Fallout Equestria: Medicine & Mail

Interlude

“Second chances rarely happen, y’daft filly,

So don’t go makin’ the same mistake twice.”

The time we spent in Desert’s Edge was quiet, boring in a way. Sleepy little town tucked away, as the name would suggest, along the border of the lesser Commonwealth, right at the desert’s edge. I sat around at the Bin, tinkering and toying away on Betty’s little gift, which let me keep up on Wasteland rumors and the war that was so quickly escalating out east. The slow paced life of Desert’s Edge had given me plenty of time to go over my thoughts in peace and put pencil to paper, and a few thoughts in particular needed addressing.

—

Copper,

How’s the caravan doing? Well, I hope.

Pay’s not shorting caps again on some crazy investment, is she? Well, not that you mind, I suppose. She’s got a good sense for that.

We’ve never really seen eye to eye on how to run the caravan, less so when it came to matters of a more personal nature, but I want you to know that you did fine. Everything’s working out fine, and, well, I’m still out here.

Hazy would be proud.

No regrets.

- Bit Flip

Oh, also, you’ll probably get this well after you receive my other package, but if not, would you mind dropping it off at the Church?

And tell Doc to ease up on the smokes. That’s profit going down the drain.

(And it’s bad for him.)

—

I hung out around the Bin for so long that I ended up working there for our short stay in town. Put my wings to a bit of work holding trays up while delivering food and drink. Vitia argued, of course, that I shouldn’t have used them until the month was up, but it turned out okay. They take a fair bit of force to break, even when somewhat brittle after using bone brew. Besides, sitting around doing nothing was driving me mad, and the constant supply of free house specials on my breaks never hurt.

—

Errant,

I got your message loud and clear.

Thanks again for taking care of Hammer for me. I hope Needles and his goons weren’t too much of a hassle.

Hammer might grump and fuss a lot, but he’s nice enough and means well. Put him to work repairing or building things and he’ll be right as rain. Hell, he’ll probably have renovated half the town by the time you get this.

Also, tell Lumi that I said thanks for traveling with us. We made it out of there okay, but ran into a little issue with slavers on the northern rails and ended up having to detour down the river to catch a ferry from Desert’s Edge.

- Bit

—

Silver adjusted, with a bit of help from Vitia, back in to her old life in town. Vitia pulled a few strings and had Greenhooves get Silver a position down at the docks cataloguing their warehouses and what few shipments they received. Vitia also gave her the deed to her old apartment, though Silver was adamant about only looking after it if she ever decided to return.

It wasn’t until the day we left for Thieves’ Bend before I finally figured out what I wanted to say to Willow.

—

Hey Willow,

I know things were rough after what happened, and I didn’t explain myself very well before disappearing into the Wastes, but after losing the caravan I lost myself and the only way of life I knew.

Still haven’t found her or it, really, but I’m looking.

I’ve met some amazing ponies over the last while, seen some strange and wonderful places, and even become privy to a live broadcasting of The Signal.

Everypony I’ve met has their purpose, their way of life, and the conviction to see it through. All of them, from Buff Aloe in the Ridge to the anti-raider guerillas in Paint are trying to make the best of the day they’re given.

Each of these things made me look back at my time in the caravan. I enjoyed it and had a lot of good things come from it, like meeting you, but I’ve come realize that I was never truly happy there. I let fear take hold and stop me from seeing the Wasteland as I wanted, not how the Company wanted.

I’m not sure where this journey east through the Commonwealth will take me, but my hope is that it will lead me to myself and a purpose I can call my own.

—

Vitia had her own thoughts she wanted to put down as well, as I’d imagine she would, and before I had even set the pencil down, she was trying to pull it from my hoof-brace. Her magic had slowly begun to return over those two weeks since having the ring removed, but it was painful to watch her struggle keeping hold on that pencil with her feeble magic.

She managed to hold it somewhat stable and put her words down, but it was very obvious that the effort to maintain the flicker of magic for even the most basic telekinesis cantrip drained her. Still, in large and uneven foal-like letters, many scratched out and rewritten, she slowly wrote to her lover mare.

