Chapters Fallout Equestria: Sourpuss' Dossier
Forward: On ghouls and LSP
Forward: On ghouls and LSP "The future. Survival anywhere. We surpass the norms."
Ghouls.
The necrotic post-equestrians, the zombies that stay alive long after death should have held them. The powerful creatures capable of fantastic feats due to strength given by radiation, those that have brains capable of rot and that all inevitably draw closer and closer to zombification, to pure mindlessness. I am a ghoul.
I am sourpuss, and before the war I was just another pony. I barely had a job, I barely had a life, I was just another grumpy Bucklyn stereotype. It was the only bit of personality I was given by celesta, and frankly that just pissed me off more. I guess I could have been glad, for it was the war that gave me a purpose beyond my editorial.
I was a member of a special division of the Ministry of Morale, presided over by Pinkie Pie herself. On the front we were merely high level officials, middle management as it were, and we simply ran our local branches. Hell, the branch I was tasked with running was far from special, it was only across the river from Manhattan itself. It was a small building, a former warehouse that had the MoM sign plastered in fading paint.
However, like I said, I was a member of a special division. And, in truth, we were presided over only by the ministry mare herself. We were given this special position due to a very rare earth-pony ability that the MAS called 'Limited Sensory Precognition', LSP for short. However, Pinkie liked to call it our 'sense.'
Each of our specific abilities which, to a certain degree, had a small amount of specialization were named after ourselves. My particular abilities, were known as my Sour Sense. Giving me limited precognition about horrible things, and a sense of where I stood. These Sense abilities came in the form of small physical reactions...
When I was younger, the only thing that my ability could sense was malcontent, and all I would get this itch in the back of my neck. And, seeing as to where I grew up, this was hard to deal with. As I would sense what someone was from how my neck itched around me, and I could sense how each pony contributed to the pain and suffering in my good city. There were crime lords, drug dealers, and foal-fiddlers... all of which I knew about since the moment I walked past them when I was just a little child.
Can you fucking imagine how hard it is to talk the world at face value, especially in those days of happy go lucky colorful ponies, when you can feel just how much pain someone who walks by you causes on a day to day basis? Can you imagine how hard it was to deal with that as a fucking Foal? Can you imagine how much pain I am in every moment now that the world has gone to shit?
Pinkie found me when she was on one of her benders. Her happy go lucky attitude still showed through, but she was hitting the party scene around town. She was high on dash and, I'm fairly certain, Mintals. This wasn't long after the war had started, and I had been annoyed by that fucking itching in my neck for months. Everyone was hurting, and it was just going to get worse. But then she saw me.
"Oh Celestia!" She called out, surprised for some reason. She had called this out from across the street, about to get into a sky carriage home after leaving a club. On a side note, you would not beleive how fucking painful the club scene was for me, especially with the import of those date rape drugs... never-mind. "You, Rusty pony. Come here, I need to talk to you."
It wasn't hard to deduce that she was trying to get my attention, she addressed me in particular in the mostly empty street. "What do you want you big-shot?" I asked, approaching her and waiting to feel the itch... But I felt nothing. "I... what would you like?" I asked, supprised as I actually felt slightly elated from sensing her. She was, well, unique.
"Step into the sky carriage, I have something to talk to you about. By order of the Ministry of Morale." I Recognized the Mare of MoM after a few seconds, I accepted whatever my fate would be and stepped inside. The door closed behind me, leaving me stuck in the carriage as it started to fly up. "How would you like a job?"
This question came so far out of left field that I wasn't sure how to respond. "What kind of job?" I asked, a questioning her closely. "Because, well, I have a job. I do editorials. I make enough money as it is." That wasn't entirely true. Sure, I did have a job and adequate pay, but I wasn't really satisfied with my editorial column.
"You are going to work for the ministry." She stated it with a sort of finality, as if it had been preordained, and I suppose in a way it had. "You have a special ability, a talent few possess, and I want you to use it! I want you to join a brand new division of the Ministry of morale, and report just under me."
