Fallout: Equestria - Castle of Glass

Chapter I - The Return

Welcome home.

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A noise, far but close filled my ears. It was high pitched though... something that I didn't very much like. High pitched noises were always something I struggled with. It doesn't help that my ears were moderately larger than the average ponies. I opened my eyes to try and get a feel of the situation. The... thing I was in had a foggy atmosphere. Foggy and cold and sticky. Humidity did my lugs a little bit of good, it helped me wake up to try and find a way to get better air.

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A thin line of light shone in the capsule I had found myself in. It flashed across my face trying to get my eyes to adjust. Hearing and sight were the only things that I had at the moment. The light faded away bit by bit and finally my pupils dilated and refocused in their correct positions. My vision uncrossed itself and now instead of a double vision view of the foggy air, it merged into a single vision view of the fog.

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Then I felt something in my throat. Looking down, I tried to get a better idea of what it was. Then I choked. Oh crap there was a tube in there! Get it out! Get it the fuck out!

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Vwork

The tube in my throat was yanked out of my mouth and neck. My mouth was coated in a soury, disgusting film that did not mix very well with the air. I took in a few breaths without a damn tube in my mouth. Then, bit by bit, feeling returned to every numb part of my body.

Legs... four. Ears... two. Eyes... two. Nose... one. Chest... one. Body... one. Wings... two. Pinions... eight. Okay... good. Everything else... okay... I still feel a bit numb down there but at least I still have it.

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Blok

With a hiss of air, the panel on the front of the thing I was in opened up. Still feeling weak, I feel out of pod and onto the cold aluminum floor and sprawled out on the ground. The sudden change in air threw my lungs through a loop and I exploded into a hacking, coughing fit that lasted for a minute. That minute was much needed as it allowed me to remember who I was, what I was, and why I was here.

My name is Quantum. I am the first son of my father Quasar Mechanic and the mother of Nebule Redux. My parents were immigrants from Trootingham who had move to Equestria for better work and to move out of the zebra's crosshairs. I am the second born in the Mechanic family line. My sister, Ion, was born twelve years earlier. Or... was it thirteen? No. It was twelve. I came from a family of scientists, engineers, and designers that were widely respected in the Ministry of Technology and the Ministry of Arcane Sciences respectively. My father was responsible for the design of several aspects of the t45 and t51b Steel Ranger Power Armor and the final build of the machines. My mother worked on a super top secret thing called IMP. I never got an answer of what it actually was but I knew that it was really important to the MAS.

My sister got into technical work in Manehattan to work on some huge tower thingy. I never visited it personally, I was too caught up in my studies and learning how to repair and maintain electronic components. I was an Electrical Engineer and was certified by the MWT to work on terminals, mainframes, different kinds of talismans, air systems, and magical generations.

I was a pegasus stallion. My mane and tail was a bicolor dark blue and black split evenly down the middle. My coat color was a plaster white, but is usually described as a marble color. My eyes were a dark sapphire blue described a midnight blue. I was slightly taller than the average unicorn. My ears were longer than a normal ponies. It was determined to be a random genetic mutation that resulted in heightened hearing with the drawback of high pitched noises causing my ears to bleed for a few minutes until I took a Healing Potion to alleviate the pain and injury. I spoke with a Trootingham accent that was very similar to my parents, though a bit heavier than normal as I personally like the way it sounds. My cutie mark was quasar, a celestial thing that is made of a black hole at its center, a ring surrounding it with two jets of fire funneling out of it in opposite directions. The mark was described as looking like a compass needle.

Now... why was I here? I was here because something happened. Something big, but I don't remember. Something bad, but I cannot recall. Something horrifying, but I can't recollect. But... what?

My eyes finished twitching around and began to sync up with each other. I wish my legs and wings would do the same as well though but it's better to take it as it comes. When my eyes focused on the pile of white things in front of me I realized very quickly what it was.

A skeleton of a unicorn.

Suddenly I could feel my legs and wings work right again do to the wondrous brain chemical known only as adrenaline. I stumbled to my hooves in shock, my ears swiveling around trying to pick up any trace noise that could help tell me what was going on. For the next minute I stood there, paralyzed, staring at the skeleton. I would've been still sitting there to this day if not for the slight skittering noise that snapped me out of my trance. A large bug... a cockroach I think scampered around its enteni twitching around on its carapace head. The bug stopped and turned towards me, its left enteni swiveling around to point at me. With a high pitched screech, the bug charged towards me with near suicidal glee.

I hobbled away on my still unsteady legs as I did not dare try to fly. I needed something to kill the thing! But what? In a panic, I grabbed a large bone from the unicorn's skeleton and swung it with all my might at the skittering bug. With a loud crunch the bug exploded apart its body and head crushed by the blow.

There I sat, staring at the bone, the bug, and the skeleton. I did the only think that I could think of at a time like this. I curled up into a little ball and began to sob. What had happened? What the fuck had happened?

