Fallout Equestria: Little Boxes

Theme Music: Boogie Man- Sid Phillips

           The Canterborough Ministry of Peace hub was once a place where ponies of all shapes and sizes could go and receive medicinal care at the hands of the Ministry doctors who populated the place. It was a place where ground-breaking medicines, spells and drugs were discovered and researched. It was a place where the Ministry monitored all its activity over the entire area. It was once truly magnificent.

         It is now a burnt out shell that a raider party has taken for its own.

       Let me clarify something here. Raiders are the salt of the earth. They are insane psychopaths hopped out on five different drugs at a time, and will think nothing of torturing fillies to death for a laugh. Every single one deserves to die. No exceptions.

           The problem is, is that raiders are like vermin; they are very, very difficult to get rid of. And especially if they are well organized and equipped, such as the ones infesting this MP hub. This particular raider band was known as Boss’s Boys, and what made them so dangerous wasn’t their numbers nor their sheer bloody-mindedness, but their leader: Boss.

           Boss is something of an exception to the raider gang leader rule. Whereas most raider leaders are massive, hulking brutes that radiate authority and testosterone/oestrogen, Boss doesn’t have the physical qualities of the others. Instead, he has something far, far worse. The mind of a general. Boss is a genius when it comes to warfare and organization, and he has managed to transform this meagre group of bandits and thugs into one of the largest raider parties known to civilization. Using maps and stolen Pip-Bucks from the occasional Stablepony, he has managed to ensure that his boys have the best equipment they could find. Coupled with a military-like organization, and every Boy knowing a few more military drills than just ‘run at the enemy screaming and firing’, this has ensured that this group has a fearsome reputation that they more than live up to, as one unlucky mare was about to find out.

            The heroine slowly snuck towards the large tower block, weapons raised and eyes swivelling about in their sockets. She hugged a wall for cover, slowly walking alongside it. When she came across a break, she rolled over to the other side and continued. All the time, she was filled with mind numbing terror, of what the soulless monsters that were the raiders would do to her if they caught her sneaking around their little patch of hell. But she went on, emboldened by Monkey Wrench’s words and the desperation of New Canterborough inhabitants.

           She slowly progressed like this for half an hour, hugging the walls and making as little sound as she could. All the time, she could only think of the fear of the raiders, and the fear of New Canterborough. At last, she came across a courtyard. There were neither walls nor rubble that she could use to sneak about and avoid detection, and as misfortune would have it, the entrance to the building was just across the other side of the plateau of tarmac. So she galloped. She ran as hard and as fast as she could to the other side of the courtyard. All the time, fear of a sniper or a landmine was in her mind as she pelted for her life. But in the end, nothing happened, and she was the entrance. The heroine chuckled quietly at her misfounded fears, her jumping at the shadows.

      On a window on the fifth floor, Marksmare saw the mare that Boss was talking about make a beeline for the front entrance. Lines thought of dropping the heroine with a single shot, but thought better of it. After all, they were much, much more fun when they were alive. She activated her microphone and spoke down it hurriedly.

      “Boss, the heroine’s here! She’s all yours, sweetie. Over.”

      “Marks, what have I told you about being intimate when we use these things? Over.”

      “Aww, Boss, give a mare a break!”

      “Gnnn.” Marksmare heard hoof strike flesh. “As soon as I deal with our unwanted guest, I want you in my office, pronto. Over and out.” The comm line switched off. Marksmare smirked and continued to target the mare’s forhead.

