Fallout: Equestria - Of Taint and Colts

Chapter Five - "The Firsts"

“You got it.”

I…

I-I…

I’m stunned. I’m speechless. I’m completely at a loss for words. Tourniquet is blind! Completely blank-sight blind!

“How are you surviving?” I ask. “I mean, how do you know where to shoot? Where to look?”

She smiles as she rearranges her armor. “Implants.”

I trot alongside her and gaze at the shell. She smirks and begins fiddling with the helmet.

“You’re curious to know how they work, right?”

I nod silently, my eyes locked onto the interesting mechanisms within the protective headgear.

“The armor is standard issue wear for Steel Ranger attire – multiple calibers of weapons, self-inoculation equipment for field injuries, and med kits for anything more serious. The helmet, however, is custom made. It has two nodes that connect to a couple small implants in my skull.”

She shows me the inside of the helmet, as well as her own head. Indeed, where her temples should be, are two gold plates with small, rounded holes. Matching these positions in the helmet are two gold nodes with small, rounded bumps.

“These implants go to my visual cortex in my brain. My helmet’s visor receives visual input like a giant camera lens and sends the information to my brain. My brain then processes the information and sends it to my enchanted gem-eyes. My eyes then paint a picture for my brain of silhouettes, friendlies, neutrals, and foes based on input from other senses, including my own thoughts.”

I gawk. “Let me get this straight – your armor is able to keep track of things you think.”

Tourniquet nodded. “That’s what my eyes contribute – they’re made with the same basic spell framework as a memory orb, except they’re designed for real-time processing instead of storage.”

“That… what… imp…” I stammer for a while in utter disbelief. “Who has that kind of technology nowadays? Who the hay has that kind of money? What would it take to make something like that? Who got them for you?” So… many… bloody… questions!!

“I don’t know any of that other stuff, but I can tell you who got them for me.” She chuckles bitterly. “Who else? Gearshift. Fucking bastard… fucking gorgeous bastard…”

As she breaks down, I feel a knot form in my gut. I approach the stone with the lonely green mare on it and crawl on. I awkwardly wrap a wing over her and allow her to mourn her loss freely for the first time since she lost Shift. She tucks her muzzle into my wing pit, causing a shudder to escape. I fight it for her sake – I can’t help that I’m ticklish where most pegasi are aroused! I endure the sensitivity as Tourniquet cleanses herself of her loss.

I realize I’m tearing up myself as the Earth pony beside me cries. I am suddenly reminded of the effort Shift took to save me, a total stranger even up until his death. Yet, how did he know I was there? Was he just passing by? Did he save me on purpose? I owed my life twice over to a pony I could never repay the debt to, a stallion I barely knew.

A shock to my senses from that same junction startles the tears out of my eyes. I turn my head towards Tourniquet. She is slowly working her way around my wing, nibbling and crying at the same time. I admit, I’ve never considered myself… that way. In fact, I haven’t even thought about doing the dirty dance at all. Now, in the barrenness of winter, nearing the dawn of a new day, the sensitivity of never being stimulated catches up with me, and I can barely act against the sensations her attentions are awakening.

“T-Tourni…”

She paralyzes me with a simple nibble on my wingtip. Her breaths are short… choppy… almost panicky.

“No words…” she said, clearly desperately trying to suppress further tears with her foreplay, “…just feel.”

I moan and melt into the night, disappearing within the caresses of a suddenly very attractive Earth pony.

Never have I woken up so drowsy before. I feel like I’m weighed down by a thousand pounds of snow. I crack open an eye. The dead fire in the middle of the igloo tells of a melting atmosphere as the rocks are filled with a shallow puddle of water. I’m not awake enough to be concerned, but aware sufficiently to realize that I’m a little hungry. A few small holes throughout the structure allow thin spears of light to penetrate the interior. The dampness of my cloak tells of dripping water that only began recently. I become aware of a sack of warmth next to me.

Tourniquet…

I smile kindly as I regard her still-sleeping form. I admit, it was needed stress relief, even if neither of us were in our right minds. Regardless, there was little to regret about the act or the warmth it provided. However, it felt… incomplete, like there was something more to do yet.

A stallion might be what I’m missing.