My vision, swimming in hot tears, picked up a yellow number on the aluminum floor. In bright yellow, slightly faded paint, was the number "37". With that, a little more memory returned. My father, my sister, and I were in a house. It was... two stories and had a basement where my father kept himself on the days where he wasn't working. It was a normal day. We were all looking forward to Nightmare Night, a time where we all gathered together and had a dinner together. A family tradition. My mother wasn't there yet, she went to the marketplace to pick up some food. Then, a bright greenish-yellow flash lit up the cloudless blue sky. We all stared at the sight, stunned. Then a few moments later that felt more like an eternity, a second explosion farther up in the sky erupted, green fire surging in all directions in a near perfect sphere.

We ran to the nearest shelter. My father had a pass to a nearby stable. So did the rest of the family. We ran and ran until we made it to the entrance and the door closed behind us just before the shock wave of dust, air, and other debris slammed into the survivors. We trotted in. The ponies who were already there told us that we needed to go under radiological decontamination due to the close proximity explosion of a Balefire Bomb. We obliged and trotted into some strange pod looking things. A pod that I had feel out of not even fifteen minutes ago.

I sat back up on my haunches, looking at the bones. The bones of... oh fuck. OH FUCK!!

I started to shake. My sister took the pod in front of mine. We had always been very close to each other as friends. We took care of each other when we needed help. She knew how to teleport, something I was always fascinated by as teleportation was a skill only a few unicorns could do well if at all. She wore a silver necklace with a small sapphire crescent moon pendant hanging off of it. She had always believed and loved Princess Luna, much more than our previous Princess Celestia even if she quit during the middle of the war.

The necklace was tangled around one of the vertebrae of the skeleton.

I sat there, dying on the inside. I was cold, tired, hungry, thirsty, and now heartbroken. One by one I looked at all the other pods in the small room I found myself in. My father wasn't there. His pod, the one to the left of Ion's, was empty. There was no trace of him left in it, not even a speck of dust. All except for a box of Sugar Apple Bombs with a note attached to it. I picked it up and read it.

To any who woke up,

My name is Quasar Mechanic. I don't know if my position of what I was even matters anymore. I don't know who if anything we had known still stands. All I know is that I pray that I am not the only one who will walk out of this Stable in some form of alive. You will find that you will be hungry after you wake up so here is something for you to get at least something in you. And, if my estimate is correct, you will need something to protect yourself. I have left a 10mm pistol on one of the tables in the Stable's Atrium along with some ammunition for it. I wish all who wake up, good luck."

The paper did not look that old, maybe one or two weeks old. The ink on the paper had barely faded with only a little bit of fraying on the edges. I opened the box of cereal and began to eat it down. Slowly at first as my stomach took a little bit of time to adjust to the taste, somehow giving the impression of the food being rather old. Once I had ate enough for the moment, I cleaned the bone I had used to crush the roach, placed it back where it belonged, took the necklace with the moon pendant from the bones, and gently kissed the skull of the skeleton. Like before when she was alive, she had helped me once again.

***

I soon discovered that the stable I was in was rather chilly. The jumpsuits I had found on most of the skeletons were faded and decayed, nothing I could use for my own needs. Not that I wanted to go and desecrate any more of the dead anyways. Even still, I needed something to keep myself warm. I checked every drawer in the living quarters. There was nothing in any of them. All there was were several suitcases with still decaying clothing lying open on the ground. I was lost in the stable. The only direction I could think of with anything I could use that would be familiar with was the generator rooms in the lower levels. And with that in mind, I worked my way down making sure that I remembered the direction that I came when I would eventually leave the stable.

I made it to the engineer's quarters. It was fully stocked with tools and parts along with several different kinds of batteries and power converters. Knowing that I had nothing in terms of protection as I decided that I would grab the gun on the way out, a cast iron wrench would suffice for the time being. The suppy lockers were mostly empty. A few scrap pieces of wires, scrap metal, and a few screws. But in one, the locker for a pony named "Piston" held a uniform. It was made up of two pieces of clothing, one being a bright yellow undershirt with orange trim on the edges, and a dark purple button up overcoat with a blue-grey collar and a bright yellow "37" embroidered into the fabric. The barding was substantially heavier than other uniforms. I put it on and closed the locker, leaving the room and up to the atrium.

***

The Atrium was the largest section of the stable as far as I could tell. A few of the large roaches skittered about, but after the one I had to kill with a bone, I felt no shame nor remorse as I eradicate them one by one with the pipe wrench. There wasn't much in terms of food as most of it was decaying and rotted. I guess that my father went through quite a few things of food before he had decided to leave on his own accord. No wonder why there was quite a few open boxes of Sugar Apple Bombs, BigMac and Cheese, and Snack Cakes. It would be just like him to wait for somepony else to awaken and leave with him. He hated being alone.

