Fallout Equestria: Salvation

Fallout Equestria: Salvation

Chapter Two: Home

"The only thing I know for certain is that I don't know nothing."

    There are many times in my life where I look back, only to realize that whatever I did at that moment was the stupidest thing ever. Even if somepony knocked me over the head with a lead pipe, then asked me what to do, would have resulted in a better option. Sometimes it is the complete lack of doing anything that was the stupid choice. I failed to do one of the simple survival rules of the wasteland, making sure where you sleep is safe, and was paying for it. Sure, I could blame my teammates that they should’ve done so, but can I really do that? No, I should have done it regardless if they remembered to. When you grow up in the Equestrian Wasteland, and actually manage to survive to adulthood, you don’t risk fate by forgetting the basics. Okay, so we did this time, but you really shouldn’t. No matter if you think it can’t get worse than it is, the wasteland will just laugh at you, and then send some horror to prove you wrong.

* * *

    “Ponies, get up!” I yelled in a whispered voice. Captain Frost and Wire woke up, and got to their hooves. The factory stone floor felt colder than it should have, or maybe that was me being scared.

    “What is goi-” I shushed Wire. Sounds of hooves on metal clanked above, probably on a catwalk somewhere. Ponies from before the war loved catwalks built over machinery for whatever reason. Neither Frost or Wire used magic while securing their gear, afraid to give away our location with the light.

Grrrrrrrrrrr grrrrrrr grrrrrrrr

    Multiple growls came from above, maybe ten or more from the same direction. I pulled out a javelin, and looked above into the darkness. A small green light appeared from above, and gradually got brighter. I heard my companions back up to my side.

    The sickly green glow got bright enough to reveal it was coming from a doorway, and illuminated that a catwalk was indeed up there, then it came through the door. A large glowing ghoul stood there, it’s light revealing over two dozen feral ghouls all lined up on a catwalk directly above the entrance to the factory. The rain still echoing softly through the building.

    “Holy mother of the goddesses...” Wire whispered. I almost had the urge to piss myself right there, and I don’t think the others would’ve blamed me. A tense moment hung in the air.

    “Shit,” I looked around and saw a metal door behind us, opposite of the ghouls. “there’s a door behind us, slowly back up toward it, don’t take your eyes off the ghouls.”

    We all started towards it, nopony making any noise if they could help it. Not ten steps after, the glowing ghoul pony let out a banshee shriek, and all the feral ghouls jumped off the catwalk onto the factory floor. Shit, shit, shit! “Ruuuuuuuun!” I yelled as I quickly turned, and ran for the door. The factory filled with the squishy and metal clop of all the pony hooves.

    I reached the door first, a couple seconds before the others, and pushed it open. I went in, and held it for Captain and Wire. I got a good look at the scene when I looked back. A small army of rotted animated corpses were screaming is a gnarled tone as they chased two ponies, the glowing one just now slowly jumping down from its perch.

    “Ahhh!!” Wire screamed, Captain Frost just looked determined to make it through the door. After they passed me, I slammed the door shut, and locked it with its small bolt lock. That wasn’t going to hold out very long.

    “Captain, what do we do?” I asked, she picked up her minigun off her back with levitation.

    “Easy, we kill all these sons of bitches, then go to sleep.”

thump

    “Are you crazy!? There is a whole army out there, not to mention that freaky glowing pony!” Wire was screaming, probably in shock. I faired a bit better, seeing worse things before, but this was still really scary.

thumpthump

    “Captain... Do you think this is a good holding position?” I looked at the straight hallway, it was maybe five ponies wide. I saw further back that the end of it had collapsed on itself, we were trapped in here. I met her blue eyes in the dim light from her horn.

thumpthumpthump

    “We have no other option, Silent.. Wire, take any guns you have that can be fired and lay them out next to you in the back, you won’t have a chance to reload. Silent, you keep them off us when they get up close.” We all went to the collapsed back, stuck between a wall of rubble and an army of ghouls wanting to eat our flesh.

