Fallout: Lavender Wastelander

Twilight Sparkle glared at the floor after listening to the entire explanation of how Fluttershy had managed to acquire the respect of a group of raiders. Had she not seen how proficient Fluttershy had become with violence, as well as known Daniel personally, she wouldn’t have believed the story for a second. But she had seen Fluttershy and did know Daniel. She still didn’t want to believe Fluttershy would voluntarily try and reform raiders. If they were just chem addicts, that was fine, but from Daniel’s descriptions of them, especially Kerri’s relation to the Springvale raiders, they were all monsters.

Twilight was going to have to talk with Fluttershy about her reasoning. She had succeeded in reforming Discord of all creatures, sure, but he hadn’t murdered anypony. That, and all the damage he had caused was fixable. Raiders couldn't magically fix a dead Fluttershy.

As Daniel finished his retelling of the events leading up to his arrival in Equestria, the throne room grew quiet enough to hear everypony’s individual breaths.

During Daniel’s explanation, Luna had joined the throne beside Celestia’s, the pair of sisters staring down at them both.

Luna recovered from the story faster than Celestia.

“Daniel has already told me of your travels with him,” Luna said with a grim nod. Twilight recoiled her eyes away from Luna’s expression. Half of her face resembled boiled leather, and if she scowled too hard it would show teeth. With Luna losing half the fur on her face, Twilight supposed that every expression Luna had was a grim one. “Would you like to tell your story? Or is his word enough?”

“I trust him, Luna,” Twilight replied with no hesitation. Taking a slow, calming breath, she turned her gaze slowly back to Luna’s ruined features. It was a small solace that, in time, with enough regeneration magic and a few skin grafts, Luna’s face could mostly recover. Unfortunately, her missing eye was lost forever. Eyes were one of the few organs too complicated to magically regrow. It wasn’t fair. Luna hadn’t even been sent to the Wasteland and she had suffered near-fatal injuries. Injuries that would have been fatal if she wasn’t an alicorn.

“Your trust is good enough for me,” Luna said. Her horn flashed, and a series of weapons appeared, bundled together in her levitation spell. Twilight blinked when she realized they belonged to Daniel. He had been disarmed, unlike her. And like her pistol, his weapons had also been ponified. They drifted several paces towards Daniel, before Luna’s purple magic was overwhelmed by the gold of Celestia’s magic.

“Apologies, Sister, but one moment,” Celestia softly said as she pulled the weapons back to her. Twilight raised a single eyebrow. Daniel, standing beside her, muttered something about not getting his weapons back.

Celestia removed the magazine from the pistol before she pulled back the slide, ejecting the chambered 10mm pistol cartridge. She caught the flying brass in her magic before reloading it into the removed magazine. She pointed the empty pistol away from everyone and pulled the trigger, causing the hammer to strike on empty before she slid the magazine back into the pistol. She followed the same process with the rifle. Unload the magazine, pull back the charging handle, catch the cartridge, reload the magazine, aim downrange and pull the trigger, place the magazine back into the rifle.

Twilight narrowed her eyes at Celestia. Besides placing the magazines back into the weapons, Celestia had appropriately cleared both weapons according to how Rivet City’s security had taught her. Celestia had learned how to use guns. It made sense. Luna had nearly been killed. But there had been a practiced fluidity to the movements. It was like watching Fluttershy work her rifle.

Luna stared at Celestia as well, sharing the same expression of confusion as Twilight.

Celestia regarded both of them with a quick glance before she sighed heavily.

“Luna, you were about to hand hot weapons to a Wastelander,” Celestia reprimanded in a stern, yet teacherly voice. Hearing that teacherly tone again flooded Twilight with memories of her long history spent being tutored by Celestia. She was practically a second mother. The pleasant memories were distorted by the fact that Celestia handled the weapons too well. If Celestia was so busy running the kingdom and sending back what raiders she could, then when had she learned how to use firearms? Especially to the point that she used terms that Fluttershy would use?

