Fallout Equestria: SIDEQUEST

Chapter One: Mad World

I was dying. Me, Spanner Wrench, daughter of Air Hammer, the head of Maintenance, was bleeding out in the Atrium. My head hurt, and I felt something poking out of my torn and broken skull that should never be on the outside of a living pony… A smeary trail of red lead back down to Ventilation, where a fan I’d been working on had restarted while I was still inside it. I was lying here... bleeding... dying... and nopony was helping me.

A legion of ponies were walking around in the Atrium, ignoring me as I died slowly at their hooves. They had about six shapes between all of them. My mother, my father, the unicorn I was supposed to call Overmare. An Earth pony that had bullied me and the Overmare until a falling pipe had put an end to his stupidity (oops). A faceless pony with wings I guess was a pegasus (there were none in my Stable). The stallion who ran the clinic.

I turned my face towards a sudden bright light, brighter than anything I’d ever seen before. I was sickened by the feeling of something in my back giving, and a sudden freedom that told me dragging my useless legs wasn’t an issue anymore. The Stable Door was opening… Slowly, inexorably opening. I felt there was something on the other side, and then I saw her. Celestia, in all her radiant glory, the golden symbol of her office somehow flaring out behind her. I begged her for succor.

“Please… heal me… Princess…”

Her benevolent expression shifted, her eyes narrowed. She grinned horribly. “No.”

There was a blinding flash, and I watched as the ponies I saw milling around turned to matchsticks in the blaze, before they winked out. I sobbed, watched them turn to ash in the fury of her gaze, my eyes closing tightly before her forehoof ended me with a crunch that I heard and felt despite it occurring.

My eyes snapped open on darkness. Complete and utter darkness where there should always be light. Dear Celestia, was I struck blind during the night? Buck me! As my eyes adjusted slowly, I peered around the room. Same four walls. Same methodical neatness. So I wasn’t broken, the lights were. Sighing a little bit, I pulled on my utility barding a moment or two after all four hooves were on the floor, hearing the familiar jingle of the tools stowed away in the pockets. I didn’t know why, but I always felt more able to do my job after putting them on and had an easier time unlocking my personal effects locker… Awkwardly tucking the sleeve against my PIP, I smacked and held down a button on its face until the screen glowed in overbright mode, bathing my surroundings in a sickly green.

I smiled a little bit, entirely ignoring my mane besides tying it back. A single naturally spiky lock fell forward, out of the rest and refusing to be tamed and shoved into line with the rest. Well good on it. Buck authority. My eyesight was restored to full capacity with me donning my eyeglasses. I don’t know how, but my other eleven senses were increased as well… A Mint-al had me feeling my usual intelligent self, and the color leached back into the world. I peered in my mirror, making sure I looked at least presentable and ready to start my shift on Maintenance, noticing dark circles under my eyes that I hadn’t noticed before my Mint-al. Ah well. A little sleep deprivation never hurt anypony.

The lights in the corridor were out as well, which meant my job would be simply swell today. I paused, closing my eyes a little bit as I thought. I had replacement bulbs in my quarters, cabling, everything I might need. Then again, a trip to Maintenance would yield the rest of my tools, reassure me that I wasn’t the only pony left alive after sleeping through a Stableocalypse… to Maintenance it was. The overbright mode on my PIP’s screen only illuminated about ten feet ahead of me, so beyond that I had no idea what was coming up until it was within my little halo of light. It was through this and muscle memory that kept me from making any wrong turns on my way down to the level I wanted, or walking into walls and stuff.

The next level’s lights were also off, about half of them. Stepping out into one of the pools of light, I stepped around a pony before walking into him. Noticing his cyan and navy blue mane, general dour body language that brightened when he noticed little old messy-haired me, I determined it to be a pony I knew only as Doof, and preferred to keep that way.

“Hey Maintenance, when are you going to finally drop the haughty bitch routine and lift that tail for me?”

‘When Celestia busts down the Stable door and gives you a brain, mud-pony… I wonder…’ ”Can mud ponies read?” ‘… Shit. Smooth move. Note;’  “learn to think and not say.” ‘…Celestia clop me...’