    “Don’t you mean if they get close?” Wire looked at Captain, and she just shook her head.

thumpthumpthump--

    The sound of the ghouls beating against the door stopped. I didn’t have a good feeling about that, and neither did Captain Frost, revving up her minigun. Another loud banshee shriek pierced my ears as an explosion of ghostly green light came from the doorway, ripping the door off its hinges. The glowing green ghoul stood right in the doorway, backed up a couple steps, and let the other ghouls rush in to eat our soft fleshy bodies.

    Gunfire blared from both my sides, the rapid fire of dozens of bullets a second from one, and the single shots of a revolver on the other. I stood between them with a javelin in my teeth, prepared to skewer any enemies that got within range. The decayed ponies were torn to pieces, falling over in chunks one after the other, but more just climbed over their bodies to get it us. The glowing ghoul was behind the entire pack, sending off a wave of radiation to heal his herd every couple of seconds.

    “Where are they all coming from!?” Wire yelled. What did I tell him about talking in combat? Besides, the obvious answer was when ponies and zebras decided to kill everypony with radiation bombs. A ghoul got through the blaze of gunfire, and jumped for me. I angled my head, and thrust the spear into its skull, the metal head coming out the other side with green ichor all over it. I kicked with my forehooves, and pulled my weapon out of the ghoul’s brain.

    They got closer and closer, finally within good jump distance. Only six of the ferals were left, and the glowing pony behind them.

click click click

    “I’m out of bullets!” Wire released his gun from his magic. Why would you do that, even if you were out of bullets, you could still club somepony with it!

    I pivoted my body, and tossed my javelin at the glowing ghoul. It went straight into its chest, appearing out the bottom of his stomach. Fuck, I missed the head. Its rotted flesh healed around the shaft of the spear, and it continued on like nothing hit it. Only two ferals and the glowing pony left.

click click click

    “Oh, fuck...” Frost’s voice was all I needed to hear to know it just got worse. I pulled out one javelin, tossed it to Captain, “Captain! Pointy end in the head!” and yanked out my last one for myself. Captain caught the spear in her telekinetic grip, and jabbed one of the ferals through the skull, the body fell forward, and trapped the spear inside its corpse. My eyes widened in fear, me and my last spear the only defense against two ghouls.

    The last feral ran at me, its dead eyes showing its hunger for my blood. I reared up, its ghoul teeth biting my armored barding, and I slammed my forehooves down on his spine with a rewarding sick crunch. I stepped over its body, and jumped at the glowing ghoul. I twisted my neck, and drove my javelin through its mouth, into its brain. It released one last explosion of radiation, and sent me flying into the nearest stone wall. My back hit first, then my neck snapped backwards, and my head cracked against the stone. I felt the warmth of my blood soaking my mane.

    I heard voices, probably that of my teammates, saying some stuff that sounded like concern. I touched the back of my head, and looked at my blue hoof. It was purple. That was so not good!

    “Any of yous gots uh healin’ potion?” I looked up at Captain, she was looking through her saddlebags. Wire just shrugged, guess he would have used his back at Bearado. Frost pulled out a red vial, and levitated it to my lips. I drank that potion like my life depended on it, which it might have. I’ll never know since it fixed my skull right back up to top condition.

    “Are we alive?” I looked at Wire and Captain.

    “You bet your ass we’re alive. Though, I’m definitely going to need that pay from the raider assignment, my minigun isn’t looking too hot, AND I’m all out of ammo.” She levitated her gun back onto its saddle mount.

    I walked over to the dead glowing ghoul, his green light fading by the second. I yanked both of my javelins out, the one in his chest proving a little harder, and holstered them. I went to go get my last one.

    “Wow, I haven’t seen that many ghouls.... ever! Think we could get paid for this number?”

    Captain and I looked at each other. Could we? “If there was such a request somewhere in our files, and we showed up with proof, maybe we could.” I replied.

    “That’s pretty unorthodox, but it might fly with the upper staff. This seems like it would have been a dangerous mission. Wire, Silent, any of you have a really big bag?” I smiled. I pulled out my large sleeping blanket, large enough that it could probably cover up two dozen pony heads.

