Fallout: Lavender Wastelander

Cold Case stood frozen in place as shards of glass and powderized brick fell like rain. Smoke and dust obscured most of the street. Everything was muffled, like he was underwater. Everything but the head-splitting ringing in his ears.

The old pegasus had disappeared. One second he was there, then he was gone.

Somepony shouted something at him, and sound came rushing back to Cold Case as he blinked, then coughed out a lungful of dust. Capone was standing in front of him, eyes wide.

“What just happened!?” Cold Case shouted, choking on the dust in the air. Even his own voice was distorted by the ringing in his ears.

“Someone bombed the building.” Capone’s voice was loud enough to hear over the ringing in Case’s ears. Case guessed that Capone’s own ears were ringing as well. Behind Capone, Cold Case caught the sight of movement through the smoke. Ponies rushed out of the apartment building. Cold Case couldn’t see them very well through the haze hanging in the air.

“S-should we help them?” Cold Case asked, his voice stuttering.

Capone turned and saw the ponies emerging from the building.

“First responders have the training to handle them,” Capone said quickly, turning back to Cold Case. “We’ve got to go before they get here.” Cold Case was about to ask why, but Capone cut him off before he could open his mouth. “No time for arguing. A building just exploded, and I’m as good a suspect as any… if we’re going to get whoever did this, we can’t waste time with the police, and whatever leads we had here just went up in smoke.”

“By Celestia,” Cold Case growled. It was heartless, pragmatic, and… correct. Cold Case shook his head, cursing himself for what he was about to say as he turned towards an alley, the air still thick with obscuring smoke. “Come on, we can cut through here. There’s one pony I know who might be able to give us a lead.”

“And who's that?” Capone asked from behind Case.

“His marefriend.” Case said simply.

The pair made their escape through the heavy fog of brick dust and smoke.

<>~<>~<>

Twilight muttered her entire repertoire of human curse words under her breath as she reset the tumbler of the lock once again.

Fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes she had been trying and failing to open the door that would let them into what she hoped was a way around the collapsed car tunnel. The metal door was unfortunately too reinforced to kick down. Daniel could attest to that. Climbing the steep slopes of the rocky hills would be doable, but the risk of injury was too great since mountaineering gear was one of the few things Twilight hadn’t considered packing in their overstuffed rucksacks, thus Twilight needed to get the door open. Unfortunately, human locks and pony locks were different enough that she was nearly at her wits’ end.

Daniel stood off to the side of her, watching her work as he levitated around small objects. Twilight herself kept her lockpicking tools levitated rather than using her hands. Even with her broken horn, she had slightly more dexterity with her magic.

“This is a tough lock,” Twilight groaned. She applied slight pressure on the torsion bar she had pushed into the top of the keyhole one more time, before she worked a slightly curved, thin metal lockpick all the way to the back of the tumbler. “Feels like this thing is nothing but security pins. Whoever installed this didn’t want anyone picking their way through this door.”

The number six pin slid upwards as Twilight leveraged her pick against the bottom of the lock.

“I’ll take your word on it,” Daniel said with a laugh. “You’re speaking a new language to me. Couldn’t you try manipulating the pins with your magic?”

Busy with focusing on the lock rather than speaking, Twilight simply shook her head. Under normal circumstances, it would have been very likely that she could. But with her snapped horn, her fine control was impaired. Daniel was asking her to focus her magic into an object and manipulate multiple small internal parts.

Number five pin slid into place, quickly followed by pin four. It was pin number three that always tripped her up.

“That time of the P.M.! You know it, you love it, it’s newwwwwwwwwwws time, children, and I got some juicy ones for you this afternoon,” Three Dog’s chocolate smooth voice drifted out of her Pip-Boy. Even with the radio being turned to a lower volume, the sudden shouting of Three Dog had Twilight jerk to the point she nearly lost focus on her tools. She had waited for the news, which was why she hadn’t turned the radio off entirely. “So all of those songs you people just heard were from that other world I mentioned earlier, hard to believe, I know, but trust me. These people, the Equestrians, are peaceful and compassionate. Now that’s something rare in the Wasteland. ‘But Three Dawg’, I hear you ask, ‘Yew seriously want us to believe in magic?’. No, I’m just the messenger. You see, the Equestrians have been getting hit hard by raiders coming over to their world. Not just the ones from the Metro gangs, either, but those absolute cannibal psychos that roam the wasteland. The Equestrians are coming soon for some payback. So when you start seeing strange mutant soldiers burning down raider camps, give them a wave, or even better, some ammo… because my brothers and sisters, they’re coming to join the good fight.” There was a brief pause and a shuffle of paper. “Last up before I get back to the music, I just had a recorded message dropped off for Twilight Sparkle from her friends, so if you’re out there, listen up.”