"What?!" I asked in dis-belief. "How the hell do you know that I'm not a bad person? How do you know I'm not a spy from zebra, Sent to sow malcontent. To sew seeds of rebellion." Of course I wasn't, but it was a pretty good question. If she had read my column it wouldn't be hard to beleive, as just about every word of it was pure... grump.
"I just know... I have a feeling about you." She said, frowning in my direction. "And, well... Gah! Twilight already tried to get me to explain this, I'm not going to try again. Just take it at my word that I know your good. OK?" She looked at me, straight in the eyes, and despite being high I somehow beveled in her conviction.
"Fine, I beleive you. When do I start?"
Footnote
S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
Sour Sense: You have minor precognition, which allows you small incites into upcoming disaster and the maliciousness of someone's heart. These incites are not always reliable however, or always useful, and can turn people off if you react to them too much. Be warned.
Fallout Equestria: Sourpuss' Dossier
Chapter 1: Ministry Work “The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all."
I began work at the Ministry of Morale within the next week, and it wasn't long before I became a symbol like the other directors. My duties, really, were left to me. I was to use my LSP to gauge the discontent from my city. Technically, I was the regional director for Manehatten and it's surrounding boroughs. But, since Pinkie spent just as much time in her Manehattan high-rise as she did in Canterlot, I was able to have a smaller and less impressive office in my home in south Bucklyn.
The building was a former warehouse, common in the former meat-packing district right next to the Bucklyn bridge. By the time pinkie found me, that area was already a popping Indy nightclub scene, so it wasn't hard for the ministry to buy and fund another one. The Logo for the ministry was much smaller here and more hidden then in the city, and our offices were soundproofed against the late-night parties... as well as distant gunshots It was often a pain to ignore.
Between days of working, I stayed in my home. A small two story brick building sandwiched among several others, it had started out as a two story flat with three apartments. After my, ahem, windfall I was able to purchase the building and install a powerful security system. You can call me paranoid, and your right, but when you see things my way it's hard not to be. The only other creature in my house the majority of the time, unless I held the obligatory house party, was my cat.
Tarter Sauce was just as grumpy as me, at least she looked it, even though she was adorable. My finding her had been an important moment in my childhood. See, I had been walking along when I felt a bit of malingering anger... a bit of pre-cognitive fear and pain. And I was young enough at this point to be so foolish as to try and save whatever was in pain from what was about to happen. I ran, hard, across a street and through an ally until I was right on the edge of the harbor, and there they were.
The delinquents felt, well, wrong when I came across them. And I had to stare at each of them in turn as they stared at me, running straight into the scene. They all wore matching jackets, something that back then was almost always just out of fiction, unlike today's idea of gangs. Anyway, these kids were all wearing matching red jackets and they were bigger than me by about two feet each.
The first was a gray maned blue Pegasus, who hovered above the others. Another was a green and red unicorn, looking like fucking heartwarming decorations, whop's horn held a stick. The third was an earth pony, who held a sack in his hooves, his brown coat and orange mane almost distracting me from the fact that the sack was moving. And, of course, being the foolish colt I was... I ran straight into him to knock the sack away.
Seconds later I was surrounded, but I could handle myself. I wasn't as strong as the other earth pony, but I could defend myself, and I proceed to do so. I hoped that the cat would run away, and it seemed that she had as I saw her tail dart around a corner. "Momma said she was deformed!" The unicorn said, slamming a hoof into me as his horn glowed brightly. "So we've gotta drown it."
I wasn't deterred, as I responded to his prattling with an uppercut, feeling the swoosh of magic nearly take my ear off. I was so distracted however that I didn't notice as the Pegasus slammed into me, pining me against the no longer stunned earth pony as he began to kick my back. I was taken... and I would have been sent right to the hospital if it wasn't for Tarter.
Tarter jumped on the Pegasus and began to rip his wings out, feather by feather. Sure, it would be easy to grow back but fuck that must have hurt because after a few seconds he jumped off me, and began to fly as fast as he could to get my cat off him. She eventually jumped off and he flew away, not looking back at his friends as we cleaned up. Tarter scratched the face of the unicorn while I turned around and gave the big earth pony a tackle of my own before pinning him to the railing, threatening to push him over.
