Chaos Rules in the Wasteland

Twilight Sparkle bolted upright out of her bed. She was certain that she had heard somepony whisper her name.

"Twilight."

She heard it again. It was coming from somewhere in her own room!

"Spike," she asked uncertainly. "Is that you?"

"Twilight."

She cast a light spell and gasped as the room lit up. Directly in the center of the room, in front of her bed, was black cloud. All throughout it, there were swirls of red whirling around inside it. Occasionally there seemed to be a miniature lightning strike inside the cloud in these areas.

"Who are you?" cried Twilight quietly, backing away from the cloud.

"Twilight."

Twilight cringed at the voice, which was definitely originating from the cloud.

"What do you want from me?"

There was only a short moment of silence.

"Twilight."

Twilight cast a spell of revealing that would alert her to any living thing in the room.

Her mind recoiled as the cloud registered an unbelievably huge vitality. After she recovered, she thought to herself, There is something dreadfully wrong.

In the moment that she sensed the energy of the cloud, she felt an overwhelming sensation of despair and desperation.

She did something that, when she thought of it again in a few minutes, was incredibly dumb: she touched her hoof to the cloud, as though trying to comfort it.

"WHOA!" she screamed as she rapidly shrunk and was pulled inside. The cloud dissipated, leaving nothing behind.

A moment later Discord flashed into her room. "Twilight! Twilight!" he shouted to the empty room in a rare show of genuine concern. "Oh, no no no no no, please, please tell me you're still here! You- you didn't..."

Twilight suddenly felt very hot. She knew it must be the sun on her coat, and it was apparently quite a hot day. She opened her eyes and gasped.

Twilight was frantically trying to comprehend what she was seeing. She had just woken up, and it appeared that she was immediately in much danger. There were four enormous scorpions running past her toward a bipedal creature a short distance , which was standing it's ground and holding an object of unknown purpose. She scrambled to her feet.

"Damn it!" screamed the biped in a masculine voice, who was now inspecting the object that he was holding desperately.

Twilight flinched. She had only heard anypony use that world once, and that pony had just lost someone very dear to him. She quickly reasoned that it was because the creature's life was in danger. She froze as she then considered what the scorpions must be capable of. "This is not at all what I was expecting today!" she whispered to herself in a high pitched and panicked voice. "How am I supposed to further my understanding of friendship like this?"

The biped threw the object to the ground in a fit and actually ran at the scorpions, fast, unbelievably fast. Twilight gaped in astonishment as the creature jumped onto the nearest scorpion, grinding it into the ground, and rolled off of it while grabbing it's tail. When he had regained its footing, he spun the scorpion around his head and smashed it down into the ground on top of another scorpion. The impact ripped the tail off, and the scorpion that was on the receiving end of the blow was phased enough for the biped to kick it away. The other two scorpions had used this time to "surround" him on one side, and he took off running in the opposite direction; in Twilight's direction.

She actually felt him run past, but he didn't seem pay her any attention at all. She turned back to the scorpions. She immediately noticed that all three were now heading not for the other creature, but toward her. And she knew she couldn't outrun them.

She tried picking them up off the ground with her magic, but to her horror, this task proved to be extremely strenuous for some reason. She screamed. Desperately, she tried picking up just one at a time, and to her immense relief, this was something that she could manage. She threw the scorpion to the side as hard as she could and wasted no time in doing the same to the second one.

Immense stabbing pain hit her side. She screamed again, this time in pain, and jerked away from the last scorpion. As she was preparing to throw it aside too, the biped was suddenly upon it before she knew what happened, his fist clenching a knife that was buried into the scorpion's back, piercing its armor.

Twilight felt herself start to collapse against her will. What's going on? she thought in panic. She shouldn't be in the least bit tired. She felt woozy, and her head was cloudy, and she was definitely aware of it.

"What the hell..." she heard the creature say.

She used a significant portion of her strength to look up at the creature who had destroyed her assailant. "Help..." she gasped out.

He slowly raised an eyebrow at her. "What... did you say?"

Twilight didn't have the strength to speak again. Already she felt herself falling unconscious. Just 60 seconds ago I was safe in my home, and now I'm going to die! She didn't have the time to think of anything else.