Twilight stopped her work as she turned all of her attention to the radio.

“Hiya, Twilight,” Twilight’s heart leapt with joy as she heard PINKIE PIE over the radio, her voice doubly distorted. Once from the holotape her voice was recorded on, and once more by the fact the holotape played over the radio, but there was no mistaking Pinkie’s sugar-fueled voice. “Spiky and I are in Point Lookout trying to save up enough bottlecaps for riverboat tickets which are suuuuper expensive. Four-hundred bottlecaps for each of us. I’m having to give Tobar a hundred caps just to bring this holotape to D.C., so maybe the radio station there can tell you where we are. Please hurry if you can, we found a super cursed book. Which reminds me, if you can hear this and are stuck on something, remember to take a breath and check under Eeee.”

Twilight shared a look with Daniel. Cursed book… Point Lookout. There was no way. But Pinkie Pie was involved, so of course there was the chance she and Spike had somehow found the Krivbeknih. There was a brief pause, and Twilight’s mood whiplashed back to pure joy as Spike’s voice came over the radio.

“Hey, Twilight,” Spike said slowly. Her joy faded into confusion as Spike’s voice sounded… off. Deeper, more mature. If he had turned partially human like Twilight and the rest of her friends, then Spike would be past the age of puberty for humans. “I want you to know that I love you. Pinkie and I are doing as well as we can, but parts of this place are worse than the Everfree Forest. We’re living in the Homestead Motel right now, but that might change. I can’t wait to see you and the rest of our friends again. I love you, Mom.”

The message ended, and one of Three Dog’s old music tracks began to play.

“You okay?” Daniel asked as he placed a hand on Twilight’s shoulder.

“No,” Twilight said, wiping a single tear away with the back of her hand. It felt as if someone had reached deep within her and grabbed her heart. She swallowed, the heartache turning to worry as Twilight went over Spike’s message again. “T-that’s the first time Spike intentionally called me Mom. Something terrible must have happened!”

“Hey, Twilight, hang on, they both said that they’re fine,” Daniel reassured her, placing both hands on her shoulders.

Twilight took a deep, calming breath. Daniel was right, and Pinkie was too.

“Alright,” Twilight said as she let out the breath. She turned away from the door and looked at the steep slopes of the hills. She couldn’t fly with her backpack on.

With her backpack on…

“I’m the smartest idiot I know,” Twilight groused, facepalming.

“What do you mean, Twilight?”

“I know how we can get around this,” Twilight said. She telekinetically placed all her lockpicking tools back into the black case, shoved the case back into her backpack, then took the backpack off entirely. “The answer was so simple. If I can’t fly with my backpack on, I can just carry it up the hill. Then I can fly back down, grab your bag, fly back up, then come grab you.”

“Damn it,” Daniel groaned, rubbing his forehead. “I should have known that! It’s that fox, hen, and birdseed logic puzzle all over again!”

Twilight suspected the puzzle was similar to the hydra, the cockatrice, and the cucumber.

“Let’s see if I can fly up with both of the packs,” Twilight said as she grabbed her rucksack by the straps.

“Wait,” Daniel said as he took off his backpack. “How about you fly me ahead first and come back for the packs? If you run into trouble, you’ll at least have me with you. Remember last time.”

Twilight glanced down to her knee brace. How could she forget?

“You’re right,” Twilight said slowly. She set her bag down, and Daniel placed his next to hers.

“So, I just hold on tight?” Daniel asked, approaching Twilight and grabbing around her waist. He had made sure to grab around her tightly, almost to the point it felt as if he was crushing her waist.

“Yes,” Twilight said, grabbing around Daniel a bit more gently than he did. “We won’t be flying for long. I know you’re afraid of heights and wide open spaces. We’ll be back on the ground soon.”

“Thanks, Twilight.” Daniel said as she spread her wings and took to the sky.

<>~<>~<>

Cold Case knew Manehattan’s alleys like the backs of his hooves. He had chased many criminals through them in his years since leaving Ponyville as a young colt. Now he used his criminal-chasing skills to become one as he and Capone jogged through the back streets and alleyways of the city. The apartment building was over a dozen blocks behind them now.