“Celestia?” Twilight asked slowly as Celestia levitated the bundle of weapons to Daniel. Daniel grabbed them with his forehooves. He quickly slid the pistol back into his leg holster, but the rifle appeared to give him trouble reattaching to the harness he wore. “What happened two hundred years ago in the Everfree Forest?”

“Two hundred years ago,” Celestia said with a frown deep enough to rival oceanic trenches, “a large group of ponies of all types—along with a few gryphons and zebras—appeared in the area through a portal to another world. It was not one of Starswirl’s portals either. They were from the American military.”

“I believe that you said the markings on the mechanical mare that attacked me were of the same type as their uniforms, correct?” Luna asked.

“Yes,” Celestia replied, before rising from her throne. “Come with me, everypony.”

“Where are we going?” Twilight asked, quickly trotting behind Celestia. Celestia didn’t walk far from the dias that held the thrones before she stopped and pawed at the marble floor with a hoof.

Golden runes appeared in a space about the size of a flashcard as Celestia spoke.

“Old habits die hard.”

The runes flashed brightly, then sparked with a sound like breaking wine glasses. A large rectangular section of the floor dropped several inches before sliding sideways into a recess with the sound of stone grinding on stone. The new opening revealed a stairwell.

Twilight chuckled with a grin despite the tenseness in the air. Celestia and Luna had always been fond of trap doors and secret passageways. Their old castle in the Everfree Forest was a funhouse of hidden corridors and traps meant to prank anyone wanting to brave the halls.

In Twilight’s opinion, the passphrase was quite fitting.

“I swear,” Daniel said, matching Twilight’s mirth. “Every other second that I spend in Equestria reminds me of a Grognak comic book. A castle with trap doors hidden behind magic. Amazing!”

“I need to start reading those and take notes on what’s accurate,” Twilight replied. Daniel had finished rearming himself with Luna’s help. Luna took up the rear of the group, leaving her close to Twilight, giving her the chance to study the blades Luna carried. Celestia had said that Luna had claimed the swords from her would-be assassin. From what Twilight could see of the blades, Luna was lucky to be alive after being impaled.

“Those comics are rather uninspired,” Luna said, rolling her eyes as she jutted out her bottom jaw and grunted. “Big dumb muscle-stallion swing axe to solve problem.”

Twilight snickered along with Daniel. Some dumb fun to turn her brain off and enjoy sounded like a wonderful form of escapism from the Wasteland when she went back. If Americans had shown up in Equestria, maybe Celestia had acquired some copies. Perhaps that was where the passage led, a storage chamber full of American relics.

Turning around to face where Princess Celestia had been, Twilight saw she was already down the steps. She picked up the pace to follow, but the burst of speed rapidly bled off as she hobbled her way down the steps after Celestia. Her rear right leg was braced, and Twilight didn’t want to remove it. The leg felt weak, like the bones and muscles weren’t enough to support her for long without the brace. Her left forehoof was also slightly malformed, the leftmost outer edge slightly shorter than the rightmost outer edge of her right hoof. Just like her shortened pinky finger.

Damage translated as best as it could between realms. That was a good fact to keep in mind. She briefly wondered what Fluttershy looked like. Would her tattoo show up on her fur? So many questions, so little time to answer them.

At least Celestia was guiding them to one.

<>~<>~<>

Twilight stared past Celestia as the final, massive secret door swung open. Ancient metal hinges scrubbed together as the thick circular slab of a door swung outwards like a bank vault.

“When I expected a bunch of American relics, I never imagined I’d call it this well,” Twilight said. Beyond the door was a massive vaulted chamber, rectangular in dimensions and around the size of a Buckball field. Every wall and much of the floor space was composed of rows upon rows of shelves stocked floor to ceiling with cans, glass jars, and numerous other items. The center of the floor was dedicated to boxes on massive wooden pallets, large metal and wooden crates, metal barrels, and machinery. Some of which Twilight had never even seen. Some, though, she did recognize. Like a Nuka~Cola machine.