If the mud pony had heard me, he made no sign, continuing on his misogynistic mutterings. I wondered idly if all males thought with their dicks, if it was only mud ponies, or if it was just this colt.

And a colt he was same as I was still a filly; you could get out of school one of four ways: if an orphan could perform the same work as their parents and tested proficient at it; if you worked above grade level for your age, got your cutie mark, proved yourself mature enough, and tested out (Like me. Being of the Master Race of unicorn… This was no surprise.); you could pass your classes and aptitude tests somewhere in the middle (Like most ponies), or you could fail miserably. At everything. Strong ponies good at taking orders and not much else went to Security. All the other dumb ones went to Janitorial, and the records showed the Overmare’s office in one case.

“So anyway, Spanner, it’s lucky I ran into you before anyone else. So we can go find a…”

“Look. Doof, whatever your dirt parents named you. Cut through thinkin with your dick, or I’ll cut it off for you to help. What. The fuck. Do you want.”

His expression hardened as he stared at my forelock. My beloved, anarchist forelock. An electric blue that clashed with the pink of my coat, the fuchsia of the rest of the spiky mane currently tugged back into a rubber o-ring to keep it from interfering with my work. I grabbed an adjustable spanner from a loop on my utility barding in my magic- good heavy steel- as he drew his baton and took a step forward.

“What did you say?”

“Doof. Or did your mud-pony parents name you Doofus? Remember, dirt, the Overmare is also of the Master Race, and a friend of mine.”

I smirked as he let out a snort and dashed towards me, turning his neck to swing his baton as hard as he could at lil old me... who was currently slamming my heavy spanner into the back of his front left knee as I ran forward to meet him. He stumbled and went down heavily as I emerged from under him, pausing to turn and face him. “… Wow, you guards need better knee protection. If I hit you any harder I probably could have stopped your guarding days for good. Do yourself a favor, dirt.” I spat on his prone form and drew my small body up as high as I could; putting what I thought was an imperial gaze. “Hit the latrines, look at the pictures in your colt-cuddler magazine, you’ll be right as rain after a while. And don’t get in my way again, somepony’s got to get to fixing these stupid lights.” I laughed a little bit as I hung a right at the next corner, the MAINTENANCE sign over the stairwell more than a small clue to where I was headed.

The lights were on in Maintenance, which meant either the break was somewhere between this level and the one above it, or this level’s problem had been fixed. I trotted towards the sound of voices and slipped into the gathering hall along with the rest of C-shift, avoiding my mom’s gaze at the front. I listened in to what she was saying, not having any real hope of not being noticed; my mane was a dead giveaway, especially with me trying to hide in a group of ten..

“B-shift, your repair tickets have been completed. You’re officially off-duty as of now. Turn your keys in to C-shift.”

The ponies on the right turned, hoofing or levitating the rings of keys that we’d be entrusted with for the next eight hours over to us on C-shift, who tucked them away in our bardings or clipped them to belts.

“B-shift, go get a meal, shower, and hit your bunks. You’re back on in sixteen, remember.”

The fifteen ponies on the other side of the room- A and B were larger than C, we were just a skeleton crew to maintain and catch whatever work A and B shifts missed- left quietly under the watchful gaze of Air Hammer.

“C-shift, Stable’s yours. Stay out of Security’s way, and no slacking off. Your repair tickets are posted on the wall. See you in eight.” A mare of few words, my mother stepped back from her podium and turned towards her desk, slipping up into her chair as she turned her attention to some paperwork. Once out from under her gaze, we all rose as one pony, and turned to trot over to the board and see what we’d be doing. Swell, I was tasked with the light situation…

I sighed a little bit as I turned away, watching the other ponies file out of the room and across the Stable to make their repairs. My mother approached me, her expression hard as I looked up at her.

“You’re late.”

“Overslept, held up by a stupid mud-pony colt in Security who wanted to talk about prospective breeding options. I politely declined.”

She shook her head. “You know how the Lottery runs. You should think about being a little less disruptive and a little more punctual and care about your job, Wrenchie.”

I let out a little grump. “The Overmare is a personal friend of mine, mom. She won’t let my name come up.”

