So you all know that I got a free PipBuck from headquarters. That is why you had no boss yesterday. Well, they told me that it sticks little needles into my skin to monitor my health. I can’t stand needles.

So I had a great idea. Since I cannot use it, I’ll give it to one of you. The next employee of the month will get my PipBuck. So everypony start kissing my ass.

PS. I had a safe installed in my office so don’t even try to take it.

Signed,

Mellon Shimmer

That must have been that room, where I kicked down the door before. I am getting excited. A PipBuck is in this building. I jump out of my seat, exclaiming, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

The quizzical stares of my friends prompt me to say, “PipBuck, upstairs” before sprinting out of the room.
I dash up the stairs in a dash, not caring if my friends are following me. I need that PipBuck. I run through the main hall and climb the stairs. The lights make it so much easier to traverse the lumpy vine-covered ground. I make it all the way to the third floor with haste; after all I had just cleared this entire building on the way down.

I am running through the cubicles when I my hooves slip out from under me. I fall flat on my face for the second time in five minutes and let me tell you, experience does not make the pain less.

I look back rubbing my snout. What did I slip on? The only things on the ground are more vines.

Oh well. I have a PipBuck to scavenge. I turn and trot more carefully to the door which I had knocked down, before.
From this angle I can see that the terminal has been turned on, drawing power from the generator.

Giggling crazily, I march over to the terminal, “Come on PipBuck.” Damn, it’s locked.

“No,” I will not let my chances of getting a PipBuck be ruined this easily.

I examine the screen. It kindly tells me I have three tries to find the password. I have no idea what it could be. I stare at the screen as it stares back at me. I look at the words closely

”User: Mellon Shimmer,
Password:__________
You have 3 tries left.”

In a fumble attempt to guess it, I type in password. ”Incorrect.” Darn. Well that would be a dumb password.

“Alright focus,” what do I know about Mellon Shimmer. She has a dumb name, but that’s not going to help me. I try to remember the three messages about her. The first one was about underground plant growth. The second was about defective batteries. The third one was about the PipBuck. What did they have in common?

I stare at the terminal itself this time. It is a regulation terminal, with its short screen, monitor encompassing the entire CPU, and its keyboard built in. The logo in the top right corner of the monitor simply says: Stable-Tec™. Stable-Tec. Stable-Tec! That’s it! Each message complained about corporate, using that exact word. Corporate has to be the password.

I type that in. Wrong still.

”User: Mellon Shimmer,
Password:__________
You have 1 try left.”

With nothing else to do, I stare at the screen for a whole minute. I can feel it suck the soul out of my body, taunting me with the perfect prize, but not giving me the answer. Eventually I get so frustrated I flip the entire desk.

I stand there fuming over the now broken monitor. “Screw you password.”

In my rage I almost don’t notice a small note attached to the bottom of the desk. It read: tr0ub4dour. No. Bucking. Way. The password was on the bottom of the desk the whole time!? And I destroyed the terminal!

Fuck me all the way to Sascanterwan!

Staring at the broken torture device, my resentment rises. The faint flashing light stares me down. All the pain this machine has caused me and even broken, it doesn’t have the reverence to stop taunting me.

The light. Maybe the machine is not broken. I had disconnected the computer from the wall in my rage, so the “insufficient power” light came on. But that couldn’t happen unless the computer still worked.

I rush back over to the terminal picking it up and bringing it back to the wall and plugging in the cord. By my guess it would bring up the login screen immediately so I typed in tr0ub4dour and hit enter. Again I have to assume that it worked and that unlock safe was first.

I hear a creaking noise. I look up at the doorway. Nothing’s there.

I hit enter again and I hear the most satisfying sound ever, a click as the safe unlocks.

There’s that creaking noise again. But still nothing’s at the doorway.

I open the safe and there sitting in pristine condition is the sought after PipBuck. I pick it up. It’s a special edition PipBuck with the inscription, THE BOSS 8/10, on the side. Other than that it looks the same as a regular PipBuck only bulkier, very fitting of The Boss.

I look up and there is a smiling face staring back at me. “Oh, Celestia!” I jump from both surprise and familiarity. I put the PipBuck in my bag.

“What’s up Jet?”

He just smiles back, staring at me. “Okay, that’s getting creepy.”

He says nothing. Instead he raises a hoof.

“Jet, what are you doing?”

He strikes his hoof out and hits me right in the face with a ton more force than I thought could be possible from him. It knocks me down. He moves over to body and raises his hoof again. I try to move, but my I now have a splitting headache.
“Wh-What are…” I say groggily.

He pounds my head again. I can’t take any more of this. As I slowly drift to blackness, I look at Jet to see that horrible smile on his face.

My best friend just betrayed me, but I’m not angry. I’m not disappointed either. There’s only one emotion I have as Jet rears back for a third blow.

Fear.

Footnote: Level up!
New perk: Terminal Technician - you have a natural knack for computers. All you have to do is throw one across the room and it tells you its secrets. +10 science

Quest perk: PipBucking -You are a real adventurer now, with a real PipBuck. You have gained all the abilities of the PipBuck, including bag organization and a radio. However you do not have access to the more crucial features, such as, S.A.T.S. and E.F.S.

Chapter 3: Tales of Possessed Ponies and Murderous Plants

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Link to Google Docs

Fallout Equestria: The Dreamer

Chapter 3: Tales of Possessed Ponies and Murderous Plants

Redemption.

I awake to find myself lying in a dark room. I can feel vines beneath my body. So I’m still in the building. It’s too dark to see the walls of the room; in fact I could not be sure I was even in a room.

“Hello?” I call out. There is a faint echo, so I’m definitely in a room and a rather large one at that. I wait for a reply, but none comes.

Shakily, I force myself to stand up, but I collapse after only a few seconds. Why is that? I can vaguely remember getting hit in the head… by Jet. My best friend. That really hurt, and I don’t just mean my head being crushed. Being betrayed by your best friend really depresses a pony.

I try again to stand and this time I am able to remain standing. I pace a bit before again collapsing backward from the effort.

I try to remember what happened before Jet knocked me out. I was angry at a computer for some reason. Then, I picked something up and put it in my bag. What was it? Argh! Why was this so difficult?

“Fine. I’ll just check my bag for it,” I think aloud. I suddenly realize how light my back feels. My bag is missing along with the, er… thing.

Just then, the whole room lights up red, making the room look demonic. Finally able to get a glimpse of the room, I see there are various tools sitting on a table and a chair with constraints on the hoofrests and hind leg rest. There is a pony skeleton hung limply in the bindings. Blood is covering the seat. I don’t even want to know what went on here. There is a heavy metal door across from the chair.

I try the door. It’s locked. It would never be that simple. I search around the room for another method of egress. There are no other doors or windows. Actually, there might be, but vines cover all the walls.

I lie down. It’s hopeless. I am stuck at the mercy of the pony that put me here. I stare at the tile-covered ceiling (It has holes in it) and casually wonder why it doesn’t have vines covering it. I blink and suddenly there are vines there.

I sit up startled, but before I can think about it more, I hear faint hoof steps from the other side of the door. Whoever put me in here has come back to do whatever Luna-forsaken thing he’s done to the other ponies he put in this room.

I rush over to the table of tools to see if I can use anything to protect myself from the unknown demon on the other side of that door. I reach to grab a particularly dangerous looking tool with three blades that spin and a drill in the center, but it flies away as if it were afraid of my touch.

Suddenly, I am hoisted up into the air by something grabbing my left hind leg. I reach out for something to grab on to, but with hooves, it is rather difficult. I am now completely off the ground, suspended by what appears to be one of the vines covering the ceiling. My suspicions are confirmed when many more vines latch on to my body. They wrap around my body and before long I am wrapped in a cocoon of vines.

The pony on the other side of the door just made it to the door. He opens the door slowly before walking into the room. He is dressed entirely in scrubs. I can’t see any part of his body except for his eyes. Those eyes, so full of malicious intent, stare back at me, hanging upside-down from the ceiling.

He reaches over to the table with the weird tools on it and picks up a tool. It is the same tool I had tried to pick up earlier only it didn’t jump out of his hoof. He brings the horribly spinning blades to my face. He uses a gentle touch as he first pierces the skin. The pain is unlike any other pain I have ever experienced. It’s like my face is caught in a thousand fires. I scream at the top of my lungs.

“Nopony can hear you down here,” the surgeon says, his eyes narrowing and his pupils turning to slits.
“That’s what you think.” I look at the doorway. My friends are standing there, white light shining behind them. “Put him down,” Jet says forcibly.

“I don’t think so. I have grown fond of my patient.” The surgeon turns into a snake and attacks Jet. Wait, what?
With a triple shot my friends strike the surgeon-snake dead. The vines collapse and I fall to the ground. I stand back up to find myself in a field surrounded by my friends. Jet is grinning smugly, Enigma rushes over to give me a hug, and Poultice stands stoically. I can’t help having a feeling of pride at my friends. Enigma nuzzles me before planting a kiss on my cheek.

Oh! I get it now. This is a dream.

I wake up.

|><|-------|><|

I awake with a start and a frustrated demeanor. Just as my dream was getting good, it ends.

I glance around. I am lying in a dimly lit room with vines covering the floor. The room seems to stretch on forever in front of me, but the ceiling is pretty low. Large machinery lines the walls to my left and right.

I stand up, feeling a pain in the base of my neck and running down my mane. I collapse falling on my face. I have an odd feeling of déjà vu, like I have already done this before.

I decide that I don’t need to stand anymore. Even in my dream, I had fallen down twice and I don’t want to risk another fall on my face. By the end of this, I may not even have a snout.

I hear faint hoofsteps approaching me. I can see the outline of a pony in the distance. Oh Celestia! It’s Surgeon Snake!

I sprint away, only to fall on me snout… again. This time blood starts flowing out of my nose. Still, I scramble away from the figure coming towards me. I start to hyperventilate as the figure speeds up.

“Calm the buck down. It’s jus’ me,” a familiar voice insists.

“Poultice? When did you become a surgeon?”

“What are you talkin’ about?” She gets close enough to see and I realize that she’s not wearing scrubs nor does she exhibit any evidence of being a snake.

“Oh.” I blush. “Where are we?”

“The factory”

“How’d I get here? Wasn’t I…” I think for a bit. My concussion was not only a part of my dream. “Wasn’t I getting killed by Jet upstairs?”

“Ya mean you don’t remember?” I shake my head and immediately regret it, feeling a little dizzy. “Well, you ran off, excited outta your mind. I told you’re the black one to follow you so you wouldn’t die.” She pauses to admire the irony of the situation. “Then I went to explore the factory with Enigma. There are a buncha spark batteries, but other than that not much
else.” She kicks a battery that’s lying on the floor. “That’s when we heard the crash. Enigma was worried so we chased you upstairs.”

“Where is Enigma?”

“I’m gettin’ there. Calm down,” she says obviously irked by my interruption. “Well, we make it up to the second floor with no problems. Then in the middle o’ the second floor, Enigma went totally ape-shit on me. She turned around and pointed her gun at ma head. She hesitated just enough for me to grab the gun and knock ‘er out with it.

“Then I rushed up the final flight o’ stairs to find you layin’ there on the ground with the stupid one standin’ over you He reared back to kill you so I shot him in the leg. Then I sprinted at him and knocked ‘im out too. Then you got up and I told you alla this.

“Ya came up with a plan, but you only told me to get you to the basement. On the way you looked really shaky like you were gonna fall so we tried to move as fast as possible. But when the vines started attackin’ us, it slowed us down. “

“Wait, vines attacking us?”

“Yeah, the tips of the vines were crawling along the ground to attack us. If it wasn’t for ma armor it would have got me before I realized. I was able to protect you from the vines by pushin’ you outta the way. When we finally got to the basement you passed out and I have been waitin’ for you to wake up for hours.”

I tried to comprehend all of this. Two of my friends turned on us in a crazy rage. Plants started attacking. And the most insane thing, Poultice was being nice. All this crazy stuff was making my head hurt and the concussion wasn’t helping.
But the good news is I had a plan…that I can’t remember. Ugh! This building won’t give me a break.

What would past me do?

I had already succeeded in the reason I had come here for so the objective must have changed. I could have easily chosen to leave this building, so I must have wanted to save the murderous psychopaths I call my friends. But why did I want to come to the basement? I don’t know. Maybe, I needed a million spark batteries.

What else is in the basement? The generator room and the research room. I haven’t been to the research room yet so let’s try there first.

“Okay, here’s the plan…”

|><|-------|><|

The hallway was very aggressive, but we managed to make it into the research room without a scratch.

The research room is a small room with two desks in it, each of which has a working terminal on it. The room doesn’t look big enough for two ponies to work in. It was only the size of one and a half of those cubicles upstairs. A single UV light is on in the corner of the room shining on a dead vine, illuminating the room in a eerie purple.

What was my plan now? Well I might as well read the terminals.

The first terminal is the one next to the dead plant. It was locked. Not wanting another embarrassing situation I search in and around the desk. There are no notes telling the password so I was out of luck. Maybe the other one is unlocked.
I turn around and my snout shoves right into one of the medical boxes on Poultice’s flank. “Hey watch it.” That’s the fifth time I’ve hit my face since coming into this building. Great, it’s bleeding again.
“I hab to geb ober dare,” I say through the blood. We have to skirt around each other to get by, walking in a circle like we’re dancing.

Finally making it to the other side of the room, I check the terminal. Yes, unlocked. There the four company-wide memos that I had seen before, but at the end there are three notes. The first one is labeled “Promotion!” the next one is labeled “What the hay is this?” and finally, the last one is labeled “Blah.” I decide to go in order.

4.15.77

I was the star of the show. During that meeting I was the one to come up with the winning idea. I suggested the idea to enchant plants to grow by fluorescent lights instead of sunlight. I’m so smart that they gave me an entire office to myself and a fancy new title. Head Researcher. Take that everyone! Ha!

Your new superior,
Puffin Chump

Okay that was interesting. I try the next file.

5.15.77

What the hay? I was demoted yesterday. They asked me how much progress I had made in the month since I started. All I said was, “Progress on what?” and they demoted me. They brought somepony from corporate to take my job. He’s supposed to be some genius unicorn or something so he probably won’t be any fun.

The annoyed,
Puffin Chump

Really? Not working gets you in trouble, I would have never guessed. I open the last on.

5.22.77

The genius has been here for a week. He is soooooooooo snobby. I asked him if he saw the hoofball game yesterday, but he’s all like “I don’t watch hoofball, I’m too much of a douche bag to watch hoofball.” Or something like that. Whenever I try to talk to him, he insults my work ethic. What the buck is “work ethic?”

Also he’s really paranoid. Whenever he leaves his computer, he locks it and his password is like 20 letters long, but I figured it out. It’s “I can has daisyburger.” And he calls me the stupid one. At least I knew that in a room this small I could figure out what he was typing for his password.

One more thing, his face is ugly.

The awesome,
Puffin Chump

Puffin Chump may be the stupidest pony ever, but he told the information I needed, the password.

I turned around, slowly this time, to see Poultice staring at the door. “Why haven’t they gotten in yet?”

“What?”

She turns to stare right into my eyes. “Why haven’t the vines gotten in? There’s enough room to slide under the door. Why haven’t they?”

I was dumbfounded. I don’t know why.

“If you ask me it’s because they’re laying a trap.”

|><|-------|><|

The other terminal’s password was, in fact “I can has daisyburger.” Thank you Puffin Chump. This one has a bunch of audio files. Too bad I can’t play any of them.

Wait, I can.

I had completely forgotten about the PipBuck I had found upstairs.

