Fallout: Equestria - Group Anthology - 2016

Rain or Shine

by Mnador the Changeling

Rain washes away everything. Give it time, it could wash away the radioactive waste of this land that we once called “Equestria.” And some day, it will wash away the land with it. Just needs time.

I, for one, hate the rain. Not that I can help it, since every day it rains here. Drip, drip, drip, an endless mantra that drowns out any other sound. The streets are flooded, the ground mush, the rain envelops everything here. Always just cold enough to make you feel like you’re freezing your tail off, but never cold enough to be in any danger of it actually happening. No, the bigger danger is slipping and falling in a puddle and drowning. Since a puddle here is big enough to fit one of those old sky wagons in.

Shivering, I look out at the flooded streets of concrete ruins that was once a proud city of Equestria, now just another ruin that’s a blip on a map. Grey slabs everywhere, grey-colored water, grey everything. I thought Equestria was supposed to be colorful? Even the light of my auburn pipbuck seems to have had it’s life sucked out by this dreadful place.

Pulling my dripping hat down, I stand up on all fours, shake myself off like a dog, and start heading for the abandoned elevator shaft. Each hooffall causing a pish-ing sound as I make my way to the door. One would think the second floor would have been enough to keep me out of the flooding streets, but nope. With a little force, the ancient doors are pulled open, water-logged by the flooding.

Slowly, I ascend the wall; constantly assaulted by drips and drops of water leaking through the cracked “ceiling”, the slanted “hallway” leading me closer to my destination. Every step takes an agonizingly long time, as trudging through slippery ground in a building that’s slanted far beyond anything that would be deemed “safe” is apparently a tough ordeal, who knew? Still, I trudge on, endlessly marching toward the top.

A sudden SLICKing sound and before I know it I’m flat on my face, holding on for dear life to the emergency ladder, partially due to my pipbuck getting stuck on a rung. I pull myself up, shake my head off, and trudge on once more. I groan as the wet feeling of this aquatic tartarus seeps into my murky-brown coat, and so close to finding the one place that might be dry, too!

Well, there’s nothing for it, just gotta keep trudging on...

BAM! A shotgun shell wasted, but that’s not important right now. What’s important is… A DRY ROOM! Genuine, dry, lit and tiled room! After climbing through my shotgun-blown hole in the window, and carefully making it past the broken glass, I throw off my soaked duster, hat, and shotgun and jump for pure joy.

“Dry! Dry land at last! Thank Celestia for dry land!” I shout, not caring who or what hears me.

Of course, I’m not actually dry yet, nor is anything I own, but hopefully after I get whatever that griffon wanted I’ll be dryer than Appaloosa, new or old! Well, nothing else to do. I slowly take in the room of what once was the Ministry of Morale hub for… whatever town this was. It’s name was long ago washed away by the endless rain, and my pipbuck offers nothing to help with that. She just calls it what that griffon, Starker, called it: “Stadt an der Grenze der Hölle,” whatever that means.

Something does seem off about this room…but what could…?

The light. The lights are working? There shouldn’t be power to this building, not with all the damage that’s been done to this place.

…

Oh sure. Soon as I notice them, they start flickering. Typical.

Sighing, I continue to search the room, checking all the desks for anything of use. Nothing but a couple of paperweights and a few bottle caps. Pulling my damp duster back on and looking out the window, something catches my eye Down below.

Is that… A whirlpool? What in the...?

Well, only one way to go now…

There is something seriously wrong with this building, much less this whole town.

I think whilst walking down the stairs, keeping an eye out for enemies, and drinking Rad-away. The top level where I entered was the only level that wasn’t irradiated, which is believable, but at this point the radiation’s getting unsettlingly strong.

What’s worse is the loud silence. The endless rain continues to pour down outside, and although muffled by the walls, the constant drip-dropping is still an annoyance. But other than that… nothing. Not a single monster, barely any corpses or remains. It’s.. unsettling, to put it lightly.

Okay… Let’s go over the facts here.

First, there’s this rain. With the sky closed and no pegasi, the weather is erratic. But NOWHERE is there this much rain in all the wasteland! Nowhere is there enough to flood the remains of an entire city, even if it is in a bowl.

Two, the strength of this radiation is consistent with that of a Balefire Megaspell, but all the cities that were hit are accounted for… at least the ruins are, anyway.

Third, there’s the fact that this building still has power. Any generator would have been destroyed were there a Megaspell, or at least overloaded. Not to mention the flood would utterly RUIN anything electronic, Pipbucks aside. Even the semi-erratic flickering shouldn't be happening, so what’s going o-

Rustle-tap.

Dead in my tracks I stop.

Was that a sound I heard just now?

Slowly and carefully, I draw my shotgun and continue my advance down the stairs.

Click-click-click...

The radiation is getting stronger… I need to be quick.

Slowly, carefully, I open the door at the end of the stairwell…

…

Sweet Celestia…

My eyes beheld a sight that was far too surreal to be true. A sea of clouds was before the broken remains of the bottom of the tower, rainbow-like water creating a pool in the middle of the “room.” And with the walls made up by the whirlpool I saw above, it indeed was like a room. Every now and again a strike of lightning would shoot out from the middle of the ruined cloud-mass, starting to go upwards but arcing down and into a long metal rod, leading directly into the generator for the building. There was leaking rainbow-colored liquid everywhere, far more viscous than the pool in the middle of the room. My Pipbuck was clicking faster than before, radiation levels skyrocketing.

The only explanation for everything that’s here, everything that went wrong with this city.

The Cloudsdale Weather Factory.

But how? And why here…?

Questions for another time. The swirling mass of water that was the whirlpool gave off the loud whooshing sound of water, drowning out a lot of the sound. But not the sound of a mare giving orders.

