Fallout Equestria: Winds of Change
By Mad Moon

Chapter One: The Windy City

Death, what do you know of it? I'd like to think I know a thing or two, you have to in my line of work as a mercenary. Then again, just about every living thing in the wasteland is well acquainted with the reaper. It’s hard to find someone who hasn’t taken a life or lost a loved one anywhere you go. But it wasn’t always like that. Two centuries ago death was a far away concept, as an eternal peace ruled, then in one fleeting moment, that all changed. Now death was everywhere, behind every rock, in every house, just waiting for you to make a misstep and add to the wasteland’s bodycount

I’ll never know why ponies and zebras choose to end the world in a fit of rage, but truth be told it didn’t really interest me. Why would it? When every day is a fight to see the next, the politics of long dead ponies grows into an unnecessary, often lethal distraction. All that needs to be known is that the world isnt what it once was. Uncounted and unmourned billions died in the war ponies fought against zebras, and the world was changed forever for it. Regardless, that brings us back to my first question, what do you know of death?

***

Tired. So very tired. I huffed and puffed, my breastplate chafing again. The offending armor was only a super-lightweight chest piece, not likely to stop more than a pistol round, but it was better than nothing. The tarnished army-green color nicely accenting my brown duster and clashing garishly with my deep blue hide.

Sweat dripped off my brow and soaked my blue and grey streaked mane as I adjusted my packs and glanced around at the caravan around me, unconsciously taking inventory of all the people under my protection. In total we were a dozen brahmins, a double hooful of wagons, and about twenty ponies. I was one of a half dozen hired guards making the trip with them.

Not a bad gig honestly, they paid up front, and fed me to boot. Hard to believe they were having trouble finding willing guns in Friendship city. Taking a small sip from my canteen, the bottle encased in my jade sheath of magic, I lamented the weeks I’d spent with this caravan. How was I supposed to know the destination was literal weeks of walking from Manehattan?

A sign loomed ahead, and I squinted up at it from my position off to the caravans left side, “Welcome to Chicacolt!” I muttered under my breath. The sign proclaimed Equestria’s largest something, but the decayed sign was too rusted to really make out anything else.

“Kind of a piece of shit huh, Sapphire Sands?” A voice from behind me made me jump and spin around, bringing me face to face with Ursula. The petite earth pony was sneaky, and that came in handy when scouting out routes. Not so much when she used her ability to scare the shit out of people.

Calming my suddenly sprinting heart, I turned back to keep pace with the caravan. “I’ve never been here before, and not many of the caravaners talk to us merc types.” The caravan ponies, while wealthy enough to set me up for a year in one job, were not very sociable, and mostly kept to themselves, only granting their security ponies a cursory glance when it couldn’t be avoided. The only one who openly talked to any of us was the leader, Shipwright, and he was… well he was a little eccentric.

“You mean you just packed up everything and left Manehattan?” The green pony exclaimed from beside me, “I get we’re traveling guns and all, but you’ve gotta have some ties back in Friendship City!” Ursula waved back down the road with a small hoof as if to ward off the ghosts of that dead city.

I looked her up and down, over the last few weeks of walking, she’d become… something. I wouldn’t say friend, but I did enjoy her company. Talking to ponies was nothing new for me, but actually enjoying the experience of conversation was a much more fleeting feeling. “Nah, family’s all dead, never set down stakes and bought a room in Friendship City, just kinda drifted around.”

The caravan was starting to get into Chicacolt proper now, an ocean of abandoned suburban homes ringed the city, forming a myriad of dangers that could hide anything from raider dens to Steel Rangers. We slowed our pace accordingly, and while we were more alert, ponies kept chatting. “Well, that certainly explains your willingness to leave huh.” My companion seemed undeterred by my casual revelation, “But why Chicacolt? You must have heard some stories about the place.” She stared at me expectantly, as if I were retarded for not knowing.

