Fallout Equestria: Salvation

Fallout Equestria: Salvation

Chapter One: Six Years Later

“The more time I spend talking to you, the less I spend watching for raiders”

    Sigh, why couldn’t the simple assignments ever turn out to be just that? Wood chips fell on my head as bullets destroyed the wall above me. I peeked to my left around the corner of the bar counter I was hiding behind to see where they were. Two raiders, both looking straight at me, aimed their guns at my head. I pulled back, the counter vibrating as it took more bullets. I dusted off my purple and black scarf, and pulled one of my three javelins out of the holster on my side. Salvaged wooden shaft and a sleek metal head, a weapon that wouldn’t run out of ammo or jam.

    “Haha, now this is what I call real action! Us two versus them two, easy win!”

    I lazily glanced to my right, a slightly younger charcoal unicorn stallion with a blonde mane and eyes. Glowing in his grey aura beside him was his .44 Magnum. He wore no armor besides our uniform black duster that had its own saddlebags. I wished he put on the standard black barding that came with the duster, mine sure has hay saved me on more than one occasion.

    “Live Wire, no win is easy. We’re pinned down behind in a bar with who knows how many raiders outside besides those two.” More gunshots rang out, the counter vibrating from the impacts. “This was supposed to be-”

    “Yeeeeaaahhh! Eat lead father fuckers!” He peeked over the counter, angled his gun sideways, and unloaded all six shots before crouching back down and reload them. Something in my mind snapped, and I facehoofed. Why did I have to always babysit the rookies? Oh right, so they don't die.

    “Goddesses damnit Wire, that was exactly why we’re in this friggin’ situation!”

    He looked up while magically loading bullets into the revolver, “What situation? I thought we were doing our assignment.”

    “Yeah, our assignment was to clear out the raiders from Bearado, but Captain told us to watch for anything and alert her if-”

    “Yeah, but waiting up on the hill was so boooooriiinnng! We have guns, well I have a gun, so why not just go and take them out ourselves?”

    I couldn’t finish a sentence around this foal. Wait, something is off... the gunshots have stopped. Live Wire snapped the chamber closed, and looked over the counter again. His face told me it before he did.

    “Hey, uhh, Silent? The raiders are gone.” This wasn’t good. Javelin still in mouth, I looked over the counter as well. Charred wooden walls held up the building with a couple wooden beams here and there, old broken and decayed bar furniture littered the floor with all the empty glass bottles. Mostly intact windows were on both side walls, the front entrance having none.

    “Aww hay, Live, we should get o-” I stopped mid-sentence staring at a metal apple floating in a pink field in the doorway. Obvious lesson of the day, don’t talk on a battlefield, you’re more likely to get killed while distracted. It flung itself inside the building, and landed right between me and Wire. “Shit, windows, now!”

    I saw Wire turn to his nearest window as I did mine. I dash-jumped through the window head first. While that was the obvious way to jump, the grenade seemed to have made me forget I wielded a javelin in my mouth. As the tip of my snout cleared the window, my spear met both sides of the window, and slammed toward the back of my mouth. My body didn’t catch the stopping queue, slamming downwards and sending me falling onto my back. Why the heck were centuries old wooden buildings so damn sturdy? I balled up with my back to the grenade, hiding my face under my forehooves.

BOOOOM

    My ears started to ring as I was peppered with shrapnel and glass that was laying around the grenade. Most of it bounced off the duster, and the sharp pieces stopped at the leather barding underneath. Saved yet again by armor, how I shall never go anywhere without it. I uncovered my eyes and stood up. Well that wasn’t that bad.

Creeeeeaaaaaaakcreeeeeaaaaak

    I looked at the support beams for the building. They were heavily damaged and broken by the explosion. Oh come on, how can it break that easily? They snapped, breaking into small chunks at the roof started to cave in. I wasn’t going to stay for that! I picked my javelin up, angled my head so the length pointed through the window, and climbed out, falling face first into the dirt. Wood smashing together and dust flying outward behind me was all I needed to know that I almost died, again.

    I coughed the dust out of my lungs, and got to my hooves, only to see a sawed-off shotgun barrel covering my vision. Ahh! I ducked, bullets flying over my head and the heat from the fire singing my ears. I twisted my neck and felt the solid thump of my javelin's head sinking into the raider’s body. She dropped the shotgun from her mouth, collapsing on the ground. I yanked my weapon out of her body and ran off to find Live Wire.

