Fallout Equestria: Wasteland knight

"The world is like a the wick of a candle: it ends in fire"

     Yelling. Yelling and screaming are what I can remember from before this, from before the world ended before my, and many other's

eyes. I remember just standing in silence as life as I knew it, as my home; Canterlot, succumbed to the cloud of mutative pink vapor.

      I can recall the salty taste of my own tears dripping into the corner of my mouth, and the face of a filly with a yellow mane smiling and giggling as she was directed into an omni-environmental suit.

      I had two choices: stay and wait for the shield to fall, and die alongside the masses of panic stricken ponies, or I could run as far as I Could and pray.

      So I chose option two, and ran as hard as I could through the crowds, and straight into a riot officer.

     "You there! Do not resist authority, GET. TO. SAFETY!" The officer, a brown unicorn mare, pleaded with her eyes as she levitated her shotgun level to my head and bellowed orders at me.

      Once more, two options flitted through my head, and once more I chose option two.

     "Have you seen that?!" I scream right back at her, my eyes begging to be let through without violence. "We need to Evacuate Canterlot! All of us! Now!" I shout above the terrified crowd.

       A green unicorn mare at the back of the crowd suddenly started screaming as well, desperately pushing the scrambled ponies aside in a wild dash for the front. She managed to announce something about how Celeestia and Luna had abandoned us before the riot officer fired the shotgun into her chest and racked a fresh shell.

      I saw my opportunity to escape and took it as the soldier turned to look me in the eyes just before I brought my front left hoof crashing into her head and sent her sprawling to the ground.

      I lingered there for a split second, and decided to take the mare's gun with me on my afternoon run.

     "I'm so sorry miss!" I called back to the unicorn as I sprinted down the now almost empty street, towards the entrance of the city.

      How long I ran, I do not know. How far I ran? All the way to the main gates of Canterlot, until I was stopped by a scarred and grizzled white Stallion with a blue mane in royal guard armor.

     "Halt, return to the evacuation area at once Sir! The air wagon will be leaving soon!" He commanded, a spear resting at his right side.

      I blinked as I recognized the Stallion from school. "Flash Sentry?" I asked, hope in my voice.

     "N-nano? What are you doing in Canterlot? You were stationed with the Rangers weren't you? He questioned back.

     I shivered, remembering my death at the hands of a zebra soldier, and my resurrection at the hands of Fluttershy's Megaspell. "I was K.I.A. actually." I answered.

    "How did you—" Flash was interrupted by a resounding boom and a flash of light that came from the royal castle. The spear at his side fell onto the cobblestone with a clang as he sank to the ground and screamed in sadness and disbelief. "No.....not them....not the princesses...." He sobbed, his heart broken and his hope shattered.

    "Listen, we have to go! If we don't, we'll get caught in that....cloud!" I demanded, trying to get him on his hooves.

    He stood suddenly and yelled at me with a defeated voice, and tear filled eyes. "It's over! We've lost, and now we'll die! This is the end!"

    I hit him in the head with the shotgun, and knocked him out cold.

    "Maybe you will, but I'm not going to die! I am NanoGram! I survive!" Not looking back, I took the shotgun in my mouth, and ran clean out of the city and out of the cloud's area of affect.

Or so I thought.

     I turned around for a split second just to see the mass of pink swallow me from head to hoof.

   I began to feel faint, like I was about to pass out, but I knew it was certainly not safe to fall and hit my head on a cobblestone road, so I leaned up against the closest thing to me for support, I would've preferred it be something not made of stone, but all I could find was a statue of an old pony knight stood at the side of the road.

     Either way, I felt like if I couldn't stand, I'd die, not knowing if I was right, and not realizing the hell I was putting my future self in.

     So, for what seemed like forever, I stood against the statue.

And that's were my past ends. And my present begins.....

     I open my eyes, and see hell. Well, more accurately, I see what I had seen up until I passed out. Except it's brown and grey and dark, and I can't move a fucking inch.

     My brain does some thinking, and I figure I must have been paralyzed, because my legs can't move, and I can't feel them. But, if I'm paralyzed from the waist down, how come I can't move anything?

     I will myself to move, but am unsuccessful, until the strangest and most comforting thing happens; my head turns a bit to the right to gaze at Canterlot, or rather, what's left of it.

     The pink cloud has receded back into smaller part of the city, but that's not all that's different. From my view, I see a ruined castle, it's now almost nonexistent outer walls, and the road back into town.

     I manage to turn my head to the left, and see the road out of town, now flanked on both sides by desolate wasteland.

     For the first time in what feels like forever, I'm speechless. While I was unconscious, all that I've loved had been converted into a twisted ruin of its former self, and I don't think I can bear to look at it anymore.

     Sickened by the world's state, I force my legs to move, and am greeted with a sickening crunch.

A stone-meets-bone kind of crunch.

     I wince in pain, knowing what that means. I've broken my legs, and I'm  just now getting control of the devastated limbs.

     But, as I try to stand, I feel no pain, only a tremendous weight pushing down unevenly on my body.

     I try to walk, and fall on my right side, unbalanced by the mysterious weight, and to my amazement, feel no pain.

     My confidence boosted, I stand easily this time, and take a few steps forward.

     The weight is gone, and I begin to laugh in triumph but am stopped dead by what I see when I rest my gaze on where I fell.

     Stone and metal fragments litter the ground around a 'me' shaped patch of tan dirt.

     A metal sword sits neatly in the soil a meter or so to the left, and the dots connect.

     I realize why I couldn't move, and why I had felt so heavy earlier; I was inside that statue.