The pair surrendered after that, which I suppose is fair. And it was then that I got my cat. I plead and begged my mom to keep her, though she was a bit weirder out by the odd shape of Tarter's face, and she eventually relented. Especially once I took off my over-coat and noticed my cat's face on my butt.
When I joined the Ministry, it was hard work, particularly trying to work in that environment. You see what it's like to go from a behind the scenes pony with a slow and steady job to being the face of a branch of a government agency. Especially one that's being run by Pinkie Pie... that mare was insane, to the point where I didn't know the day to day procedures because she kept changing them.
Thankfully, I was able to rest in my office the majority of the time. My job was to rely on my LSP and 'feel' out my city. There were others of course, at least 30 of us, but only pinkie knew the real extent of the LSP division. My main job ended up being to take drugs, which were supposed to make my senses more powerful, but mostly just meant that I was forced to use whiskey to drag myself down at the end of the night. How the hell else was I supposed to sleep?
My town was rough and tumble, to the extent that I was forced to be real analytical in finding out who was a real enemy of the state. Just about half of the population in Bucklyn was against the war, and nearly a quarter were actively supporters of the zebra side. The fucking bastards were everywhere, and it wasn't helped that my town happened to hold alot more than ponies.
Little Zebraca was just a few miles away from my office, filled with a majority of Zebra and Zony population. There was nothing we could do except watch everyone who was moving in and out of that ghetto, and watch a couple of really high level targets. There was this one zebra stallion, who moved in with a pony wife, who we knew used to be a former spy. He had defected, but we still kept an extremely close watch upon him. Including at least one pass-by by me every week... He was always clean.
Other prominent groups in my city were essentially all the non-ponies. Sure, they could live anywhere, but some folk just like to live in the same environment as they grew up in. So you had griffon filled sections where they all acted rough and tumble and gruff, and even the odd minotaur or dragon who preferred to live away from the ponies. And of course, the pretty and passive-aggressive face of our mare wasn't exactly going to give any of these people, or the rough ponies that lived on this side of town, pause.
And so it went that my face and my cutie mark were used as symbols, on those faded posters that plastered walls. 'I'm not happy unless you are' they said, with a picture of my frowning face above it. Everyone understood what the ministry of morale really was, at least alot of people did, so the people in my town understood what those posters meant. It was an outright threat of violence if they didn't cooperate, and it worked.
Footnote!
Quest perk.
Ministry Access (rank one): You are an acting director of the Ministry of Morale. You have access to high level facilities in your ministry.
Fallout Equestria: Sourpuss' Dossier
Chapter 2: The final moments
"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?"
Fire, burning, pain beyond pain.
Those were the last things I felt as a regular pony, but I had little indication of it before... When I woke up everything was normal, and it felt like a normal day. Sure, my neck felt a bit more itchy than normal, but I was able to ignore it as I got dressed and ignored Sauce on my bed. I simply went about my normal routine, and walked out of my building normally.
On the way to work I took the subway, a feat of earth-pony engineering unmatched in any other city. Manehatten had mostly ignored it, allowing it's skies to be filled with pegasi pulling magically powered carts... but in my town, where the majority of the population were either non-ponies or earth ponies, more of us were comfortable underground than far above it.
I ended up walking out of my subway right next to my building, always glad for the stop right there, and climbed up to my floor. The nightclub wasn't exactly hopping, not during the day, but it was still louder than I would have liked, so I was glad when I was able to enter my office. Unlike pinkie I didn't like the sound of music, and I had instantly had my office soundproofed from all interruptions when I had taken the job.
"Commander Sourpuss, entering the office!" Came the crisp voice of the military personnel manning the door of the main offices. She was a good Mare, lean and good looking, but she was a bit too formal for my liking. I frowned at her but nodded, I couldn't even remember her name. She had a peach coat, and a soft chocolate mane, that was all I could ever remember. I noted her cutiemark, partially as an excuse to stare at her flank for a few seconds, it was a teddy bear with a switchblade... I wasn't sure I wanted to know how she got that one.
