Fallout Equestria: The Vanhoover Chronicles

Ever a reminder of the Great War, of the ancient days and of what ponykind has lost. In the heart of Equestria the city of Canterlot rests on the side of the royal mountain, forever its dreams filled with nightmares. Every foal is told by their mothers of that place and to stay far away lest they become trapped forever in the rotten ruin, where the very air corrupts and twist all it touches. Yet here we are, me walking the ancient road home and my ironic travelling companion.

"There is no need to rush you know, the ruin isn't going anywhere."

"Is pony tired already?"

"Pfft, you do realize that I have been doing this longer than you?"

There is a reason to why I prefer travelling alone. Alright, several reasons. I could just kill the zebra, no one would miss them. And yet I need them, after all these years I haven't come any closer to figuring out just what kind of poison they let loose in my home. The pink gas is a threat, even to one such as me.

I closed my eyes, taking in the harsh cold wind with just the faintest remnants of the gas. The road felt like the wasteland should be; shattered and broken but still solid. The twisted trees seemed more wind worn than corrupted, unlike those far below in zebra town (what halfwit named that place?), despite us being almost at the top.

I opened my eyes again, feeling something amiss. Around my hooves, I looked down and realized that these cracks were different. Something heavy have frequented this road, pony sized but... steel rangers? In Canterlot??

"This is no picnic you daft pony!"

Of course there was insult in the tone. I closed my eyes and let the magic surge. When I opened them again I was standing by the shocked zebra, and noticed the pink haze surrounding us. Yet... it was avoiding us. And the gem in their staff glowed, she had already worked her spell.

"Curse you pony! Do not do such thing, why you waste energy? Just to scare me?"

"Relax, I can still teleport us out of here if need be."

"And shamblers?"

I raised my eyebrow at the shaman, and my rifle.

"You think crystal lance is enough?"

"If it isn't, then I will simply use something else."

"Overconfidence is first step to death, sorceress."

"If only."

"Huh?"

I might not have shared my superiors frankly foalish distaste for the striped kind, but that was before they did THIS to my beloved home. The grass to the sides of the road were more pastel coloured jelly than vegetation, the trees had rotten and twisted yet still stood for over a century. The city gates were cracked and miscoloured, the houses looked like they should have long since fallen apart and among it all was a thick pink cloud preserving this...

"Oh! Stop, stop! Pony, stop this madness!!"

When my gaze fell upon my companion I realized that my rifle was pointed straight at their head. Instinctual telekinesis, something that would have impressed the scholars of Canterlot if they were still alive. The rifle retracted away from them.

"Madness? Then what do you call this?" I motioned towards the city.

"... Before my time, do not blame me." The stripe was scared, she knew of course...

"And yet, you inherit your ancestors sins. Just as much as any pony."

A zebrecian saying, something that is rarely heard from a pony's mouth.

"You... We do not have time, crystal can't hold forever."

"A valid point, my dear companion. Let's get going."

"How far in city is it?"

"Not far, the lower terrace."

***

The nostalgia was painful enough on its own, even without taking the rot and decay into consideration. I beheld the feral ghoul in my grip, it was thrashing and biting in the air. Without any success I might add, for all its undead resilience it was helpless against something so simple as telekinesis. It looked familiar... of course it did. I looked at the house it had crawled out of, it and three others. Sunny's Bakery. Oh right, I used to go there on dates when I wanted peace and quiet. She always had a wonderful smile when I walked in, and an embarrassed blush now that I think of it. This was her filly, I think?

"Please hurry, pony!"

A second layer of magic glowed over my horn and the bolt burned the poor girl to ash. There was an eldritch light glowing through the ash pile, I tilted my head, closed my eyes and breathed in. Sour in taste, but mostly revolting. A pity, but it is all I can do for her.

"..." Zirkei stared at me, of course they did. I confirmed every myth and legend in Zebrecia with every encounter.

"Let's continue my striped friend." I said and trotted onwards on a familiar street.

Something was wrong, liquid flew from my eyes. Oh right, tears. I'm crying, fancy that? Didn't know I still had it in me, but sure enough... There were a stirring of emotions in the black pool that was my heart. Could be a problem, I can't lash out just yet. Too much is at stake.

The pink cloud was thick around me, I had gone too far from the shaman's magic. I conjured a small whirlwind and the street was clean, well relatively. There was a galloping of hooves behind me, one equine. I pulled down my hat to cover my eyes.

"How you do that? That was no teleport!"

"Oh be quiet, stripe..."

"Ah, sorry!"

We turned corner and had finally reached it, the street of my youth. Just as disgusting as the rest. A ghoul walked mindlessly up and down the street. One of the end points was the house I had shared with my mother so many years ago, the other... Ah... Silver Spark, from the Ministry of Arcane Sciences. Well, that and being my neighbor. She was by far the cutest mare in bed, and so more than that. She was an actual proper friend, why couldn't she have listened to me and left the city in time??

She looked up, and recognized me. By the stars... She is still sentient? After all this time?

