Fallout Equestria: Honest Lies

Fallout Equestria:Honest Lies

Chapter 2: Hard Knocks

“Beatings. Books. Beatings WITH books…”

He wasn’t kidding.  My training did start that morning, about four hours earlier than I had been used to being awake, looking back I am not sure why I didn’t think training would be hard, or even half as miserable as it actually was.  Being trained for special positions and missions is a double-edged sword.  On one hoof, you get to be more involved and get better experience, on the other hoof, you need to be able to match the part given, and also understand what you are using, and how it affects another.  In most military positions and the like, this includes the weapons and tactics you use on others.

There was a knock on my door and the sun hadn’t even decided to lazily come into any kind of view yet, normally I would’ve ignored it, but after last night I wanted to be sure.  I approached sleepily and was greeted by a sight so lovely I had almost forgotten about our secretary for a moment. Almost.  Standing at my door was a black pegasus, looking sleek as ever, she had a green mane and tail that reminded me of limes, I wanted a taste to make sure, her eyes were a cold purple and bore an alluring look.  “H-hi.” I meekly waved at her unsure of what to think, all she did was flip her mane and bat her eyes at me. “uh. Can i-“ She spoke suddenly as I fumbled with my words “Punch Drunk?” I simply nodded to her, her voice was sultry too, had somepony ordered me a hooker? Do hookers even look THIS good?

She saw right through me though, and in my defense, it was early, and I wasn’t exactly hiding my looks. “My name is Nightshade.”  She leaned down to meet my gaze which had drifted over most of her except for her face.  “Oh uh, sorry…heh.”  She smiled knowingly with a hint of annoyance. “I get that a lot. I will humor you however, with just. One. Kiss.” She stepped forward and punctuated every word she said, I backpedaled a bit in spite of myself, never was anypony I knew that forward.  Much to my chagrin it was a mere peck on the lips.  “I was sent by Lighthooves to start your training, please have a seat.”

My curiosity was piqued, and I would have to have words with Lighthooves about when proper training hours were.  “So uh, when do we start?” I began to take light steps towards my couch when suddenly my blood started to feel cold; I began to sweat a tiny bit, she swished her mane again, “We already have.” She nearly cooed the words out, delighted enough to simply watch me.  Quickly it became nigh impossible to move my hooves to finish those light steps to the couch, every time I so much as twitched it felt as though someone had lit my muscles on fire and put large weights on them, I had been poisoned by something fierce.

I felt myself being dragged along the clouds quietly as I tried to scream from some of the new sensations of pain I was feeling but nothing came out.  This stuff was unpleasant, it also had dried my eyes to the point of blurred vision and strain, but it hurt so much to even try to blink!  Through tremendous effort and a small whimper, I managed to speak. “Wh-what did you…did you do to…m-me?”  She didn’t stop dragging me along but casually replied to me anyway, “Oh I kissed you. Sometimes I wear a rather powerful lipstick.”  I felt like the fetal position would be good about now, but I couldn’t force myself to move my burning muscles to do so. I started to taste the bitter copper of blood. “I…blood…” I could barely speak now, so much fire inside of every inch of me. “Yeah, that happens, most ponies are dead by now.”  I felt mortified at that, somepony came to my home to kill me and I just…opened the door.

I must have passed out from the pain, or maybe I was dead.  It gets hard to tell, but I’m sure wherever we go to when we die did not include my boss’s desk. I groaned and felt tinges of internal burning still, but was no longer crippled, and I was in front of Lighthooves’ desk.  “Oh sir! Thank you for saving me from that-“ I saw her, standing next to his desk smugly, Lighthooves looked up at me from his terminal, “That was the first, and likely easiest part of your training Punch. Nightshade is one of the ponies on the team you now belong to.”  I somberly took this in as I looked at him; he was as cold as ever and did not seem bothered that I had just almost died. He should be! I sure was! But he continued, “From here on in, the training will be much worse, and will help shape you into what we need for these coming assignments, survive them Punch, or we don’t need you.” His words were final and matter of fact as I found myself nodding.

