Fallout Equestria: And None Shall Follow

Its all secrets and lies with you!

I sat, staring at a room full of death and suffering. Everything, all Equestria was and could have been, all the potential of the world had fallen to weapons like these. And yet, even after destroying everything, nearly scouring the world clean, they still had so many left. Each one of these weapons could have leveled a city, and I had just gotten my hooves on at least 50 of them. Oh burning sun above, had the ponies been so mad to think they would need so many? Were they so focused on destroying the zebra that they would not dare to leave even one alive? And were they so foolish not to think of what would happen if even one of these went off? Then again, Bray was a donkey town, as if we ever mattered to ponies.

I just sat still, staring around the room, not quit daring to move. I really didn't want to find out what it took to set one of these off. So of course that was when the kid reached out a hoof and began tapping on a balefire bomb on a low shelf.

To be fair, my flying tackle probably wasn't the best option, but I wasn't really thinking of his feelings at the time. "W-What did I..." He stuttered from the floor beneath me, tears beginning to fill his eyes.

"Kid, they're balefire bombs. Don't. Flipping. Touch." I said tensely, climbing off the kid. He stayed on the ground, eyes growing incredibly wide at the realization of what he had been doing. I left him there and began carefully moving around the room. I needed to see everything in this place before I did anything more. Who knows how well this place was bobby-trapped, or what else this place held. I could see another door straight across from the one we entered by, but when I looked out it, I saw a hallway identical to the one we entered from. Apparently, it was where the other hallway went. There were two more doors, one each the remaining two walls. I cautiously ventured through the nearest door to find a short hallway with three doors, on each on the right and left, the last straight ahead. I poked my head in the first door. A decent sized room greeted me, with a couple of desks piled high with books, along with a massive row of filing cabinets along 3 walls. What really caught my eyes was the massive terminal covering the entire back wall. Well, that was something for the kid to look at. The room across the hall was an armory.

Oh, such an armory. This room held enough munitions to outfit a couple battalions, and all of it looked in perfect condition. My hooves itched to go inventory, but I still had one last room to check. Hopefully not, this many megaspells going off at once would... well, I wasn't exactly sure, but it really wouldn't be good. Though if it happened while I was here, at least I would never know. The door at the end of the hall had a terminal to unlock it, but it had never been locked down. I guess Crabapple just though his descendants would give a nags horn about his wishes. The door opened easily at my hoof, and I looked in at an... empty room. It was an odd room, with pure white walls inset with various carved symbols. But still, it was just an empty room. Who would lock up an empty room? I guess they must have taken whatever was important here out before everything went down.

I turned, and, seeing the kid entering the hallway, motioned him into the room with the massive terminal. Then I went to inventory the armory. Oh glorious golden day, what a treasure trove. Racks of rifles, cabinets full of pistols, a multitude of ammo crates, and even a little storage cage of various grenades, mines, and other explosives. Oh, but the best was yet to come. At the very back of the room, charging, but deactivated, were several sentinel robots. And yes, their terminal was unlocked, I heard of other scavengers reprogramming them to ignore set ponies, but blast the crap out of anyone else. Another thing to get the kid on. A slow burning rage which had been building since I read the first terminal kept building in my chest. That traitorous ancestor of mine had CHOSEN to lock this all away. Leave us all to toil and suffer while all this power was right under our hooves. That stinking turncoat had chosen to side with what some princess had probably ordered, rather then help his own kind. Well, he was rotted away in the grave, and all that power was resting at my hooves.

First thing first through, I had to figure out a plan to deal with the megaspells. Couldn't make much use of the place if it turned into a magically radioactive crater leaking pink cloud. So, that left the other door across the megaspell room. This one led to a staircase that led straight down into the earth. the lower I got, I reaches a small landing with two doors on each walls. I turned left, and found what I guessed was a barracks. Or would have been. Metal bunks were lined up in rows, but the rows stopped halfway down the room. A stack of mattresses was in a corner, but not enough for the bunks. Footlockers were stacked by the mattress's, but a quick look showed they were empty. Across the hall was what looked to be a kitchen and dining hall, but only half complete, and with not a can of food in stock. I wouldn't have thought much of that if it wasn't for an empty box labeled "Sparkle Cola" left against the empty fridge.

I remembered the old story, the dark days following THE day. Those in hiding in the depths, desperate, the hero bringing them food he had stored away for just these darkest hours. And it was all a load of pony piles. He had just walked in here and packed it all away. And still saw fit to leave his family and friends cowering in caves while he had this retreat that would have kept us all safe. All this power at our hooves could have made Bray the greatest force in the wasteland. It would have been unstoppable if that thrice cursed ancestor of mine had enough loyalty to his own kind to fill a teacup. But I could deal with my feelings later, I still had more of this place to search.