"Goldie!! You came back!" Not a shred of raspiness, her voice was still as squeaky as ever.

She galloped towards me and tackle hugged me, and my heart shattered once more.

"I waited. Everypony died... or went crazy but I waited. I knew you didn't die! You promised!"

"Why... why couldn't you have left? Why did you stay?"

She looked like she was trying to cry, but her body wouldn't let her.

"I... tried, then I remembered you mother and ran back in."

"Is she still in there?"

"Yes, I tried... getting her out but she gets violent. I think she is in pain."

"And you?"

"I don't... It is nothing. I... It was lonely."

"I know, but you did good Silver. I just have a few errands and you can come with me."

Her coat looked like it had been scorched, and was black with a pinkish tint. Her once beautiful sapphire eyes were a dead white, by all rights she should be blind. Her mane was the same sick pink as everything else in this accursed place, the blue long since gone. Yet I didn't care. She was alive (in manner of speaking), she recognized me and I was no longer alone.

"Ahum!" I was so close to shooting the blasted zebra.

"ZEBRA?!" The nigh invincible undead monster was frightened, it was almost cute.

"Silver, they are with me. Zirkei is helping me walk through the city without being poisoned."

"Huh? If you say so..." She hid behind me, staring at them.

"We should probably go visit my mother."

"Hm..." The shaman disapproved of me accepting the living dead.

"Don't even try..." I warned the shaman.

I walked up to my home, the windows were shattered, the walls were bleeding pink and the door had melted into the frame. Silver was about to suggest something when I simply aimed my rifle and shot. The bright blue beam hit, the door remained. A few more shots and it melted away.

"Goldie, where did you find that?"

Oh right, she worked in weapons development. And the Glimmer 2000 is a post war design. Nice to see her mental faculties still being intact. I stepped inside and really appreciated the conversation distracting me from reality.

"It was a gift from an ex at the Starlight Institute."

"I though they only did theory work?"

"The royal coordinator got them involved in some local projects. One of them involves energy weapons."

"Oh, right. Project: Lightbringer, I thought phase one was a dud?"

"It was."

The stairs bent unnaturally when I put my hoof on it, but judging by the rest of Canterlot it would hold. I ignored my old room, there was nothing left of value there. Only reason to why I had returned to this place was one, my poor mother who is little more than a victim to fate in this wretched drama that is my life. I envy the young who struggle and die within a few decades of their birth, too preoccupied with their own survival to dwell on the past.

I opened the door to her bedroom, and she sat in her chair with her favourite book on the small round table. The remnants of a small glass and a bottle. She had been waiting for the end when the gas was released, I suspect that she knew long before the end. I knew, and she could always read my emotions (she is my mother after all). Of course she didn't try to flee the City, she was tired and dejected towards the end.

Silver Spark entered with me, with a tone of worry in her voice.

"She doesn't let me move her. I thought maybe she is waiting for you to come back."

My mother's eyes were showing signs that she was recognizing me, but there wasn't anything more than that.

"Mother, I am back."

No response.

"... I see."

I turned to my two companions.

"Could you two please step outside?"

This accursed weapon of the zebras. The fact that they mixed in necrotic energies made me almost believe all the propaganda commissioned by my minister. Chemical and biological weapons are bad enough, but this... I could kill a Canterlot ghoul, it is not much more difficult than a regular one if you do it correctly. The soul though, it is tainted and while it is normally meant to disperse and become part of the magical ether we breathe... Here, in a similar manner to balefire bombs it get absorbed and slowly rot away. The spirit vaguely aware of its own corrupted existence.

We do not live in a world where salvation is viable, the royal sisters saw to that. For all the desperate religious nonsense of the wastelanders, the princesses are nowhere to be seen or heard. No, there is no salvation. Only two choices remains for those who still exist: Damnation, and Oblivion.

This is the logic I tell myself, the spiritual equivalent of mercy killing.

"Be at peace, mother. You have done enough."

My horn glowed as I sent out a faint golden light. It danced in the rotten air and entered her body, I could feel it finding her. Not the molten carcass of a body but the real her, I drew her out. It was just as miscoloured as every other soul in this place. No, I would not let the cloud have her any longer.

I took a deep breath. I felt a surge of emotions that died off as suddenly as they came. Rest well mother, it is over. I wiped my tears, breathed the foul dead air and turned to my two companions. One who had waited here in undeath for over a century, for my sake. And one who went against the sins of their ancestors, who tried to fix things and whom promised to help me put my past to rest.

"Let's go."

***

Silver Spark had been trying to talk our way past any feral ghoul we found, with limited success. A few just stared at us, one looked at us and then ran away, most however... where aggressive and died as a result. We had been travelling through the middle terrace with little issue. If you ignore the dozens of ghouls, I suspected that I even had gotten high off the magical energies. That was definitely not part of the plan.