I chuckle at the thought, and, despite the bawdiness of its contents, I put it away easily. I am in no state of wakefulness to entertain that kind of thought seriously. I stretch out, flexing all my muscles in order. I decide to wake up to whatever rations Tournie had set aside for us. I ruffle through her things and dig up a bag of jerky and some raisins. I tear them open and begin munching on my breakfast. As I do, I slowly awaken to the rest of the world. There is a light breeze blowing through the igloo, warmer than before. It feels almost spring-like. The details of the holes we have exude a clear, sunny day.

I yawn as I fill my mouth with food. I smirk a little. I must look like a cow chewing its cud, with the expression I feel I have on my face: a dumb, thoughtless animal, mindlessly gnawing on necessary sustenance. Again, however, I’m too tired to sustain the thought for long, and resume burning a hole through this ice block in front of me while eating my first full meal in nearly twenty-four hours or so.

All too soon, however, the meal is over. I grimace as I set aside the bags. I decide to get outside for a morning flight, something I hadn’t experienced before. As I slip outside, I’m reminded of my previous thoughts regarding Cloud Kicker and freedom. Who would have thought that I would be enjoying the same freedoms as she did, that my schedule would be interrupted so that I could come out here and be a part of life outside the Stable? I certainly didn’t. Nor did I want to.

I take off into the mid-morning sun, the snow around us beginning to melt into the daytime warmth. It is surprisingly warm for this high up in the mountains. The air is thick and much easier to fly in than up where Stable Eighty-Five is. I pull off a simple corkscrew, whirling and spinning high into the sky. I reach a point where I am level with the top of the mountain, able to see for thousands of miles around, before lazily aileron rolling into an inverse flight. I curl my wings into a ball and plummet to the surface. The wind is wonderful. My second flight without the Stable… it’s liberating. Exciting…

…and weird.

It’s weird to go from desiring such strict regimentation and fearing freedom, to experiencing freedom and being scared out of my life, and then from having freedom to liking it, yet still desiring the regimen… on my third day out of the Stable, no less. It is truly a bizarre oxymoron. It almost feels like a vacation, in a sense.

Not that I would know what a vacation feels like.

The Stable never allowed vacations. Now that I’m outside the walls, I can understand why. I haven’t found safety anywhere I’ve been out here yet, and I highly doubt that I can elsewhere. Vacation is an illusion here, nothing more than a dead concept from a dead era. It almost feels frivolous to me to even consider the notion that so many of my Stable mates deliberated and even anticipated on occasion. How could one disturb their routines with a vacation? It still baffles me.

I level out a mere dozen feet from the mountainside and flap my way back up the ridge. I catch a couple hooves on the rock and gallop for a while up the ridge. I leap up off the cliff face and quickly aileron and curve around so I fly the other way. I look around a bit for the igloo. I spot it at a distance, the superstructure melting away. A snow cube from the night before has melted to nothing over a mottled green blotch on a large stone laid out for two.

She’s going to be really cold when she wakes up.

With a smirk, I dip back down into the range below. I barrel straight for the igloo. A few minutes of accelerating descent are cut short as I flare my feathers out and angle up a bit so I aim for a bit beyond the ruined dwelling. I pass over the sleeping pony and hover on fluttering wings before I descend, landing carefully atop her so as not to disturb her slumber. My four hooves straddle the sleeper, and I gently lay down atop her as a blanket. I nibble her ear, prodding her awake with kisses. Tourniquet shudders under my attentions.

“Five more minutes,” she mumbles.

I shake my head slightly. “No, sleepyhead. Time to get up.”

A low rumbling that could be mistaken for a snore rolls up from beneath. I grin and bat her lightly with a hoof. “None of that, Tournie.”

“Mmmmnnnnrrrgghhfine…”

I step off Tourniquet and allow her some breathing room. She yawns and rolls over. Cracking one of her eyes to the daylight, she snorts, then stands up. Seeming to ignore the cold, she steps over what remains of the wall of last night’s shelter, squats, and…

WHOA! Going to busy myself while she relieves herself!

I quickly make like the snow’s the most interesting thing in the world, drawing patches in the softening drifts, my face redder than a cherry tomato. The air is already warmer down here than up in the mountains. I look up and scan the path we are to take. The snow is absent from the valley floor. The splotchy greenery is interwoven with laces of brown, dying foliage and blackened, war-mangled earth. A forest to my right, deeper into zebra lands, is still smoldering with the smoke of oil that was lit during the war and still burns to this day. A couple scattered villages lie ahead of us, one alight with the red of a bonfire. What greenery that still lives looks patchy and sickly, a stark contrast to the nearly scar-less distant image of Equestria I had been able to discern from a distance. This land, the homeland of the zebras, was still festering with the wounds of war. It is clear that whatever strategies the Princesses of old may have had to save Equestria were not evident in the plans of the zebra leaders. A clandestine building near one of the villages was instantly recognizable as a failed attempt at a Stable, even from this distance.