Bearado was, or used to be a small town of maybe eight buildings all tightly clustered. Many of them were still standing tall, pride of pony construction in a long ago generation. I turned around the back of the collapsed bar and ran toward the opposite end. Gunshots came from that direction, so I just ran quicker. As I reached the end to turn, I bumped into somepony, at least I knew it was a pony since my spear stabbed into something meaty. I got a good look at the back of a raider’s head, blood leaking out of the small gap between the metal spear head and her hide. Thank goddesses that wasn’t somepony important. I gave a hard tug, pulling it out. Chunks of meat and brain clung to the tip. Eww, I gave it a hard shake, flinging it off to the ground.

    I turned around the corner and saw Wire laying down behind a tipped over decayed taxi cart with his magnum pointed at the front side of the bar. I ran as stealthily as a pony could in broad daylight up to him.

    “Good, you’re alive.” He gave a startled jump and turned his magnum on me, firing off a shot. Thankfully, it went straight into the sky. He should stop floating his gun in that stupid position, the sight must be way off. “Woah, wh-”

    “What the hay, you almost scared me to death!” I just noticed his left shoulder was bleeding badly from a large gash, blood running down his right foreleg.

    “Yeah, you almost killed me, we’re even. You’re hurt, one sec.” I slid my javelin back into my holster, reached into one of my saddlebags, and pulled out a vial of red liquid. I held it between my hooves, opened it, and shoved it down Wire’s muzzle before he could object. The healing potion took effect immediately, the gash closing up seamlessly. Biggest downside to the potions was they didn’t clear up any of the blood, so his foreleg was soaked. He's lost a lot of his blood, maybe the was deeper than it looked?

    He shivered in relief, “Oh, thanks, that feels loads better. So, what should we do now?”

    “We try and survive this stupid attack, and maybe Captain won’t kill us. Look, let’s just get out of town. We’ll head down the street behind the bar.” I helped Wire to his hooves, and trotted to the end of the street. I looked around the building’s corner into the next street, no sign of any raiders.

    “Wire, this way is clear,” I motioned for him to come over. When he caught up, we both walked around into the dirt road. What. The. Hay. Six raiders standing side by side were in the middle of the street, blocking the way. Most of them had various rusted or broken melee weapons, but the pink unicorn in the middle held a rather well maintained assault rifle in her magical grip, it aimed straight at us. Wire just gave me a curious look.

    “What? It was clear just a few seconds ago! Hey” I made a sweeping motion at all the raiders,” y’all can’t just show up from thin air! That’s not fair.” I mean, what, did they just spawn on the road when nopony was looking or something?

    “Hah, ready to die you chumps?” the raider yelled with glee. Her entourage started to laugh all crazy like. Raiders were fucking insane, how did they ever end up like that from being a normal pony?

    “Chumps? You’re the chumps!” Wire retorted with a pointed hoof. Wow, real great comeback on that one.

Vvvvvvrrrrrrrrrrrrr

    A slow mechanical spinning sound came from the rooftop on our left, it gradually getting louder. I just smiled at the raiders. A white unicorn with an orange and blue mane stepped up to view, wearing the typical South Station Mercenaries black duster and armor. A large minigun levitating next to her, it’s barrel spinning at top speed. We were all chumps in her blue eyes.

    “What the fuck?” the pink raider looked up to only see a flurry of bullets a second before she was torn apart into chunks of flesh. With the priority target dead, the minigun mare continued her slaughter on the helpless raiders from above, them all becoming chunks and blood in the open street. When all were dead, besides wire and myself anyway, she stopped firing and let her minigun wind down before setting it on the saddle mount on her back.

    A few minutes later she exited the building’s front doorway, the door no longer there. She had a warm smile on her face as she walked over to me and Live Wire.

    “So, I see my boys are still alive after all.”

    “Ah... thanks for the save Captain Frost. We were in a bad spot there.” I winced at Wire’s comment. Captain Frost Fire walked up really close to him.

    “Yeah, so I saw. Now that I saved your hides,” she put one leg around his shoulder, “mind telling me why you two aren’t back on that hill ready to save MINE?” Wire started to sweat under the pressure. Nopony would want to be in his position, so my next actions didn’t really make sense.