I take it out of my bags and try to put it on, but it is locked. Well it’s a good thing I don’t need to wear it for this. I turn it on.
It shows the Stable-Tec logo while it boots up. Then it has a huge warning message: “WARNING! PIPBUCK 3000 IS NOT CONNECTED TO LIFEFORM. ABILITIES OF MACHINE WILL BE LIMITED.” I hit ignore and connect it to the terminal. It automatically downloads the files to the notes section. A pop-up appears asking “Tutorial?” I, of course, hit yes. It goes on to tell me how if I click a file, it plays it. Imagine that. Then, at the end it tells me that a wireless device called an Ear Bloom is attached to the underside of the PipBuck and can allow me to listen to music without disturbing others.

I flip it over to find that there is one. I take it out. It is a simple device designed to wrap around an ear. With a bit of trouble, I get it in my ear.

I click the first file. A stallion with a scholarly yet somehow still gruff voice starts speaking.

“Date: May 15th 2077

“It is my first day back, after the fiasco with the energy drink got me suspended. The boss assigned me to a new position, head researcher at one of the regional branches.

“This job seems beneath me, but I am content with having a job after those people died.

“I arrived expecting to get less than preferable conditions, but I could not protect me from the hell I was about to go through.

“The manager greeted me as I walked in. She seemed cheery enough. After we got the pleasantries out of the way showed me my office. It was in the basement. They buried me in a basement simply because I made a mistake.

As if that was not enough, the manager told me I had to share the space with a pony that may be the stupidest pony ever to exist. To prove my point, I will say how he greeted me. He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Sup dude, you see the hoofball game last night?’”

I snicker. It sounded funny coming from such an intelligent mouth.

“I asked him what the project was and when he told me, I could not believe my ears. I had to make plants that grow in artificial lighting. I have to do something that complicated with him.

“These next few months are going to be torture.”

Okay that was interesting, but I knew all of that already. I look down the list of the recordings. I notice that the name of each file is the date of the file and an explanation of the recording. The next one was labeled, “5/16 Hell”. The next was labeled,
“5/18 Annoying as (see 5/16).” The next twenty or so have similar names as the first two. However, one about halfway down is labeled, “7/23 BREAKTHROUGH.” I open that file. The same intelligent, yet masculine voice starts to speak in my ear.

“Date: July 23 2077

“He found it!

“The stupidest pony in the world found the spell I’ve been working on for two months in an ancient tome said to be written by a disciple of Star Swirl the Bearded. All he did was go to the library and ask for an old spell book.

“How is this going to look to corporate? Former genius outshined by village idiot. I am never going to become an important pony again.

“Despite this fact, I still cannot help but feel excited about this. After two months of work, we finally have made some progress on making a plant fueled by artificial lighting. Of course, I still have to adapt the spell to my needs.

Even so, I plan to have a test plant ready before the end of next week.”

Again nothing that can help me now.

I glance over at Poultice. She is still watching the door nervously. When she notices that I’m staring at her, she says, “I don’t like it in here. Let’s leave.”

“Why do you hate this room so much?” I ask genuinely amused by the lack of logic in her behavior.

“I...will tell you after we get outta here” She drops her head low. “It’s not a very good story.”

What could make Poultice, a pony I have already pegged as emotionally repressed, depressed? Whatever it is, she doesn’t want to talk about it, so I leave it at that.

We head back to the factory.

|><|-------|><|

“Date: August 1, 2077

“Further studies into the spell’s effects show great predictability, sustainability, and control.

“The spell made the small vine I had chosen grow in fluorescent light, but it also did something else. It made it stop growing in the absence of light. I acquired an ultraviolet light from the hardware store to experiment on the plant, and I was delighted to discover that the plant goes into a dormant state where the magic inundated spores dissolve, allowing the vine to return to its normal state. That state is of course slowly growing in the presence of sunlight.

“However when put back under the fluorescent lights the spores grew again. This made the plant return to its fast-growing state.

“This plant also grows back quickly when cut, so it is easy to grow enough to support a community.

“Imagine the possibilities! If an apple tree is enchanted with this spell, it would grow back any picked fruit overnight! There would be no more hunger in the world!

“I can honestly say that this project is a huge success. I’m going to go down in history as one of the greatest magicians of all time. I’ll be as famous as Star Swirl the Bearded.”

“Who?” Another voice, presumable Puffin Chump, says.

“Star Swirl the Bearded…father of the amniomorphic spell? He created over two hundred spells!”

“You’re the biggest nerd ever.”

“And you have the mental capacity of a mesohippus.”

“What did you call me?”

“Prehistoric horse… I called you dumb.”

“Oh. Screw you.”

“I’m going to end the recording here to save future me from having to hear the rest of this conversation again.”

“I’m not done talk-”

The recordings before this had very little of importance on them, but this one contains enough information to make up for the lack in the others.

This recording says that when the lights are on, the plant grows. When the lights are off, the plant stops.

“Poultice, I have a plan. We need to turn off the lights.”

“Who made you leader?” Poultice asserts indignantly. “I have a plan of my own. We leave.”

I stare back at her with an expression of disbelief on my face. “Leave?”

“Yeah. The other two have obviously gone bat-shit crazy, and the door has been open this entire time, so why can’t we leave?”

Would it be better just to leave them behind? “No,” I blurt out. “I mean, if you had gone crazy, would you like it if your friends left you in a building without help.”

“I wouldn’t care. I’d be crazy.”

“Well, if there’s a chance to save them, then I am going to try it,” I insist. “Now, back to my plan. The plants will stop trying to attack us when the lights are off, so let’s turn off the generator.”

“You could die from this. You don’t even know if it’ll work.”

“Yeah, but I have to take the chance.”

Poultice lets out an exasperated sigh. “Fine. Let’s go.”

|><|-------|><|

“Date: August 10, 2077

“The plant growth is incredible! Just ten days ago, I performed the spell, and now the plant is growing out into the hallway. The other ponies are getting annoyed, but I don’t care. The spell worked.

“I have spent the last ten days with a perpetual smile on my face. I’m going to be famous!

“Luna has scheduled a plan to come in a month from now to review the spell. I’m going to meet Luna!

“It’s Ironic how they tried to bury me in a cramped basement so I wouldn’t be seen by the public, when here I am getting the most publicity.

“That’s it for today. Don’t be surprised if by tomorrow, I’m famous.”

The hallway is clear, illuminated by the lights, only half of which have burnt out. The vines seem to notice me opening the door, but instead of attacking me they recede back up the stairs. Seeing my chance, we make a break to the door to the generator room.

Just then, a lone silhouette appears at the top of the stairs. As the figure steps into the light, I can see that it is Jet, only not the Jet that I know. His coat has a weird tint to it, as if it is being dyed green over its original black. His mane appears to be made entirely out of grass. His maniacal smile has disappeared, giving way to an amused, if not sinister grin. He does not appear to be crazy anymore, however something still seems off about him.

“Good evening, Icarus,” multiple overlapping voices say from Jet’s mouth. “Are you ready to join us?” Suddenly vines, presumably the ones that had receded before, appear in an arc around Jet’s body. The tendrils, now writhing around
in midair, seem to be protruding from Jet’s body, but that does not make any sense.

“Um…Jet?”

“We were once called this, but now we are one. And soon you shall be too.” Just then the tendrils lashed out at me with a speed I didn’t think possible.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” I scramble to reach the door to the generator. It is only ten feet away, yet the vines are too fast. They’ll reach me first.

Right when I think I’m a goner, Poultice jumps in front of me blocking all of the vines from hitting me. She gets nasty cuts all over her stomach and side, but none of the vines are able to hit me. She had been able to buy me enough time to barely reach the door and slam it shut.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand Poultice. One minute, she is contradicting every word I say and the next, she is diving in front of me to save my life. There is probably some reason why she is so… inconsistent.

But now I have more important things to do, primarily turn off the generator. I walk towards the generator one step before there is a terrible bang on the door that’s protecting me from that horrible demon in Jet’s body.

“Open the door. We need you to assimilate.”

I sprint over to the generator. Where’s that cutoff switch?

The terrible bang of Jet ramming the door thunders through the small space again followed by the roaring multivoice saying, “JOIN US”

The pull chord of the generator is sitting right in front of me, but the switch is not there.

*Thump* “JOIN US.”

“Who the buck designed this machine?”

*Thump* “JOIN US.”

Wait, the terminal! It had an option that I didn’t look at. Maybe that’s the cutoff.

A new sound comes from behind me. It was the splintering of the wood protecting my life. The door can only withstand one more strong blow on its own. “JOIN US.”

I activate the terminal and sure enough at the bottom of the list there is an option labeled, “KILL GENERATOR.” I slam down
harder on that button than I had ever pressed a key before.

A low groan pierces the air as the generator powers down. The lights flicker for a little while until they eventually go out.
Even though the lights are off, the pounding on the door does not stop.

The door swings open with a loud smash. Not knowing what else to do, I slam the door back shut. The door does not shut. The tip of a single vine penetrates the opening of the room. It wiggles around feebly, but cannot reach me. The energy of the vine seems to decrease with time. I can see the vine slowing down. After a few seconds the vine ceases to move altogether.

The pounding on the door does not. Though, the enthusiasm in the voices seems to have gone. Also the pounding seems to have lessened slightly.

*thump* “Join us.” *Thump* “Join us.”

After a few more of these with no success on getting in, I decide to listen to more of the recordings that I had found.

“Date: August 30 2077”

The voice sounds sad this time.

“Today the Puffin Chump cut himself on one of the vines. He had an adverse reaction to the vine. He passed out on the floor afterward.

“The doctors got to him quick enough, but they weren’t able to diagnose his ailment. ‘A cut that small should not have made him pass out,’ they said.”

He lets out a long and drawn out sigh.

“Unfortunately, I think I may know why he passed out. Spores from the vine most likely transferred into his blood stream causing him damage.

“The doctors say he will be fine, but that does not remedy the true shame of all of this. It probably means that I’m going to get fired…again”

He lets out another sigh. Then suddenly his demeanor changes to a happy mood.

“Well the good news is that I get to experiment on the effects of the spores entering the bloodstream until I get fired. Maybe Puffin Chump might actually be used to help people in the future.

“Now where is my scalpel?”

I listen to Jet pounding on my door. Instead of a thump, it is more like a flop against the wall now.

“Join us… Join us… Join… me?”

I hear the sound of a pony collapsing outside my door. I cautiously open the door to find Jet passed out on the floor by my hooves, still with a greenish pelt. Enigma is groaning next to him, cuts all over her. She is obviously not in any condition to walk.

I take a healing potion out of her bag and force her to drink it. She puts up no resistance.

Then I work to get everypony out.

|><|-------|><|

Getting everypony out wasn’t as difficult as I thought. I managed to get Jet up the stairs by dragging him by his leg. He only hit his head a dozen time so that was pretty successful.

Poultice managed to push herself up by this point and helped me get Enigma from the second floor down to the exit. She of course had passed out when the lights went out like Jet did.

We had set up camp only a few yards away from the building. As much as I would like to leave this place and never come back, it is difficult carrying both of those ponies. The camp itself was only the tent we had stolen from the slaver encampment and a single sleeping bag. Poultice is now in the tent, trying to get some shut-eye. She had been up through my collapse and through the entire fight that ensued after my awakening. She deserved the tent.

Velv- sorry Enigma is now sleeping on top of the sleeping bag and Jet is passed out on the ground a respectable distance away.

I had decided to listen to some more of the voice recordings that the mysterious pony left for me. The last few had a bunch of technical jargon that I will never hope to understand, so I take out my ear bloom and instead look over Enigma.

She had transformed in a similar way to Jet. Wherein Jet’s coat had tinted green and his mane turned to grass, Enigma’s coat had also been shaded green, but her mane instead turned into elegant flowers. Blue Lilies to be exact. They are all small and hardly noticeable, except for two which curled around her ears to look like they were given to her by a lover on Hearts and Hooves Day. It is the most beautiful sight in the entire wasteland. She is the most beautiful mare in all of the wasteland.

I let out an audible sigh. She would never go for a stallion like me, a plain gray boring rock farmer. She probably would like a strong bronco to be her special somepony.

I look back to my PipBuck to distract myself from my thoughts. I notice a few messages down that there is an entry titled, “Balefire Bomb: Unforeseen Side Effects.” Intrigued, I start the recording.

The stallion’s voice sounds weary.

“Date: October 23 2077

“They are all dead.

“The tension with the zebras has finally reached the point where the zebras have just blown us all up.

“Now that’s perfectly fine with me. I mean, many of those ponies deserved it, but the bomb has ruined my experiment.

“Although the nearest bomb was in Harmony Falls, a wave of magical energy spread outward. The wave had mostly deteriorated by the time it reached us, so it didn’t catch us on fire. However, the wave did affect my plants.

“I had come upstairs after feeling the explosion underground. I saw that everyone had crowded around the window opposite me to see the explosion, when my benign little plants, all of a sudden, started to attack everyone. It- it was horrifying. After the plants had cut the ponies up sufficiently, the ponies turned on each other, bashing each other’s skulls into the ground.

“The last one alive, the pudgy purple one- what was his name? He was weakened and coming toward me.

“So I ran out of there as fast as I could, trying to get to the basement. Obviously the plants had become, for lack of a
better term, evil and begun to force the ponies to kill each other. I had to pull the plug on the program.

“I don’t know how I made it to the generator room, but I did and I turned it off. That stopped the attacking vines, but I only saved one other pony. He was badly injured, but his superego would not allow him to stop. He has started to use his own blood to mark on the wall. He believes that he can help somepony later to not experience the same fate as he did.

“…My entire life has changed dramatically… I don’t know what to do now…”

My heart goes out to this mystery pony. His entire life got flipped upside down, just like mine did. He lost everyone he knew
and his work. I feel like a wuss, becoming depressed for losing only my parents.

“My parents!” I exclaim, waking Enigma, who was sleeping next to me.

“Wha-huh?”

“Enigma, you’re not crazy!”

“Why would I be crazy?” she says, pushing herself up. The lilies bob during this action. Enigma tries to brush them off her head, but quickly realizes that they are attached to her body. “Eek! What is this?” She groans then collapses on the ground in a fit of dry heaves. I am surprised and confused at the fact that I think that this is really attractive in her. She spends a few seconds recovering before commanding, “Explain now.”

So I explain everything to her, from the killer plants to long dead scientist, from the PipBuck to the spark batteries, from the assault by Jet to the protection by Poultice. I tell her everything in the span of half an hour. At the end she is just dumbfounded.

“So I really tried to kill Poultice?” I nod. “Well that explains the headache.”

“Yeah she hit you pretty hard.”

“Obviously. And what about these flowers hanging around my ears?”

“I don’t know. I guess from that the vine somehow changed your DNA.”

“Does that mean-”

“Yes, you’re part plant now.”

|><|-------|><|

All throughout the time I was explaining everything to Enigma, Jet still remained unconscious. I don’t know how I feel about that. He had gone completely zany. It can’t just all wash out of his system. When he awakes, he could still be homicidal. On the other hoof, he is my best friend and the fact he isn’t awake makes me worried.

Not much I can do about it though. Poultice had drunken most of the healing potions when she had been cut up badly.
Then, Enigma used the rest to get rid of the pain all over her cause by the plant cells all screaming from the lack of artificial light.

I stare down at the food in my hoofs. As appealing as this preservative packed sweet is, I cannot eat any more of it. The stress of the day is overpowering my hunger. I look at the sky. It’s starting to get dark. Time to sleep.

As I lay my head down on the ground, I am almost immediately met with sleep.

But I can’t enjoy it because a familiar voice yells at me, “get up you fat ass! Raiders!”

Enigma floats a log in front of us for cover, while Poultice makes sure her guns are loaded. Enigma puts the log down and magics out her sniper rifle. I, myself, take out my hunting rifle and aim down at the group of four raiders charging at us.
I fire a shot at the closest raider. Dammit, missed. I hear a loud crack to my left and the first raider falls. Fine, I’ll kill the second one. I aim right at his head. I hold my breath and fire again, and miss again.

