Fallout Equestria: Silver Nocturne

For the fourth day in a row, a heavy knocking roused me from my sleep. Almost immediately, I hurt all over. I gave out a sputtering gasp like I hadn’t breathed in days, and a groan that made me feel it right down to my sore bones.

“Goddesses, I need a drink.” I coughed out, reaching my hoof up to wipe my eyes in the darkness around me. With a solid thunk, my hoof struck something wooden only inches above my muzzle. “What the…” I paused as yet another heavy thump shook the small box I now found myself to be in. My mind scrambled to fit the pieces together on how I got here, or how I was even alive in the first place. The world was upside down in my mind, running in circles until I remembered the old refrigerator in Rusty’s yard. “Caltrop.” I gasped.

With a loud creak along with a plume of dirt and dust, the top of the box swung open. A light brighter than the sun stung my eyes worse than any hangover I’d ever had. A dark figure obscured it slightly, holding a hoof down to me. I took the stranger’s hoof, feeling stuck with awe as my senses kicked back in all at once. As he pulled me to my hooves, nothing felt like it stacked up anymore. The air smelled dry and filled with rot, and the warm breeze pressed upon my skin like the velvet touch of an affectionate mare. The wood under my hooves was slightly damp, and the dirt on me stung in several places.

“Eeyup, thought that might be the case.” The raspy voice of a stallion strained to sound less gravely than a rolling barrel full of rocks. I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, but that sort of luck I’d always been short on. The palooka who’d helped me up was an orange coated ghoul in an old M.A.S. lab coat. The green glow behind his eyes pierce through his broken glasses frames as he sized me up.

“What’s going on? Where am I?” Taking a look around, I scoped out the terrain around us. The light that had blinded me moments ago was infact the normal, cloudy midday sun. For some reason, I was in the middle of the Shady Pines graveyard on the edge of town. Looking down, I found I was still standing one hoof deep in my own grave. I looked over the quickly cobbled together wooden gravemarker that sat at the head of my rickety wooden coffin. The white paint on it spelled out my name, but like the boob I was, I still couldn’t put it all together.

“Hear on the radio that somepony out this way got caught in a sky wagon blast a few days back.” The orange ghoul regarded with the attitude that this wasn’t something unheard of. “Sometimes the townsfolk, they don’t really give the victims the time they need to sit and recuperate before burying them.” He sighed and looked at me with a dimwitted smile across his rotting muzzle. “Don’t see many late bloomers these days compared to after the war, but just to be sure, I try to sneak in and do a double check. It’s a bad fate to be left in your own grave to go feral.”

His confusing words sent my mind into a tumble that I almost lost myself in. Looking over myself, my legs almost gave out in sheer terror. My coat was all but burned away underneath my charred and nearly shredded old world suit, and shards of burnt metal were fused into my body. Part of a pipe still pierced through my hind leg, and I could see the bone on my right forehoof through the gouged out rotting flesh. I… I was…

The orange ghoul laughed. “Eeyup. I see that you finally noticed your peculiar affliction.” Part of my mind cried out that he was just trying to make a gag at me, but I had all the evidence I needed to know he wasn’t trying to spin anything but the truth. “don’t need to eat, much. Don’t really need to sleep, but you can.” He continued absent mindedly almost. “So long as you don’t think about things too much and limit your radiation intake, you’ve got another century or two to do whatever you want. Stay here, finally go where you’ve always wanted, you can do it now that you’re effectually dead.” He beamed a smile too wide for the heavy talk he’d just laid on me.

“So!” He pressed, almost feeling like he tried to put the screws on me. “What will you do now?”

I don’t know why he wanted an answer when this whole situation made my head spin like an old world ballet dancer. I wanted to tell him to nix on the questions and scram, but he had a fair point. Looking at the graveyard around me, I found only a few fresh graves, each one next to my own. The gravemarkers read that Dutch and Jerry sat in a line next to me, while Rusty and Doc chips sat to the other side. The one marker that was thankfully absent, was one that spelled out ‘Caltrop’ on it.

“How long have I been out?” I asked, heeling around on the old lunger.

“Oh…” He wheezed, rubbing his hoof along his chin in a way that made his exposed muscles move unnaturally. It was almost enough to make me vomit, but for one reason or another, I couldn’t manage to dredge up the drive to actually do it. I was all clammed up, just waiting for an answer. “About five days now? Took me a few to get all the way here after I’d heard the news.” He finally barbered up. “Why? Have an appointment you still need to make?”

“Yeah.” I nodded looking down to find my half burnt hat, giving it a good dusting off before tipping it up onto my head. “I’m late for an important meeting with somepony in Manehattan.” I was dead to this rotting town. It had taken more from me than I had to give, and that red light it’d hung on me was finally somepony else’s job to deal with. I was my own pony once again, free of the rigged system of the life I’d been penned up in.

Stepping out of my grave, it was finally time to dust out of this scrap pile of a town for good. I’d just as lief spend my days searching every single ruin in Manehatten for Caltrop rather than spend another moment letting his trail run cold. Even if it took me five, ten, or fifty years, I won’t give up in looking for him. Even if he’s moved on, or if he won’t take me back now that I’m a ghoul, I need to find him. I needed to give him the second chance he once gave me.

“Thank you kindly for the assistance.” I said with a tip of my hat to the old ghoul. “Maybe somewhere down the road we’ll meet again and I can buy you a drink.”

“Perhaps. Anything is possible.” He smiled and gave a wave of his glowing hoof. “Best be going now. There’s a big world out there, and it’s not getting any smaller.” He offered as I turned away from town. “Oh, and one last thing, friend. Remember this on your journey, above all else!” He called, rousing me to look back. “Friendship is magic.”

“Will do.” I nodded with a smile, headed off south on what was going to be the beginning of the longest and most difficult missing pony case that’ll ever have been worked in the wasteland.