Fallout: Equestria - No Holds Barred
Chapter 2: Sands

The sand crunches underneath my boots as I pull the odd little cart behind me, my father’s armor hanging loose on my shoulders with the straps of the harness threatening to yank it down. The smell of hot metal is burning the air around me, and I take a deep breath of it, using it, drinking it in as motivation. I love this smell, this odor of scorched steel. It reminds me of mom and dad.

It reminds me of what I plan to do to the yellow mare when I finally grow up enough to repay her back for ripping my family apart at the seams.

The little cart behind me isn’t really a wagon per se, and looks rather ludicrous, a footlocker with big scooter wheels mounted on a pair of axles I welded to the bottom, the entire thing longer than it is wide by several feet. It’s enough for now, enough to hold dad’s carbine until I’m big enough to carry it without getting tired.

His helmet is in there, too, encased in old newspapers, the remains of shredded books I’ve grown tired of reading, even a little bit of silk cloth I found in the remains of an old clothing store. I think it was supposed to be some kind of dress before I found it, like one of the ones from the old Ministry of Image posters.

The only thing I know for certain is that the Carousel Boutique logo stitched inside of it is all kinds of tacky.

I’m hot, of course. What kind of pony doesn’t get hot in the desert? I don’t mind. Heat’s good. Heat’s a source of energy, and feeling it on my face behind the makeshift hood I’ve sewn together out of the same scrap of dress I’d made the helmet-sack feels great. It's been dyed brown by almost a year of traveling through the filth and mud of Equestria’s southwestern deserts.

I’d had no idea that the rest of the old country had gotten so filthy since the bombs. I suppose it doesn’t matter, since I’m here to make it messier.

I’d always thought the flaps hanging down beside dad’s legs were silly when he wore this armor back up in the mountains. They dragged through the mud and snow, weighing him down and getting his boots dirtier than they already were. Now they’re a godsend, keeping the biting sand and lashing wind off of my legs during the storms that sometimes crop up in this area of Equestria.

Not like there’s anything there worth protecting, though. My flank’s as blank as a cartridge stuffed with powder and no bullet.

Thirteen and no butt tattoo? I guess I’m what mom called a ‘late bloomer’ before she got dragged off. It used to bother me.

Now I’ve got bigger concerns.

The oasis house comes into view as I crest one last dune, the wagon-box threatening to drag me back down the hill with it if I let it, the metal crate stubborn and hard to move. Perfect for protecting dad’s belongings, and an excellent reminder of why I’m here.

I need that box to get lighter, so that I can get stronger, even if that weight kills me. I sometimes imagine it as dad’s corpse tied behind me when it gets too heavy. Dragging a beheaded carcass behind you through the desert sand is wonderful motivation for a growing colt.

He’s got to be in here. There’s no two ways about it. He’s scrawnier than I am, weaker. His rabbit to my hare. I’ve already got the advantage. He just doesn’t know it yet.

I debate on what to do, taking the opportunity to plan out my course of attack, letting the sweat stream down my face and the back of my neck, my mane plastered to my forehead and pate, silver, blue and deep gray splayed wildly like the hairstyle of a madmare.

I haven’t bathed in two months.

It would be easiest to go in at night, when he isn’t suspecting me. When he’s gone to bed, tucked himself underneath the covers and checked on his ill-gotten gains one last time before drifting off to sleep.

No, that won’t work. He could have hidden it anywhere down there. In the pool, underneath the two graves out by the water — only one gravestone? ¬— or in any other number of places. I could waste hours, even days tearing this place apart and never find it. I don’t know how his mind works, how he thinks, and I can’t waste time observing him. I don’t have the food supplies for that kind of wait.

I need to start heading back to town tonight, or I’ll starve to death, nobody knowing or caring besides the buzzards lucky enough to claim a free meal before rot sets in and bleaches my bones yellow-white.

Fuck it, then. We’ll do this the quick way.