I shook my head absently scanning the buildings around us for threats. She clopped along beside me, seemingly unaware of our surroundings. “Apparently, and this is just what I've heard from the other guards, no one that goes to Chi town ever comes back quite the same, if at all.” Ignoring my wandering attention, she pressed on. My grunts the only thing confirming I was still listening. “Kind of like the Hoof, people just don't come here without a reason, and a very good one at that!” She exclaimed incredulously.

“So what’s your excuse? You haven't really talked about that, you always dance around it.” I countered. Stopping, I looked at her with my emerald eyes, locking with her own golden ones.

“Thats… Well that's a bit of a story. And not really relevant right now.” She shifted uncomfortably in her own army green body armor and made a show of checking her already well cared for carbine.

With that, conversation died, like the city around us. Both of us started paying more attention to the landscape around us. Something was making the caravaners nervous, and by extension, that made me very nervous. I’d only been a merc for all of five years, but I knew enough to trust that gut feeling screaming at me to beware. Beware of what, I had no idea, but I didn't like this place. Too many places to get ambushed, and while a few of the guards had made this trip before, most of us were brand new to it.

I found myself constantly fidgeting with my weapon, a painstakingly maintained heirloom passed to me from my mother. In fact it was the only thing I had from my mother. Which explained the great effort I put into keeping it working. You would not believe just how scarce magical energy weapons were in the wasteland! Three times I had needed to scavenge parts for the gun from security robots. And let me tell you, robots did not like it when you tried to take their internal components apart.

Ursula moved away from me, back to her position at the rear of the caravan, parting with a whispered “Stay frosty, Sapphire.” The tension in the air was so thick, I could almost feel it, threatening to snap like a rubber band pulled too far. We haven't even made it twenty minutes into Chicacolt and I already hated the place.

My attention bolted forward as Atrophy called the column to halt. A brown unicorn stallion jumped from the first wagon and trotted up to where our pointman waited, guns leveled at a pair of finely dressed Pegasi. They wore pinstripe business suits, and while they had no guns of their own, they showed what I could only describe as annoyed indifference toward our precession.

I was too far away to hear everything they discussed, but Shipwright began talking louder and louder, waving his hooves about. Normally this was no cause for concern, but then something glinted in a window to my left, and I turned my head, warning on my lips, just as Shipwright’s head exploded.

Instantly, the houses around us came alive with gunfire, bullets zipped and pinged around me as I threw myself against the nearest wagon hulk. Ponies screamed as the caravaners were torn apart, only a few managing to even draw their weapons. The security detail, those of us I could hear, were firing back, but I could already tell this fight was doomed. We were badly outnumbered and outgunned, and caught off guard as we were… really this battle wasn't much of a battle as it was stalling of the inevitable.

That didn't stop me from firing a few shots of my own. I couldn't tell if the pink bolts were actually effective, and I started to draw a lot more attention because of it. This wasn't my first firefight, but goddesses, was it the most desperate. I watched out of the corner of my eye as Plate Glass, the most veteran merc with the caravan, was evaporated by a rocket, the heat from the explosion washing over me and tossing several others near him out of their cover.

Our return fire was all but stopped now, only myself and three others still standing against what must have been at least two dozen armed assailants. As I ducked back into cover, I could see a bloody and battered Ursula crawling her way towards me, carbine nowhere to be seen. One of the attackers, the first I’d seen clearly aside from the pegasi, galloped up behind her.

The unicorn stallion wore an odd assortment of rags that reminded me of a mummy from the books of old, overlaid with a leather jacket that had a strange scorpion shaped emblem on the back.

I shot him twice as he raised on his rear hooves to smash Ursula to paste, dropping his still whirring ripper into a glowing pile of goo. My companion looked up at me gratefully, but then her expression contorted to alarm and she shouted at me, “Look out!”

Turning, I caught an applebuck square in the face. My concentration shattered and my rifle clattered to the ground, “Ha! You fucked with the wrong scorpions bitch!” An earth pony mare declared from above me, giving me enough time to refocus and roll out from under her sledgehammer.