The ill-fated Stable Fourteen.

I grimace. Although not the last Stable built, it was Equestria’s last act of goodwill towards the zebras, and the final Stable constructed in their territory. However, who was in charge of the stable and its construction had long since disappeared from memory. One theory suggested that Ministry Mare Fluttershy, before she had disappeared without a trace from the history books, was secretly overseeing the construction of this Stable herself. Another stated it was going to house the largest balefire bomb ever created, that Stable-Tec’s Apple Bloom had found hiding in Equestria just before she was locked in Stable 3. The most popular and most likely within Stable Eighty-Five, however, is that a prison break occurred at the Correctional Facility, and one of the prisoners, formerly of Stable-Tec and with a knack for remembering everything he or she saw, tried to organize their cellmates into constructing a Stable for themselves.

However, I don’t know for sure. Regardless, it was never completed.

The incomplete Stable is as a lantern to a fly. I suddenly wanted to dig into that place to find out what happened there with my own eyes. Stable Eighty-Five may have been a regimented place, but a lot of ponies in their down time took to gossip about the outside world. Even Babs Seed in her younger days had participated in the rumour mill, especially once the bombs had stopped falling and the guns had stopped firing regularly. Nowadays, though, routine is all that matters there. The rumour mill had stopped churning a few years ago. There is only the gray of the Stable, the droning of work, the pink of the air.

…Kind of dull, really…

Whoa. Where did THAT come from?! That’s the first time I’ve ever thought of it being dull in a Stable. Is this wasteland changing me that much? I have a craving for sweet potato nutrient paste…

“Candy!”

A voice startles me once again. Is this going to become a habit? Maybe it already is… I just ate. Why am I thinking so hard about nutrient paste? I just ate a full meal. I’m not even hun-

“Candy!!”

I jolt back to reality and look at Tourniquet as if I was a deer caught in the path of a chariot. She is once again suited up in her armour. How did that happen?

“You’ve been standing there, staring at that old Stable for twenty minutes now,” she says. “I’ve been trying to get your attention the whole time!”

I blush and recoil on myself. “Sorry…”

Tourniquet sighs and walks down the slope. “Candy, Candy, Candy… doing that could get you killed out here.” I rather doubt she’s joking. “Anyway, we’ve got to make Einamir by nightfall. Shattered Hoof usually sends ponies down into the valley via this pass every Thursday. We really don’t want to meet them with that crazy Mine Walker leading them. He’s probably got them on watch for a Steel Ranger and company or something of the sort.”

I swallow. That was true. I didn’t want to be turned inside out. I follow my friend in steel and suddenly find myself wishing I had one of those suits. As we descend to the valley floor, Tourniquet keeps a gun out. I shuffle around nervously, hobbling for a couple seconds, and finally return to a normal gait. I glance around quizzically at an odd weight around my foreleg, and lift my hoof. To my surprise, my gun has strapped itself to my foreleg. Somehow, the sight of it at the ready comforts me, especially with Tourniquet looking kind of skittish.

“This is where we’re usually attacked.”

Now that’s something I did not need to hear…

I don’t want to be attacked. I want to go back. I want my Stable. I want my little shell. I want my routine. I don’t want another gun I don’t want to shoot no guns no bullets no no no no no no!

“W-we’ll be ok-k-k-kay, r… r-right?”

As I follow her, Tourniquet’s suit pops a couple panels and exposes two small-caliber, machine guns. I take that as a sign of insecurity and start to moan in nervous fear. We take a few steps down towards the village.

“Will you shut your fucking trap!?” Tourniquet screams.

I flinch back at the sudden outburst. What did I do? I can’t help if I get nervous in tense situations! Tourniquet, you’re the only one I count as friend out here… don’t shout at me like that!

“S-sorry…” I squeak.

Don’t yell at me don’t yell at me don’t yell at me…

BLAM BLAM BLAM

HOLYFUCKWE’REDEADHOLYFUCKWE’REDEADHOLYFUCKWE’REDEAD…

Tourniquet launches into action, whirling in place and firing from her chain guns. Ponies and zebras drop like flies around us, but more emerge from the mountain. I watch her take down waves and wa-

ACK! They’re shooting at me, too! I lose Tourniquet as I run away and duck into a small cave for protection.

