Fallout: Equestria - Castle of Glass

Chapter III - Grays

That is far enough! You are no longer worthy of your title!
I'll tell you when I've gone far enough!

The unexpected side effect of sleeping in the cold is quite simple. Everything freezes. After a rather uncomfortable nap, I woke up to the smoldering fire covered in cold sweat. Correction, cold sweat is the wrong description. It would be more accurate if I said "Icy Sweat". In a literal sense, ice had formed a thin layer on my face around my cheeks and on my forehead. To say it was painful was an understatement as it felt like thin daggers were surgically inserted in every pore of my face. Quickly I brushed as much of the ice off of my face as possible.

Now normally a pegasus is built to withstand outrageous temperatures. Having feathers really keeps heat trapped against our skin and we can fluff ourselves out to get cold air in. Most would think that cold weather like this wouldn't be a problem. Of course they would be right in the normal sense. Right now the term "Normal" can't really be applied effectively to Detrot. In fact I would personally assign "Supernatural" to it. Regardless, the thing that made this kind of weather worse was the fact that I woke up feeling quite sick.

Oh wait. Apparently I threw up while I was asleep. Good thing I didn't choke on that, or else I would've surely been dead by now.

Then I looked at the screen of my PipBuck to see if I had anything internally wrong. Turns out that I had absorbed four Grays. That... is nowhere near good for my heath. A Grey is another term for 100 rads by the way. Having 400 rads pretty much guarantees acute radiation poisoning. Other than the possibility of skin degradation, things like loss of appetite nausea all the way to seizures and comas can happen. Looking back at the pile of frozen vomit, I guess that acute radiation poisoning fits the bill.

Now my current objective is to find some RadAway or a bunch of irradiated to piss all the Greys out of my body. Considering the fact that I most likely got the radiation from the snow outside, finding clean water is going to be almost impossible. Finding RadAway at this point was probably my best option. There was a hospital about an hour's walk away called the "Hoofington State Hospital". Considering the fact that Hoofington was the leading state in research of pretty much ANYTHING that would be the first place I would check.

Problem number two. My leg still hurts like ass. Though the bullet that punched through it was very low caliber and it didn't hit any major tendons, nerves, or arteries, the fact that I have an open wound like it probably isn't going to be doing me any favors in terms of keeping the Grays out. Taking the energy pistol out and getting my sense of direction, I moved as quickly as I could to Hoofington State.

***

The trip to Hoofington State was quite tricky. Not due to numerous ponies shooting at me like before. In fact the only thing that would count as pony was the many frozen bodies of ponies left outside for too long. Thank Luna I didn't recognize any of them. That would be several different kinds of horrifying. At the time of reaching the reinforced doors of Hoofington State, my Gray levels have reached 4.55 Greys (455 Rads).

Now I have reached my newest adversary.

Wartime Equestrian Engineering. More specifically two inch thick reinforced glass.

Glass is normally the weakest part of a building. But this kind of glass was magically hardened and enchanted to protect and repair itself. Nothing less than a bomb will break through it. Even after firing twelve rounds from the energy pistol at essentially point blank range, the glass didn't even crack.

Dammit.

I was going to die due to my inability to break glass.

So... a bomb is essentially an application of a rapid release of pressure in a small area. If I were to apply similar amount of pressure in some other way, I could punch through the glass.

Then I had an idea. Opening my saddlebags, I pulled out my hammer and a pair of heavy duty magnets. Walking over to a lamppost, I stuck one of the magnets on the metal pole and made it stick. Then I placed the other magnet on the face of the hammer and set it to repel itself from any other magnet. With as strong of a swing I can manage with my hooves and mouth, the two magnets made contact for only a split second before the hammer flew out of my mouth...

CRACK

... right into the door.

Oh Luna please let my hammer not be broken. Those damn things were expensive before everything exploded. It seriously was 170 bits for an electrician's hammer.

Walking back up to the window, I found that there was an indentation right where the door lock is designed to be. The hammer itself was fine due to it being even more reinforced than a pane of glass, but the metal door shattered as much as if it was made of wood instead of steel. With a small push, the door fell in on itself.

"...okay."

With a shake of my head, I hobbled my way into the hospital.

***

PLINK!...PLINK!...PLINK!

After three well placed shots, the outrageously large cockroach exploded into a stain of dead bug on the floor. It was the fifth one I had run into after reaching the third floor of the building. The first bug took only one shot but the plasma gun I had needs a repair to it. The cooling system, I had discovered, was broken. It could, in theory, function properly in the cold weather outside. However the temperature inside of the building was at least 35 degrees higher than outside (in Celsius. Its -30 degrees Celsius outside). It being five degrees in here makes a substantial difference in my mood and the Gray count. As of this point, I have not exceeded 4.60 Grays.

Still it was important to find a batch of RadAway before I climb the Gray ladder any higher.

