Fallout: Equestria - Heart of Nickel

Chapter 4: … And somepony’s bound to want you dead

        I slipped on the saddlebags, newly modified by Wattson so that I could wear it. The clasp, which was formerly a metal flower, was a computer terminal. “Like it? I call it a…,” Wattson’s face scrunched up for a moment as he tried to think of a name, “Backbag! No, no that doesn’t sound very good.”

        “How about ‘backpack’?” Pacey asked before returning her head to the inside of a box of Sugar Apple Bombs that I bought for her with my limited caps.

        “Great idea, I’ll have to write that down somewhere,” Wattson said as he dug through the many cabinets in his store, speaking to me all the while about my mission. “Now, this is a rather dangerous task. Mostly because I have no clue what’s going on in there. For all I know, it could be massive amounts of radiation or some creature like a manticore or a hellhound that’s been killing the ponies.”

        My mind went towards my tiny pegasus companion. there was no way that I was taking her with me. Wattson seemed like a nice enough guy. Sure, he was a bit odd, but from what I’ve seen so far, “a bit odd” was a thousand times better than “kidnap and sell you”.

        “Wattson, could you look after Pacey?”

        The electric stallion looked up at me, “Sure. Why, scared you’re gonna lose her?”

        Pacey piped up, “Woah, woah, woah! You can’t just leave me here!” her wings flitted nervously and I could see her face become red even through her yellow coat.

        “I’m not just leaving you here, I’ll be back for you when I’m done with the job.”

        “And what if I follow you?”

        “I won’t allow that,” Wattson answered, “ But if I’m going to be a foalsitter, I’m gonna need to be paid like one, too. No worries, though, I’ll just take it out of the payment.”

“My, my, how generous of you,” I said flatly

“Keep in mind who’s paying for your backpack, and who I put the job up for.”

        He was right, I wasn’t doing this for just him. I was doing this for everybody in town.

        “Anything else I need to know?”

        He pulled out a crudely drawn map of the facility. “There are three generators, here, here and here,” he said, pointing towards their respective places on the map, “I’m not sure if any of these are even working, but the main one should be the one connected to town. The others are connected elsewhere, and are probably broken. If you feel lucky, you could try to repair them. Don’t count on it though, this is some pretty advanced tech.”

“Okay so turn on the main generator ,try to fix the other ones, and come home alive”

“You forgot ‘Avoid horrible monsters.’”

“That was implied.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Several minutes later, outside of Maneton

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I began walking south, towards the power plant, after being waved off by Pacey and Wattson. I had found the closest thing I ever had to a friend in who knows how long and I managed to lose her in less than a day.

“No, I didn’t lose her. not yet, and if I have anything to do about it, not ever.”

That’s the spirit!

“Oh, you again.”

Yes, me again! You think that you can just lock me away along with your memories of that... thing and get away with it?

“I was hoping so, yes.”

You’re lucky I’m a forgiving person. Anywho, I see you’ve got some new gear.

“You know about the backpack?”

Yep, I can see everything you have on you in here

Several moments pass, with an awkward silence between myself and… myself.

Y’know, I’ve been scanning through your memories, and I’ve noticed that some holes in it fit with my memories eerily well.

Really? Have you come to any conclusions?

None that aren’t obvious, no.