I jumped back to my hooves, horn glowing as I leveled the plasma rifle against her temple and pulled the trigger several times. Her headless corpse hadn’t hit the ground before a bullet found its way into my shoulder, slamming me to the ground and knocking out my breath .

When I tried to rise, another round tore into my chest like my armor was wet tissue paper. It must have been a high power rifle, damn me for not buying better barding. Still, I tried to put my legs under me, then a third and final bullet punched through my right foreleg. Blackness crept into my vision and pain exploded through my chest with every labored breath I drew in.

Lying there, I could see the victors moving through the now wrecked caravan, executing some, saving others for later, and just generally looting. They were all dressed like the first one I’d shot and carried an assortment of decent ranged and melee weapons with them. They must have been expecting us, to hit us as hard as they did.

All speculation went out the window as the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed against my head, and I looked up at the scowling face of a pegasus in a pinstripe suit. “Sorry doll, you gotta know, it ain't nothin’ personal, just wrong place wrong time.”

I coughed, warm copper filling my mouth as I fought the darkness pressing in on me, “W-why?” I managed to spit out at last.

“It's just business, doll.” I could almost swear he sounded sincere.

And then he shot me again. In the face.

***

So. This was what death was like eh? Kinda overrated honesty. And painful. When was death supposed to hurt so much?

“You're awake. Good.” A gruff stallion’s voice met my ears.

“You're not the Goddesses!” I tried to say, instead I got to ‘not’ when I broke into a horrible coughing fit.

The voice shifted over to my right, but I couldn't hear any hoofsteps, “Whatever you're about to say, save it.” Jeeze, what a grumpy voice. “You're operating off one lung while I work on fixing the other one, so try not to talk more than you need to.” Then it started to move again, to my left.

I tried to shift onto my left side to follow it, and was rewarded with stabbing pain lancing up my spine from where my lung would be. I took several steadying breaths before I tried my hoof at talking again, “Who are you, and where am I?”

Something loomed over me, I could just feel something inches away from me, and then the voice sounded almost on top of me, “Im Doctor Winter Wash, and you're sitting in my hospital, Chicacolt General, to be precise.” I flinched at the closeness, and almost reflexively opened my eyes. Just to find myself nose to nose with a flying thing about the size of a pony. It was round and shaped to look like a massive parasprite, and it floated silently on wings that fluttered but produced no backwash or even a hum of machinery.

I was in a hospital room. An honest to goodness hospital room! It was sparkling clean with white tiled floors and a sterile uniform grey on the walls. The room I was in was spacious, and while I had it all to myself, had three other beds occupied the far corners. A needle led into my unbandaged foreleg while purple healing potion dripped into the tube leading to the needle. A monitor showed a zig zagging line that beeped with every change. The bed I lay in was propped up so I wasn't just laying flat, a fluffy pillow supported my back and warm blankets were pulled up to my navel.

Taken aback by the realization Id been talking with a robot the whole time, I blurted out, “But you're a robot!” A very pony sounding robot!

He said nothing, there was a click and a pair of arms unfolded from the bottom of his body and started to work on connecting a new drip to my IV, only after he’d pointedly checked the healing concoction did he respond, “Yes, and after several surgeries, I removed two large caliber bullets from your body and saved your life.” Was it just me, or did he sound… just a little dour? “Honestly two gunshot wounds to the chest and one to the head is childsplay here in Chicacolt,” His stern tone softened for just a second, “Doubtless I'll be seeing you again, one way or another.”

He turned and without a sound made for the open exit, then a sudden realization fell over me, “Wait!” He stopped just short of the doorway and spun just enough to focus an eye on me, “How did I get here?” I asked, only a little afraid of the answer. “Last I remember I was dying on a road...” I trailed off. Id had close brushes with death before, but never that close.

“You were dropped off in the lobby, bleeding from several wounds and missing a considerable chunk of your head.” I didn’t like how he described my condition, and unconsciously reached up a bandaged hoof to touch my perfectly intact head. “We had to use a lot of resources on you, but you’ve been paid for in full.” I hated not being able to read his face, if he even had one! And his voice, while disconcertingly pony, was level and gave nothing to work with emotionally. “Rest for today, you can leave in the morning once the potion has healed your lung.”

