Fallout Equestria: Longtalons

Epilogue

What a day.

Kasimir prodded at the exposed electronics set into the back of the stove top. Like it usually did, something crackled and the frazzled old circuit board flared back to life. Or the heating element did at least.

He grumbled and turned the chunk of searing radigator tail over. Then he grumbled some more when he saw it was all but scorched on the bottom.

Damned thing hadn't ever worked right, as anything cobbled together out of scraps of a dozen unrelated kitchen appliances never would, but it had gotten a lot worse in the last few months. He just couldn't get any temperature control with it! It wasn't like he was much of a cook, but even the finest chefs from Prance couldn't work with this thing.

Clunk. Oh goody. The… what was it Amy called it? The relay. Yeah, the relay flipped again. And the heating element was dead once more.

He reached past a row of empty glass bottles on the counter to rest a claw against a panel of intact wood on the wall, so he could bang on the electronics a little harder this time. Pop. A little stream of white smoke rose from… pony-goddesses-knew-what. Well, that was that. Even he knew that once you let the magic smoke out, electronics were toast.

“What's burning?” Ah, right on cue.

Kaz stepped aside and held up a claw to the dead stove top. “I don't think you can fix it this time.”

Amy groaned and hobbled into the kitchen from the connecting hallway. “Well, you're right about that. Not without replacing parts anyway. What did you even do?”

“Percussive maintenance. It usually works.”

“Until it doesn't,” she replied, backing away from the dead stove. She leaned back against the faintly spluttering refrigerator and rubbed at her foreleg. “I guess it's take out again tonight then?”

He frowned and plopped the chunk of unevenly, but still cooked, meat back into the pan. “Eating take out all of the time is why we can't afford to replace this thing in the first place. It's still edible. Just... have to trim it a little.” He dug through the drawers for a knife and tried to change the subject. “Leg bothering you again? Rough day at work?”

“Twisted it wrong again when tightening a pipe at the plant.” She flexed each talon slowly as she rubbed the leg. “It's been cramping ever since. Just need a hot bath and I'll be fine.”

“Are they still on track to commission it next week?”

“That's what they say. Got the last solar panels fixed a couple of days ago, so we're running conduit for the last of the cables now. The foreman keeps saying we're cutting the time line too much, but they're bringing a... general or someone to speak at the commissioning, so they're commissioning the plant even if we've all got to jump on treadmills to make the needles move.” She snorted. “I'm guessing that's why there are so many troops in town today.”

“Yeah, I guess so. We had two dozen come through the office for physicals. The army's trying to get caught up on that while they can.” He held the knife up and said, “Oh, and it's not a general coming. It's Senator Freija Ironclaw, if you want to believe the gossip from the soldiers.”

Amy's jaw slackened. “You're serious? She won the election?”

“If you can believe it. People must not have believed that she's a deserter.” He hacked the meat into smaller chunks and grimaced. “Or don't care. I'm sure some believe she was in the right for doing it. Uh, on a different subject, maybe we should eat out after all.”

Amy stepped aside and held the refrigerator door open for him to stash his cooking mistake for later. “Yeah... we can figure out what to do with that some other time. Besides, I'm hungry now.” She gently shut the door, checking the cracking weather stripping to make sure it all sealed and kept the cold where it belonged. “I'll go get the girl. Last I saw she was out back doing something.”

“All right, meet me back up front.” Before they went anywhere he had to go count their bits. As much as he guessed Holly Bell would extend some credit after he dug the marble out of her daughter's nose without charging her, he'd rather not be in that position to begin with.

He swerved past the kitchen table, trying to ignore the split forming in one of the legs that he'd been putting off replacing for too long now, and headed through the den back toward his office. How many bits might they have? It had to be at least a few dozen. He'd just paid the property taxes and that was about what he remembered being left. Plenty for dinner if-

Knock knock.

Kaz stopped, one foot off the ground. Great. Someone must be having an emergency of some kind. He plodded over, cursing under his breath. At least it happened before they were actually eating. Hopefully it wouldn't take long…

Behind the door were two griffonesses. The one on the left was short and covered in brown feathers, wearing a necklace adorned with orange feathers, while the one on the right was tall, lean and yellow.

His heart skipped a beat.

Carmelita grinned. “Hey, Kaz. Long time, no see.”

Leigh gave a little wave. “Looks like the soldiers at the gate were right.”

He stepped outside, beak agape and uttering everything but coherent speech. Was anyone else here? He looked past them, but didn't see anyone else. Where had they even come from?

“Wow, speechless.” Carmelita gave Leigh a little nudge. “I didn't think I had that effect on people anymore. Anyway, Kaz, you going to invite us in or do we have to chat out here?”