—

Bit’s fine. I’m fi fine. Found Silver; she’s hom home now. We’re OK. Bit wants to go east; I’m following. It’s going to be hard; I miss you so so much. Every day, every mome moment. Sorry my writing is so bad. Ring was removed, bu but some pins ststil still in. Can’t use ma magic very well.

—

She tried to continue on, but the increasing struggle to maintain that tenuous grasp on the pencil ate at me through every letter and every word. Her magic eventually faltered and her chest heaved with each long inhale through clenched teeth as she repeatedly attempted to pick up the fallen pencil. I wanted to let her finish, but I knew Willow wouldn’t want her injuring herself further over a letter, no matter how touching it might have been. And without so much as a whimper of protest, she slumped down, rested her cheek on the table, and accepted my offer of finishing the letter.

At first she continued on as she had, going into detail about Xanti, and the whole other unknown side to the world of healing and medicine that the zebra had shown her. She wanted to know how Spice, how Ghost Ant, and how everyone else at the Church was doing, and to send them her best wishes. And time and time again she said she missed Willow.

But soon, she began to doze, slowly drifting away into that half-conscious dream world where one’s desires exist most vividly. Her sentences began to meander and run together and she was slurring her words as she spoke of Willow. She must have forgotten there was anypony else there, so caught up in her fantasies that she began describing all of the lustful pleasures she’d been dreaming of.

I tried writing as much as I could, though the flaring heat of embarrassment her remarkably vivid descriptions had stirred in me made concentrating on the task something of a problem. It wasn’t long before she slipped into unconsciousness completely and I could take a moment to step out into the evening air to cool and settle down before adding in my last words to Willow.

—

Vitia found me, as you can tell from her letter. Rather, I should say that we found each other in 144.

We’re staying over in her old home town for a short while before we take off east; it’s so boring here that she may have had to bail me out of trouble with the locals a few times. (Can’t help it, I got real lock picks!)

While I dearly wish I could return her to you, only because I know it would do the both you a world of good, I doubt she would ever entertain the idea. She’s pretty set on making this journey with me.

Though, if I’m to be honest, I’m glad we’re traveling together. Her presence has become something of a comfort to me these last couple weeks. It’s nice to have someone you can trust at your side while traveling.

Promise I’ll make every effort to return her safely to you.

I’m going to miss you and Ghost Ant dearly. Tell the Daughters and everyone else at the Church I said “hello.”

I’ll see you when I see you,

Bit

—

I’d love to say the two of us were clever enough to have found our way back to Thieves’ Bend immediately, but our previous guide wasn’t joking when he said they made an effort to keep folks out of the front door.

Vitia, even having lived in Desert’s Edge all her life, could not recall anypony that routinely made the travel upriver ever residing in the small town. The danger of ambush from raiders or bandits on either side of the divide was too great and not many ferries felt the risk was ever worth it. It was only after a fair bit of searching around the docks that we found our unicorn. Lanky, with an unassuming look about her, like she could blend in well with any surrounding she landed in, but most importantly, she had a river and map cutie mark.

She took us through the coves and caves where the water level was high enough for travel, well away from the open lanes of the river. Much like the first night we happened upon the secret little town, we stepped off on to the dock late into the evening. The whole ordeal had been very trying and we were both exhausted from it.

The walk to the Safe House wasn’t but ten minutes from the docks and Crookshanks greeted us with a wave his razor tipped paw when we arrived and showed us to an open room. Said he’d let Betty know of my arrival in the morning and left us to ourselves. Before we settled in for the night Vitia had brought up an odd point about our new acquaintances. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but that was the third or fourth time I had been addressed as newbie.

Vitia set off to visit Xanti the following morning while I headed off to meet with Betty to return his note and find out what he meant. I waited patiently in his shop while he took care of existing customers, and inspected the safes along the wall with a renewed interest. It wasn’t until the last customer left and he locked the door to the store that he broached the topic of his note and I realized I had been conned almost from the word go.

Of course, I thought that back then, but these days I’m a bit more ambivalent about it and I understand why he was so obtuse in his methods. By delivering Betty’s cap to Crookshanks that day, I marked myself as being under his employ.

He asked me to show him what I had learned since that day. Traditionally, he explained, lock picking is usually something of a unicorn trait. Others can muddle their way through it, but magic is exceptionally well suited to manipulating objects, after all. I showed him the writing hoof-brace I had modified to hold a lock pick securely and demonstrated just how much I could muddle my way through. The safe I failed in opening before was opened with time to spare.