I pull the cart up to the top of the hill and crack it open, grabbing hold of the long cloth-wrapped bundle inside, sliding the rifle into the harness on my left side so that my right is open for throwing punches and pushing open doors.

I can’t wear the helmet yet, so I just leave it where it sits, wrapped in its swaddling cloth and a little lonelier now that its constant companion is coming out to play. I shut the lid and lock it again before it begins to look accusing, like two cyan eyes filled with tears made of bullet-proof glass.

I’m getting sentimental, delusional. Need to get inside and cool off. Now.

The trot down the hill is a short one, marked by puffs of dust as my dad’s boots strike the sand in an ever-increasing tempo, war drums on my hooves as I prepare to crash into the door. The trot becomes a canter, and then a run, and then a flat gallop as I barrel towards the main entrance, a living bullet made out of dark-colored metal and cloth, and loaded with gunpowder made out of hate and thirsty, ragged pony flesh.

I note that the headstone has a name written on it as I run past. It’s fresh, hardly worn by the sand and wind. “Glimmerhoof.”

Name doesn’t matter. I’ve got my own reasons for being here.

The door crumbles like a pillar of ash, dried wood refusing to yield the satisfying crack of timber they always use as a sound effect in the old comics I’ll dig up in ruins sometimes, replacing it with the desiccated sound of something old and forgotten finally put out of its misery.

It reminds me of an old stallion taking a shit and dying on the toilet from the effort before he can pass his stool.

The pot to the side of my skull just hurts.

I go crashing to the side as my momentum is killed deader than a raider with no face, my body tumbling and rolling in a humiliating heap, knocking over chairs and a table in its path like a deranged bowling ball that’d gotten the idea to take itself into a different lane, just to break up the monotony of moving in a straight line all day.

The grey earth colt with mold-green hair is on me before I can right myself, punching and kicking as hard as he can, his unarmored hooves clicking on my breastplate when they connect with it, my face making fleshy smacks when he aims there as soon as he figures out my torso isn’t quite as soft.

He’s thin, scraggly, underfed, his teeth are almost completely rotted out of his head, and his eyeballs are wipe open. Fear, panic and instinct are ruling him now, his blows aimed by some kind of training, some sort of weird martial art that makes my attempts at gathering my wits to defend myself an absolutely laughable endeavor.

He’s got chafing around his neck and fetlocks. The furs’ been completely worn away.

I am a third again as large as this colt, and easily two years his senior. I’m better fed,healthier, and I’d like to think I’m a better fighter. I’ve got a hell of a lot more motivation to keep on living and walk away from this alive.

That particular bubble gets popped over and over again as he thrashes me like a ninety-pound schoolyard sissy.

The literal bubbles of blood leaking out of my left nostril and mouth don’t make the beating any easier to take.

At one point, he literally picks me up with his front hooves and pushes me up towards the ceiling, armor, combat harness, rifle and all, my limbs splayed out like I’m the prettiest ballerina on the stage, and then he slams me down onto the floor so hard that I black out for a second, stripes and stars flickering through my vision as I lie in the wreckage of the table’s remains.

He straddles me and then looks down at me, his front legs pinning mine to the floor, my wings caught in the cloth of my armor so that they’re useless to do so much as get some air circulating in the room and get rid of this damned heat.

The colt leans close, almost like he’s about to kiss me, his wild yellow eyes boring into mine as I start to focus again.

“I don’t have any more time to play with you, but I’ll hear your last words if you’ve got ‘em,” he says, his voice so squeaky and cute that it’s horrifying when juxtaposed against the vicious punches he’d been doling out seconds ago.

I smile up at him, my teeth stained crimson by the bruises and tears lining my mouth both inside and out, my left eye swelling up and making me look even more ridiculous than before.

I spit in his face.

It gives me all the opening I need.

My knee in his crotch is painful. Any stallion with any experience in taking blows below the waist can tell you that. It’s not like taking a punch, or a gun shot, or getting shanked in the gut. That kind of wound makes the body twitch and shudder, do everything it can to get away from the pain, to make the hurt stop long enough for it to start stitching itself back together if it can survive long enough.

