Fallout Equestria: The Kingdom of Ice

Everything Changes

Horrifying. The sight that was in front of me was truly horrifying. In front of me was what used to be a pony. Its head was split open down the middle down to the top of the lower jaw. The pony was sitting slouched against the wall, with blood and brains, with bits of bones were splattered everywhere, to the point i couldn't tell what color fur the pony originally had. The two halves of the head hung on each side, leaving the head in sort of a “V” shaped. Flies were swarming around the body and walking all over the corpse, which helped explained why there were so many flies, and it also explained the smell around the tool shed.

I found this corpse right outside the toolshed. I walked outside of the tool shed to follow the red dot that was showing on my pipbucks E.F.S. However when turned the corner around the building I found it. I stopped in my tracks when I saw it, my jaw dropped in horror at the sight of it. I couldn’t look away, I started at it for what felt like an eternity before the combination of the gruesome sight and horrid smell got to me and my stomach lurched, I then began to vomit up my lunch, and even after I kept looking at the ground, coughing and hacking when in the corner of my eye I noticed the red dot on E.F.S. start to move.

I turned around as I raised my head so I wouldn’t see the corpse again, however what I saw next was more horrifying. Out from behind a rotted shed about 20ft away from me came a unicorn, his fur was matted and disgusting, covered in dirt, grime, and dried blood. He walked slowly towards me, a wild look in his eye and a crooked evil grin. An orange glow surrounded his horn and next to him and floating beside him was a bloodied ax covered in his magic aura. His mane and tail were also a complete mess. I instinctively took a step back out of fear.

“Hi there darlin’” he spoke with a deep voice and a tone that made it sound that he was getting off to the idea of killing me violently.

I grabbed the gun I had with my magic and quickly pulled it out of my saddle bags and pointed it at him, I was trembling with fear. The gun shaking so much I could hear its parts rattle.

“D-d-don’t m-move! I-I-I have a gun!” I said to him, keeping my gun pointed at him, I was obviously terrified. He laughed a dry wheezing sounding laugh.

“Oh, the widdle stabul pony iz gunna huhrrt me” He mocked and continued laughing. “It’s too bad you saw me...I’ve been watching you since you trotted outta that cottage.” I took another step back, he continued. “It gave me time ta think ‘bout how im gonna chop you up, but it looks like I won’t be able to express my creativity” He laughed again and started quickly trotting towards me while he continued laughing. I closed my eyes and turned my head focusing on the trigger of the gun.

*BANG*

I heard a thud and shortly after an unsettling gurgling. I opened my eyes and slowly looked back where the gun was pointing, smoke pouring out of the barrel. In front of me lay the unicorn slumped on the ground, his jaw was moving around trying to say something, a hole in his neck, blood pouring out of the wound and pooling around it on the ground. His eyes slowly rolling in the back of his head and life slowly drained from him. The gurgling continued as he tried to speak, the ax he was holding at dropped and the blade stuck in the ground. I couldn’t look away from the ghastly sight, watching the life drain from him. It took three minutes for him to bleed out and die. My eyes were glued on him the entire time. I took a step back, after a few minutes after he died, I was starting to get control of myself. Words began forming in me and escaped my mouth “I...k-killed somepony…”

I looked down a little, looking at the large pool of blood around the bullet hole in his neck. Every part of me was shaking, my mind began racing. I killed somepony! Im a murderer! That word, murderer, had entered my head and wouldn’t leave. I was now a murderer in my own eyes. I looked at the two corpses near me and had to get away. I ran back inside the tool shed and sat on a bench inside, I dropped my gun and cried.

I don’t know how long I cried, but it must of been for at least an hour. I could not believe that I had done such a horrible thing. Everytime I closed my eyes, all I could see was the images of the ponies dead body burned into my mind. I couldn’t take it, I wanted to go back home. I wanted to go back to my room and curl up up in my bed. I wanted Soft Heart to talk to me. I wanted my mom to hug me. But no one was there but me, alone, my only company were two corpses outside, one of them I had made.