“This is a reliquary,” Celestia answered somberly. She took the lead as she slowly walked through the opened metal doorway. She stopped by a shelf dedicated to nothing but bottles of Nuka~Cola. “One enshrining the memory of America.”

Twilight craned her neck to pick out every little detail of the chamber she could. There were other pieces of furniture towards the center of the room like couches and chairs, but the shelves were the only furniture with objects on display. Folded articles of clothing, pristine boxes of pre-war food, weapons and boxes of ammo, and many other items.

“Where’d you get all of this?” Daniel asked quietly.

Daniel’s tone of voice drew Twilight’s attention. She turned to see Daniel’s shocked expression as he stared slack-jawed at the relics from his home realm. Pristine relics. All without so much as a speck of atomic dust.

“The Americans gave it to Celestia in a trade deal,” Luna said. “In exchange for the Everfree Forest and a portion of arable land around it.”

“She sold the Everfree Forest?” Twilight gasped. “What about the old castle?”

“I did not want it,” Celestia said. “It was the place where Luna transformed into Nightmare Moon, and the same place where I banished her to the moon. The sentimental value it held to me was nothing but painful sentiments.” There was a faint shutter from Celestia before she fluttered her wings to hide it. “And the deal the Americans offered for the wildest, most untamed part of Equestria was a good one. They imported as much as they could through the Everfree mirror. Though, in hindsight and the words of an American I trusted, the deal was supposed to be a poisoned apple.”

There were several things wrong with what Celestia was saying. For one, Celestia had sold land to the Americans, and that was in no history book Twilight had ever read. Secondly, she had never had anything she could identify as American… unless the technological boom in Equestria resulted from a terrifying number of reverse-engineered goods.

Twilight shook her head, stepping over that rabbit hole of a thought to complete her list. Thirdly, a poisoned apple wasn’t a good thing, so what was up with that? She completed the list with a possible fourth thing. Celestia spoke like she’d had an American advisor in the past.

Twilight quickly turned to Luna, who kept herself neutral. Twilight assumed Celestia had already shown Luna this room. With Luna offering no further insight, Twilight turned back to Celestia, and was about to ask what she meant before Celestia obliged the unanswered question with a question of her own.

“Daniel, have you ever heard of the Defense Intelligence Agency?” Celestia asked. She hadn’t turned to face him, instead, she turned away from the Nuka~Cola and walked past a few more shelves of American goods.

Twilight grunted and followed. So. Much. Walking. The stairs alone getting down here had been hell on her braced knee. The passageway down had been too low and narrow to fly in.

“No, your majesty,” Daniel replied. “But you have?”

“Oh yes,” Celestia replied with a dark chuckle. It was a sound Twilight never wanted to hear Celestia make again. It reminded her of Queen Chrysalis’s laugh. “A largely-atheistic, progressive, partially-autocratic government fit the bill to label me as a likely communist sympathizer. The DIA wanted to Americanize Equestria by flooding us with imports. If America wasn’t destroyed in your war, the American I spoke of suspected one of America’s many intelligence agencies would have been tasked with deposing me if Equestria wasn’t Americanized fast enough.”

Twilight came to a screeching halt. What the absolute wagonload of fuck? They were planning to depose Celestia after just meeting her? The revelation was like someone had dropped a piano onto Twilight, followed by an anvil, then chased it with a mini-nuke for good measure. She violently shook her head, trying to wake herself up from the nightmare she was in the middle of, to no avail. When did reality become so absolutely crazy?

“But we’re peaceful!” Twilight cried out, venting her frustration with a hoof stomp. “You were never some iron-hooved Sombra-type ruler. Equestria and America could have been mutual trading partners.”

