Fallout Equestria: SSDW

Same Shit, Different Wasteland

Welcome to Dodge

Goooooooood morning, everypony! DJ PON-3 here, with some news to keep you warm out there in the wastes.

Well, I’m sure you remember that strange dude I told you about? The one that looks like a minotaur? We finally have a name to put to the face, not that anyone’s ever seen it. Courier Six. I’ve got no idea why he calls himself that, or what it means. But, if you guys run into any other Couriers, let me know. Might be able to set up a reunion, the DJ said with a chuckle.

In other news, things have been really loud in the vicinity of Dodge the last few days. After some unknown force decided to push the residents out, the Steel Rangers in the area have been desperately trying to reclaim the area. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, Rangers helping us normal wastelanders? It doesn’t add up. But look at it this way: the only reason they’re doing it is because whoever forced out the residents have some tech they want. But hey, if they manage to win, good on them. Just as long as they let the townsfolk back in. Either way, stay away from the area. No telling just how trigger-happy both sides are.

Today’s weather is cloudy with a slight chance of rain. Now, to take you away, here’s Sweetie Belle with Sunshine. Because we can all hope, right?

The DJ’s voice was replaced by slow, gentle music and a mare singing. “I miss Mr. New Vegas,” Thomas muttered, turning his Pip-Boy’s radio off.

“Hey! Turn it back on!” He turned to see a brown earth pony glaring at him.

“Shut up, Bingo,” another pony said. Thomas glanced at the dull red unicorn. “It’s just the same ten songs over and over again.”

“But Sunshine is my favourite,” Bingo muttered, the stallion sighing.

“I’ll turn it back on later,” the man said. “For now, let’s keep going.”

“Really?” the unicorn asked. “Didn’t ya hear what he said?”

“Yeah, but I don’t exactly got a choice,” Thomas drawled. For some reason, he found it easier to talk like this around them. “Y’see, my payment depends on whether or not I get this thing my employers want. At the very least, they want to know that I couldn’t find it.”

“What are ya looking for again?” the unicorn asked. “Are ya sure ya couldn’t find it somewhere else?”

“Sorry, Bargain,” the man said. “Top secret stuff.”

“Top secret stuff? What are ya, a Ministry Mare?” Bargain asked him, a note of amusement in his voice.

“Are we really gonna have this conversation again?”

“Are you gonna tell us anything?”

“No.”

“Then I guess we’re done talking.”

There wasn’t much else they could really do, though. The walk to Dodge, as it was now known, was a long one, about three weeks. It reminded Thomas of his trek to Zion with Happy Trails and his meeting with the Burned Man. He just hoped that this world didn’t decide to have something similar waiting for him.

There wasn’t much to look at or do, either. All around them was dirt, rocks and dead or dying vegetation. He’d learnt the hard way not to let a bloatsprite get too close, after it had nearly taken a finger. Apart from that mishap, though, the trip had been peaceful. Bingo and Bargain didn’t have a pack brahmin, but took turns pulling the cart filled with their wares. At first, this struck Thomas as odd. After a while, though, he could see the logic.

“How much further is it, anyways?”

“Not too much farther, maybe twenty minutes,” Bargain answered casually.

“Hmm,” Thomas grunted in response.

The next fifteen minutes passed by in tense silence. Both stallions looked around nervously as they tried to find whoever was responsible for evicting the townsfolk, while Thomas just stared at the horizon. “Something’s not right,” he muttered.

Bingo unhitched himself so he could use his pistol more efficiently. “I know what ya mean, it shouldn’t be this quiet.”

“Well... we should be able to fight off most things,” Bargain said with a nod towards Thomas. “We’ve got Courier Six there.”

Thomas rolled his eyes under his mask. He really just preferred the shorter title, and he had no idea how the DJ had managed to get the longer one in the first place. “Just keep lookin’.”

All three of them spun around when they heard what sounded like hoofsteps. “We’re not alone, are we?” Bingo said around his gun.

