Fallout Equestria: Crystal Reborn

Chapter Two: Rude Awakening

"I never could understand why one pony would want to kill the other."

"Ow my head, what... whats happening?" I started to rub my eyes and wiped off the glass in front of me. There stood several griffons, there four of them. Two of them had on some type of combat armor, the other had on a hazmat suit. I have never seen a griffon hazmat suit before and the last one was wearing a crown. He looked a lot like the griffon king that I saw before. I saw the hazmat griffon open up the pod that Shining Armor was in and saw the king look at me. He had white feathers on from his neck up and had all grey feathers on his wings with a gray body. He was definitely a descendant of the king I once knew.

"My great grandfather was right, you and Shining Armor did survive the war. Its a shame I have to do this to both of you but I will return for you princess but for now watch me take what you hold dear," he laughed maniacally. He was a cliché version of the king I knew that's for sure. He was your stereotypical storybook villain. Although he could be just be doing this to spite me because I am powerless. I felt the pod start to get colder again. I again found myself drifting off to sleep.

I awoke again, but this time it was a little bit different. I did my best to look through the glass to see if anypony was there. Then my pod opened. I fell out and landed on the floor. "Ow, ugh that hurt," I sat down and rubbed my head. I had a bad headache but I figured it was because of the cryogenic sleep. "Tho-those griffons were they real or was it just a dream?" I looked up and Shining Armors pod and glanced in it. I felt my heart sank. "Shining Armor is really gone. I swear I am going to kill the griffon king for this, he is going to pay," I looked around still seeing all the other pods closed. I was wondering why all of them were closed. I walked over to the terminal at the end of the room. I selected residents status. As I went down the list of the ponies that were in the room I saw that the list said all the same things for everypony. They all have died from asphyxiation, Shining Armor's pod said status unknown. I turned the terminal off and walked into the room next to this one. As I tried to collect my thoughts I passed by Starlight's pod. "Oh that's right I need to release Starlight from her pod. I searched the room for its terminal. After a few minutes of searching I found it. As I was going down the list of ponies it shows they died from asphyxiation. However Starlights said unknown so there may be a chance she is still alive. I started the defrost procedure for her pod. When the pod door finally opened I heard her take a deep breath and start coughing. "Oh thanks Celestia your ok Starlight," I was so happy I ran up to her and hugged her.

"Cadance... is that you. Whats happened why is it only you and me out of the pods?" She gave me a blank look I didn't know how to tell her everyone was dead so I decided to just go out with it.

"Everypony died. They died of asphyxiation, Shining Armor was kidnapped by the griffons, their kingdom didn't fall after the bombs fell they continued to live on. We need to go and get him," I was frantic, I wanted to go right away and go fight the griffons. I helped Starlight up and let her get her bearings.

"So Shining Armor is gone. we can wait on him for the moment Cadance we need to get out of here. Let's head to the armory we can find something to defend ourselves with and maybe some armor. I don't think Equestria will be as friendly as we remember, follow me I know where it is," Starlight got up and started walking to the door. I followed behind her. I look around and the walls seem to be unmaintained. We walked a for a little bit, I had nothing to say I just had a hard time wrapping my head around what was happening. "So here we are Cadance, there may not be a lot of weapons in here this stable. We weren't equipped like with the same stuff, hold on let me put in my access code," She turned on the terminal, she worked quickly and she typed rather fast, I heard a click and the door opened. We walked inside and started looking around trying to find some weapons.

I started to dig around in one of the piles of dirty vault suits and a 10mm pistol was under the pile. "Starlight! I found one come over here," I yelled at her from across the room. She came over to me levitating a small yellow box. "What's that box for?"

"You found a 10mm cool give it here," she took the gun and started to examine it. She pressed a button on it and a clip slid out from the bottom of the gun. "There are three bullets in the clip and the clip can only hold twelve bullets. The yellow box here contains bullets for the gun," she used her magic to start loading the bullets into the clip. "We only have five spare bullets so we have to use this wisely. Cadance do you know how to shoot a gun?"