The staircase kept leading down, until the metal walls ran out, and gave way to solid stone behind unfinished supports. Then I came to a large doorway, much like the one was had opened to get in here, but this one stood open. In fact, it looked like it was missing several parts needed to shut and lock. Through the massive doorway was a large natural looking cave. However, a large concrete platform had been set into the floor, and a set of rails leading up to it. It was a train station of sorts, bare, but it must have been functional once. They must have brought the megaspells in by rail, probably from a tunnel deep under the mountains. But now the whole back wall of the cave had collapsed, burying that way in under tons of mountain. But for me, there was nothing left of interest.

I went to go see what the kid was up to, but before I could even open the door to the terminal room, I could hear him whimpering. I carefully opened the door and peeked in. Last thing I needed now that I hit the motherload was find I hadn't deactivated a security bot or something. There was nothing, just the kid sitting in front of the terminal, papers scattered around him, indicating he had been reading before he went to the terminal. It was the look on the kids face though that gave me pause. He was staring at the screen with a look of pure terror, scrolling down page after page of text with eyes that couldn't open wider. I tapped him with a hoof to get his attention, and he shrieked before he saw it was me.

"Whats wrong?" I asked, peering at the terminal screen to try and figure what had him so wound up. It was just an inventory of what was here.
"This place, its... its full of megaspells." The kid whimpered, eyes seeming to stare right through me. "Goddess's, this place could take out most of Equestria."

"Yeah, kind of noticed that on the way in." I said. Seriously, the place was full of them, had the kid not realized this?

"Its not just those." The kid whimpered. "This place was built to store megaspells, not just those ones. The papers, the terminal. Its copied data. Everything old Equestira knew about megaspells. It's all here, some sort of backup. If this place got into the wrong hooves..." He looked up at me, the fear evident in his face. "We have to destroy this place."

I snorted. "Kid, do you happen to know how to do that without setting everything in here off? Cause I don't."

The kid looked crestfallen at that. I could guess what he was feeling, after all, these things had destroyed Equestria. To find a whole storage facility of them left intact, yeah, it could be an unparalleled disaster if the wrong ponies got their hooves on them. Heck, my ancestor had locked this place up and kept silent about its existence for this very reason. But even he, the one that apparently helped set up this place, didn't have a safe way to destroy it. Which meant that wasn't an option. Kind of a good thing, weren't going to be any caps in just blowing the place off the map. Let face it, every megaspell in here was got to be worth a small fortune to the right group.

"Just... see if this stuff says anything about moving them safely, or something." I said, letting the kid work. Right now, I needed a plan. A fortune had just fallen at my hooves, and I wasn't about to let it go to waste. First though, I needed to know exactly how much of a fortune I had. Time for inventory. I walked the armory, taking note of every weapon, opening every ammo can and locker, making sure I knew everything in it. Then, I went and looked at the megaspells. There were a lot. And if appearance was any indication, there were several types. I wasn't sure if it meant a different effect, or just a different strength. Everything was just labeled as "MS-42" or the like. Maybe the colt could find something in the terminal to help. When I came one section though, I didn't need his help. There were small megaspells, maybe half the size of normal, in pairs, connected by a harness clearly meant to be worn by a pony. I just stared. Really? Somepony was expected to deliver a freaking megaspell by hoof? Yeah, I saw timers stored with them, but seriously, who thought they could outrun a megaspell? Though these might just get me a nice payload. No worries about how to move them after all. If only the kid was big enough to carry one...

Well, now that I had some clue what was here, I needed a plan. I could practically see the heaps of bottle caps this haul would bring in. Forget settle up a little trading company. With this haul, I could set up my own empire. Heck, I could probably afford the whole of tenpony tower, with the whole of manehatten thrown in. That is, I could find a buyer for any of it. Yes, un-detonated megaspells were more then worth their weight in bottle caps. After all, I hadn't heard of one being found in a generation. And the power owning just one would give a group...
The problem was, though I could think of a dozen groups who would love to get their hooves on a megaspell, the ones that wouldn't just murder me after to save caps were few and far between. Then there was the problem of me not trusting most of those groups with said megaspells. And I could think of a few communities that might like to have a megaspell as a threat deterant, but few of them could afford the caps these were worth. So, who would have the caps to buy a cache of megaspells, even just a one at a time, wouldn't kill me for them, and wouldn't just use them on anyone and everyone that opposed them. Red eye would afford it, and not kill me, so long as I was still useful, but I knew to well what that sorry son of a goat would use them for. The steel rangers would love to get their hooves on one, but they weren't exactly known for buying tech. They preferred to simply take at gunpoint. That left... Tenpony tower. Made sense, a bunch of rich ponies that could afford to buy a few megaspells at a time from me, setting me up long-term. Plus, they weren't exactly the genocidal type, heck, if anything, they would just make sure Red Eye would never threaten them again. Good, now I had a plan. Assuming the kid could figure out how to move them safely.

"Hey kid, give me a hoof here!" I called out.I went back to the armory with him following. "Ok, help with with these straps." Together, we removed my pack saddle, which took a couple minutes. It was rather firmly attached to keep me from losing it after all. I did have an emergency quick release, but I only used that when necessary. When it was off, I unloaded everything not necessary for the journey into a pile. The kids expression was priceless when the pile quickly grew larger then me. apparently storage expansion spells weren't a thing in his stable.