And just like that I was alone in the room, with nothing but my thoughts and the steady beep beep beep of the weird arcane equipment around me.

Who had brought me here? Who had whacked the caravan? Why had Shipwright acted like he knew the two finely dressed pegasi? Why was my treatment already paid for? Gahhh! Too many questions and not nearly enough answers for them! In fact, I had exactly zero answers to anything!

Slowly, my eyes began to shut themselves against my will, all the while my brain was whirling with implications and theories. Powerless against the lead weights drawing my eyelids down, I gave in and passed into a troubled sleep.

***

My dreams, while not exactly fitful, were full of horrors. I saw the pegasus, the one that shot me, his pitying purple eyes looking down into mine, a gun barrel between us. Then I was a kid again, and I really didn’t want to relive that. My dreams didn’t care what I wanted however, and I got to experience the crippling pain of loss for my brother over and over again.

When I finally awoke, gasping and covered in a cold sweat, it was already mid afternoon. How long had I slept for? I hadn’t even known what time it was when Id passed out! The only way I even knew it was the afternoon was the clock hanging forlornly over the door with a medical cross in the center of it. At least I was breathing normally now.

Slowly, I tested getting my legs under me, and found that while my right foreleg still ached distantly, I could walk. At the foot of my bed stood a small chest with my belongings, or rather, whatever Id been admitted in with.

There wasn’t a whole lot to be had, the only items were my bloodsoaked duster, the woefully inadequate barding, and my saddlebags. I took my time inventorying everything, and was relieved to find that most of my stuff was actually still there! All the ammunition for Courage, my rifle, was gone, as was the rifle itself. And while that stung, I had every intention of getting it back.

I just didn’t know exactly how… Shifting through the last of my junk, I found two healing potions still with me, their bright purple glow making them stand out at the bottom of the bags. Whoever had looted me must have been in a hurry to miss these!

Laden with what I had left, I set out on my grand adventure. The hallways were much the same as my room had been, clean white walls with a lime green railing running the length at chest height. The walls were occasionally punched through with doorways leading to other rooms with beds and equipment in them and the corradoors themselves were somewhat littered with unused beds. Ponies in white coats walked this way and that, looking busy and doing important stuff, caring for the alarming number of ponies.

There really were a huge number of ponies here! I found the stairs and started down them, apparently I was on the fifth floor of this hospital. Curious, I stuck my head into the fourth floor hallway, and was greeted by just as many ponies as on the floor above working or being worked on. Most of the injured ponies wore a black shirt, those who could, with a strange all white emblem of a large green apple with five gears formed in a pentagon at its prominent curves overlaid by two crossed swords.

Shaking my head, I withdrew back to the stairwell and continued to the ground floor. There I came out into a massive lobby about two stories high, the cavernous space was dominated by a large statue of a valiant looking unicorn stallion in military fatigues holding a helmet with a red cross painted on it under his foreleg.

In front of the statue was a carefully restored plaque that read, “In honor of Hospital Corpspony 2nd Class Restless Heart, a true friend and paragon of kindness, Rest in Peace.” Looking up at the looming statue’s soft features, I couldn’t help but feel an aura of gentle concern from it, like whoever Restless Heart had been, his spirit watched over this place.

Somewhat reluctantly, I continued on past the large circular reception desk manned by three bored looking secretaries and a battered old sign reading, “Welcome to the Restless Heart Medical University!” That seemed a little out of place, with everything else seeming so new and meticulously cared for.

I shrugged it off, not something to worry about right now. What was something to worry about however, were the platoon of heavily armed and armored ponies milling around the courtyard in power armor!

Id only ever run into the steel rangers twice before, and both times they’d attempted to rob me blind. Needless to say I shared no love for the steel clad cunts, and had the pleasure of killing a few in the past.

That said however, my magical grip closed around empty air where Courage should have been, and panic shot through me. My first instinct was to go for my gun and dive for cover, but since that had failed, I opted for my second instinct and looked around from the top of the short stairs leading to the courtyard.

