Fallout Equestria: Special Delivery

Chapter one: Relic, Wasteland Delivery Pony

So, let me start my little tale with a little information on exactly who I am. I am as some would say, a product. Off the books. Somepony that doesn’t actually exist, haven’t for about two hundred years, not since the bombs dropped and I leapt into one of the armoured stasis pods lining the walls of the Detrot O.I.A offices. I can’t remember my actual name, it was stripped from me when I agreed to go through with this, steelpony procedure, I was dying from a zebra curse and it was the only way I could keep on going. I had nothing to lose, so I kind of just thought, Fuck it and went through with the surgery to turn me into a cyberpony. I was put to sleep and woke up a machine. So I searched my memory and found a name fitting of my situation, Relic. I was a two hundred and thirty years old artefact, A relic from the war that decimated everything.

Also a relic that was fucking bored of waiting around in the fucking rain while a pack of Detrot raiders raped and ate his previous wasteland partner, leaving little else but bones and the little titbits of junk they saw no value in. “Damnit Hair-Trigger” I whispered, lowering my head in respect to my deceased friend. I wanted to lift the little pistol I carried and pull the trigger on all of them. All twenty of the stinking, swearing fucks. I had no chance at all considering that I had all of eight bullets in the clip and the gun was on the very brink of falling apart in my metal hooves. The water was logging in my green mane and my blue coat was becoming heavy with the never ending rain.

No, by the way, I was not an entirely synthetic pony. I was only about 44.521% machine. My hind legs were metal, alongside with some of my organs, being my liver, kidneys, heart and my eyes also most of my bones were steel, but not my spine. I had access to an E.F.S or Eyes Forward Sparkle and a S.A.T.S assisted targeting system, all linked up to my brain. Also I had what could be best described as an inventory system that stated whatever was inside my bags at any one time. I essentially had a pipbuck interface in my brain.

All of this was not at all helping my boredom for the next hour till the swearing mob of raiders moved on to find and most likely fuck their next target. I slowly came out from behind my cover, my wide brimmed hat flopping down over my eyes with the still increasing weight of the rain upon my head. My back legs vented and sprayed steam across the ground behind me as I crouched down next to my friend and closed his eyes on his mangled face. The raiders around these parts always left the eyes alone. I shook my doubts off of my back and started picking through what was left his belongings. A couple of bullets they had missed out, four caps, some more junk, six spark batteries and a stealthbuck. I dumped my small stack of loot in my saddlebag and sighed, sitting next to my old friend until his dusty coat was washed clean by the waning storm clouds.

After I had paid my last respects to Trigger, I mechanically rose to my hooves, turning away from the bloody carcass on the cracked asphalt behind me and continuing on my now lone journey to stable 56.

The stable had contacted me a while back to get their prissy little hooves on a new reactor core for their faulty matrixes. I had the core and just needed to make my delivery. One problem, 56 is in the middle of a fucking raider territory so I will most likely not be able to make my delivery of a priceless reactor core for meagre pay at this time.

I stayed true on my path, getting closer to the little marker I could see off in the distance on my E.F.S. I also tried to steer clear of the red bars, they signified something wanting to tear off both my ears and all my legs, then club what’s left of me to death with them. Raiders, all of them insane ponies, wearing nothing but leather and the very occasional piece of scrap metal strapped to their wretched bodies as makeshift armour.

It wasn’t long before I came across a group of fetid raiders I couldn’t skirt past. They didn’t have much in the way of guns, or maybe they just didn’t have any bullets. Anyway, I neatly stepped into the alley where they were loitering and slid into the targeting nirvana of S.A.T.S.

There were four of them, the fetid stinking ponies all turned to me in slow motion, and I toggled a pair of bullets from the little pistol I held in my magical grip. As I exited the spell, the gun fired, leaving two of the raiders as corpses on the ground, their heads ruptured and in pieces across the ground while the other two carried on running at me, a sharpened piece of rebar and a tire iron in tow. The first one leapt on me, and received a hydraulic hoof in the face for his troubles, spiralling back across the alley and snapping his neck as he impacted the wall. The mess of a pony slid down the wall almost comically, crumpling in a heap on the floor while the other frothing raider bared down on me apparently oblivious to the fact all three of his friends had just been killed.