Nopony liked the Lottery, but it was necessary. Every ten years, somepony would have their name come up from the rosters of Stable 105, and be ejected from the Stable to explore and see if the outside could support life, if it was ready for the door to be permanently opened yet. Some ponies thought it was a way for the Overmare (or Stallion) to get rid of ponies she didn’t like, but nopony complained. You just did your job, and hoped your name wouldn’t come up.

Now, I wasn’t a dumb pony, I was just a little bit lazy when it came to actually doing any work, and a little leery of being copasetic with other ponies. Except the Overmare. I’d always been able to relate to her, and then her father had died and she’d tested competent enough to replace him…

I found myself crawling through ductwork some time later, chasing the electrical problem. I’d found nothing wrong all the way down to Ventilation. I found the problem; a vent fan had shorted everything and everything on the same circuit (other vent fans, lights…) had also gone dark. I stuck my tongue out and got out a tool, poking around inside it with the tip of a screwdriver held in my magic, PIPbuck screen in overbright mode to light what I was working on. “HAH! Spanner Wrench is best pony!” I grinned as I pulled out a burnt out fuse and some wiring, splicing new copper wire and a fresh fuse into it.

And then realized my mistake. The fan instantly kicked on.

“Celestia! Did they not shut off the fucking power?” My ears flattened tight to my head as I turned tail and ran as fast as I could down the ductwork, trying to escape the suction. My small size helped me move quickly because I didn’t have to crawl, but on the other side of the bit I was surely being pulled at by the current building in the duct. “Fuck fuck fuck!”

I could swear that I’d be a goner, and then I saw light. “Ffff-yes!” I leapt- I hoped this was the vent that I’d accessed the ducts through, but any port in a storm!

I sailed through the air, out the hole in the wall, and hit the ground heavily with a rattle from my tools. I could have kissed the floor, but Janitorial hadn’t been through yet.. buck that. I rose shakily to my hooves and turned at the hole in the wall that had nearly killed me, lifting the cover into place with magic and screwing it down. I was struck by my dream- hadn’t I been cut up by a fan? Weird…

Now that I was finished with my work, I was (technically) supposed to report back to Maintenance and see if anypony else needed help, or if Mom would give me another task; keeping us all alive took everypony working around the clock to make sure what was working stayed working and what was broken got fixed. But, as I have said earlier, I’m somewhat of a lazy pony when it comes to doing my job, soooo it was time for me to fuck off!

I sang a soft song to myself as I trotted along the hallway, levitating my toolbox along behind me as I allowed myself a brief moment to reflect on the world. Every night I woke, grabbed a shower and breakfast if I was early enough, shrugged into my utility barding and ran down to Maintenance if not. Every night I fixed a light fixture, or a terminal, or a door, or some other asinine thing that broke while other ponies got to work on more important projects. Worked on improving our standard of living instead of maintaining it.

I kicked at a piece of paper as I pouted. “Ain’t fair.” Now, it must be said that it sounded nothing like that to anypony within earshot; we’d gone into the Stable as Bayston-area ponies of varying backgrounds (even a couple families of lower-class citizens, probably in the idea of getting a good degree of variation or even for the Sorrel Hells of it). As a result, Equestrian Common had been given a beating. What somepony would know as a light accent before the war had turned into a full-blown dialect with its own slang and pronunciation rules.

In the Stable, our words carried r-sounds removed and placed seemingly at random, our vowels had hardened as surely as the packets of bubblegum that could still be pulled out of deep storage by a tenacious or observant enough horn or hoof, along with other ‘contraband’ items that had been mothballed against Apocalypse. Which reminded me, I needed another tin of mints…

I whistled cheerfully as I peered around, before nudging my Pipbuck to turn on the Eyes-Forward Sparkle, the spell taking a moment to take stock of me and my surroundings. I saw no white lines in the vicinity, and so I slipped into a grating close to the floor, crawling a path I held in my memory from my fillyhood, into Deep Storage. The humming of machines around me would interfere with the E.F.S. of ponies sent after my Pipbuck tag, and interfere with it even being picked up at all! I was such a genius~

There was of course a legitimate way to get there; the first time I’d been was with my mother…

“Wrenchie… Take a breath.”