Enigma’s rifle fires again and the raider no longer has a head. Now this time, I aim at the pony farthest away. I focus as hard as I can and fire. I missed. “Oh, come on!”

I focus again on that pony. I focus a little too hard because I miss the pony whom had snuck around our camp to phalanx us. He lifts his axe up without me noticing. He has every intent to chop my head off. He swings his axe down.

Bam!

I feel blood run down my neck. I turn around to find a raider lying at my feet, a huge hole in his side. I trace the line of the shot back to my best friend holding a sawn-off shotgun in his mouth.

Jet is back.

|><|-------|><|

The battle had not lasted much longer than that. Poultice and Enigma had picked off the final two raiders while I wasted another bullet on the ground. How do ponies shoot these guns holding them in their mouths?

The adrenaline from the battle prevents me from sleeping, so I decide to listen to more of the recordings from the scientist stallion. There is only one left and it does not have a name. Curious about this mysterious recording, I click on the file.

“Date: October 24 2077

“The other pony had died overnight. He never finished his message. It just said, ‘BEWARE THE HYBRI,’ so I finished it for him. It was the least I could do for a pony whose name I can’t even remember.

“There is no more purpose for me to be here. I am leaving the building and locking it. No one will be killed by my experiment again.

“I guess I’ll go to the closest other branch to us, the one in Mareacle City. Hopefully it wasn’t bombed.

“Well goodbye Hell number 1. I don’t know why I am making this recording. It’s probably just to prolong the time before I step out into Hell number 2.

“Well, I have to leave now while it’s still light out. Although with all the cloud cover it’s getting hard to tell. The pegasi really need to do something about that.

“Oh- I just realized something. I have never said my name in any of these recordings. So here goes:

“This is Endogen saying ‘goodbye and good riddance’”

Endogen was a bitter pony when everyone was alive, but his last act before leaving the building was to help somepony complete his last wish. Maybe he had finally warmed up to people.

With closure, I manage to close my eyes.

I think about what has happened in the last few hours. First Poultice had redeemed herself in my eyes when she saved my life after disputing my plan. Then, Jet had redeemed himself by saving my life after trying to kill me. Finally, Endogen had redeemed himself for showing kindness after hating everypony.

I fell asleep easily after that with one heartwarming idea stuck in my mind.

Redemption.

Footnote: Level up!
New perk: I see my friends - You realize that not having friends sucks. You don't know why, but friends make you stronger +1 strength when you are with friends, -1 strength alone

Chapter 4: Auxois Mysteries

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As always, here's the link to Google Docs

Fallout Equestria: The Dreamer
Chapter 4: Auxois Mysteries

Mysteries.

I kick at the rocks on the ground. I might as well bash these two together. It comes by habit to me. It is such a mundane skill that I have, but it seems to impress other ponies. All you do is pick one up in each hoof and smash them together, but everypony seems to think it’s awesome. Don’t get me wrong. I love the attention, but it just doesn’t seem very special.

Neither of these rocks had gems in it. They just crumbled to dirt.

“Oh well,” I say with an apathetic sigh.

I pick up another two, but I don’t feel like smashing them. When this happens, I like to make games to become more interested. This time I throw one high in the air, wait for it to reach the top of its arc, before throwing the second one after it.
They collide in midair, exploding in a shower of dust and diamonds.

I hear a slow clap from behind me, as I bend down to pick up the gems. I turn to see my father approaching me.

Wait, what? “Father, what are you doing out here?”

My father has a weird look in his eyes. Is that compassion? “I need to talk to you.”

“Okay,” I say rigidly.

“Not here, at the memory tree.”

Suddenly, we’re at the memory tree. “What do you want?” I say with a tone that is ice cold.

This throws my dad off guard. “I wanted you to know that I ne-” He chokes up a bit. “I never meant to hurt you.” He starts sobbing hysterically. I have never seen my dad like this. I want to go over and hug him, but I am too stubborn to stop hating him. “I only did it because I didn’t want to get too attached to you. I thought that if- if I treated you badly, it wouldn’t be as bad when you were taken from me.”

“What?”

“But I judged him wrong. He didn’t take you, he took me.”

Suddenly I remember. “You’re dead!”

“Eeyup, but don’t worry. I left you in good hooves.”

“Whose hooves?” but by this point he begins to fade. “What do you mean judged him wrong? Who’s he?” I leap forward and put to grab him with my forelegs.

“Listen to the recordings. They will explain everything.” His voice fades off at the end.

“Why’d you die? Tell me!” But he’s gone and I fall flat on my face. It was my dad’s last encounter with me and he leaves me in pain and with so many questions.

I am left lying on the ground to think. Who was my dad?

I wake up.

|><|-------|><|

“Good morning!” Enigma says in a very chipper voice.

“You’re awfully peppy today.”

“Just look at me!” She had changed overnight back to her original aquamarine color. Her mane could now be recognized as actual hair, instead of flowers. One of the larger flowers still remains, looking as if it were simply tucked behind her ear. She seems to have a luster glowing around her body and I can’t help, but gape.

“You look beautiful,” I say in a trance. “I mean, you look almost back to normal again.”

“Um, yeah,” she says turning red. “This just happened overnight. Well, not all of it. I cut off one of the flowers this morning.
It just seemed like too much.”

“Did it hurt?”

“See, I didn’t think it would, but it was weird. First, I couldn’t feel the pain at all when I first cut it, but then, it started to bleed and hurt. After I took the health potion, it was fine.”

We seemed to be using a lot of those. “How many do we have left?”

“A couple, but I get what you’re saying. We have to find more at some point.”

An awkward silence ensues. She stares over at the burnt trees, while I stare at the sky. The clouds seem even thinner than yesterday. I can almost see the golden disk through the clouds. I allow my mind to wander as I think of what the sun would be like. I obviously know about it. I’ve heard stories. The sun was said to bring warmth and light to all of Equestria. Now it hides behind the clouds. It’s probably better that way. All the murder, rape, and thievery happening doesn’t deserve light.

“Well I better go,” Enigma said, snapping me out of my thoughts.

“See you later.” She walks off toward the direction of the trees she had just been staring at, leaving me just standing there.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. ‘You look beautiful?’ Why am I so bad at this?

|><|-------|><|

Once everypony else was awake, we had a breakfast, consisting of packaged hay and beans and about three gulps of clean water.

After we finish our meager meals, Enigma asks me, “Where to next, boss?”

I am dumbfounded. Where do we go next? I haven’t listened to the recordings yet so I don’t know.

Seeing my perplexed expression, Poultice steps up to the plate, “I have some… business in the village of Auxois. It’s only an hour’s walk away and they don’t usually attack strangers.” Then she whispers to me, “And it’ll give you some time to get your shit together.”

“So it’s decided. We’ll go there,” I proclaim.

We make it three steps before Jet suddenly realizes something.

“Wait, isn’t your business slavery?”

|><|-------|><|

The hour’s walk is plenty time to listen to my dad’s messages to me. I slip the first small cassette into my PipBuck. I am greeted by my dad’s voice, but not my dad’s voice. It is softer, younger and it sounds happy which my dad wasn’t really known for.

“You were born today, this morning to be exact. This is the happiest day of my life. After your mother had exhibited signs of… illness, I thought I would never have a son. But here you are, as healthy we could have hoped for.

“Now I’d hate to ruin this momentous occasion, but I have some sad news. I will not be here forever, and I don’t have any doubt how I will go out.

“I never should have made that deal with Firesoul. He is a terrible stallion. *sigh* But he paid for the farm and provides the protection from raiders. Well, I wouldn’t have the farm if it weren’t for him.”

“Honey, are you up there? I need help.”

“In a second. That’s your mom calling, gotta go. Just know that I love you already, my little Ic. I can’t bear the thought of leaving you alone in this world.”

*click*

I stop in place. My dad had once been nice? And who was Firesoul and why was my dad so scared of him? My dream had said that everything would be clarified by these recordings, but all they did was prompt new questions.

“Ic, what’s the matter?”

I am snapped out of a stupor for the second time today by Enigma. “Nothing,” I say as I sprint to catch up the rest of the group.

I search through my bag for the other recordings. There are two more. I put in the next one and listen to the sound of my young dad speak to me.

“You spoke your first word today. It was Dada. My heart melted at this. You’re beginning to grow up. It’s hard to imagine that it’s already been a year since you were born. You just make me so-”

*knock* *knock* *knock*

“Hold on, let me get that”

There is silence for a bit, and then the sound of a door opening far away can be heard. Upon opening the door my father becomes nervous.

“F-Firesoul! What are you doing here?”

A gruff voice replies, “Well, I wanted to see how my little investment was doing.”

“Did you- did you have to bring the guards?”

“They’re my insurance. Now, where are those gems?”

“Here, I’m sure you’ll find th-”

“WHAT!? THAT’S IT?!”

“We’ve only had-”

“NO EXCUSES! If you don’t show more gems by the end of the month, Bruiser here will stick that rifle of his so far up your ass, you won’t be able to sit for weeks!”

“Rock farming is not a perfect system. It doesn’t always give you diamonds when you want it.”

“I hear that you have a new son. How’s he doing?”

“Leave my son out of this!”

“Double this by the end of the month or you’ll never see your son again.”

SLAM

*sigh* “Oh, I left the recorder on. Sorry you had to hear that. I have a lot of thinking to do.”

*click*

“Wow.” My dad was involved in some nasty stuff.

“What was that?” My friends had apparently heard my reaction to my dad’s hidden life.

“Does anypony know who Firesoul is?”

Poultice stops so suddenly that I walk right into her. “Firesoul is… a bad pony,” she says quietly before walking again.

I’m not content with that answer. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s done a lot of bad things to good ponies,” she says quickening her pace.

Obviously, she doesn’t want to talk about it, so I let it go. Only, Jet doesn’t seem to understand. “What does that mean?”

“It means that he’s not a pony you want as a friend.”

“Does that mean that he’s evil or just socially awkward?”

“He’s as evil as they come.”

“But-”

Poultice turns and snarls at him.

“Okay, okay, I can take a hint.”

Enigma giggles to herself as I just shake my head.

|><|-------|><|

Auxois appears at in the distance. It seems like a peaceful enough town of about fifty ponies. Ponies are bustling about doing pony things. A few merchants are walking through the town to sell their wares. There is a church, an inn, and even a pub. Overall, it seems like a happy little town.

However, all that joy and activity stops when we walk in. It is as if a magic spell was sent through the entire town taking away their voices.

The silence is broken by Poultice who shouts, “Bring me Puddle Dump.”

The town murmurs for a few seconds before a small pony is thrown out of the pub and onto the street.

He is a grayish blue earth pony with short brown mane. He had obviously drunk a lot of alcohol, as he was having trouble getting up. He fell down four times before finally managing to stand on his own four hooves.

Poultice wastes no time asking him, “Where’s… the thing?”

“What thi- oh you mean the g-,” he says before Poultice shoves a hoof in his mouth.

“Not here. Where’s the inn?”

We go to the inn where we buy two rooms. One is for Enigma and Poultice and one is for Jet and me.

Right now Enigma, Jet, and I are all huddled in my room while Poultice interrogates Puddle Dump. The thing is I need to know what they are talking about. So I make an excuse to leave, “I’m going to go refill our water.”

I crouch by the door in just enough time to hear the intoxicated voice of Puddle Dump saying, “That information comes at a price.”

“Come on, Puddle. We’ve been friends for years.”

“No, I won’t have it. Word is that you’ve gone straight and I can’t have any heroes in my town.”

“Watcha doing?” A soft high-pitched voice says in my ear. I jump so high, you’d think they’d need a new roof. I fight the urge to run away and instead look at the pony that startled me. She’s a red unicorn with horribly straight pink hair. Something just doesn’t sit right with the hair. It should be poofy or something.

“Oh me, nothing. I was just… sitting on the ground with my head against this door.” As if there’s nothing weird with that.

“Why were you doing that?”

“I…was…tired.” What?

“You know ponies usually sleep in the room, not on the room, right?”

“Well in my way, people notice you more. My name’s Icarus. What’s yours?”

“Cardinal Cross.”

We spend the next fifteen minutes just talking. I talk about my adventure so far, and she talks about her life in Auxois. Somehow, we end up talking about her religion.

“We believe that Celestia and Luna are not actually goddesses, but powerful prophets sent from the Creator. Only, at one point along the way, Celestia and Luna forgot their main task. Instead, they took up the greedy position of both monarch and God,” she explains.

“Really?”

“What? It makes as much sense as actual god-creatures living on Earth.”

“Celestia and Luna control the moon and the sun. That seems pretty god-like to me.”

“Then explain how the sun and presumably the moon keep rising and falling after the princesses are long dead. Furthermore, how could a goddess die?”

“I don’t know. It just seems so… stretched.”

“This idea was actually adopted after Celestia and Luna showed up to run the place. The religion has been around for much longer. It’s one of the oldest religions in all of Equestria. In fact, the only religion that has been around for the same amount of time is the zebra religion and that’s been around forever.”

“But how could…” My voice trails off as I just can’t think of anything else to say. Religion has never really been a major
issue in Equestria, seeing as the deities of the major religion were alive and could perform incredible tasks. But apparently, there had been this secret underground religion since before Celestia even harnessed the elements.

Just then a loud yell could be heard from inside the room. “Fine we’ll do it, but don’t expect to still be on my good side.”

The door slams open, narrowly avoiding my snout.

“Good, you’re here,” Poultice says to me, still obviously miffed. “We have a job.”

|><|-------|><|

Regrouped in my room (we can’t fit this many ponies in here!), we discuss the job with everyone.

“Basically, a stable has recently reared its head on the edge of the Mareabian Desert. Puddle Dump wants us to check it out and loot it. Shouldn’t be too difficult. He asked specifically for the wine collection.”

“What’s the pay?” Jet asks.

“Nothing”

“What?” the entire group complains in unison. We try to argue with her, but she just brushes it off.

“Guys, I need this. I can’t explain why, but we have to do this.”

This puts the entire room in silence. I am the first one to speak up, “If you think this is right, we’ll do it.” I can’t forget that she saved my life back in the plant (get it?).

Enigma nods her head whilst Jet grumbles to himself something like, “Why do we have to listen to her? I mean, we don’t get caps from it.”

“There it’s settled. We’re going.”

|><|-------|><|

The walk to the Mareabian Desert is at least a full day trek. So before we can go we have to buy supplies. Enigma and I have been put in charge of this task, leaving Jet and Poultice to get some rest.

The town is wary of us, but they aren’t scared or angry at us anymore.

We walk to the nearest merchant. He seems friendly enough. He’s an old rust colored unicorn with an unusually large pack. When asked how he manages to carry the bag everywhere, he responds with a simple, “I have a strong back.”

We manage to get everything we need from this one merchant, except sniper rifle ammo, but Enigma tells me that ammo for that gun is rare. After checking the other merchants, we confirm that the ammo is indeed rare.

I’m thirsty so I walk over to the sunrise sarsaparilla machine, buy two and hoof one to Enigma. I had never tasted a liquid that wasn’t water so I’m surprised when the sweet and tangy flavor reaches my lips. It’s unlike anything I have ever tasted before. If I had to describe the flavor, I would say it tastes like lettuce mixed with essence of Celestia, Herself. I down the first one in a snap (of my hooves?) and buy another. I can’t get enough of the flavor. This is the source of all euphoria, like alcohol is to other ponies, but this is better. It’s a sort of root beer, you could say. I finish the second one just as fast, but before I could buy another Enigma stops me.

“Woah, there. You’re drinking a little too much of that. I’m setting two as your limit.”

“B-but, why?”