With tears streaming down my face and at my weakest point, an impulse kicked in. I picked up my gun with my magic and pushed the barrel against my head. I couldn’t take it, I was cold and miserable, alone, and I had branded myself a murderer. I felt like I couldn’t go on after what had happened, I could never get over it, I couldn’t go home after what I had done. Everypony in the stable would look down upon me if I returned, forever branded a criminal. My mind was racing. What was I even thinking? Why did I even think to go out here? Im such a terrible pony! I shot him without even trying a peaceful solution! I was traumatized, I’d never shot anything with the intent to destroy it, even in the range with Soft Heart, I intentionally missed targets just so I would have to see my bullets destroy a paper target, but now I had killed a pony and watched him die. I pushed the gun harder against my head but after a few minutes of crying, I dropped the gun and cried harder. I owed Soft Heart 10 bits.

<***>

I don’t know how long I cried, but several hours had past before I was ready to leave the tool shed. I slowly got off the bench then using my magic, grabbed the gun off the ground and looked at it, such a small tool, yet it killed so easily, I wasn’t even looking at the pony when I shot him. The feeling was both empowering and frightening. As much as I was afraid of it, I could not ignore its potential uses, I hoped that in the future I could simply use it as a tool of intimidation and never again have to resort to such violence. I placed it back in my saddle bag and exited the shed. It was about mid afternoon, the pony I had killed was still there, his corpse had started bloating, the pool of blood around him had dried and made a dark red puddle around him, and flies had started to gather. The smell was horrible. It made me sick to look at it, it sickened me that I had caused that. I gagged and closed my eyes and walked away from the grizzly scene.

I simply wandered away aimlessly from the cottage. I was emotionally drained and had no direction I was just walking, I wanted to get away from the scene of death. After several minutes of mindless wandering, I looked at my pipbuck and accessed it’s map. I was reminded of my original goal, find the city of Stalliongrad and after a bit of searching on my pipbucks map I found it, far to the east of where I was, but that didn’t matter, all that mattered was that I now had a direction and a purpose again. I took a deep breath, pushing the recent events in the back of my mind, I couldn’t let a single terrible thing stop me. I turned in the direction I needed to go and started walking.

<***>

After about an hour of walking I hear loud almost explosion type noises. I assumed they were gunshots, but they were not like any gunshot I had heard before. I slowly crept up the hill in front of me where the sounds were coming from, drawing out my revolver and keeping it beside me. As I got to the top of the hill, I saw a red unicorn with a yellow mane and tail. He was wearing large sunglasses and a huge grin on his face, around him were 3 corpses, these ponies were dirty and mangy and looked much like the one I killed earlier. I was of course mortified by the scene in front of me. I looked on terrified as blood, bone and brains covered the hilltop. This gun caused much more serious injuries than the one I had, although it didn’t look like it was made by ponies or for ponies. It was longer in size and under the barrel was a wooden block that moved back and forth making a “CHUCK-CHECK” noise. He was twirling the gun around in the air as if he took pleasure in the slaughter of others. It was then I noticed that his cutie mark was also a gun. I quickly hid behind the slope of the hill again, hoping that this psychopath didn’t notice me. “Hey there! It’s safe to come out!” Realizing he noticed me I jumped up and pulled out my gun and faced him, my gun was wobbling in fear “D-don’t shoot! I-I-I have a gun!” I kept my focus on him, trying not to look down at the ground at the carnage around me. To my surprise and relief he backed up. “Woah now, lets not get carried away. I don’t mean you any harm little lady.” My guard lowered. “You-you’re not going to shoot me?” He chuckled. “Now why would I shoot you and ruin your flowing teal mane, lovely silver blue coat, and those stunning yellow eyes, not to mention that cute little rear you sport.” I was suddenly self conscious about my everything.

