Fallout Equestria: New Maneas

“Ugghh…" What are we even looking for again Dusty?” Scarlet Lily groaned as she turned on her flashlight, the thick dust of the underground cave slightly choked her words as they came out.

“Like I said one hundred times before we got here… pre-war rations!”  Dusty Rose yelled out, he had been extremely stressed from the journey south…

“Sorry Lily… I’m just tired is all…” He took a deep breath and continued. “Like I said, we’re looking for some food that was stockpiled during the war.”

The two had navigated the long cave for a good half-hour, and Lily was getting impatient. Their food supply was almost as empty as the Marejave, and their water supply was so dirty it may have well been mud. Regardless, the two pressed on… The citizens of Sunset needed this food badly. Many of the caravans that supplied them food have been wiped out by Fiends, and without a stable supply of food and water… Sunset would dry up like a dead carcass in the blazing sun. This military bunker was Sunset’s last hope.

“There should be some guns and ammo around here too… we’ll have to salvage what we can and bring it back…” Dusty trailed off as he stopped abruptly, and Dusty Rose narrowed his vision in curiosity.

“What is it Dusty…?” Scarlet looked towards whatever had caught Dusty’s attention.

Dusty’s eyes peered into the distance. He could barely make out the glimmer of metal as he waved his flashlight in front of him. He then resumed his movement and investigated the strange shimmer that grew brighter as he came closer towards it. When the two had finally reached the curious glint in the distance, they were shocked to see a massive metal door before them. Dusty blew the thin layer of dust covering the door away, and he examined the markings on the door. It was a familiar cutie-mark, one that had only been heard of in legends when he was a young colt. It was a large sun that was a faint yellowish-orange… he knew this symbol…

“Dusty… what is that mark?” Scarlet inquired in the young and curious voice she always had.

“It’s… This is the mark of Celestia…” Dusty was mystified… He thought Celestia was just a fairy-tale.

“Celestia…? Who’s that?” Scarlet looked closer at the large sun-shaped symbol with a suspicious glare.

“Well… an old legend tells of a time long before my own…” Dusty looked back down at Scarlet. “Before the war… Celestia was an alicorn princess. She ruled over most of Equestria at that time, but when the war broke out she was one of the first to be killed.”

“Really…? An alicorn princess…? That is certainly a legend no doubt. How could one alicorn rule all of Equestria?” Scarlet laughed at the thought.

“Don’t ask me kid… I didn’t write the legend…” Dusty replied.

Dusty looked to his left and spotted the control panel for the door. He walked over to it, and examined it thoroughly. It was a simple mechanism, only having one lever. The panel reminded Dusty of the empty stables he used to scrounge in his younger days.

“Alright… let’s see here…” Dusty pulled the lever with a strong pull from his hoof.

The massive door opened with a deafening screech. The sheer amount of noise made the two cringe in pain, as it echoed across the cave. Sparks flew as the metal slid along the grooves holding it in place, and the door came to a halt as it was carried out of the way by the door mechanism.

“This is a lot more advanced than stable tech…” Dusty added as the door revealed a plethora of pre-war computers and terminals. “Whatever is in here… must be of great importance…”

Scarlet quickly trotted towards the nearest terminal and began digging into the data files, as she levitated her pen and paper out of her knapsack. Intrigued by the data on the terminal, she wrote down information frantically.

“This is incredible… There are files and records here that date back to before the war even started…” Scarlet looked to Dusty with anxiousness exuding from her spirit. “I think this is some kind of… “Data Stable”…”

As Scarlet mindlessly scoured the terminal for info using her notebook Dusty wandered off into a separate corridor blocked off by another metal door. Dusty looked down for a switch, but no such luck.

“Hey… Scar…” Dusty called behind him. “I need yer… science stuff to get through this door…”

“Uggh…” Scarlet said with a disappointed sigh. “Hang on… I get it for you … just a minute.”

Dusty examined the door, and it seemed a lot stronger than a stable door. “Perhaps it was a weapon cache…” Dusty thought to himself. Any kind of tech would defiantly be worth something in trade, granted the folks in Sunset were not arms-dealers. Dusty certainly knew that well.

“Wow… Dusty… there is something defiantly in there…” Scarlet added. “Almost all the power has been routed to that corridor… strange.”

Scarlet Lily galloped to the control panel on the door. She brought out her notebook and flipped through the pages in a hurry, a look of child-like eagerness still pasted on her young face. Dusty always liked that about Scarlet; she always saw adventure in every situation and certainly knew how to find a good trek now and then. She always had a spark in her eye Dusty felt nostalgic about, reminiscing back to a time when he was a young stallion.