“Probably not... just keep a lookout for - ”

There was a loud pew! as a pink beam burned its way through the unicorn’s ratty leather barding. As Bargain dropped, Thomas jumped behind the cart, dragging Bingo by his tail. “It’s fucking Zion all over again!” the man shouted.

“Bargain!” Bingo shouted around his gun, struggling against the man’s grip.

“Calm down, or you’ll get yourself killed as well!”

“You killed him! You bastards killed him!”

Thomas could only watch as Bingo slipped out of his grip and jumped into the open, firing his pistol in unbridled rage, managing to take one of the attackers down with a lucky shot. The lasers that struck did nothing to deter him until a stray beam hit him in the jaw, sending his pistol to the ground. The stallion didn’t even have a chance to glance at it before a dozen more beams perforated him.

The man stared at the broken, bleeding pony for a few moments. “You fuckers want me!? Come and get me!” Thomas screamed at the top of his lungs, ignoring the lasers as he rose up from cover, SMG in hand. He didn’t even bother to fire in bursts, instead holding down the trigger and pointing the gun in the general direction of an attacker.

The attackers, surprised by the sudden onslaught, ducked behind their own cover. What followed were a few incredibly tense moments as both sides waited for the other to act first. Thomas used the opportunity to switch to a better weapon and run through what he knew about his attackers.

They were all wearing armour that was either the same as or incredibly similar to the ponies that had attacked him in Manehattan. That, the laser weapons and their horns meant that the only realistic possibility was that they were from the same group. But why were all eight of them unicorns?

He didn’t have much chance to think any further when a laser beam left an ugly melted spot on his helmet. “Jesus!” he shouted, ducking down further. If these laser weapons were like anything he knew from his Wasteland, all that had to happen was for the shooter to get lucky and he’d be a pile of ash just waiting to get blown away. Luckily, he had something like that of his own.

Rising from cover he aimed his magical shotgun, the Assistant, at the nearest unicorn. Moonbeam had decided that the magical energy weapon would be better in his hands, and he was glad he hadn’t argued. He watched with grim satisfaction as a unicorn let out an anguished scream that turned to gurgling as the plasma melted her into a glowing green puddle.

“He has plasma!” he heard one of the unicorns yell as he ducked back down.

“Keep firing!” He was forced back down when the beams focused on him again. He had to rethink his strategy. The cart wasn’t going to last much longer under the barrage, and he knew his armour was capable of taking a few shots before he had to worry about disintegration. All he had to do was get close enough to one of them to make firing too risky…

Firing a shot at the largest cluster of unicorns, he charged the nearest one, a stallion with a pink coat and white mane. The face-concealing helmet did nothing to muffle his scream as Thomas pushed him over before firing point-blank into his barrel, the emerald fire melting his armour like ice.

Before the other unicorns could react he fired at them again, some of them screaming when the plasma pellets struck. Every second he would fire, suppressing them as he stepped closer. By the time he had run out of ammo, he was within punching range.

The unicorns could only scream and try desperately to hit the man as Thomas’s Displacer Glove removed body parts and pulped flesh. He threw dirt at their faces, kicked their legs out from under them, even threw a corpse at another pony to distract them. Every dirty tactic he could think of, he used it against them.

Eventually, he stood alone, covered in blood that wasn’t his. Around him were the broken and mangled bodies of six unicorns, each one either missing limbs or with exposed organs. As the man panted, he looked around. He was sure there had been another. So where were they…?

The man fell with a yelp something burned through his pants, leaving a horrible wound in his leg. “All I need to do is drag your corpse back to HQ and they’ll reward me,” a cultured female voice said, poking him in the back with her rifle.

Thomas raised his hands and turned around slowly, to avoid aggravating his injured leg. The mare in question was wearing armour identical to her dead comrades, but her golden mane and alabaster coat were clearly visible. “Won’t you get a bigger reward if I’m alive?”

The mare snorted. “After what you did to my friends?” she asked harshly, jabbing him in the gut.

