Fallout: Equestria: Counting Stars

Dibs on the guacomole.

Darkness.

Well, technically not. I couldn't actually see anything. The equine mind cannot comprehend the lack of sight- ah- whatever, it looked dark as fuck.

It was obvious that I was dreaming, as I felt I was floating in midair with no body. But this was a different kind of dreaming. There was no coin in my pocket to squeeze and wake up, no subconscious ranting. In fact, this wasn’t my subconscious at all, I felt. My subconscious was full of shit.

You have aged beyong your years, my son. I thought.

Wait, what? I didn’t think that! I-

Your mind is strong. Your mental barriers were too strong for even me to bypass whilst you were awake, I thought once more.

However, there is a reason I could sire so many, such a great force.  My strength increases by the second, yet wanes by the hour.

Alright, I knew my mind was effed up, but this was just batshit crazy. Like me.

“Who are you?” I asked aloud, forgetting I had no mouth. The thought instead reverberated inside my head like an echo.

Let’s just call me... your benefactor. Or Tod. Whichever one you prefer.

“Tod.” This right here was a fucking testament to my madness.

Names have great power, Lanthe. I implore you not to overuse them. I wonder-

The voice in my head went silent for a moment.

Ah, the Orchard. Strange, I would’ve thought you to be the Shadow. Nonetheless, your fate is set.

“Saywhatnow?”

Find the Caesar, Centurion. And be glad I chose to spare you. I care not for you. I care for the bastion. Roam, as you call it -- the city that is a testament of your people’s challenge to time.

At this point, I really hoped I wasn’t going all sczitzo. I used to have a friend, Connor was his name. He went all bipolar a few years ago. It wasn’t pretty.

Welcome to the legion, Lanthe. The REAL legion. The legion of change.

*** *** ***

"Pull, you fuckers! PULL!" I heard the voice of a mare yell. But that thought was lost to me, mostly because...

I'm on fire.

"HARDER, DAMMIT! Oh, crap! He's waking up. Lanthe. Lanthe!" the mare yelled again, panic and worry evident in her tone.

My leg is on fucking fire.

“Lanthe! Listen to me!”

I'm burning! I'm on burni-

"OH HOLY FUCKING SHIT! THAT FUCKING HURTS!" My scream resounded through my head, jarring my mind back to the reality from my former metaphysical state. Burning agony coursed through my veins like lava ravaging a lush mountainside, burning all feelings of life and replacing it all with biological hell -- a pain so terrible and unimaginable that I could do nothing but sit there and listen to my own involuntary screams of profanity and strings of nonsense. And as I yelled my lungs out, my throat finally began to feel rougher than a rocky cliff, and it’s soreness only caused me to scream louder.

Through the agonizing hell I was in, I managed to open my eyes to try to confirm my location. What I saw through the haze in my vision was a rickety old floor side made of what was once a sturdy hardwood. Dust and pieces of wood flew about the room, and every few seconds the building would shake hard enough to send several more pieces of debris down on top of me. It may have looked different, but I knew where this was: this was the break room.

"Lanthe, listen to me! This will numb the pain for a minute!" the mare said. Through the corner of my eye, past all the veritable blur and chaos of pain, I saw a shiny metal object flash in Cypress's bloodstained hooves.

Something jabbed into my leg, and the pain decreased from a never ending deathless suicide off a mountain to a dull throbbing. I looked at my savior thankfully and panted, sweaty and tired from my screaming, my throat sore as scraped skin.

It was Cypress. The oversized zebra was piercing my leg with what looked like a large hypodermic needle, labeled with some science shit I didn't understand. The pain was bad alright -- and no matter how much pain killer I’d take, it would still probably feel like my veins were the temperature of the sun -- but nothing compared to what I had felt a few seconds before. My mind wouldn't-,no, couldn't take that pain again.

She looked urgent. “Lanthe, we don’t have much time. When you fell, you got a piece of rebar through your stomach. You’re lucky that you didn’t die.” I nodded jerkily. “We could use healing potions, but we need to pull it out first.” Her face looked sympathetic, yet madly worried. I could tell that she was starting to lose hope, but not for me. For her. And really, who could blame her? Nobody wanted to die, definitely not like this.

Another earth shaking rumble racked the building, sending a cloud of wood and dust up and making the rays of light streaming through the shoddy walls visible one again, like... golden lasers stabbing into the room. Cypress exhaled shakily, seeming lost.