“I suppose that confirms my theory about you being an offshoot of my own personality, but still leaves the question of where the rest of my memories are.” My mind shot to the dream figure, but I shook it off.

~~~~~~

An hour or so passed before a group of three griffons landed in front of me, kicking up a large cloud of dust.

“May I help you?” I asked in the hopes that they were friendly.

“Why, yes actually. You see, some pony’s hired us to take you out.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say that they were rather invested in that slaver camp you busted up”

I powered up my weapons, hoping to intimidate them. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Look, man. Just don’t fight back, and we won’t kill you. We’ll just cripple you and bring you back to a town to get you fixed.”

A male griffon with an almost scarily big gun strapped to his side looked at the one I was speaking to. “Why are you talking to it?! It’s just a robot.”

“And you’re just a big bird with cat legs, what’s your point?”

They all looked at me, eyes filled with varying degrees of anger, with the big-gun-griffon looking the most pissed.

“That’s it! I’ve had enough!” He said, firing a barrage of bullets at me.

I had barely enough time to react. Diving behind a nearby rock, I managed to get out of the line of fire without very many injuries. The griffon’s screaming about how he was having a shit day was inaudible over the sound of the massive gun firing.

The sound of two more guns joined the sound of bullets bouncing off of the rock, chipping off small stones.

I was peeking over the boulder, waiting for an opportunity to get either a word or a bullet in, when I heard a Whoomph behind me, along with the familiar click of a pistol and a distinct pressure on the back of my head.

Fuck.

I put my hands up. “Look, I give up. You win. See?”

“Damn straight. Now turn around and look me in the eyes. I love to see the fear in the eyes of those I kill.”

I obeyed her orders, turning around and looking down towards her eyes. She was weathered, her body and face covered in scars, some areas devoid of fur or feathers. Her eye was covered with a patch, accompanied by a large scar.

I had one chance to save myself. “ Tell me, why do you do this?”

“Kill? Griffons got to eat.”

“I suppose that’s a good enough reason, but why kill?”

“It’s what I’m good at,” the other two stopped firing and flew to join her, “It’s what we’re good at.”

“I guess living here long enough would make you good at that. Allow me to be more specific. Why must you kill the innocent? Why not the deserving?”

“You’d be surprised what the deserving pay to get the innocent killed. Not to say that the innocent don’t pay, too,” I noticed that the three were wearing black leather armor.

“So you’ve gotten requests to kill the deserving, but ignore them because they don’t pay enough?”

“Pretty much, yes,” her guard was down. this was my chance.

I activated my plasma cannon, pressing the business end of it against her skull. the other two readied their weapons, pointing them at me, “Very well,” I stated flatly,” I’ve decided that you’re deserving.”

She started laughing, “You really think that you have the guts to fire that thing?”

“The only difference between you and a psychopath is the fact that you have the choice to be good, yet deny it. that’s even worse than your average crazy,” I flooded power to the plasma cannon. I wasn’t going to get two shots, so may as well only need one.

I heard an audible gulp from the griffons as the plasma cannon grew brighter and brighter before a massive flash of light, an explosion, then relative darkness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I woke up in the dead of night, my body covered in holes and loose wires, slowly being fixed. I spotted the body parts of what appeared to be two griffons. More specifically, three back legs and two-and-a-half front claws. The third griffon was, judging from the irradiated goop on the ground, reduced to an irradiated goop.

I continued walking. At this point I was probably closer to the power plant than Maneton, so I may as well get the job done.

Y’know, you didn’t have to do that.

“Yes I did.”

She said she would drop you off at the nearest town.

“Who knows where that is.”

You could’ve waited to heal, then gotten to Pacey and told her --

“And tell her what? that the big tough robot that saved her from those slavers was almost killed by three birds?”

You could’ve told her that you held back because it was the right thing to do.

I paused for a moment, thinking about my response.

Nic? I’m noticing that there’s a lot more power being devoted to your emotional and mental processes than there should be.

I silently mulled over the other ways I could have gone about dealing with the griffons. They weren’t truly deserving. Just more than most. The voice tried to get me to speak up several times, eventually getting the hint, and shutting up.

The topic of my thoughts had slowly shifted, and I was contemplating the various ways this world could have come about when I noticed the shadow of the power plant peaking over the horizon.