“You’re angry, I get that,” Thomas replied, waiting for the right moment.

“Damn right I’m fuckin’ angry!” the mare yelled, her accent slipping into something a bit more savage. “I’m gonna rip out ya spine and flog ya withit! Now take off that fuckin’ mask so I can sees ya face!”

“How about you go fuck yourself with that rifle?” Thomas asked back. He carefully lowered his hands, making sure to perform the action as slow as he possibly could. If he got it right, he would be able to get a shot off with his pistol before she could react.

“Hey! Keep them claws where I can see’em!” she yelled, jabbing him again. “Try anything funny and I’ll shoot ya dick off!” She lowered her rifle, aiming it right at his crotch to show she was serious. That made him stop, and made her smirk. “That’s what I thought. All yous are the same, one hint that I’m gonna hurt you down there and - ”

Thomas leapt back when something struck the mare in the jaw, sending her tumbling and her rifle clattering to the ground. Whatever it was had left her jaw hanging onto the rest of her head by the muscle alone, a grotesque sight as she let out a wordless moan. Mercifully she was struck again, this time the projectile killing her.

“Thank Celestia we found you!” Thomas turned to see three other ponies approaching him. Two of them were in leather barding, one levitating a rifle in their magic. The third was wearing the power armour that he knew belonged to the Steel Rangers. “Wouldn’t be good if Courier Six got killed.”

“As much as I appreciate the help,” he said, limping over to them, “this is the strangest rescue party I’ve seen.”

“You mean the Ranger?” the unicorn asked, flicking his red mane out of his eyes. Under his barding Thomas could see that he had a brown, almost dirt-coloured coat.

“The Steel Rangers in the area and the residents of Dodge have a long-standing agreement,” the Ranger explained.

“We hand over anything interesting we salvage, they stop raiders and wildlife from attacking the town,” the third pony elaborated. The dark brown mane wasn’t very odd, but Thomas was a little surprised to see a set of dirty yellow wings on his sides.

Thomas decided to limp closer. “Well, again, thanks. I don’t suppose you know anything about what happened to Dodge?”

The Ranger snorted. “We lost three dozen trying to hold them back,” she said sadly. “We had to retreat to one of the old farms outside the town. For some reason, they seem content to let us rot.”

Thomas frowned under his mask. “Great. I need access to one of the warehouses in the town. Guess that won’t be happening.”

The pegasus laughed. “Don’t count on it. They pushed us out, but they ain’t gonna keep us out.”

“Dodge survived the war, we’ll survive this,” the unicorn added proudly.

“That’s enough, you two,” the Ranger said commandingly before turning to Thomas. “Think you can walk?”

“I’ll be a bit slow, but I can manage,” the man replied.

“Good. Hitch me up to that wagon, and I’ll pull it. Pit, Bee, help load the bodies into it. Grab their rifles too.”

As the unicorn and pegasus did that, Thomas turned to the Ranger. “The two I was with, Bargain and Bingo, what’re you gonna do with them?”

“If the farm’s owner doesn’t mind, we can give them a burial. Failing that, we’ll burn all the bodies,” she explained.

“I guess that makes sense.” Thomas limped alongside her and quickly hitched her up before collecting the Assistant.

“Thanks. Busy, get up there and make sure we’re not walking into an ambush,” she commanded. The pegasus nodded and briefly took flight before landing again moments later.

“Unless they found a stockpile of Stealth-Bucks, I’d say we’re clear.”

“Then let’s move.” Their small procession moved across the dusty ground, each member silent as they scanned the area.

The pain in Thomas’s leg made it hard to keep track of time, but before long they found themselves at a large fenced off property. To one side was a large farmhouse, and off in the distance was what looked like a warehouse. Beyond that were trees. More trees than he had ever seen in one place. Admittedly, most of them were shrivelled black things, but it was something.

“Welcome to Cherry Hill Ranch,” the Ranger said as they walked through the gate.