Finally I reached my personal office, and I was able to block out even more. For the next few hours I worked on my paperwork, happy to leave the 'high flying' work until it was late. It wasn't that I was ungrateful, but my work involved alot of pain and alot of pain-killers. And frankly, I hated the stress that supercharged LSP put on my body. So instead I worked happy on busy work. Happy until I got interrupted that is.
A loud, and cracking buzzing sound came from my door as the red light flashed. This indicated that someone wanted to see me, which meant something was wrong. I pressed the button that let someone in, and the one who walked in was someone I relay didn't want to see. Pescolt, an actor turned politician that had been bugging me for weeks at that point. "Sourpuss, I need to talk to you about Buried lede."
Well, that made me roll my eyes, this reporter had gotten under Pescolt's skin and that meant he'd had gotten under mine. "What about him, he finally get pictures of that vigilante?" I didn't admit that the vigilantly that had been doing stuff around the city had been hired by morale to be a symbol for the people in the city. "Or is he doing something else to fudge up our spinning gears and happily running machine?" I had to sigh, this reporter had been trying to get information out of the ministries since the start of the war. Sure, he was loyal to the crown, but he was a pain in my plot.
He paused for a second giving me a chance to study his visage. He looked like he usually did, in his dumb suit and with his graying mane messy as usual. He held a clipboard at his side, covering his Slice-of-Pizza cutiemark. "Honestly, there's nothing we can do. That reporter will do everything he can to publish the truth. And that's not always good for us."
"Then why in Taurus are you talking to me? I've told you a thousand times that trying to get the reporter to spin things to our side is the Ministry of Image's job." I slammed my hoof onto the desk, staring right into his eyes, my piercing and powerful eyes boring into his.
Pescolt tugged at his tie, looking uncomfortable as fuck. "Sir, I think I need to talk to you about my... Family." He sighed and slowly became far more confident then he was as a position, as if this was his true calling. "Look friend, I think you aught to accept the Calzone's offer. Take a hit out on the fucker."
"No." I cut in, sighing. I wasn't objecting over moral grounds, I was perfectly willing to get some help from the Family if I needed it, but this wasn't the time. "No, we can deal with this ourselves. Thanks. Now get out of my sight." This whole conversation had given me a headache to compete with the pain in my neck for who could be worse... It was already shaping up to be an unpleasant day.
***
I spent hours stalling taking that leap, because I knew that despite their headache killing effects those Mint-Als would not help my burning neck. My neck, mind you, that got worse with every moment. Still, I eventually had to do as I was hired to do, and take drugs for my country. So, later in the day then I ought to have, I pressed the few keys to save my work on my stable-tech computer and walked over to the single other peice of equipment in my office. The large, and perhaps overkill, gun cabinet I kept my drugs in.
Inside were alot of drugs, including ones that weren't being used by anyone else. But the one that I needed for my job, the one I was willing to take daily for my nation, was sitting right in the middle. A pile of hundreds upon hundreds of PTMs, Party Time Mintals. I took one tin, popped a few into my mouth, before locking the door and moving back to my desk.
At first my neck started to get worse and worse, as if something was searing it, and then I was hit by a weave of nausea. "Oh Luna..." I said, as my eyes clouded over and I was reduced to reacting like an overdoase. "T-there... There is going to be a bomb. A mega-spell! It's in an hour!" But no one could hear me scream as I lay there, and passed out from the pain.
When I woke up, twenty minutes later and finaly feeling the overwhelming power of PTMs in the rest of my system I was raring to go. I threw on my coat and ran out into the Morale. "Evacuate, there's a bomb. It's going to take out the city." I said, buttoning up. "And someone get me on the line with the mare, I know she's in her office right now."
"We can't get a line in." A random tech pony asked, who I mostly ignored. "What the hell are we going to do sir? This is fucking big!"
