Fallout Equestria: Prospector

Systems Initialized - PipBuck 3052A rev.272.

...starting recording system...

Done.

Fallout: Equestria

Prospector

By Shukin

Prologue pt.2 – Bullet Wounds

“It's nothing serious, then?”

I woke up oblivious to my wounded ribs, being fast and painfully reminded of them after stretching. I coughed a little, the classical rust taste of blood rolling through my mouth. I didn’t need to look further to my condition, as that HUD that was kept by the PipBuck informed me of the actual status of my lungs. Sure they were recovering, but still it’s not enough of an improvement for me to stroll around laughing and taunting Brilliant Prickle. I grabbed my saddlebags, opening them in search of the magical bandages. There were just enough for me to cover the actual bandages over the bullet wounds, after the whole fiasco two days ago.

With the bandages in place, I strapped my saddlebags to my back and casually limped down the corridor, locking the door behind me. It felt strange to walk with that metal casing around my leg without understanding exactly how it worked. I sure knew about the Medic add-on that constantly reminded me of my broken rib and the recovering bullet wounds, but what about that E.F.S.? Or that other function, S.A.T.S., modified for this exact model. That’s why I was headed to Friendship’s Statue Torch, to question the crazily-anxious Rosy Coral that I’m sure couldn’t even blink after yesterday.

As one of the repairponies of the station, Coral had a good experience with tinkering in pre-war machines and her dad taught her a lot before dying of rad-poisoning at ripe old age. Well, that’s what you get roaming the wasteland without care. Actually, he was one of the ponies that helped Radar to repair the exact bridge that gets us inside the statue every day. With all that swimming required to retrieve its parts, it was not only expected but required to die of radiation poisoning.

I cautiously limped upstairs, trying not to strain my torso and just cause me even more pain than before, as for now I’d just worsen the half-healed muscles. Gasping for air, I reached the top of the building and, just as I was going to knock, the door opened and I hit her right in the eye. “Oh! Sorry, I didn’t meant to—“

“Patchie?!” she smiled awkwardly in a mix of happiness, anxiety and pain. With a hoof in her hurt eye, she kept talking as fast as she could. “I was going to wake you up, you lazy pony! You wouldn’t believe what I’ve found in one of the terminals at Cargo Four!” She guided me inside, and the first thing I noticed is that there was a fully operational terminal propped against the walls of the Security Room.

“Wait, you brought it here? Wasn’t it easier to just go where it was?” I glanced over her shoulder, noticing the sheer quantity of green rambling in the display. I couldn’t understand anything besides one or another word.

“You know Prick, he didn’t let me tinker with it over there… So I brought it here!” She took another step closer to the computer and put her hoof in the side of the monitor. “Look, it’s a Stable-Tec computer too!”

“I wonder where the hell they found this.” The screen was as dirty and scratched as everything else pre-war, and a lot of things post-war too. It made a nice contrast with the clean and bright light that the PipBuck emitted. I took another look around and found, between the security lockers, a pile of books ranging from hacking to maintenance of guns. Her collection, I think.

“We only have one problem…” She said, staring at the screen blankly.

“And that would be…?”

“I don’t have idea of how I’m gonna unlock this.” She smiled at me like that was good news. “I just don’t know exactly... what to do…”

I took another look at it: There were some words over the whole scrambled symbols. The worst of it was that there wasn’t any kind of input system besides the on/off button and some others for navigation next to the monitor. Another thing that I noticed was that there was a kind of blocky gap exactly under the display. I leaned over to observe it closer and, just as that, another green-glowing info popped into my eyes, scaring the hell out of me. “What happened, Patchie?” She tried not to laugh with the scare I took, but at least she was interested in what I’ve saw.

“Control Input.” I stared at those green letters for some time, trying to understand what they meant. “Looks like I can get into this computer with the PipBuck through this… slot.” For the lack of a better word.

“So do it!” She hit my shoulder, then remembered my wounds and drew back her hoof. “Sorry.”

Through my painful face, I nodded and stared at the PipBuck, which showed me the same information, this time regarding one of its buttons. I pressed it and a little cable with a square tip popped out of the display’s left side. I simply floated the cable and connected it to the terminal, automatically duplicating the scrambled symbols in my arm.

Now I could interact with it, but I didn’t know exactly what to do. Scrolling through the random characters I highlighted them, sometimes as a whole part, between parenthesis and brackets. Noticing four blocks in the upper part of the screen, I clicked a random icon of a dot and one of the blocks disappeared. “I only get four chances to guess the right password…”

She was staring directly the monitor of the terminal, examining closely every step that I took in that virtual environment. I chose a group between brackets, and one of the words disappeared, as simple as that. “So, if I do this…” I took another group now, and the lost block returned to its place. “Hm… Right, so I can regain my tries…”

That was interesting. I clicked one of the words, ‘WALKING’, and the display informed me that three of the seven letters were correct. Then I tried ‘RUMMAGE’ and it displayed two of the seven letters. Any of the letters of both of the words were in the same position, so they’re probably right in different places. I noticed one of the words, ‘RUNNING’. “It has the last three words of ‘walking’ and the first two of ‘rummage’… This is it, then.”

