Fallout Equestria: Rewritten

"I just don't know what went wrong!"

Velvet Remedy was a very pretty mare who graced the Stable with her wonderful singing. Today, her voice was playing through my pip-buck as I was reading. The music became extremely distracting, the flow of Velvet's voice smooth like, well, velvet. I wished that I hadn't alienated myself from the thought of actually talking to her. Even imagining it excited me, but she was nearly 7 years older than me, keeping the memories of the awkward gestures I made when I was younger fresh in my mind.

I switched off the radio, trying to put the thought out of my mind. I knew that the chances of Velvet being both attracted to mares, and attracted to me was low, but the idea of it was so exciting that it had lingered for years. Hoping that I could leave to find something better to distract myself with, I checked the time on my pip-buck; 15:34, less than an hour before my shift was over. However, the boredom would only have to last for a little while longer. Lost in my thoughts, I didn't notice that somepony had entered the room, her voice startling me once, and then twice, once I recognized it,

"Hello, I need some help with my pip-buck, and I was told that is where I could find it,"

Velvet Remedy was standing by the doorway, and I was sitting there, staring at her like an idiot. After the passage of a few seconds, I stammered,

"What can I help you with?"

"I'm not sure exactly what's wrong with it, but the thing won't even turn on. I'd appreciate if you could replace the padding as well, it's started to wear, and it chafes a bit on my fur," she paused, "Are you all right? You seem on edge."

Speaking both to her and myself, I responded, "Fine, I'm fine. Uh, when did it stop working?"

"I noticed it a few hours ago, but I hadn't looked at it for a while before that."

Leaving my seat, I asked, "Could you raise your foreleg, please?"

"What? Oh, here."

I unlatched her pip-buck with my magic, carefully sliding if off her foreleg. Holding it in the air and angling its screen towards me, I pressed the power button.

ERROR: NO BOOT DISC FOUND

I turned it in her direction, "Is this what it said when you tried to turn it on?"

"One and the same message."

"Well, I'll try to figure out what's wrong. You probably should go; I'm sure that you have better places to be."

"Not really, I don't have anything planned,"

I talked to myself in my head, Now is the time, Littlepip.

"I don't, either," I matched with, after a moment of silence, "I don't think that there's anything else you can help me with, so, you can go."

"All right, thank you for your help, and thank you, for fixing my pip-buck, in the future, I mean. Goodbye, have a nice day!"

She disappeared through the door, and I wondered if her remembering my name was a good or bad thing. The awkward mess of words before her departure aroused the slightest sense of suspicion in me, before it faded.

I turned around, levitating the pip-buck to a nearby table. I gathered every tool that I would need, and began the process of breaking the pip-buck apart. I won't include the technical details, but over the course of 30 minutes, I eliminated the possibility that the problem was with anything but the pip-buck's data storage. It was unlikely that anything else could have been accidentally (or intentionally) damaged, but even less likely that the drive would be both intact and not working. Slowly, I made a connection that should have been easy: the drive had been intentionally disabled. Although this was obvious, I dismissed it, because Velvet Remedy would have no reason to do such a thing.

Velvet was an artist, one of the many in the Stable, who among the others, gave the rest of us motivation to keep working towards the future, following the overmare, blah, blah, etc. In some fucked up way, it worked. Velvet's music was a big part in me not sinking into depression, something the Stable was famous (among itself) for. The empty wall of the pip-buck maintenance room could use a mural, hell, half of the Stable could use murals, but it would just be another patch on the Stable's flawed society. Why did ponies in Stable II become depressed? They were stuck between the Stable and the outside world. Their only purpose was to live, work, reproduce, and die.

Sometimes the walls themselves were unsettling. There was nothing beyond them but caverns and support structures. Beyond the door, there was only death. Leaving would mean being slaughtered by savages, or dying to radiation, chemical weapons, viruses, and everything else released during the war.

I realized that the end of my shift had passed, and I much preferred to continue investigating at home, so I left the room. Luna (as in Lunar Eclipse, the pegasus, quite distinct from the former princess), my adopted sister, was another large part of my motivation. She had managed, through terrible conditions, to find some kind of meaning in the Stable, even without submitting to the overmare's authority. Her ridiculous ability to survive was inspirational.

