Fallout Equestria – Morals of the Wasteland

“You ain’t got no family, u’ little prick! There ain’t nopony out there who would give a buck about’u!”

“Gideon, you may be one of the longest living Slave Ponies in here, but they will find a way to starve you eventually. Matter of fact they enjoy it more when their slaves die slowly, and you know that!”

“Apparently, everything out there in the Wasteland that crawls, trots, flies, and squats wants to kill you. How is that any better than here?”

“Blood Blade does not enjoy disobedience! Take a look at those slaves as bugs and vultures feast on them! THIS, is what happens to all who disobey or run!”

“One day, you’ll see. I will make them all bleed. I will make them see the hell they’ve created. One day, when I’m free, I will find a way to burn this place in all ways, if it takes me the rest of my worthless life.”

Chapter 2: A Gift

Trotting, trotting, trotting, more trotting, more trotting, even more trotting. Definitely how I imagined my first few days out of Out Town. Though I guess I shouldn’t entirely act like I didn’t see this coming. I mean even while still in that town, it was generally obvious that Wastelands are miles and miles of pure nothingness.

I would have asked the Mercs if we could slow down a bit, but they made it clear before; no talking unless allowed. So instead, I tried to ask for a brake in some other way. I kept showing signs of tiredness as we kept walking. Maybe they seemed careless about whether I live or not, but surely they didn’t want to get to Red Eye empty-hoofed.

“Hey guys! Could we slow down? The little kid here is getting tired.”

It worked.

“Well than carry him, he doesn’t look that heavy!”

Or not. The Merc leader, who during all the trotting I heard him being called Dual Pistols, did not want to stop.

But, now I no longer considered stopping myself, because I saw a light in the distance. Obviously that means a settlement, and a settlement, meant a rest.

But then, Dual said “There’s Junction Town. Remember, we go through a passage in the mountain so we can get to the Facility without provoking those damn Griffons.”

“Lead the way Boss.” Said another one of the Mercs, just at the moment when I was about to say “Are you KIDDING ME!?”

Obviously I didn’t say it out loud, I just thought of it, in my head. But seriously, can you blame me? I was already getting tired of all the trotting, and now, instead of going to a nearest town where I could rest even if I was ordered to rest in mud, we were changing directions towards some high mountains.

I did my fare share of mountain climbing when I was a slave in Out Town, but that can only mean that I absolutely did not enjoyed general mountain climbing.

I did slew down a bit, and finally one of the Mercs rushed me by pushing me and saying “Hey, shit-for-brains! Keep moving. Nopony is gonna carry you if you drop dead.”

I could almost swear that there was another settlement far to the East of our location from which I saw smoke coming. Probably another slaver-settlement. Or maybe just a war-zone for all I cared.

I tried to keep away the very thought about climbing the mountains. I learned long ago in Out Town that if you just keep picturing the first hard steps of an upcoming misery, the beginning is just gonna feel much harder. So instead I focused my mind on something else, clearly forcing myself not to think about the damn climbing or even hiking. As if I wasn’t tired enough.

What else was there to think about? I just heard them saying “Griffons”. Yeah, I know what Griffons are. Some weird species of crossed eagles and lions. I heard that during the war, their purpose wasn’t so different from today. They worked as Mercenaries. Still do today.

A lot of those so-called “Talon Mercenaries” that are all Griffons often made a lot of deals with Blood Blade. They seem to be completely unorganized, since at one time, I hear that there is a group of Talons that have some sense of goodness, and at other times, I hear that they serve Red Eye. Oh Griffons. Who can understand them, right?

And finally, when we reached the foot of the mountains and I was ready for the worst, the lead merc suddenly started pushing away a few rocks from a pile with his magic. He was a unicorn, and apparently a strong one, because those rocks were as big as him, and he moved them with ease.

Suddenly, some kind of cave was revealed. Of course! They said before “Passage through the mountains”. That moment before, I only heard best the word mountain. I was so confused about why we weren’t going to the nearest settlement, that I didn’t heard that part.

Guess, no climbing then? Replaced by darkness.