"You are going to keep calling until Pinkie gets her plot to answer the fucking call. Everyone else is going to evacuate Bucklyn as best as they can." I stared around the room. "What the hell are you waiting for, this is a fucking mega-spell and we've got less than a goddamn hour!"
Minutes passed, and I spent my entire time where I was, staring at my subsidiaries. "Everyone, get as many ponies as you can into the Bucklyn Stables. Protocol W4-12. And Get your families there. Pegasi, evacuate Griphons above the clouds and try to find a city that's not about to blow up."
They went. All of them went. And within the hour of my premonition, there was the blast. In my worrying and commanding I had stayed in the relatively unprotected offices, and I was the last one left except for the one pony, who was still trying to call pinkie pie. Fuck.
The blast was white-hot, even across the river. For all I know it was detonated as close to me as to most of Manehattan, because we were just across the river from where it had done the most damage. I can not tell you the pain of it, but I can tell you one thing. LSP goes away when those you are sensing die...
Footnote:
Quest Perk Added:
Ghoulification (Rank 1): You are in the beginning of ghoulification, and you'll soon become a full ghoul unless some other effect changes that soon. You have some of the benefits... but you are weak as your body adjusts itself to it's new biology.
Fallout Equestria: Sourpuss' Dossier
Chapter 3: New Dawn Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
When I woke up I was in a pile of rubble but, miraculously, I was somehow alive. The whole building had collapsed below me, or at leas the top floor had. Mixing rubble with ministry files and equipment. Forgive me but, well, with that knock on the head I wasn't quite thinking straight. So I simply walked away from what would later be the most important thing to me: the large amounts of trading supplies that filled the building.
No, I just stood up and slipped on my jacket like I usualy did at the end of the day. I placed my hat on my head, and I walked, acting out the moments before the blast... acting out like I was still there in true Equestria, and like it was time to go home. I walked down the stairs, ignoring the singular corpse left in the building, and walked down to the subway.
In that tunnel I waited for a long time, still in my daze, before realizing that the marvel of technology was unlikely to still be functioning at this point. The tunnels were still standing, though I knew that they would be crushed in Manehattan... I hoped they wouldn't let the water into the one thing I had left of the old times. My favorite innovation from the earth pony race.
Slowly I walked to my home, miles and miles away from where I was and into deeper parts of Bucklyn. Slowly I noticed that I was covered in cuts, ones that oozed gore... but somehow they didn't seem to be getting any worse or even hurt that bad. Only later would I learn that the necrosis had already begun to take it's hold on my body as I shambled and moved.
Making my way home was easy, I knew these passages by heart. Not only because I rode them every day, but because I had overseen their work and made sure they existed. Sure, that was the MWT's duty, but I had made sure that the subways would be made what they needed to be: Symbols of pride.
After a few hours I finally made it to my front door. I was woozy, and tired, and frankly I was filled with radiation. But I opened my door and passed out right on the couch, just how it normally was... like I would wake up tomorrow with it all being a dream.
***
I did not wake up the next day, or the day after that, or any time in the next week. Finally I did wake up, much much later than I aught to have. To a pain in my side. A pain in my back. A pain... well in a bunch of places. And I'm not talking about soreness or sickness, I'm talking about straight up viscous 'mauled by a tiger' pain. And that analogy was more apt than I would like to admit.
When I opened my eyes I found my cat... eating my flesh. Currently she was eating parts of my right shoulder, causing a deep hole there where she was trying to pick at my muscles. Trust me, I loved my cat, but that was not the sort of image you want to awake to. Thankfully my leg was still able to move, which I found out when I tried to knock her off me and hit her to the side of the room.
Getting up I looked around, I intended to apologize to my cat. Sure, it hurt like a blighter, but if your a cat lover like me your willing to excuse anything your perfect little angel does. Looking at my side I saw a massive goddamn gash where, while I somehow lived, she had ripped the skin and started to gnaw on my bones. Thankfully, it seemed, she hadn't gotten to anything important and I was still able to walk fine.