Speaking of Luna, I wondered where she was. If she had time, she could possibly add some insight into the mystery of Velvet's pip-buck. Reaching the elevator, I pressed the recall button, and waited. What did I like about Velvet? Her hair, her face, her voice and way of speaking, her... The elevator arrived with a "ding!". The doors opened, revealing Luna, apparently waiting for me to enter.

"I was on my way to see you," she began.

I stepped through the doorway, "Was there something that you wanted to do?"

"No, that's why I'm here."

"Good, Velvet Remedy stopped by a while ago, and something's wrong with her pip-buck."

"And?"

"And what?"

She paused and assumed a silly look before speaking, "Was there something that you wanted to do?"

"Oh, it seems like someone tried to erase the hard drive, but I can't think of why."

"Do you mean that Velvet tried to erase the hard drive?"

"Why would she do that? What reason could she possibly have to erase a pip-buck, then lie to me about it?"

"Why would somepony else erase her pip-buck? Before we keep speculating, maybe you should try to recover some of the data."

"That's what I was going to do anyway, but I wanted to see if you had any ideas about it."

She, in a rare moment, was irritated with me, "I do; I have the idea that you can't bring yourself to think that Velvet was lying to you."

I wanted to make a retort, but I couldn't, because she was right. I decided to terminate the subject with an apology before the elevator became any more uncomfortable,
"Sorry, you're right. I just can't imagine her lying."

She looked like she wanted to say something else, but said, "It's fine, but I don't want you to feel bad about it." her usual, calm demeanour returned, "Let's go home, and then we can talk about that hard drive."

I gave a small grin. Her comforting helped, but I still had the feeling that something was wrong with how I liked Velvet. I had felt it many times before, but I was never able to pinpoint any reason that I shouldn't even try a romance with Velvet, so I kept the unrequited love with me for years.

"Seriously, you have to either say something to her, or let her go," Not this talk again, I wondered how I let myself be given dating advice by a pony three years my younger, "You can't just keep dancing around her forever."

"How? I don't even know if she likes mares, how can I figure that one out?"

"You could try asking her," I sighed, before she smiled at me and said, "but whether or not she does, she'll probably like you, as a friend or a marefriend."

"I don't want her to just be a friend!" I looked around to make sure that the hallway was empty.

"If she doesn't like mares, then she'll have to be. Whether you like it or not, sex and attraction are vital parts of a functioning relationship."

I felt my face become warm, "It'll take a long time for that to not be problematic between me and Velvet."

"Maybe you should start that time now, then?"

Luna had been angry since "someone", but she was good at hiding her emotions.

The rest of our walk to our quarters was uneventful, aside from the introspection resulting from Luna's love lecture. I needed to actually interact with Velvet outside of coincidental meetings. The goal for the near future became both clear and terrifying. Thinking more about this during the recovery of the pip-buck, I, for a brief moment, felt confident that I could, in fact, talk to Velvet Remedy. My fear returned soon, as I thought about the details of what I would say to her. Abridging these, I had no idea what I could do about Velvet that wouldn't be awkward or too forward.

"Done! We just have to wait... seven hours, twenty minutes for the results," I said.

By happenstance, Luna's more broad technical skill had helped more with the process of recovery than my specialized knowledge of pip-bucks. Now, we just had to find something else to occupy the next seven hours and twenty minutes, or until we went to sleep. Luna wanted to watch some of those old movies she liked, and I didn't have anything more pressing to do but join her. We watched Twilight, and Echo, the former being a documentary, and the latter being a batpony romance movie. Luna claimed that Echo had a much deeper message, but her explanation was beyond my understanding. After the second movie, she went to bed, and, soon after, I did so as well.

*** *** ***

Leaving bed, one thing was on my mind, and I nearly jumped out. I checked the terminal we had used to interface with the pip-buck, finding that the recovery was complete. I mounted the drive, and began looking through its files. It was all personal data, but I realized that I didn't really care about it anymore. Why should I let some data push me around?

Echo was a great movie, despite my apparently partial understanding of it. Luna was still asleep, despite the length since she went to bed. I entered Luna's room, and noticed that something was wrong. As I inspected the room, the walls and ceiling began to drift away, leaving the floor and its dependants in a lightless void.