By then I figured it out. They were simply avoiding that settlement because it was controlled by the Talon Griffons with whom apparently nopony gets along. Also, the Facility was right behind the mountains, so we were taking a shortcut.

The passage stretched like a long tunnel, and the deeper it went the darker it was. The lead merc and the two other unicorn ones lighted up their horns and, while I wished everypony else in our group had torches, the path was now decently visible.

That reminded me of another thing back from Out Town. By now you may be surprised that I mention Out Town so much. Well, can you really blame me? You know that I’ve spent my whole life there. I am not remotely familiar with anything else in existence than being a slave in that place.

The one thing back there that this tunnel reminded me off, was “The Coffin”. A form of punishment designed by Whiplie. Slaves are basically just buried alive for a given time, and Raiders leave it up to our luck’s for us to survive. If we’re lucky, the raiders dig us out before we run out of breath, and if not, they obviously dig out an already buried corpse. Makes no difference for them. It’s just general fun. I was punished like this only once, after I accidently dropped a shovel on Whiplie’s hoof.

Anyhow, the passage was getting darker, and was I getting more scared? I tried to contain myself, but memories of being buried alive aren’t really the kind that you can just forget. I kept begging fate “Please, don’t let this be my permanent coffin. I’ll live with it being my second and last, but please not in the dying way”.

I did get a response to my silent begging. I think by that time we were still halfway through the whole passage. We heard sounds far in the tunnel ahead of us. Growling sounds. I didn’t took any guesses what it was, but Hector behind me did.

“Hey, Ghoulie, please tell me that was you” He asked.

Why was it that he was asking the creepy Ghoul if it was him that was making growling noises? Well, he was a Ghoul.

“Oh balls.”

That’s what I said out loud as I realized what the sounds were. Feral Ghouls.

There they were, far away already looking at us and barking like dogs. Not only did they decayed, they were still covered with decaying clothes, and at least two of them had decaying armor on them.

The mercs around me, started preparing their weapons. Long was I watching their weapons and battle-saddles as we were going through the desert. The Merc Boss used his telekinesis to pull out two pistols. They looked a bit rusty but still in good condition. It was reliefing that I could say the same about the other weapons the Mercs had. The three other Unicorn Mercs pulled out weapons with their magic. Two of them had simple Assault rifles and one of them lifted a Combat Shotgun. The weapons I saw the other Earth Pony mercs were another assault rifle, another pistol and a Brush Gun. And yes, the one with the pistol used his mouth. I’ve heard that Earth Ponies like me are considered weird for using their mouths to shoot. Well, for small guns like pistols, yes, but for rifles, they were always specifically designed for hoof usage.

All the mercs were getting into shooting positions and the growling noises were getting louder. Hector pushed me against the wall, and started warning me.

“Remember that if you try to run, that collar blows your head off, but if you’ll still try to run, I will shoot you in your hoofs and let the ferals right there feast in you before the collar does the job, you got that?!”

I quickly nodded a few speedy times, not just because he threatened me. The growling was getting closer and louder, and I never saw Feral Ghouls before. I just heard about them when I occasionally wondered things about Normal Ghouls.

Speaking of which, I wondered what the Ghoul was armed with. Then I saw him standing on his back hoofs like the other Earth Pony mercs, and from under his duster, he pulled out a sniper rifle. For a slave I had fair knowledge about weapons. I saw the whole armory in Out Town when I occasionally worked in the ammo factory the raiders had there. I saw heavy weapons like flamethrowers, and missile launchers, and even energy weapons.

The Boss was the first to start shooting. I quickly got over how loud the shots were, so while I still hugged the wall, I took a look at what laid ahead of the tunnel. There I saw them. The REAL zombies. They looked nothing like regular Ghouls. Those ferals . . . . . . well, then I realized that this is a good name. They growled and growled, and were clearly getting angrier with each next shot they received.

But, when I saw them, than . . . . . . Wow, the Ghoul in our group was still scary, because they looked ugly, but they at least still had their skins. But they were really, really wrinkly as if it was decaying. Ghoulification as of then, looked like something much worse than death for me.