“You’ll spend all of our money.”

I give my best puppy dog eyes.

“Ugh! Fine.”

“Yes!” I find it a little interesting how I needed her permission to buy it with my own bits. But then again she could take me in a fight. I pop the lid off of the bottle and gulp down the sweet ambrosia inside.

I walk over to Enigma, now sitting on a bench and sit next to her.

“Are you happy?” She asks me.

I nod happily. She sighs.

We sit there on the bench for a while. Enigma just sit staring at the distance, taking a swig from her bottle every once in a while. Finally, she says, “You probably don’t understand to gravity of the situation Poultice has put us in.” After waiting for me to answer, she continues, “Those stable have always been trouble. Whether they have had monsters coming out of them or if the inhabitants mysteriously disappeared, when one of those open, it’s never good.”

I just stare, mouth agape. How could she put us in this situation?

“I just don’t get what can make her this arrogant to think that we would just do whatever she says. Why did we even allow her in the group? She just pulls all this shit and expects us to deal with it.” She takes a quick moment to cool down. “Come on. We better make sure she hasn’t murdered Jet by now.” Enigma is obviously not looking forward to what comes next.

|><|-------|><|

While the walk back was uneventful, the scene that we walked into was definitely not. Poultice had the pony that she had met in that room (I believe she called him Puddle Dump) at gunpoint.

“I agree to do this ridiculous task, yet you still try to steal from me?” Poultice says in a cold and unwavering voice. “What’s to stop me from killing you right now?”

“You and I both know that without me, you will never find the…” He notices us in the room before continuing to say, “thing.”

Poultice contemplates this for what seems like a whole minute, before finally lowering her weapon with a snort. Even without the threat of a death, the tension in the room is still palpable.

“Get out.”

Puddle Dump gets halfway to door before turning around and saying, “Maybe I was wrong about you. You don’t seem like a
good pony at all.”

“Out,” Poultice grits between her teeth.

“And you two, what are you guys doing here?” Poultice snaps.

“We, um, got the stuff for the trip,” I say hesitantly.

“Oh.” This seems to quell her rage. “Then we can leave immediately.”

“But the walk there will take all day and sundown’s in 3 hours and-”

“Sweetie, if Poultice stays in this town for any more time, she will murder somepony,” Enigma whispers at a barely audible level.

“Okay, let’s go!”

|><|-------|><|

I like walking. I don’t know what about it that makes it so great, but I love to walk. I guess it could be to the fact that I’m a taller stallion than most so it takes even less effort to walk at the same pace. Or it could be that walking just clears your mind
allowing you to focus on whatever it is that is most prevalent in your life. Or perhaps it is just having the free time to do whatever you want, provided that includes walking.

And what I want to do right now is learn about my friends, starting with why Poultice was being so secretive with Puddle Dump.

“Hey, Poultice”

She sighs, “And I was having such a great trip so far. What?”

“You know how you forced Puddle Dump not to talk about ‘the thing.’ What’s the thing?”

“And this is why I don’t like to talk to you. You can’t just figure out that I don’t want you to know about it. So just let it go.”

“But we’re risking-”

“Let. It. Go.

“Okay.” Moving on to my other friend, of whom I know nothing about.

“Enigma, why did you save my life?”

She halts, obviously taken off guard by this question. “My… parents…weren’t good ponies. I told myself, I wasn’t going to follow their example. I saw a pony getting beat on by three others, so I decided to give you a chance.” She walks off before I
can ask any more questions.

Fine then, on to my last friend. “Jet?” There is no response. I look around for him. No Jet.

“Guys, where’s Jet?” My friends look around

“Hmm, I guess that explains why it has been so quiet,” Poultice smirks. “We must have left him back at Auxois.”

“How could we leave him behind?” I ask.

“I sent him out of room so I could talk to Puddle Dump. I guess I just forgot about him.”

“What were you talking about that he had to leave?”

“Luna dammit! Didn’t I tell you I don’t want to talk about it?” She runs off ahead with Enigma.

I can hear her say, “Ic meddles way too much” before they get too far away.

Great! Only an hour into this walk and I have creating a distance between my friends and myself, both literally and figuratively.

|><|-------|><|

I make it about a minute before boredom controls me. I take out the PipBuck and start looking through the features. There’s a thing called the Eyes Forward Sparkle that gauges your health, location, ammo, and other important things, but I can’t use any of that because it isn’t attached to my body. There’s this that called the SATS that helps you aim, but again I can’t use it.

I eventually find my way over to the stats page. It has a huge list of abilities that it gauges your performance in and gives you a percentage for that skill. The percentage is of proficiency, 100 being perfect and 1 being the worst possible thing. The list is very odd. It has lock pick, and stealth, and small guns, and large guns, and a whole lot more. I just want to know why they were assessing somepony’s lock pick skill. Were they trying to catch future thieves or did they know that ponies would need to know how to pick a lock in post-apocalyptic Equestria?

Whatever the case, I can’t use this either. In fact the only things that found that I can use are the file playback and the radio.

The radio has now become my favorite toy. I’ve discovered two stations, one called DJ PON-3 and the other one called Raider Radio.

I listened to the first one. It had a smooth-talking host who was fun to listen to. He would talk about “the good fight” and give tips on how to survive the wasteland. Both of which made me want to do more good things. He is an awesome host, but the music is too happy and upbeat. I am not really in a Binga-Banga-Bonga mood.

So now, I am listening to Raider Radio. It is similar in the fact that it has a smooth talking host, but the similarities stop there. Instead of talking about the betterment of Equestria, he makes fun of failed heroes and calls out bounties for ponies who he doesn’t like. Instead of “fighting the good fight,” he just wants people to fight. He is not a very agreeable host, unless you were a raider.

The real reason I listen to his station is for the music. It has an angrier feel to it, exactly the mood I feel when my friends are shunning me. The first song I listened to had a zebra (or a zebra sounding pony) speaking so fast, I couldn’t make out a single word he said. Now I’m listening to a song where the artist switches back-and-forth between singing and screaming into my ears. I don’t know why, but I like this music.

There is this wailing sound coming in the middle of the song. Well it was in the entire song, but it is the only sound now.

This mysterious sound is changing pitch extremely quickly and is perhaps the most beautiful thing I have heard. I need to know what makes this sound. This is where the notes section of the PipBuck is useful.

|><|-------|><|

“We’re almost there. Just look.” Poultice points at the horizon where a weird aura can be seen. The air looks… evil. As we get closer, the air gets more and more evil and my friends notice it too.

“Let’s set up camp here,” Enigma says. “We’ve been walking for hours. We don’t need to tackle the stable now.”

We both agree and set up camp, which is still just the single tent. We also build a fire and eat dinner. We all sit awkwardly around the fire for a few minutes before Poultice goes into the tent with a, “Ic, you guard first tonight.” Enigma finds a soft spot away from me and falls asleep as well. Who knew asking friends questions about their past would stick with them so much?

I brush it off. Perhaps in the morning, they’ll be back to normal.

A stare at the weird aura radiating from our destination and I try to determine what makes it so evil. First of all, it is sending off pulses, each one distorting the air. Also, it is glowing setting the night clouds ablaze. Lastly, the glow itself is a blood red which is disturbing as well. All those packed together makes an ominous sky.

I take my pack off. I might as well get comfortable. A small cassette clatters out onto the ground. My dad’s final recording. I
have put off listening to it because it would mean the finality of my parents’ death and I don’t know if I can handle it.

But I have put it off for too long. I slide in the tape and am greeted by the end of a familiar conversation.

“Your dad’s wasted it all shootin’ radroaches.”

“Have a nice day.”

“Grr”

The door slams and there is silence for a few seconds before Mom says.

“Do you think that was good?”

“Yes, he has to be out of the house when Firesoul comes.”

“Okay…”

“Well, my little Icarus, that was our last conversation. I tried to end it on a high note, but I guess after 16 years of bad treatment one ‘have a nice day’ won’t fix it. I’m sorry for mistreating you, but you have to look at it from my perspective. I thought Firesoul was going to take you away from me so I pushed you away. I agree, not the best idea, but it was all I can do.

“Firesoul will probably kill us, but I’m leaving you in good hooves. My best friend, the explorer, agreed to teach you to survive. You can’t miss him. He’s the blue unicorn with a treasure map as a cutie mark. He’s the best pony I know. Think of it as a final way of me saying, ‘I love you’ because I always have.”

“He’s coming!”

“Sweetie, take this and bury it in the memory tree with the others. Just let me-”

*click*

My dad loved me? To the day he died? I feel tears fill my eyes. Then I come to the stunning realization. My parents are dead and I never really felt remorse for them. I just moved on. The tears come now. They rush down my face by the gallons. By the time I am finished, I feel lightheaded from dehydration.

Now the thinking comes. These recordings have taught me so much about my parents. They worked for a pony named Firesoul, who is not a good pony. They had sent a pony to teach me. And most importantly, my dad *sob* loved me.

But it leaves me with more unknown. Who was this Firesoul that even my friends don’t want to talk about (though they don’t really want to talk about anything)? Why did he kill my parents? And what were my parents involved in?

All these questions swam around in my head with the ones about Poultice and Enigma. Even as I was finally relieved of my shift, the questions still kept in the front of my mind. As I lay on the ground, I realize how little I know about the people I care about. They are simply unknown. They are

Mysteries.

Footnote: Level up!
New Perk: Daddy’s Colt-The man you thought you knew isn’t what you thought. Your thirst for the truth gives you increased willpower +1 Endurance

Chapter 5: Into the Depths of Hell

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GDOOCS

Fallout Equestria: The Dreamer
Chapter 5: Into the Depths of Hell

Darkness.

The air feels good beneath my wings. I spin and do twirl, performing intricate stunts. I do all this with the widest smile on my face.

This is where I belong. I haven’t flown in three whole days. The feeling I feel right now is a sense of freedom nonpareil.

I do these stunts for a whole hour before finally landing on the top of a cliff overlooking a valley. The sight is breathtaking. There are trees strewn across the countryside with woodland creature running about. And by woodland creatures, I don’t mean those scary bloatsprites or manticores that are abundant in our wasteland. I mean the
squirrels and bunnies from legend that only have peace in their hearts.

I look up at the sun, a huge white circle in the sky and feel the warmth of its glow on my face. “I love the sun,” I say in
the euphoria of the moment.

“And the sun loves you back,” a booming, yet somehow still sweet voice projects over the land.

“Who said that?”

“It was I,” a pony flies from out of the sun and lands next to me. “I was very impressed with your flying and thought I would meet you, Icarus.”

“How do you know my name?” I recognize this white mare from somewhere…

“I know all of my subjects’ names,” she gives me the warmest smile.

“Princess Celestia!” Upon my realization, I give short bow before continuing, “You really liked my performance?”

“But of course. I have seen a flier as talented as you since the days of my splendor.”

“Thank you…” Suddenly a question comes to my mind. “Princess Celestia, why did you leave us?”

Her smiling face turns to a scowl. “YOU DARE ACCUSE ME OF CAUSING THE WASTELAND,” She speaks in the booming voice, only it no longer sounds sweet. “YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN ANTAGONIZING A GOD.” With these words, Princess Celestia shoots straight up at the sun. When she hits it, it extinguishes, covering the entire world in a blanket of darkness.

Within seconds, I lose track of where I am. I take a step forward and plummet of the edge of the cliff. I am able to catch myself with my wings, but that does not solve the problem of not being able to see.

Panic wells up inside of me. What if there is no more light in the entire world? What if I can’t find food? What if I die?

The only solution to these problems is to fly around until I could find light and just hope not to crash into anything. I do this for a few hours, but to no avail. I am starting to get tired so I just have to find a nice soft place to sleep for the night. I take my chances flying straight down to the ground, where I land in a tree. The tree is a good enough place as any, so I choose this as my bed.

I wake up.

|><|-------|><|

The sound of multiple voices yelling at one another can be heard in the distance. If I listen hard enough, I can just make out what they are saying.

“I want to go toward the pretty sky,” The pony sounds extremely unintelligent loud, but there is also something else about the voice. It sounds as if somepony had taped the pony’s upper lips to their nose, and then plugged their nose. It is a very peculiar and uncomforting sound.

“No, the mean pony said to go this way!” Besides this one having a slightly lower pitched voice, the voices are identical.

“But it looks so pretty.” Is that a third voice or is it the first one again?

“NO!”

I want to talk with these mysterious ponies. After all, they might have items to trade and if they are as dumb as they sound, then I could get a good deal. My friends are still asleep, so it’s up to me to exploit the travelers.

“Hay-” just then a hoof comes over my mouth.

“Are you crazy?” Poultice whispers forcibly. “Are you trying to get us killed?”

“What was that? PONY!” one of mystery ponies grunts.

“Shit, we have to leave, now,” she insists in a panicked tone.

“Why?”

“You just alerted a pack of super mutants to our camp.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know?” The impact of my simple mistake is starting to hit me.

“Doesn’t matter, now. Just wake up the other two. I’ll pack up camp.”

“Pony? Where are you?” The sound of the super mutants is getting closer now.

The initial grumbled complaints of Enigma for interrupting her beauty sleep, are quickly put to an end after I tell them the situation.

Enigma becomes extremely objective oriented, immediately requesting the full information and developing a plan.
After Poultice is done packing, Enigma tells us the plan she made in the few seconds she had. “We have to run towards the vault,” she says, pointing a hoof in the direction of the disturbance in the sky.

We oblige to her demand because neither of us have any better ideas. Still, running into an unknown area where the only description I can make is evil, doesn’t sit well with me.

A small purple earth pony starts galloping into our camp and past us. From the look of him, it seems that he has been running for a pretty long time. He gives a scared, “Run!”

We follow the pony’s command and not a moment too soon. Almost immediately, I hear a unpleasant scream, “DIE, PONY!” The super mutants have finally reached our camp. A whirring sound comes from behind us.

“Look out,” I say, anticipating what is to come next. The loud gunshots and the bullets whizzing over my head confirm my suspicious.

“BWA HA HA!” The super mutant seems to be enjoying himself too much to notice how bad his aim is. His friends finally show up as well. They add their quieter shots to the mix. A fierce pain erupts in my flank. Apparently the ones without an overly dramatic bullet waster actually aim their shots.

I hardly notice as the dirt beneath my hooves slowly switches to sand. I am too worried about the three extremely large ponies chasing us. Somehow, the one with the minigun is still able to keep pace with us, unencumbered ponies.

My legs are burning, and not just the one that has been shot. I’m a rock farmer, not a distance runner. I can’t keep this speed for much longer. Fortunately, a cylindrical tower comes into view. The aura seems to be emanating off of it.
Upon this sight, I gain a second wind. I can only assume that the vault is beneath that building.

The super mutants finally catch wind of our plan and slow down to shoot at us with more vigor. Their accuracy greatly improves after this, but so does the distance between us.

Another bullet hits me, this time grazing my neck. Blood starts spurting out of my neck, casting out in a wide arc across the ground. I can’t stop to heal it right now. I need to make it to the tower.

Even the power of my will cannot stop me from slowing down. The purple pony is slowing down as well, but the mares are still going strong. I want to say something like, “Guess there’s a reason I always listen to them,” but I don’t want to use up my breath. The purple pony keeps slowing down. Even I, who has brought up the rear every trip, am passing him. A quick glance away from the target to the new arrival confirms the worst. Blood is seeping out of a hole in his side. He definitely won’t make it the rest of the way to the tower.

The mares had just entered the tower by the time he collapses behind me. Despite all of my instincts, I stop to help him. I grab his hoof and throw it over my shoulder, all the while encouraging him to keep going. Despite my best efforts, he begins to wheeze and starts to drag me down with him.

“Come on, we have to make it! Only a few more feet,” I assure him, even though I am practically dragging him at this point.