“Ohhhh boy,” Daniel said with an exasperated groan from behind her. “You don’t know American history half as well as I do, and according to Dad, the Vault textbooks were heavily edited.” Daniel snorted and rolled his eyes. “Now, I’m coming from a heavily whitewashed bias, but I still know enough to know that selling them land was a bad move. Your majesty, did the deal come with complimentary smallpox blankets? You are natives who gave some Americans land.”

Twilight couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Textbooks edited to censor facts rather than correct any accidents or update them with new historical findings? A history of giving disease-tainted blankets to native populations? Was America made of evil ideas?

“They did not,” Celestia bluntly replied. “They were too busy sending their bioweapons to the Chinese.”

“How do you know that?” Twilight blurted out. Bioweapons, too?

“There was a DIA agent who saw that the nuclear war was coming,” Celestia said with a heavy sigh. “Rather than help his government topple mine, he became my counter-intelligence advisor.”

“So there was at least one sane American,” Twilight groused slowly. “Did you ever go back on the deal to sell the Everfree Forest and the land around it?”

“No,” Celestia replied. “The war destroying the mirror and trapping around a hundred Americans in Equestria ended the need to go back on my offer. There was nothing I could legally do anyways. I had already sold them the land.”

“If I know the pre-war government,” Daniel said, waving a hoof dismissively, “they’d still claim it was their land.”

<>~<>~<>

With his hands tucked into the small of his back, Colonel Augustus Autumn listened to the sound of his boots clinking on the metal grating as he stalked through Hydroponics Garden #3. As he took in the scent of wet earth, compost, and plant clippings, a rare smile slowly creased his middle-aged features

It smelled like what America should smell like. Whole, beautiful, natural.

He paused by a tomato plant. A wrinkled, dead, blackened leaf was easily visible among the rest of the green. He reached for it with a pair of small garden clippers he had tucked in the palm of his right hand.

The old, malformed leaf gave no resistance as he applied slow, even pressure to the clippers. As the dead leaf fell away, Colonel Autumn could have quipped about ‘pruning America’. There was an apt metaphor there about casting off the dead so the rest could prosper. The hydroponics bays had always been his bastion of retreat for quiet reflection, and thoughts of that nature often did cross his mind.

But a counterpoint to the sentiment was the simple fact that countries and people were not plants. President Eden’s genocidal plan would not put them in the good graces of the wastelanders inhabiting American soil. If President Eden wanted to know how well using the forced evolutionary virus as a bioweapon worked out on the first attempt, there was a tribal from Arroyo with a nuke to sell him.

“Do ya always walk like a villain?” Applejack asked from across the planter bed, catching Colonel Autumn’s attention in time to see her tip the large stetson hat she wore. She was dressed in an Enclave uniform under a pair of blue denim coveralls and had her own pair of clippers. “That whole ‘hands behind yer back, slow-walk’ thing makes ya look right sinister. Ya even clip plants like a villain.”

“I clip plants like a villain?” Colonel Autumn asked, raising an eyebrow as he stood with his hands behind his back once again. “Please, enlighten me on how I have achieved this third, secret way of plant clipping, outside of the right and wrong way to clip a plant.”

“Bah, ya do it all slow and calculated-like,” Applejack scoffed as she rolled her bright green eyes. “Like plant maintenance is some confounded mental exercise. Relax a little.”

“Thinking is how I relax,” Colonel Autumn replied sardonically.

“Well, ya don’t look relaxed,” Applejack shot back with a grin. She pruned a few dead leaves off a tomato plant, then apologized to it and gave the remainder of the plant a kiss.

Colonel Autumn watched the routine with fascination. By all appearances, the cornsilk blond woman with the sunkissed, freckled face was completely human. Even the DNA tests came back human with no abnormal mutations. Yet, two-and-a-half-weeks after being let loose in a hydroponics bay without any of the robotic gardeners, expected crop yield was up three percent over the fully automated bays.

“I’ll try and look relaxed, then,” Colonel Autumn replied. He stopped by another tomato plant with a wilted leaf and stared at it.