“Uh… y-yeah, please. Come in!” He doubled back inside and held the door for them. Prancing pony princesses, the house was such a mess! If he'd had any idea they were coming he'd have straightened things up and gotten the table fixed, or his chair reupholstered, and probably found something to put agaomst the far wall instead of the hammock Amy had strung up there in place of a couch…

“Nice place you've got here,” Leigh said, without a trace of sarcasm. She ran a claw over the coffee table in the center of the room, which was covered in magazines of three dozen varieties that Amy had left there instead of stowing them somewhere more reasonable.

“Uh, thanks, it still needs a lot of work, but it's home I guess,” he said as he hurried over to at least straighten the stacks up a bit.

Lita tapped a talon against the cracked mortar of the wall next to her. “Hey, it sure beats a bunk bed like I've got.” She peered around the corner down the hallway toward the office and bedrooms. “So, just you here in this big place?”

Right on cue, the flimsy storm door to the back fluttered open and banged shut. Small footsteps pattered closer. “Papa! Look what I...”

“Pluck me bald, who is that?” Lita asked as a massive grin crept onto her face.

Small claws grasped his hind leg, and something brushed against his tail.

“That,” he said, stepping aside and nudging the little gray and white griffawn to let go and step out to meet them, “Is our daughter Ida. Say hello, now.”

Ida took a pensive step forward, but kept his tail grasped in her left claw. “Um, hello.”

Leigh and Lita exchanged quick looks, and Lita reached out to ruffle Ida's feathers a bit. “Ida, huh? Ain't you just adorable.”

A smile formed on Leigh's face too. “It's a pretty name. I've always liked it.”

The door shuddered and banged once more. “Ida, make sure you get washed… up...” Amy slowed to a stop in the middle of the kitchen. “Pinfeathers… Carmelita? Leigh?”

“Don't look so happy to see us,” Lita quipped.

She trotted around the furniture in the kitchen to join everyone in the now very cramped den. Words left her for a few moments too as she looked around for signs of any others. “I-I, it's just such a surprise. I mean, it's great to see you. Did you just get here? How long have you… how did you even find us?”

Kaz cleared his throat and motioned for everyone to have a seat at the kitchen table. “I'm sure there's a lot to discuss. Let me get everyone something to drink and we can take it from the top.”

Getting everyone settled only took a minute, even if he regretted that they didn't have much to offer them other than purified water and a few chocolate chip cookies left from the mare down the street that Ida had nicknamed the 'Cussin' Cookie Lady' given her language. He wasn't about to offer what was left of the radigator after his attempts to make it presentable.

Leigh began by explaining that they got into town about an hour ago, and after asking a few of the guards they quickly came to be pretty certain they had the right city, but they couldn't find him at the doctor's office so they had to keep asking around until they found their home address. 12 Withers Way, ironically near the entrance gate.

Carmelita swirled the water in her glass and asked, “Of course, that all begs the question of how you ended up here in Sunburn anyway. I remembered you talking about Oatsfield a few times back in Fillydelphia, but it took a while to track you two down here, you know.”

“It's a really long story,” Kaz began, trying to decide how to condense it all. “But… well, okay, maybe it's not so long if we just hit the high points. After Fillydelphia fell and Talon Company was dissolved, we did return to Oatsfield. We stayed there for a while too. Maybe a year or a year and a half, but it wasn't really working out.” He shrugged a little. “The reasons I left to join Talon Company hadn't really changed. They didn't need a doctor, and there wasn't much other work to be had. The town was small and didn't need more people running security, even if they were one of the few places that could still grow some food at the time.”

Lita held up a claw. “Hang on a second, didn't you have family there?”

“Not by that point,” he said simply, letting the implications settle as they would. “And my old house was all but falling in on itself thirty years ago, much less by then. No one had been taking care of it for years, and it was getting to the point where it wasn't much better than living out in the open.”

Amy traced a talon in a little circle on the table. “We were getting by on odd jobs, but really, we left because of Gawdyna. About a year and a half after Fillydelphia fell, she'd gotten all of the leftovers together and started piecing together a new empire. Oatsfield could make food so it was one of the first places she annexed. We heard the rumors a few weeks before they got there and didn't want to be there when that happened.”

Leigh glanced back into the den, where two red sashes adorned with a handful of service badges hung on the wall. “But, wait a second. Aren't those from NCR uniforms?”

Lita looked over too. “Yeah, not going to lie, and no offense Kaz, but I figured you'd jump off a bridge before you joined the NCR after Fillydelphia.”

He clicked his beak and blew out a little sigh. “It wasn't an easy decision, trust me. But… in the end we ironically didn't have a lot of choice. We bounced around for a year or so trying to stay ahead of the fledgling NCR because, yeah, I was expecting it to be just like Fillydelphia all over again, but we were running out of places to run.