It was only now that I realized most of the power armored ponies were pointing their guns away from the hospital from atop a huge wall constructed of haphazardly piled up slabs of concrete as big as a tractor trailer. A large number of ambulatory patients sporting their weird uniform shirts relaxed in the courtyard or chatted with lighter armed guard ponies happily.

The courtyard itself was flanked on three sides by large white marbled buildings about seven stories tall, each with a set of long steps leading to a grand entrance flanked by two marble columns. Defensive positions had been emplaced at each of the doors, heavy machine gun turrets watching silently over everything from behind sandbag walls. Scribes walked casually from one to another, floating tablets and other note gear around them as they went about their business.

High above I spotted more than one sniper looking down into the yard with bored expressions, and more turrets were placed around the tops of the buildings, curiously facing up rather than in or out.

The last side of the enormous courtyard was taken by the exterior perimeter wall, a gate had been built into it, allowing for caravans of all types to enter and exit the security of this heavily guarded place.

Trotting toward the exit, I was surprised by the lack of looks I was drawing, honestly I felt like a sore hoof with all these ponies just lounging around in their matching shirts! I just supposed ponies like me were common, just wastelanders wandering in for treatment and leaving.

Then again, I did see a fair number of regular non uniformed ponies mixed in with the others, so not too different after all.

While I walked, I studied the buildings, each one was clearly scorched along the northern face, although somepony had taken care to attempt to scrub the black from the marbled surface. The one I had come from was marked “Heros Hall” and the other two “Luna” and “Celestia” halls.

I found that weird, why call them halls? They were most assuredly larger than a single hall! In fact, each one looked like it could have been right at home among the ministry buildings in Canterlot! Not that Id ever been, but Id seen pictures.

As I neared the exit, I felt a strange unease wash over me, now up close to one of the power armored ponies, I could see that their armor wasn’t the uniform grey of their Manehattan counterparts but painted black with deep blue highlights along the edges with that same strange emblem on the flank.

A green mare whose long brown mane was pulled into a ponytail and sporting two additional lines along her armor stood in my path, “Hold it. You’re that mare Doc Wash told us about yeah?” Her gruff tone spoke of many hard years in the wasteland, and that she wanted no bullshit from me.

My first reaction was confusion, quickly followed by suspicion. How had this mare picked me out of crowd of hundreds? And it only raised more questions as to my current reality. Questions I highly doubted this knight would bother answering for me, if she even could. So instead I threw on my best easy going face and pushed my feelings to the back of my head, “Yep! Thats me. Sapphire Sands is the name, mercenary work is the game.” I cheerily said back to her as I tried to pass her.

She blocked me with a power armored hoof and I looked her in her sky blue eyes, we seemed to size one another up before she said anything back, “Knight Sergeant Night Shower. Doc Wash told us you were good to go, but to make sure you knew where this place was.” A small smirk crossed her scarred visage, “Just in case you ever need to come back.”

I stepped back from her raised foreleg and nodded, “What even is this place?” I asked, genuinely curious, and not only because I was pretty sure it’d be important later.

Night Shower took a deep breath, then let it out in a huff, “I’ve got other shit to do besides giving the new arrival an orientation on Chicacolt. But here’s the basics kid,” The older mare stepped aside as a caravan came ambling through the gate, their gaunt faces flush with relief. “You’re standing at the main gate for the Restless Heart Medical University, run by a group known pretty simply as the Doctor’s Helpers. They use this place as their headquarters to give aid and relief to the citizens of Chi Town.” She gestured around us, at all the weapons, “We, the New Steel Rangers, give them protection in exchange for basing rights to use the compound and its technology to further our own goals.”

I interjected as she paused for breath, “So it’s a protection racket? Classy.” I said, smoothly side stepping as several ponies raced past, competing in some sort of race.