I did as my mother said, my weak magic holding a BB pistol aloft. As I calmed, it stopped shaking and held still.

“Now aim at the target.”

I let out my breath, sticking out my tongue in concentration as I took careful aim, the pistol held up before me, three little white dots aligning on the white center of the target. My mother had found it and rebuilt it to like-new a year or so ago after Dadd- Tears obscured my vision and the pistol dropped before I caught it, expecting a sharp word from my mother. My fate hadn’t been sealed at that point, my C.A.T. (Cutie-Mark Aptitude Test) had revealed that I’d be a likely candidate for either maintenance (Like mom!) or security. I didn’t like the security ponies… Things had happened, and then suddenly I couldn’t find Dad around the Stable anymore… But mom wanted me to be able to do either. Only me noticing more than other ponies seemed to help me any with my pistol, but I was good with the batons and stuff…

My lapse in concentration earned a tap on the head with the butt of Mom’s handgun. She always told me that it had been passed down from Maintenance head to Maintenance head (our family, duh) since the first Head of Maintenance; Spade Sapper who had built the firearm. I didn’t know much about Momma’s gun, just that it was loud, had a little emerald on it that glowed softly, and the bullets it fired ripped holes in the targets we shot at and buried themselves into the wall behind them…

“Sarry ma… jus’ thinkin’ baout stuff…”

“It’s okay, Wrenchie. Put up ya gun, let’s go get suppah.”

I nodded eagerly as I tucked away my little BB pistol amongst the other contraband hidden away before following my mom up through the halls and through the door, mom stopping to pull something out of a control panel to make the rooms beyond inaccessible without the part and Section Head clearance…

                       ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’d always been susceptible to flights of fancy and lapses into catatonia where I sat quietly and thought about things, as I came up from now. My hoof nudged a couple casings that had been left on the floor as I gave a small sigh of memory, opening my toolbox and moving a couple things around before opening a hooflocker and digging through it. A couple tins of Mint-als went into the space, before I relented and added a few more so I wouldn’t have to make the trip again for a couple weeks.

There was enough drugs down here for me to start a pharmacy, but I only took Mint-als and the odd Med-X and once me and the Overmare had experimented with Dash… I shook my head with a small chuckle at the memory as I returned to the tunnel, checking my E.F.S. for white bars before wiggling out and replacing the cover, a jaunty tune coming from me as I headed back down to Maintenance after checking the time to make sure I wasn’t coming up on any deadlines.

My trip back was uneventful, no lusty Security ponies after my tail this time, nopony at all actually… I hopped down the last step into the Maintenance hall, trotting to the board and drawing a line through my name and work order. “I’m done, mom! Got anything else for me?” I blinked a little bit and turned around. ‘This is weird…’  “Mom? Ah you around?”

I wondered how I hadn’t noticed her when she crawled out from underneath her desk, probably something wrong with her finicky terminal. “Yeah, Wrenchie. The Ovamaah wants yeh in hea orffice.”

What could she want? “Well… Aight. Seeya inna few, ma.” I smiled and turned, trotting back out of the hall and up a few levels, nodding to unicorns and giving Earths a good berth as I passed them, most in bed at this time of night. “Only a couple moah hou’ahs, Wrench. An then it’s off-time.” I grinned to myself at the thought of a meal to replace the one I’d missed by waking up late, so cheerful that I even bucked at the Overmare’s office door to open it.

“Oh, Spannah, good to seeya.” She laughed a little bit and tapped her hooves together as she sat behind her desk, watching me . She looked like hell, apparently either the job hadn’t been treating her well or something had come up.

“Whassa mattah?” I approached her, hating the protocol that kept us at leg’s length from one another. I wasn’t even allowed to call her by name anymore!

“Well.. Ya ken… the Lottery comes up soon, and… Well…” She twisted her hooves against one another, biting her lower lip. “I uh… Dinna think the maneframe kin handle the extra work. It’s bin wuhkin’, but the results canna be right.”

I rolled my eyes a little bit and shook my head. “Well… Who’sit? You? Me mam?”

“Spannah… It’s you.”

