Fallout Equestria: Snapdragon

The wind howled across the mountainside as the stable door slammed shut behind the excursion team.

Even though the rad suit was temperature controlled and comfortable, Snapdragon felt a cold shiver creep down his spine as he took in the sight before him.

There was a sheer drop directly below the entrance alcove, with the mountain sloping down on a sharp decline. Brown tufts of burnt grass and the charred husks of trees littered the mountainside, and the sky was a boiling grey mass of of thick clouds that stretched horizon to horizon. A path wound down from the alcove, down around the mountain before fading into the slightly green tinged mist that pooled at the bottom of the mountain.

This was a far cry from the cool grey marble that coated the inside of the stable, but it wasn’t what sent the chill down his spine.

That was caused by the long line of white and black skeletons that trailed down the mountain path as far as he could see, littered with carts, saddlebags and detritus as if the ponies had all perished in a single moment.

‘Which,’ Snaps thought grimly, ‘they quite possibly did.’

“Alright team, form a line!” Jackdaw shouted, the tinny sound of his speaker almost being drowned out in the screaming wind. “We are going to need to move some of those bones for the wagon to pass! The dirt we need is about a weeks travel from the base of the mountain according to our scans. I need Snapdragon, Willow and Sunflower at the front of the formation with shovels. don’t worry about the bones, they wont mind!”

Snaps groaned at the thought of touching the burnt brittle bones, even through the rad suit. Willow bumped him as she walked past, a burly green unicorn mare. She turned and smiled down at Snapdragon, her robust size reminding him again of him own slender form.

“The Crow is already pushing us hard aye!” she laughed and winked, her magic enveloping a plow and tossing it to him. Out of reflex Snaps tried catching it in his mouth only to have it clack against his helmet and clatter to the ground, causing Jackdaw to turn and frown at him.

Flushing with embarrassment, he flipped the plow up into his hooves and squeezed past the wagon to the front of the group. Steeling himself against the rising bile in his throat, he began to push against a skeleton. The shovel ground against the bones but they did not move. Grunting, Snaps put his whole body behind the shovel, pushing as hard as he could, except the shovel promptly snapped, the head of the shovel spinning off the edge of the path and down the cliff, clanging as it went. His head whipped around at the similar sound happening to his teammates, shovels snapping. Sunflower grunted in surprised and caught himself with his magic, stopping himself from falling over the cliff. Willow wasn’t so lucky, her weight was too much to counter balance and she flipped over the bones, off the path, over the edge and plummeted down into the fog.

Screams erupted from behind him as the team began to panic, only to have Jackdaw rip off his helmet, take a deep breath of the potentially poisoned outside air and yell as loud as he could.

“SILENCE!” His deep, booming voice echoing down the mountain, reverberating back up to them as it bounced off the fog.

The group fell silent. Snaps looked around him in fear, his heart hammering in his chest as he felt a strange vibration along his feathers. The vibration quickly spread to his hooves as a rumble, and the mountain began to shake. Rocks and debris began to fall from above them, bouncing off the cliff before disappearing in the same direction as Willow. The mountain began to shake in earnest now, Snaps throwing himself into the air to escape the unsteady ground.

“BACK TO THE STABLE! RETREAT!” Jackdaw screamed in panic, turning to flee back to the safety of the alcove that the stable door was located in, before a huge rock slammed down behind the wagon, falling through the path and taking the pony standing behind it with it. Snaps began to shake as he realized there was no way back to Eclair. He beat his wings, trying to catch enough lift to pull away from the mountain.

Pain exploded in his wing as a rock smashed through it, slamming him back onto the path amongst the bones. Dizziness clouded his mind, his ears ringing as he watched the blurry coloured ponies scurry around in front of him in panic, dodging falling rocks on the narrow path. Grey began closing in around his vision, the last thing he saw before passing out was the sight of more rocks piling up over the stable entrance, blocking completely what tiny path was left leading to it.