Obviously, he also had no idea that pissing off a pony with a pistol while armed with a chunk of rebar is not the best idea as he ran face first into the still smoking barrel of the firearm I was wielding. The trigger pulled and he looked exceptionally surprised as he hit the ground, a hoof to the hole in his throat. That was four dead raiders, in assorted states of decimation, they had fuck all on them, the best I found was a grenade they had forgotten they owned. Reloading the pistol, I carried un my brisk trot towards the stable. I intended to stay there for a couple of days then move on again after most likely having stolen some more bullets and maybe a rifle, if I can find any, that is.

On the rest of the way there, I had few other confrontations, my E.F.S. helping me skirt past most of the fetid ponies. The subway entrance was directly in-front of me and it was dark as all fuck, almost rivalling the Detrot night time. Taking my careful way, I started inside, blinking three times and making my eyes light up, like a wartime pipbuck’s lamp function, just better, I swept my vision across the dingy walls, a torch beam following me wherever I looked, the walls were cracked and splattered with profane graffiti, all red, most likely blood, and no mattering the graffiti, the amount of pony bodies hung around the ceiling, I gagged and wretched at the smell of decomposing bodies and that they all seemed to be looking directly at me with their terrified eyes.

Carefully I stepped into the tunnel, tying a bandanna over my muzzle to block out the rotten reek of pony bodies, it didn’t work overly well, but was better than nothing. I never thought raiders could really be just this bad. It reeked of shit and all types of rot as I delved deeper into the pitch black open space knowing very well that the place was more than likely infested by more fetid raiders.

I was glad I hadn’t found any… so far.

After exploring the desecrated tunnel for a while, I found it mostly deserted besides the occasional radroach that I simply crushed underhoof or splatted with a piece of debris, the only raiders I found were either dead with bloated stomachs and gore splattering their mouths or sleeping, in my previous experience, you could drive a train next to one of these sleeping looneys and get away with it, so I didn’t bother trying to be overly sneaky, which would have slowed me down severely. The little bar at the top of my modified E.F.S. system telling me if anything could see me, it only flashed occasionally as a scuttling radroach became interested in me and came over just to receive my hoof squashing it for its trouble. I guessed this was the raider’s nest due to the amount of bodies and food, alongside the amount of random trashed weapons and spare bullets, which I kindly helped myself to. I had lost my precious L.D-Sparkle rifle a while back, an elegant magical energy weapon that charged a single blast using spark batteries and amplifies a small amount of energy into a wide range of effects, such as it could be a sniper rifle one moment, then a shotgun the next by use of the M.A.S beam refraction tech. I am not going to ask how many ponies got diced when making and testing the deadly weapon.
I still had the wrecked carcass of my close weapon, but looking at it for anything more than a moment told you that it was too dangerous due to the amount of damage it sustained when my late partner and I stepped on a mine, luckily it was my tread that set off the explosive and my cybernetic hoof absorbed most of the explosion and Trigger was quick enough on his hooves to roll away from the boom before any real damage could be done… the unfortunate thing about that encounter was the mine’s shockwave had cracked the refraction chamber on my beam rifle and then we had to deal with a group of raiders, which had caused my precious gun to explode in my face, sending the highly powered beam of magical energy rocketing straight into the chest of one of the attacking ponies, burning a hole straight through their sternum and melting their lungs. All I had besides that was my falling apart pistol which was more falling apart now.

I sat down against a door rusted shut and took the bandanna from over my muzzle, the stench properly reaching me and making me wretch, nevertheless I managed to choke down some water and eat some of the food I was carrying. Also I took the time to start to pick through the belongings I had purloined from the raiders, few of the guns were in better condition than the one I was trying to keep together with a combination of wonderglue and duct tape, but the little mouthgun was on its last legs three fights ago and now it just needed burying. I took the parts of it I could still use, being the clip and the four bullets left in it.