“By the time we made it to New Appleoosa, we were starting to hear the stories from people who were living in the NCR and how things sounded surprisingly decent. Stable, anyway, and citizenship wasn't just a fancy term for slavery. And the easiest way to get citizenship was to serve a tour in the army...”

Lita swirled her drink more. “I'm still shocked. I mean, you're a doctor so there had to be plenty of other options. Last I heard Friendship City was still a holdout, and there has to be demand for a doctor there.”

Amy scratched a little scuff in the table. “Maybe, but we were tired of running, and if the NCR was halfway decent it seemed like the best option we had.”

Kaz nodded silently. It helped that by that point the army was getting sophisticated enough that they were offering to train people in useful skills besides just shooting people. He didn't really have any use for it and fell right into place as a medic again, but Amy sorely needed it. He'd never taken her for mechanically minded before, but it was something she seemed to enjoy. It got her a great position at the solar plant fixing pipes and conduit, and farm equipment on the side.

And to say she needed it wasn't an exaggeration. Now wasn't the time to bring it up, but those years they were running from the NCR… were not kind to her. Without any useful skills outside of military life and with no military work to be found, she didn't have anything to do. He still remembered the days he'd come home to find that she hadn't moved from the spot he left her in. Depression was something he wouldn't wish on anyone.

Lita made a thoughtful noise. “And they actually gave you citizenship after that? After what, four years?”

“That's right,” he answered. “Someone true to their word for a change. We might have stayed in longer, but by that point we had an egg to take care of. The timing was pretty convenient, really. We'd already been deployed here to Sunburn, so we just decided not to sign up again. The town was growing so it wasn't hard to find work as a doctor, and Amy joined the force restoring the old solar plant.”

Amy nodded toward their guests. “So, I take you two aren't citizens then. What have you been up to this whole time if not?”

Lita made a derisive chuckle. “Sorry, but NCR life isn't for me. No, after Serge and I tracked down Leigh in some random junk town outside of Fillydelphia, I parted ways and headed down south. Wanted to be anywhere but there, and I came across a bunch of nuts calling themselves the Gun Runners. Learned how to make guns, so now I do that for a living. Sure, it's pretty spartan living sometimes, and we sell guns to the NCR, but I live on my terms. And come on, who wouldn't jump at the chance to machine a brand new twenty millimeter machine gun and get paid for it?”

Leigh smirked and said, “Right, well, as she said I didn't follow and just followed some of the migratory groups leaving Fillydelphia for a while. Tried to stay ahead of the NCR too, because I was and frankly still am suspicious of their motives. I guess it was about a year later that I ran into a small group of the Followers of the Apocalypse and… I wasn't a doctor, but they gave me new purpose, even if I was fixing things or even running security when I had to.”

She crossed her legs on the table. “I was a little disappointed, to be honest. I really expected to find you there, Kaz. It seemed like exactly the kind of organization you'd join. But nobody I talked to had ever heard of you, even from the other expeditions.”

Kaz tapped his talons on the table. “I did think about it once, but the truth is, by the time I'd even learned about them we were already getting ready to sign on the dotted line for the NCR. We weren't prepared to make that big of a jump into the unknown just to avoid what appeared to be an inevitable situation down the line anyway.

“But that does bring up the question of how you two met back up and got here.”

Leigh answered, “The Followers wander everywhere looking for people who need help. It was probably just a matter of time before they sent my group down south like they did, but that's when we ran across the Gun Runners. Lita and I spent a while catching up then, but we eventually had to leave, so we've been writing ever since. A few years after that she got the idea to come looking for everyone else, and took some time off for it. So did I. We met up in Ponyville and started looking for the two of you in Oatsfield. It wasn't too hard to figure out you'd joined the NCR and track you down here, but it did take a few months.”

Lita grinned. “See, that's what living on your own terms gets you. Want to just fuck off for a while? Nobody's going to stop you if you've got the bits to live like that.”

“So, what about Serge?” Kaz asked. He eyed the orange feathers on Leigh's necklace. They weren't Isaac's. Too fresh and pristine. They weren't his, but didn't Lita mention finding her with Serge? “Have you talked to him?”

Both frowned at the same time, and Leigh said, “We haven't been able to find him. I figured if anyone joined the NCR army it would have been him, but no one has heard of him. The few leads we had about blue griffons were all someone else.”

Lita snorted. “We all split up around the same time. I did ask around and heard a rumor that there's a griffon with cybernetic claws at Shattered Hoof who was a former Talon. Definitely sounds like Serge, but we haven't had a chance to follow up on that yet.”