Eventually I found her, shaking in a corner. She didn't look good, and patches of her fur were falling out. "Sause, baby, I'm sorry. Please come here, your sick." I used my best soft and comforting voice, and I was able to calm her down. She'd mostly been freaked out because I had started to move, and thankfully didn't resent the mild abuse she had reserved when I'd found her nomming on me.
Picking her up I walked around a corner and first things first started to get some medicine out of my house med-kit. Deciding that we both needed it, I took a health potion and drank half, before forcing sauce to take a sip herself. She was emaciated but alive, and damn I was glad for that. But hell, I had survived so much in the last... I didn't know how long. I was willing to be thankful for anything.
***
Over the course of the next few days I ventured out of my house, and began to take stock of my surroundings. At first I didn't let Sause come with me, but eventually she just got too restless and I just had to. She'd been born in the streets and I had never had any intention of keeping her off them. And I was honestly thankful for her being with me. I almost never saw anypony else, and at that time my streets were filled with ferels.
The first time I met a feral was a... hard experiance. I met him... it in an appliance store on my first outing. It had turned grey, it's coat seeming to have fallen out in patches much worse than my own. As time has gone on I have found that I was lucky, I was able to keep an, admittedly thin, mane and tail.
When I saw the feral I ran over to it, yelling out in excitement for seeing someone else who had survived the blast. "Celestia! What has happened to you?! Are you alright? I have healing supli-" I was cut off by a guttural growl. Slowly it got up and I saw the wildness, the primal nature of it's mind, a madness I had only fended off with the help of my companion.
I was able to easily dispatch him with my hoofs, but I vowed to get myself a gun soon. However, it was as I looted that I found something I sorely needed. It was a radio, a simple stabletech emergency number that was phased out of production years ago, but it still had a home in my town. When almost nobody could afford, and for some even use, a pipbuck it lead us to make due with what we had.
The next day or two, when I wasn't trying to explore, I fiddled with the radio until I could find even one channel that worked. If I had just had a pipbuck, this would have been alot easier, but I made sure to mark down the radio frequency on the side as I listened to the first voice of a fellow sane pony I had heard in what seemed like forever.
" - the Manehattan MAS hub, on top of the obvious. Although the magical defenses of this building protected us from the brunt of the blast, what we didn't know was that a number of small holes in those defenses were letting radiation leak into the tower. One of those holes was located here, in the emergency broadcast room. Unfortunately, by the time we realized this and fixed the problem, Magpie, as well as a few others, had already taken a fatal dose. I hope you all join me in a moment of silence for the brave mare who stayed up here, trying to bring you all the truth of this disaster.”
This was a revelation I took to heart, that there were other ponies out there... and that the rest of them were somehow not feeling the same immunity to radiation as I had experienced. I ignored most of the rest of the broadcast, focusing on where the MAS hub was and how to get to it from where I was. I hadn't ever actually visited that ministry, so it wasn't precisely easy to remember an exact route.
Footnote!
Quest Perk Added
Ghoulification (Rank 2): Dispite how much better you look than many ghouls, you've taken your tole. The combination of physical trauma, and repeated experiance of radiation, has caused you to go into second-stage ghoulification. Radiation will now fully heal you, and you are no longer weakened by this taking it's effects.
Fallout Equestria: Sourpuss' Dossier
File 001: Manehatten MAS Hub
File 001-R13
Manehatten MAS Hub - Report
The Manhattan MAS Hub (Known now as Tenpony), is a community consisting of mostly MAS employees and their decedents. Due to their internal supplies, they quickly became leaders of Manehatten, and ended up the largest community of ponies that lived like pre-war.
The Hub is fortified in many layers, from it's outer facades to it's inner sanctums which include magical defenses that have been contestable do to political circumstances. It's walls have been fortified so that only one entrance can be accessed, and it is heavily policed. They, supposedly, have laws against live ammo usage within the walls of the hub.