After another hour of searching and stripping weapons down for spare parts I had picked the raider nest pretty clean, I had managed to fix myself up with a duct taped carbine rifle of my own design, I thought myself quite resourceful when it came to making weapons out of other bits of weapons. I kind of just knew what bits of random weapons would work together into a workable firearm. I managed to test it out on it with a few rounds of hollow point on a raider’s head as she raised from her sleep groggily. Also I had managed to pull apart a number of the pistols I had purloined from the tunnel and assemble them into a set of pistols and I chose the best quality firearm as my own, unfortunately I didn’t have an opportunity to test it as my rifle shots had started to stir some of the other raiders around me from their sleep.

I had about twenty seconds to slip from the tunnel before I was seen and the raiders noticed they didn’t have their guns. This would most likely just piss them off more. I managed to get out before any of the stinking ponies had noticed me, staggering to their gnawed hooves one nudged the mare I had shot with her nose, then a hoof, then he burst into giggling, prodding the bullet wounds with his hooves and watching the blood run down her mottled hide and onto the cracked ground. Then he opened one of her glassy eyes and stared into it, then mumbled something to her.
“Shit! All of you fuckers! Sixgun’s been shotted! We got a fuckin’ interuderer in the hideyhole!” He yelled into the crowd of raiders who stood stunned for a few moments, then all jumped to where I had stolen their guns from them.

‘Shit’ I thought as it dawned on them that their weapons were missing.

“And whoever shotted Sixgun stole my fucking gun!” The raider pony that had prodded Sixgun yelled. Double shit. “Find him and make ‘im fuckin’ shotted, then get me my fucking gun!” He ran over to a pile of rubble and grabbed a chunk of rebar in his broken and rotten teeth. Brandishing the sharp metal stake in the air then charging away out of the tunnel, being followed by most of the other raiders.

I began to pick my way across the tunnel to the dark slowly as to not get noticed by the raiders that had lagged behind to play with the unfortunate mare’s corpse. There was seven in total in the hidey hole with me and they were all giggling maliciously as they poked and prodded at the poor mare’s body. My Celestia raiders could be disgusting.

Eventually I made it across the chamber and started on my way away from the raider nest, staying to the shadows and keeping the eye on my E.F.S. closed, there would be nopony finding me… “Shit… stable doors are fucking loud with all the sirens and the metal squealing.” I mumbled to myself quietly, the problem is that once I had gotten into the stable, I would have to fight my way out of the tunnel, not that I am unable to do that, but because I didn’t like killing anypony that didn’t want me dead, in reality I didn’t like killing at all. But in the Wasteland, you did whatever was fucking necessary to keep you alive and if you can your family and friends, we had learned all of that from the stable dweller marching herself around near Tenpony tower and the Security Mare shooting the fuck out of the Hoof, and probably herself and everyone around her knowing that accursed place. I had had a bad run in with it when making a delivery to the Hoofington Reapers, got myself stuck in an enervation field around this place called Chapel and a unicorn pulled me out and nursed me back to health.

Weird ponies in the Hoof, this unicorn, his name was Priest, asked me if I had wanted to make the pilgrimage, I said no of course, I had a delivery to make. But when I had asked him what the pilgrimage was he turned away from me and went silent. While I was there, I managed to get a bunch of conversation out of the Crusaders, a group of kids that knew the hoof like the back of their hooves… and there was their vendor, her name is Charity. I do not think I had ever heard more of a lie in the entire time I have been alive in the Wastes, that filly had a nose for caps and seemed to know how to milk ponies for them every which way.

My saddlebags were definitely lighter when I left that place to go and make my (now slightly late) delivery of four sets of powerhooves to the Reapers. Their leader, Big Daddy had been much more sympathetic to me than I had expected and paid me more than he should have because of my run in with one of the many curses of the hoof and then denied doing so.