“We shouldn’t have left the scene,” Cold Case said evenly. The jog hadn’t even made him break a sweat. Thankfully, his head had stopped ringing, allowing him to think clearly. He slowed to a trot as they turned into a long narrow alley full of trash cans and detritus.

“What makes you say that?” Capone asked, sucking in air. His wheezing voice rattled like a spraycan.

“If somepony saw us, we’re prime suspects… and it was wrong to just leave those ponies,” Cold Case grumped. He stopped in the alley to talk to Capone and let the ghoul catch his breath.

“If we stayed, we’d be there for hours getting questioned,” Capone groaned. He trotted over to a tipped over trash can and sat on it. “H-how aren’t you out of breath?”

“I’ve spent years chasing criminals,” Cold Case said. “And I don’t smoke.”

“Right,” Capone wheezed as he leaned forward, sucking in air. “How far is Starry’s marefriend?”

“Just around the corner,” Cold Case said. “But us barging in with you out of breath won’t do us any good if whoever killed Starry is there after his marefriend. Do you have one of your human weapons?”

“I do,” Capone replied as he used his red magic to pull aside his suit jacket and revealed the grip of a pistol. He let go of his jacket before he slowly stood up, his breathing under control. “So how’d you know he had a marefriend? Not even the boss knew anything about her.”

“I may be misconstruing things, but I’ve seen him go backstage a few times after her songs were done,” Cold Case said as he walked calmly down the alley, Capone by his side. “But if Don Mozzarella didn’t know about her, that could mean we’re in luck and whoever bombed his apartment doesn’t know about her either.”

The pair exited the alley and into the street. Across the road, printed on the velvet-red awning in gold lettering on a black background was the name of the jazz club. The Swing.

It wasn’t one of the most upscale joints Cold Case had attended, but it had its perks. Cheap booze and good food, and even better music. A place to hang out and relax that was only a small cab fare away from his apartment.

Crossing the street at a crosswalk, Cold Case and Capone made their way to the front door. Cold Case was the first to enter.

Just like always, the lights were down low in the club. The stench of alcohol was heavy in the air, as heavy as the atmosphere of sadness radiating from the stage at the back of the club. Nightingale Song was on stage, and she was absolutely beautiful, dressed in a midnight black cocktail gown and a wide-brimmed white dress hat ringed with alternating black and red roses.

Her mane fell away from her head like a stormcloud-gray waterfall. The silky locks draped over one of her slitted azure eyes, obscuring half of her chestnut-brown face as she sang her long sad notes into the microphone in front of her.

“Wowza,” Capone said beside Cold Case. “Is that gal our dame?”

“Yeah,” Cold Case said with a dumbstruck nod. Nightingale was the best thing about The Swing. She always took Cold’s breath away. He made his way through the club, looking left and right over the circular tables of the low-lit club. Most of the seating was in front of the stage, allowing Cold Case a good overview for any suspicious figures. Unfortunately, there were a lot of ponies to keep an eye on. It was always a full house when Nightingale was on stage. Luckily, she was so good that nopony seemed to notice the literal corpse that had walked through the door with him. “I know the owner, she’ll let us backstage to speak to Nightingale.”

“Got it,” Capone said from behind him. “Need me to stand guard outside or something while you do your detective work?”

“No,” Cold Case said, his voice low so it wouldn’t carry and be overheard as he headed towards the bar. The mare behind the counter was the owner. “If the perp is as professional as you say, I’d rather not give the creep our heads on a silver plate by isolating us.”

“Hmm, good point.” Capone said, his voice low as well.

Cold Case overheard a few patrons that they passed complaining about something smelling, but with the low light, only pegasi or batponies would see Capone for what he really was. If any did see Capone’s ghoulness, they had the courtesy to not scream in panic.

“Think anyone here felt what happened at the apartment?” Cold Case asked. They were halfway to the bar.

“I doubt it,” Capone replied. “No blinding flash so it wasn’t a mini-nuke. If I had to bet my horn on it, it was maybe two to four pounds of C-4. But don’t quote me on that, it's probably been a century since I used it.”

“Wait,” Cold Case asked, startled. “You’re how old?”

“Two-hundred and thirty… seven,” Capone said, though he sounded unconvinced. “Let’s just say I’m old, and really want to talk to your princesses about their skin care regimen, because they look good for women five times my age.”