The Hub is hostile to any and all necrotic (ghoul) ponies, no matter their former ranks within ministries. Despite a few early leaks, none of the enhancement experienced the change, which appears to mean that it must be caused by quick and immediate consumption of rads. This policy has been in effect since the first several weeks after the bombs, in part due to interactions with ghouls... Including the reporting agent.
Within several weeks, the first DJ Pon-3 took the reigns of the broadcast. The broadcast's power is one of the widest within the wasteland, for unknown reasons. It may be because it was initially an emergency broadcast, and piggybacked on some protocol or another. The DJ's politics change over time, which reflects the fact that it is obviously a verity of ponies. (though recent times has indicated voice modulation.)
----Redacted----
Tenpony Threat Level: Low
Analysis: Tenpony is unable to make changes or take action, despite their haughty words. They will, instead, spend their time trying to curate a failing socioty. The only shimmering light is the fact that somepony among them is DJ Pon-3, a beacon of truth who reports everything.
Course of Action: Leave well enough Alone.
Fallout Equestria: Sourpuss' Dossier
Chapter 4: Arcane Assholes
Chapter 4: Arcane Assholes "Come on, cut the ghoulies a break. If they've got the caps and you've got the space, it's a win-win, right? So what do you say?"
The first time I left my city after the bombs was frightening, because it involved crossing the Bucklyn Bridge. Now, that might not sound like a harrowing journey, but if you know the area you know there isn't a Bucklyn Bridge. Well, I'm sorry to say, I might have helped to accelerate the blast's destruction just a little.
Walking across the wood-slated pedestrian area was something of love. Between the pedestrian sections was a road, parts of which had already fallen out because of the blast and the heavy carts that stood on it. Parts of it still stood, and occasionally I had to jump onto them to move across, as there were holes in the slated pedestrian-ways as well.
I couldn't help it but several chunks slipped from my hoof as I walked... noticeably more than I would have liked. While the walkway lasted a few more years after that, I was one of the few ponies that walked on it consonantly, and every hoof-step I placed down seemed to shake the foundations of the bridge, or break off a chunk of steel reinforced concrete. But this first time was still oh so sweet.
As I walked past the middle I thought about what I knew was below, a stable. I knew I had been scorched by the radiation, and that I was basically a walking contaminate of anyone in those things. Still, I wished I could have been inside one of those places, rather than where I had been. But my duty was to my country first... at least it had been when it still existed.
***
It took me hours of walking, but eventually I made it to the MAS hub. Back in those days, you could go pretty far without encountering anypony, though irradiated beasts still existed and would have been a nuicence. OF course, that was ignoring the fact that I was going with a cat who happened to like chancing after the quickly evolving irradiated rats and things.
On the way, she had distracted me for a good half an hour by trying to chance what I can now only assume was a bale-fire phoenix. I recognized the shape of the bird from shows, but the color... well, the cool green color freeked me the fuck out. I'd seen enough demonstrations to recognize zebra-fire...
Sauce never did catch that bird, but I don't blame her. You try catching and killing a creature made of near-complete fire. She didn't manage it, and honestly I'm willing to bet she got doused in a lion's share of rads. But she seemed pleased enough with herself, which is a feat that only a cat can preform after failing. Arrogant creatures they are.
In any case, we were finally standing in front of the hub building, and frankly we might have been glowing, it was hard to tell so early in the evening. I didn't bother with shit, I just walked up to the one door that they hadn't boarded up and waited for a response. "Ministry of Morale. Get the hell out here in the name of the princess."
I didn't get a response for a while. As if the time was passing me by in a river. And I tried to knock again, but still I ended up without a response. And yet, after a good twenty minutes, a window opened a story above me. "What the bloody hell do you want!" The pony said, a brown MAS unicorn with the markings of being the equivalent of middle management. Slo
"I want to talk to you about my city, you are still under the jourestiction of the princess' royal army and refusing an inspection by Morale could look pretty damn bad if you don't come the hell down here." I said, slamming my hoof down in seeming frustration. I wasn't realy sure how to express myself at the time, and that was good enough for my buck.
