Fallout Equestria: Ain't It Fun

Chapter Two: Beginner’s Luck
“Clench your butt this isn’t gonna be good!”

Although my friend’s sociopathic tendencies should’ve worried me, I was carefree and didn’t really bother to think this through. Questions such as: “How do we get out?”, “How do we get them to let us out?”, “How much do we pack?” and of course my personal favorite, “How can we be sure that shit doesn’t slam into the fan the second we step out of this building, this building which has kept us safe for an estimated six to seven years?”. And of course, every last one of those questions, and more, were left unanswered.

“So, what’s the plan?” I asked Belette whilst swinging my hind legs.

“We walk out the door. Or jump out the window. Whichever seems easier.” The purple unicorn replied while she rummaged underneath the workbench I was sitting on.

“What if they try and stop us?”

“The guards are lazy little shits. Pretty sure they’ll be happy that they have two mares worth of free space once we leave.”

“Where do we go?”

Belette stopped scavenging through the bottom of the workbench and looked up at me.

“You don’t have any idea where we should be going?”

“Nuh uh.” I said while shaking my head.

She inhaled a breath of air before letting out a sigh of frustration.

“That’s fine. That’s great. We’ll just bring a map and go from there.” She continued before poking her head down below again.

******

The escape from our little haven was… it was something.

It pretty much consisted of Belette walking past the little barrier of furniture that the watchponies usually camped out at, one of the guard ponies asking her to stop, Belette saying “no” before unlocking the door, asking me to follow and then barging out. I’m not sure what I expected, but I guess that was okay.

And after that flop of an exit, I caught up to my companion and was promptly blinded by the light as I stepped outside. After my eyeballs adjusted to the sudden change of light, we both feasted our eyes on the Wasteland in all it’s glory. A ruined street deprived of any signs of life, save for a couple of ruined buildings here and there. It might as well have been a flat desert. However, my excitement never wavered as I took my first steps outside of the home I was abandoning.

"So, where we headed?" I asked Belette.

I watched as Belette turned around and rummaged through her saddlebag. After a few minutes, she pulled out a yellow piece of paper, which I assumed was our map. Almost a quarter of it was gone, the black edges suggesting that it was burned off. She turned it around before pointing slightly to the left.

"Where'd you get the map?" I asked.

"We're holed up in a school. It's not that hard to rip a page out of a textbook. This one, the traders used. They drew on it, marked a couple of things and whatnot." Belette said as she rolled up our map and stuffed it back into her saddlebag.

"How'd you get them to give it up?"

"I never said anything about them "giving it up"."

"Don't they need that?"

Belette stopped and pondered for a while, staring off into the distance while I simply watched her.

"Naaaaaaah." She replied.

"What's waiting for us over there?" I asked her as I waved my hoof in the direction that she had previously pointed to.

"A little town. It's a long ways away from here, but if this map is correct, and the megaspells weren't as powerful as I thought, there should be a couple of buildings in between that should be vacant. And that's assuming North is where I think North is."

"So, we walk and pray that we're heading in the right direction?"

"You got a better idea?"

"We could-

"Of course you don't. Now come on, we're burning daylight." Belette said as she dragged me along with her magic.

******

I thought the wasteland was going to be exciting. I thought I was prepared for just about everything that was waiting for me outside, I thought I had everything packed and ready.

I thought wrong.

We had been walking for quite some time now, never once stopping besides that one time my saddlebag fell off. The scenery remained pretty much the same save for the absence of our old home and the other old run down buildings. But besides that, it was practically the same. Dirt here, dirt there. Oh hey, what's over there? More dirt!

Aside from that, only what we heard changed as we continued. We would randomly hear sounds of the sand and dirt shifting, being tossed up occasionally. However neither of us could figure out what was causing it, so we decided to just continue walking and ignore it. The once distant sound would grow louder with every time it sounded, putting me on edge.

"How long have we been walking?" I groaned.

