Fallout: Horse Country

"Toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat."

Nothingness! At least that's what I would have said if my eyes were open. I was still trying to force my brain to perceive what I wanted it to perceive, instead of what it would have perceived if I had just opened my eyes right off the bat. It isn't easy to force your brain to see things which simply aren't there (except if you're my mother and you believe... ahem), but I'd had to do that a lot in the past, considering with whom I was forced to live for my entire life, and I'd gained a special aptitude for it. Well, here goes!

I opened my eyes. Nothingness! It was exactly as they had told me! There was nothing out here! I was dead! Gone with the wind! Nowhere to be found! No... it was just bright out here and my eyes were adjusting. What a relief!

After my eyes adjusted, the first thing I saw was a beautiful beach with rolling waves. I had never heard the sound of the beach before... there were palm trees and a relatively sparsely populated road along the coast... I looked to my left and noticed a stallion carrying the beach and cars in his front hooves, waving his head around and blowing as much air and saliva through his teeth as his lungs allowed.

"Stop doing that, Ted! You look retarded and you're ruining the billboard!" a muscular, brown stallion with a strong Brooklyn accent shouted at the poor fuckwit, who looked exactly the same, but without the muscles. "See, you've practically peeled all the paint off already! There's foam all over the sand!"

"Sorry, Bawss!" he replied, dropping the billboard. "Won't happen again!"

"You're damn right, it won't." Bawss pulled a blunderbuss out of his inventory. It was made of rusty iron and had a brass ring lining the edge of the barrel. It looked like it could only survive a couple more shots. He lifted it up to bear on Ted's face with his pathetic earth pony hooves, and, as I shut my eyes, not wanting any gunpowder to get into them, he pulled the giant trigger.

BLAM!

"Aw, Bawss! I hate when ya do that!"

He was still alive? I reopened my eyes for the second time that day to look at him. The sight was absolutely...

Stupid.

His face was completely black, as was his blown-back mane. It would probably also be notable that his muzzle was turned around backwards. He fixed his muzzle's stupid position and picked the billboard back up.

They put the billboard into their truck and drove off. I realized that the brightness I saw earlier was just from those light on top of the billboard. What supplies their power? I wondered.

God damn! Am I going to have to deal with shit like this the whole time I'm out here?

As the truck dematerialized over the horizon, I exhaled, glancing around. There was a distinct blueness to this [New Area Discovered: Equestrian Wasteland]. The wind swept through my mane and chilled me, supplementing the blue feel of the wasteland. I looked up towards the dark sky, as any normal pony would do, and laughed. "Gee, I bet some ponies would look up and be scared. Idiots." What should been a clear blue sky had been substituted by a thick layer of black fog. Oh well, what can you do?

Alright. I have a job to do. If I was a Rambo, where would I hide?

Fuck if I know. I doubt I could think anything like her if I tried.

I checked my PipeBuck for a second to see if it was still working and — "SHIT! Are you kidding me?!" I screamed, slamming my hoof onto the buttons embedded into the panel surrounding the monitor. The backlight of the monitor briefly flickered, before displaying an image of a bright green hill under a blue sky. It had decided to enter sleep mode. Ugh. Lazy computer.

Upon releasing a long breath, I listened around for any possible voices. I did not hear any voices. I did, however, hear a quiet ticking coming from my hoof. What's this? I lifted my PipeBuck up to my face and saw that the little needle on its corner was vibrating, which I had never seen before. While usually, it would be planted firmly in the green, it was now listing lazily to the right, approaching the range of yellow. I, being the super PipeBuck detective that I am, recalled that this needle represented amount of radiation being absorbed by the device. "Haha! Take that, you pea-brained machine! You cannot overcome my vast knowledge!" I guffawed, for several seconds, or minutes (I couldn't tell), before regaining my composure.

Now, what is radiation?

I noticed a notification in the corner of my vision. Rotating my eyes within their sockets, I read the notification: You are now suffering from Advanced Radiation Poisoning. Poisoning? But... what does that mean? Poison means hurt and poisoning means to be afflicted with poison, so... "Poisoning bad?" I asked nopony in particular.

The universe chose to answer my question by making me throw up my entire day's food onto the parched ground. "Poisoning bad."

Of course, now I had more problems to deal with. First Rambo, then the wasteland and now this 'Advanced Radiation Poisoning.' Okay, it's probably best I solve these in a specific order. Logically, I chose: Rambo first, then get some RadAway (I had read about it in history books), then back home. In order to find Rambo, I was going to have to start looking. "Damn you, Rambo. How dare you leave me your PipeBuck?!"

I pressed the Data button on my PipeBuck and selected World Map. A blue square appeared, showing the Google Maps logo, before disappearing and displaying my near surroundings. For some reason, Google had made this program such that areas to which users had not yet been were completely invisible, which was REALLY DAMNED HELPFUL. THANKS, GOOGLE. Anyway, it showed a building to my right. I looked up from the screen and checked to my right. There was, indeed, a building there.

Deciding not to screw around any longer, I moved to move to the building, before being interrupted by a massive amount of vomit I could not believe I still had in me, accompanied by another notification: You are now suffering from Critical Radiation Poisoning. "Oh, fuck." I repeatedly tried to keep moving, but I only stumbled and fell to the ground - repeatedly. Finally, my body started to respond to my commands, lifting up a front leg and placing it ahead of me, before doing the same with the other. I managed to gallop 30 feet to the building shown on the map. I looked back at my PipeBuck. The needle had settled. "Phew! Looks like that radiation isn't having any adverse effect on me now! Well, aside from having slightly less hitpoints, moving slightly slower and suddenly not being able to carry 10 pounds that I could before."