“Eclair..” he whispered, then passed out.

*****

Snapdragon coughed, choking as he awoke to the sickly taste of healing potion being poured down his throat. Swallowing and blinking, he looked around, realising his helmet was shattered around him, nothing filtering his lungs from the deadly air. His breath began to quicken in panic, and he started hyperventilating. A touch on his cheek drew his attention to his savior. Jackdaw sat back on his haunches, looking worriedly down at him, his eyes darting to the side as he looked at something with what seemed to be sadness.

“Oh Snaps, I am so sorry.” The normally calm and collected unicorn moaned, his face ashen beneath his dark fur. “I am so, so sorry. Your wing… I didn’t know, medical didn’t cover this.”

It was only then that Snapdragon noticed the dull ache at his side. Wincing, he looked down and let out a scream. His right wing was twisted and broken, the bones snapped and poking through the fragile skin, the pink marrow clearly visible, a chunk of rock still embedded in it. The healing potion was closing the wounds as he watched, but the bones were fusing wrong, they were healing in the still broken position. He tried moving it, only to groan as the rock had became a part of himself. Healing potions had stopped him from bleeding out and had numbed the pain, but it had indiscriminately healed him in a grotesque way.

He flopped back onto the ground, covering his eyes with his foreleg so he didn’t have to see anymore.

“Where is everyone?” he asked.

Jackdaw sighed. “Willow, Lemongrass, Sunflower and Fennel are all dead, crushed or worse I imagine. I don’t know where everyone else is. When I woke up and drank a healing potion, I saw you lying there. I had thought you had died too, but you live.” Snaps heard Jackdaw lay down next to him, the dirt strangely crunchy under him. “We are about halfway down the mountain, it looks like we fell into a slightly covered underpass, thank Celestia. Our supplies are wrecked. Our equipment is wrecked. The stable door is blocked by a mountain of rocks that we couldn’t move even if we had Willow to help. You cant fly. My magic is broken.”

Hearing that, Snapdragon opened his eyes and looked over at Jackdaw before letting out a gasp in dismay. Jackdaw was a very handsome unicorn, with an unusual coat as dark as coal, with a beautiful purple mane that flopped into his forest green eyes whenever he was concentrating. He was truly the heartthrob of the stable. Now his face was filthy and torn, his fur missing where it had been healed by the potion. That wasn’t what Snaps was staring at though. Jackdaw’s once proud and pointed horn now ended halfway up, cruel jagged tips where there should have been a fine point. Jackdaw winced, and tried to channel magic through it, only to have the tips spark and pop. Sweating and panting with pain, he looked helplessly at Snapdragon.

“I was chosen to lead this excursion. It was my fault that the avalanche happened, it’s my fault our people cant go home.”

Snaps opened his mouth to say something comforting, only to have vomit pour out as the adrenaline finally caught up with him. Healing potion tasted even worse coming back up. He felt too weak to even move to clean his fur.

“Water?” he croaked, the taste of bile reminding him how thirsty he was.

“We have your canteen and mine. That’s it. Unless we find the purifier in the wreckage, we are going to lose to thirst, or hunger, or exposure.” Jackdaw’s voice was grim as he clumsily hoofed over a canteen. Sparingly, Snaps rinsed out his mouth, then sipped at the canteen, ignoring his vomit covered fur.

“What do we do now?” he asked the older stallion.

“We find the wreckage. Pack as much as we can. Find the others, then find other ponies. Not everyone disappeared when the megaspells hit. We know there were at least 23 other stables made with however many ponies inside. We need to find only one of them and get a message to stable 24 for a rescue.” Jackdaw rubbed his face with a hoof, sitting up and staring at the horizon. “I don’t know this world, Snapdragon, none of us do. Whatever is out there, we have to hope it is friendly.”

“Snaps.” Jackdaw looked at him in confusion. “You can call me Snaps.”

