Fallout Equestria: Operation Suscitabo Solis

Chapter 7: More Than Coincidence

"You saw a PEGASUS come through here and you didn't ask questions? Never mind not a Dashite, but a damn Wastelander Pegasus? Do you have ANY idea how rare that is? Now get your ass over to the vertibuck before I decide to give you more than just a reprimand for incompetence!" The enclave captain barked.

"Ever since that stable exploration gone wrong we haven't had a trace of her, now she pops up again, and our own ground troops are too stupid to bat an eye" he thought to himself. "Shouldn't have let that unicorn run that operation. He screwed it all up and got the damn Steel Rangers after them. Lost some good ponies...... and Her......."
He turned a walked back to the Veribuck.

"I'll find you Amaria, I'll find you."

Far to the northwest New Pegasus, my troubles were just starting. Cazadores. Giant bucking cazadores. I hated those things. Thank Celestia I had good ears and heard the buzzing in time to dodge one as it charged headlong at me. I turned and flew out there in a hurry. If there was one thing I'd learned about these bugs, it was to never let them close. One good sting could debilitate a full grown stallion and then they'd finish you off. Why did I know this you ask? Well if you hadn’t noticed, I tend to do a lot of listening rather than talking. You can learn a lot by just listening in on the tales traders and mercs swap at bars and inns. I opted to loose them with distance. Sure enough they tired once they couldn't catch me, and returned to the townsite. I looped back around and came back at a different angle so as to get a better view. Yup, probably six or seven of those nasty things down there. And a nest, so probably a queen hiding somewhere too. Standard rounds aren't going to do much about their shells. AP usually did the trick. I swapped out the rounds in my rifles magazine and popped it back in. I peered through the scope to see if there was anything worth wasting my time and ammo for down there. The buildings looked mostly intact. However, they didn’t look like they’d been touched in a very long time. No signs of recent activities from scavengers or ponies trying to settle down, so the cazadores must have been in this area for quite some time. A old military wagon sat in the middle of town. A few ammo canisters strewn amongst the long dead remains of soldiers lay nearby. Might be something useful in there. Bam. One less cazadore. I kept still and let the rest calm down. Bam, bam. Two more. I then moved to another rooftop, and no sooner than I did three cazadores swarmed my previous location. Cazadores were smart, but with some skill you could out think them. Boom! The three cazadores exploded in a burst of flame. Trip wired frag grenades. Works like charm every time.

I scanned around for more but found none. Looking back towards the entrance I saw the enormous queen poking out of the hole to the nest. Must have been attracted by the noise. I tossed a few more grenades at the queen, which subsequently exploded in a blast of sticky cazadore guts. Not sure why ponies had so much trouble with these damn things... this seemed easy. Try fight a diamond dog, now that was tricky. Then again, I guess I wasn't a standard pony. Kinda got these wings and a brain full off stuff I can't remember why I know. I guess if it kept me alive it wasn't so bad. I flew down to the wagon and looked over the remains. Ammo, some grenades, a few medical supplies. Those went into my bags. Some old rusty guns.... Not much use in their current state... but perhaps could be stripped for parts. Then I noticed a leather holster by one of the skeletons. I opened it up and pulled out a .357 magnum revolver. It was in near immaculate condition, ivory grips set in oak, and the entire barrel and receiver were engraved with images of equestria's landscape. This gun most have cost a small fortune. On the receiver was the name, " Old Reliable". Perhaps this was an heirloom passed down to a son? I looked in the holster and found a rolled up note. Captain Appleturnover, 14 th MareHave Guards. The date was smudged out.