        My world had been ended in that moment. I’d shaken my head, I’d cried neigh! That couldn’t be right! The maneframe must be broken… But every time we ran the Lottery program, even with fiddling… It turned out with me. I’d have to leave tomorrow. If I survived, I could come back in a year, but nopony sent out had ever come back. This maneframe must hate my family. First my dad, and now me?

        By now I was sitting in my room, waiting to turn the Stable over to A shift, and packing saddlebags I’d found. Technically this was against protocol, for an Overmare to give a pony advance warning, but she’d been my only friend through our fillyhoods. She’d explained everything. I could take no more than twenty pounds of equipment with me, including food and water supplies. I chewed a Mint-al pensively. They’d give me a weapon- probably just a baton from Security, and kick me out of the Stable in less than eight hours.

       I sighed and set the bags on my bed, dragging my hooves off towards Maintenance, ignoring ponies that walked the same way. I took my place on the right side of the room, and readied my keyring as my mom rattled off who had completed their work orders and who hadn’t, running through the ceremony, before finishing with ‘A shift, the Stable is yours.’ We hoofed off our keys, and C shift filed out, A shift moving to check the duty roster.

       I moved to the front of the room and waited for the number of ponies to decrease. “Ma.”

“Whazzit, Wrenchie?”

“I found out what the Ovahmah wanted.”

       “Whazzit?”

       “… The Lottery… Ma… my name’s come up.”

       She looked at me with a sad, quiet look, before looking away. Never a mare of many words, she turned away, looking at the wall. She levitated her pistol from her waist and held it out for me to take in my magic. “Go puttit wit’ yoah stuff, Wrenchie. I ain’t havin’ anothah filly, so you take it and give it to yoah filly when you get back.”

       I bit back tears with a small smile. “Thanks, ma..” Her vote of confidence meant the world to me. I knew how her gun worked, having watched her maintain and fire it many times, what the bullets for it looked like, and I decided to give it a name. Air’s Hammer. I tucked it into my barding and hugged my mom, before turning to trot back to my room and stash the gun with my saddlebags, before going to clean the gunk I’d accumulated by writhing around in ductwork all night off with a shower and get something to eat…

The luck that had kept me from dying in that ventilation shaft held, rather than the fortune that had dumped the maneframe’s decision into my hooves. I didn’t meet up with the earth pony from earlier, didn’t see anypony that would actually talk to me, honestly. I just grabbed my food and sat down in an out of the way trestle table, enjoying for a moment the crisp snap and bland taste of a carrot stick.

The information must have spread, somehow. Ponies were actively avoiding me like I had some Stable illness that could be transmitted merely by looking in my direction. It was almost uncanny. Ponies that would have sneered about my diminutive stature had learned to do so not in my presence or risk unleashing the balefire that had been packed into my undersized body, but there were always those that looked down their nose at Utility ponies. They lumped us in Maintenance, that kept the juice flowing to keep the lights on, water pumping, fields growing in with the ponies that did little more than gather and separate trash before dumping it into the respective recyclers.

I cleaned my plate like a good filly, and actually seemed to take stock in the idea that this was my last meal in a Stable, at least for a year. There wasn’t any question about me surviving. That duct hadn’t taken me, and neither would the Wasteland. I’d pass Air’s Hammer to my filly, and tell her the stories of each Maintenance head, starting with the legendary Sapper Spade just  before the war. I carried my tray to where it would be taken in to be cleaned and reused just like everything else in this Stable. Something broke, you replaced the part, or jury-rigged it, and took the faulty to be recycled and formed into a new part, everything stripped and remelted and forged and used until it broke at which point the cycle  started over.

Ponies died, well... we’d run them through a special recycler that separated them into the nutrients that made them up, that would be used to make the synthetic portion of our diet. There were stories that they used to not have the machine, that they would bury bodies in the field or in the roots of the few fruit trees we had that grew under the lights... So much calcium, protein, phosphorus, all lost...

Enough of that. No ghost stories, I was enjoying my final meal. Fluffy yellow protein-surrogate, a glass of juice from the apples we managed to harvest that was approaching an amber color, strips of pressed protein-surrogate, and rectangles of fried-up complex sugars. Good old Stable breakfast. Just sit and eat, ignore the faceless ponies that sat all around me and talked to their friends, ignore the fate that was facing me later today. Don’t think about any of it, Spanner...

