The Sierra Madre and its unwilling company
Chapter 1: The Sierra Madre
You’ve heard of the Sierra Madre Casino.
We all have... the legend, the curses.
Foolishness about it lying in the city of the dead, buried beneath a blood-red cloud.
A bright, shining monument, luring treasure hunters to their doom...
The world’s most famous stars and entertainers were invited to its grand opening, an invitation was a sign of... exclusiveness.
The opening was supposed to symbolise a road to a brighter future, not just for the world...
...But to all who came to its doors.
A chance for anyone to ‘begin again’
Except... the Sierra Madre never opened.
The War froze it in time, like a giant flashbulb going off. The Grand Opening - one big ending of humanity.
It’s still out there, in the wastes, preserved, just waiting for someone to crack it open.
But getting to it... That’s not the hard part...
... It’s letting go.
Chrysalis stared at the ceiling, counting the cracks and indents in the surface for the hundredth time that day. Forty-seven: twelve cracks and twenty-five indents, it never changed and probably never would, not likely within’ the next week, anyway. It was certainly something to occupy her time, even if it was repetitive as all hell.
Not that she had much choice, there wasn’t an awful lot to do in the run-down police station she’d made her home, and the villa outside wasn’t ideal for a number of reasons. Given the choice of either staying in the station and passing the time... or going outside and facing the dangers and mysteries of the outside; such as the crimson red cloud of choking toxic smog that seemed to eat through all it touched, surrounding the villa and soaked into it, leaving it poisonous to remain outside for very long periods of time, and with it filled with copper and sulphur, concentrated collections of it sitting throughout the area would no doubt able to kill her within’ minutes – if not seconds – of inhalation.
Though the old police station was one of the very few places that the deadly mist had not penetrated, the changeling queen – or rather – the former changeling queen smirked to herself as she let her thoughts wander to ‘The Cloud’, musing on how it’d be easier to leave this accursed place if it were her only obstacle. Of course, just like the incident with the Canterlot wedding, that of course wasn’t the case.
The gates leading from the Sierra Madre were locked, and there lay several sets of them before they opened out into the grand mountainous wasteland surrounding it, each and every one coated in the thick fog of The Cloud. Chrysalis would be able to bring up a shield using her limited magic reserves, sure, but she did not have enough left to maintain the shield and be capable of forcing her way past the gates. Food was only capable of keeping her alive, not maintaining and restoring magic like Love was. And with the lack of any noticeably talkative company, she had to preserve it for absolute emergencies, as she would have no way of getting it back.
Access to food wasn’t all that much of an issue however, as the Villa itself was filled with strange machines that accepted the many gambling chips that had been left abandoned in the Villa – along with their owners, apparently – and would exchange them for goods, namely food, medicine, and most importantly: ammunition.
Though the villa may have lacked anyone talkative, or at least, anyone talkative who was still alive, it did not mean that Chrysalis was alone...
‘Ghost People’ was what they were referred to by others she had met since her arrival – all of whom had since passed due to... less than pleasant circumstances – and they were apparently once workers in the villa from before the war, long since mutated and decayed by severe exposure to The Cloud. The thick, dark brown hazmat suits they were wearing having corroded so intensely that removing them with anything short of some space-age technology capable of rending steel would be considered folly. Not that one would want to really see what horror was lurking behind the gas masks they wore that caused their eyes to endlessly glow bright green.
Seemingly endless in number, the changeling had long since learnt that killing one wasn’t as easy as pointing a firearm at it and pulling the trigger, or hitting it with something sharp or blunt until it stopped moving; the abominations would simply get back up again after a few moments of stillness. No, she had learnt that the only way to truly defeat these things was to dismember them, something in tearing the suit open allowed the corrupted and seemingly immortal to finally drop dead, never to move ever again. One could easily wonder if those inside could even be considered human anymore.
Chrysalis wouldn’t exactly consider herself that human regardless, sure she had arms and legs and was a slightly above average height for a human, but the grey haired chitin that covered her skin made it obvious she was only humanoid in shape, though those who asked always seemed a bit too comfortable with the fact that she was a pony... well, a changeling, but it wasn’t likely they’d know the difference outside of visual appearance. Perhaps they thought she was just a unique mutant? One could never be sure.
Shrugging off the old blanket she had been resting under, Chrysalis slowly pulled herself upright on the old mattress, glancing around the room as though hoping for something unique to have happened since she had lain down.