Time flew forwards, and, in the entrance level with Luna, I saw that the Stable's halls were empty and dilapidated. Rust ate at the metal parts, and the surface of the concrete slowly cracked into nothing. Stable II was no longer a place to live; now it was only a concrete shell filled with hollow, shaped steel. The machines had no circuitry, the only ventilation was natural, through the no longer sealed caverns and broken floors.

Luna led me, and we walked for minutes. Our path began to blur, the corners becoming fluids, the halls twisting in every direction. Eventually, we reached the doorway which once was the only point of access between the Stable and the outside world. The door itself was not visible, the doorway filled with a blinding light that my vision could not penetrate. Luna looked at me, and led me into the light.

We emerged in an aboveground-style room inside of a larger building; one of those that only gets built above the surface, before the war. Through what can only be described as a vision, I saw a massive plain of cracked rock and soil, ending in a cliff not far from us. Desks and metal boxes were scattered throughout the room, some organized and others clearly thrown around by shock. Papers were strewn across the floor, creating patches of white on the grey flooring. Facing me, Luna touched her forehead to my horn, and the world turned to white.

*** *** ***

Waking, two things were on my mind, the first of which was the great sexual pleasure I was experiencing, which was odd in itself. The second was the vision of Luna's face coming so close to mine. The combination of the two created one of the most unusual experiences in my life up to that point. As both faded, I was left in a confused stillness. Leaving bed, I contemplated the experience of my trailing dream. It had been so memorable that I had forgotten all of those proceeding ones. Why did ponies spontaneously have orgasms while asleep? This trail of thought was ended by the smell of an already cooked breakfast that wafted in when I opened my door.

"Good morning! Since you were asleep, I started breakfast, then I finished it, too."

"Breakfast isn't finished until you're finished eating," I pointed out, the food still intact.

Her face assumed a slightly awkward smile, "I always find it disturbing how the same sentence can mean so many things."

We both sat down at the table across from each other and began eating.

"Is that like the thing that you talked to me about last night? What you said Echo was about."

"You're right, and you should read more about it. There's also a lot of things about similar subjects I think you'd be interested in. We should go to the library after breakfast, since neither of us have work today."

"That sounds great," I responded, as I chewed on a piece of bacon.

The Stable's food engineers certainly wished that we could supplement our diets with grass, but I greatly enjoyed the fruits of their hard work towards keeping our food supply diverse and edible. The table was silent for a few minutes as we continued to indulge in those "fruits". Theoretically, the Stable was a perfect place to live in the post-apocalypse, and during this moment of peace, I felt almost fine with living here.

After finishing breakfast, Luna continued talking as she waited for me,

"So, what have you been read-", she stopped, "Can you hear that noise?"

I listened for a few seconds, and heard what sounded like muffled speaking.

"Outside?"

She nodded. We both stood up, my meal still unfinished. Luna walked ahead of me, arriving at the door first. She opened it, and unleashed a tidal wave of noise. Ponies were gathered around the door, but soon created a bubble around us once it opened. Luna and I moved through, me feeling like we were in some kind of trouble. Although the voices mostly drowned each other out, I could make out a few words in the now quieter, surprised crowd,

"That's them," "How could they let this happen?" "I still can't believe it."

A familiar voice pierced the noise,

"Make way, move away from the door, we will handle this with the authority of law."

The overmare emerged from the crowd, entering our bubble of isolation. My eyes widened in surprise; we were really in trouble. She looked at both of us sternly, and asked,

"Do you know what happened last night?"

We looked at each other, then at the overmare,

"No."

"No."

"When you carelessly removed Velvet Remedy's pip-buck, she used the opportunity to leave the Stable!"

My mouth stuck open in shock. What the fuck? Why? How? What?

What left my mouth was more of an overlap of each previous word into a mess of syllables. Luna stood completely still, and said nothing. I could feel the overmare's anger, and the anger of every other pony surrounding us. We were fucked.

Luckily for us, the overmare regained control of her emotions, and began speaking more coldly,

"I will have to spend time deciding what to do with you two, but for now, the crowd will disperse," she addressed the crowd, "I understand your anger, but we must leave these to ponies to law and order, meaning that, according to the laws of this Stable, we cannot disturb them, no matter how much anger we may feel."