As I said, strange pones in the hoof. The ponies around Detrot either wanted to fuck you, fuck your cap reserve over, or fucking kill you. All different flavours of fucked. Personally, I didn’t really like any of those flavours of fuckiness so I tried to steer clear of those areas of Detrot, which meant most of the ruined city. One of the zebra balefire bombs came down just outside of the city and cooked about half of its inhabitants, left the others to try to scamper into stables like the one I was trying to find at the moment. Some were what I have learned to call Dystopian Stables. Experiments by Stable-tech to learn more about pony psychology and how to prevent future wars. Guess that was a little bit of a long shot because of the two hundred years that passed between the doors closing and the present day of the Wasteland.

The one I was traveling to was lucky enough to be one of the normalish stables, Stable 56. And it wasn’t long till I found it, and the group of raiders trying to cut through the door with a jury-rigged laser cutter. I ducked quickly out of sight before they heard me and turned around.

Hearing what they were talking about made me sick, they were discussing how they were going to kill the stable dwellers and what they were going to do with them before they died.

Fucking sick ponies, but the laser cutter they had put together meant they had somepony that knew what they were doing with tech, it was, albeit slowly, burning a hole into the stable. I may be able to salvage a few parts from the cutter to repair my beloved L.D-Sparkle. There were five of them bristling with pointy things and firearms, and one of me. I would have to deal with them before I made my way into the stable to make my delivery and take my pay.

I couldn’t decide whether to see if I could take on the raiders head on, or try a stealthier approach. Eventually I decided on trying to be a sneaky pony and slunk through the shadows towards the raised platform the five raider ponies were standing on, swearing and fighting amongst each-other.

They didn’t notice me at all as I pulled a small silver apple from my saddlebag and pulled the stem from it. I gently placed it on the platform and let go of the single leaf stopping it from going off then rolled under the scaffolding. I heard a shout from above then the resounding explosion of the grenade. Then nothing but the steady whir and buzz from the laser cutter. I came out from under my protective scaffolding and pulled myself up to the bloody and blackened platform to switch off the cutter. There was little left of the five besides a number of bloody lumps and the caps I took from them.

Starting to disassemble the cutter I managed to salvage enough parts from it to mostly repair my precious Sparkle, all I needed now was a high voltage resonance crystal, each stable had hundreds of them in the lights that illuminated them. I just needed to ask for a light bulb as an added payment for having to go through so much raider territory. It’d be silly of them to force me to steal it, because I might steal a couple more things alongside it.

I put the salvaged parts from the cutter in my bags and moved over to the intercom system between the stable and the Wasteland, slamming the button down I growled into the microphone “Delivery pony, let me into your stable or im leaving with your battery.”
A few seconds later, a female voice came over the speakers, “You are the delivery pony Relic?” she asked, “aren’t there a bunch of bad ponies out there, they’ve been trying to break into the stable!” the mare panicked.

“Do you want me to put them back?” I growled back at her and she squeaked, then I heard muttering on the other side of the speakers and after a few moments, the sirens declaring the huge gear shaped door was about to open began to blare. I backed away a little as the door started to squeal and tilt to the side, beginning to roll open.

I saw light spilling from the crack in the door as the Clackson siren kept on wailing over my head. The rusted door was taking its sweet time opening and if it took any longer I was going to start hearing raiders swearing and cursing at me… then throwing things at me, then worse, I couldn’t hold them all off, at least not without my Sparkle rifle.

The door finally let out a squealing shriek and rolled aside, revealing a group of ponies in combat armour aiming at me with 10mm pistols that would most likely do nought but spark off my lightweight Stabletec armour, unless they were modified to be able to fire AP rounds, which at a glance, I could tell they weren’t.
“So are you going to stop pointing your peashooters at me and let me in?” I growled at them and started walking over the bridge that was extending towards my platform. They shook when they saw what was left of the raiders I had dealt with and most of them lowered their guns, a couple keeping their sights trained on me. They were obviously scared of me, especially with my eyes glowing and having metal back legs, no mattering me being a wastelander. Fucking stable ponies, could never do anything right, a couple of them had left the safety on when they had opened the door. I was going to have some fun here before I left.