He nodded and stared closer at me, as I looked up my scarf fell and my hat revealed my face from shadow. Suddenly, he reeled in disgust. "What the hell are you?!" He asked, staring at my slightly patchy fur and skin. "We don't recognize the princesses no-more... but fine. I'll send someone down to look you over."
After some time, a stallion opened the door. He was wearing a radiation suit, a pale yellow that covered everything... Including his mane and tail. The only thing I could see was his face behind a clear glass pane, as he brandished a radiation counter at me. "Dear Celestia, what in her name are you?!" He asked, just like the previous pony had.
As the counter got closer to me, the loud clicking drowned out just about everything around me. It was so much that I only noticed Sauce on my back when she moved forward and batted at the thing, making the radiation spike and make a sound so horrible I was surprised it didn't shatter the stallion's mask.
"You shouldn't be alive, neither of you two should!" He said, staring at me. "I... we need to up security. I'm... 'sorry', but you can't come in here. Your fucking radioactive, you think we would let you come inside?" And without a second thought, the pony slammed the door in my face, using an intercom on it to speak. "Leave, get the hell out, this isn't your town any more. You and your... ghosts, zombies, whatever... You don't belong in pony socioty, your dangerous contaminants!"
I tried to talk to them again a few times but... they ignored me. I left when they posted guards that were ready to shoot. I hoped that no other... of whatever I was would have to experiance this. But I suppose I was probably wrong. Still, now I didn't have a mission... Now I had nothing to deal with in the mean time.
***
It took me a long time, but eventually I found it. The night-club turned MoM hub... The one primarily overseen by my direct superior, Pinkie Pie. I shouldn't have gone up there, but... I couldn't help it. Something forced me to walk up the stairs and hallways of the generously reinforced building.
Unlike my own offices, Pinkie had insisted that the skyscraper have at least some mega-spell shielding. But from what I remember, most of the production had been placed in preserving the massive monument... to remind everyone that even after death she would always be watching. I remember those offices so vividly, many of them with actual dead, while many others were surprisingly empty.
Nowadays I would loot the dead and gone. Nowadays I would try and get every drug I could from that place. Those days... Those days were not nowadays. Back then I didn't dare touch a single one of the people who I had worked with for years. I didn't dare disturb their rest. That wasn't to say that Sauce had the same reverence, and I had to stop her from eating my co-workers several times on my way up to that top floor.
If you know anything about the ministries, you might not be surprised about where I was going. Well, I was going directly to the mare herself, pinkie pie. I had spoken with that pink ball of excitement hundreds of times over the years, but... She had always trusted me, and in turn, I had always trusted her.
You might not understand it, but LSP... It changes you. Ponies like me and pinkie, we had to deal with knowing that pain was going to happen... although it was much more a constant issue for me. And, well, that created a sort of comradere between me and Pinkie. A sharing of a burden that was rare... and heavy as any could possibly bear.
So I marched into her office and saw her corpse, lying there on the floor... seeming as if to still be looking at what had happened just days... weeks? ago. And when I saw her I broke down. I cried. I couldn't tell you how long it took for me to get it out, but I can tell you that I ignored the passing of at least one night while I sat there...
Sauce was as reverent as I was, and didn't eat the cotton candy mare. She didn't bother with her at all, attending to me during the majority of our time... that was until she did something I never would have expected. She pawed at pinkie's hoof and revealed a statue to me, a statue of Twilight Sparkle, a statue of the mare that had gotten so angry at my minestry mare at the party last year.
Something about that statue called out to me, made me want it, made me want to hold it. But I ignored that something. Instead, I marched out of there and began to wander. I began a journey that lasts to this day, one that wouldn't take me back to my city for years. A journey that I am here, writing about.
Footnote!
New Perk
Ghoulification (rank 3): Well, here it is, you are no longer a pony, you are bonified undead. But don't worry, being a full ghoul comes with it's benefits. You now not only heal from radiation, but gain strength from large amounts of it! Just try not to become a glowing one, kay?