She awoke to discover that it was dark. More importantly, she felt like herself again.

When she tried to move, she painfully discovered that this was not the case after all. Moving caused her to feel that her insides were aching all over, and the scorpion sting pained her terribly. She groaned and stopped trying to move. Instead, she channeled her magic to provide a little light to her surroundings, a feat that took all her concentration.

"Ough!" Moaned a voice. Twilight saw the biped was for some reason still in her presence, and was lying in the dirt, much like herself. It flew awake in seconds.

"Hey!" It said in a loud whisper as he bolted upright and turned to her. "Cut it out!"

Twilight immediately cut the spell off and fearfully whispered back "Sorry!"

There was a moment of silence. "Did you actually...?" said the male strenuously.

"I'm sorry about the light!" replied Twilight. "Are we still in danger?"

The creature stopped to consider. "If anything was going to hurt us, it would have by now." Twilight let out a sigh.

"Sorry," he continued, digging into a bag next to him that Twilight had not noticed before. "I've never been outside of my vault before yesterday. I always thought that only humans could talk."

Now that Twilight felt reasonably safe, her inquisitive nature kicked in. She noticed that the "human" was in fact clothed in a blue suit, which had the number thirteen on the back in bright yellow. "Is that what your species is called? Human?"

"Are there not other people out here in the wasteland?" he asked, confused. "I was told there would be."

"People?"

"It's just another word for humans."

"Oh. I don't know, I have never been here before."

The man stared at her incredulously. "You're kidding. Where is your vault?"

"What?" asked Twilight, thoroughly confused. "You want to know where my valued possessions are?"

"What? No! Where do you live?"

Twilight failed to see how this was related to the original question, but she answered, "I'm from Equestria. You've probably never heard of it." She groaned in pain.

"Never. Where is it?"

Twilight looked down. "I don't know. That's the problem, I think it's a rather long way from here, and I'm stranded here, and I REALLY don't like it here."

"Tell me about it. You got stung, right?"

"Umm, yes..."

"Here, hold still." he said as he pulled out a syringe filled with red liquid.

Twilight's eyes widened, but, guessing that it this would relieve her pain, she made no attempt to stop him. Instead she tried alleviating her worry with more talk.

"I suppose they have a kind of poison that, fortunately, exits our bodies after a while." Twilight came to a realization. "You SAVED my life!" she said slowly.

"What?" asked the man, who had apparently already used the syringe without Twilight feeling any additional pain. "I suppose I did. I was actually just saving myself though, I thought you were just another mutated creature."

"Pardon me?"

"Whoa, look, I don't know what's a monster and what isn't. Look at those things!" He kicked one of the dried corpses of the scorpions around them. "Never seen anything like them in my life!"

Twilight hesitated, then began to speak slowly. "I would think you were insulting me. But, I suppose," she continued more matter of factually and looking down, "that as it is, I can understand completely."

"Good, good. How are you feeling?"

Twilight hesitated, then got to her hooves.

"Whoa, that is some medicine you've got there! Did you numb the pain?"

"As a matter of fact, you should be in more or less fine shape. I don't have very many of them though. Do you have a name?"

"My name is Twilight Sparkle. Pleased to meet you! Although I wish the circumstances were more pleasant."

"John Griffin."

"What? You're no griffin! A griffin has wings!"

There was a pause. "My last name is Griffin." He gave her a look that she identified as one questioning her sanity. "I certainly don't have wings."

"Oh." said Twilight more quietly, embarrassed.

"Hey, I don't suppose-" John started. "Aw, forget it. You wouldn't possibly know."

"I know a lot more than you might think, ask and you might be surprised."

"I don't suppose you know where I can get a water chip?" he asked, crossing his arms.

"Oh. I don't have any idea what that is."

"I thought so." he said, uncrossing his arms as he sighed. "Apparently it provides us with our fresh water, and It is my job to find a new one. The old one at my vault stopped working a few days ago, and if I can't find a new one, everyone in the vault will die."

"That's- that's terrible!" said Twilight. After a moment she added, "Are you are their only hope?"