I clicked and the lock opened itself like a flower. I laughed at how easy that was, disconnecting the cable that returned as fast as it came out to the PipBuck. Without giving me space to read anything, Rosy Coral jumped in front of the terminal and pressed buttons like crazy. “I can’t understand how you can read this fast, girl.”

“Here, it’s here! Look!” She took a step aside and pressed one of the buttons:

“S.A.T.S. – Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell

With a simple mental command, the user will experience a better reaction time as the time around him slows down and the system helps with our most advanced targeting system, calculating in real-time the chances of hitting something aimed by its user.”

“It’s pretty simple, actually…” I thought aloud. “One of the notes says that the S.A.T.S. system of this PipBuck is a slightly modified version… Let’s see.”

I focused on Rosy Coral, trying to activate the system. As promised, the system highlighted her in real-time and showed her body fragmented exactly as the pony that represented my health, showing a full-diagnosis of her. There were percentages, alright, but not of hitting: It was clearly the functionality of each limb. I took a step back and walked to the stairway, going down a few steps and looking through the corridor.

“Damn.” A smile covered my face as I saw exactly the same information for everypony walking through there. I could focus on each one I wanted the info about and it would simply appear in thin air, clear and close enough so that I could read even through wind or debris.

Then the effect stopped, my body hurt like a train wrecked me and I coughed a little bit of blood, the damn rust taste again destroying my flavor glandes. “Oh goddesses the pain…” From upstairs, Rosy screamed something I couldn’t understand as the world around me took a ride in the roller coaster of nausea. After some moments of near-blindness for sheer pain, I retook the stairway one step at a time, reaching a shaking happily Rosy Coral.

“You were… fast! How did you do that?!” She screamed, jumping around me. “I don’t know, were I?” I answered, trying to recollect myself as I sat in one of the benches in the room. “It was probably the modified S.A.T.S… I saw so many information of everypony!  This is really a modified version for medicinal use.”

“How so? Tell me tell me tell me!” She jumped around the bench, waiting anxiously for an answer. “Calm down, pink freak-out. As I focused in anypony, I saw exactly how functional their bodies are, with a little bar for every limb. And, to me, time simply slowed down. You said I was fast?”

I reproduced the presentation through the speaker, now with this new information. “So that’s what they meant when she said it augments the user’s reflex and, looks like, the body too. And that’s why I felt so much pain after that. Damn you, wounds.”

“It’s nothing serious, at least?” She sounded worried. I smiled, trying to reassure her: “Yeah, just a little bit of pain after straining the body. Imagine it like a cramp, only I can’t breathe correctly and my ribs hate me.” I took a little laugh, reminding myself of why I was trying not to.

“Good to know I’d not need to drag your bloody body everywhere again! Hihihihi!” Of the many things I liked about her, one of them wasn’t her squeaky laugh.  My stomach rumbled, and I looked to the PipBuck searching for a clock, noticing it in the top right corner. “Let’s grab some grub, I’m hungry with all this ‘research’.”

“But there’s another to—“

“We’ll read it later, Coral. C’mon, let’s eat.”

=-=-=-=

“You  know we’re herbivores, right?” I took another spoon of the rabbit and carrot stew. It tasted great, despite the angry fit our stomach will do later. She nodded positively, taking another spoon herself.

The food court was specially crowded that Sunday, with the different recipe. A merchant caravan from New Appleloosa bought a lot of scrap metal from us and, for payment, they provided the ingredients and cooked the huge bowl of stew that some of the guards were protecting. I ate another spoon, grateful for a different and incomparably better taste in my mouth than the usual blood of the last two days.

“Sho?” She tried to answer through a full mouth, spitting some of the stew on the metal table made of scrap metal. After a big swallow, she sighed and said: “It’s not like we have anything better to eat, and this is pretty tasty.”

“Yeah, can’t deny it.” And I took another spoon.

When I noticed, I was already with my head inside my bowl, and a little trace of blood mixed itself with the orange soup. I raised my head as fast as I could, a little piece of carrot in my mane and my whole face dirty with what was my meal. “What the fuck, Prickle!” I turned my head against the grinning idiot and his troupe.

“Oh! You were so enticed by the stew that I thought you’d want to eat more, so I helped you!” The other two guards tried not to laugh, but the carrot falling in the ground was the breaking point for them. My little pony told me that nothing was broken, but a slight shade of orange took place over its head as a little ‘-5%’ appeared over it.

“I’m not in my best mood now, Prickle, so get the fuck out of here or I’m afraid I’ll have t—“

He stared me defiantly while his two ‘friends’ laughed their asses off. “To do what?” He spat, clearly wanting a fight. I took a deep breath and backed down, using a towel from my saddlebags to clean my face.  He just walked away laughing like he’s won the lottery. “Screw that guy.” Rosy Coral tried to comfort me.

“I just wonder how the flying fuck somepony turns out to be so stupid like him… He was a nice guy, damn it.” I pushed the bowl with my front hoof while pressing my own nose with the towel to stop the bleeding. “He’s like this since he entered the security.”