Drawing in a slow, gentle breath of the garden air, he held it for just a few seconds to savor the smell of what he hoped America could one day become. He eased the breath out as he tried untensing his shoulders and craned his neck from side-to-side. There were far more pops than sounded healthy. He was getting old. Fifty-five, and yet still so much to be done. Perhaps the path he was sending the Enclave down was the incorrect one.

He reached for the plant with his clippers and pruned off the dead leaves. Once the simple task was complete, he continued to stare at the cut plant.

Colonel Autumn had been skeptical that Equestria even existed until the dominos had started to fall. Applejack’s DNA test had been the first domino. The paper trail that followed was something out of a fever dream, but the fact that every piece of paper in that trail was stamped with the seal of the Defense Intelligence Agency and had come from Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling gave it all the credibility Colonel Autumn needed to accept that Equestria was real.

Rainbow Dash trying to hand him a chunk of cloud was just the evidence he needed to know the documents weren’t some coded psi-ops message, and that Equestria wasn’t some euphemism for a secret project. With that in mind, perhaps there was some merit to Applejack’s strange ways.

Colonel Autumn slowly leaned close to the remaining buds and leaves. What could he say? It was a plant. But if Equestria was real, so was magic.

“Stay strong, soldier,” Colonel Autumn said to the plant. He shook his head and groaned as the absurdity of the situation came crashing down on him. Despite feeling the heat on his cheeks, he didn’t back out, and continued to commit. “America’s future depends on you. It’s a lot to ask, but we’re in this fight together. You have the thankless task of being the fuel that allows the men and women of the Enclave to march ever onwards in their own thankless tasks. So, for once, I would like to take this time to thank you personally.”

He pulled his head away and gently patted the largest leaf he saw on the plant with a finger. He drew the line at giving the plant a public display of affection. It was the closest thing he could give the plant to a handshake.

“Feel better?” Applejack asked with a wry smile and another hat tip.

“I think I feel like a fool,” Colonel Autumn replied as flatly as he could manage. He wanted to push the feeling of embarrassment as far away from him as he could.

“Yer so tightly wound, you could make a spool of bailin’ wire green with envy, ya know that?” Applejack asked, gesturing wildly at him with her clippers. “To enjoy life, ya need to live with a little discomfort erry now-and-then.”

Colonel Autumn chuckled. Applejack was amazing.

Homely words of wisdom, grew up on a rural farm, loves her large family, has a dog, and has gone on several carefree adventures with her friends.

She was everything President Eden claimed to be, and so much more. If Fort Horseshoe was still a valid piece of American soil, then she was born a flesh and blood American. Tenuous as the connection may be, even if Applejack was not born on US soil, she had DNA in her that could be traced back to Enclave and DIA records of expedition members sent to Equestria.

“What you smilin’ at all of a sudden?” Applejack asked as they both reached the end of the row of planters and approached one another.

“Just thanking my lucky stars,” Colonel Autumn replied as he met Applejack’s eyes with his own. “Once Rachel is finished with today’s training, I’m going to send her on a special assignment. If she’s successful, what we discussed can go through.”

Applejack frowned deeply.

“I don’t like how we’re plottin’ against your leader,” Applejack said dourly. “The Enclave is just one massive nest of back-bitin’ vipers. Y’all ain’t got nothin’ done since yer all too busy congratulatin’ yerselves on bein’ horrible to each other.”

Truer words had never been spoken in the Enclave.

“I am certain that someone as honest and headstrong as you can help put things on the right track,” Colonel Autumn said reassuringly. He placed a gloved hand on her shoulder and gave a few pats.

If she wasn’t the right choice, he could always use that honesty against her. No president survived a big enough scandal.

Puppet or prodigy, the Enclave would have a flesh and blood president again. And once a human was in office to be the face America saw, the Enclave would be ready to make its return.

America would live again.