“Who’s overmare?” I said, making a few of them jump, one young buck swallowed and stepped forward, slipping his pistol into his holster before addressing me.

“The overmare is called Marina, she is in the office at the moment.” He stammered then backed away as I turned towards another mare who had left her safety on.

“Would you care to direct me?” I said to the earth pony mare, who squeaked and started trembling. I smiled a little at her, terrifying her more and I saw her reach out to the trigger on her pistol and pull with her tongue. Nothing happened, quite obviously. I took the gun and flicked the safety with my magic, then pointed it at the ceiling and pulled the trigger and it let off a resounding bang, making a couple of the ponies in the group scream and im pretty sure one of them feinted.

“Fixed it.” I said casually and dropped the pistol, I turned away and started walking through the clean stable before it clattered to the floor followed a few seconds later by the sound of an earth pony mare hitting the steel floor. “Oh and you’re going to want to close that before any of those raiders out there work out you’ve opened the door, because I pissed them off.” I told them and sent them frantically scrambling at the controls to close the door.

I worked my way around the stable, ignoring the terrified looks of all the jumpsuted occupants until I got to the office of the overmare and walked in, not bothering to knock. “Marina? I have your battery. Now I want payment and a courtesy payment of a couple lightbulbs, a night’s rest, a hot shower and directions to a workstation for having to trawl through all that raider territory.” I demanded, walking into the tidy office, getting a curious stare from the mare behind the terminal.

“You must be Relic?” Marina asked as she stood up from her desk, her curly yellow mane bouncing around her blue shoulders. “Can I have our battery first; I have learned the hard way not to trust wastelanders.” She said firmly, placing a hoof on her desk. I grunted in reply and floated out the yellow cylinder, dropping it on the desk in front of her. “Is it functional?” she asked.

“Not my job to find out, not my job to care.” I said, rolling my eyes and earning a hard stare from the stable pony. “Yes I believe it is functional, at least it was before I yanked it out the back of a dead protectapony.” I growled after giving out under her stare, reminded me of somepony close to me, probably my mother, she was dead now, I didn’t care.

She smiled with her thin mouth and nudged a box with her hoof, the contents rattling. “The right amount of bottle caps I hope, you can go down to maintenance, take some light bulbs for whatever reason you want them for. Then you can stay in an empty room, I will have the stable guard find somewhere for you, the workstations are in maintenance.” She told me, taking the battery into her immaculate hooves. “Please don’t scare anypony else. If you don’t mind.”

I simply grunted and floated the box up, shaking it, full of caps, about 2000. That was right, I asked for 1500, won’t complain about a few extra. “Nice doing business with you. And also, I stopped a gang of raiders from cutting through your stable door.”
“That’s what the extra five hundred caps are for, we are deeply thankful for your assistance in that too.” She interjected, answering my question before I asked it.

“Thanks, now I have a gun to fix, please excuse me.” I growled and started to make my way out of the room before she stopped me with a question.

“What happened to your legs?” She asked, completely innocent.
“Accident, I keep it personal, don’t ask again.” I told her without turning around. This was my answer to this question every time it was asked.

She was silent for a moment, then, with a very apologetic tone said, “Sorry, I will leave you to your weapon.” And with that I left the room and she went back to her desk.

It wasn’t long before I had picked up company, a rather small mare. She was red with a charcoal mane and had an incessant need to ask questions about everything. Her name was Promise and she was turning out to be a royal pain in the flank.

“What happened in the Hoof? Why are you called Relic? What’s your cutiemark? What are you going to fix? Why do you need lightbulbs?” She incessantly questioned, I ignored her completely, walking along to the maintenance section of the stable. “Why do you have metal legs and glowy eyes?” She asked, now walking backwards in front of me.

“Coz I do, drop it.” I told her, not looking at the small mare.
“Are they uncomfortable?”

“No, stop asking.” I told her, now looking at her deep blue eyes.
“Are they super strong?” She asked again, now she was pissing me off.

“Yes, now will you leave me alone, because if you ask me another question I will demonstrate how strong they are by kicking you into a wall.” I growled at her and she very quickly shut up. But still walked next to me.