         From a maintenance ladder, Boss saw themare attempt to break in through one of the myriad back doorsHe didn’t bother with slipping on his disguise. He levitated a small revolver and a combat-issue knife and quietly snuck over to the heroine’s concentrating form. She didn’t even notice him, too busy embroiled in the insanely frustrating task of attempting to break into an unlocked foyer. He tiptoed up to her, and watched her. Noted her curves, her coat, her cutie mark of a button, her Pip-Buck 3000 displaying him as an enemy. Boss ran his tongue over his cracked lips. She looked delicious. She’d probably taste delicious too. As the mare broke her sixth bobby pin, he decided to act, throwing his knife at the wood door directly above her head, splitting more than a few hairs. To say that the mare jumped out of her skin would’ve been an underexaggeration. She shrieked, jumped a good two feet in the air and dashed to the side, diving for cover as she pulled out her 10mm. Almost instantly, Boss fell the telltale treacle-like air of the S.A.T.S spell envelope him, and he watched the mare slowly rise up from the rubble she hid behind, pistol raised, verifying the part of his body that would take the most damage. He knew that there was nothing that he could do, and he pushed his way through the treacle-like spell, the crack of a gun impacting the dirt around him. The spell ran its course and the mare swore bodily, ducking behind the rubble as Boss fired with his revolver, smashing holes into the concrete block. Once he stopped firing, he made a mad dash for another fallen block of concrete, narrowly missing the pot-shots taken at him. As he reached the concrete cover, he opened fire again with his gun, successfully hitting the mare in the foreleg. As she cried out in pain and fell back, Boss vaulted over the concrete and made a beeline for her, throwing himself to the side as a bullet missed him-again. Bloody hell, her aim’s awful, he thought to himself. He fired again with his revolver, wounding her again. Boss ducked down, expecting a flurry of bullets, but he heard nothing. Slowly, he poked his head up. The mare was injecting herself with the tranquilizers he had given her earlier, professing that they were in fact syringes filled with Med-X. When she finished injecting the one tube she suddenly slumped and fell still, slowly moving and moaning. Knowing that she was harmless in this state, Boss walked up to her. The mare looked up at him fearfully. Boss raised a hoof.

   “Nighty night.” Boss brought the hoof down onto her temple.

She was in a field full of green grass and the sky was blue and the sun was yellow as the drawing on the wall of the Stable nursery said it would be and there were her friends Blue Ribbon and Torch and they were running about and laughing and having fun and she was running and laughing with them but then the sky went dark and birds came and suddenly the field was full of brown dirt and the sky was grey and the sun was lost behind the grey and she was cold and wet and cold and cold wet cold-

          The heroine jerked up, gasping for air, mane and coat wet with the irradiated water a raider had thrown on her. As she slumped back down on the chair she was tied to, she realises she was blindfolded. She couldn’t see. Suddenly, all her fears came rushing back to her in a snap, and she started bucking and shrieking for help. Suddenly, she heard hoofsteps, and then the cold force of a hoof impact into her cheek. Blood spattered the wall to the left. She felt the raider invade her space, felt rubbery fabric brush against her cheek. The raider spoke in a muffled yet snide feminine voice.

      “So you’re the pathetic excuse of flesh that Boss decided to waste my tranquilizers on. Disgusting.”

      The mare suddenly felt a cold needle press against her skin. The raider didn’t jam it in. She left it there. Perhaps that was worse. Suddenly the blindfold came off, and blinding light flooded her eyes. She instinctively looked away, but a hoof twisted her head and forced her to look. The raider mare spoke again.

           “Now, I’m going to tell you what will happen. You are going to tell me absolutely everything. Who you are, why you’re here, your motivation for this, et cetera, et cetera. If you lie, if you omit anything from your confession, I will make it my business to slowly break you down into raw meat until either you break, or you die. I’m not picky about which one comes first. Do you understand me, or did Boss fuck you up so bad you can’t even speak?” The needle pressed even harder, and yet still it didn’t break. The heroine whimpered.

       “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. What did you say?” The heroine began to shake. Suddenly the needle broke through her skin, and stayed there. She screamed.

          “This is the Zebrican drug known as Manteca. This stuff is a potent hallucinogen, so potent that a few cc can kill. This was used by the Zebricans during the Great War as a method of torture. And if you don’t tell me everything you know, I’ll inject fifteen cubic centimetres of this...shit... directly into your jugular vein. Kapeesh?” The mare remained silent.

        “Really now? How interesting.” Morphine paused for a moment, reflected. Then she injected the high octane nightmare fuel into the heroine, whom be-

-rows upon rows upon rows of hanging bodies, twitchi-

-gan to exper-

-fields of fire and fillies on them, burning and laughi-

-ience horri-

-a dead face, the jaw gone, screaming and screaming-

-fic hallucinations-

-dry skulls in a dusty valley with all the tops sawn off-

         -which ended as abruptly as they had began. The heroine turned over o the side and vomited out the dish of preserved soya she had eaten earlier. Morphine put the almost full needle down and wiped it with a cloth.