The Mercs continued to shoot with extreme ferocity and they didn’t seem to be scared at all. Empty bullets and shotgun shells were piling up under out hoofs. Hell, the mercs were even carefully paying attention at their “gun-having” advantage, because they were not all shooting at once. Dual and few of the others stood right in the front and every time they needed to reload, the ones behind them were replacing them in the bullet storming. The Ghoul Merc during this whole time was in the very back making every bullet count. But the bigger distraction during this time, was seeing how many of those feral ghouls were coming.

Used-up ammo and magazines weren’t the only things piling up on the floor in the tunnel. The ghouls were dropping pretty easily, and I saw some of their heads popping. But more than just heads were eventually going to pop.

Dual suddenly lost his coolness and shouted “AW BUCKING SHIT! A GLOWING ONE!”.

A glowing what? And then, as if seeing the tunnel sprayed with radioactive bucking blood wasn’t bad enough, light filled it up. Light from a literal glowing feral Ghoul.

Glowing ones are a rare, dangerous kinds of Ghouls. They are disposed to radioactivity so much, that it makes their entire flesh glow, and they become sources of radioactivity themselves. And one of them was charging right at as, probably getting ready to emit a radioactive explosion from himself.

“KILL IT! KILL IT NOW BEFORE IT GETS CLOSER!” shouted Dual. And for good reason. Radiation acts as something of a healing force for Ghouls, feral or not. Glowing ones can definitely heal themselves and other Ghouls around them, when they emit Radiation out of themselves at will.

And then I realized what mistake the Mercs did. They all fired at the same time. They didn’t considered that they will ALL need time to reload. That’s why the Glowing didn’t go down quickly. Only Dual and two others had reloaded by the time he was just 30 feet away from us.

The Mercs finally were almost as scared as me. Dual jumped to the side before the Ghoul could finally grab his neck and most possibly rip it off. Others weren’t so lucky,

Including me.

Everypony did fired just enough at him to kill him, but what was too late for, was for stopping him from make us bath in radiation.

All I saw a second later was just green. You know what. The green-ness of radioactivity. The Glowing Ghoul, just before he stopped galloping at us and stopped breathing, did exactly what Dual feared. He emitted so much radiation I could feel my internal organs acting funny, and that’s beside me becoming nauseous.

After all the green was gone, I saw everything tripled. I figured that this was my mind being exposed to the ordeal. I heard the other Mercs coughing and while there were much more of them now, I could tell all of them were almost as nauseous as me.

I was starting to lose consciousness.

So this is it, huh? My first day in life out of the Town of misery and torture turns out to be a one-way trip to most certain doom, where I die in what I assumed, is the most typical death in the history of first-timers of the Wasteland. I remember I said I don’t mind dying, but do you think I meant dying so quickly? And without doing something outside of the chains?

However, just as I was breaking my nose while collapsing on the floor, I felt someone grabbing me. And that’s all I remember, because afterwards, I just passed out.

Before I even opened my eyes, I was breathing in smoke. I woke up by a campfire. That could have only meant that I was out for a long time. Unfortunately, not enough time to be out of the tunnel apparently.

I come to my senses and I see that the campfire is in the middle of the tunnel that still seem to be going for miles in both directions. That wasn’t the worst part though.

The Pony I saw then sitting opposite me by the fire, was the one that grabbed me and probably saved me from radiation poisoning. But no. It wasn’t a Pony, it was the Ghoul.

The exact same Ghoul that freaked me out during this whole journey. Off course he survived this. Non-feral Ghouls are also immune to radiation poisoning.

He was just sitting there, staring at me, still in his duster, with his gun concealed. He looked different than before in way. His blood was glowing. Must have been the exposure to the radiation that caused that. You probably think that like many Ghouls, he was looking at me like he was about to eat me alive, but having spent time with some of the most bucked-up Raiders ever, I can recognize a cannibalistic glare. That wasn’t one.

After about five seconds of silence, the freaky Ghoul Pony finally spoke.

“I don’t recommend any fast movements. That thing on your hoof is saving your life right now as we speak, so don’t shake it off.”