"This is perhaps the final account of events after the megaspells hit Las Pegasus... the world really did go to shit. We tried to hold our position as ordered and keep everyone calm, but it wasn't much use. Ponies panicking, others going outright mad. A few got too violent and we had to regrettably shoot them. I didn't want to, but I had to maintain order somehow. What kind of pony am I? Not that it really matters. About a week later and we'd run out of meds for the townsfolk. Even our supply was running low. We had to set a guard so no pony stole from our stock. More and more of us started succumbing to either hunger or radiation... reinforcements with aid were supposed to come.... they never did. Probably died or were suffering the same fate. Not like help would have saved us anyways. We doomed ourselves by starting this war, now we're paying for it. Kinda regret not hooking up with that pretty mare in Vegas last summer... then I might've had a son to pass my grandpas gun to... not that it matters now. Guess this is just a pony trying to clear his conscience before he dies.... I'm the last one here... maybe in Equestria... I'm not sure if somepony will ever find or read this, but if you do, please grant me final request. Please bury the remains of me a my squad. At least give us the dignity of some kind of funeral. As for my gun, please keep it. It's served me well, and I hope it does the same for you. Consider it a thank you for final act of kindness for a dying pony."

I tucked the note back into the holster and placed the revolver back in. I didn't know it then, but I'd keep that revolver for a long time. I strapped the holster to my left foreleg where I could grab it easily. Ever since I'd dropped my 10mm for those stable ponies I'd been short a pistol. This more than satisfied that need. I preferred long range, but sometimes things got too close for a rifle. I honoured the captains request and buried their remains under a flagpole in the center of town. I fashioned a few crosses out of boards and placed them at the heads of the graves. Not much of a burial, but at least they got a bit if the dignity they deserved. I gathered the raft of the bones I could find and burned them. Not much remained that was salvageable. No food or weapons, just worn old household items. What surprised me was the decayed but not not that old remains of a pegasi inside one of the houses. His uniform was nearly intact, thus denoting him a Enclave. He had no weapons, and a quick analysis of the body showed he'd died of cazadore venom, but he'd been previously hit by an beam weapon... Deserter? Perhaps. I then moved over to his saddle bag. I was suprised to see it was an enchanted bag. I'd heard about these, but never seen one. The ministry of arcane science was working on them before the war. Bags that could carry four times the carrying weight of a pony. I opened it and began pulling out contents. A few spark cells, a magical plasma pistol, broken, and a few plasma rounds. Then out tumbled a black box with StableTec logos on it. My eyes lit up. Could it be? A single Robronco logo at the top confirmed it. There was a small script as well. Property of StableTec. Prototype Mark 4 Alpha Pipbuck. Testing purposes only. It was. It bucking was! I'd found my Pipbuck! The magical lock was still in place, so I put my hoof to it. It beeped and the lid slid open. There it was, brand new and shiny. It was smoother and more refined than the standard Pipbuck. Closer in design to the Delta model, but contained much more powerful hardware. It featured an integrated broadcaster, a memory orb reader, and a StableTec terminal interface plugin. This thing was loaded. I strapped it onto my right leg, feeling giddy that I now might have some answers. I pushed the power button and it started to boot up. Then it began a user check... that was new. Most didn't do that. The screen went black. Then flashed white. New text appeared.

Welcome Amaria. All parameters checked. Vitals, normal. Surroundings, cleared. Multiple locations discovered, logging. New skills acquired... Notice, you have left vault X-27 exactly 10 years too early. Readjusting parameters...

