Fallout: Equestria - Last Legacy

Introduction

When I was little, my mother used to talk me to sleep.

Personally, I consider it a part of how I was raised – hearing about her daily activities, the highlights of her week, the endeavors she'd sought out in earlier years.  Sometimes it seemed like she could go on forever.  Topics ranged from purses she’d spotted to elderly patients at the clinic.  But every once in a while, she would tell me a story.

These were the moments I looked forward to the most when I would crawl into bed as a filly.  As she laid me down she used to say, "Now love, tonight I'm going to tell you a special story...”  She would sit on the side of my bed, smiling, and tuck me in.  While she situated herself, I would lay still with my hooves crossed, a sort of adrenaline boost kicking in from the excitement as I eagerly awaited another chapter in a chronicle of the past.  She told wild tales of ponies going on adventures and prophecies coming true.  And at the end of each night, she would conclude with an annoyingly predictable cliffhanger.  However, I still begged her for more, to which she replied each time, "Forbearance, young one.  It's a virtue."   (Of course, I never understood the word until I was older.)

Now, despite the valuable lessons that I (and many other ponies) learned through age, the stories my mother told were the ones that shaped my ideologies the most.  They were the ones that gave me hope.  And it was this same hope that would carry me on into the final moments before I slept.  The world seemed like such a magical place after she would leave me to my imaginings.

Sometimes though, rather than dozing off, I would think to myself, ‘Are they real?’ The stories seemed like old myths, meant to do nothing more than what my mother was doing: putting a foal to sleep.  But did the ponies in the stories really do all that she'd said they'd done?  The Wasteland was a better place now.  Ponies didn't still have to run about, rescuing captives and saving the world… or, at least not to my knowledge they didn't.  Slavery had rules, had regulations, had principles.  In fact, for a while, they started to just call it "Equestria" again.  Ponies could go out to picnics in the middle of the day and didn't have to worry about fighting for their lives, and if they did, at least it wasn't against others of our own kind.  The roads weren't crawling with Raiders, and scavenging was really only a popular hobby.  So, the ponies in the stories must have done something.  But granted, no matter what anypony called it, it was still a wasteland.  There were still horrors out there that no one should ever have to see.  The secrets were just better guarded back then.

It was for this reason that, in my youthful ignorance, I was unable to answer my questions about the stories my mother told.  And yet still I wondered.  Still, I stayed up half the night trying to imagine a place where every day was a struggle for life and death.  The idea of it fascinated me, and in a sick, twisted, and naively innocent way, I wished I could have lived in that world.  There's a cliché saying about caution in wishes that I really wish I'd heard sooner.

The ponies my mother spoke about in the stories, you've probably heard of.  Hardly anyone grew up not knowing about them, after all of the change they'd brought to the world.  Ponies like the virtuous LittlePip, the infamous Blackjack, or maybe even a few others who had followed in their image back when Equestria needed the horsepower.  You do know the ones.  The ponies who'd led our little Wasteland to its golden age.

Their names are in history books...

It doesn’t matter anymore though.  The changes they’d brought, the sacrifices they’d all made… it was all in vain.

Because things changed… and not for the better.  And soon enough, we were back to where we'd all started... a hellhole, where Raiders ran free and justice was nowhere to be found.  Where were our heroes then?  Where were the ponies that helped shaped this world into a better place when the Collapse tore us all apart?  Where was anypony who could pick up the pieces again?

I'm sure I'll get to explain what happened later.  After all, the details are trivial, and as always, purely our own.  But for now, it's my turn for the spotlight.  Because this is my story, my fight for survival in a world that should have killed me, my light in the darkness.

My name is Everdawn Sunrise, or just “Sunny”.

I am a survivor of the Equestrian Wasteland.

And this is my legacy.

Fallout Equestria: Last Legacy