He was referring to a bag of RadAway that I had inserted with a needle to my left hoof. Even in these time, nopony ever gets used to needles for the first time, but he warned me that this is healing me, so with that in mind, all I did was just get a little surprised. The thought that I had all that radioactive shit out of my body was very reassuring.

I was so confused. This Ghoul Pony obviously wanted me alive for some reason. However, surely it wasn’t just out of kindness, because I suddenly realized I still had my slave-collar on. He said that the thing on my hoof was saving my life as we speak. Well the other thing on my neck was probably counting down to zero the clock of my life as we speak. Maybe he didn’t figured out how to take it off? Either way, the rule of silences probably didn’t applied anymore.

While he was still looking at me with his, scary dead eyes, I asked him questions.

“What the hell just happened? Are we the only ones who made it?”

“Don’t tell me that you already started to like your new owners” He replied. He has made it clear before that he doesn’t like them.

He continued talking “Yeah, the others are probably coughing up their own blood right now. There was enough radiation there to make them less able to gallop.”

So they were all dead? I didn’t know if I should be happy about this or not. They may have been mercenaries that were just selling me later on, but now being a slave to a Ghoul? Probably as a backup snack? At this point I was more and more to ask why I was still alive?

“And . . . . . why are we still alive?”

With each next answer he gave, he was making it clearer that he doesn’t like me.

“You mean why didn’t I leave you back there so I wouldn’t have to share some of the loot?”

He then pointed his head at a bunch of bags. Those were most if not all of the Mercs’s saddlebags. I could tell before that they were probably full of food and drinks. I reminded myself how long I was possibly out of consciousness, and plus the amount of bags, the Ghoul must have returned for them a few times. That made it more obvious that all the Dual and all the other Mercenary Ponies were dead.

“You’re lucky I grabbed this too, or you literally wouldn’t be in one piece.”

He said that as he was showing me the detonator to my collar. All the more reason for me not to run away. And I did considered doing so, because first of all, I was stuck with the Ghoul Merc of all the others that were back there, and second of all, the freedom of going anywhere without somepony shooting at you was still a beautiful thought for me at that time. Little did I know that this happens in the Wasteland a lot, whether your with somepony or not in your travels.

At this point, I had to risk he wouldn’t be upset if I asked impolitely.

“What do you want from me?”

He answered my question while putting the detonator under his duster and still giving me the scary look.

“Me? Nothing. Somepony else I know wants you.”

Does this mean he still wants to deliver me to this Red Eye? That’s what I thought, but the answer he gave me was much different. Though it made it clear that apparently he doesn’t work for Red Eyes army either.

“I don’t know if it makes any difference to you, but no. It’s not that asswhole Red Eye.”

I responded “Well, than who is it?”

Then he suddenly got a lot less scary when he explained everything.

“Alright, I’ll lay it all out for you.” He stood up and came a little closer “First off, are you familiar with what I putted on your other hoof?”

He was pointing at my other hoof, than I noticed that he putted something on it that would eventually mean a consolation for my collar.

A strange piece of metal with a terminal screen on it, glowing in an amber color, with a strange picture of a pony in it. Upon seeing it, I didn’t freak out the same way I did when I saw the RadAway inserted in my veins. I haven’t learned yet at the time that this was an actual PipBuck.

“Well, the way you’re looking at it, I guess the answer is ‘no’”

It was true, I wasn’t familiar with them at the time. And it was kind of stupid that I didn’t realized first, it did say right next to the screen, “PipBuck model 3000”. He then explained it all to me.

You see, when the Great War started, the Stables weren’t the only things built for the purpose of saving life from the bombs. Since the Stables were basically giant underground shelters, all occupants of each Stable out there were given special devices so that each one can learn easier on the most basic of needs. Those devices were the PipBucks; another scrap of miracle created from the combined forces of advanced science and great magic. They can monitor each owner’s health, equipment, level of radiation, and even calculate the possibility for hunger and dehydration. They can also be used for help when tinkering with other technology and enchanted items. Those were just almost half of all the magical crap those techno-magical miracle-do-ers could do. And now, one of them was mine.