“Um… Mr Relic?” She asked and I sighed.

“Yes?”

“You just walked past maintenance.” She pointed out, and was completely correct.

“Thank you.” I sighed, and turned around. “Youre still going to follow me, aren’t you?”

My question was very quickly answered as the crimson mare spun on her hooves and trotted up next to me. “What’s the Wasteland like?” She asked, this time genuinely curious.

“It’s like a bad time went and fucked an apocalypse, then that child had a baby with Nightmare moon.” I said bluntly, earning an astonished look form the small mare before she gave an exasperated giggle. “And that’s the Wastes on a good day” I added pointedly.

“Well if it’s that bad, why don’t you go and live in a stable?” She asked.

“Because it’s boring.” I said, nothing more to it, and the small smile on the mare’s face said that she agreed.

“You want to come with me, don’t you?” I looked at the small mare, she’d be good for sneaking into small places, but she also looked as if she would run and hide at the hint that a gun was going to go off. “It’s a shitty place out there. You won’t like it, then it’ll kill you and rape your body.”

“I… I don’t know” She stammered, “But it’s really boring being cooped up in here with all the grey… and the grey… and the routine.” She said, pointing to her pipbuck.

“Routine?” I asked as we walked into the maintenance wing of the stable.

“Yeah, the pipbucks tell us what to do inside the stable and when we do them… and how to do them. Im on my break at the moment, but soon I’ll have to go and do… something.” She said, a little sad.

“So it is a dystopian stable.” I said to myself, smiling a little.

“Wha?” She said, turning to me.

“Nothing, just a theory I have.” I said to the little mare as we walked into the store room and were confronted with row upon row of boxes of stuff. I set about looking for lightbulbs while the mare went back to peppering me incessantly with questions.

In the eighteenth box I searched I found the bulbs I was looking for and took them to the workbench in the corner of the room and sat at it.

“Whatcha doin’” the small earthpony mare said, appearing next to me.

“Fixing my gun.” I said, pulling out the carcass of my precious L.D-Sparkle and lying it on the bench.

“It looks really odd for a gun.” She said and prodded at it with a curious hoof.

“That’s because it is a laser rifle, sniper and shotgun.” I pointed out, starting to unscrew the chambers.

“How can it be all those different types of gun?” She sat down, a confused look on her face.

“Because it can, that’s all you need to know.” I had the barrel of the gun off and had put the bent pipe in the vice to bend it back into shape. I let the autoforge begin to straighten the barrel before I began to disassemble the firing mechanism.

“But if it is all those kinds of gun, won’t you need to take it apart and put it back together over and over again?” She said, and it made sense, you would have to with the M3 intachangeagun. But it proved too much of a faff in battle and was replaced with the L.D-Sparkle rifle.

“With previous models of the gun, yes, but this one is special, and better.” I added in answer to her question, I floated the battery matrix up and removed the shattered resonance crystal with my magic and tossed it over to the overcurious mare. “That is what makes the gun do different things.”

“Oooh! So this gem thingy makes the lasers do different things?” She caught the gem in her hooves and held it up to the light. I lifted up a stabletec lightbulb and smashed the glass casing against the table, making the mare jump. “Hay! What was that for?!” She squealed at me.

“Because I need the gem that is inside the bulb. It’s what makes them change colours.” I said, floating up the gem, the ones used by Stabletec had a shell on it that made the light resonate without becoming dangerous. But I needed the shell off to be able to use the clear crystal in my gun.

“But that can’t be used in a gun, it’s a light bulb.” She said, brushing the glass off her front.

“It can’t be used yet, I need to get the inhibitor off it, is there anywhere I can get a hacksaw in here?” I asked, floating the crystal up and looking through it at the light. In the resonance caused by my magic, it bathed me in green light, the same colour as my eyes.