“Oh, thank the stars!”

‘bout damn time, too! Check your clock, it’s almost dawn.

“You fixed the clock?”

Yeah. It wasn’t that difficult, to be honest. Surprised you didn’t do it earlier.

“It’s hard to fix things when you’re being shot at.”

And what about the times you aren’t being shot at?

“... shut up.”

So the genius robot isn’t so smart after all.

“It’s not that, it’s just that I never really wanted to learn about my internal processes,” I started jogging towards the plant.

Mhm. and next time you’ll be telling me that you didn’t want to learn about physics.

“You shut your mouth, I love physics.”

I walked through the doorway of the old building. the structure seemed to nearly crumble as I walked in, groaning slightly and allowing some pebbles to rain from the ceiling.

“Alright,” I said as I opened up the map, seeing the area that the generator was, and starting for it.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

Did you hear that?

“Probably just the building falling apart.”

I’d like to say that you’re right, but I just have a feeling that something terrifying is going to be waiting for us.

“Knowing our luck, probably.”

The thumping was getting louder as I got closer to the generator room, but stopped some time before I reached the door to the room.

I swung open the door, weapons at the ready for anything.

It was twice as tall as I was, maybe even three times, and had the body of a lion, a scorpion’s tail, and one wing.

So maybe I wasn’t ready for that. I started charging the plasma cannon, but before I could fire, the large creature swung at me, easily taking my arm off and putting large gashes into my torso.

Warnings flashed all across my HUD, telling me things that I barely understood.

The creature swung at me again, and I leapt backwards through the doorway. I had to do something, anything, to kill this thing as quickly as possible.

I could take down the roof, but that would destroy the generators.

I started shooting at it, but to no avail, the bullets were barely drawing blood. This thing’s hide was a lot tougher than it looked.

I ran out of the room, and the creature followed, smashing its way through the doorways.

After what seemed to be hours, I sprinted up several flights of stairs to a roof, the creature roaring after me.

I had a chance. I hid behind a half destroyed air conditioner as the creature emerged through a hole it had made.

It sniffed around for me, to no aid. Thank the stars that I don’t bleed.

Rather stupidly, it walked up to the edge of the building, possibly thinking that I jumped off. I had a clear shot at its neck.

I lined up my rifle-arm to the best I could with one arm, and shot.

The barrage of bullets struck nearly spot on, catching the creature off guard.

as the bullets penetrated, freeing a massive burst of blood to go with them, the creature stumbled, and fell off of the building. releasing a blood curdling roar mixed with a gurgle as his lungs filled with blood on the way down.

The last thing I heard from it was a wet splat.

I calmly climbed back down the remnants of the stairs and made my way to the generator room.

I collected my arm and turned on the main generator, noticing something move as I did so.

        Moving closer to investigate, I powered up my only means of protecting myself.

        “Oh, no…”

You fucked up, dude.

        tumbling and and rolling in front of me, I saw at least five baby creatures, complete with tails and wings.

Not knowing what else to do, I ran. I ran out of the building until I couldn’t run anymore, once again cursing my body for not allowing me to cry.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I stepped through the door to maneton, the people opening it readily for me this time.

Once again, I caught the attention of nearly every pony in town, but their eyes weren’t full of suspicion this time. They were smiling. Some even gave me a look of concern due to my distinct lack of an arm.

They began cheering. This was nothing like the feeble cheers of the slaves, however, they were loud, almost deafening. the cheers followed me through the town, giving my ego a good boost, although there was still that little seed of guilt for those small creatures.

I swung open the door to Maneton Supplies.

“OH MY CELESTIA! Niccy!” Pacey screamed as she flapped her small wings so quickly that she left the ground for several moments, “What happened to your arm?”

“There was a creature. At least twenty feet tall with a scorpion’s tail and claws the size of machetes!” I blew the size of things slightly out of proportion, but she would probably imagine it like that, anyway.

“Woooah.”

“I knew that you could do it, buddy,” Wattson said, “Here, let me fix your arm up on the house.”

LEVEL UP!

        New Perk: Arm-Rifle Mastery I

                You’ve started to get used to the whole firing-bullets-out-of-your-arm thing, and will now be more accurate and deal more damage with your arm-rifle