Tales by Balefirelight (a Fallout: Equestria Group Collab)

Drunkby Windmill 7

Tunnel Vision mounted the final flight of stairs, counting steps by their echoes, muttering a different name for each. Veiled panic—or was it something else? He felt himself shaking. Thoughts raced, melted into nonsense, drained back into a neat reality. Fragile like his head. He asked himself if he would forget, but the only answer was a hoof searching for a step that wasn’t there. Stumbling a bit, he knew he wouldn’t. Like a firebrand for the mind, mnemonics drawn in blood. He drew his rifle, mounted it on an upturned desk. One bottle capsized target, bright in the darkness of the city.

One more name to remember.

He could see him. His features were crystal through the magnification of his scope, from the grime that edged his mouth to the grease that smeared his coat. Dirty like the worm he is, like he deserves to be. All the soap in Equestria couldn’t make him clean. All the suits in the world couldn’t stop him from looking like a rat out of the garbage. Tunnel Vision could feel his blood boiling beneath his skin.

But he didn’t shoot.

Chill out, T.V.

Laughter. A ghost trapped in his mind. He shook his head. He couldn’t remember her smile, but her voice haunted him.

And whose fault was that? He gritted his teeth.

Pinstripe, you worthless piece of shit.

Dark, dark as the Wasteland. And they had thought they found a fire to light it. This city was supposed to be a beacon. And it was, until one pony snuffed that fire out to split profit with the devil. Raiders, Fiends, Slavers. Even the Great Fawns of the north, who never would’ve come had Pinstripe not given them the city on a silver platter. Now everypony was dead or gone.

Boxer. Matchstick. Flinch.

Click. He chambered a new round.

Jackal. Tailwind. Wanderlust.

Marigold.

His friends, his family. His love. Their corpses were rotting in the streets below now, their flesh stuck in the blackened teeth of raiders, their wills bound by the cold steel of Slaver collars. And for what?

For what, Pinstripe? For what?

A mountain of caps you couldn’t hope to spend? Control of a city now more worthless than the dust of this irradiated Equestria?

It’d been 10 long minutes since he first scoped onto him, but Pinstripe had hardly moved an inch. His horn glowed a brilliant orange, and a wheel of glasses bobbed in the air around him like fish lures in a sea of darkness. One long gulp, he downed one of the drinks like second nature. The glass flew across the room to some dark corner, and the wheel of liquor spun. Drinking while poison floods the veins of your city. A drunk, in metaphor and in life.

Tunnel Vision hated him. But he hated himself too. Hated himself for trying. Hated himself for wanting to believe that the Wasteland could be saved. Hated himself for trusting Pinstripe.

He should never have come to this city. He would never have met them, the ponies he had spent every day of the last ten years with, the ponies that he loved with all his life, but they’d still all be alive. She’d still be alive.

Tunnel Vision lined up his crosshair. He stopped. Pinstripe was crying. His eyes were wet, red-rimmed. His body shook with tremors. There was something in his hooves—a picture. That first day they had found an old camera. It was as grim and gray a day as any other, but they were all smiling. Pinstripe. Marigold. And himself.

That’s right. He remembered. Even Pinstripe was his friend once. And even Pinstripe had lost something from all that’s happened. He had sold the city. But the city was his too, and maybe he loved it more than anypony else. Pinstripe’s horn glowed brighter as he poured himself one last drink, the only light in the darkness of the city. Tunnel Vision pulled the trigger.

One more name to remember.