The square room was fairly large, a quarter of the space on the far side of the room from the front door taken up by a massive jail cell that she locked herself into whenever she slept, leaving the only key hidden under the mattress where it couldn’t be seen by any would-be thief... or any of the ghost people in the unlikely chance that one figured out how to get inside the station. Along the side of the cell facing towards the front door of the building there were two large desks with old, non-functioning computers sitting atop them, as well as strewn with various needless items such as a globe and a small empty pencil holder.
To the left and right sides of the room were three doors, the one on the right being listed by the sign above it as the Armoury, the two on the left being the bathrooms through one of them, and the other leading to now thoroughly searched offices of the former residents, filled with nothing now but empty filing cabinets and broken chairs. It was to Chrysalis’ great surprise and relief when she found that the bathrooms were somehow still functional, while the armoury was only ever used to store excess ammunition and weapons pilfered from the dead and the Ghost People she’d managed to kill.
Though it wasn’t much, it was as close to home as it would get for Chrysalis until she figured out how to get back to Equestria, or at the very least back to the Mojave Desert where she had originally found herself after the wedding fiasco, and had originally acquired a few alliances as well as many more weapons and ammunition, but she had come to terms with having to deal with less weapons and ammunition ever since she had arrived at the Villa... However that was.
She had no real idea how she had arrived, she could only ever remember approaching a signal emanating from a radio broadcasting an advertisement for the Sierra Madre Casino, and then vaguely remembered being gassed right afterwards. Something or someone had brought her to the Villa just like all the others, but unlike the others, she had been missing one particular thing that the others hadn’t, namely a thick metallic collar that was apparently filled with explosives.
Though this was still a good thing, Chrysalis had wondered what it was for, as none of the previous visitors had cared to elaborate, so she was determined to figure it out.
Through hours of listening to outside conversations, she’d determined that of the people brought in, various groups had been linked together by their collars, some kind of pre-war techno-babble that Chrysalis had little interest in, and they were being grouped together to try and open and rob the Sierra Madre Casino. The casino was a massive intimidating beast of a building, sitting perched at the almost highest spot on what seemed to be the highest mountain in the wastes. One was never sure, Chrysalis knew no-one who had seen the place before The Cloud appeared and doubted she ever would. But there was something about the building that drew people to it. Chrysalis had done so out of curiosity more than anything, but everyone else? They were drawn by the legend that surrounded the casino.
Over two hundred years since the war, and the legend had spread that the casino and its contents were virtually untouched, the bloody cloud that surrounded it preserved it and the tech within, pre-war weaponry that one couldn’t find anywhere else, and supposedly of a vault filled with gold and valuables beyond measure. It’s hard to imagine what one in a post-apocalyptic world could do with such wealth, which was why breaking into it was so difficult; everyone kept turning on each other.
Time after time, Chrysalis would watch from afar as a member of a group would be consumed by greed and abandon his partners or even turn on them, usually the latter, and the few who did the former were usually unlucky enough to come across the Ghost People.
Standing up, brushing the front of her clothes, Chrysalis looked around the room one last time before turning her attention to the equipment she’d left in the cell with her bed: Two weapons, one partially concealed within a holster, and the other leaning against the wall with a strap for carrying over her shoulder. Picking up and wrapping the holster around her waist, she couldn’t help but pull the little revolver out and look at it, seemingly always amused by how it looked.
It bore a long barrel, with a white handgrip with a black clubs card suit on each side, the metal on the rest of the weapon mostly black, but covered in fine golden trimming, as well as a plate alongside the barrel with the word ‘Lucky ’ engraved on it in fine cursive letters. Chrysalis smirked at the name, finding it fitting seeing as she had never missed a shot with it, though she often went through the .357 Magnum ammunition surprisingly quickly when she stopped paying attention to it.
Putting Lucky back into the holster, she grabbed the sling of the other weapon, giving it a glance as well, as though expecting something new to appear on it.
‘Browning Automatic Rifle’ was printed on the side, Chrysalis had no real idea who this Browning character was, but she certainly appreciated the weapon’s design, a sleek wooden finish on the stock and grip made it quite comfortable for her to old, almost familiar. Along with the power of the .308 ammunition it used, it was the only thing keeping her using it, as the long barrel and seemingly irremovable bipod made the weapon very front-heavy if she held it incorrectly. The weapon left much to be desired, but it would have to do, it’s not like there was anything else that could tear off a Ghost Person’s limb faster than a .308 round to the shoulder.
“Now then,” she muttered to no-one in particular “Let’s see if anyone new has ‘magically’ appeared at the gate today”
Slinging the B.A.R. over her shoulder, Chrysalis opened the door to the police station, looking back for a moment, and then disappearing into the Villa, closing the door behind her.