Jackdaw smiled, wrinkling his nose slightly at the smell of his companion’s sour fur.

“Jack is fine by me. Lets find that purifier, and get you cleaned up.”

***

Scavenging was slow going for the both of them, as Jack was not used to using his hooves for everything, and Snaps was weighed down by the rock that now formed a part of his wing. They had found debris from the wagon, but not the actual wagon.

“Should we use the path to go right to the bottom and see if it landed there?” Snaps sipped at his canteen awkwardly, holding his left wing out for balance as he drank. Walking on three legs was hardly graceful, but he couldn’t hold the canteen under his wings.

“I think that's better than climbing directly down the mountain, but we might miss some supplies on the way down if they have fallen out of the wagon.” Jack kicked at a rock. “Lets do it this way until we hit the fog, then we will follow the path through it. If worst comes to worst, we can scavenge from the bones.” Jack looked a bit green at this idea.

“That fog does not look healthy to breathe. I may only be a botanist but I know that breathing green air is not the path to a long and prosperous life.” Snaps glanced at Jack, noticing the sweat glistening on his coat, causing it to be slicked down against the firm muscles, sparkling in the sunlight with every move that he made. Shaking his head to distract himself from that very distracting sight, he continued. “Unless we find Willow. I know she had some air masks in her rad suit pockets.”

“Agreed, that should be our first concern. I don’t know if you have noticed, but our rad counters have been steadily in the yellow this whole time.”

Snaps looked down at his pipbuck, only to see a blank screen with a giant crack running across it. Tapping it yielded no results.

“Umm…” He looked up at Jack helplessly.

“A rock must have landed on it pretty hard for that to happen.” Picking up Snaps hoof, he inspected the pipbuck closely, tapping on the buttons in an attempt to get a response. Snaps flushed, feeling embarrassed that Jack was so close to him when he was covered in dried spew. Jack kept at the pipbuck for a while, before sighing and dropping Snaps’s hoof.

“We will need a pipbuck technician to get that fixed. Hopefully there is one at the nearest stable.”

“Where is the nearest?”

Jack pointed his hoof south. “About 3 weeks travel that way, underneath what used to be a town called Appaloosa. We have no intel on what their experiment was, so I don’t know what condition their stable will be in.”

“Why were the experiments taking place anyway?”

“We don’t actually know. All we know is what the first Overmare told us, how our experiment works, and that when we try to change our experiment..well you know the rest.”

Snaps nodded grimly. All of Stable 24 knew.

They kept walking down in silence, hooves skidding slightly on the slope, scanning the landscape for any large chunks of debris. The stench of his fur was really bothering Snaps, and he could feel his clumsily healed wing dragging uselessly upon the ground, the rock embedded within it stopping him from even folding it. His hooves crunched across the parched mountain ground, his breathing rasping, heart pounding in his chest. Over and over his mind replayed watching the stable door being covered by rocks. He smiled sadly as he wondered what Eclair would think of his broken wing. She’d probably laugh and tease him, saying how they were equal now, and he couldn’t just lazily fly around the stable.

Oh Celestia, he realised, it finally dawning on him. He’d never fly again. Not unless a miracle happened.

Tears of grief and anger welled up in his eyes and he angrily blinked them away before Jack could see. Why was he getting mopey now? If they didn’t find their supply wagon before they hit that fog, he wouldn't ever see Eclair again anyway.

A distant shout rang out, and Snaps looked up to find he had wandered quite far away from Jackdaw, who was now waving excitedly at him and pointing behind him with a hoof. Breaking into a gallop, Snapdragon ran after him.

“I found the wagon. And Willow!” Jack was excited, but also sad. “It isn’t pretty, so don’t look. I already pulled out the re-breathing masks from her pocket, but I will need your help turning the wagon over so we can get at the supplies inside.”