Cold Case snorted. Capone had a sense of humor.

They reached the bar. With Nightingale on stage, nopony was nearby to order drinks.

“Cold Case,” the mare behind the bar greeted, a chartreuse green unicorn with a star anise cutie mark. She was busy wiping down the bar with a rag. Her nose wrinkled. “Sweet Celestia, what’s that smell?”

“Hey, Absinthe,” Cold Case said, ignoring her complaint about Capone’s stench as he hopped onto one of the stools and leaned halfway over the bar. “My friend and I need to talk to Nightingale. But first, what can you tell me about Starry Stripes?”

“Starry?” Absinthe asked, raising an eyebrow, as well as her cleaning rag to her nose. “Not much. He seemed like a quiet stallion. I love him because he pays his tab. He stays away from the harder stuff and is absolutely head-over-hooves for Nightingale. Good in a fight, too. I offered him a job last week when some stallion came in here starting crap.”

“Did Starry know this stallion?” Cold Case asked. He’d missed that fight.

“I think so,” Absinthe said. “He’s a fire-wagon red pegasus with a two-tone orange mane and tail, like fire. Can’t tell you much more than that, since he was out of here as fast as he came in. I think his name was Red Glare or something like that. What’s this about?”

Cold Case looked left and right before leaning even more over the bar. He raised a hoof to the side of his face and whispered. “Starry was murdered. Nightingale’s a long shot, but she might have a lead on who did it.”

“What!?” Absinthe shot out in alarm, but thankfully kept her voice under a shout. Cold Case quickly looked around, but the patrons were all still mercifully engrossed by the beauty onstage. “G-go ahead backstage. I’ll signal Nightingale to end her set after this song. She’s almost done… In the meantime, I think I smell a dead mouse somewhere… unless it’s your friend lingering in the shadows there.”

“Thanks, Absinthe,” Cold Case said. He levitated more than enough bits to the counter before grabbing a bottle of whiskey off the shelf behind Absinthe. “Keep the change.”

If Nightingale and Starry were involved, Cold Case would offer his condolences the only way he knew how, which was a stiff shot in the stallion’s name.

<>~<>~<>

The walls of Nightingale’s dress room were dark black, with red curtains breaking up the flatness alongside faux arched windows set between decorative columns jutting from the wall. The floor was a checkerboard of black and red tiles, while most of the furniture was evenly split between white or black and heavily ornamented in a gothic style, heavily set on arches and engravings.

“Do all batponies sleep in coffins?” Capone asked as he shut the door behind him.

“Only the ones who lean into the whole vampire stereotype,” Cold Case said, tuning from his observation of the room to take a look at the queen-sized bed inside an oversized coffin. “I never took Nightingale as the type. Guess you can never guess a book by its cover.”

“Story of my last two-hundred years,” Capone said flatly. He walked over to a white ottoman and sat down. A chessboard on the coffee table nearby was already in the middle of a game.

From what Cold Case knew of chess—which wasn’t much, he had to admit—black appeared to be losing by a considerable margin. There was a black ottoman on the other side of the coffee table.

“So how long have you been in Equestria?” Cold Case asked as he meandered around the room. Cold Case had picked up the fact that Capone had adopted Equestrian phrases and terminology. Besides that, with Nightingale out of the room, there was no reason to not look around for clues. Especially if she was involved somehow. He started by her makeup table. Nothing immediately leapt out to Cold Case, besides his own unfamiliarity with the beauty products he looked over.

“Been here two and a half weeks, was probably one of the first to arrive,” Capone said, he slouched on the ottoman as he watched Case walk around the room. “It didn’t take me long to fall in with the Oregano family. One of the cops who found me was from Roam. When he saw me, he started shouting in Italian, or Roaman, and that took me way back to my childhood.” He finished with a wistful chuckle.

“How’d a cop speaking Roaman get you in with the Oregano family?” Cold Case asked, moving on to the dresser tops. The three dressers alternated colors, starting and ending with white, and the middle being black. The objects on top, thankfully, didn’t conform to the color palette. Cold Case was getting tired of the alternating colors. There was a jewelry box pulled out farther than the rest of the objects on the dresser top, almost overhanging over the front.

“I was so shocked to hear Italian again that I started a conversation with him, which led to his family, which led me to his cousin who got me in,” Capone said, as if it were a simple process.