Kaz stopped brushing at the cookie crumbs accumulating on the table. “Wait, Shattered Hoof? Like, a prisoner there? How?”

“No clue,” Lita said with a shrug. “He might be the warden for all we know. I can't imagine he'd do anything to end up a prisoner there, unless he told Gawd to go fuck herself instead of joining the NCR.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “That hasn't actually happened to anyone. That's just what everyone tells people to demonize the NCR if they don't like them.”

Lita shrugged again. “Just saying. We don't know if it's him or how he got there, but it's something I plan to find out.”

A short silence fell as everyone digested the news. It was difficult to believe or accept that Serge might be a prisoner if the rest of them escaped it, but Kaz couldn't let that distract him too much right now. “So, what about the others? Do you know where anyone else ended up?”

“There's another former Talon in the Gun Runners,” Lita said. “Greta Ashbeak. I never knew her so she must have been pretty new when everything exploded. I'd say she just stole the armor she has but she knew some people so she must have been legit.”

The name didn't ring a bell. “Anyone else?”

Leigh raised a talon. “Yes, actually. One of the other groups of the Followers who headed out west a few years ago told me that they ran into Heidi. She joined the Children of the Light, apparently.”

Lita groaned and shook her head. “And I'm telling you whoever told you that got mixed up. They had to mean the Children of the Cathedral. As much as she drank Red Eye's fruit punch it's impossible that she didn't join up with what was left of his forces.”

Kaz had to agree. The Children of the Light? The religious group who fell in love with The Lightbringer, as they called her? Even if the mare really had been the one responsible for the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows, who'd worship a regular pony as a goddess? And how would Heidi of all people end up among them?

Maybe losing the battle of Fillydelphia hurt her more than he realized. She didn't really seem to be as dedicated to the idea of Red Eye's Fillydelphia as Lita thought.

Leigh frowned a little and clicked her beak. “I didn't mishear, but we can follow up on that later too.”

“You're on. Ten bits that she's with Red Eye's wackos, not the other ones.”

“We'll see.”

“Right, well,” Kaz interjected to change the subject, “I know a few dozen of the former Talons have joined the NCR army. I don't know if any are here in Sunburn, but Zella is in the medical corps still last I heard. Working alongside a former Enclave medic, believe it or not.”

Lita grunted. “I do, actually. We've seen enough pegasi around… almost like nothing even happened. Crazy.”

Leigh added, “Whatever people can say about the NCR, it at least looks promising. I hope it lives up to what Gawd envisioned.”

“We all do,” Amy replied. “It'll never be the Equestria of old, but no one remembers what it was like anyway.”

The conversation took a turn toward the philosophical and political for some time, while Kaz and Amy talked about everything they'd seen and helped build, and while Leigh and Lita tried not to sound too dismissive or skeptical. Only as the sun began to set and the orange light outside began to wane did someone come to their rescue.

“Ma?” Ida asked, peeking around the corner. “I thought we were gonna get something to eat.”

“We are, just give us a few more minutes,” Amy answered.

“Food does sound good,” Lita added, running her talon through the crumbs of her long gone cookie. “I mean, I could really use some fried mirelurk right about now.”

A chorus of agreement flowed around the table, ending with Kaz easing up and flexing his stiff wings. “I think that's a good idea. There's a diner a few blocks over and we can talk over dinner. It's pony food so not much in the way of fried seafood, but I'm sure you can find something you'll like.”

“I'll take a deep fried salad then, or whatever it is ponies eat,” Lita said as she hopped up.

Kaz led them all back out front and waited for Ida to climb up onto his back before setting off. She could easily walk that far and keep up, but it was a convenient excuse for him to not have to fly there himself. Nobody liked physical therapy, but one day he'd take his own advice and start flying more to work the soreness and stiffness out. Like half of his patients, one day could come later, except he only had himself to nag about it.

With Ida in tow, Amy at his side and his former squad mates trailing him, he set off down the dusty path back toward the center of Sunburn. Even with the sun setting, the repaired solar panels of the power plant ahead cast an almost blinding glare that forced him to hold his head at a slight angle, but it framed the city in a literal glow that filled him with a sense of pride. He watched a squad of pegasi and griffons drift overhead, while earth ponies and unicorns in uniforms stood at the gate just visible past the hills and low rising buildings to their right. Citizens, equine and griffon alike, strolled the streets.

It might not be the Equestria of old, but it was enough for him. It was stability and society on a level Red Eye dreamed of but would never have reached. It was a hopeful future.

But more than anything else, it was home.

Kaz's family: Kasimir Longtalons, Amalia Silverwing and Ida Silverwing
Fanart by Somber (no relation to Project Horizons)