Betty congratulated me in bypassing the most basic of lock security. He explained that while spooler pins aren’t uncommon, they aren’t so common that your everyday box will use them. They existed only to frustrate the hasty thief.

He revealed the nature of Thieves’ Bend and asked that I stay on to learn how to better put those skills to a useful purpose. I couldn’t resist.

Every day was some new exercise. A stack of different lock types to work on here, a disassembled mess he expected me to reassemble and re-pin there, or an impromptu lesson on valuing items and marks.

His or, well, our line of work often requires a certain degree of speed, silence, and awareness. We would often take long excursions into forgotten building and tunnels of dead pre-war towns and nearby cities to work using my natural lightness as a pegasus and develop a sense of quiet about my movements. A slow thief or a noisy thief is a dead thief, as he was fond of saying.

Vitia and I saw little of each other during our stay in Thieves’ Bend, as she had chosen to learn the art of zebra alchemy from Xanti. Sometimes it would be stretches at a time before our paths crossed again. What short time we had together was mostly confined to the evening or early morning hours at the Safe House.

Vitia would tell me what she could of her new-found excitement. Xanti, in much a similar fashion to Betty, had her working constantly around the medical greenhouse and lab. They would take the occasional trip out into the desert flats near Paint and sometimes be gone for a full week before returning. She would fill our short time together with tales of the wondrous things that alchemy could do and the many things she learned out in the fields or the various properties of plants and animals.

Betty had given me the full disclosure of the roles many people played in Thieves’ Bend. Tank owned the casino-bar and served as the first stop in any major information brokering in town. The gambling was just something to do on the side and his way of keeping an eye on the grifters and cheats that passed through. Crookshanks handled the fencing of stolen goods sold through the bazaar. He also provided a haven for those that fell within the hierarchy of town. Thieves’ Bend housed a lot of things, and I worried about Vitia during those days. She was spending nearly every waking moment with Xanti, a zebra who not only specializes in medicine and alchemy but also murder.

Isolated in our little world, we saw and worked at only the things they asked of us. The days passed by as we became engrossed in our training and before I knew it not only had my wings finished healing but three months had passed us by. I once more began to feel the pressing urge to move on with my journey further into the Commonwealth than our short excursions would take us.

“Make no mistake, Bit Flip, we’re thieves. There’s nothing wholesome or right about what we do, but there’s no point in making the Wasteland a worse place than it already is. Take from those who have taken, nothing more.”

Betty’s parting words ring true, even today, and it is a rule I learned to live by as Vitia and I traveled further east across the Commonwealth. We passed through Flankshaft and stayed a short while to take on a job we had been eyeing for some time. Eventually, we turned north after hearing of the city Elysium and its many golden rumors. It was there that we butted heads with Wicker, our explosive new friend.

Of course, I hadn’t realized then just how much I’d come to rely on Betty’s teaching. And on the trust in my companion, and the friends we’d meet as our journey continued.

——

Party Status:

Bit Flip: Overall good physical condition.

Level Up (18)

Perk: Intense Training (Agility)

Your tireless dedication to self-improvement has finally paid off! Your Agility score is increased by 1.

Perk: Intense Training (Perception)

Your tireless dedication to self-improvement has finally paid off! Your Perception score is increased by 1.

Quest Perk: Stack the Odds

Unicorns may look down on you with their freaky magic, but you can muddle along with the best of them now. You receive a lock picking bonus of +5 when equipped with a hoof-brace and proper lock picks.

Vitia: Overall good physical condition.

Level Up (16)

Perk: Intense Training (Perception)

Your tireless dedication to self-improvement has finally paid off! Your Perception score is increased by 1.

Perk: Tribal Wisdom

Your studies in Zebra alchemy have given you new perspective on the joys of radhog bacon and various other delicacies of the desert. You take 20% less damage from poisons and eating strange food confers a minor bonus to health.

Quest Perk: Magic Enfeeblement II

Your magical conduit is damaged, but healing. Magic is painful. -25 Magic Energy and automatic failure of high level spells.

Notable Possessions:

Hoof-Brace

Lock Pick Set

Big Book of Alchemy