"Well you see, we don't let many people outside. They would all die out here," he elaborated, suddenly depressed. "But anyway, The overseer decided that the best solution was to find the one person in the vault most likely to survive outside to be allowed to leave the vault to hunt down a new water chip, at any costs."

"And the overseer chose you."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Ha!" exclaimed the man. "It's pretty dumb actually. Stupid, stupid Carlos thought he could steal my water ration."

John didn't continue, and Twilight raised her eyebrow at him.

"Well, to be honest, when I caught him, I hit him in the face. He was furious. Tried chasing me down the halls. He, least of all, had not a chance in hell of catching John Griffin! I'm the fastest man in the whole vault!"

Wow, he loves to boast, Twilight thought to herself, but then she remembered his performance during the scorpion attack. She decided conclusively that he had every right to boast as much as he pleased.

"I saw what you had to do to those scorpions, and it was indeed very brave. But explain how this connects to the 'overseer'."

"Carlos tried ratting me out to the overseer." Twilight tilted her head, which John noticed. "Tried to make it sound like I hit him for no reason."

"Ah," said Twilight.

"And the overseer actually believed him too! Said that I ought to be disciplined. But then, he said that, luckily for me, he needed 'someone who could get away with things like this' for a special job. I could barely believe it, but you better believe that I said yes. Next thing I knew, I was whisked away to the entrance of the vault. I guess I didn't know what I was getting into," he finished less enthusiastically.

Suddenly, he burst out with "And the bastard gave me that damn defective pistol!"

Twilight was uneasy about the man's profane speech, but she ignored it. "I take it that that thing over there is the pistol?" She pointed with a hoof toward the object that he had thrown to the ground during the fight.

"Don't you know what a gun is? Hell, don't you have ANYTHING to defend yourself with?"

"Is a pistol the same thing as a gun?"

"Well, a pistol is a kind of gun, but not all guns are pistols."

"Oh, that makes sense," said Twilight. "But to answer your question, I have nothing but my magic. I didn't know that this would be so dangerous."

"What, magic?" said John. "I've never heard of a weapon like that, your turn to explain to me."

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "This," she said as her horn lit up and picked a small rock off the ground.

John gaped. "That's not possible!"

"Maybe not for you, but for an alicorn such as myself, it is second nature. But I seem to be having some trouble using it right now." Her last sentence was mostly in a worried tone to herself.

"I thought I might find some crazy people out here," said John in awe. "But I was absolutely not prepared for this!" he finished, unknowingly echoing Twilights own thoughts.

"John, can you let me see that 'pistol'?"

"Can you figure out what is wrong with it? Cause that would be incredible if you do."

"Probably?" answered Twilight, unsure.

John got to his feet and retrieved the pistol from the dirt, then handed it to Twilight, who gripped it with her magic. John sat down and watched her in amazement.

Twilight gave the pistol a thorough inspection. "What does it actually do?"

"Nuthin, stupid piece of crap," answered the man. Twilight glanced at him. "It's supposed to shoot out bullets from the hole in the front when you pull on that trigger though," he said, indicating the appropriate spots.

Twilight fiddled with the pistol some more. Suddenly the cylinder that was embedded in the middle swung out, but still attached to the gun. Twilight extracted a piece of metal from one of the holes in it.

"Is this what it shoots?" she asked.

"Hang on..." said John in a confused voice, taking it from Twilight. He dug into his backpack and produced another bullet with a similar appearance, but there was one major difference.

"Why does that one have a red tip on it?" asked Twilight.

"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking..."

"Do you have more?"

"Yeah," said John again, digging into the bag. "Here's the whole box."

Twilight dumped all of the old bullets onto the ground from the pistol, then withdrew 11 more of the new bullets from the box. She slipped the new ones into place and then closed the cylinder.

BANG

"Damn!" shouted John. Twilight had jerked away from the gun in shock, dropping it. Luckily she had shot into the ground.

"You could have warned me about that!" she screamed at John.

John ignored her and instead said, "So that's what those were for."

"How fast do those bullets come out?"

"I don't know? Fast as hell."

"That doesn't make sense," Twilight said to John critically.

Twilight took aim at a boulder a short distance away.