There was a map on the wall. It wasn't the first one I have seen since starting my assent into the building. It wasn't even my thirtieth. Every floor had one. Every entrance to an elevator had one. Every corridor had one. They could've made a billboard with all the metal, plastic, and mounting systems that they wasted on these things. Sure the billboard would look pretty awful but it still would've been enough to do the job.

There was a room at the end of the hall with a broken sign. From what I remembered by reading all the maps, this room was Radiology. Back before everything exploded, Radiology was meant to diagnose and heal ponies that came into contact with biomagical and radioactive materials. From what I heard from Ion, that had these all over the place in the Manehattan tower she worked. Design choice by the MAS's ministry mare Twilight Sparkle. Apparently, an accident in one of the big secret buildings she worked in called for the implementation of them all over the west side of Equestria near the Everfree Forest. Never got the details of this accident. I was an engineer not a doctor.

And being the lack of doctor that I am, I did not notice the loud chirping that came from my PipBuck before the door to Radiology opened. My stomach did as it immediately purged what little I had left in it out. Inside the room was a long bed with a decomposing corpse strapped to it. The corpse was glowing a bright neon green that lit up every corner of the room around it. Quickly I shut the door before my Grays shot through the roof.

5.53 Grays.

"What the fuck was that?" I mumbled to myself.

Then it somehow got way worse. Worse than the rising levels of Grays. The door tried to open itself.

Something was alive back there?! How is that even possible? Just a mere glance of the room nearly added an entire Gray to my levels. Not only that, but all the windows were intact and it took a magnetically accelerated hammer to break the door down. There is no way that there would be anything alive by the standard definition of "alive".

Robot? No. Robots that could fit through a door usually don't more that fast and they would've busted to door down like it was made of tinfoil.

Animal? No. Animals usually don't posses the capability to escape a room like that. And with how high the radiation was, it wouldn't talk more than a minute to cook something to death.

Thud!

The door tried to break itself down again. I am not sticking around about to drop from radiation poisoning trying to hold a door up. Time for a change of plan.

Running for my life.

And so I did. I ran down a random corridor that I haven't been down yet. Soon I came to a door still open slightly. I ran into it and closed it, locked it, and melted the doorknob with the blowtorch.

There. Absolutely nothing was getting in now...

...

... and absolutely nothing was getting out.

Fear makes ponies stupid and I had just fell for it. Unless I plan on doing the hammer/magnet trick again, I have no real way of getting out of the room.

There was a low hiss from the other side of the door. A feeling of dread funneled into the room from the bottom of the door as the creature shambled its way past. The hoofsteps were heavy. Lumbering. Almost as if it took effort to move but held power deep within them. I had no clue what was just past there, but I knew for a fact that it was something that can and will kill me without a second thought.

So I just had to do it first. But with what? The pistol needed a new cooling system or it might as well be a blue flashlight.

I backed away from the door to contemplate my next move...

When I came face to face with a Steel Ranger. Or at the very least, its armour. Powered down and slightly rusted, but in good condition despite the look of age and the dust covering it. A pale skeleton lay beside it, its saddlebags still intact. But more important than that, was a shotgun. A twelve gauge shotgun with a finely polished wooden stock. I picked it up and set it to the side to open the poor pony's saddlebag.

13 Twelve Gauge Shotgun Slugs
2 Bottles of Fresh Water
22 Gold Bits
1 Pouch of RadAway

All but the last item went back into the saddlebag as I took it as my own. Opening the RadAway, I drank it down without a second thought ignoring the watered down taste of orange. When it was gone I looked back at the PipBuck's Rad counter.

4.53 Grays.

Not enough to keep me from Death's Door but enough to keep him away for now. I picked the shotgun back up and loaded it.

Step two, kill that mother fucker outside the door.

No problem.

BANG! Chik-Click

With a powerful explosion of sound and light, the doorknob spiraled off into one direction and the lock spiraled into another. I crashed through the door to come face to face with the thing. It was a corpse more or less. All of its skin was missing having rotted off. Its teeth were yellowed and missing while its gums were dripping a black tar-like fluid that must have been its blood. It had no mane nor tail. Its eyes were filmy white like pearls.

It charged it me, intent of feasting upon my flesh. That was its final mistake.

BANG! Chik-Click

BANG! Chik-Click

The two slugs perforated its head and chest, leaving it with no face or internal organs as far as I could tell. I looked to the shotgun held in my wings and gave a satisfied little smile. At that particular moment in time, I don't believe I've ever had a healthier or more deeply felt respect for any object in the universe than the shotgun I now hold.

4.75 Grays.

Fuck. Saving the respect for it later. Need to get more RadAway now. Slinging the shotgun to my side, I dashed through the hallway and through the glowing green room as fast as I could, slamming the door shut behind me. I didn't even bother looking at the Rad counter at this point. It was probably way higher than I wanted it to be. The lights were off and the light switch was probably just as broken.

