Fallout: Equestria - Bits and Pieces

Link to the story on Gdocs - Chp. 1 - Decisions

I lovingly caressed her body, admiring her beauty. She was perfect in every way, shape and form. I had never seen anything more perfect in all of my years. I leaned forward and gave her a kiss with my beak. “I love you,” I whispered.

“What are you doing...?”

I jumped, startled by the owner of the voice. Turning, I saw my brother Ghaleb had entered the room and was looking at me with a quizzical eye.

I motioned towards the tri-barreled energy turret I had been stroking. “Isn’t she perfect?” I asked him. “This baby can punch a hole into the side of an armoured sky-wagon in seconds! Anyone tries to enter HQ without permission, they’ll be a turned into a finely glowing ash!”

Ghaleb rolled his eyes in annoyance. “How much ammunition does it use, brother? You know we’re short on caps as it is.”

“Er...” I stuttered. “Well... it does take quite a bit of ammunition, but it evens out! We’ll be spending less on firearms rounds, plus we won’t need as many guards!”

Ghaleb shook his head. “Gur, when will you learn? Dad doesn’t want to use any of your crazy schemes. The ammunition for this thing is expensive. We’d be completely broke by the end of the month.” He turned. “Instead of fiddling with your fancy energy weapons, why don’t you learn to use a gun? If you really wanted to help out, you wouldn’t waste our time and resources doing... whatever this is, you would be out there-” he waved a claw, motioning to the sky “-getting us contracts.”

I growled. Ghaleb always refused to see the bigger picture. “You idiot! Do you know how much this would help us? If we can get just a few more we wouldn’t have to worry about defence ever again!” I threw the wrench I had been using to repair the turret onto the ground. “You need to think of the long run! This will save us caps!”

“We don’t need to worry about the long run. We need to worry about the now.”

I sat there, fuming, as Ghaleb walked away. What an intolerable prick. I picked up my wrench and dusted it off on my mechanic’s overalls. Well, they weren’t really mechanic’s overalls. I couldn’t personally afford anything like that, mainly because my father would call it a waste. It was just the scraps of old combat armour sewed together to create some comfortable working clothes. Sure, it didn’t look as nice as the real thing, but on the bright side it was knife-proof. Not that I got into knife fights very often.

I turned back to the turret, my enthusiasm for the weapon drained. “Looks like your chance to shine will have to wait,” I told it. With a sigh and a grunt, I picked up the heavy machine and lugged it back to my workshop.

My workshop wasn’t solely a workshop. As with the overalls, my dad would never approve of me using up space for something he considered useless. Instead, I had added a workbench and tool rack into my bedroom. It was cluttered and there wasn’t much space to move, but it got the job done. I dragged the turret toward the back of the room, which was full of other scrapped projects, and placed it down, then went and sat on my bed.

My bedroom used to be an old public washroom. It had had all of the toilets and sinks ripped out, but the ever-present stench of waste and mould still lingered. It wasn’t the best, but it was better than the bedroom we had added to the boiler room.

Our HQ was built into an old public school. Apparently, before the war, it was a place where young ponies would come to learn. Now, it was a place for us Talons to work out how many caps we would earn from taking contracts and killing people. It was a drastic change of use.

I lay down on my bed, trying to come up with another idea on a way to improve HQ. All of my ideas so far had been rejected, all because of the shortsightedness of everyone here. My mind wandered, and I thought about my father.

I was the son of the Talon chief of this chapter, Guto. You would think that would get me a little more respect than I got now, but you’d think wrong. If anything, I was treated even worse for it. Everyone expected me to become a great soldier like my father or my brother, and their expectations were high. When I started to gain an interest in science, they didn’t think of it as something good.

My father, especially, was disappointed in me. After having my brother Ghaleb turn into the fighter he is, he had high hopes for me. He’d treated me different ever since the day I first picked up that Big Book of Science.

The Talon life wasn’t for me. I was no mercenary. In truth, I had always secretly dreamed of travelling to Tenpony tower and helping out as a doctor or nurse. Maybe I would study science without anyone looking at me with disappointment.

I fantasized for a bit, picturing myself leaving the Talon life. No more constant weapons practice, which I was no good at anyway. The only weapons I could keep on target were energy weapons, and only the small ones at that. Their lack of recoil made it easy to keep on target, even for someone as scrawny as I.

To be honest, I’ve never even killed anything. I was a Talon who never killed anything. A joke. The rest of the Talons laughed at me behind my back. Sometimes right to my face. I really, really didn’t belong here.

Could I leave? What would happen if I just packed up some essentials and left? I could find a town, but would I survive the trip? I stopped myself from weighing the odds of survival in my mind. That was ridiculous! I couldn’t leave!

Could I?

Would anyone even notice I was gone? Its not like they let me help around here. They would probably notice the equipment I took was missing before they noticed I was. If I recalled correctly, the nearest town was a dingy place called Diptrip. If I were to leave, would I survive the three day trip? The wastes could be a dangerous place, and I wasn’t confident in my survival skills, or even my aim.

I made a quick mental list of everything I would need to survive. Food, a weapon, ammo, a bedroll, and water were essentials. I could get food and water from the mess hall, I was pretty sure I could get a weapon from the firing range if I acted like I was planning to practice, and I already had a bedroll. That just left ammo. Where could I get the large supply of ammo I would need out in the wastes?