Snaps nodded, closing his eyes against the sight of Willow’s crushed head while he leaned against the wagon. Jack slammed into it next to him, grunting and straining as they levered the wagon until it was upright. The wagon groaned and the stuff inside crashed as it landed on the broken wheel spokes, the side giving way and landing on the ground. The wagon kept rocking, and a bang was heard from inside as what Snaps guessed was the giant medicine chest fell onto the floor

The wagon splintered into pieces, chunks of wood flying everywhere. Snapdragon winced in pain as several of them embedded themselves in his skin. Jack dove into the wreck, pulling planks out of his way as he vanished. His head appeared from under the debris, a bag of water clutched in his teeth. He tossed it over to Snaps, where it landed at his hooves.

“Use that to clean yourself up, while I dig around some more in here. A lot was broken but I think we can salvage some.”

Snapdragon blushed, daintily picking up the water skein and trotting to behind a rock, he was humiliated that he was so filthy, and that Jack had been so kind about it. Scrubbing at his fur with a hoofful of water, he smoothed down his mane and tail. Soon he looked a bit waterlogged, but back to his usual self. He didn’t smell any more at least. Shaking his curly mane out into its usual poofy self, he stepped out from behind the rock. A clatter came from Jack’s direction, and Snaps head whipped up to see Jack staring at him, slack-jawed, as a few food boxes rolled around at his hooves.

“What?” Nervousness bloomed within him. Had he missed a spot? He quickly turned in a circle, trying to see what had startled Jack.

“Nothing. You just look different with your fur all wet like that.” Jack said gruffly, before looking back down at the pile of supplies that he had gathered. Snaps felt his eyebrows raise. Was Jack blushing, or was it just the light? He shook his head. Jackdaw wouldn't blush like that over a damn stallion, no matter how feminine he looked.

“How will we carry all of this?” Jack mused. “The rad suits were almost destroyed, and they don’t have saddle bags anyway. We counted on carrying it all in the wagon. We are woefully unprepared.”

Snapdragon knocked a few things from the pile, hoping to see a familiar blue tin. He let out a sigh of relief, it was there. He scooped it up, and then began to tug at Willow’s body, much to Jack’s horror.

“What are you doing?” He gasped.

“We need her rad suit material. She fell first so the rocks didn’t damage hers too badly. She is big, I can make two rudimentary saddlebags from it.” Snaps tugged the rad suit off the giant mare and nosed open the blue tin to reveal a sewing kit and other odds and ends. He sat down and began to slice up the suit.

Jackdaw knelt on the ground beside him, watching him work.

”Where did you learn this?” his eyes followed Snaps as he skillfully stitched the strips of cloth together, manipulating the needle with his tongue, his head bobbing up and down methodically. Jackdaw flushed and looked away.

Spitting out the needle, Snaps held up one saddlebag. “My mother taught me as a colt. I was determined to get my cutie mark so I pestered her to teach me every hobby she knew. This one was my favourite, and if I hadn't discovered botany, I’d have probably become a tailor.”

The two stallions sat in comfortable silence, processing all that had happened to them while Snapdragon sewed. Night has begun to fall, the clouds above darkening to a deep grey black, almost identical to Jackdaw’s coat.

Gathering wood from the wreckage, Jack used a flint to create a small fire. It was cold up on the mountain, and as he was a unicorn, he didn’t have the innate weather protection like pegasi or the robust hardiness of an earth pony. He began to shiver, despite the fire’s feeble warmth.

Night had completely fallen by the time Snapdragon had finished sewing the new saddlebags. He looked over at Jackdaw, surprised to see him dozing, gently shivering in the cool night air. Snapdragon felt his heart beat a little quicker at the stallions sleeping face.

He pulled a fire proof blanket from the first aid kit in pile of supplies and settled himself down next to Jack, draping his good wing over him along with the blanket. It was just to keep them both warm, he kept telling himself as he nuzzled into Jack’s back.

Only for warmth.