“Spread out, keep searching! Command wants a report in 20 minutes!”

Crouching behind an overturned desk, I survey the room. My Pipbuck picks up 7 red dots spread across the room. These are ponies, but they sound far too intelligent to be raiders. From what little I can see from my cover, each has some kind of black carapace armor, with wings and strange scorpion tails.

Pegasi? They were talked about back in the vault, years ago, but there’s only rumors of them being out in the wasteland that I thought they were wiped out in the war...

One stood nearby, a few meters ahead, surveying the others as they worked through the remains of the factory, and appeared to be the one giving orders. Another strode up to her.

“Ma’am, we’ve searched all over, but there’s not much here that’s useful to us. Certainly nothing to help open the S.P.P.” the officer, a young stallion by the sound of him, reported; he then continued “We can try moving up about a click or three north. Reports say that’s where Rainbow Dash’s house crashed when Cloudsdale was going down.”

“That’s going back on the trail.” she replied, and even behind the helmet I could hear her gritting her teeth. “This was the closest we can get to Cloudsdale without entering the city itself. Guess there’s not much else we can do here” Sighing, she then turned to address the rest of their group. “Alright, pack it up! Set charges in the old Rainbow Factory and let’s move out!”

The officer turned with her… then stopped, looking straight at my hiding spot. Too slow, I ducked down behind the desk, pulling out my shotgun.

“Intruder!” He shouted, some kind of gems on the suit starting to glow… and then they fired energy beams at me!

I fire a glancing shot, running to another overturned table as the previous one practically exploded from the beams of energy. The commander readied her own weapons as a few behind her fly up to assist in the fight.

I hate to admit it… but I think I’m outnumbered here. And not enough cover to make it to the door either…

Well, if all else fails…

“I don’t want to fight you!” I yell, cowering behind the desk.

“Then you shouldn’t have fired at us!” The commander yelled back.

Oh. Right. Well, shit.

“Sorry?”

The Energy beams blowing holes in the wall are the only apology I receive as I dodge as many shots as I can, returning fire with a few glancing shotgun blasts that do little to pierce their armor. Running is the best option I have, dodging the maelstrom of green-and-red Energy Shots.

Still, it’s not nearly enough; I let out a yelp of pain as one of the green beams burns a hole in my leg, my pipbuck yelling at me that it’s crippled. Limping along, a few more glancing shots manage to hit my arms, causing searing pain as my beloved duster gets scorched.

Making it to cover behind one of the tanks, I pant and reload my shotgun. However, the sudden realization of having only 2 armor-piercing rounds left brings a frown to my face. It’s nowhere near enough to take out them al-

I look up in time to see another pegasus in armor run out from behind another sideways tank, readying his/her weapons.

Wasting no time, I lunge toward them, slipping into the blissful slowdown of S.A.T.S. and firing both AP rounds straight into their head. The slowed time shows the first round fly straight and true into the visor on their helmet, which badly cracks from the blast. The slowdown then shows in gritty detail the second blast once again hitting their visor, shattering it and having the remains of the shotgun shell and the glass shrapnel from their visor burst into their head. They’re given to time to even breath a word of pain before they’re pushed onto their back from the force of the blast, dead.

I limp past them, trying my best not to think about it as I head away from the rest of my attackers… straight into a strange device with a digital timer, counting down.

“The Charge is set! Everyone out, now!” I can barely hear their commander as I try limping back the way I came...

00:02:30

Need to keep moving. Step, step, st-ow, step, step, ste-ow…

00:01:45

I’ve made it to the door, quickly starting the climb back up. The water “walls” make it impossible to go anywhere else, though drowning might be a better option than being blown up. My assailants must have already gone up and out. Stupid wings… wish I had some right about now…

00:00:15

The drip-dropping has returned, I must be about level with the lake outside. The weather factory gone haywire would cause a storm like this… It makes sense. Not now, need to keep moving, need to hurry u-

00:00:00

I can barely make out the sound of a far-explosion.. Followed by another, and another, and then a much bigger, and louder one!

The ground shakes with each blast, old dust and rubble vibrating all about, until the building around me is blown away in a flash of light!

A bright light engulfs my very soul, and the sounds of the end of days are everywhere. Too bright to see anything… I feel weightless, floating away from this world at last…

Slowly my vision returns…colors fading in one at a time. First black, the shadows that remain of a long-dead city sketched with care. Then the dark hues of orange and yellow, the palette of choice for a ruined world with no life left. Blues, the dreary colors that paint the feelings of those who live here.

But then… All at once, vibrant colors of all kinds rush to my eyes. A pillar of light stretches high into the heavens, filled with all shades of every color imagined. Green, Red, Violet, Pink, all colors reaching out into a bright void high in the sky.

As I float on the water, the ruins of the city crumbling around me, I can’t help but stare into the sky, since for once there is sky to stare at. The endless drip-dropping has finally ceased, and an unsettling silence has settled on the land. A fulfilling warmth is brought with the new hole in the sky. The only sound to reach my ears is the far-away sound of running water, drowned out by the brilliant hole in the cloud-roof of Equestria.

“Sunshine and rainbows…” I croak, barely having the strength to move as the water carries my body away from the city.

Far too soon, however, streaks can be seen in the sky, slowly pulling the cloud curtain together again. Little by little, the beauty of Celestia’s Sun disappears behind the dreary grey curtain that has been there for 200 years, the silence finally broken with the unwelcome drip-drops that have plagued these ruins.

With no strength left to move, (no real point to do so anyway), I finally close my eyes and let the water take me wherever it wishes. My only companion my pipbuck and the start of another endless rainstorm.

Maybe this time the rain will wash me away...