"I may I haven't shot conventional firearms like that, I used to have a laser pistol on me but I dropped it trying to get here," I felt bad about never taking the a firearms course at the castle, I knew how to shoot magical energy weapons and laser weapons but not conventional firearms. "If we can get to the castle armory inside the city we should be able to re-equip ourselves. So should we head out?" Starlight nodded and we started walking, we followed all the signs to the stable door. Starlight walked up to the control panel and plugged her PipBuck in. Then a yellow light started flashing and the giant machine on the ceiling went forward into the door and pulled the door back rolling it to the side. On the other side of the door was a similar look stable door but this was a elevator leading to the top. I walked outside the stable door and pressed the red button to call the elevator down. Starlight joined me shortly. The elevator made a large screeching noise at it came down. Once it stopped me and Starlight stepped on and the elevator took off for the top. There was an outer shield for the vault door elevator which opened as we approached it. I squinted my eyes, it was much brighter out here then it was inside the stable. Once the elevator stopped at the top I rubbed my eyes again and let them get used to the light. What I saw was not what I expected. The sky was darkened and covered with clouds. My PipBuck's watch said its 2:30 pm. "This isn't right why is it so dark and its only 2:30pm?"

"Let's go, the map on our PipBucks says the castle is to the east of us. We need to start walking traveling at night in the crystal empire is a bad idea. We have no idea if the world has changed or not," Starlight was right there were monsters that were known to roam the area around the Crystal Empire. The castle is only a days trot away anyways. We walked down to the gate where there were soldier ponies not refusing to let ponies in. Now there were just skeletons of ponies who used to be. Something that I couldn't understand is why aren't the power armor ponies here. Did the survive the blast because of their armor? I don't think I will know the answer to that one. Once we got to the bottom of the hill we walked on the tip of the castle was barely visible from the bottom of the hills. What was left of the pine trees blocked my view of it and so we started our journey.

****************************************************************

Several hours have gone by, it's now 10pm. We are just at the edge of the city limits. "Shall we call it a night Cadance? My hooves are killing me, we should enter the city in the morning," So we made camp outside the city and started a fire to keep us warm. "Cadance want to take shifts on sleeping, I don't want a bear coming at us while we sleep," she playfully laugh and I laugh along with her. "I will take the first shift I will wake you up in 5 hours,ok," I nodded and laid down and fell asleep. I started to dream, it was something that really never happened to me. I either didn't have a dream or was plagued with nightmares. This dream was pleasant it was before the war and I was at the crystal fair. The one right after we defeated King Sombra. I say the crystal ponies full of life and energy. Damn do I miss those times. After that I was woken up by Starlight."Cadance, it's your turn to keep watch," she gave me the pistol and laid down and fell asleep. Three hours had past and the sun was starting to rise. With the daylight fast approaching I was able to see down one of the streets. There were four ponies each one was holding a gun to each other.

I tapped her to wake up. "Starlight, Starlight get up quick!" I did my best to say this in a quiet tone, I didn't want them to know I was here. "Starlight get up," I used my magic to shake her.

"Wha-whats going on?" I put my hoof over her mouth and pointed over at the four ponies. "Oh so there are survivors, should we go say hi to them," Starlight got up and shouted "Hello to you over there!" He voice echoed through the streets each one of those ponies looked right at us. Then I heard gunshots, two of the ponies were on the floor bleeding from their heads and the other two came charging at us.

"Oh no what do we do," I felt utter terror the two remaining ponies came close and used fallen trees for cover they started shooting at us. Starlight grabbed the gun and started shooting back at them. She fired 2 shoots and each of those shots hit the one of the ponies and that one dropped dead. My PipBuck identified the two as raiders. Both of them were raiders I didn't understand what that was but right now I need to focus on surviving. I cast a paralysis spell on the raider in front of us. The bullets stop, I ran up to him, he was breathing heavily and I could tell he was trying to break free. I levitated him up and leaned it against the tree and removed his helmet. He was red unicorn buck with a orange mane.

"Fuck you, once I am free I am going to tear you apart and pin you to my wall," That red buck was still able to talk but I wish he couldn't.

"Do you know who I am?" I spread my wings out and gave him a menacing look.

"No why the hell would I? Your probably one of the alicorns that serve the goddess although, I have never seen a pink one like you, and even if I didn't I don't give a fuck," he didn't seem to want to cooperate but I have my ways.

"Now look I am one of the three alicorn princess from before the war and leader of the Crystal Empire, so I suggest you tell me what I want to know."

"Ha, good one, one of the three princesses. Everypony knows they all died when the bombs fell," He rolled his eyes, Starlight was growing rather impatient with him.

"You better believe she is the real deal. She survived in Stable 13 with me, we are the only survivor. So you can either tell us what we want to know or I can send you straight to Tartarus. Our magic strong enough alone to rip you in two and send you to the moon," Starlight started to bluff a little there, I wasn't that strong in magic.

"Ok, ok, just calm down I will tell you what we want to know, just ask away," the raider was scared out of his mind, looks like Starlight was great at persuasion or threatening whichever came first.