Murmurs filled the air as the crowd reluctantly began to disperse. A few ponies began to back away, and soon the whole had left. The overmare simply shook her head, and walked away with all of the other ponies.

A resounding "Fuck." came from Luna's mouth.

*** *** ***

"It was so overwhelming that I forgot to talk. She could have been more prudent in addressing the mob," Luna complained.

"What are we going to do now? I have to assume that the news is widespread, and both of us are going to be disciplined, either by Stable Security or by public opinion."

"I expect it to be both."

I sighed. We stayed in silence for a while.

Suddenly, Luna had a simple idea, "What about the pip-buck? We haven't checked it since last night."

I raised my head in recognition. We raced to my terminal, with which the pip-buck was interfaced with. I didn't know what I expected to find, but I knew it had something to do with Velvet leaving. Velvet, leaving? All of the one-word questions from before surfaced again.

I sorted the files by "last accessed", and watched as they all sorted, from the newest and most intact, to the oldest and barely readable. The first file was encrypted, with what I wasn't sure. The second, an audio file. The rest descended into data corruption, even the third file being unrecognisable. Velvet had apparently used the first two files fairly recently before she brought the pip-buck to me. I let the file play, hearing the voice of Velvet,

"Hello... nopony."

"I don't know why I'm recording this. I guess I just want some closure with the Stable."

"Tonight, I'm leaving, and leaving this thing behind, too."

"If I walk anywhere near the exit, I'll set off so many alarms that security will catch me before the door can open."

She sighed,

"Rosebud."

"That's the key. It took me a while to figure out, but I found something in the Stable's computers."

"Well, more like somethings."

"The first was a message. A message from the outside. The second was the Stable's door override, and its decryption key."

"There are ponies out there, not savages, ponies! And we're hiding down here while they die up there."

"They're dying from disease, starvation, not by any weapons but guns, probably."

"It's habitable up there, it has all been lies. Everything that we've been taught is a lie."

"I don't know why, but we've been told that the outside is death for Stable ponies, and that only savages live up there!"

"I'm going to clean this pip-buck before I give it to pip-buck maintenance, Littlepip. That's her name, Littlepip. It doesn't matter if I tell everypony, or leave a message behind, the overmare will just brand that as lies. My only option is escape, and I can't let anypony know what I'm doing. I've copied the message onto external storage so that somepony else can look at it."

"'My pip-buck stopped working a while ago'. That's all I need to say before I can leave. Just a few more words to the guard, and I can escape. I might as well end thi-"

The tape stopped. We looked on without words. We had the override code for the door. We could leave. There were ponies out there. Velvet was out there. Whatever happened next would change the course of my life forever. If I modified our pip-bucks, Luna and I could make our way through the Stable's sensors without being noticed. She knew enough to keep us alive out there. The pieces came together in my head, and the question I hoped for came,

"Well... do you think that we should follow her?" Luna asked, with a worried expression.

"Yes."

"I knew that you would agree with us!" she exclaimed, "I'll have to steal at least a year's worth of medication. We'll have to dehydrate most of the food we bring. We'll also have to-"

I interrupted her before she rattled off everything we would need, "Do you think that Velvet prepared before leaving?"

"If she didn't, we need to prepare if we want to help her. Even with a head start, she can't outrun us if she's undersupplied. Although, it will be easier for her to move than for us to find her."

"When did you learn so much about the outside?" I teased, "I guess you really do know everything."

"We should start by making jerky now, so that it has time to marinate and dry in the oven. Next, we should plan out everything else. They let me take my prescription from Medical without supervision, and later tonight is a good time to betray that trust."

The old drug cabinets in Medical were simple enough to take from, if you had access, which Luna had. Her medication, in particular, was used only by her in the entire Stable, making it a rather unknown substance, and it wasn't very useful for anything else but prescription.

Despite the more disagreeable aspects of the Stable, requisitioning oft-used supplies was a very pleasant and smooth process. The process for food was almost entirely automated, so I simply had to go to the cafeteria and use up some of our extra food rations for the meat. By the time that anypony could realize what we were doing, we would be long gone.

Luna stayed behind and prepared everything for when I got back. As I walked through the halls, I garnered many glares and much staring. Reaching the cafeteria, most of the conversations I overheard were about Velvet, Luna, and me. I, evenly dividing Luna's and my rations, requisitioned eight steaks, gaining an odd expression from the pony behind the counter. I shrugged, "Guests.", and walked home.