With all of the tenacious bugs killed, I made it to the front table just like the note had instructed. And, just as it said, there was a 10mm pistol lying on the table next to four extra twelve round magazines and a full box of ammunition totaling in at seventy-eight rounds of 10mm ammunition. I loaded one of the mazanines into the gun, loaded a round into the chamber, and holstered it into one of the large pockets inside of the dark purple coat that I now wore. The extra bullets and magazines went into the other pocket for now. I would have to find a saddlebag sooner or later. If I had only my wings and these two pockets to carry things, things would get rather difficult to carry. I took the one unopened Snack Cake that sat next to the pistol and walked off looking for the exit.

***

The great cog toothed door of Stable 37 stared back at me. The final barrier between the stable and the large cargo elevator that would lead back to the surface. The yellow paint that covered the door seemed slightly more faded here than in the rest of the shelter, it being scratched across it in a diagonal pattern. I knew how these doors worked. My father explained it to me. Several tons of reinforced steel set in a layer of thick concrete strong enough to withstand a direct strike from a Balefire Bomb. He knew this because he toured the stable three weeks before the end and, being the engineer he was, he was able to determine how the mechanics worked. And, as he had said, there should be a terminal system that operated the door.

Like he said, there was. A simple terminal with several dials and buttons with a universal connection port set in the center. I looked at it and scowled. I had nothing to interact with it. All of the tools I had once used during my time as an Electrical Engineer were left in a metal tool locker I installed in my room back home. Now, it was probably nothing but so much scrap metal and slag but I had to check anyways. It, at the very least, was a goal I could accomplish for the time being. At this point I was planning on taking a pair of wire cutters and a screwdriver to take the terminal apart and try to hard wire the door to open with a push of a button.

But I didn't need to.

When I went to check the access box below the terminal, I had found another skeleton. He was in a shredded and torn lab coat that had once been white and was now a dull grey. On his left hoof, just above his ankle, was a brown cuff attached to his foreleg. It was clasped to his leg by a simple metal latch that was easy to undo, even for a nonunicorn like myself. So I undid the clasp, wrapped the cuff around my left foreleg much like the skeleton and locked it shut.

The device was like a small terminal but it was worn on your hoof rather than being mounted. As mentioned before, it was a drab brown. It had an old style tv style screen with rounded edges and a metal plate that extended out to shade the screen from the glaring light from the lightbulbs above. There were several knobs and dials all over the device. One, I guess, adjusted the focus on the screen. One large one on the top right corner had a pointer that could change from STAT, INV, DATA, MAP, and RADIO. Just behind that dial was another scroll wheel that I guess helped changed the pages and functions on the device itself. A counter on the front was labeled RADS and had a small needle that would point to different numbers on the counter ranging from 0 to 10. And finally a large cog shaped dial operated a small pointer that would I assume change radio frequencies. There was a button on the front.

I pressed it.

With a soft crackle of static and a several second long pause, the screen came to life. Green letters and numbers filled up the screen and scrolled up faster than I could register and examine. As quickly as the numbers appeared they disappeared, replaced by a screen prompt.

******************************* Pip-OS (R) V7.1.0.8 ***************************************

Copyright 2075 ROBRONCO(R)
LOADER V1.1
EXEC VERSION 41.10
64K RAM SYSTEM
38911 BYTES FREE
NO HOLOTAPE FOUND
LOAD ROM(1): DEITRIX 303

**************************************************************************************

With a flicker, a green stable pony pegasus appeared on the screen trotting in place with little green bars pointing to several different parts of the body. One to each leg, one to each wing, one to each flank, one to the head, and one to the chest. The pony was happy, wearing a grin that I could only hope that I could eventually match one day. In my vision, a compass, a health bar, and a small dot appeared in the center gleefully telling me that I had full health and was pointing north east. Turning the "Pip-Buck 3000 Mrk.4" as the device called itself around, I unplugged the universal connection wire from it and plugged it into the terminal. With a beep, the terminal accepted the input and a bright orange button began to glow right next to the port.

I pressed it.

The door then made a loud scream of protest. The door was pulled inward with some hydraulic mechanisms that I couldn't see and then rolled to the left revealing the large cargo elevator that I had took down to this very stable so many years ago. My ears were ringing, but it was an acceptable amount of pain. It did not hurt as much as using a bone from a familiar pony's skeleton to kill a giant bug. I trotted to the elevator and pressed the button that would take me up to the surface. Bit by bit I ascended up to the familiar yet the unknown.

The hatch above opened, dumping a thin layer of snow down upon me. I brushed it off as best as I could. It must be winter. Who was I to judge the day I was awake to the new world?

I had reached to top and blinked. The snow was sharp, cold, and terrible. It was as if thousands upon thousands of razor sharp knives were cutting at every bit of exposed flesh and only my feathery wings had a bit of respite from the assault from mother nature's wrath. From horizon to horizon the ground was covered with a thin layer of snow several ruined buildings were visible in the distance. The only thing I could say was a simple few words,

"Sweet Luna have mercy..."

Footnote: LEVEL UP

New Perk: Hacker

Knowledge of cutting-edge computer encryption allows you to hack Advanced terminals.