    “We could put them in this, I’ll carry it back to camp. Question is, who has a machete?” Wire levitated a broken, but still sharp sword out of his pack.

    “Raider had it on him.” This could work.

    We cut off all the heads at the top of the neck, stacked them in the middle of the blanket, and tied it up in a makeshift sack. I looked on the bright side, if we did get paid for these, I could always just buy a new blanket. I don’t think the smell would ever come out, the bottom started to turn green with soaked ichor blood. We put the sack of heads by the front door, kindled our fire with more toys, and went back to sleep with Captain pulling the second guard shift.

* * *

    Wire woke us up at the end of his guard, signalling that morning had arrived. The smell from the rotten ghoul heads wasn’t as bad as I expected, but it’ll get worse in the next few days. I suggested we find out what the name of this place was, so we could report it correctly. If we showed up at HQ with a bag full of zombie heads and didn’t know where we killed them, we might not even get one cap a head. Captain and Wire took the top floor, where the ghouls first came out of, while I searched some of the side rooms on the bottom. This place had a basement, but that just screams bad news. You would have to pay me to go in any basement or sewer tunnel, and then pay me again if I came back out.

    I found a locked first aid box, the standard yellow with a pink butterfly mark, in one of the small bathrooms. A lot of medical supplies ended up in bathrooms, that always struck me as odd. Oh well, chalk it up to crazy pre-war ponies and their shenanigans. I pulled out my multi-tool, bit the screwdriver tab, and pulled it open. I wedged the flat head in the lock, and made sure it stayed it when I let it go. I slowly turned around, and bucked the end up the screwdriver, driving the head through the lock. Good old fashioned earth pony lockpicking, I yanked the tool out with a metal screech, and put it away before opening up the medical box. A newly shattered potion sat next to its twin, and a syringe of Med-X. Well, it wasn’t a perfect lockpick, but I got supplies I wouldn’t have if I didn’t open it in the first place. I continued looking around, but found nothing of use, not even old factory report papers or something. I went back to my ghoul heads, and waited for my teammates.

    In about ten minutes, they came back downstairs. Said they found an old working terminal in an office, and that this place was called Charity’s Gift Supply. Well those ghouls weren’t my idea of a charitable gift. Captain levitated the, now dark green, bag of heads onto my back. It felt squishy, but I ignored it by thinking of the potential caps. The air was misty and cool from the storm last night, I thanked it for not making us travel in the heat. We left the abandoned factory, heading back home for some well deserved rest and rewards.

* * *

    South Station was the home of its very own mercenary group, started by a founder nopony actually knew the name of. When I think of home, it will always be there. Even as a colt, my family were just roaming scavengers, just trying to make do in their lives. To me, this is where I feel safest, well in a manner of speaking. When our unit finally saw home, I just couldn’t help but feel happy.

    South Station used to be an old train station before the war, but not in what you would think. It wasn’t a hub for trains to come and go from, no, it was a station where they built the train cars and parts. Many of those very same box train cars sat around the building in a square perimeter, acting as a barricade against anything that would attack it. At each of the four corners inside the train car fence, were sentry towers, just tall enough to get a view over the walls. Inside the whole thing was a huge stone building shaped like a small set of stairs with three floors, windows all over the sides of the building.

    We walked up to the entrance into our headquarters, a small security checkpoint at a pair of makeshift tin doors cut out of the middle of the train cars leading into the actual fortification. Captain walked up, and knocked of the doors.

    “7th Unit reporting back, open up.” she said in a military tone. The set of doors were opened by a blue unicorn guard, who just stared at us, and waited as we walked through before closing them again. Between the box walls and the actual building was nothing special, just a couple guards patrolling about. Guard shift was something any mercenary could do for a small time and get paid for it, but it took years to retire to the actual guard service. Even when you get too old or too damaged to go back out into the wastes, you can stay home and protect your allies so they can continue on. They were probably the strongest group here, each probably worth a whole unit themselves.