I cast aside his comments. “B-but you slaughtered those other ponies!” He looked around.
“Well..they were raiders...drugged up psychopaths who murder and steal, and rape and all that stuff…” He said, although slightly confused. I couldn’t understand why he was confused, he was clearly a murderer as well. “What makes you different?” I challenged him “You murdered those ponies without a thought, you’re the psychopath here!” He chuckled. “Hey now, I’m not the crazy one, I’m doing all the ponies living in this area a favor by putting these rats down, besides they attacked me first!”

I ran in my head all the things I could possibly say to respond to this guy, who I thought was insane, but the only thing that came out of my mouth was “What?”

Again he laughed. “How long have you been out of the stable?” He asked as levitated his gun into what I guessed was a holster, but not like the ones the security ponies used. He clearly didn’t fear me even though I still had my revolver out. “A-about a day or so.” He shook his head “Tsk, tsk, tsk, You’ve got a lot to learn my friend!” he then grabbed my gun with his magic and ripped it out of my control then pointed right at my head

“Bang!”

I shrieked and then he opened up the gun and emptied out the ammo and removed the cylinder and tossed both parts of the gun. “That’s all it takes. You’re lucky I’m a good guy, if I was any other pony, I would have robbed you for your stuff and left you for dead.” I was still breathing hard and in shock. Was it really this easy? I thought to myself, looking at the two halfs of the guns laying in two piles of blood. I lowered my guard, and my magic was weaker. It was scary.

“How? Like was my stable the only good one?” It was the only thing that made sense to ask. However, he just started laughing “Why are you laughing?”

“Oh girl, I was born out here, a lot of those stables opened up long ago, there’s a lot of ponies out here, My dad was born out here and my Grandpa was born out here!” This blew my mind. “Wait...What?”

He shook his head, grabbing my gun and levitated it up and fixed it, then lifted the bullets up and reloaded it. “I heard you stable-dwellers were naive, but wow!” Once he had put the gun back together, he put it into my saddle bag. “So what’s your name stable girl?”

“Its uh...Silver Light, who are you?” He then reared up and struck a pose as if he was dying of wait, waiting for me to ask. “Buck Blazes! Professional badass of the wasteland!” I refused to believe that was his real name.

“I see…” I was still nervous, and very unsure about this guy, but he wasn’t actively trying to kill me, so I thought I was safe for now, although I still had my weapon floating beside me. “So” he started. “What brings you out of the stable? All of you stable-dwellers have some reason for leaving.”

I sighed, but for the moment I had forgotten that on the ground were 3 dead bodies, one of which was missing half of their head, but I wasn’t looking at the ground. “Well, I um, went in search of my father. He um went missing about 15 years ago, and I found a computer file that said he left the stable, so I went out in search for him” He nodded. “Since you’re pretty, I’ll help you out, I’ll bring you to Mo-Tel, follow me.” He started walking off, and I followed behind, but I made a mistake of looking at the ground, and more horrifying images were burned into my mind.

<***>

“So hold on, you seriously thought that outside of the stable was an empty void?” He chuckled, we had been walking for a few hours now. “Well, that’s all we knew” While we were traveling together and talking, I was still very apprehensive. I still didn’t trust this guy, for all I know he was going to kill me on the spot for no reason.

“So um, what kind of gun is that?” I said, motioning to the gun in his holster. “Oh this?” He pulled it out and floated it around. “This is a griffon shotgun! My grandpa was the original Buck Blazes, technically, I’m Buck Blazes the Third! But anyway, my grandpa went up against a fearsome griffon Talon mercenary! They fought for hours, but in the end, my grandpa won that fight, taking his shotgun as a trophy, thus cementing himself as the original Buck Blazes!” He was very eccentric about himself and his family line, although I was still on the fence about his sanity, It was getting dark and I was getting tired from walking. It was also getting cold. I got out my plaid coat and put it on. But I noticed that Buck didn’t seem affected by the cold, but on closer inspection, I saw his fur was longer than most ponies I’ve seen. “We need to find shelter, it will get cold soon”.