Getting kicked in the balls is a paralyzing pain, causing every muscle in your body to lock up for half a second. It’s a stallion’s pride that gets injured when you punch him there, both literally and metaphorically, and I intend to repay this little shit for what he’s just done to me tenfold.

A second kick, and then a third delivered to his gut are all it takes to get the fight back on even terms, the buck going staggering off to the side as he struggles to clutch at his jewels and wipe the spit out of his face at the same time, my hoof slamming into the left side of his face as I get back up.

It’s still too close for the rifle. I can’t draw a bead on him, not when he’s back up and lashing out at me faster than I can aim.

He’s an excellent fighter compared to most wastelanders I’ve encountered. Drunken barfights, raiders stripped of their weapons and angry farmers simply don’t compare. Lucky for me, then, that I don’t fight clean.

He uses his hooves almost exclusively, focusing on quick strikes at sensitive parts of my body, lashing out with one or two punches and then withdrawing to a safe distance, waiting for me to slip up while making a move so that he can dish out more punishment for my error.

I use my body weight, and my surprising speed, to my advantage, absorbing a lot of his blows with the plates on my armor, and blocking the ones with metal-shod hooves when I can’t. All I have to do is focus on my face, protect it so that he can’t knock my brains loose again, and I’m golden.

He’s getting tired and weak. So am I, but I’m bigger, stronger and tougher. The march through the desert wasn’t nearly as difficult for me as it must have been for him, even with the cart being pulled along behind me.

All it takes is one slip up on his part, one punch towards the face that isn’t quite as fast as the others, and I have him.

My teeth sink deep into his flesh and my front limbs pull him closer to me so that he can’t reach my face, his opposite forelimb pinned between our chests where it can’t hit me at full force.
It’s a cobra fighting a snapping turtle, and it turns out the turtle has a mean bite of its own when you piss it off enough.

At least until the cobra decides it’s time to run away.

The pony pulls some kind of weird hold on me, leaving me on my back and gasping as my ribs start to ache, the completely unexpected and unobserved maneuver leaving me upended — aptly enough — like the turtle I’d just been imagining. He’s out the door before I can grab him again, faster than I’ll ever be despite his wounds and bleeding hoof.

By the time I’m upright and facing the door again, he’s almost out of sight, a little black speck on the horizon.

It’s no big, dramatic thing when I gun him down, no long pause to meditate on the life I’m about to take. I don’t stop and think “This colt is even younger than I am, and here I am about to shoot him in the back for just trying to survive.”

I don’t cry, or rant, or angst over it, or tell myself there’s a better way.

I just pull the trigger after I take a second to aim.

He drops before the pain hits.

The trudge out to his body takes a good five minutes or so, he’d covered so much distance before I could get to him. His head’s intact, mostly. I’ve caught him on the back of the throat, the big .45-70 cartridge tearing out his Adam’s apple and leaving a hole big enough for me to stuff an actual piece of fruit inside.

Doesn’t take too long for me to reach down and grab what’s mine out of the holster he’d cobbled together.

I’ll have to replace the mouth-grip’s rubber covering. Colt’d chewed his way right through down to the metal in the week since he’d stolen it.

Mother would be disgusted if she could see what I’d allowed to happen to her pistol.

I don’t notice until two days later that my cutie mark has appeared, a pair of crossed rifle bullets with a wrench partially hidden behind them, their tips sprinkled with a gentle spattering of fresh blood that stands out beautifully against the brass of the casings and the shimmering silver of the wrench.

I was too busy fantasizing about doing to her what I’d done to the colt.

Author's Note

Due to schoolwork and other things making my life busier than it was when I began this story a few weeks ago, I'll be changing the format a bit. The flashback portions will now be their own short chapters, with the present-day portions occupying their own versions of the same. As always, commentary is welcome. Please, tell my why you don't like things! It helps me be a better writer.