    The fetid ghoul heads started to really get to me, and I could tell that the others gave me some space after walking all day with them. We walked through the metal double doors into South Station, and were greeted with the familiar smell of other ponies, and the various sounds of conversation. The first room you enter is the large floor where they used to build the train cars, but somepony long since cleared all that machinery away. Now it was a large open common room, full with salvaged tables and chairs, vending machines along the wall that were mainly there for decoration, and a long desk at the left end from the front door. It had a large bulletin board behind it, with many requests and posts of assignments.

    “Wire, go see if there was any assignment to Charity’s Gift Supply, or to clean out a bunch of ghouls in the area. I really hope I didn’t carry this thing here for nothing, not to mention ruining my good blanket.”

    “Alright, meet you at Lemon’s.” Wire walked off toward the desk and billboard, weaving through small groups of ponies that littered the open floor. Captain motioned for me to follow.

    “Come on, let’s go get paid, and drop off that nasty thing while we’re at it.” We walked toward the door that lead further in on the far right. I got some odd looks, but nothing unusual for a pony carrying a dried green lumpy bag on his back. Continuing past that door, we walked down two hallways before coming to what looked like an iron barred ticket booth.

    A yellow unicorn sat behind the bars, her brown mane covering half of her face in a mess. She was about two decades older than me, but only looked maybe a couple years over me. She was writing something down in a ledger with a floating pencil, her white duster she wore showed that she was our resident quartermaster. Captain went directly up to her, while I sat down the disgustingly big bag of heads. Maybe I should have found something to drag them with, I don’t know if I can ever get that ichor out of that blanket.

    “Hey Lemon Cake, how’s life?” I wasn’t too close with our quartermaster, but Captain was. Lemon looked up from her work, and her expression brightened considerably.

    “Frost Fire! Damn girl, haven’t seen you in a couple days. Thought you kicked it, or something.” she looked over to me. “Hey Silent, woah, what is up with that sick sack of shit?”

    Captain laughed, “It’s nothing, just full of ghoul heads that belonged to an army trying to eat us in our sleep. I really thought we were going to die. Hey, 7th Unit is reporting completion of our assignment out in Bearado. You know, the raider infestation?” Lemon nodded.

    “Well, give me a second, and I will gather up your payment.” Lemon crouched down, and made some sounds like opening metal, and popped up with six bags of caps in her magical grip. Captain took four, and levitated two over into my saddlebags. Six hundred for the total, split three ways.

    “Look, we figured we could get something out of nearly dying to all those ghouls. Think you can do something about it” I asked with a pleading tone. Lemon just shrugged.

    “I don’t know if I can help without it being an actual assignment, but you could always ask a council member to credit a reward to you.”

    I sighed, and Captain looked to me. “Silent, don’t you know one of the council personally?”

    “Yeah, but I’d rather not use my friend’s position to benefit myself like that. Would give her, me, or possibly both of us a bad reputation. Let’s just wait fo-”

    “Guys, there WAS a request up on the board!” Wire was running down the hallway towards us. One of these days, I’m going to knock his teeth out when he interrupts me. He stopped in front of the booth, and put a piece of paper on the desk so Lemon could read it. I got up to go get a look at it.

Assignment #614

Extermination of Ghouls

Old Toy Factory

“I saw a bunch of ghouls, I mean a bunch of them, all around this factory about a day away from your company. They’re attacking, and eating anypony that gets close. Daring Deliveries will pay 900 caps to anypony who gets rid of them.”

    Wow, I’ll be damned, I didn’t reek of rotted ponies for nothing!

    “Woah, that sure is a reward. How many suckers did you kill in there?” Lemon levitated nine bags out this time, and set them on the desk. I grabbed three of them, and stowed them away for later use. Captain took hers, then levitated Wire’s share for the raiders into his bags, Wire following suit and taking his three bags and tucking them away.

    “I’d rather not open that up to count, but I’d guess two dozen, plus this really nasty radiation filled ghoul.” I said casually, acting like it was no big deal. Her face looked shocked from the number.

    “You ponies faced down that many ghouls, with a Glowing One in the group? I’m surprised you fellas ain’t dead in a gutter with your bones picked clean by them right now.”