BANG

There was a cracking noise from the bullet hitting the rock in the same instant she had pulled the trigger. She stared at the rock with her jaw hanging open.

"Hey, no more shooting, I need as many of those bullets as I can get." John stopped and put a hand to his chin. "Actually..."

Twilight looked at him expectantly.

"If you come with me, I'll let you have that thing."

"WHAT? But I am not a pony of- violence! I could never bring myself to- to use anything like this against a living thing! I-"

"HEY!" shouted John. Twilight stopped speaking, but she crouched down in fear. "Look," he continued in his most serious tone. "You're stuck out here whether you like it or not, same as me. Things are going to try to kill you. If you don't kill them back, you will die."

He gave her a moment to let that sink in, and her face only turned to terror.

He decided to take a different approach. "I think we can improve our chances of staying alive out here if we stick together. I need a friend."

Something about the way that John had said "friend" caused Twilight to regain some composure. She knew deep down that he was right, and if he was offering to be her friend through this, then it would be downright foolish to refuse, considering how he saved her life.

"But what about you?" she asked John, her voice still quivering. "If I have your pistol, that leaves you with just a... knife."

"Clearly I can't be trusted with a gun," he said, annoyed, though not with Twilight. "I actually ran out of bullets when I was shooting the rats that live in the cave that leads to the vault."

"You were shooting rats?! exclaimed Twilight.

"They were huge and trying to kill me, just like those scorpions!" defended John. "They can bite hard, although I don't think it's life threatening." Twilight looked him in the eye, then nodded.

"Anyway, you ever seen anyone kill a dozen rats with a knife? I've only seen one, and that's me!"

"Ok, fair..." said Twilight, trying to shove the image out of her head. "But if this wasteland is as dangerous as it seems to be, we're not going to be seeing many small... rats..." She finished with a strained voice.

"Well, yeah I suppose you've got a point there. But you saw what I did to those scorpions! Am I amazing or what? Even if one of them did nail me."

"Wow," thought Twilight. "I just realized that he kind of reminds me of Rainbow Dash."

Twilight eventually came to a decision. "I suppose if you won't be using the pistol, it's better than nothing. And if we are going to travel together," she said as she got to her hooves, "and if you're on a mission to save your friends, then I am absolutely ready to do whatever it takes to help you. Where are we going to go first? In the morning, of course."

John was taken aback. "What? Oh, well, the only place I know that might have a spare water chip is Vault 15, east of here. The Overseer said that I should start looking there, but he couldn't give me much more advice."

"Which vault is your home?"

"Vault 13. It's just a day west of here. I'll show you."

He pulled out a thin tablet that had buttons all over it. It had the worlds 'Pip-boy 2000' written on a corner. Twilight watched curiously as John pushed a button that caused a lit map of the area to appear on the tablet.

"What a remarkable machine!" said Twilight. I have dabbled in engineering slightly myself, but something like this is out of my league."

John looked at her with doubt in his face.

"I only ever invented a machine that would show me how one of my friends perceived things around her."

"Oh really?" said John in an amused tone. "Perception huh? Check this out."

He pushed a button on the pip-boy and the screen changed to show a lot of information. The first thing that stood out to Twilight when John gave her a good look at the screen was the following:

Strength:7

Perception:5

Endurance:7

Charisma:4

Intelligence:5

Agility:9

Luck:3

"This is an assessment of your natural physical and mental abilities and traits!" Shouted Twilight excitedly. "Even something so difficult to measure as how lucky you are!"

"Something like that," said John. "But lists 'traits' somewhere else. He indicated another section of the screen. There was a list of things in the 'traits' section, but only one was lit up, and that was "fast shot".

"What does that mean?" asked Twilight.

"It means I don't screw around!" said John smugly. "I don't bother to aim for the head, it takes far less effort to just try to hit stuff anywhere in general. It improves my reaction time."

Twilight was already sickening herself with the thought of what she was about to say. "I think, you will be far more likely to... stop... something quicker... if you aim for its... head... if you can actually... hit it..."

"Precisely my point!" said John. Don't worry, in a prolonged fight, I can keep out of harm's way. Most of the time."