Then a wave of nausea hit me. My head began to swim, and I collapsed on the floor. What happened next I can only describe a a massive flood of memories all at once. My childhood, Equestria, going though tests and training, and then the big mystery. My purpose. It shocked me so badly my mind cleared and I sat straight up on my haunches. No.... No bucking way! I'm a what? How? And no pony ever detected it? Then my mind kicked in. Yes, it was the perfect disguise. No one would suspect a Pegasus. That was a stroke a pure genius. Well, now that I knew, might as well give it shot. I closed my eyes and focused. "Change... I need to change." Nothing. I kept thinking about it. Nothing. Then the room burst with a orange yellow light. I felt my body expanding.... changing. The ground pulled away from me as my wings felt larger then they ever had. Then I looked up and saw it.... I had a horn. I blinked. Yes, I wasn't seeing things, I had a freekin horn. Not a small dinky one either, it had to be a good two and a half feet at least... So this confirmed it. I got up and moved nearly effortlessly to the hall. This body didn't seem to feel effort at all. I headed for the bathroom and was surprised when I subconsciously ducked my head to avoid hitting my horn on the door frame. I didn't have time to think about it. What I saw in the mirror would have shocked me mere days ago. There stood an alicorn version of my pegasi self. I just stared at myself. This was something else. Two hundred some years and no pony knew. I checked my Pipbuck... Everything checked out normally. A new mission marker had appeared on phillydelphia and hoofington on the map. Item retrieval. Interesting. I somehow already knew what it was. Was this my new alicorn mind at work? I could get used to this. I could almost feel my mind analyzing my surroundings subconsciously. Things like the houses structural integrity, where to hit it to make it collapse, how to fortify it... I could think fast before, but this was on a new level. Out of curiosity I winked at my myself in the mirror, and it dawned on my just how sexy I looked. Damn... Sexy, powerful, and a massive bucking target. Every pony from here to the Hoof wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet in my head. Including the Steel Rangers.... Fuck. This just got more complicated. But I had the solution already. Simply go back to my old form. Simple enough. Wait.... I was talking to myself... Out loud! My voice was back! I started crying with joy. I'd thought I'd never get that back. My voice... it felt so good just to hear it. I'd have to hide that as well, no pony needs to suspect anything. My gear had all magically been removed when I'd changed I noted, thank Celestia, so I enjoyed looking myself over for the next while. This body felt so new, fresh, and powerful. I wanted to try it out, but I couldn't risk it. I focused my magic again a found it easy enough to revert back to my old form, albeit much more powerful now. And it turned out I could still use magic in this form if I needed. Interesting. Never tried that before, but then again, I didn’t know due to the memory blocks. I scrolled through the pipbuck stats again. Damn, I did have implants. Yup, biologically engineered and implant enhanced alicorn. No pony would expect, yet alone believe such a thing was possible. Only alicorns they knew were those freaky ones. As much as I wanted to just march into New Pegas in full alicorn glory, it wasn’t a good idea. Besides, I now suspected I was being hunted. Not just by the alicorns, but the Enclave. Somepony knows something. I grabbed my stuff and activated E.F.S. Nothing on the compass. Good. I took off at a low level flight back to the city. Yup, definitely faster and less effort. I could get used to this. It was night by the time I reached the walls, so I simply slipped in over the wall undetected. Yup, the Enclave had definitely increased ground presence. I tucked into a shadowed corner of a rooftop and began scanning frequencies with my pipbuck. The Enclave broadcast wasn’t hard to find or tap into. Mostly random chatter about patrols and checkins. What interested me was the seemed to be scanning for someone... me... orange maned yellow Pegasus. Possible stable barding. Could be using other gear. Locals confirmed sightings. What I found interesting was I was described as highly intelligent and dangerous, but to be apprehended, not harmed.