He is having an extremely difficult time breathing, but is intent on telling me something. He struggles to speak and after a few tries he finally manages, “Go on… without… me.”

“No way man. I never let potential friends down.”

We manage to get pretty close before the super mutants catch up with us. They have stopped shooting. They already know that they have us killed; even their small brains can see that.

“HA HA! MEAN MAN WILL BE SO HAPPY WHEN I GIVE HIM YOU TWO.” The super mutant with the mini gun reaches down and picks the pony up in his teeth. He just hangs there limply, as if he were dead.

“EW TO, ET MM,” the super mutant says through the pony in his mouth. The ugly one (or is the other one uglier) leans over to pick me up, when suddenly, his head explodes. The other two are so shocked by this that the big one drops the pony, who lands on the ground with a small grunt.

I use this opportunity to take out my pistol and shoot a whole magazine into the big one’s head. I miss a few shots, but when you shoot eight bullets, it’s bound to do some damage. I get lucky. A bullet pierces each of his eyes. Surprisingly, that doesn’t kill him, but instead causes him to on an uncontrollable rage. He starts to spray his mini gun randomly, killing his partner and doing a ton of damage to the ground and sky.

Once he runs out of bullets, he starts randomly kicking the ground. The purple pony, who had before fallen to the ground by his hooves, gets a hard kick to the ribs. I hear a small crack, as he flies over twenty feet, landing near the base of the building.

I scramble to hooves to avoid his flailing limbs, but there was no need for worry because he also gets sniped. Thinking I am in a safe place, I loot the bodies. Other than the mini gun and a few caps, there is nothing useful on the bodies.
I trot over to the building where Poultice is waving me over intently. I speed up my pace, trusting my friend to have a reason. When I finally get there, she says hurriedly, “Those little fuckers weren’t alone. Get in quick.” She says all this while picking up the other pony and dragging him in.

The inside of the building is different than I expected. The entire tower is one gigantic room. A spiral staircase climbs along the side of the circular room. The ceiling is at least five stories tall, but it is hard to tell because there is no light other than a few candles on the ground level.

The candles themselves are on an alter which has wearily withstood the sands of time. It is a tired looking shrine respecting a weird looking amalgamation of animals. The creature in the carving appears to be laughing with a maniacal looking in its eyes. There are sticks of incense on the ground by four incense jars which are filled with used incense themselves. Being the thrifty stallion I am, I snatched all the incense and jars. A weird chill runs up my spine, causing the hair on my neck to stand on end. But just as it came quickly, it also left quickly.

“Look, Ic,” Enigma says, panic starting to show in her voice. I hurry over to the doorway, where enigma is looking through her sniper rifle. “I’m a good shot, but I can’t take out that many.”

She hands me her sniper rifle, which I peer through. Out on the horizon there appears to be an entire army of super mutants charging our tower. This stands up on the back of my neck again, this time in fear.

“I don’t think-” I feel a little woozy. I can do nothing as my legs decide that they don’t want to work anymore and I collapse on the ground. I can vaguely hear Poultice shouting at me, “We have to get to the Vault. Get off your lazy ass.”
But by this point my senses start to get fuzzy and I pass out.

|><|-------|><|

Suddenly, the spacious room that I was in has changed into a small cramped space with metal walls. There is a table taking up the far wall of the 6 foot wide room and two gurneys pushed against the long walls. There are also a few small tables on wheels to hold medical instruments. It is obvious that the designer of this medical room wanted to maximize the efficiency of the space. There’s a window opposite of me that shows an open room outside.

Also, the room is covered in blood.

I push myself up off my gurney. I run towards the door, only to feel woozy and fall onto the one next to me. This one is occupied, judging by the entrails now in covering my face. I back away in disgust. The remains of a violet hued pony lay on this table. The smell is overpowering now. I don’t know if it is just the connection of the smell to a body or if it’s because of the fact that I have his organs on my face, but I dry heave my nonexistent breakfast on the floor. The kill is fresh, within a few minutes. Whoever killed him will be back.

I run out the door. I don’t know if it is because I need to get away from the corpse, or if it is to get protect me from the unknown assailant. I trip on my way out the door and fall on my snout (which is still sore from two days ago). I check the ground and see that the object I tripped on was another corpse, this one with three clean gashes down its side.

Startled, I scramble backwards on the ground away from the corpse. I start panting and can feel my heartbeat in my ears. I bump into another body, again with the cuts. I look around the room in a panic. To my horror, it is littered with ponies killed in a similar manner.

I put my hooves over my face and start to cry. I know I shouldn’t be crying at a time like this, but of all the stress I have had in the past week, I deserve a moment to let it out.

After a few minutes, a warm hoof is put around my neck. It never even occurred to me beforehand that I was vulnerable to attack. Anypony could easily kill me now. But luckily this hoof is friendly. I look up to see the worried eyes of Enigma.

The empathetic mare pleads to me, “Please stop crying. Because if you keep crying, I’ll start crying then only Poultice, here, will be able think straight.”

Poultice adds to it by ordering in a didactic tone, “Stop crying, your body needs the fluids. You lost a lot of blood back there and crying will only make it worse.”

I ponder this for a second. I can’t make Enigma sad, so there, it is decided. Even though being strong is the last thing I want to do right now, I still snap myself out of my emotions.

As soon as I have composed myself, I ask them where they have been.

They tell me how there is a horde of super mutants outside and how they had to drag that other pony and me down three flights of stairs to the vault. They had barely closed the door in time. Then, they had to drag us to the medical wing where Poultice stitched us up.

“…but when I tried to remove the bullet from his heart, he went into cardiac arrest.” After a look of confusion from me, she clarifies, “He died.”

“Oh,” I feel sorry for the colt. Then a repulsive thought came to my head. “Was he the one on the operating table?”

“Yeah, why?”

“No reason,” I want to puke for the second time today. I fell face first into his guts. “Where were you guys, anyway?”

“Well, we went exploring. I left you in stable condition so we went to find the water talisman.”

“Oh?”

“The water talisman, the magic device that creates clean water. We searched for it, but didn’t find it,” Poultice says, looking me dead in the eye, daring me to say something else.

“Okay, I’m coming with you,” I stand up, immediately feel light headed, and fall back down. “Just give me a second,” I try the same thing over again and find that it has the same result.

“Yo, dumbass, didn’t I tell you that you lost a lot of blood? You are gonna sit here and not try to do anything,” Poultice gives me the same stare as before, and I let it go, just as before. “Enigma, stay here with him. I’m going to find that talisman.” She leaves the room through the leftmost of the four doorways.

“Once she walked out of sight, Enigma grins at me, “Which way do you want to explore?”

“But didn’t P-”

“Please, if you listen to everything everypony tells you, you’re going to end up bored or dead.” I can’t argue with that logic. “Let’s go.”

I finally concede, “Okay, let’s go this way.” I point my hoof at the rightmost door labeled “Maintenance.”

Steadying myself against the wall, I push myself up slowly. The dizzying feeling I get is as bad as the first time, but it dissipates quickly, and I am able to carefully walk towards the door.

|><|-------|><|

The maintenance wing as one would expect was just a series of closets. There’s a broom closet, a mop closet, even a
“Vacu-closet,” but the most interesting closet of them all is the PipBuck closet.

It isn’t any different in design than the other three rooms in this hallway, but the things within it are way more interesting. There is a small work bench on the wall in front of me and a hammock set across the small room on the right. On the left, there is a rather sizeable box. I start there.

I’m surprised to find the box nearly empty. The box, big enough to fit an entire pony in it, only holds three PipBucks, all of which won’t turn on at my command. I toss those back, moving to the workbench.

The workbench has another Pipbuck, also broken, and a plethora of tools strewn about it. The number of tools overwhelms me, but I guess it makes sense. After all, the PipBuck is a complicated machine. It would need a large number of tools to fix it.

This would be the perfect time to fix my PipBuck. Now, I’m no engineer, but how difficult could this be?

|><|-------|><|

“How difficult can this be?” I mutter to myself on the edge of breaking down. “Well, two hours later and I still haven’t opened it.” At this point, I’m practically screaming.

Now, I just pick up a random tool and shove it into a random slot. It fits! Turns out the square peg fits in the square hole. With a twist of my neck, the PipBuck pops open.

I squee, a smile lighting up my face. I slap my leg into the PipBuck and lock it. I lift my leg in victory and imagine rays of light coming off of the PipBuck in a dramatic fashion.

Giggling, I try to see what this puppy can do, only to find me staring hard at the words THE BOSS on the bottom of it.

“Shit,” I put it on backwards. I look over at where I put the tool that opened my PipBuck, only to find it hidden in the pile of tools. “Ugh! It’ll take me another hour to find the tool again.”

There is a whirring noise emanating from deep within BOSS (for that is what I am going to refer to it as). BOSS started rotating on my leg until it righted itself. Apparently, staring at something intently can actually do something.

After BOSS had picked a spot to sit, the screen became alit. A message pops up saying, “Is this orientation adequate for your needs?”

I move my leg around to check and, of course, BOSS had done its job well. I click the yes button, and a message pops up.
This one displaying, “Initializing Magic Injections™”

“Magic Injections?” My inquiry does not go unanswered for very long. A splitting pain comes from beneath BOSS. It spreads all the way up my leg and starts to attack my chest.

From my vast knowledge of medical practice, I know exactly what to do in a time like this. Flail around like a madmare, until the pain goes away. The weird thing is that this did not help the pain. In fact, it made it worse. Plus, the bruises I got from hitting my limbs against various pieces of furniture didn’t help.

When I finally regain my senses, I see Enigma standing over me. She looks at me with a combination of worry and disbelief, “How can you even hurt yourself in a small room by yourself?”

I look her in the eyes, raise my two forelegs out in front of me, and say, “PipBucks.”

She giggles at this, “Come on, Poultice still hasn’t come back from her expedition. I’m starting to get worried.”

I follow her out of the room and back to the atrium, where the bodies have been removed and in their place is a single incense jar giving off a small wisp of smoke. It smells like nothing that I have ever smelled before. It smells like I have always imaged flowers covered in dew droplets to smell like. It smells… calming.

Noticing my discovery, Enigma says, “Sorry, I couldn’t stand the smell in here so I borrowed one of your jars. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. I don’t even know why I took those.” The truth is I felt like I needed to have them.

Enigma walks through the doorway Poultice had entered hours before. I turn to follow her, but catch something out of the corner of my eye.

It is a pony, but not really. He certainly has the shape of a pony, but definitely is not a pony. He is an all white, misty form in the shape of a pony, but where his hooves should touch the ground, there is nothing. In fact, he doesn’t have hooves at all! He just floats everywhere. Although the rest of his body is a foggy form, his head is perfectly clear. It is the skull of a pony. It is as if that part is only there to scare the living Celestia out of ponies.

The pony floats over to the incense in the center of the room and picks it up. Since he does not have any hooves, it appears to be floating there. It seems at this moment that the ghoul finally realizes that I am there, for her looks at me with those empty holes and whispers in a raspy voice, “3.” He then lifts the incense over his head and drops it into what his mouth would be. He vanishes from sight after this.

I stand there stunned for a few seconds before Enigma comes back into the rooms saying, “What’s taking you so long?”

A shiver runs down my spine as I say, “Nothing, let’s go.”

|><|-------|><|

Enigma is the first to see her body lying limply on the blood soaked floor. The tough-as-nails pony is no match for whatever hit her. Even her thick leather armor did not help Poultice block the bullets. Her gun is still in its holster.

“She didn’t even get off a shot,” Enigma says, sighing and shaking her head. “We better keep an eye out for the pony who did this. We are not alone.” She nudges Poultice at these words.

A small groan can be heard coming from the pile on the floor. Enigma’s familiar smile comes back to her face.

“Thank Celestia. You’re alive,” I say letting out a sigh of relief.

Enigma rushes to take out a health potion and forces its contents down Poultice’s throat, a look of worry on her face. “I was saving this for an emergency, but for Poultice I guess I can use it.”

A realization hits me as the last drops of liquid pour into Poultice’s mouth. “That was our last vial, right?” The look on
Enigma’s face says it all. “Yeah, I figured.”

The lights flicker a few times, causing me to look around the corridor. It’s a simple T-junction, where you could turn either left or right. A soft murmur can be heard down the hallway to my left. I approach the source of the noise slowly, aware that it may be the same pony who shot Poultice. I hold a hoof up to me lips, motioning to Enigma to stay back and be quiet.

As I get close, I can make out some of the mare’s muttering, “All dead… Why can’t I be with them...Little foal, Fodder… run out of time! Ha, Ha!”

I carefully draw my pistol to be on the ready for any possible reaction from the obviously insane pony. Somehow she hears me, “What was that? You doggies aren’t back again, are you?”

I hear a whirring noise of which I had heard before. Just as I remember what it was, the bullets flying through the air make it redundant.

"I wont go down like this. I can't go down like this! Die dogs!" The mare's crazy rant flies by me like the bullets that I'm trying to avoid. I somehow manage to make it back to the conjunction. I take cover around the corner, pressing myself against the wall.

"Did that pony just say 'dogs?'" Poultice says between the moans and groans.

"Poultice!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm alive. Now on to more important things, Did she say dogs?"

"Yeah," Poultice winces at this word, whether from the pain or the word itself is unknown. "But I don't know how-"

"Don't you get it?" This sentence seemed to take more out of her, as she is gritting her teeth, unable to speak. The effort causes her to pass out again.

Enigma fills me in, "The only dogs in the Wasteland are the hell hounds."

"Oh," then I realize the power of these words, "Oh! So that means that we are trapped in this stable with-"

"Yes, a whole pack of hell hounds."

|><|-------|><|

We sat in silence for an unknown amount of time after that. It could have been days for all I cared. There is a pack of hell hounds down here! We can't beat that. We were nearly killed by a few unhappy plants.

But then something interrupt our silence. The crazy mare had stopped shooting.

I make the decision that if we want to survive, we need all the help we can get, even if the help is crazy.

"We're not hell hounds. We just want to talk."

"That's exactly what they would say. Prove it!"

"Okay, I'm going to come out nice and slow and you're not going to shoot me. Okay?"

She stammers before replying, "Okay."

I turn the corner and am surprised to see an undersized mare toting an oversized battle saddle. She is a purple pegasus with a grass green mane. I can't tell what her cute mark is because of the minigun. In fact, the only reason I could tell that she was a pegasus was that she had to flap her wings just to keep from collapsing.

"Stand back!" she grows at me.

"I'm not going to shoot you." To show my sincerity, I take out my rifle and place it on the ground. "Now you do the same," I say this slowly and calmly.

She take off the saddle and drops it on the ground with a resounding thud, all the while keeping her eye on me. Without her saddle, I can see just how small she is. She can't be more than a teenager. She tries to fold her wings under, but twitches in pain and unfolds them.

"Are your wings okay?" Silence. "You want me to take a look at them?"

"No," she says, backing away from me.

“Okay, then will you at least tell me your name?"

"It's...Arpeggia.” She calms down at saying this.

“Mine’s Icarus. Will you tell me why you shot at me?”

“I thought you were one of them, one of those dogs,” she shivers

Enigma, noticing that there is no more threat, approaches us and asks, "What happened?"

Arpeggia jumps in the air in fright and tries to fy away, but her wings seize up and she falls back to the ground.

"It's okay, Arpeggia. She's with me." Keeping her calm is a very delicate process. "This is Enigma. Enigma, this is Arpeggia."

Enigma holds out a hoof for a hoofshake, but Arpeggia just cowers away.

"Okay, then will you tell me why you're doing this?"