The steel door slid a lot smoother than the larger door as it opened, and the noise was a lot more tolerable than the last door. Another chamber was beheld to the pair… it was very alien to their eyes. More advanced circuitry lined the floors and walls leading to the end of the room, and they had to step over many of the large tubes and cables strewn about along the chamber. In the center… was a strange capsule that was a lot larger than the both of them, filled with some sort of dark-blue fluid that clouded the contents of what was inside.

“What in the hell…?” Dusty took of his large cowboy had in astonishment. “What is this thing…?”

“I have no idea… whatever it is must be important.” Scarlet assured Dusty as she searched through the next terminal beside the large capsule… her eyes widened as she found a file popped up on the screen before her.

“What is it darlin?” Dusty inquired as he approached her.

“Sweet Celestia on her throne… this is a stasis pod.” Scarlet’s eyes widened even larger as she dug through the records, she gasped in amazement. “Whoever, or whatever is in there is still intact!”

Scarlet began hacking the device to override the capsule controls. Dusty looked back at her with a worried expression on his face.

“Careful now darlin…” Dusty warned. “We have no idea what could be in there…”

“I don’t think this is dangerous… it actually should have opened a long time ago…” Scarlet looked to Dusty. “This pod should have opened many decades ago… I think the time calibration uplink system was damaged somehow.”

Scarlet began rerouting all the power to the terminal to overload the pod, and if she was right… and she knew she was right. This would disengage the pod’s locking mechanism, and release whatever was inside.

“Why do you think there weren’t any security systems at all down here…?” Scarlet asked Dusty.

“I haven’t a clue darlin…” Dusty replied

“The pony who built this defiantly wanted somepony else to find this…” Scarlet answered as the machines around her sparked and buzzed. “Stand back… that fluid is going to come rushing out once the pod opens…”

The capsule let out a hiss as it popped open, the blue fluid drained from the tank as the true contents fell out of the pod.

“Dear Luna!” Scarlet gasped in awe.

A mass of metal hit the floor like a ton of bricks with a loud “bang”. Scarlet and Dusty reluctantly approached the laying figure on the ground. Whoever it was… it was out cold. Scarlet peeked around to the figure’s head.

“It’s a stallion… a pretty big one too.” Scarlet examined the strange white-skinned stallion; however she was cautious about touching him.

“I’ll say… an alicorn!” Dusty agreed as he curiously observed the stallion. “Say… is his wings and horn made of… metal…?”

“Yes… in fact most of him his metal, except his neck and head…” Scarlet turned him on his back. “I’ve never seen arcane-cybernetics of this complexity before… super-advanced… defiantly pre-war military-grade.”

“Is he… alive…?” Dusty inquired with a serious look.

Scarlet put her hoof on his neck. “Not much of this stallion is organic, but I can just barely make out a heartbeat…”

Scarlet and Dusty’s attention however, had been stolen by another strange aspect of this stallion. A large and glass-like port-hole on the stallion’s chest had emanated a faint blue light. This intrigued Scarlet further, as she got closer to the strange stallion. His long blue mane half-covered the port and Scarlet brushed it aside.

“Now what is-” Scarlet gasped as she was abruptly cut-off.

The large stallion beneath her feet sprung to life in an instant, his large metal wings stretched out to an impressive length as he got to his hooves in a flash. He looked around to see alien surroundings; his eyes frantically scanned the area.

“Cadence…?” The stallion approached Scarlet quickly and menacingly. “Where is she!?”

“Listen fella… just calm down now alrigh-” A large metal spike protruded from the ground and grazed Dusty Rose’s neck.

“I’m not going to ask again. Where is Cadence!?” The white stallion boomed.

“Stop it! Calm down! We don’t know what you’re talking about sir!” Scarlet begged. “Don’t hurt him!”

The large metal spine retracted back into the ground as the stallion looked around in panic, his eyes tirelessly looking for anything familiar. Dusty let his breath go in relief, and approached the stallion again.

“Where… where am I?” The stallion asked, showing a weak desperation in his voice.

“Yer in the Marejave Desert… If that rings any bells…” Dusty answered.

Clearly, Scarlet could see the stallion was more confused than ever from that answer.

“You’ve been asleep… for a long time…” Scarlet informed the dazed stallion. “We woke you up from a stasis pod…”

“Stasis pod…? No… no… no… no! That can’t be right… I died!” The stallion backed up in a panic trying to process what he heard. “How long have I been in that pod…?”

A long and silent pause went on as Scarlet Lily looked at Dusty, then back to the stallion before her.

“I said how long!?” The stallion yelled.

“Hundreds of years…” Scarlet Lily walked towards the large stallion “Captain Shining Armor…correct?”