Fallout: Equestria - Lost Souls

When Milky finally woke the next morning she let an exaggerated yawn escape her muzzle as she stretched the best she could on the bus seat. Curious as to whether or not Sane had woken she looked at him, then recoiled a bit at the sight that greeted her.

Sane was sitting upright in his seat with the blanket pulled over his shoulders and his chin tucked inside. She could not tell whether he was awake or not as his eyes were all but closed and he was shakin a bit. “Sane... A-are you alright?” Concern lay thick on her words.

Sane's eyes opened slightly as he turned his head to face her. “I'm fine, I just didn't sleep very well.” He replied. “I saw something last night that made it difficult for me to rest.”

“What did you see?” Milky got up from her seat and moved closer to Sane.

“Just... Get your gear on and I'll show you. It'll be much easier than trying to explain it here.”

Milky let her gaze rest on Sane a bit longer before nodding her head in approval.

Not long after Milky was following Sane off of the road and into the dessert which struck her as odd. She did not have to wait very long as to why. She saw a thick trail of blood leading from her right that fed into a much bigger pool of blood that broke off in another trail farther into the Dessert.

“I saw somepony last night running, running from something, I don't know what, at least three times their size. Whoever they were, they were not fast enough. It caught them, I believer you can guess where. After the creature killed the pony it carried them off into the dessert.” Sane recalled from his fresh memories of the incident

“T-thats a lot of blood Sane... That did not come from just one pony.”

“I don't think it is all the pony's.” Sane replied, locating the hilt of a half buried dagger in the sand, a few hooves away and recovering it. Sure enough the blade was covered in blood. “The pony struggled for a moment and I thought I saw the pony lash out at the beast. It gave a horrible screech when they did. I think he or she may have stabbed it.” Sane explained.

“Why didn't you wake me Sane?” Milky inquired with a bit more concern.

“I didn't want you to lose sleep over this to. I watched this thing disappear into the night before I even attempted to sleep.” Sane replied.

Milky felt bad for him but at the same time she knew it was not her own fault. Though she couldn't help but admire that Sane had put her before his own comfort. However the idea that somepony had died not so far away while she slept put a damper on her resolve. “T-thank you.” Milky dropped the blade down at her hooves. “Lets get going. Don't worry, we should be coming up on the next town before evening if we travel without interference. Then you can try and catch up on the sleep you missed last night.” Milky cooed.

Sane simply nodded in acceptance and dragged his hooves behind Milky as they made their way back and up the road.

Despite not having slept he was able to keep pace with her. Losing one nights sleep wasn't going to slow him down. “Whats the name of the next town we are headed to anyway?” Sane could have checked his PD map but as per the norm, he preferred to talk.

“I think it is called Hayton.” Milky replied. “If I remember correctly it is a bit bigger than SaddleSpur. A little nicer to. If we are lucky we may run into an ELM unit while we are there. Some of the Enclave's reports I went through stated that they traveled through the town a lot.”

“What are we going to tell them if we do find them?” Sane inquired.

“The truth. We know that the Enclave have what is potentially a dooms day weapon.”

“I'm a little concerned though, how are we going to tell them we know all this? They might turn on you when they find out you aided them.” Sane replied.

“We're not going to tell them that, I'm just going to play along with your story. We'll tell them we both survived the attack. It's believable when we're both wearing Stable 42 gear.” Milky explained.

Sane's tail twitched with annoyance at his own ignorance once again. “I'm sorry, that's  pretty obvious.” He sighed.

“Don't worry about it Sane. Your tired is all.”

Sane was glad to have somepony so patient and understanding to travel with him. For the life of it all however her could not figure out why he was making so many dumb mistakes. Maybe it's subconscious trauma from all that has happened While seeing all of this was not a pleasant experience and bothered him a bit it wasn't so terrible as to damage any critical thinking... Not consciously anyway.

For a while they traveled the road in peace, most of their conversation revolved around pointless trivia to keep them busy. Such as why the sky is blue. After walking a few more miles they stopped to eat just as the sun hit its peak in the sky. Processed food designed to last decades wasn't exactly the best food but it did the job.

With the sun high in the sky the temperature became bearably warm, much to Sane's relief. One of the thoughts that popped in his head was the dreadful possibility of rain during the night. Precipitation at that temperature would surely mean snow. Snow would do nothing but slow them down  and make it even more dangerous to travel.

Sane heard something that snapped him out of his thoughts a moment later. A subtle whirring sound mixed with other unrecognizable sounds. Milky must have heard it to as she pulled her pistol halfway from it's holster. The source of the sound soon presented itself. From their left there hovered a small spherical robot with multiple antennas all around it and a speaker on the front. Mounted below it was a small laser gun.

Sane was just about to shoot it when Milky stopped him by sticking a forhoof in front of him. “It's not a threat.” Milky told him. The small robot flew closer to them, whirring and bobbing up and down in the air. However instead of any audible dialogue the robot was emitting a series of static and beeping noises.

“What is it then?” Sane asked.

“It's an eye bot. I forget the name of the pony who manufactured these things but they made a fortune selling them to different factions for multi purpose use. I think it's broken though, so there is no way to tell who it belongs to.”

“What if it shoots us?”

“It shouldn't even attempt it. They were built to be docile and only engage in a firefight for self preservation. If they shot at everypony and everything it saw then they would all be destroyed. They're not the toughest little things.” Milky explained.

“So... just ignore it then?”

“No, we're going to destroy it. I don't know whos it is and I know the Enclave commissioned a few of these from their manufacturer. While it won't attack you on the spot it has the ability to feed data back to it's owners.” Milky picked a large rock from the ground and waited for the bot to pass by them before smashing it over the top of the bot with as much force as she could.

The blow had broken two of the bot's antennas and sent it to the ground. For a moment it tried to recover, hovering a foot off the ground before crashing back down in a plume of smoke. Just for good measure Milky slammed the rock down on it to make sure it was no longer any kind of operational “We do need to get out of here though. If that was an Enclave eye bot and they got it's feed they will know where we are at. We're headed the opposite direction of their base so we should have more than enough time to get lost.”

“Sounds good.” The last thing either of them wanted was an Enclave search party after their heads. Sane was almost positive that the next time the Enclave tracked them down there would be more than one.

Immediately they resumed their travel. After an hour Milky checked her PD. “This isn't going to take as long as I thought.”

“Good.” Sane replied. “I've found I do not like to be in the open so long.” Half collapsed buildings and the occasional ruined vehicle made Sane nervous. He had gotten it in his head that any pony could be hiding in a junk car or a ruined building, just waiting for them to pass by. He shook his head to clear the thoughts. While it was good to remain suspicious, paranoia, would do more harm than good.