A mare -- one by the name of Vigil -- judging by her voice, barged in through the door to the side and locked all of us with a look of total horror. Her gaze lingered on my wound for a second, her facial expression not leaving me very encouraged. She swallowed her stomach acids and gulped to speak.

"Sarge? They're at the door. It's him or us. We have to leave him or drag him!" Vigil joined Cypress at my side, and I could see that she was half-dressed in guard's armor, with nothing but a hastily donned breastplate and an unbuckled helmet. A submachine gun with a folding skeletal stock hung from a sling around her neck.

Vigil shook off her helmet, revealing her long, flowing, grey-and-white mane. Her eyes, an intense green, looked on with an expression of tension and terror. That did not raise my hopes up in the slightest.

Cypress looked down at my face, her expression solemn and sad. "I'm sorry, Lanthe. We have no choice."

My pain was beginning to come back, the fire blazing, the flowing lava beginning to roll down the slopes of the mountain once more. I dared not speak for fear of losing my lunch, but I nodded quickly. It was the right decision.

"Sarge!" Vigil was already out the door, looking at the outside with wide and terrified eyes.

"Coming!" She started for the door, and hesitated. She turned back. "They're taking prisoners, not killing," she said. She slipped a revolver out of her neck holster, checking the chamber and snapping it shut. "But if you start blazing away when they come in, they won't think twice about feeding you a bullet." She pressed the magnum into my hoof.

She turned and hurried out the door. I looked at the revolver, a .38, by it's appearance. So I could either be taken prisoner, or take one or two with me and die a helpless stallion. What a nice set of options.

"Spray and pray!" I heard the yell from outside, followed by a barrage of gunfire. After about five seconds, it stopped and was returned by a longer, louder, and faster barrage.

But I never got to think about making a choice. I faded into black once more.

*** *** ***

For the third time that day, I awoke. It was getting kind of old, actually. Even me staring down the barrel of a gun didn’t surprise me TOO much. A wee bit scary, perhaps, but no more than the tower exploding upwards underneath my hooves.

Wincing in pain, I put my weary head to the side and spat out a tooth, probably dislodged during the explosion. Rivulets of red blood followed behind it in trails, staining the already-red pool table with my mouth-gore. It was a miracle I didn’t choke on my own blood.

The gun uncocked itself, and pulled the barrel away from my forehead. I recognized it as the one Cypress gave me earlier, the black .38 magnum. My gaze drifted to the stallion holding it. I couldn’t see his face, as It was concealed behind a large, balaclava-like face covering. It had only slits for his eyes, which were bright red, popping out of his wrap like warning signs.

I could tell that my wound had been healed, albeit hastily closed up. I could still feel the injury, but the terrible and recursive agony that was there before had all but dissappeared.

“Get up,” the stallion behind the gun spoke, motioning his head to the side as I did so.

I groaned in pain.

“Make no mistake; you can’t take me. I’ve seen that wound in your tummy. Now get up.”

He was right. I couldn’t see my obviously terrible injury, but I could still feel the blood flowing from the wound. Knowing that pesky thing called physics, there was probably an exit wound too.

Mustering all of the effort that I could scavenge out of my weak, limp body, I obeyed the stranger and slid myself off the table of the floor. I landed face-up.

"Holy shit," Both me and my antagonist said simultaneously.

I had left so much blood on the operating table that it was literally spilling off, the little red waterfall cascading down to the wooden floor and into the spaces between the wooden slats. And to make things better, I could feel the slick puddle of blood below me, confirming that I had an exit wound. My vision went in and out of double again, making the red waterfall into two fountains of kool aid.

The masked pony, tearing his red, unending gaze from the fountain, began rummaging through his pack for something. I was starting to feel real light-headed now, my judgement clouded. I looked at my wound.

"Woah."

My entire front was covered in splotches of red punch, looking as if my fur had been colored with dark red paint. The wound itself had semi-closed up, only a few small, profusely amd freely bleeding holes remaining where the rebar had punched through my abdomen. Next to me, on the floor, empty blood packs and shattered vials of healing potion littered the area. My fur, now painted with red, looked as if I had been dunked in a vat of Cherry Sparkle-Cola.

A joke, one from my early childhood, rose to the front of my teetering consciousness. my head was clouded, and I couldn’t think straight.