Soon? It was cold now! I thought to myself. I looked around. “Where are we going to stay?” I asked. Buck looked around and spotted a nearby building. “There, that old supply station by the road.” We set off towards the building, but I was curious. “What exactly is a power station?”

“Its a building ponies used to use to charge the batteries of their motorized carriages and automobiles, most have a little store, it's good to hide out in and use for shelter. But we will have to be very weary of bandits and raiders.”

I couldn’t believe this. “Why are ponies killing each other out here?” He chuckled at my question “Honestly, I don’t know! It’s just a fact of life! Ponies kill ponies! Whether it’s for food, caps, drugs, whatever.” He said it so matter of factly I again questioned his mental sanity.

<***>

We arrived at the power station. It wasn’t a big building, actually it was pretty small, the main building itself was actually a general store. Outside the building was an odd looking structure, it was cylinder in shape, rather large and about as tall as the building it was next to. “Hey what is this thing?”

He shrugged “I’m not completely sure, I think it’s what old ponies used to charge spark batteries.” He said nonchalantly, I decided not to ask more questions, although I had many, I didn’t want to annoy him, he might have had a friendly demeanor, but he also murdered three ponies and didn’t even bat an eye. I noticed that it had gotten much darker, and the cold really hit, while he entered the store, I pulled out the trousers and put them on, and entered the store. Inside the store it was dark and I couldn’t see Buck. I turned on my pipbuck’s lamp, EFS showed Buck as a green dot, but I couldn’t see any red dots, so I walked inside.

Most of the shelves were barren, probably picked clean long ago. I was beginning to piece together that ponies have been out here for a while, and anypony out here was some form of bad, be it a thief or a murderer. I was still afraid of Buck, the fact the he slaughtered three ponies like it was nothing and didn’t think anything of it still bothered me a lot, however I followed his lead simply out of fear.

I saw Buck rummaging through the back office behind the counter, bathed in the green glow of my pipbuck. He floated out an old rotted desk from the back and smashed it against the wall breaking it into pieces. “What are you doing?” I asked aloud as he made a seemingly random act of violence. “I’m breaking this desk up to make into firewood, I’d like a campfire to keep us warm while we sleep.” He said while putting on a coat. He put the wood in a pile and took a metal box and put it on the floor, then put the wood in the box. I looked on as he took out a match and tried striking it, several times. “Come on...just....” I took the initiative and walked up to the box and used my heat beam on the wood pile and quickly lit the wood inside the box. He looked at the fire and was surprised and amused. “Hey, thanks.” I figured I should get on his good side so he’s less inclined to shoot me. I simply shrugged to show my acknowledgement.

“Ok, so heres the plan, we are going to take turns sleeping, one of us keeps an eye out, the other one sleeps, I haven’t been able to catch some sleep for a day or so, so I’ll sleep first, just stay up and keep watch, wake me in a few hours, or if you see anything.” And with that he laid down and instantly went to sleep. I sat by the fire for a few minutes and then took a sigh, when a terrible thought just occured to me, I had forgotten any sort of method to carry water with! I began to silently panic, I hadn’t drank anything since I left the stable, and now I was thirsty and had no water to drink.

I silently scoured the store, trying not to wake Buck, however, I was freaking out a bit, and it didn’t help that my movement was slightly hindered by the thick clothing. The shelves were mostly barren, not containing anything useful to my current predicament. I had always had problems with being forgetful, but never had it bit me in the ass like this. Then I saw something useful looking, a vending machine in the back, the back light had faded but from the light of the fire and from my pipbuck I could read “Sparkle Cola” while soda wasn’t hydrating, but I knew I could at least use the bottle to hold water until I found a better container.
I approached the machine and used my magic to try to open the door, but again my magic wasn’t very strong. I tried to focus on the internal lock, but I wasn’t very skilled with lock mechanisms. I got frustrated with my failed attempts, but I was determined. I pulled out my crowbar and shoved the end into the door hinge and with all my might, pushed against it with my body until i heard a loud clunk as the door swung open. I fell over and my crowbar felt and hit the floor with a loud “CLANK” sound. I stood up and put my crowbar away and looked at my work. Inside was exactly what I was looking for.