    Wire shivered, “Yeah, I thought we were going to die when we ran out of ammo.”

    Lemon gasped, “Even you, Frost?” Captain just laughed, then nodded.

    “If Silent was not one for using weapons that didn’t shoot bullets, I would think we would be ghoul food right now.” I shrugged, trying to play is smooth. That praise was going to go straight to my ego, but I wasn’t going to let them know that.

    “Well, I’m off to relax for the rest of the day, maybe wash my friggin’ uniform. This ghoul blood is disgusting.” I waved my hoof, and left them to, what I assume, resupply their ammo and buy some stuff. I would do that later, I really had to get this smell off of me.

    I walked around to the back exit of South Station, and went outside. The backyard was really a small scrap yard, usable by anypony who needed it. I walked over to the water pump further back. This stuff is pretty irradiated, so drinking it would kill you faster than a bullet to the head. I grabbed beaten metal bucket that was lying next to the pump, and filled it with dark brown water. I unlatched the saddlebags from the coat, and took out my cleaning rag. I spent the next hour scrubbing that thing until any spot that wasn’t black was gone.

    I held up the duster in my hooves, inspecting it closely, and sniffed it. At least the smell of radiation is better than what it was coated with. Re-attaching the saddlebags, I put the duster back on when I heard hoofsteps behind me. I turned to see a pair of orange eyes. Ahh! I stumbled backwards, knocking over the bucket of nasty water.

    “Jeez, don’t have a fit Silent, I only wanted to see how you were doing.” I smiled, this day just kept getting better.

    “Then don’t sneak on ponies, they might just get scared. How are ya, Council Member Glare?” She punched me in the shoulder.

    “What did I tell you about titles? Just call me Mourning, or something. I get enough of the council stuff as it is.”

    “Haha, alright. How’s it goin’ Mourning?” Now don’t get the wrong idea, we are just friends. Maybe a bit closer than that, but only in a parental way. She was the one who looked after me as I trained up to be a mercenary. You know, like a second mother.

    “Ugh, the Council is currently having this whole campaign about whether we should ignore or accept the request to end this town’s civil war.” She sighed, and looked back at the station. “The problem is, both sides have put in a request, and we can’t afford to take sides.”

    “Wait, why is it up for vote if we can’t take a side?” All this politics and stuff was confusing, maybe you had to learn how to be confusing to understand it.

    “Well, if we refuse outright, one side will know and might think we took the other side’s.... side? Wonder how many times I can use that in a single sentence. Anyway, letting it hang in the air is just as bad.”

    “Well, that’s complicated. I just got done with almost dying three times, but you seem to have your hoofs full. I wouldn’t want to be in your horseshoes.” I laughed, and got a punch to the shoulder again, same friggin’ spot too.

    “Yeah, it’s tough being behind a desk all day.” Mourning rolled her eyes,” Look, I know you just got back and all, but you think you could do me a favor? You won’t get paid officially, but I could work something out.”

    “...what is it?” I tightened my scarf around my neck, pushing it under the collar of my duster.

    “Would you go solve that civil war problem for me?” I sighed. It sounded rough, but at least it was better than sitting on my ass, gambling away all my caps in boredom.

    “Only ‘cause it’s you asking me, Mourning. Where is this town?”

    “Well, it is a bit bigger than a town.  Ciderside City is two days west of here, you will be going without your unit since this is an unofficial job.”

    “What!? Oh, damnit Glare, that’s...” I took in a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “Alright, but I have to get some supplies, and you have to pay me something up front even if I might fail.”

Footnote: Level Up (3)

Skill Note: Melee Weapon: 75

New Perk: Quick Reflexes: You are now 50% quicker to react to any attack or ambush.

Quest Perk: Ghoul Slayer: You deal 25% bonus damage to any ghoul, through your great knowledge on how to end their unlife.

((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. The chapters will get longer, I swear! Major thanks to Mint Julep for drawing and editing me a cover. Any and all feedback is much wanted and welcome))