That moment was when I realized I was seriously considering leaving. Sure, I had fantasized before, but I had never taken it this far. Could I do it? Could I actually leave?

I made up my mind. I was leaving the Talons for good.

Four hours later, I was silently padding my way down the halls of HQ, making my way toward the storage closet. The storage closet was where we stored our more valuable or dangerous equipment- Ammo, Rad-away, caps, and even the single balefire egg launcher we managed to scavenge a few years back. The door was always kept locked, but I had spent many hours learning how to pick locks. It was the only way for me to get some of the items I needed for some of my more expensive ideas.

I made it to a corner in the hallway and pressed myself up against the wall. One right turn would leave me right in front of the storage closet, but there was a problem. A guard always stood outside the door, and I would need a way to get him away for a bit.

I leaned my head around the corner and sure enough, a guard stood in front of the door, assault rifle in claw. I recognized her as Gladwyn, one of my brother’s friends. She was nice enough, and by that I mean she didn’t go out of her way to bother me.

I quickly made up a story in my head. I’m not the most convincing griffon, but that was alright. Gladwyn wasn’t the smartest. I walked up to her, an award-winning (nervous) smile on my beak.

“Hey Gladwyn,” I said. “My dad sent me to pick up some ammo. Could you let me in?”

Gladwyn raised an eyebrow. “You? What do you need ammo for, Chicken Legs?”

There was that nickname. Everyone in the base called me that. It was starting to bug me. Nevertheless, I continued.

“My dad says I have to go out on the next contract with Ghaleb. Says it’ll ‘make me a real Talon’.”

Gladwyn rolled her eyes. “Like that’ll ever happen. Just get some ammo and get out.”

I walked up to the door and start to reach into one of the pockets of my overalls. I fumbled around in them like I was searching for something, then frantically started to pat down the rest of me. “Oh, crap! I lost the key!” I exclaimed.

Gladwyn sighed and put a claw over her face. “Useless... well, if you can’t get in you have no use being here. Scram!”

I raised my claws. “I really need to get in? Can you just let me pick it? Please!”

Gladwyn looked around, making sure there was nobody else around in the hallway. “Fine. Just be quick about it.”

Success! I took my screwdriver and bobby pin out of a pocket in my overalls. I inserted them into the lock and got to work. It didn’t take long- the lock was two hundred years old, and none of the griffons here bothered with maintaining much. The door opened with a click and I stepped inside.

Around me were shelves piled high with stuff. Weapons, ammo, even armour were stacked to the ceiling, just ripe for the picking. I perused the shelves, eventually stumbling on a large pile of spark cells. I took a cloth pouch out from one of my pockets and unfolded it, then took as many cells as I could and dropped them in. After debating whether to take a magical energy pistol or a magical energy shotgun, I eventually took both and threw them in the bag as well.

I looked down at my patchwork overalls. They were ugly and obviously homemade, and I debated whether or not to grab a suit of combat armour from a shelf. I decided against it. The overalls had served me well, and they provided enough protection to do me good in the wastes.

I grabbed a bedroll and some purified water and shoved those in the bag as well. As I turned to leave the closet, something caught my eye. A safe, wedged in the corner between piles of old leather armour. A few suits of armour had fallen on top of the safe, and I wouldn’t have noticed it if not for the gleam of light on the metal door.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and started to walk up to it, but stopped to grab an armoured bag to strap around my waste. I put all my stuff in there and inspected the safe.

The safe was oddly clean for something that had survived the apocalypse. Someone had obviously been taking loving care of it, cleaning it and hiding it underneath piles of armour. I took out my screwdriver and bobby pins and went to work.

Four bobby pins and many annoyed grunts later, I stood up kicked the safe. The thing definitely wasn’t going to open. With a sigh I placed my screwdriver back into my pocket.

Just as I finished grabbing a pile of caps that had caught my eye, I heard a loud banging noise and turned around to see Gladwyn hitting the door. “Hurry up in there!” she ordered.

I closed my bags and left the closet. “What, did you get lost in there?” she asked, laughing at her own joke. She became serious a moment later. “Now scram!”

She didn’t have to tell me twice. I turned tail and ran back to my room.

Back in the safety and comfort of my own room, I started to do inventory on all the goods I had... “liberated”, and counted my caps. I had a fair amount of spark cells, and I had swiped a good three hundred caps. Everything was going along swimmingly, and it looked like I would be able to continue with my plan.

I still had some reservations with leaving. Besides make my way to Diptrip, I didn’t know what I would do out there. Sure, I could travel to Tenpony, but what were the odds of them letting in a scrawny little griffon who just wandered in from the wastes?

I also didn’t know how my father would react to my leaving. Would he take it as betrayal? Talons were all about loyalty, and anyone who betrayed them didn’t usually live long enough to make any use of it. I’d hoped that he would take it in stride, maybe be happy that the useless son was gone, but now I wasn’t so sure.

It was too late to go back on my plan now. I stood up, put both my weapons in their holsters, grabbed my bags, and left my room for the last time.

Footnote: Level Up.

New Perk: Awareness - Your griffon eyes are well adjusted for seeing over long distances or noticing things others might not. You have +1 perception and can often notice important things about your enemies in combat.