“Hacksaw? I think there should be one in the toolbox under the bench.” She answered me, mesmerised by the green light created by the crystal. I went and looked through the box, and sure enough, there was a hacksaw that I floated out and used to carve the gem free of its magic inhibiting shell. The moment that the shell came off the gem, the light shining through it began to heat up and I needed to clip it into the battery matrix before it cooked me. I waited for my weapon to accept the new crystal. I slammed a spark battery into the dock and the light that came on was green, the matrix was completely intact and had accepted the modified crystal.

“That was cool!” Promise said next to me. “I wish I was a unicorn like you.” She whined while I began reassembling the Sparkle. The firing trigger needed a little jimmying before it accepted the new crystal. But before long I had my rifle back in working condition. I switched it between the different modes, watching the scope slowly click and smoothly rise out of the ornate gun. A while back I had visited a market and bought a new scope for my gun before it broke and I hadn’t had chance to change them. I ejected the spark battery and turned my gun over to press the button on the underside, turning it to exchange mode. Where the gun started to come apart, its basic frame exposing itself and the different parts clicking apart from each other. I removed the sniper scope and slotted in my new one, then swapped a couple of other parts of my gun that were becoming worn.

“There we go.” I said, flicking the switch again, making the gun reassemble itself with a pneumatic hiss. “One working gun.” I aimed down the sight ring available for rifle mode and pulled the trigger on the unloaded gun, imagining the canister of something I was aiming at exploding into flaming debris.

“It looks very dangerous.” Said Promise, who was marvelling at the weapon.

“Shit, I think she has the basic idea of a gun.” I snarked at her.
After about another thirty thousand questions I had managed to assemble and repair another four other guns, I was planning on selling them to a market. I never imagined a pony could physically be as curious as Promise. Under great strain I managed to get all my work done before she killed all my brain cells.

“I have to go and talk to your security ponies now to get my room. As long as it isn’t your room or near your room, im going to be happy.” I said to her, packing up the weapons I had repaired and slung the Sparke over my back, slotting the sixgun I had just repaired into a holster on my front leg.

She hung her head, a little put out by my insult but perked up again pretty quickly, excitedly she voiced her idea, “Can I come with you?” She said as I was walking out of the room. “Please please please please please!?” she begged, stopping me in my tracks.

I sighed, “I will sleep on it. But you must remember that in my line of work, I kill ponies, and I sit around doing fuck all for long periods of time, and there’s fuck all to eat out in the wastes.” I said, turning around to face her widening eyes.

“K-kill ponies?” She stammered.

“Why the fuck do you think I carry a gun, two guns at that.” I asked her as if she was stupid.

She nodded a little put out. “I don’t think I would be able to kill a pony...” She whimpered a little. “But I still want to come with you!” She looked up at me with a determined face on.

I sighed again, then nodded and passed her one of the guns I had just repaired and attached a silencer to it. “Get a picture of somepony you love, imagine it is really them. Put it on your wall and empty the clip from this gun into it.” I passed her a clip of ten 10mm bullets. “That goes in there, you bite down on there and use your tongue to fire, that is the safety.” I explained, indicating all the parts of the gun. Her wide eyes were telling enough that I might not have another companion in the wasteland for a while. “Prove you have done that by the morning and I’ll take you with me.”

She nodded and put on a brave face. “I will. I’ll do it!” She said determined.

“If you do, pack everything you can carry and then a little more.” I told her, making my way away from the determined mare. “And, by the way, im going to have to tell you, we are going to have to fight our way out of the stable and out of the tunnel to get out into Detrot.” With that, I walked out of the room and left the mare to her own devices.

A short walk later, I knocked on the door to the security offices and quite surprised the pony who opened the door.
“Marina told me you’d set me up with a room.” I growled at the surprised unicorn mare and she nodded quickly and indicated to follow me.

“Marina said you wanted a hot shower too.” The security mare stammered, walking towards the accommodation wing in the stable. “All the accommodation rooms in the stable are equipped with a shower facility and toilet. You may use them both at your leisure due to your delivery, thanks for that too.” She said over her shoulder.

“Thanks.” I muttered, more worried about my shower than anything else at the moment, I had a bloodstain in my mane that I hadn’t been able to get out for so long.