"About an hour or so." Belette replied, not even slowing down as she did so.

"Felt longer..."

"Better get used to it. Unless you can magically grow wings, we're gonna be walking. A lot."

"Carry me?"

"Fuck no."

As we continued walking, I couldn't help but wonder about what awaited us at the supposed 'little town' that Belette had previously mentioned. That is, if her estimations were correct and she wasn't leading us to a raiders nest. But, I trusted that Belette wasn't nearly dumb enough to do that. I mean, you see the buildings with the dead bodies and you get out of dodge, simple as that.

While I was of course worried about us possibly walking into a minefield and blowing up into little unidentifiable pieces, I was also worried that because we didn’t have a reliable way of telling where an enemy would be coming from, save for our eyes and ears, being blindsided was a possibility. And just then, the universe, in all it's graciousness, decided to show me that I haven't been worrying for nothing.

I stopped daydreaming to listen to the weird sound again, only to realize it wasn’t there anymore. I looked around at our surroundings, trying to look for anything out of place. Only to find the vast wasteland undisturbed. As I continued searching for the source of the now absent noise, Belette had only just realized that I had come to a stop.

“Whatcha waiting for?” She yelled.

“The sound. It’s gone.” I replied.

“What sound?”

“The sandy-tossy-shifty-”

Just as I was about to continue to attempt describing the noise I’d been hearing for the past hour or so, I was cut off mid sentence as I felt a wave of dirt accompanied by a dust cloud fly up and rain on me, I instinctively shut my eyes and lowered my ears as to not let dirt fall in them.

Before I could reopen my eyes, I felt something solid and slightly hairy smash into my right side, sending me flying through the air, before crashing into the side of a mountain of dirt and promptly rolling down said mountain of dirt. At the moment I couldn't have cared less about how many ribs I’d broken, the sheer fact that something had snuck up on me and forcibly made me reenact Luna’s banishment to the moon had set my mind into panic mode, the adrenaline drowned out the pain that might’ve come with the impact of whatever in Discord’s name hit me and the crash that followed.

As soon as I came to a halt, and the dust had settled, I looked up and saw Belette, standing her ground, glaring at her foe, Mirage was encased in her purple aura and being levitated over her head, aimed at the creature that had assaulted me.

The creature, was none other than a giant radscorpion.

Well, fuck you too universe.

The monstrosity was about as long as two fully grown stallions, each of its legs almost as thick as a pony foreleg, its stinger was easily larger than any pony’s head, and its black exoskeleton reflected the sunlight that shone down on it and practically any other part of the wasteland.

At first, I was confused as to why it was here in the first place. Caneighda didn’t see many scorpions, especially not in Tortrotto, although the idea of such a large predator making its way up North was not completely absurd. Then after the confusion, the panic kicked in again. I froze in fear as I watched Belette simply stand in place and stare down the large arthropod, while the bug pretty much did the same.

I had no idea as to what she wanted to do. I doubted her gun would be able to put any bullets beyond it’s armor; she’d have to aim for the chinks in it’s armor if she wanted to do any immediate damage.

Who am I kidding here, with Mirage, “Aim” simply throws itself out the window.

I watched as she let off a barrage of bullets. It was aimed at the scorpion’s face. And then it wasn’t. The recoil of the gun caused it to shoot along its back and even at its stinger. The creature merely shrugged off the bullets and attempted to nab my friend in its pincers. She merely took a step back and released the empty magazine from her weapon before throwing it at the scorpion. Just like the bullets, it had no effect.

Just as she tried to get another magazine from her bags, the bug arched its back, its rear raised in the air and its tail lashing out in an attempt to sting her. For a brief moment, I saw the very tip of the stinger encased in her purple aura before it smashed into the ground and completely buried itself next to Belette.