He had chosen to escort me personally to the debriefing room and had a folder with him of my other ‘team members’ but held onto it and sat across from me, I sat and I listened like a good little pony. “The mission we are preparing you for is going to take a lot to handle both physically and mentally, we have to make you ready for that in a fairly short time, so things will be bad.  I trust you to get through them all, and would not be surprised if you hated me for it, but where we are sending you-it won’t be much better.” I grimaced but nodded, only imagining what kind of training I would be subjected to.  He looked up to me from his folders, “Your physical training will be with Collateral Damage and Sitting Duck.” I blinked. “Those are some odd names for Vertibucks sir.” He stayed cold, “They are ponies.” I gulped audibly. He motioned to a door into the training facility and gave me a sad look, “And Punch? I am truly sorry that you have to go through this.” I could for once, tell he meant it, and that scared me more than anything else.

The facility I had been sent into seemed more like a prison than anything else, in the background somewhere I could hear the sound of gunfire, but it wasn’t magical energy discharge. Did we even use standard arms in Black Ops? No, this sounded heavy. Either very large caliber or some kind of explosive round, it was too low and sounded far away in these walls.  I followed the walkway to the only room I could go to, it was labeled ‘Processing’.  When I stepped in, I was met with a very powerful, very muscular pegasus, he had stone hard eyes and a very short orange mane, he had a very stubby tail too, his expression kept me from laughing. His cutie mark was of some kind of explosion as far as I could tell and set nicely against his grey coat.  “Oh, you must be-“ His heavy hoof hit me in the face hard, I think a few teeth were now loose. I shuddered as he walked over to me and stood looking down, a kind of practiced fury in his eyes. “I did not tell you to speak!” he spoke with the subtlety of a drill instructor, which he probably was. “My name is Collateral Damage! You do what I say, when I say, unquestioningly! Is that clear!?” I opened my mouth to say yes, and my vision nearly blacked as he hit me again, this time, I fought back my whimpering and just nodded. “Good!”

He let me know that in here, I had no name, just trainee. I had no voice. He also let me know that he was no longer going to be soft on me, which I did not understand.  He told me that my new room had my schedule on the wall, and food would be given IF I was scheduled for it.  My room was hard to call that, it was metal, and had no bed, just a bucket.  I felt like I was a terrible war criminal or political prisoner of some sort…just what had I done?  I couldn’t sleep, and between the faded burning of that poison from Nightshade, and the pounding pain in my skull from Collateral Damage, I wasn’t sure I would wake up again if I did.  The next morning (morning?i couldn’t tell in here.) they fetched me and brought me into an exercise room, this matched the first part of my schedule.  Collateral was watching me exercise and did not set any number of repetitions, but I didn’t dare stop unless he told me to.

I stopped when I was incapable of doing any more. The only times he spoke to me were to tell me to switch what exercises I was doing, each of those was punctuated by a whistle that hung from his neck. I took note of the fact he hadn’t asked me to do any kind of wing exercises. Hell I could barely breathe, and definitely couldn’t exercise more and he came over to me, I instinctively braced myself, but he did not hit me this time. “Don’ worry, toughness training isn’t for another day or so.” I dreaded whatever that meant. “Right now, its jus’ exercise 2.” Just like it said on my schedule.  I disregarded his speaking warning without thinking “But I can’t even move right now…” to my surprise he didn’t hit me again, why do I feel happy about this!? He just smiled, “Oh you’d be surprised at what you can do when you’re getting’ shot at.” I paled as he left the room and a handful of little sprite bots floated into the room, weapons primed. I heard his voice over some PA system, “Oh, they won’t kill you most likely; sometimes one of their shots will –rarely- turn a pony into dust. Best to run still though…”

Footnote: level up: Hoof-Forced Fitness: Through grueling forced training regimens, you gain +1 CON, but also -1 AGI.