The Wastelands

by Overdrive

Rating: everyone
Tags: Tragedy, Adventure
Length: 1804

What would you do if your country was taken over? Would you kill without reason or trust anypony blindly?

Since Equestria has been attacked by the mysterious "Shadow ponies" Tiger is trying to survive in the wasteland. He takes on the quest to free all the ponies and to recapture Equestria. But this is not something he can do on his own…..

~Thanks to David and Jordan for proofreading :)~

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2014-01-22 08:22:14 UTC

The place once called Equestria

I opened my eyes. Once again, an attack was over. Once again, I proved to be smart enough to survive. I looked at the corpse of the dead pony in front of me. The shadow ponies were the same as anypony, but their hightech equipment allowed them to surprise the Equestrian army... And capture Equestria. It is ridiculous to be even speaking of the name Equestria now, for it does not exist anymore..

I walked up to the black pony and pulled off its suit to see if he had anything useful with him. After finding nothing, I threw its suit away. Apperantly he was just a scout. They have become too careless. They've sent their scouts to die. Although, they wouldn't have know that until they've found the bodies. I looked at the unlucky pony next to him. I didn't mean to shoot a fellow survivor. I approached to pony carefully and took her backpack off. I noticed her cutiemark. It was a teapot. Making tea is nothing useful in this world, because right now, you have to be smart or strong. If you are both you have better chances to survive than the rest. I am quite smart. I learn things quickly, such as how to aim at ponies and how to shoot carefully. As well as showing no mercy to ponies because you can't take the risk of betrayal now.

I still remember when I could trust ponies. But a year after the attack, the place once called "Equestria", fell apart. Ponies started to kill each other, of course they had good reasons to kill! We need recourses to survive. Water for example. Or the guns of the shadow ponies to defend ourselves. No, I don't have any disease. I only kill ponies because I need their resources. There is a reason for every death. Killing without reason is needless.

I took the saddlebag off the pony. Some blood dripped off of it. I was scared of blood before all of this happened. Heh, it is funny how ponies change so quickly. How did they call it again? Something like the toughest surive I guess? To make clear, I, Tiger, am totally not the strongest. I was bullied when school still existed for my weaknesses. I was bullied for not making friends, so I blame myself for it. Also, I didn't care about flying at school. I can fly, but I don't like to. It just feels like I am better than every earth pony or unicorn if I am flying. But since the attack, I have been flying a lot. You need your abilities in this new country. This country - whatever those shadow ponies called it.

While I was deep in thought somepony behind me placed a gun against my head. Swiftly I turned around and knocked the gun out of the hoof of the pony.

"I'm sorry I thought you were one of them, as you are wearing one of their suits."

I looked at the grey unicorn in front of me. Her cutie mark looked like a black mask.

"What is your talent? I can't figure it out by your cutie mark," she said.

"It once was music making and I guess my star stands for my love of astronomy."

"My talent is invisibility."

"Well that makes me trust you even less," I said with a laugh.

"Your talent seems trustworthy though."

"Well I don't trust anypony but I don't see any reason to hurt you since you could've already hurt me a long time ago."

"I know but I don't like hurting anypony."

"How did you survive this long without hurting anypony?"

"Well I hid in a forest, but since the resources were running out, I had to leave."

"That's quite clever, weird that I didn't even think about it."

"There are timberwolves and other creatures there."

"Hmm, I've hurt enough ponies to know that I can survive that."

I showed her my gun and knife. Also the huge supply of food I had. And the little bit of water I still had left. I was ready to stab her or shoot her at anytime if she decided that she needed my supplies.

"So what is your name?" She asked.

"Tiger."

"Mine is Parallel."

"Interesting name, never heard something like it."

"Yeah everyone used to say that."

"So I guess we are friends since we didn't kill each other?" She asked.

"Not friends yet, companions."

"Seems fair to me."

"Follow me I'll take you to my shelter."

"Okay," she replied.