    “Wasn’t Private Wire’s fault, Captain, it was mine.” Wire gave me a shocked look, while Frost just looked at me boredly.

    “Go on...”

    “We didn’t see that you were in any trouble, so we decided to go and help you out by attacking the raiders.” I stood still and tried to talk in monotone, failing miserably at it. This lying thing had always been hard.

    “Wow Silent, that sure is the best plan ever! Much better than my plan I thought we were using.” her sarcastic tone couldn’t have been more obvious.

    “It is?” Wire asked. Both me and Captain facehoofed. She sighed, and dropped her whole act.

    “Look, Wire, you know what we are?” she asked in a motherly trying-to-teach way.

    “Yeah, we are the 7th Unit of the South Station Mercenaries. Why?”

    “Okay, so, do you know why we’re in a Unit?

    “Because it’s safer with more ponies.” He smiled sheepishly. Captain just sighed, there sure was a lot of sighing going on today.

    “Silent, would you?” she asked. I turned straight to Wire.

    “A Unit is complete with three ponies in order to make sure SSM makes profits without killing off all their employees. One captain, one corporal, and one private. Captains are the veteran of the group, being around for far longer than others. The corporal is a pony with a normal amount of field experience under their saddle. Then there is the Private, the rookie of the group that is trained in the field with other ponies. This way, a group of rookies wouldn’t just group up and go get slaughtered on any assignment they pick up.”

    “Exactly the textbook answer, so that’s why you privates don’t make the plans, and should listen to your teammates. There isn’t any real rule saying I’m the leader, but you should bucking listen to me when I tell you to do something. Got it?” Captain Frost stared straight into Wire’s eyes until he nodded in approval. He looked like he was going to cry, not that I could blame him. Captain looked back at me.

    “Corporal Silent Step, what would you suggest we do now that this assignment is complete?” She gave me this weird look, maybe for me to show Wire something? Either way, what would I tell any private not do to during a battle?

    “We should loot the bodies, collect anything of value, and head back to HQ for payment. Cut off the ears of any dead raiders as proof that we did our job, I’d rather not lose another payday that way again.” Both Frost and Wire nodded in agreement, and we split up to do just that.

    An hour or so later we met up at the southeast end of town, the direction our headquarters was. I hoofed my bloody bag of ears to Captain, as did Wire, and we set off to home. It was two days travel on hoof, but we were going to trot instead of walk most of the distance, cutting the time to a half.

    “Oh, by the way, you two owe me for all that minigun ammo. I would say a seventy-five, twenty-five split. Wire, you obviously get the seventy-five because it was your idea to ruin my plan.” she said in a mild tone. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or mad, maybe a bit of both?

    “Oh fine, i’ll jus-”

    “My twenty-five can be bought for that healing potion I used on you back in town.” I interrupted Wire, justice has been served. He grumbled, levitating a small sack out of his bags, normally a set amount of a hundred caps put into one that size, and put it in Captain’s bags.

    “Pleasure doing business with you boys, a mare could make a profit of saving your burly hides all the time.” she taunted in a stuck up tone. I smiled a bit, at least she saved us.

    I looked around the same typical dead landscape I’ve seen my entire life, wishing for something not black, red, brown or any mix of the three. These trips would be so boring without conversation. Oh wait, they were, since we used all our breath covering distance at a higher speed. Discolored scenery, why were you my enemy?

* * *

    We didn’t make it back home, no, it would just so happen my unit and I ended up in a large abandoned factory on the way there. I could hear the downpour of rain outside, filling the hollow building with a thousand taps a second. We got inside before it got too heavy, so we weren’t all soaked to the bone. Be thankful for the small things, right? Wet fur smell got old when it wasn’t your own fur.

    Well, at least wet fur would be more pleasant than this. My unit sat around a fire to keep warm, thing is, the fire was burning random junk we found around the factory. Old teddy ursas and wooden toys piled together for kindling, some of the materials letting off a nasty odor as they burned. With all these toys, I guess this was a toy factory? Who knows, these could have been disguised weapons for children by how crazy our ancestors were.

    I took out my three javelin’s out of their side holster and laid them down to my side. Captain was just resting, and Wire fiddling with the junk weapons that he looted from the raiders. I reached into my saddlebags, nosed around a bit, and pulled out dry rag. I started to dry off my weapons, they would get bad fast if they just stayed wet without maintenance.