“I think he’s still mad that you broke that promise.” She said, trying to clean up the rest of the mess in the table.

“What, the one that the three of us would be a team forever? I told both of you that I didn’t want to wear these stupid armors. Besides, I’m a medic, what the hell would I do in Security?” I crossed my front legs, supporting my head.

“I… just don’t know, Patchie. But he’s still hurt, so he hurts you. I think.”

“That was six months ago, how can someone hold a grudge for so long?” I told them I’d be a prospector, and not a security pony, and they laughed at me. Prickly still taunts me with the damn nickname; Coral took the different route I went to in a very mature posture, besides taunting me too. Both of them loves to make me mad, but Coral at least doesn’t fucking hurt me. I think the PipBuck in my leg is a good proof that I’m not that bad at scavenging after all.

“I don’t know…” She finished her stew, getting up again and heading to the stairway for the Torch. “C’mon, Carrot Patchie, we have a lot more to study.”

“Stop with the nicknames, Coral, damn!” I rushed to her, both of us reaching the Security Room after nearly two minutes. And what surprise we had when we found the little note by Prickle by the door, with a little sympathetic message: “fuck u”

Couldn’t he at least write correctly? We opened the door and, for some reason, the terminal was turned off. I took some steps in its direction trying to understand why it is that way. Coral, as crazily anxious she is, ran to the terminal and pressed some buttons, getting the exact zero responses we expected. “What did he do?” I asked, without understanding exactly what happened.

“I think he…” She looked behind the terminal, noticing something that made she smile. “…took it out of the socket.” Out of nowhere, she started jumping and swearing in an unintelligible language, grabbing my attention to the back of the terminal too. There, I found the reason she was so mad: He took off the whole power cable of the terminal. “Why did he do that?! That prick!” She barked, looking around for a replacement.

“That’s his name, yeah, Stupid Prick.” I sat down, waiting for some resolution. She stared at me like a hellhound and barked: “Why are you not doing anything to help?!” I just smirked, shook my shoulders and added: “I’m not a repairpony, you are. I’m just a medic.”

After some minutes circling around the room like crazy, she took a piece of metal and, while keeping it immobile with her mouth, cleaned it with a steel wool. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Tchaking outh tche rushst!” She said, after some seconds of brushing the little metal bar. After she spat it, she pressed it against her workshop and started to sharpen its extremities. “Without the rust, aluminum is a great electric conductor. We don’t need a power cable when we can do a power bar!”

“…What.”

“Just help me here, I don’t want to be electrocuted by this.” She said, letting me float the bar and pushing the terminal, giving me enough space to put the bar between the remains of the power cable and the socket. As simply as that, and with some sparkles, the terminal turned back on. “Yeah! Now we can study this in peace!”

“Calm down, Coral, I’m the one with the PipBuck and I’m not startled as you are.” I took the cable and plugged it in its slot, selecting the right password and entering in the database as she clicked in the E.F.S. information.

“Eyes-Forward Sparkle

This magic system complements the user interface with a compass and automatic mapping system. The E.F.S. is capable of detecting any kind of life, robotic or supernatural form and register it in its compass in real-time while determining if said form is hostile to the PipBuck user or not. The user need to turn on the E.F.S. function in the Status menu of the PipBuck.”

I immediately went to the Status and saw the discreet E.F.S. button in the left corner, and I pressed it. Two bars appeared at the right corner of my vision, one of them marked with the cardinal directions (I was looking close to the Southeast) and the other had a little green dot. I looked around, noticing the green dot accompanying where Coral is, while at least fifty more appeared when looking to the North, where most of the statue were inhabited.

“This is incredible.” was the only thing I could talk after such display. Coral was clearly jealous of what I was seeing, but she had a proud and happy look to her face that made me smile. “I don’t know how I lived without one of these.”

=-=-=-=

“I heard shooting, what happened?” I said, floating my saddlebags by my side. I was woken up by the gunshots near the Friendship Bridge, and it looked like half of the east side of the statue did it too. Through the crowd, four security guards, one of them Brilliant Prickle in one of the only moments he wasn’t a douchebag, escorted a group of approximately six tearing foals.

“I can’t believe this!” “Yes, how the Stable Dweller could do that?!” I tried to relate the name to someone without success while the whole crowd spoke about a massacre, the gunshots and how the Stable Dweller had attacked Arbu. That’s one settlement I’ve heard of, close enough to exist a direct trade route to them from the statue. I pressed the ponies ahead of me to get out of the way and went as fast as I could to the clinic, where Healing Surge diagnosed one of the foals.

I activated the S.A.T.S., looking at every little pony and went to one of them with a splint, stripping it into his strained front leg. “This is the only medical condition in them, doc. Looks like she hurt herself while running… Why where you running, little foal?”

Through her sobbing, she looked me straight in the eyes and spoke with a shaken voice: “T-th—the hellmare…” I couldn’t do anything besides hugging her at that point, whence she simply collapsed.

________________________________________

S: 3

P: 4

E: 3

C: 4

I: 9

A: 5

L: 5

Tags: Medicine, Science, Guns.

Traits: Trigger Discipline, Heavy Handed.

Level: 1

Perks: ---