I managed to choke down my meal and rise while levitating the tray, turning to look around the crowded diner. All these ponies would die. Whether they lived out their full life and gave back to the Stable what was put into them was another matter. Diseases sometimes found their way into the Stable and took out five, ten, fifteen out of our thousand or so, injury took a couple every year, then with stillbirth our numbers didn’t always level back out. Plus the fact that after over two centuries our gene pool was in need of some fresh water soon, or we’d die out completely from genetic mutations and the like. Ponies left, but nopony ever came back, nopony new ever came in.

Speaking of leaving, I could hear the distinct sound of the Overmare’s voice over the loudspeaker system and the radios of several ponies calling us all to gather in one of the larger meeting places. The results of the Lottery were being announced.

Well I left with the rest of the ponies in the diner, after giving over my tray to the food staff. I tried to get in as close to the front of the group as possible to avoid drama when my name was called.

The Overmare stepped up to her podium at the front, and arranged the speech she had written out in front of her before speaking. “My fellow ponies. I have called you today to this room for a reason. Today, we must do a duty. Ouah very way of life demands that we do this, the laws ah cleah. Once ev’ry ten ye’ahs, the computah that we use to control all the vital systems of the Stable spits out a numbah.

This numbah is the name of a pony. Ouah instructions say this pony must leave the Stable foh one ye’ah, aftah that they may come back and bring whatevah ponies they find, whatevah supplies, and a plan will be made foh the next ten ye’ahs. Othahwise, the computah will shut down completely, beyond all hope of being tuhned back on. It has happened once befoah, and I will not see it happen again, much as I love the pony the computah has chosen. I blame myself foh he’ah numbah comin’ up.

This pony is Spannah Wrench, the child of Aiah Hammah ouah current chief of Maintenance, and the descendant of Sappah Spade, ouah fihst Maintenance chief. Spannah come on up heah.” I did so, haughtily ignoring the ponies staring at little me as I stood facing the mare at the podium. My life in the stable flashed before me, as I ignored the mud pony from earlier’s angry glare. “Spannah, yoah numbah was chosen by ouah maneframe. As puh Stable proceedyuh, you will be issured a weapon from Security, given time to take whatever you’d like to bring outside with you from youah quahtahs, and brought to the Atrium, at which point the Door will open and you will leave.”

“I undahstand, Ovahmayah.”

“So it be.” She nodded and Officer Tanner nudged me, holding out a baton that I took and slipped into a loop on my barding. It didn’t take them long to escort me down to my room for my saddlebags, nor for me to buckle them on. After that, it was a bare fifteen minutes or so before I was sitting before the big 105 on the Stable Door that my dad had walked through ten years before, and somepony before that, twenty times since the Stable closed...

I turned to face the crowd, ignoring the door behind me, silently regarding them with every amount of derision I could muster. I didn’t even hardly react, having been around loud noises of the sort my whole life, when the door was pulled back and it rolled aside, exposing the entrance tunnel beyond. I spat, turned, and trotted over the threshold between the Stable and the Wasteland with my mission in mind. Find civilization. Make contact. Survive, and come back.

My vision flashed as the door rolled aside, everything I could see being cast in a weird blue color as my sight cut through the darkness of the tunnel. The corner flashed, and text slid across, a spell tied into my Pipbuck at work. “QUEST ADDED: ARMS, ARMOR, FRIENDS.” was what it read. Text underneath was an unmarked checkbox, and ‘Leave Stable 105’ next to it. The box filled with white, and it scrolled up, to be replaced with ‘Find weapons’ ‘Find armor’ and ‘Find friends’ in three separate entries. I took a deep breath and took a step forward.

My journey began.

Footnote:  Level up.

New Perk: Friend of the Night; you are a true friend of the night. Your eyes adapt quickly to low-light conditions indoors and when darkness falls across the Equestrian wasteland.

New Trait (2): Four Eyes; + 2 Perception while glasses equipped, -1 base Perception. Small Frame; Due to your small size, you have +1 Agility but your limbs are more easily crippled (25% extra limb damage)