She hesitates, but then, deciding that she trusts me, says, "I was on my way to school, when the drilling stopped." Drilling? "Then everypony went to the drilling room to see what was happening. That's when they came. Those ferocious dog killed everypony." She starts crying again and it takes a few minutes before she composes herself enough to continue. "Then, my brother and I were the only ones left alive. He l-left yesterday to get help. I haven't seen him since. I-I don't know what happened to him." She sounds like she is on the verge of crying again.

"I'm so sorry," I say lamely, as if my being sorry could change the fact that everypony she knows is dead.

"But now that you guys are here, I don't have to worry anymore." She gets really close to me as she says this, making m uncomfortable. An angry look appears on Enigma's face for just a second, so short that I'm not even sure if it actually happened.

"Yeah, you're grateful. Now go tell that to Enigma," I say, awkwardly pushing Arpeggia off of me.

With an unusual grin, Enigma adds, "We still have to find that water talisman, so you go find that, while Arpeggia and I guard Poultice."

"Sounds good," anything to get away from the tension between Enigma and Arpeggia.

|><|-------|><|

Using my vast knowledge of stables and their layout, I decide that the water talisman has to be in the overmares office because it is the most important room in the facility.

It seems like the makers wanted no confusion that this is the most important room. They put all the signs for the room in large font and all caps. The sign above the door looks a little like this:

OVERMARES OFFICE

That added to the fact that there is a window overlooking the main atrium in the room, means power.

The only problem is that the door is locked.

But, much to my relief, there is a terminal by it, which I assume will unlock it. This is the perfect time to try out the advanced hacking feature of my PipBuck.

I quickly hook up the PipBuck to the terminal and a screen pops up saying:

"PickBuck Terminal Disablement Program

“Please assure that you are doing this in completely legal means described in the document below."

I scroll through the document. It would take me three hours to read this. I don't have that kind of time. Luckily, there is just a simple "I accept" option at the end. It doesn't check whether you read it or not so... yeah, I'm just going to hit that.

The screen changes to a "possible passwords" page where it lists a few options with long strngs of random character in between.

I choose one of those, "Vault." It displays an "incorrect, two tries left" just as it did before, only now it tells me that two of the letters were in the right place. So that allows me to figure out the actual answer of "value."

Just as I expected, the terminal brought up a screen with a single option: unlock door. With a simple click, the door opens, showing me a small room with a U-shaped table in the center.

"Welcome, the overmare isn't here right now. Please come back later when she has returned," an automated voice tells me. "You have ten seconds to comply."

"Oh really, what are you going to do?"

To answer my questions two large turrets drop down from the ceiling and aim directly at me.

"Oh, shit!" I fumble around, trying to take out my gun. Meanwhile, the automated voice started counting down.

"5...4...3"

I hold up my gun and try to pull the trigger, but instead of grabbing my gun, I grabbed a banana.

"2...1"

In my panic, I throw the banana. It hits the turret just as it starts shooting, causing it to turn and shoot the other turret. This gives me enough time to take out my 10 mil and shoot the remaining turret.

"Guess this turret... has gone bananas."

|><|-------|><|

This exploration has been less fruitful than I had anticipated. The only thing in the room is a fried terminal and a locked safe. I still don’t know how to pick a lock, but I just got through a door that I would have never been able to before, so I’m pretty confident.

I take out a bobby pin and screwdriver. Then, I insert them both into the safe and twist. The safe opens with a click. Wow! It’s that easy? The hardest part of that was finding a way to turn them with my mouth.

I open the safe to see my reward. I am delighted to find three voice recordings and a gun. But it’s not just any gun, it’s the most beautiful gun that I have ever seen. It’s a sleek ten millimeter pistol just like my other gun, only this one is in perfect condition and has a cracked glass pattern covering every inch of it. A small piece of paper is on it with the words “Lyra’s Fist” on it.

I put the gun in my mouth and wave it around a few times. It feels nice. Actually, it feels like it was made for me. I point the gun at the doorway. I point the gun at one of the broken turrets. I point Lyra’s Fist out the window and what I see scares the living Celestia out of me.

There, in the atrium, is a great looming beast wandering. From my vantage point high above the beast, I can see its red eyes, huge muscles, and, most intimidatingly, its sharp claws. The stories about the hell hounds have not given justice to their bloodcurdling form.

The hell hound leans over and picks up something small and sniffs it. My Incense jar! This excites the fiend and he runs down a hallway. The same hallway as Enigma.

I don’t even give it a second thought; I just sprint after it.

|><|------|><|

As I gallop down the long hallway, the only thought I have is of the safety of Enigma.

I turn the corner to where I left the group, but instead of finding my friends, I see a confused looking hell hound also looking for Enigma. He readily abandons his search at the sight of me.

"Oh, buck me with a croquet mallet." I sprint as fast as I can the other way. When I make it back to the intersection where we found Poultice, I gallop past the turn towards the atrium and go down the way I haven't been yet.

I make it ten feet before I am forced to tun left down another hallway. At the end of this hallway is a door marked drill room, oh and all my friends.

"Go!" I shout, motioning toward the door behind them. They all look at me with a confused expression (all, but Poultice, who is still unconscious), but that expression changes to fear as the hell hound barrels around the corner behind me. "I'll hold him off. Just go."

Enigma looks at me, worried, but still picks up Poultice with her magic and enters the room.

When I finally get to the end of the hall, I turn and take out my new gun. I look right into the charging hell hound's eyes.
I shoot four bullets out of Lyra's Fist and into the dog's chest. Despite the thick hide of the hound, the bullets still punch right into his heart. His body collapses, sliding to a halt at my feet.

I loot the body where I find some sunglasses. I put them on and say, "It looks like the dog days are over."

I can't leave off the fact that when I shot the hell hound, my Lyra's Fist felt perfect in my mouth. There was an
imperceptible amount of recoil and I could fire way faster than I could with my other 10 mil. It feels like a perfect gun...except for the flaws all pistol have, such as a short range and a semiautomatic firing system.

"We're safe." No sooner had I said this, than three new hell hounds bound around the corner. "Buck, no. Oh, hayl no!"

I charge into the door screaming, "Run!" Little do I know that the room is practically just a giant hole in the ground surrounded by only about two feet on any side.

I try to catch myself as I teeter on the edge, but to no avail. I fall right into the pit. The last thing I hear is Enigma screaming something at me, before I fall into the

Darkness.

Footnote: Level up!
New Perk: Gunslinger - who needs those big bazookas? Not me! The best weapon is, of course, the pistol. +10% damage with one-hoof weapons (Why do they call it that if you shoot with your mouth?)

Chapter 6: The Three Tribes

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Chapter 6: The Three Tribes

Death.

Ponies bustle left and right through the village center, talking excited to their friends. There’s so much noise and excitement that I hardly notice when a pony trips over my hoof. He notices though and he turns to glare at me.

“Hey, watch it, jackass,” he yells at me.

I get up, with all intention to attack, but I control myself. If there’s one thing I’m proud of it’s of my calm nature. I meander over to the market and begin to talk with the cabbage vendor. It’s of nothing important, just small talk. I buy a cabbage. I can hear Jet say, “Two caps” as he tells me the total worth of all the items I have in my pack right now.

Where is Jet, anyways?

And just like that he appears on the other end of the market calling my name.

“Hey Ic, what’s up?” He’s by my side now.

My head starts to feel like it’s in a daze, as if there were something that I’m forgetting.

“What’s the matter?” Jet asks bringing me back to reality.

“Nothing,” I reply. “There just seems to be something that I’m forgetting.”

“Did you leave the stove on?” Jet asks, a smile growing on his face.

“What?” I start to laugh, not exactly sure why though. “What’s a stove?”

“I don’t know. It’s just something that ponies used to say.” Jet starts to laugh too.

We both share a laugh while we walk around the market. I can’t even recall the original feeling that was bothering me.

A yell from across the market disturbs my moment of mirth.

“Hey, you’re the one who tripped me earlier!” I can vaguely remember doing this. “You’re going to pay for that.”

“Just calm do-”

“No, don’t talk to me like that!” He draws a knife. “Any last words?”

Something snaps in my brain, like some small wire that used to keep my sanity together.

“Nothing? Yeah, I thought so.” He turns to walk away, but I don’t let him. I grab him by the neck and slam him in the ground, crushing his skull. He doesn’t say another word to me.

I beat him over and over to get the anger out of my system. The sounds stop and everyone is staring at me as I finished him off, beating him with my hooves. They must have been stopped for a while because they are starting to recover from shock.

“Why is everypony staring at me?” I shout to the crowd. This causes some of the crowd to hide away in buildings. The others draw weapons of some kind, some are normal guns, but I see one pony with a prewar mailbox in her hooves.

“Come at me!” I scream, taking out my pistol. I must sound like a raider by now, but I don’t care. I finally get it. Everypony in the wastes sucks and deserves to die.

One brave mare shoots her gun first, but the shotgun’s too big for her and she gets thrown to the ground. I counter her shot by shooting my bullet back at her, hitting her squarely in between the eyes.

“Who’s next?”

Three stallions approach me each with a baseball bat in their mouth. I dodge the first strike with a dive forward and I stab him in the stomach with the knife from the first guy. The second guy swing wildly at me, but misses. Instead, he hits the first stallion in the head knocking him out cold. I shoot my gun at the third stallion before he can even swing his bat. His face goes pale as the life drains from him. I turn to buck the third guy hard in the ribs. I hear a snap and I repeat the process to his head.

My flank burns in a very familiar way and I turn to see the cause. A pony with a flame thrower is trying his luck with me. I pick up a baseball bat and charge at him. Running right through his flames, I strike him with my, now on fire, baseball bat. His skull shatters, his brain turning into a putty and seeping through the cracks.

I pick up the flame thrower and turn to the crowd again. The rest of the ponies in the market are stunned by my awesome show of prowess. They either ran away or started begging for their lives. I allow them to live just to show my power over life and death. I am not going to be so tolerant to the ponies who chose to hide.

I see a house in front of me, so I begin to torch the outside. As the flames start to take hold of the building, I run inside to see who my latest victims are. There are two of them, blankly staring at me. Ha, I’ll wipe those blank looks off their faces.

I run towards the closer one, and tackle him. I pull out my pistol again and plant it’s barrel between my victim’s eyes. “Any last words?” A grin starts to creep across my face.

The stallion lets out a sigh. “None for you, son.”

My heart stops at the last word. I glance in shock down at my victim, and I see my father’s face. I jump up, and begin to back away, but the house is already collapsing on us, on them. I run towards the exit, but it collapses in flames. I look back at my parents as the roof is collapsing on us all. A single thought crosses my mind.

“Wait! I never got to say-”

I wake up.

“...goodbye.”

|><|-------|><|

Is a pony defined by his dreams or are his dreams simply random gesticulations of unconscious thought? In other words, am I the pony in the dream, or was that just a random nightmare?

It’s ridiculous to think that I am the pony from my dream, but my dreams have become reflexive of my life recently. So, is this a precursor to what is to come in my life?

My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a pony coughing near me.

I open my eyes to see nothing. At first, I think that my eyes are broken, but after a few seconds my eyes adjust to the light, or lack thereof. I'm in a cave. How'd I get here? I quickly scan the cavern for the source of the sound. I see a familiar aquamarine mass sitting on the ground with another blob cradled in her lap.

"She saved you, you know," she said in a callous voice. "She dove after you when you jumped into the pit."

The events of yesterday come back to me. "Wow, she did that for me." A warmth spreads through my veins, juxtaposing the ice of my dream.

"But she didn't have the energy. You stressed her too much. Come and see."

I push myself to my feet and walk carefully over to my friends, the feeling of lightheadedness becoming a familiar friend to me. As I get closer, I can see the condition they are in. Enigma, usually looking like a pool of immaculate water, now looks as dirty as the puddle I had used to douse the flames on my flank, so long ago. Well, only 5 days ago, but it seems like much longer than that. Arpeggia looks like she is in more severe condition. Her small form is shivering and looks even more frail and weak than before.

"Is she okay?" I ask lamely.

"Feel her forehead."

I touch her head with the tip of my hoof, but recoil it quickly. The small filly is burning up.

"She's been out for hours and her condition has steadily gotten worse." Enigma looks at me as if it was my fault that she was like this. Well, I guess it is my fault, but I don't need her to throw unnecessary guilt my way.

I contemplate ways I can make it better, which leads me to think of my own experiences as a sick pony. The most recent time was when I passed out in the tower. Poultice had healed me. Poultice! "Where's Poultice?" I blurt out much louder than I should have.

Enigma looks shocked, as I'm sure anypony would be after watching a friend drift into deep thought in the middle of a conversation, then suddenly scream in their face.

"She went to explore around," Enigma pauses, puzzled. "But that was hours ago. She should have been back by now." She glances nervously behind her.

"Which way did she go?"

She points behind her with one hoof, making sure to keep Arpeggia's head cradled in the other one.

"I'm going to look for her. You stay here and make sure Arpeggia's alright."

"Fine," I turn to leave, but she stops me. "Just, be careful." She looks as if she is going to cry.

"Okay, I will." Wow, Ic, way not to be awkward.

|><|-------|><|

Twenty minutes of uneventful searching follow and by the end of it, I'm feeling discouraged. I'm about to turn around, but I decide to give it five more minutes. Where could she have gone? I mean, there is only one path. It's not like it splits into many different corridors where I could have easily made a wrong turn.

A small torch comes into vision far down the path. It is good to have light after being in the dark since waking up, even if it is just a pinprick in the distance. I sense a small feeling fluttering in the depths of my soul. That feeling is hope. I take that hope and stretch it out to cover other parts of my life. I hope I can find Poultice. I hope that Arpeggia will be alright. I hope I am not the pony in my dream. But hope can only spread so far. If you try to hope for as many things as I hope for, at least a few of your hopes will not come true, and when that happens, a pony can lose himself. My thoughts return to my dream and I gather up all the hope I can muster for my dream never to happen.

The corridor opens to a large square room. It is about the width and length of three ponies and there are three tunnels cut jaggedly into the wall. There is a torch over each of the entrances uniting them, but there is a nervous feeling in my gut telling me that they are not as united as I think.

To the left there is a tunnel covered in bright red gemstones. This path leads down farther into the ground. Peering down the hallway, I can see a faint glow coming from far down the descent. A warm draft comes from this tunnel, adding a refreshing change from the cold, damp air that has filled my lungs since I woke up.

The right path leads down another tunnel, this one lined with deep blue jewels. This path also leads down, but there is no glow from the bottom. It seems as if the light is getting sucked out from the path. Even in the room I’m in, the light is concentrated away from this doorway. Warmth also seems to have disappeared in this half of the room, leaving me with an uneasy imbalance between my two halves.

The final door way seems more rigid. Where the other ones seem like they were set up crudely, the rock in this one seems to have been cut smoothly with a knife. Diamonds set along the ground of this entrance, yet the walls seem bare. There is no temperature change, whether warm or cold in this hallway, and there is a faint ambient light for as far as I can see in the cave.

The left appeals to me the most right now, so I'll go that way.

The rubies in the tunnel reflect the light from the end of the tunnel and spray it all over the wall, giving the entire tunnel a red hue. I used to see this from time to time when farming, but never to this scale and only when the light of the sun was strong enough through the clouds to get such a reflection.

When I was a foal and my dad made me help him with his work for the first time, he gave me a small ruby and said, "This is what we're looking for. Now, grab a couple rocks and bang them together."

I'd take a rock and get to work, but, like many foals that age, I became distracted quickly, especially because of this unprecedented gift from my dad. I held the ruby up to my eye and the world became red. I thought this was the most magical thing. I ran around for hours, trying to see everything in the entire farm in red color. My dad wasn't very happy about that and he took it back from me. I cried for the rest of the day, only letting up when Mom came and told me the story of the rock dwellers and the gem farmers.