Just as I just explained it to you, the Ghoul Pony did it the same way to me. He gave partially a little history lesson about how hard all these years ago Ponykind tried to maintain what little population it had left. I’m sure he was annoyed by the fact he had to tell me EVERYTHING.

“Thank you? I guess. For giving me something that . . . . .”

You have to admit, a PipBuck is one of the greatest things you can find in the Wastelands, so off course I wanted to say ‘awesome’. Find, but not use. You think you can just put on any PipBuck out there and use it like an abandoned terminal? It’s more complicated than that.

The Ghoul then continued.

“You’ll have plenty of time and opportunities to learn how to use it and find out what each button does. Right now, I want to finish explaining to you why I’m risking that much to save your sorry ass.”

I was looking forward to start pressing all the buttons, but I listened.

“Remember how I said, that somepony I know wants you alive? And that it wasn’t Red Eye?”

I nodded, and then he pulled out from his pocket a little holodisk. Holodisks were special message disks that can be listened to with PipBucks.

“This is the message from that Pony, and it is to you.”

He gave the holodisk to me, and it wasn’t easy for me to take it from his, rotting smelly Ghoul hands.

I quickly figured out how to play holodisks on my new “toy”. I just inserted it in the right place, and all the buttons were marked “Stats”, “Items”, and “Data”. I picked “Data”, selected “Notes”, and played the message.

It was a recorded message, and by the voice I recognized it was a Mare. One that sounded strangely familiar.

Gideon, Listen very closely.

Yes, I know your name, and I know much more than that about you.

If you’re listening to this, then that means that you are finally out of Out Town, and that your still alive as I always hoped. I’m sure you don’t remember me, but I was a slave in that place just like you. Several years ago I was sold to some sick ponies, and I used that opportunity to break free.

Now, just a few days ago I’ve sent my friend Deadtrot here to get you out of there. I am now a free pony. I kind of live now as a member of a vigilante group of Ponies who like me want to make a difference in the Wasteland, fight for good. The Ponies of the Wasteland have been bleeding long enough, and we bring light and hope to them. With that in mind, you’re probably wondering why I’ve sent Deadtrot only for you and not every other slave in that horrible place. It’s because I care for your life and freedom most of all.

This is very hard for me to say it straight like that, and I know that you might feel angry. And once I tell you, you’ll have every right to hate me. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I just want a better life for you.

Gideon . . . . . . my name is Sunlight Flower . . . . . . I . . . . I’m your Mother.

Ever since I have left Out Town, I’ve been fighting for my own freedom so that one day I could fight for yours as well. Even back then I did all I could to save you from the hell that you undoubtedly lived through. But the Raiders of Out Town don’t just enjoy physical pain of their slaves.

I still feel all matter of pain myself, not just because you were taken away from me, but because right now I couldn’t come for you myself. You have to understand that it just had to be another way. The Ponies with which I live right now, they need me too, and also, if I were to come for you in Out Town myself, the Raiders would recognize me. They would hang us both.

Now look, I know Deadtrot personally. He’s also a member of our group. I know that he wouldn’t fail to bring you to us. Yes, that’s right. He will help you get to us.

Our hideout is within the ruins of a place called Ponyville. The PipBuck that you’re using now, will help you in your travel. Learn how to use it, and Deadtrot will meanwhile teach you on how to use a weapon and how to survive. Listen to everything he says, and try to learn to trust him.

He’s your new best friend now.

I know that this is a lot to throw in at somepony at once, but I believe in you, and with a PipBuck of your own, and Deadtrot as your guide, you WILL make it. I know you will. I know in my heart that despite all these years, you are still alive. And anypony who survived Out Town can most certainly survive the Equestrian Wasteland.

When you’ll get to us . . . . . then you can start asking questions. Gideon, I repeat . . . . . I do not expect you to forgive me. You have every right not to love me. I’m obviously not a great Mother, if I let my baby to be raised in a town of slavery. But at least you’ll be safe here, and you will have a better life, than one in chains.

Goodluck . . . . . . I love you.