Apprehended. Not happening. They were going to need a Raptor to attempt that. I chuckled to myself. This was a nice change to be several steps ahead of everypony. I had my suspicions as to why they wanted me, but I needed be sure. That part wouldn’t be easy. Cloud terminals, especially working ones weren’t that common down here, and any that there were either had top notch encryption or a heavy enclave guard. That pretty much left me only a couple options. Infiltrate the Enclave, or resort to my backup plan. Infiltrating right now was a bit too risky, even for me. Better to drop off the map for a while and let things cool down. I’d have to look into the backup plan. I snuck off the roof and dropped down into an alleyway. EFS was clear. Good. I activated my disguise spell and morphed my appearance. Unicorn mare, light grey, black mane. There, that should work. Learning that reverse changeling magic certainly was coming in handy. I remembered back to just how hard those spells had been to get right. I strolled out of the alley and right up to the main gates. The guards didn’t even look up and the Enclave trooper stationed there didn’t even acknowledge me. I snickered to myself. If ably they knew. Once out of view, I did another quick frequency scan. Nothing new. Nothing on my EFS either. Good. Alright, time to go get some answers from old Corncob. Not like I didn’t know or have my suspicions already, I just wanted confirmation. I pictured Newsprings in my mind. The back of my little shop. My magic crackled and then there was a flash. I looked up, I was back in Newsprings, right behind my shop. Nice. Haven’t lost my touch in teleportation. I probably could have teleported elsewhere, but I wasn’t going to risk porting into something I didn’t know was there. Collapsed building, subway tunnel full of feral ghouls.... no thanks. I’ll stick to locations I’ve been to recently.I looked at my EFS. A few green blips and one yellow. All far. I grabbed a few items from my secret stash and deposited them in my saddlebag. I wasn’t likely to be coming back so I might as well take everything I may need. Once I’d grabbed everything, I headed straight for the airbase. I’d memorized their patrol schedule of the perimeter, so crossing the fence wasn’t going to be an issue. I remembered the incident with the stealthbuck. Yeah, not happening again. You could hide your signature and appear invisible, but one thing they didn’t fully manage to hide was part of the user heat signature. It was enough to hide from sensors and heat scopes though, so the large majority couldn’t see it. Runs out I had a little trick. I closed my eyes and focused, then opened them again. My vision was a bit blurred, then it focused. Mostly dark or deep reds, here and there a patch of yellow, and then far off in the distance along the perimeter fence line a few small white objects. Yep, I had heat vision, just another a several little built in tricks in my bag. I’d pretty much always had it, just thanks to those memory modifications they’d tried on me I slightly forgot them. Yes, they’d tried the whole memory manipulation thing on me. Tried to suppress memories so I’d only remember them when they were triggered by certain things or events. I’d caught on to what they wanted from the get go and just played along. Those plans only managed to succeed partially. Sure, create a hyper intelligent biologically engineered and bio implant enhanced alicorn and expect her to NOT figure out what your doing? It was laughable. Lucky for them I did know all about Suscitabo Solis, or that early wake up from the stable would have ruined everything. I slipped on some scribe attire I’d picked up some time ago, and being in unicorn form meant this would go pretty smoothly.

As predicted the rangers were more or less oblivious to my presence. I made my way all the into the mainframe room and settled in a corner. All I got was an acknowledging nod from the other scribes before they went back to their duties. Time to do some digging. I logged into a terminal using an admin override I’d leaned back when I was secretly interning at Robronco. Oh yes, they had me learning stuff from all over. The override worked like a charm and I began browsing what was archived on the system. Lots of technical documents, maps, schematics. I made copies and transferred them to my pipbuck. Might come in handy. The pipbuck automatically updated its files with the new data. Yup, good old Mark 4 Alpha. If it was the 3000 or less I’d have to manually update. Now to go off on a bit of a side track here, the Mark 4 Alpha was perhaps the best possible variant of the Pipbuck that was available in my knowledge. Sure it lacked some of the built in spells like levitation that others had, but none could compare to its on-board storage. That combined with its ability to connect over broadcasts to other PipBucks to update itself with information they had acquired made it extremely useful. More or less standard design and layout, but along with its radio, Geiger counter, E.F.S., and S.A.T.S. this baby had a built in memory orb reader, broadcaster, and a data port connector. No risks trying to touch your horn to a corrupted orb.E.F.S. was a bit different too. If I wanted, it would display brief info on whatever I happened to be looking at. Types of plants, distances, etc. Pretty much an all inclusive system. Well, back to the matter at hand. I did some more digging and soon found what I wanted. The Elder’s personal logs. This was going to be juicy if my suspicions were right.