Luna chopped the steak into slices, placing them in a large jar, which she explained was full of salt water. Now, we only had to wait for that to be ready for drying later. Meanwhile, we began discussing things other than jerky and medication. I explained my plan for disabling the Stable's pip-buck tracking, so that we could simply disappear inside the Stable, then be discovered outside.

Luna, in turn, gave me advice for disabling the guard: basic anatomical knowledge of the arteries in a pony's neck. She, after some convincing, made me practice the procedure on her. I successfully blocked blood flow enough to only theoretically knock a pony unconscious, as I wouldn't actually do that to Luna. The time between the beginning of my telekinesis spell and the unconsciousness had me worried. According to Luna, the spell caused a slight choking sensation, which might be problematic with a guard wearing a pip-buck. I supposed that we would have to see what happened when I did it for real.

If there were two guards, Luna could buck one while she was distracted by the other guard's newfound condition. If there were more than two... we would have to improvise. For a while after disabling the guards, there would be nothing in our way but the door, the opening of which I had already readied my pip-buck for.

With the escape itself planned, we each packed our own saddlebags. The rest of what we needed was inside of our quarters. I packed an extra jumpsuit, two full canteens, two bars of soap, some books, a chest-mounted toolbelt, and other various items.

*** *** ***

Hours later, it was time. We were leaving the Stable. The hours before are irrelevant, mostly being preparation and overall inconsequential talking. I hoped that a hundred years had really been enough to at least partially civilize the outside. I also hoped that we wouldn't be caught before we left. We made it to the elevator without anypony passing by, and set it towards the entrance floor. My stomach filled with butterflies as my home passed by. Soon, only one sliver of it was left to cross as the elevator gave a final ding!.

I went first, looking around the corner. Finding nothing, I nodded to Luna, and she followed me down the hall. We had a limited amount of time until the news of our disappearance climbed the ladder of command. Continuing, we briskly walked until we arrived at a door emblazoned with a single word: EXIT.

It was time to put my telekinetic ability to the test. Luna hid around the doorframe as I tripped the override switch. The door opened with a whoosh! followed by a clunk. The two guards, a mare and stallion, immediately looked at me. I answered their questioning gaze with,

"I'm here to do maintenance on the door controls; to make sure that nopony else opens it."

"We weren't told about any maintenance," the mare said, "Wait, aren't you that pip-buck technician?"

"Yeah, she is! Let's call this in." the stallion said, straightening up.

My horn lit up in a glow, prompting a confused response from the now ailing stallion, "What the hell?" he gasped.

Luna ran through the door, moving towards the mare. Her left forehoof connected with the poor mare's face, knocking her unconscious in one hit. Meanwhile, the stallion weakened to unconsciousness, but not before he could press a button on his pip-buck.

Alarms began to sound.

"Shit!" I exclaimed. My magic dissipated from the guard's neck.

Luna watched the doorway as I began to work, plugging the pip-buck into the door control panel. As I entered the commands to access the override code, a voice boomed through the loudspeakers.

"Littlepip, Lunar Eclipse, yes, those are your names. Do not continue what you are doing. If you leave, you will not be allowed back in, even if you find Velvet Remedy. Think of your mother. Velvet made the choice to leave behind her friends and family, but you don't have to. Surrender, and you will be treated fairly."

'Fairly' under the definition of tyranny is not an offer that I am willing to take. A quote from the book I was reading, which at this moment I gained context for. Luna scoffed. I continued, completing the procedure. The door mechanism clicked and whirred, along with the computer. Long-unused circuits and servos activated, creating a musical of various digital and mechanical noises.

A deafening, grating noise filled the room, as a hydraulic press pushed Stable II's massive steel blast door outwards. Luna flinched. The scene inspired awe for the sheer scale and engineering of the Stable. The great door was giant like its enclosing structure, but so much simpler. It was a cork, nothing else, but it was also our and our ancestors' salvation. Once the door slid outward, an arm extended into view and pulled the door out of our path.

Nothing stood in our way. Luna and I hesitatingly looked at each other, and I took the first step.

A cavern loomed across the boundary of the doorway. My first step onto the rock gave me butterflies. It was time to leave this place behind.