A strange code

I opened the door of the unstable cottage. It was the best shelter I found in this area, because most of the buildings had collapsed. This happened due to the “Destruction” attack. At least that is what I call it. When I saw the destruction of Manehattan something snapped in me. Mainly because my only friend was blown into pieces by a so called explosive shell. Those explosive shells are a mystery to me. I guess they come from machines which shoot them from far away. Well what I do know is that they were one of the reasons Equestria resigned at last. Even though they didn’t directly and you can guess what is left of Manehattan…. About nothing. Everyone who survived the deadly attacks was sent to hard labour camps. I saw ponies working while they were under shot by the shadow ponies. I managed to sneak out of the city, but I don’t know what happened to the unlucky ones. The ponies who were found later got an even worse punishment: Death. I know that because I saw a shadow pony behind a cuffed pony with a gun. I couldn’t help her. There was a sniper nearby who would’ve shot me if I would have attacked that shadow pony. And then there were also three other shadow ponies around him. I heard nothing but a single shot after I ran away. I looked outside the broken window. I could feel the soft wind against my head when suddenly I could hear distorted sounds. I looked around me and saw Parallel turning on a radio knob.

“What are you doing?

“I’m looking if I can find any signals.”

The radio started making short and long beeps. It sounded like this:

Beep, beep, beeeep, beep, beeep

“Welp, I think you just might’ve found a code Parallel.”

“Or those are just random sounds.”

“Well do you really think that if all the radio stations are down, these are random sounds?”

Parallel was silent.

“Thought so.”

After a while the code started repeating itself.

“The difference is in the short and long beeps” I said, still carefully listening to the radio.

“I think we ought to write this down.”

“But how? I don’t have paper or a pen.”

“No problem Parallel, there’s pencil and paper over in that cabinet. Can you please get it?”

She walked up to the cabinet and opened it.

“Catch.”

She threw the pencil to me, but I failed to catch it and it landed on my head.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry.”

“Nevermind.”

I grabbed the pencil and Parallel put the piece of paper on the lonely table in the middle of the shelter. I think the shelter had been a shed, but I’m not sure as it was set aflame. It didn’t burn long because it’s in pretty good shape.

“So let’s put an S for a short beep and an L for a long one.”

The code started repeating itself after about a minute and I wrote it down. As it was quite hard to make out the beeps, I checked and corrected it when it repeated itself again. Just when the code started repeating itself, a sudden loud noise sounded from the radio. I heard gunshots and people screaming in the background.

“Did you get the full code Tiger?”

“I did but I don’t think the people who sent it are still alive and I assume they are dead, we may never know what they are trying to warn us about.”

“Maybe they were just trying to tell us something”

“It could be that that was the ERF.” Parallel said.

“What’s the ERF?”

“It’s the Equestrian Rebellion Force.”

“Does that exist?”

“Yep.”

“Do they try to fight the shadow ponies?”

“That were their plans, but they don’t have enough weapons and ponies to even try it.”

“How do you know about this?”

“I heard their first radio broadcast in the forest. There was a radio in the shed I used as shelter.”

“So why didn’t they directly tell us their message now?”

I could’ve guessed the answer directly. It was pretty easy to guess.

“The shadow ponies found out and tracked them down. Their main base got destroyed.”

“Parallel we should try and get to the ERF.”

“I don’t know Tiger, it is far away from here.”

“How do you know?”

“I actually don’t but they could be anywhere in Equestria.”

“Maybe the code is the location.”

“Could be, but we still don’t know how to translate the beeps into letters, remember?”

“Yeah…”

“Nevertheless I still think moving on is a good idea.”

I still didn’t trust her completely. But at least she got a bit of trust.

“Parallel, I think we should organize our stuff and rest a bit, after that we can get moving”

“Good idea”

She threw all of the stuff out of her saddlebag. It was her only one and I knew it didn’t belong to her before all of this. Because her cutie mark wasn’t on it. I had two saddlebags. One of which actually belonged to me. I threw my stuff on the table as well.

“Let’s see what we need.”

“I don't think we need three guns”

“Yeah they are quite heavy.”

I threw one gun off the table after taking the clip out of it. I looked at our scarce ammunition. 4 clips and 3 bullets.

“Tiger, how do I defend myself when we run out of bullets”

“Use the gunstock of your gun to hit a pony, or use a knife”

“Gunstock?”

“The rear end of your gun, where you put your clips in.”

I pointed at the gunstock with my hoof.

“OK, do you have a knife?”

I showed her my double-edged knife.

“Sorry if the blood on it scares you.”

“It kinda does”

I packed in one gun in her saddlebag and one in mine. I divided the ammo between the saddlebags as well. I knew I had to trust her completely. I put half of the food and water in her bag and half in mine. I put the heavy radio in my spare saddlebag.

“So we are good to go?”

“Yeah but let’s try to catch some sleep first.”

“OK”