I sent him back to work on the documents, then I sorted things out, taking out a small supply of preserved pre-war food and leaving it in a locker, which I emptied of ammo. This place would make a good cache, and maybe a base whenever I was in the south. Wasn't going to set up house here, not with the room of dangerous megaspells, but a camp, or a retreat if needed, would work. First though, I dragged a mattress up from the half finished barracks. Sure, I could have just slept down there, but if anything actually got in, I wanted to be in the armory.

Once I had set up the armory as best I could for a fallback position, I went back to the terminal room. Well, I didn't have anything better to do while the kid worked on the terminal, I got to reading. A lot if it was just technical mumbo-jumbo that I shoved aside for the kid to look at later. Hey, he had a fancy stable education, he could do the technical stuff. Once I started chucking papers that looked to technical in the first paragraph, I was left with... not much. I ended up with a bunch of logs about this places founding. Apparently, later in the war, they had megaspells stored all over Equestria in different facilities, including the two we visited. Well, that explained the paper trail that eventually led us here. Then the higher ups decided that having megaspells scattered all over Equestria, especially with at least one under a semi-major city, was a bad idea. So someone proposed building one big storage facility to keep them all in until they were ether used, or the war ended. And since this was all happening when a proposed donkey resettlement town was being built in the middle of nowhere... Yeah, someone made the link. So this place had been built in utmost secrecy, and a trusted donkey scientist placed in charge of monitoring and maintaining the facility until it was complete and most megaspells were in place. Looks like everything went down before everything was complete. Heck, I even found a printout saying that a megaspell was to be shipped here by rail the day the megaspells came down. So this place technically wasn't even fully stocked. It had a fully stocked armory for troops that never arrived, and and the facility was only half finished when the megaspells came and blasted most of Equestria, except this bare little corner, into oblivion.

I kept reading into the evening, the kid doing the same at the terminal. Finally, we stopped for the night and to compare notes. The kid had found out quit a bit about how to move a megaspell safely, it had to have been done dozens of times to get them here after all. The only problem was that it had been done via railroad to the badlands, then by special sky-chariots at night. The railroad was gone, and sky-chariots cost a lot. Talons weren't cheap to hire after all. Well, would just have to figure that into the price. And the Talons wouldn't disclose the location of this place if the contract said they couldn't.

The kid also figured out that that strange white room I had found was this places megaspell chamber. At first, he though it was a shield to protect from megaspell detonations, like tenpony tower had before the megaspells knocked it out, but that turned out to be powered by a bunch of generators built into the cliffs. These apparently were still working perfectly, after all, no megaspells had been directed here. So they had just sat unused for 200 years. So then, what was the megaspell chamber for? The terminal seemed to contain more, but the kid couldn't make it give up the secret.

"Come on kid, just hack past it!" I said after he told me he had run into more security when he tried to access any records on the megaspell chamber.

"I can't!" He replied, tapping away at the keyboard. "Its way to advanced for me."

"Come on, you hacked your way out of a stable!"

"I'm just a colt!" He half-exploded in my face. "That was practically an accident! I can't hack security of this level!"

"Fine, then magic it." I retorted.

The look on his face spoke volumes. "Magic it?"

"Yeah, do some unicorn magic stuff." I said, waving a hoof. Really, what was the problem here? "Make it work."

"You really don't know how magic works, do you?" He asked, rubbing his face with a hoof.

"Your horn lights up and crap happens." I said. "Its freaking magic. Just make it happen!"

So, the kid lit up his horn... and picked up a bottle of sparkle cola and got to work reading documents. Really, I didn't get it. Unicorns did all kinds of impossible crap, was he just being lazy? But I couldn't even get him to try.

...

We spent several days in the storage facility, spending the nights in the armory. It turned out that no, the kid could not in fact reprogram the security sentinel bots to ignore us if activated. And again he just rolled his eyes when I told him to just magic it. So once I had determined all the best stuff to sell first from the armory, and the kid seemed to have found out all he was going to in a few days, we needed to move on. I hadn't planned on spending any length of time here, and if I was going to be able to leave emergency supplies here, and still have enough to get to the next trading post, I was going to have to get moving. I stocked up on everything I could carry in my saddlebag, and the kid loaded up some technical papers to study on the way, and we got moving. At the door, I let the kid through and was about to turn back on the shield, when I had an idea. I left the shield down, and instead just instructed the kid to shut the door and record the proper password to open it again.

"Why didn't you put the shield up?" The kid asked as I carried him down the barely-existent trail from the cavern.

"Because." I said simply. At the foot of the cliff, I let him down. Well, it was more bucking him off, but he got onto the ground at any case. "Now lets get moving, we have a long ways to go before resupply."

Level up!

New perk added: Fortune Finder. Experience finding hidden treasures now means you gain more caps from random encounters and from scavenging.