"Now then, what is your name and have you seen a bunch of griffons carry away a pony with cybernetic legs?" I demanded that he answered I needed leads before I went to Griffonstone and shot up the place.

"My name is Napalm, and no I haven't seen anyone like that, now can you let me go?" I took his weapons, ammo and saddlebags from him.

"You can either join us or you can try to walk back to your raider friends who are left and explain what happened, your choice," Starlight said from behind me talking as she was making a bargain for his life. "Maybe if you came with us you will have a less chance of dying hmm," Starlight was talking in a very suave tone, I feel she was used to stuff like this.

"No, I am going to make my way to the Jewel and probably go back to mercenary work, I don't think I am cut out to be a raider," He really didn't seem like the raider type considering we were able to beat him rather easily.

"Whats the Jewel?" I assumed it was some type of city or stronghold.

"The Jewel is one of the biggest settlements in the Crystal Wastes. It's just north of here past the old castle just be careful, there is a settlement of ghouls on the way and not all of them are sane," I disabled the spell on him he got back up and began to run away, I wasn't surprised that he ran, I would have run away if I was in the same situation. I wondered what a ghoul was but that wasn't important. Starlight tried to go after him but I stopped her and shook my head.

"Let's get moving again, we already wasted a ton of time," Starlight trotted towards the city streets. I trotted up next to her, still in the back of my mind I wondered how she was able to be such a smooth talker.

****************************************************************

We continued to walk through the city, the streets were covered in broken wagons and skeletons. It was a horrible sight to see. My heart sank even lower, the city I once knew and loved was gone, my PipBuck started clicking. This happened every so often as we traveled through the city streets. The blast that hit the castle hit pretty high so the wind must have spread the radiation out all over the city. Now I was able to see a good majority of the castle. There was a huge hole on the side of the castle where the megaspell hit. I check the map on my PipBuck and we weren't too far away and we would be there in about a hour. However the closer we got the harder it was to walk the streets. A few blocks away from the castle a building had fallen into the path to the castle.

"What do we do, the path is blocked," Starlight walked up to the building and started examining it.

"I could try to fly us over, but I have never carried a pony before, your cutie mark, you have a star are you proficient in magic? We could try to levitate the building out of the way or you can try to self levitate yourself over, I can't fly and levitate you at the same time it's too much focus and energy for me to handle," What I suggested was ludicrous, I knew she was a magic adept and self levitation is almost impossible no pony other then Star Swirl the Bearded was able to use it.

"I don't think our magic combined is strong enough to lift the building and I only attempted self levitation once and I can't hold myself up for more than a few seconds, I don't think we should teleport in because of the radiation hazard or accidentally teleport into a raider camp," She looked down at her PipBuck and turned to the map. "Ok the next road in is about another hour's trot, but looking down that way, it may take more than an hour."

"I don't think we have much of a choice," we started walking, we had to weave our way in and out of destroyed rubble and abandoned wagons. As we were walking we passed a building that my PipBuck identified as the Equestria Aeronautics. How my PipBuck knew where it was and what it was, is beyond me. "Should we go inside? There may be something useful in there," I walked up to the door and opened it.

"Sure just remember we only have a small amount of time left, the sun will be set in a few hours," she walked through the door and I followed in after her. The first floor of the building was a mess, there were papers and boxes everywhere and a staircase on the right, I walked over to the receptionist's desk, the terminal looked like it blew up, under the desk, there was a skeleton of a pony. "We should split up so we can cover more ground," I nodded in response I walked into the hallway on the left side of the room and Starlight went up the stairs. I walked up to the first door it was locked, I didn't know how to open it, so I moved on to the next door. The door was missing the upper right section of it, I opened it and walked in. There was a glowing terminal, I didn't know what even kept it running. I assumed that the Crystal Empires' power plans were destroyed or at the least offline. I logged onto the terminal, there were a bunch of employee logs. I skimmed through them, they mostly talked about production quotas or opinions about their boss. I shut off the terminal and searched the desk. I found eight bullets, my PipBuck identified them for the 10mm pistol. "Why is there ammo but no gun? The gun has to be nearby," I kept searching but there was nothing of use in the room so I walked back out into the hall. I walked to the door near the end of the hall. I opened it up and it leads to the factory floor. Something was off, it smelled like something was rotting in here, I looked around there were several conveyor belts of several sizes and they were all over, several of the belts stretched into the wall and went up and down the walls. Behind one of the conveyor belt engines was what looked like a rotting corpse. Most of its mane was gone except with a few strands of hair and it was missing most of its coat with the exception of a few small patches. I moved away from it and continued searching.