“It is not a protection racket!” Night started, cold eyes drilling into me before she turned them towards the northwest, “Chi town belongs to the New Steel Rangers, but since you're new, you can be forgiven for not knowing there's a war on.” Her tone reminded me of how I would talk to my brother Thunder when he did something especially retarded.

But that did pique my interest, “A war? With who?” As far as I knew there was only one person who could wage anything even remotely considered a war, and he was busy building himself up in Fillydeliphia.

“With the Enclave, the raiders, the Wasters, and the Tribes. Everyone is at war here. We barely have the fire and ponypower to keep downtown and parts of the south side under our protection.” She gestured again, this time to the mirid of injured ponies milling about in the yard or laying on chairs, “The various settlements we protect offer what they can, and most of the times, all they can offer are their fillies and colts to fight for us.”

She snorted at my shock and retorted to my unspoken disgust, “Really, how old were you when you first killed somepony?”

Aaaand just like that, I was staring away, scratching the back of my head with a hoof. She made a ‘hmph’ sound before continuing, “That’s what I thought. You might not approve of it, hell, I don’t either. But without the Steel Rangers, what little civilization survived the death of Old Chicacolt would have burned a long time ago.”

Looking back at the gargantuan hospital complex, I supposed she was at least partly right. No where else had I seen such a large gathering of ponies and equipment! There must have been at least a few thousand ponies in the compound at least! Even Friendship city back in Manehattan hadn’t boasted such a large population, and it was the largest place I could think of.

The implications behind the size of this hospital weren’t lost on me, but I couldn’t ponder them as the Knight Sergeant cleared her throat, snapping me back into the present, “Ah, um, sorry. You were saying?” I sheepishly smiled as she pursed her lips at me, clearly disapproving of my wandering mind.

“I said to stay away from the old skyports, unless you want to get blown up in the crossfire between us and the enclave, and if you go too far north, your in Waster Territory, not many ponies come back from there.” She tapped her rough hewn chin with an armored hoof, “If you’re a merc like you say, your best bet for employment is probably Appletown. It’s in the old Applejack Tower, you can’t miss it, its the tallest tower in the city and not too far from here.”

She pointed out the still open gate at the skyline of dead and broken skyscrapers. Standing high above them all, was a strange black building made of several tiered layers that rose to different heights. Oddly, it seemed to be untouched by the centuries of neglect and balefire that had devastated its lesser constituents. Several large cylindrical shapes jutted from each platform on the way to the top where two spires seemed to pierce the cloud curtin itself. “The New Steel Rangers operate a large base there, so it should be relatively safe.” She finished, moving out of my way at long last.

“Thanks, I’ll keep all that in mind, see you round.” With nothing else to say, I unceremoniously stepped out of the gate and felt my teeth chatter in my skull as two massive slabs of metal bearing a medical cross with pegasus wings slammed shut behind me.

Looking toward the looming building, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of foreboding… It was certainly in the wrong direction from where I’d been coming from! Oh well, I needed a gun, and caps, and just about everything really, before I could go off in search of the raiders who had hit my caravan.

So with a huff, I set out towards the heart of that dark and broken city.

***

Footnote!

New Game

Are you sure this is who you want to be? Y/N

Character; Sapphire Sands

S-4
P-6
E-7
C-8
I- 5
A-6
L-4

Traits; Resourceful: Growing up in the wasteland was no easy task! You often find yourself underequipped and lacking materials, but somehow you manage to scrape by each time. +5 points to Survival, Speech, Barter, and Medicine.

Hired Hoof: As a Merc, ponies are just as likely to shoot you on sight as they are to hire you. New dialogue options now open depending on karma level.

Level up!

New Perk: Hard Headed: You’ve got one thick head on your shoulders! Your head takes 30% less damage and will never be crited!

Author's Note

My first foray into organized writing here, let’s hope it doesn’t disappoint too much! Special thanks and praise to Kkat for building the amazing world I write in, and to all the writers who inspired me to try my hand at this. Thanks also to my editors, Serious Lizard, and Universetaken for making this hot mess readable to the public, without them, I dont think Id be able to produce a story half as good as I dream of making this one!