She told it like this:

Once upon a time, there were explorers who traveled the whole world looking for treasure. They saw the ruins of Canterlot and bathed in the pink smoke. They fought treacherous beasts in the Whitetail Woods. They even sailed to the zebra homeland and traded with the strange zebra people. They had so much fun adventuring, but now they were tired and they wanted a place to rest their weary bones.

They searched high and low, looking for the perfect place to call home, and they finally found it. It had a hundred apple trees, each giving the most succulent fruit. Gems were sprouting out of the ground and made trees of their own. A flowing river would provide fresh water to the families they planned on having on this land.

Overcome with joy, the traveler set to work at once to build a town. When they finished, they looked at their work and thought it was wonderful. So they slept in the house they had built with their sweat and dreams.

The night, however, did not like the intrusion on her special lands. She sent demonic creatures to her aid. First came the fire devils that torched their apple trees. Next came the water sprites that polluted their river. Finally, to finish the trifecta, came the hell hounds who stole all of their gems.

The travelers, perturbed by this garish response by the night, decided to follow the demons into the caves from which they came. They followed them to the deepest part of the cave where they vanquished the evil beasts. They collected all of the gems and split it out between them.

Then, turned to go back, but without the demons to guide them, they soon got lost in the weaving maze. They prayed and prayed to the goddess Celestia with all their hope. The goddess responded to the call by appearing in front of the lost adventurers.

They told her their troubles and she gave them a simple choice, give her their gems to learn the way out of the cave or try to find their way by their selves.

The first group had hearts full only of greed. They said, "No, we don't want to be poor again. We need our gems. They turned and left, searching for the rest of their lives for the way out of the caves, but never found it.

The second group was not as greedy. They gave up their gems to the princess for a way out of the caves. The princess took these gems and lined the walls, pointing the way out. The travelers thanked the princess for this and escaped.

They went on to have long prosperous lives full of happiness. The other group was cursed to wander the caves for their entire lives as punishment for their greed.

This story always made me laugh. "Why wouldn’t the ponies just give her the gems?" I would ask.

My mother would reply, "Exactly, that's the moral of the story. You shouldn't let your greed control you."

A smile lingers on my face for a few seconds. It disappears with a sigh. Thinking back to my favorite memories of my parents has drained me. I don't feel like searching for Poultice anymore. I walk over to the largest ruby in sight and stare into its glow, entranced in thought. I briefly wonder where that small ruby had gone all those years ago. I come to the conclusion that it was most likely sold all that time ago just before a voice distracts me.

"Another one?" The voice is beyond raspy, like how somepony would sound if they had not drunken any water for days.

Before I can turn and respond, however, a sharp pain erupts in the back of my neck and I fall down.

I seem to be passing out a lot lately. Is that bad for me?

|><|-------|><|

It's hot.

I mean, it's really hot. I'm not awake enough to be aware of anything else, but I do know it's hot.

It takes physical effort to open my eyes. I think the blow to my head may have done something to my brain. Even with my eyes open, I can only see bright red.

After a few blinks, an image starts to form. It's an intricate design made entirely out of rubies... Actually, it's an intricate design made of a single ruby. There are cuts crisscrossing the giant gem, forming a picture. It is of a pony rising off the ground, wings spread. From the tip of her horn, there are lines going out every angle, as if powerful magic is shooting out of it.

It occurs to me that this is a giant artwork of Celestia. I have never seen a picture of Celestia before, and I am taken aback at her beauty. Even in this monochromatic representation of her, she emanates great power and grace.

A hoof stamps to my left, startling me out of my admiring trance. I glance over at the interrupting hoof and I jump back in surprise. I'm so surprised that I let out a little, "eep."

The hoof is on fire! Actually, the entire pony that owns the hoof is on fire. She (he? it?) raises one of the flames that is presumably her eyebrow. Then, she shakes her head and says, "Typical. A newcomer arrives and he is frightened by the travesty that is a Ruby Dweller." I can practically taste the sarcasm in that sentence. "I mean, we're not that different. We're both ponies. I'm just better."

Apparently, my expression is still of fright because she says, “Fine, maybe this will make you more comfortable."

She closes her eyes in concentration and the flames begin to retract, first at the tail then working its way up her body, revealing an earthy brown where the flames retreated. When the flames finally extinguish from her body, she relaxes and opens her eyes again.

"There, is that better?"

"Um, your eyes..." My voice fades away in the middle of that thought because her eyes are glowing white pools of lava.

She is completely fed up with me, "These are my eyes. They glow. I know that. Why can't you just deal with it? I should have incinerated you when I had the chance." She mutters that last part.

That gets me thinking, "Why didn't you? Most of the ponies I have met have shot at me for less than I have offended you. So, why haven't you killed me?"

"I'm supposed to give all the ponies that get close to the town a choice: join us, or get burned alive."

"Join you, as in-"

"Yes, you'll become Ruby Dweller." She closes her eyes and composes herself, preparing for the presentation that is, no doubt, to come.

She opens her eyes, which are still glowing brightly, feigns a smile, and begins to speak, "One hundred and seventy years ago, great bombs fell from sky. The lucky ones were vaporized in its blast. Others were not so lucky. Some formed into great monstrosities. Others developed severe radiation poisoning. We select few were the lucky ones. In the wake of the radiation, we fled underground into these very caves. We became obsessed with these gems. We delved deeper and deeper, finding larger and larger gems. Eventually, we found the Everuby and was it ever a ruby if you saw one. One of the more ambitious of our pack ran forward and grabbed the huge stone, and a change was seen in him immediately.

"First, he collapsed on the ground, squealing in pain. Then, he stood up, feeling more powerful than ever. Finally, he caught on fire.

"The rest of us, a little disturbed, hesitantly proceeded to touch the rock with enthusiastic encouragement from the first pony. It was the most painful experience of my life, but the reward was the most invigorating. Better strength, fire control, and ghoul-length life were all mine. The only thing the ruby asked in return was a pledge of subjugation."

She gets real close to me, almost touching my nose with hers. "All this could be yours. The power. The immortality. The Ruby. All you have to do is touch it."

She is actually starting to scare me with her erratic behavior, making me want nothing with her, but immortality is very tempting...

"You have five minutes to decide. Oh, and I don't want to spoil the great experience that you've had so far, but the exit to this room is guarded, so don't even try to leave." She leaves the room, igniting into a column of flame on the way out.

I sit in shocked silence. I could be immortal. If I don't have to worry about dying all the time, imagine what I could do...

Right, how am I going to get out of here? My eyes a drawn upon the giant gem and a thought comes to my head.

Taking all I know of gems and magic, I make some calculations.

"Oh yeah, this'll work, but things might get a little shifty."

|><|-------|><|

Enigma is getting worried. It has been an hour since Ic has left and Arpeggia has only gotten worse. Her fever has spiked and her shivers have taken a violent turn for the worse.

A low rumbling noise erupts from behind her, sending vibrations through the ground strong enough to shake a few small rocks loose.

"What has Ic gotten himself into?" Enigma asks to the unconscious pony on her lap. Multiple thoughts speed through her head, most of which do not end well for Ic. "Come on," she says lifting Arpeggia onto her back. "We have a pony to save."

|><|-------|><|

A ring of fire erupts in the doorway. A flame covered pony struts into the room through the ring. The pony asks me, "Have you made your decision?"

I walk around the room positioning me just right. If this is going to work, I have to be in the right spot.

"No, I don't want to join your cult." I pack as much insult as I can into that last word.

"Oh, you insult my religion." She begins to rise of the ground, propelled only by the energy of her fire. "Let's see how well you fare, faced with the power of it." Flames grow in between her hooves. Sparks are flying every direction, a warning for what is to come. "Take this," she yells, aiming her hooves at me. The pure fire, built up between her hooves, bullets toward me.

It travels much faster than I expected and I am barely able to move out of the way fast enough. I can feel my hair singe as the fireball narrowly misses me. It hits the gem right on the crack where all the pieces meet. The gem absorbs the energy of the fire and begins to glow. I hold my breath as I anticipate what will happen next. The gem starts to fade to a dull red hue with not a trace of anything having been done.

The mare begins to charge another blast, not even noticing the stunt in which I had put my hopes for escape.

I'm dead. Yep, definitely dead.

A light from the gem attracts my eye. It is a bright red light concentrated in the center of the gem. The light starts to spread outward through the gem. I close my eyes and brace myself.

"Take it like a stallion, you wimp."

"I'm not scared of you," well, I am, but that's not why I'm bracing myself. "I'm scared of that."

Her eyes follow my pointing hoof to see the gem just as the glow reaches the edge of the gem. "Oh, sh-"

She doesn't finish that thought because she is interrupted by a discharge of energy.

The gem exploded.

|><|-------|><|

Running out the room, I am surprised to find myself entering an entire village. Judging from the fact that only one pony had spoken to me since I got here, I am thrown off guard by the number of other buildings in the cavern. There are a hundred buildings with a couple of ponies in each and I just blew up their god.

Oh, look at the time. It's time to run.

I pick a direction at random and run that way. I pass several of the stone huts, each with ponies poking their heads out to look for an explosion. They see me rush past them and, by instinct, they chase after me.

I hear a whoosh behind me.

Then another.

And another.

The terrible sound of a pony lighting itself on fire repeats a few more times. I pick up my pace, hoping that the exit's in front of me.

It is.

I run through the modest entryway, now with the entire town on my heels [Do ponies have heels?]. I am thrown into a familiar hallway, lined with rubies. The stones glow bright as the horde of angry townsponies fills the room with their growing flames. One pony near the back of the group makes the mistake of launching a fireball at me. It does not even come close to hitting me, instead hitting a hoof-sized gem on the wall to my left. The gem releases a wave of red energy similar to the one emanated from the stone deity.

The wave causes me to stumble, but I am otherwise unhurt. The wave continues through me to the other wall of the tunnel, hitting two more gems, which in turn launch their own waves back towards me, from my right this time. The waves hit me and I trip once again.

From behind me, I hear a pony say, “Great, now you’ve started a chain. Everypony, fall back.”

The sound of hoofsteps recedes and I let my own slow as well. Finally, outran them. What did that pony say? Something about a chain?

My question is answered by a wave almost knocking me over from the left. That wave was more powerful than the last. I follow the direction of the wave with my head and see it crash into the right side of the tunnel, lighting up several gems.

Aw, but I’m tired.

I leap into full sprint again, trying to outrun the wave that approaching from my right, but to no avail. The wave hits me and knocks me to the ground. Brushing myself off, I realize that the wave will probably become enough to throw me to the wall soon.

The end of the tunnel comes into sight. I need to make it there soon. By my totally correct—and not just a random guess—calculations, if I let the wave build up three more times, it will kill me before I get out of the tunnel.

I make it halfway to the exit before the wave hits me again, but it knocks the wind out of me, so it takes me longer to get up.

I make it halfway to the exit again. This time I get thrown against the wall, landing with a sickening crunch. My legs seem fine, so I keep going. I hobble most of the way to the exit before the wave comes back, this time hitting me from behind. It sends me flying through the doorway and across the room. I land with a flop. Pain erupts in my chest.

I look down grudgingly and confirm the worst. A white bone is sticking out of my chest. Just looking at the sickening sight makes the pain worse. I need something for the pain. I throw my bags in front of me to search through for medical supplies. As I fumble through my bags, I realize how odd it is that the—what did they call themselves—ruby dwellers didn’t take my bags. They could probably use some of this stuff. Just as I thought, I have nothing in my bags, not a single healing potion or bandage. The only things I have are my rifle, my pistol, and three bottles of Sunrise Sarsaparilla.

“This won’t do,” I say, laughing at the absurdity of the comment. It sucks how it hurts to laugh.

Then, I remember the bandage that I put on my leg all those days ago. A spark of hope enters my eyes as I tear it off a carefully apply it to my chest. The magic has worn off, but at least it will stop the bleeding.

I take one of the Sunset Sarsaparillas and open it. This is for my hurt morale and it helps so much. The bubbly sensation entrances my taste buds and the cool liquid relieves my throat of the hot, dry air that I had been breathing for so long. I savor the tantalizing flavor. It’s enough to distract myself from the real world for a few precious moments, but that sensation only lasts as long as the bottle, and I am faced with the reality of my situation.

“Okay, Ic, time to find Poultice,” I say to motivate myself to get up from the comfortable stone ground on which I lay.

I push myself up with a grunt and look at my options. To my left is the ruby dwellers and no sign of Poultice, but the center and right are still a mystery.

The center, the diamond covered hallway, looks safe (and I could use safe right now), but a howl from deep within the right passage alerts me of the danger in the cave and the fact that Poultice is probably somewhere down here.

I decide to trek into the right passage so I can stop whatever is in the depths from killing my friend.

|><|-------|><|

Okay, maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

My side feels worse than the time I had caught on fire. Not only did the walking not help, but it made the pain worse. I don’t think I can walk much further down this tunnel and there is no trace of the end. Morale is at an all time low, but I must keep going. I can’t let Poultice die because I am too weak. I have to be strong, to be powerful enough to overcome this challenge. Plenty of ponies break their ribs. It’s no big deal.

A little voice in the back of my head remarks that those sought medical attention or at least rested. I can’t afford not to ignore him.

“Just continue forward,” I reassure myself. “Poultice will be at the end of this tunnel.”

“Keep moving forward,” I say in time with my steps.

“Keep moving forward.”

“Keep… moving…” I collapse in pain. Clutching my chest, I begin to cough and wheeze. I wipe mouth with my other hoof. I’m surprised to find blood on hoof.

I was afraid of this. The broken rib must have punctured my lung. I cough up more blood and turn to lie on my side to alleviate the pressure on my bad lung.

“So, this is what defeat feels like,” I chuckle to myself at the irony, but quickly my laughs turn to a fit of coughs. “Well, it sucks.”

I have no idea why I’m smiling. The dread of this situation should make me be depressed or angry, but I’m laughing at my own death. What’s up with that?

I mess with my PipBuck to get out one of my last two Sunrise Sarsaparillas. I raise my bottle to the sky and say a small toast.

“Cheers, Death. You have taken my parent and now you shall complete the set.” I take a sip of the drink. The warm bubbly liquid causes me to relax all of my muscles. My eyes slowly shut and I don’t care anymore. Perhaps it’s the drink, or maybe the repeated blood loss, but I just do not care anymore. I am allowing death to take me.

Yes, I can already hear it, the slow clop clop of death. The clopping sound grows perpetually faster and louder, to signify the closeness of death. Clop. Clop. Clop. Clop… Wait a second. That’s not the proverbial hoofsteps of death. That’s an actual noise coming from the real world.

I open my eyes to see to pony I expected to see the least in front of me.

“Poultice?”

“Shut up, raider brain. You’re losing as my blood as a super mutant after he deals with me.” She always knows the perfect thing to say.

She starts messing with the bandages on my side. “Yikes, that’s worse than I thought.” She rips a piece of leather off of her armor and puts it in my mouth. “Bite down on this. If you were the black one I wouldn’t care if you bit your tongue off, but you sometimes have important things to say. I can’t have you being an Avox.”

“What?” I ask, but before I get an answer, Poultice shoves her hoof into my side. To say the least, I make good use of that strap of leather.

After what seems like months, she takes her hoof out of my side and mutters something along the lines of, “Darn hooves. You can’t do anything intricate without magic.” Then, she tried again. It hurts more this time.
“Gah! What are you doing in there? Trying to plant an orchard?” I scream at her.

“Shh, you have to be quiet,” she impresses. “You don’t want them to hear.”

“Who?” I scream this too, half because of frustration, half because she dug her hoof further into my abdomen.

“The mirelurks,” and that, of course, clears everything up, but before I can ask, she exclaims, “Aha! Got it.”

“Great, does this mean you want dig around in my insides anymore?”