After about an hour of looking through the factory floor, I found a small chest. It had a bunch of bottle caps in there, a few pieces of leather armor, and a gun that my PipBuck identified as the 'Crystal Revolver', I moved the revolving chamber out of place, there were two small bright pink energy crystals in there... I had never seen a gun like this before, I put it in my saddlebags, then I heard gunshots coming from the other room. "Starlight, are you ok in there?" I got no response. I turned around to walked back towards the hallway, I heard a groaning noise coming from behind, I turned my head and saw the corpse getting up, it let out a loud screech and started charging towards me. I used my magic to pull out the Crystal Revolver. I shot at it in the head almost point-blank, the gun made a loud sound the echoed throughout the whole facility and the whole right side of its head tore off and burned to ash. The rest of its head was slowly turning to ash from the burn marks. The gunshots continued from the other room, I ran as fast as I could and tried to track the sound my compass was lighting up with red marks. I ran up the stairs and shouted, "Starlight, where are you!?"

"I am inside the third room on the right!" I followed the sound of her voice as well as the bullets I ran into the room, it was full of those zombie-like ponies like the one I had killed. Two of the walls in the rooms were collapse leaving a giant hole to enter the other 2 and the adjacent room. There were about five zombie ponies in here. My PipBuck called them ghouls, no idea why but I didn't have time to think. "Use your SATS, it stands for Stable-Tech Assisted Targeting Systems, Cadance it will slow down time so you can aim better, there is a button on the side of your PipBuck to activate it," I did what she instructed, time slowed down, the ghouls came to a near standstill. I only had one shot left so I had to make it count. I aimed for the body of the ghoul, then SATS released, the bullet tore through three of the ghouls and left the first on a pile of ash. Starlight shot one of the last ones and used her magic to throw the other out the window.

"That was close, I have no idea what they were, they looked like crystal ponies but without their luster and coats and manes, that's probably going to haunt me forever," I took a deep breath and sat down with my back against the wall.

"Yeah that was close, what kind of gun is that?" Starlight asked examining the Crystal Revolver. She opened up the slides and the two crystals fell out and shattered on the ground. The color changed from pink to dark purple, which must mean they lost their energy. "I assume the gun, is out of ammo," I nodded and sighed.

"How much ammo do you have left" Starlight pulled the clip out of the gun, there were no more bullets. If this happens again I don't think we will survive another attack, sheer magic alone won't help with this many targets. "Since we have some time, how did you become a Stable 13's Overmare?" I saw Starlight sigh.

"It's a long story are you sure you want to hear it?" I don't think she really wanted to tell it but I think I could press her into telling me.

"Yeah, maybe we can visit where you came from when we are done here," I looked inside the saddlebag for some food, I found some weird looking fruit and I gave one to Starlight, I took a bite out of it, odd taste my PipBuck started clicking a bit but overall wasn't awful.

"Well, I am from a village that's not too far from here. It's northwest of Manehatten and a little southeast from here. I was the leader of the village and back then I was a much different pony than I am now. Back then I thought that cutie marks only set up a barrier between friends because when everyone is the same there is no jealousy, no fighting or arguing over things that somepony has over the other. So I started a town where I would remove the resident's cutie marks making them the same as everypony else. Just if I removed mine I couldn't remove others and then I would be as good in magic as the common unicorn foal. I had a good size village but the war came around. The ponies I was with wanted their cutie marks back to go fight in the war, one of the ponies that were in my town a close friend, his name was Double Diamond, he went into the cutie mark vault and broke the glass covering, then all the cutie marks returned to its original owners. Before long my town was empty and my philosophy forgotten. So I came here seeking work, after a year of working in the Crystal Empire, I met Apple Bloom one of the leaders of Stable-Tech, she saw my proficiency in magic and compared it to that of the ministry mare Twilight Sparkle and asked me to be the leader of Stable 13. She told me to guard the wealthy and the princess, and there you have it my story in a nutshell my fillyhood wasn't much different but that's for later. It's already night we should get some rest," That story really shocked me in a town where the thing that made a pony special was seen as bad. Starlight fell asleep, she seemed more at peace than the last night.

I looked outside the broken window, the sun was already on the horizon, which gave me some hope the Luna and Celestia Survived the war. This trot to the castle is taking too long but we will be there by tomorrow. Maybe if we have time later we will journey to her former town but for now, I should rest who knows what the castle has in store for us.

Starlight's SPECIAL

Strength: 3
Perception:6
Endurance: 4
Charisma: 6
Intelagence: 7
Agility: 5
Luck: 3