“Blast, Candy!” I hear her scream. “Shoot these motherfuckers, will ya?”

I swallow as I hear the gunfire draw closer. No less than two seconds later, I am wrenched from the cave by a unicorn’s magical grip on my hair. Within seconds, the face of my captor makes itself visible. The bouncy pink hair frames a pair of piercing blue eyes, which are glaring at me like a flankhole’s would.

“Your name’s Candy, eh?” the gruff all-pink stallion growls. “You’re kinda pretty. You’ll make us a good profit!”

I squeal, curling up in his grip. “Don’t kill me… please…”

“Don’t worry, little pegasus,” he replies. “I don’t intend to hurt you… just sell you and your friend and make my boys here some good caps.”

BANG

Eyes fly open. I look at my captor. His eyes are open in shocked awe. A round red hole dripping blood is where the middle of his forehead would be. His grip on me loosens slowly and finally collapses as he falls to the ground. I only feel three hooves hit snow. I look at the fourth, raised at a precise angle to shoot point-blank into his brain. I gape in terror and feel tears start to fill my eyes.
All sounds of battle fade away. I stare at this body in front of me for what seems like hours. Blurs rush by. Somewhere in the distance I hear Tourniquet praise Celestia for something. I don’t give a damn. I have just taken a life. This stallion, likely with a family to feed, has just died at my hooves. As the hoof reconnects with the earth, I begin sobbing. Never did I think I would take a life.

“I’m sorry…” I mumble.

I heave and sob. I’ve never felt this kind of pain before. I feel as if I’ve betrayed the very planet I was born from. Life has always been of highest value to me, and now that I’ve broken that, it feels like this goddess-damned wasteland has strangled the last vestige of morality I have left. I would rather die than take another life. So help me Luna, if I have to, I would rather kill myself than murder another. It’s not right. It’s not right.

It’s not fucking right…

I feel a pressure on my side. Through my tears, I see Tourniquet look at me through her steel helmet. She knows practically everything I’ve been through so far. She’s the only one I trust. I hope she’ll be with me forever.

Out here, however, that’s a precious wish that doesn’t stand a mouse’s chance of surviving the radiation of Whitetail.

Tourniquet and I walk swiftly away from yet another sea of carnage in this dead land. I walk a little closer to her, keenly aware that my gun will be needed again. I am also aware of a bit of bitterness within my friend for not saving her.

The tears increase, but my sobs dissipate. A fire awakens within me, a perpetual storm that has brewed since the dawn of my arrival in this bastard land. Dark thoughts begin to take root.

What am I on in terms of bitch-slap count now, huh, Celestia? Four? Five? I’ve been run down so many times now I’ve lost count. When will I get a break? The Stable was never this harsh a mistress. The Stable was never this hellish a landscape. The Stable was safe. It was friendly. It had routine, a predictability I could count on. Out here? Nothing of the sort. Celestia, why did you see to throw me to the wolves?

“Let it go.” Tourniquet’s calm words ebb the tide of rage a little bit. She shakes her head. “Let it go, Candy. It’s not worth getting worked up over.”

I sigh. “I know, I know… I can’t help it. It’s war out here all the time! How do you put up with it? How do you keep going? What do you do to stop yourself from going insane?”

Tourniquet walks a little farther in silence. She doesn’t seem to have considered that question at all with the way her armour shuffles a little and her eyes scan the noontime sky for answers. Just as I’m about to call her on it, she responds.

“Remember when I said Gearshift’s virtue was mercy?”

I nod.

“That’s how we go on out here,” she says. “Bottle caps may be the currency of this land, but virtues are the blood that keeps the strongest souls of the Wasteland alive and battling for better days. You find that one thing to fight for, that one immutable facet of your soul that you will not violate no matter what. You find that goddess-damned pillar and you chain yourself to it. You hold on for all you’re fucking worth to that and never let the wasteland take that away. I guarantee you will fight harder, live longer, and save more lives than you ever fucking thought possible.”

I snort. “What fairy tale did you hear that from?”

She stops for a second and sighs. “From the most important pony to ever live in Equestria.”

“Who, the loser Princesses?”

“No.” She turned to me and smiled. “Her name is Littlepip, and her story is legendary amongst the Applejack’s Rangers.”