    “Hey Silent, why do you use those spears instead of a gun?” Wire asked.

    “Why indeed... It’s a pretty stupid reason, I guess.”

    “I’m amazed you haven’t just dropped them for something like Captain Frost’s huge damn gun, that thing is crazy. What is your so called stupid reason then?” Captain waved a hoof and ignored him. I shrugged, using a gun like that without magic would weigh me down.

    “Well, when my parents were killed by raiders, the pony who rescued me killed them off using the same type of weapons I currently use. In my mind, I’m using a weapon that avenged their deaths.” This got both of my teammates to stare at me. Wire whistled.

    “Damn, that’s a better reason than I use this magnum. It’s just the best gun I got.”

    “Wow Silent, I don’t think I’ve heard mention that before. When did you start using them?” Frost seemed rather curious, or maybe it was natural to be curious about why a pony would use spears over the technologically advanced weapon that is the firearm.

    “I started to train with them when I joined up with the SSM as a colt, but only started using them in the field about a year ago. They’re rather efficient for sneaking, assassinations or silent killings, and extremely lightweight. Plus I can just sell any ammo I find for bonus caps or materials to make another one.”

    “Wait, you make them yourself?” Wire tilted his head as he asked.

    “Where else would I get them in such a good condition? Nopony would use these over a gun, maybe raiders, but they’re crazy. I guess that makes me either a nopony or a crazy one.” I gave a laugh, and continued wiping down the spears.

    “I don’t know if I would if I could use them right. What if you lose or break all of them in one go, then you would be unarmed!” Wire tossed his hooves in the air for emphasis. I laughed a bit more.

    “Then what if I ran out of ammo at a crucial moment or my gun jammed and I didn’t have a backup weapon, or that backup was already destroyed? It can work both ways, and I never said I didn’t know how to use a gun. What do you think I used in the field as a colt when I couldn’t use these?” I motioned with the spear I was drying off in my hooves.

    “Wait, you’ve been a mercenary since you were a kid?” Wire’s jaw dropped as he looked to Captain, guessing maybe it was a joke. She just nodded.

    “Silent’s been here longer than me at the SSM, not sure why he isn’t a captain by now, forever stuck as a corporal.” I shrugged again, and switched to my next javelin.

    “I would’ve been probably, but most of my previous captains blamed me for mistakes in the past, and reported most of them to the Council.”

    “Mistakes? You don’t make that many without a good reason...” Captain Frost stated sympathetically.

    “Who said I made them? I was mainly blamed for their mistakes or one’s I covered the privates I babysit. Some of those rookies wouldn’t have lasted if they got yelled or punished for every little wrong thing, ya know?” I swapped to my last spear, drying it off to complete the set.

    “Haha, yeah....” Wire looked down to the ground.

    “Don’t mind him, I wouldn’t hold you responsible for my or any others mistakes. Maybe you might get promoted from this unit.” Captain smiled at me. That would be the day, Captain Silent Step. It has a good sound, but I like being a corporal. Somepony has to look after the new recruits, making sure they don’t get themselves or everypony else killed. Goddesses only know how many times I was saved as a private, it can mean a lot when you're in that position.

    I holstered my javelins, and put the now damp rag over by the fire, just close enough for it to dry. We spent the next hour continuing the small talk, thankfully the subject shifted off at dinner onto why Wire decided to eat a brahmin steak over a can of pre-war potatoes. Even after all these years, food was still mostly fresh and edible. Generations long gone feeding us with their food to make up for fucking up the world. After we all finished eating and put away out belongings, it was time to get some rest.

    “I’ll take first shift.” the other two nodded and went to sleep around our toy fire. Another hour passed by as the flame died out, leaving the factory floor mostly dark.

Grrrrrrrrrrr thump thump

    The growl came out from above, along with the dull thumps of what sounded like hooves. My body went cold, I knew what was coming. Didn’t we scout this place out, or at least camp in a safe spot? No, we were in the middle of the open factory floor.

    “Frost, Wire, get the fuck up.... I heard something and it sounds hungry...”

Footnote: No Level Up

((A/N: Thanks goes out to Kkat for creating the Fallout Equestria world, and to the many other sidefics of FoE for making me love the universe. Sorry this chapter isn’t really that long, I just wrote until I felt it was good. My first fanart by Mint Julep here.))