       “I just injected half a cubic centimetre into you. As you probably saw, it’s very potent shit.” She pressed the needle against her neck again.

        “Tell me who sent you or I’ll inject double the amount this time.” That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The heroine broke down in a food of tears. Morphine was unimpressed. Then again, she had just experienced Manteca.

        “N-no! I-I’ll tell yo-you! New Canterborough. T-they sent me. They,” The mare gulped. “They needed somepony to take out you bastards.”

       “So, you’re a merc.”

       “A merc?” Despite what had happened to her, the heroine still found the energy to laugh. “I’m no m-merc! I did this to m-make the Wasteland better! This...world...needs good-doers like me.”

         “You mean like Littlepip.”

       “Y-yes! Yes. I mean t-that.”

         “So you’re basically just some trumped-up pony with an idea stuck in her head. That she was another Hero.”

    “This place needs Heroes. Otherwise it isn’t a p-place. It’s chaos.”

      “Right. Anyway. We have all we need from you. Thanks for your time.” Morphine smiled and jammed the needle into the heroine’s neck, injecting 3 cc of hallucinogenic drugs directly into her blood. As her eyes widened to impossible lengths and she began to foam at the mouth, shrieking and moaning, Morphine’s smile finally became genuine.

     “It was nice knowing you, kid.” And with that, Morphine walked out of the room.

           As the soul-rending shrieks of terror behind her grew quieter and quieter, a worried Morphine ascended the ruined staircases of the MP hub. She took them two at a time, heading for the regional director’s office which Boss had repurposed into his command post. She barged through the doors and was greeted by her comrades.

         “You know, there’s a buzzer on the side. You could, you know, use that.” A lime green stallion with fire-red hair and thick black goggles teased her. Specs. Resident technophile and sadist. He appeared to be wearing the now dead heroine’s Pip-Buck, fiddling with it as he did so. Morphine ignored him and marched up the large ovular table that dominated the room. Boss sat at the head of it.

       “She talked. Manteca’s potent shit. Said New Canterborough sent her.”

      “What? That backwater? They couldn’t afford to pay even some shit bitch merc like her!”

    “That’s the thing. They didn’t pay her. Nor did they send one of their own.” Boss was confused at that.

   “So then why would someone like her, a simple Stablepony fresh out of whatever hole in the ground produced her, attack us, a group of bloody vicious killers? It doesn’t make sense!”

         “She said that she volunteered out of the good in her heart. Said she’s an aspiring Hero. Well, before I injected her with Manteca.” Boss fell silent and appeared to brood.

     “That...that’s not good. Heroes, already? I mean, we’ve just moved here!” Marksmare suddenly hugged him.

      “There, there, sweetie. We’ll find a bigger, better place to call home, won’t we?” She narrowed her eyes and stared at Specs and Morphine, who nervously backed away.

        “Yeah, sure we’ll find a good place! Don’t worry none about it, Boss.” Boss smiled and nudged his marefriend away.

         “Yes. Yes we will. Anyway,” Boss shook his head to clear away his melancholy. “Thanks to Morphine, we now have a Raze-class target. New Canterborough.” He indicated on the map at a village a few miles northeast of where they stayed. “We’ve been doing some simple raiding of the caravans nearby, starving it. Perhaps that’s why they sent the Stablepony, I wouldn’t know. Whatever the reason, I believe it’s time to live up to our label.” He rubbed his hooves together in glee.

        “New Canterborough’s ain’t gonna never forget this.”

Level Up!

Boss: Sadist:- You enjoy the pain and suffering of others. When aiming for a body part that isn’t the head or the body, you gain a +5% Critical Chance and +10% damage to all hits in those areas.

EDIT: Rewrite! Made the fight scene, the torture scene, and the command scene longer. Also made Morphine useful.

GaryGibbon again. Nothing much to say except procrastination’s a bitch. Also listen to the theme music while reading the interrogation scene. Fun. :D