"So..." said Twilight in a suddenly thoughtful tone. "Will that thing work on me?"

"You mean can it tell us about your skills? I don't see why not, and I'm curious about that too actually. Want to try?"

"Yes, please do!" said Twilight, slightly excited.

"Ok, but I think you have to be touching it."

"I can do that."

Twilight carefully took the tablet in her mouth, then used her magic to push the appropriate button. Seeing the numbers change, she dropped the pip-boy back into John's hands. He held it out to her so she could see.

Strength:4

Perception:9

Endurance:4

Charisma:8

Intelligence:10

Agility:6

Luck:6

"Hey, John," Twilight began, "Do these numbers range from one to ten?"

"Yeah, that's right."

Twilight didn't bother asking whether ten meant high or low. She smiled to herself. The intelligence score definitely answered that question for her.

"Does anypony ever get tens in all of the categories?" Twilight asked.

John gave her a look at "anypony", but he ignored it. "No," he said as he moved the pip-boy to where he could see it. "Everybody is supposed to get 40 points- Holy hell, these are some high numbers! On three of them! Not the physical ones of course."

"Well-" started Twilight, offended, but then thought her next words through. "I guess you shouldn't expect much" she finished flatly.

John did some math in his head. After a moment he said to himself, "Yeah, that's 47 alright, what gives?"

Twilight couldn't help but smirk, but she didn't say anything.

John suddenly said, "Whoa, I didn't remember this one. Nobody I know has ever gotten this."

He showed Twilight the screen and indicated the traits box. Two were highlighted, gifted and good natured.

"You've never seen anypony gifted? Or good natured?" Twilight asked with a frown.

"Gifted. The description says that you get an extra point in everything."

"Oh." Twilight suddenly felt uncomfortable. She had been called "gifted" on several occasions before, but to have the term broken down into numbers like this didn't seem right.

"So what do these other things mean?"

Twilight continued to ask questions about the pip-boy for another half hour, but she soon discovered that, despite having "slept" for a time after being poisoned, she was growing tired. Upon stating that this was the case, John agreed that they had better get some rest.

"I guess there are no beds out here, huh?" asked Twilight gloomily.

"Just the ground." answered John in equal tone. I tried using a boulder as a pillow last night," he said, lying down flat on the ground. "That was my first night out here. It wasn't a good idea though, I'm just going to lie flat from now on."

"Well..." Twilight said nothing for about ten seconds. "Good night then. And thank you, so very much."

"I told you, you shouldn't be thanking me that. I was just trying to defend myself. I was just glad you weren't trying to kill me too." He smiled at her.

"Well, you were the one nice enough to give me a chance," said Twilight. John didn't say anything, but rolled onto his back and looked into the sky after a moment.

She lay down. At least the ground here is too dry to get into my coat, thought Twilight humorlessly before dozing off.

"Discord," said Celestia a very pressing voice, "Would you mind explaining exactly how the Princess of Friendship fell into a chaos wormhole?"

"It wasn't my fault!" said Discord defensively. He sighed as a sofa appeared below him and he stretched out on it. "I was once of the belief that all worlds are, eventually, destined to fall into complete chaos." Celestia gave him a hard look. "I no longer hold that belief," continued Discord. "While it is true that most worlds end up that way eventually, chaos can be replaced by balance. Something which even you have yet to perfect." he added.

Celestia ignored his words. "Make haste, Discord. Twilight Sparkle is no longer in Equestria and is with little doubt in much peril."

"Indeed. I'll get right to the point then; opinions on the matter are irrelevant. Where as balance loves to spread out in an orderly fashion, chaos has a tendency of gravitating everything around it before exploding out, and spreading more chaos. If it grows very strong indeed, it tends to impose upon other worlds. However, our little world, being in relative balance, has countered the breach with something, or shall I say somepony, who can fill in the gap, negating hole."

Celestia approached her bedroom window and looked outside. "Twilight," stated Celestia grimly.

"I know, I'm the one who told you," asked Discord, annoyed.

Celestia turned around and looked intently upon Discord, who waited for the inevitable instructions.

"Get her back, Discord. Let nothing distract you from this task, and let your every day be focused on getting her home. You owe her far more than even this."