Cold Case opened the jewelry box lid. At the very top was a necklace made out of a bottlecap with a hole punched into the rim in two places close together for a thin chain to loop through so the bottlecap would lay flat against the chest.

Cold Case levitated up the bottlecap. A pretty, faintly-glowing blue star was painted on the inside of the cap. He turned it around, revealing the exterior of the bottlecap was painted red and yellow, with black lettering.

“Huh, never heard of Sunset Sarsaparilla,” Cold Case said.

The ottoman scraped against the floor as Capone jumped up.

“No fucking way!” Capone said. “How the fuck did a west coast soda’s bottlecap end up in Equestria?”

“Hello, somepony in here to see me?” a lovely female voice cooed as the door swung open. It was Nightingale. Cold Case hadn’t heard her approach, so he stood with her necklace still clearly visible in his telekinesis. Nightingale locked eyes with him and frowned. She adopted a snarky tone. “If you’re going to burgle me, at least take something with more value than sentiment—Starry gave that to me.”

Cold Case quickly placed the necklace back into the box and closed it.

“Sorry, ma’am, was just admiring your—”

“Cut the horse apples and get to the point. Starry’s dead, isn’t he?” Nightingale asked with a scowl.

Cold Case was taken aback by the brusqueness of Nightingale’s words. He also didn’t expect her to suspect he was dead. Cold Case disguised reaching for his pistol by floating over the bottle of whiskey, which he had previously sat on the dresser nearest the door.

“I brought alcohol as a condolence,” Cold Case said. “But it seems that won’t be necessary. How’d you know?”

“Because I’ve put the pieces together,” Nightingale said. “He started acting strange the moment the humans started coming over. He argued with Red Glare, and it would get nasty. His neighbors filed a few noise complaints, and they actually came to blows here one night. That one was the worst. They argued with carefully chosen words, but a death threat is hard to cover up.”

Nightingale took a deep breath, wincing as she pulled in the scent of Capone, but her reaction was milder than Absinthe’s.

“So you think Red Glare killed him?”

“Yes,” Nightingale said. Her angry facade crumbled as her eyes welled up with tears. “And I… I think Starry and Red are humans.”

<>~<>~<>

Lieutenant Alex Monroe—or Red Glare to the horse mutants he had spent the last nine months infiltrating—hated being a pegasus. At the very least his mutations had their upsides. Upsides that coincided with his duties to America, and to the true Enclave. Not those posers following the spineless, president-murdering coward Colonel Autumn. The moment President Eden’s signal went offline, everyone at SOCOM knew about it.

The only logical explanation for the perfect replacement for Eden in Colonel Autumn's eyes was that Equestria had somehow grown wise to the fact that the Enclave’s Special Operations Command had infiltrated them. There was only one person that Alex knew who would tip off Equestria and give them a psyche profile on Autumn… and that traitor died running for his life, as all treacherous cowards should.

Alex shook his head, chasing away the distraction as he checked his timepiece. The charges he had set should have gone off by now. He had given himself enough time to fly far, far away before the explosions would erase any evidence in the old safehouse. Still, if Starry had talked and compromised the entire mission, erasing the safehouse wouldn’t do any good. There would be only one chance to make his shot before having to bug out. But one shot would be all he needed to get back at Equestria for Eden’s assassination.

Adjusting his position, he took stock of his environment. Or at least the details that mattered. Which, given that he was in Equestria rather than back in the Capital Wasteland, was easy to know given that every aspect of the weather down to the barometric pressure could be controlled by the pegasi in their damned weather factories.

Windage, barometric pressure, humidity… opening his mutated senses to the weather, he could feel that everything was as it had been announced it would be in the papers.

Next came the head game, the mental math his new body assisted with.

If he was a conically shaped pegasus that could only flap his wings once, how would he need to launch himself in order to reach his destination.

Pressing his shoulder into the stock of his rifle, he adjusted the settings on the scope with his hoof to compensate for the bullet drop as he lined up his shot. It wouldn’t be anything fancy or personally motivated like blowing the brains out of Starry through a window.

Center mass would do fine.

“If ponies are similar to radstags,” Alex said, drawing in his breath so his breathing wouldn’t knock off his aim. All that was left was to make the final micro-adjustments and pull the trigger between a heartbeat. ‘Her heart should be right about…. there… good luck surviving two assassination attempts.’

A single, muffled shot struck its target in Canterlot.