After a few corners, she stopped in front of a door marked with ‘042’ and opened it. The smell of recent cleaning came through the door and smacked me right in the nostrils. “In here, overmare says you’re welcome to stay three days, then we’re gonna have to ask you politely to move along.”

I nodded and walked into the room, stretching out my forelegs I closed the door and locked it. I stripped off my saddlebags, rifle and armour. Then the garments I had on under them, there was a full body mirror in the bathroom and I stood a little way away from it to look at myself. “Fucking hell…” I whispered under my breath at the sight of me.

My blue coat had become more of a mottled brown with the amount of mud and congealed blood in it, my mane was more black than anything else. I locked eyes with myself, wild eyes, pinprick pupils I looked like a pony fresh out of insane asylum dosed up with a little more crazy than before. My back legs were still blood splattered with the ponies I had bucked into the next life. I needed to be clean. Stepping into the shower I turned it on and gasped at the cold water that hit my back instantly, then smiled as the cold was quickly replaced by warm then hot.

I just stood there under the shower for a good ten minutes, letting the hot water run over my shoulders and back before floating the soap up from the rack next to me and beginning to scrub myself back to being blue. I removed the blood coating my mane and coat with little difficulty, once I had all of that off did I realise how many scars I had across my whole body. Bullet wounds everywhere and the slash wound I had received when trying to escape the O.I.A. office, I would not be going back there anytime soon.

I got a good look at my cutie mark, an ancient dagger with a gemstone resembling an eye embedded in it's hilt, it didn't make sense when I got it at the age of five... The relic on my flank made more sense now since it was the name I hated taken for the Wastes, couldn't remember my old name anyway. Didn't matter that I couldn't, only thing that mattered in the Wasteland was if you got to see tomorrow. And if you didnt, then tough bloody luck. In my eyes, if you didn't see the sunrise, you were either dead or blind, eitherway, you fucked something up.

After spending a good hour in the shower I took the liberty of actually brushing my mane and tail, the knots and tangles were becoming irritating and I had a brush in my room and nothing to do. After sorting my hair I put my jacket back on and went to the door, my sixgun resting in its holster on my leg and unlocked it, pushing it open with my nose I sought out a member of the security team and drilled them on how to squire food in this stable.
"You need to wait till the schedule tells you to go and eat." The spooked mare had told me, pointing a shaking hoof at a large door. "The canteen is in there." After telling me that she had bolted so I went to the door which opened for me. In front of me was a large group of stable ponies, all looking depressed and all looking surprised to see me in here.

"What's the Wastelander doing in here?" I heard one whisper.
"Must be trying to steal our food." Remarked another.

I whirled on them, my temper quick to break. "Want to know what I go through every fucking day to get food and water?" I pulled the pistol from my holster with my magic and pressed it one of the mocking ponies' knees, "so, do ya?!" I shouted into his face, his quick shake of his head answered my question for me, he had no fucking clue.

I was shown where to get food from and was politely denied it by the robotic voice, "We at Stabletec apologise, but you do not seem to have a Stabletec patented pipbuck, your unique interface does not link with our schedule and therefore we cannot offer you food, please visit security to acquire a patented pipbuck and try again." I swore in multiple shades of red, green and brown then grumbled. I had no right to ask for food from the stable ponies if the stable itself wouldn't give it to me.

After that catastrophic failure of a dining experience I made my way back into my bedroom and tucked into a few cans of cram and a sparkle cola I had collected. When I had finished my meal I slid out my scrap-slot and fed the cram cans to the desperately hungry hole in my back leg, I felt my internal organs start to repair themselves and I coughed up a bullet that had been lodged in my chest for a while and shoved that in the slot too.

A good night's sleep was a rare thing in the wasteland, but as common as radiation in the stables, I lay down on the soft bed and slid the revolver under the pillow, I didn't have much chance to think about taking Promise with me before I closed my robotic eyes and shut down for the night.

Level up (16)
New perk: A rested body is a rested mind: Sleeping for a night removes some Rads aswell as healing limbs and damage.