“Yes,” she hesitates, a smile growing on her face. “Bite down on the leather,” and with that order, she takes a few mushrooms from her pack. “You ready?” She doesn’t wait for my response before she smudges the mushrooms into my wound.

“Ahh!” I scream some other nasty things at Poultice that I’m not willing to share right now, but you get the idea.

When I finally stop screaming, Poultice laughs at me. “You were always such a wuss. Suck it up.”

I spit the scrap of leather into my bags, “You suck.”

“Hey, if it weren’t for me, you’d be dead, and you’d have a hole in your side.”

“What are you talking about? I still have a ho-” It’s gone! The place where there used to be a rib, now has a smooth gray coat. It’s completely healed. I’m completely flustered, “What? How?”

“Glowcaps. They do wonders for healing.” She begins to look worried. “But that was my last supply and I need some to fix that…new filly.”

“Alright,” I wince. The pain’s not quite gone yet.

Poultice looks at me as if she expects me to say something. When I don’t, she continues, “So, that means that I—and now you too—will have to go back the way I came to get more.”

“Then, let’s go,” I say pushing myself up. I make it exactly three steps before collapsing. I land right on my face again.

Poultice laughs at me. “Not like that. You’re not going anywhere right now.”

“I have to. I won’t let you go alone.” I get back up, wiping the blood of my nose. “Not when I’m still able to help.”

Poultice looks at me with the same expression that you would give to the sky if it started raining frogs. She hesitates, probably sizing me up. Then, she makes a decision. “Fine, but don’t slow me down. This way.” She points deeper into the cave.

I put an unsteady hoof forward and say, “Lead the way.”

She looks uneasy, like she feels that she made the wrong decision. She shrugs it off with a grunt, turns, and begins the venture further into the cave.

|><|-------|><|

Walking is more difficult than it was when I was inhibited by my broken rib. That weird plant has stiffened the entire left side of my body. Although I don’t want Poultice to know of this, I’ve gotten a few stares from her when a small groan escapes my lips.

I lose my footing on a wet piece of rock and yelp as I fall to the ground. I try to push myself up, but my side decides that I should stay on the ground. I wince, not in pain, but anticipation. Poultice is not going to be happy with this.

I open my eyes reluctantly. As expected, Poultice is fuming. Smoke can practically be seen coming out of her ears and that could only mean two things, either she’s angry or her head is on fire, and I don’t want to pour the rest of my water on her head.

“What are you doing, making noise like that?” she whispers at me. “Do you want to get us killed?”

That was the most forceful whisper I have ever heard. I feel like I should give her a prize, like a bowling ball. If only I had a bowling ball and weren’t scared shitless. “I-erm I was just…falling,” I manage.

“Keep your voice down.” Despite the fact that she’s whispering and I’m not, I think she’s louder than me.

“Okay.” Is it getting hot in here or is it just Poultice’s head? I look for an escape, some way to derail this conversation so that she’s not angry at me. I find the perfect distraction.

“Um, Poultice, there’s a monster right behind you.” There is. It is a large, crab-like monster, only it walks on four legs like a pony. Its shell, deep blue in color, looks sturdy enough to block a shotgun blast. It looks sort of like something Poseidon and his sea-ponies created to punish the land dwellers for destroying the world.

Poultice leers at me, but keeps her voice calm and composed to emphasize the importance of this question. “Does it look like it should be boiled and served with butter?” I nod, not taking my eye off of it.

“Mirelurks.” Poultice curses under her breath. “Okay, on the count of three, we both start shooting at it,” Poultice dictates.

“Ready?”

I unholster my pistol, hold it in my teeth, and nod

“Three!” We charge the marine beast screaming bloody murder, shooting blindly at mirelurk. After a few rather ridiculous seconds of this, Poultice holds me back.

“Wait a second. This is only a shell,” she says staring angrily at me. “I just wasted bullets on a shell.” She slaps me upon the head.

“Ow! Hey, I probably already have brain damage from all the times I get knocked out. You don’t have to make it worse.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she admits. “You probably do have brain damage, if you confuse a dead Mirelurk with a living one,” She’s grins at me.

I laugh at my own expense. “So, does that mean that there are more of those things?”

“Well, that shell didn’t just appear out of thin air. We need to tread more carefully if we don’t want to end up being dinner.”

I swallow, staring at the shell, “That was what I was afraid of.”

We tiptoe past the shell and sneak further into the darkness.

|><|-------|><|

After a few minutes of careful walking, I relax. If somepony was going to attack us, then they would have already, right? I feel so relaxed that I ask the question that’s been bothering me ever since the sapphire stones lining the walls had stopped.

“How can I see?”

“What?” Obviously Poultice wasn’t expecting something so random like that. She looks at me like I’m a cow trying to run a stampede by itself.
“I mean, we are hundreds of feet underground. No light should get through, yet I can see you and you can, presumably, see me. So how is it when we shouldn’t be able to see mere inches in front of us, we can see each other pretty well from yards away?”

She opens her mouth to say something, but stops. She rubs her chin with a hoof, then gives up and says, “I think it’s one of those things that when you think about it too hard, it goes away.” She turns away from me and continues her trot.

That doesn’t stop me though. I mean, I guess it could be a spell, or maybe the walls are lined with a light-emitting lichen… Did the lights just dim? Oh, Celestia, think of something else. Like, like, um, Sunrise Sarsaparilla! Yeah! The sweet golden taste of the sun.

I guess the walls could be enchanted to let the sun penetrate down. The ambient light begins to flicker.

Focus on sarsaparilla. Focus on sarsaparilla. I repeat this to me as I jog to catch up with Poultice.

I catch up to her to see her peering around a corner. She holds a hoof up, silently urging me to stop and look at something.

As I get close to her, to follow her pointing, I notice something about my friend. Her breathing sounds shallow and maybe a little raspy. She’s covered in more sweat than I thought possible, despite the fact that it’s pretty chilly down here. Her usual confident demeanor is not quite there. Her hoof, though pointed straight out, seems to be weighing her leg down, like she simply does not have the energy.

“That must be the mirelurks’ home.” I finally focus on where she is pointing instead of her unsavory condition. There is a large opening in the cave around the corner. A pond had formed from some unseen source and large rocks are churning in the water. All the way on the other side of the pond, a faint light is casting elongated arcs across the walls. My hopes of an escape are squashed, however, when Poultice whispers, “The Glowcaps are over there, past all those mirelurks.”

I finally speak. Excited by the proximity to our goal, I forget to be quiet, “Where are these mirelurks?”

Poultice wastes no time shushing me. “Don’t you see all of them, swimming in the water?”

“What are you talking about? All I see is…rocks.” That last word comes out barely audible as I make a realization. All those rocks are just the heads of mirelurks. There are such a large number of them that counting them would be a waste of time. I’ve never actually fought one, but from Poultice’s reaction, I can tell that fighting fifty at once is a bad idea.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, and as much as I would love to charge in killing those things, we’d be dead faster than a stable dweller in Ponyville. I think we should try to sneak our way past them.”

An unpleasant thought comes to my mind. I try to look for a way other than what I think Poultice is insinuating. The banks are too narrow, there’s no flotation device, and I’m not a pegasus, so that only means one thing.

“We’re going to have to swim.”

Following Poultice’s lead I slip smoothly into the water, careful to not make a splash and I begin to wade across the lake. The water, though I would have begged for this an hour ago, is a chilly knife that cuts right down to the bone. I try not to wince with every second that goes by.

To make matters worse, the number of rocks I had seen on the shore was only a fraction of the mirelurks that are filling this lake. I try to focus on following Poultice, but I feel weird staring at her flank for so long. That’s creepy, right? So, I avert my eyes, so to speak.

My eye catches a glint in the water. It’s a reflection of light from the glowcaps. It causes a glimmer not only in the water, but also in my brain. I got it! It’s a series of mirror-like walls that diffuses the light around. No, wait. That’s stupid.

A bolt of pain jolts up my leg. I look down at the water grudgingly; however it’s redundant by this point. A creature is already rising out of the water rubbing its head and looking really confused. This confusion lasts less time than my stunned fear. The creature roars at me, simultaneously alerting all the other mirelurks. As I sit there shaking in fear, one thought dominates my mind.

I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die! SUNRISE SARSAPARILLA!

As I try to distract my brain from the danger, Poultice springs to action.

“Hyah,” she yells, kicking the back of the monster’s head. This does nothing to damage the Mirelurk through its tough shell, but it takes its attention off of me. The mirelurk takes a lunge at Poultice. I hold my breath expecting her to get crushed, but at the last second, she dives under the water to avoid it.

A second later she reemerges and yells at me, “Get out, rockbrain!”

This unfreezes my muscles and I turn to leave the cavern. The problem is that I turn to see a mirelurk charging at me. Those things can really swim so I barely have enough time to take out my pistol a shoot a single shot. Somehow, this is a money shot, killing the beast dead in one shot, but that doesn’t stop the armada.

Another charges me from the right. I use this opportunity to try out the new S.A.T.S. program on my PipBuck. My brain is plunged into overdrive, getting a boost from the S.A.T.S. Hit percentages and probabilities come into my head while everything around me seems to be moving in slow motion. I line up three shots right to the head of the charging mirelurk. S.A.T.S. tells me I have great chance of killing it, and I do. It’s all over in only a second or two, but I feel like I just got plenty of time to kill it. This power feels great. I want to try that again.

It seems I about to get that chance another comes at me from the other side. I fall smoothly into bullet time and line up a few shot, however when I pull the trigger the first time, time speeds back up to normal, leaving me more disoriented than the first time I used S.A.T.S. I end up missing the next couple shots, leaving me wide open for attack.

A claw reaches out and grabs me around the neck. It lifts me out of the water and brings me close to the face of mirelurk controlling it. It looks me, squinting, as if it were a scientist studying his newest discovery. It doesn’t seem like it wants to hurt me. I’ve never dealt with these creatures before, but looking at those claws, it could probably snap my neck like a toothpick. So why isn’t it?

“What are you doing?” I say, struggling to get the words out through a clenched neck.

It tilts its head like I did something intriguing. Then, it opens its mouth, pelting my ears with high pitched clicking. It looks like it’s struggling to speak to me, but seeing as how it’s a crab and I’m a pony, neither of us can understand the other.

Another mirelurk approaches us on a homicidal rampage. The mirelurk holding me looks over at the charging one and glares at him. The other mirelurk steps back in fear, but quickly regains its confidence and attack the one holding me. I feel the vice grip loosen from my neck as my mirelurk defends itself.

Using this distraction, I slip out of the claw and into the water. To my surprise, the mirelurk doesn’t even care. It seems glad to be able to use both of its claws to fight. The fight is no longer about me; it’s about fighting in general. Although it’s a small blow to my ego, I’m still glad to be away.

I start to make a break for the shore. Stomach deep in water, this is actually pretty difficult. I feel a tug on my tail and down I go into the water. I resurface with my gun out ready to shoot. Only, there is nothing there.

“Hmm,” I could have sworn something was behind me.

Walking out of the water, I feel the tug again. Now, it’s starting to bug me. I try to twist myself around, but my side is still too stiff from the glowcap body rub.

I weigh my options quickly in my head, quickly deciding to get far away from danger before investigating.
I run for as long as I can and when I can’t run anymore, I stop to both catch my breath and listen for any pursuers. The only thing I hear is the sound of blissful silence. It hurts my ears. It’s so silent it physically hurts my ears. I mean, there is now a gnawing sensation in my left ear that can only be explained but the utter silence engulfing me right now.

Now that I’ve confirmed my safety, it’s the perfect time to begin worrying about somepony else’s safety. In this instance, it’s Poultice’s safety that I’m worried about. Last time I saw seen her, she was conducting hoof-to-hoof combat with a mirelurk. Poultice is tough, but I can’t see anypony winning that fight.

Just then, I hear faint hoofsteps clopping down the hallway. That’s weird. The thought hasn’t even blossomed into a worry-filled flower yet. It’s such an odd time for Poultice to arrive.

Sure enough, the (color-I-can’t-remember-right-now) mare comes into my vision looking as exhausted as I feel. And, although I don’t have a flower in my head, I smile with relief at the sight of her.

I wave my leg in broad sweeping motion to get her attention. I don’t know why I make such a big deal out of it, but it feels right so I don’t stop.

When Poultice gets within range to see more minute details, I expect her to be relieved as well, but she just has a stern look cemented onto her face. It’s rather scary. I know that whatever bereavement is coming next will be intense.

“Hey, what’s up?” I say to fill the silence, not that it makes it any less awkward.

Poultice reaches into her bags, allowing a tiny crack to open and reveal a glowing interior. My shoulders feel a weight lifted off them as I realize that those must be the glowcaps. Poultice flips her head back around to show me the glowcaps and omigosh that’s a gun.

Her rifle, glistening with underground lake water, is pointed directly at my head.

“Stay perfectly still,” she orders in the stern, confident voice that only Poultice can manage. She winces as if the words or the twisting motion caused her pain. That causes her to bite down on the trigger. In the painful silence of the cave, I can hear tiny mechanism straining in her gun, simultaneously trying to hold back the monster stored within the barrel and unleash its fury.

“Poultice,” I say, my voice quavering a little. “What are you doing?”

“I’m saving your life.” Her words are cold, but firm. They do nothing to help me relax.

“Why is my life in danger?”

She finally lowers her weapon. “Wait, you mean you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

She looks awkwardly at me. "Well, you've got a parasite hanging from
face." She paused, a look of disgust flashes on her face. She reaches out a hoof, but to my surprise there is no gun, just an empty hoof. I flinch anyways.

"Stop squirming," she orders. "Let me get it."

With that, she reaches up to my ear and plucks something off it. She holds in front of me to see it clearly. I see what it is, but don't believe it. A mirelurk was hanging off my ear the entire time I was making my escape. Granted, it is just a baby, but I should have noticed something like this.

The mirelurk hangs upside down by Poultice, snapping its claws and making small, soprano roaring sounds. It doesn't look like it'll grow into a monster. It just looks like a foal, albeit a foal with a shell. The little guy yawns, having grown tired of his feeble struggling.

"Okay, I'll kill him now," Poultice announces bluntly.

"Woah, woah, woah! Why do you have to do that? I mean, he's never done anything to you."

"His mommy tried to kill me."

"And why does that mean you have to kill him?" I'm practically begging, but it still feels nice to argue against Poultice.

She grimaces, obviously not happy with the pressure I've put on her. "Fine, but you have to take care of him.” She starts to walk away like she’s done with the conversation, but she stops. She twists her head back to ask one final thing. “Why do you even want him?"

Memories of the dream I had last night assault my head. I want to say that I don’t want to be that pony, but I can’t or won’t... not to Poultice. “He was just so cute,” I say. I mean this as a joke, but the mirelurk doesn’t help convey my intention. He falls back on his shell and get stuck, flailing his legs. The clinically proven cutest action any pony-eating creature can do.

She shrugs and changes the conversation. “We should rest here.”

The baby mirelurk yawned and curled up in a ball as if on cue. That makes me realize just how tired I am. I broke a rib today. With the way my life is pointing right now, breaking a rib seems tame in comparison to all the other horrors that are becoming a norm. The ghostly apparition, overly possessive plant, and... my parents’ gruesome death. Still, injuries sap the energy out of you. It’ll be good to get a rest.

I don’t waste any time. After conferring with Poultice who would go on watch first, I crash on the ground next to the little guy.

His eyes spring open and he looks back and forth to the source of the noise. When he sees me he crawls over and snuggles next to me.

In all the bleakness and death in the wastes, he’s a beacon of innocence and adorableness.

I think I’ll call him...

Life.

Footnote: Level up!
New perk: Flame Proof, those fire ponies don’t stand a chance against you if you can’t catch fire, right? So let’s fill your veins with asbestos!
+15% fire resistance