I watched as the scorpion tugged at it’s own tail, trying to pry it out of the ground while it hissed and snapped it’s pincers out of frustration. Belette hopped onto it’s tail and from there, she levitated her weapon directly in front of her now almost helpless opponent. She loaded the fresh magazine into the gun, and just as quickly as the bullets were in, they were out. Not every single one hit, but it was enough to do some major damage.

The scorpion gave out a particularly loud hiss and retracted it’s tail, throwing up the dirt that it had been buried under in the process. Belette leapt backwards as the creature swiped at her with it’s pincers again, all the while it hissed and made generally unhappy noises. Every step it took, the ground responded with light vibrating.

Belette managed to levitate a new magazine into place, I watched as it arched it’s back once more, preparing for another attempt at nailing my friend with it’s stinger. Its attempt was futile however as the arched back was a dead giveaway. Belette sidestepped as the scorpion’s tail crashed into the ground again, creating a mini crater as it did so.

Belette capitalized and hopped onto the back of the bug, firing wildly at it’s eyes as she did so. Suddenly, the creature, once struggling and trying to kill everything in sight, stopped completely. Its legs gave out and its body went limp before hitting the ground with a thud.

Even from a distance, I could see Belette was breathing heavily. Her usually somewhat messy mane was now even messier, the semi frown that came with her battle face slowly morphed into a grin as she relished in her victory. I watched as she hopped off the carcass before kicking some dirt into the mutilated face of the now lifeless scorpion before walking towards me.

“Where the fuck did you go?” Belette asked as she approached me.

“May or may not have frozen in fear.” I replied while rubbing the back of my neck.

“You hurt? Took quite a flight there.”

I took a look at myself and assessed the damage. From what I could see at the moment, I had a couple of cuts and bruises here and there on my forelegs, I should’ve been feeling pain right about now, but I couldn’t feel them. It was as if they weren’t there at all.

“I dunno. Heart’s still pumping at a million times per second. Probably not gonna feel very good post adrenaline.”

“You’d better hope that adrenaline lasts you, because I am not gonna drag your broken body.”

“Aye aye cap-i-tan. You gonna get the poison gland or…?”

“Yea yea gimme a minute.”

I watched as she returned to the corpse of her fallen foe and tug at it’s tail with her magic. It refused to move. After several more tries she shook her head and gave up. I tried to lend a hoof and attempted to pull it out alongside her magic. Still, the results remained the same.

“Sore loser.” Belette said as she spat on the carcass.

“We’d better go, before something else decides we look tasty.” I said.

Belette nodded in agreement before using her magic to summon a portal out of nowhere. She then proceeded to levitate Mirage into said portal before closing it. All the while I watched with my jaw open.

“What.” I said out of confusion.

“What’s the problem?” Belette asked me.

“All this time you’ve just shoved your stuff into some pocket in an alternate dimension? This whole time?”

“Sorta. Think of it as a magical locker. How else do you think I’ve been able to keep walking so long?”

“... Can you keep my stuff for me?”

******

After having my load significantly lightened, I felt much better and I could put a little more pep into my step, despite having my life endangered. Enough time had passed for me to gather my thoughts and calm myself, which took a lot shorter than I thought it would considering I was fairly close to meeting the same fate both my parents met. However, having almost half my belongings not inside of my saddlebags helped tremendously. My hooves no longer ached, and my heartbeats had dropped back to normal.

And the adrenaline wore off.

Soon after that, I felt aching pains on both my sides, and stinging on various other parts of my body. Black spots danced around in my sight as the world began to go blurry and I struggled to stay standing. It felt as if Celestia’s chariot ran over me, backed up, and parked it’s wheel right on my torso. I tried to blink the spots out of my sight to no avail.

"I take it back. I don't want the thrill anymore." I said, nearly throwing up as I did so.

Before I could hear Belette’s response, my legs gave out from under me, and I found myself crashing into the ground, my eyes gradually closing and blocking out my blurred vision as I tried to make out Belette’s muffled voice.

And then, I lost consciousness.