Blowtorch.

With a quiet little his and a pop from the flint igniter the room lit up with the warm glow of blue and white light. And only the room. I remember one time that my dad explained why RadAway was colored a glowing orange. He said that it was so it could be easily identified even without the labels, but also because it reflected light that was more appealing to the eye than if it was any other color. He also said something about how the color orange is typically the color of energy, but I never understood that. Being an electrical engineer, yellow was the color of energy while simultaneously being a warning to ponies who wanted to mess around next to conductive coils and transformers.

I think I finally get what he meant by orange meaning power. The small flame I had was enough to transform the racks of radiation purging medicine into a walls of glowing orange lights. I could've and would've died right there of complete shock. I hastily grabbed seven of the damn things and downed them as fast as possible. After about another minute, I looked back at the Rad counter.

0.33 Grays.

Though I still felt like throwing up, I was fairly certain that was the seven pouches of RadAway talking and not the Grays themselves and I'm sure the feeling would pass soon. And sure enough it did after another minute or two. I stuffed as many extra pouches into my saddlebag as possible, thirty in total, and turned to look at the door I flew in from. In the room next to mine was most likely a creature much like the one I gunned down earlier. However it's mere presence seemed to be the source of most, if not all, the radiation in this building. It would explain why the Gray count got higher the closer to this room I got. For all I knew, it might even be controlling the other walking corpses if there are any in the building.

Looking to my side, I found a small bottle of Rad-X. I opened it and downed it in one shot. After the disgusting fluid made its way down my throat and hit my stomach, I reopened the door and looked to the glowing green form on the operating table. Like I suspected before, it was much like the walking corpse that I encountered before. Its four legs were strapped down and a metal helmet was melted to its head. The helmet resembled ones that soldiers wore during the Resource Wars. It must've been a soldier near the end as there would be no way that any sane doctor would leave a soldier tied to a table like this.

The hissing form thrashed and struggled for my face as I looked at him with a solemn frown. Not even the slow click from the PipBuck's Rad Counter could break me away from the living form of a dead soldier. I cursed my lack of a good cooling system, otherwise I would've made it clean. I didn't want to blow its head to chunks with the shotgun either and smashing its head in with the hammer was not the end that this soldier deserved...

... then again, being turned into a being of death wasn't the end he deserved either.

With a heavy sigh, I leveled the shotgun to the soldier's head and racked a shell.

BANG! Chik-Click

In the end, using a shotgun slug to end the poor thing's life was much better than leaving it here to suffer. I may have to fight an eternal war against the damned in the pits of hell for my own sins, but at least this soldier didn't. Luna willing his soul will reunite with whoever is waiting for him.

The light from the corpse's body seemed to slowly fade away until it was a dull glow. There was a dog tag around his neck.

"Sargent Amber Glow of the 86th Blackwing Armoured Division," I mumbled to myself.

The Blackwing division. I thought Amber Glow died just after the Battle of Brimstone's Fall. I would think so, I pulled him out of a crater there. He had a piece of shrapnel lodged in his stomach and chest.

No. Not now. I couldn't think about that now. It was too painful to think about. Too early.

I looked just to the side of the table that the late Sargent Amber Glow lay on. It was a yellow box that hung on the wall. On the box was a set of pink butterflies on it; the symbols of the Ministry of Peace. Judging by the fact that it wasn't scratched or dented, it must've been locked. Locks like those were well known for being broken into by the skilled few who could handle a screwdriver and a bobby pin. They told stories about unicorns, zebras, and some earth ponies who ended up in prison only to break out via the means of a screwdriver and a pin they brought in somehow. Theoretically, I was told, I could manage such a feat. Wings can and are often used as hands to aid in fine mechanical work and calibration of sensitive machines.

I was not such a patient pony.

Taking the hammer into my teeth and attaching the magnets to it and the lock itself, I would pry it apart like a lever.

SNAP!

And like the brittle cold steel it was made from, the lock gave way. In the box was a few bandages, a dusty bottle of Buck, and a Stimpack. I guess this hospital preferred hard drugs than Health Potions made with unicorn magic. I would agree.

Pulling the plastic cap off the needle, I jammed it into my thigh just above the previous day's bullet wound. It stung at first, but slowly I felt the flesh stitch itself back together. Once the little indicator on the top hit empty, I pulled it out of my leg and tossed it to the side to let some other poor bastard deal with it.

I took one last look at my commanding officer, wishing I had a better way of ending his suffering than with a shotgun, and gave him a salute. If I had a flag I would drape it over his corpse. Alas, I did not. So instead I stood there and gave him the moment of silence he earned from his services.

And then, I was off once more. To where I didn't know. For what, I couldn't say. For who...

... I'm not sure anymore.

Footnote: LEVEL UP

New Perk: Medic

Is there a doctor in the house? Health Potions restore 40% more Health and RadAway removes 40% more Radiation.