"Hey!" I yelled at the bandit. He now had something in his hooves that I couldn't see, and was manipulating it. "What's black, white, and red all over?!?" A hysterical grin crossed my face.

The guard ignored me.

"Me," I finished lamely.

I began spasming and laughing at this terribly funny joke, my bloody coughs mixing in harmony with my crazed, hysterical laughter. The masked stallion turned around, a large, black box-shaped object clamped between his two hooves. Pressing a button on the side of this device, he spoke into it.

“We’ve got one more, Crank Three. He’s losing blood, and fast. Get Zambi in the Doom and we’ll get out of here.” He put pressure off the button.

A garbled reply came through, sounding as if I were under water. My head was beginning to REALLY, really spin this time. I was no longer thinking coherently.

The stallion rolled up the brick-like object in a cloth, and began storing it into his large backpack. As he turned around, I saw some writing on the back of his face-wrap, a three-digit symbol that my oxygen-deprived brain struggled to translate: KR0V6.

“Can you stand up?” My captor spoke in a firm, yet slow and deliberate voice so that I could understand. I simply smiled a madstallion’s smile.

“I’ll take that as a no.” Wrapping is hoof around mine, he tugged me upwards with a firm jerk.

“Brace yourself.”

The muscle-bound stallion assumed a stable stance, bracing himself towards the wall facing to the outside of town. A wicked smile crossed his face.

My cerebellum was starting to comprehend that something was wrong. “Hey, man, I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, bu-”

I was interrupted by a large rumbling noise. Gradually getting louder, it eventually drowned out the sounds from outside.

The stallion’s smile widened. “Get ready to meet-”

The outwards wall exploded inward, wooden splinter-shrapnel stinging my hide with thousands of tiny, barbed needles. The stallion himself stood in his stance, taking the brunt of the force as if it was no more than a firecracker.

With a proud grin, the stallion declared, “Cranky Doom.”

*** *** ***

At first I saw nothing through the cloud of smoke and sawdust, only hearing a throbbing bass guitar, louder than the rumbling that had preceded the blast. The debris from the impact littered the room, and had almost knocked over the blood-soaked billiards table. A long, sharp piece of hardwood had been dislodged from the now-nonexistent wall, and was now buried in the wall on the other side like a crude throwing knife. My captor, unfazed, began to move towards the demolished wall, dragging me as he went. Splinters, now shaken loose from the floor, dug into my fur and pierced my bloody hide as my body was mercilessly pony-handled and beaten towards the site of the explosion.

I closed my eyes, disgruntled at the destruction of my property.

“Let’s go,” Said the stallion, moving once again.

I just stared blankly.

“Zebra! Let’s go!”

I looked at him.

“Th-there...there...” I started. Then an anger in me erupted, and I screamed, “THERE WAS A FUCKING DOOR, RIGHT

THERE!” I hoof-pointed to the spot where a small door had once stood as an exit to the outside. They had just... crashed through it. Like madponies.

My... childhood home. Destroyed. Obliterated. I hadn’t seen the interior of the town, but judging by the sound and shakes from the explosions outside, it wasn’t much better off. By my sense of hearing, the town was being brutally razed to the ground.

Razed to the FUCKING ground.

"ZEBRA!"

Tears flowed freely down my face, mixing with my mouth-blood. I was on my knees, crying and weeping.

"Three months of work. Three. Months. Three. Three. Three.” My brain, now beginning to descend into a blurry throbbing, could only process that one word.

THREE.

The word resounded through my head one last time, before my thoughts stopped completely. I was no longer in control of my body. I couldn’t have had any more than a few liters of blood left. I could still see blurry images of the pulverized break room, but that was fading fast.

I was dragged to the outside, through the charred hole. Thick, heavy clouds had rolled in, blocking out the sun so that I could see nothing but a blob of grey, and what remained of the walls towering upward.

I rough pair of hooves dragged me further outwards, until I felt a metal surface underneath me. A mechanical whirr followed, and a shouting mare’s voice took precedence. I was bleeding out. Like, out-out.

OUT.

*** *** ***

Sorry this took so long! I actually wanted this chapter to be much longer, but I figured that after a month that we might be a litte impatient.

I must say, thanks for reading. And also, YAY! This is the farthest I've made it without putting a story on hiatus!

Also, for all you nitpickers: The speeding up of events at the end was intended as a literary device to show Lanthe bleeding out. I liked it, but please leave feedback!

Thanks,

-Cade YYZ