While it wasn’t fully stocked, it did however contain quite a few bottles of sparkle cola. I took 3. They were still a little cold, although that was mainly due to the environment outside. I noticed I was hungry and realized I hadn’t eaten anything all day so I took an apple out of my bag and ate it, the apple could hydrate me for the time being until I found some water.

I sat back down by the fire and looked at one of the sodas. I thought about drinking it, but I had to wonder, was it safe to drink 200 year old soda? The logical thing to do would be to dump it and just use the bottle, but I didn’t for some reason, a big part of me was curious. What did 200 year old soda taste like? I shook it to see if was even still a liquid, I didn’t know if the soda had turned to sludge after a while, or at least a couple of decades, but no! It was still a liquid. A big part of me wanted to drink it, just to say I did it and brag to Soft Heart. No pony in my stable could ever say that they drank 200 year old soda. It was a stupid motivation, I know, but it wasn’t the worst thing I did that day. I took the cap off and the bottle hissed a little to my surprise, I took a drink. It was flat, still a bit of carrot though, but still a little underwhelming. “Thats it?” I said quietly aloud, I didn’t know what I was expecting, although apparently I wasn’t expecting it to be just flat. I joked with myself. “Eh, seven out of ten; it was ok” I finished the soda and put the empty bottle in my saddle bag. I would have to clean it out before I used it for storing water, which meant finding water first, but this wasn't a desert, so finding water shouldn’t be too hard of a task. I decided to just sit by the fire for the time being and take out one of my comic books.

<***>

My pipbuck told me that a few hours had past since Buck went to sleep. I was still cold, but my clothes and the fire definitely helpped. I looked down at my hooves. I need boots… I thought to myself. my cold gear was still very much incomplete. I felt like some kind of head protection would be necessary, and a scarf, I really wanted a scarf. Most of those kind of clothing weren’t available in the stable, everypony just wore the jumpsuit, different types of clothing only existed in old books. Heck the fact that I was wearing different clothing was a little exciting. I’ll admit I found fashion a little interesting, I always did want to look pretty, but when you’re a computer nerd, most ponies won’t give you the time or day to shine bright so to speak.

I was starting to get tired, but I didn’t want to wake up Buck just yet, part of me still feared him. Actually a large part of me still feared him. I stood up and put my comic away and walked over to the register counter. Looking around I saw that there was a working computer in the back office. Naturally I walked in to go check it out, I sat in front of it and began to work my magic.

The password was “Horse”, strange but whatever.

I was actually a little disappointed, there was nothing of real note here just a bunch of receipts from 200 year old transactions. There was one entry that was a little interesting, It was an email from the manager of this location to I assumed his boss, it read:

[Why am I still here?]
I wish to know why I am still being called to work. Since those stables have been built and the war has escalated so much, we have gotten zero customers in 2 weeks! And everytime I see either an automobile or an automated carriage(which isn’t often), they go right by and in a hurry too! The rest of my friends and family are in a stable waiting for me. If I do not hear back from you within 48 hours I am resigning and heading to a stable.
-White Arrow, Manager of location #343

I shrugged, hoping that White Arrow made it to a stable. I walked back into the main room. I stared at Buck, gathering my courage for a bit, I stepped forward and started nudging him “Hey uh, Buck?”

“Hmm uh...what?” He groaned, getting himself up “Oh right…” he stretched a bit “Get some sleep, I’ll watch till morning.”

I nodded and curled up near the fire. The ground was hard and uncomfortable, and I was still nervous about falling asleep near this guy. Once I took off my saddle bags and used them as a pillow however, I felt myself drift off to sleep.