We were taking the same road that I have travelled hundreds of times, a whirling path of alleyways, stairs and archways. It reminded me of Vanhoover with how labyrinthine the road was. Perhaps that was the real reason to why I liked it? Apart from the more practical reason of confusing any M.O.M. goons that might have stalked me back in the day. I can't imagine them NOT doing it, considering Minister Pie's rabid paranoia.

Not that it matters anymore, the M.O.M. is dead and gone just like the rest of it. Except I sensed something alive... Two things. Ponies. Oh right, almost all of it is dead but some fragments remain. Applesnack's followers, I forgot about them.

"Halt!"

And here they are. Two of them, one with some machine gun and the other... is that an anti air gun?

"Who are you and what are you doing in Canterlot?!"

Of all the times to have a zebra by my side...

"I'm Golden Starlight, old friend of Steelhooves."

They didn't expect to hear that name.

"Why is the stripe here? What are you playing at?!"

Did they recognize me? Hard to tell.

"In case you didn't notice, the air is a bit foul so I brought the shaman along to let me travel. As for what, I put my old mother to rest and found a friend waiting for me. Satisfied?"

Steel Rangers aren't idiots. Stubborn, yes. But not idiots.

"This road leads to Ministry Walk and the Palace."

Their guns were aimed at us but they were still too confused to be downright hostile. Most likely, they wanted to bring us in for questioning. Unfortunately, Canterlot strained my patience so the diplomatic option was out. Still, they could be his direct subordinates so restrain would be a virtue.

"Yes, that is where my office is."

"What? Explain yourself!"

"No."

BABABAM

The ranger with the anti air gun fired into the wall above us. A bluff, pointless.

"It is simple, you are a soldier of the Equestrian army. I, am a government official. By all rights, you answer to me. So either aid me or step aside and carry on with whatever mission you have here."

The rangers looked at each other for a moment. Zirkei was getting anxious, and not over the soldiers. We were running out of time then, so alternative solution it is. I disliked using the more esoteric spells, especially not when leaving survivors to witness it. Still, some part of me knew that they needed to survive.

I lifted my hoof, and punched the air. It cracked like a glass window. The pink cloud seeped into it as a wind was forming. The shaman noticed exactly what I did, the energies that flew into the streets were invisible yet I knew they were there. I took a deep breath, feeling the surge of raw astral magic. My horn glowed, and I the spell began to work its magic. The gilded light danced around the shocked soldiers, enveloped them and in a flash they disappeared.

Then my horn glowed once more as it was time to mend the cracks, and although it took extreme precision to not leave a tiny hole in the fabric of reality... I had plenty of practice. It healed, and the three of us where alone once more.

"Goldie... What did you do?"

"Time travel, I sent them a few days into the future. By then we will be long gone."

"But..."

"The cracks? Don't worry your little pretty head over it. It is fixed now." I scratched her messy mane.

"Pony should not use such magic."

"It was that or absorbing the cloud itself, and that, my dear zebra, is an experiment I rather avoid."

Silver wasn't satisfied, she knew a fair bit about magic herself after all.

"That looked like a portal or gateway... I know the theory, but that..."

"Unicorn should not have done that. If cracks continue then we would all be dead."

"Will the two of you stop it?! I know what I am doing and it was the best choice in a bad situation!"

I swear, seeing the zebrecian shaman and my old lover agree was eerie. This is why I didn't like leaving witnesses.

***

Ministry Walk, the heart of Equestria. Everything in the nation led to Canterlot and Canterlot led to Ministry Walk. This little piece of the city did in turn lead up to the royal castle, a place I actually never set hoof in. It was tempting, I will admit that, but that wasn't why I was here. Let dead princesses lie, and let them keep their secrets. I have my own to reclaim.

I put my hoof at the remains of the alabaster statue that once stood here, letting my heart wander back to the days when life was good. When this city was worth visiting. The worst part of growing old is the memories, in times of pain the memories of better times can break you. Ghouls are far from the only ones who can become feral, I... I need to get out of here before the city claims its due.

"Hey, Goldie... why did we need to go to your office again?"

I was pulled back to the present and why I was here in the first place.

"... When I left Canterlot I had to leave something behind, something important. I always planned on returning here one day, but... with this pink cloud everywhere I didn't dare. I had thought they would just turn it into a crater or something."

"Wouldn't whatever it was be destroyed? Nothing in the city works these days."

I turned my head and had my eyes meet her, she really deserved better than to live as this unholy husk. Still, it was nice to have her with me again. So many had already died and left me behind, maybe a Canterlot ghoul could actually survive travelling with me.

"Maybe, but I have to try."

We entered the ancient building where I had spent so many hours of my life.

"So what is it?"

The tone was curious and flirty, part of me just wanted to hug her and not let go.

"Remember what we talked about on nearly every date?"

"Well, yes. Data spell matrices, zebrecian talismans, energy weapons, spark generators, liquid crystal reactors, lunium reactors, solar reactors, cloud ships, cybernetics, power armour, lunite cores, E.L.F. communication, runic magic and... the next subject was... let's see..."

"Electromagnetic weaponry and whether it should replace or complement ordinary firearms."

"Oh right, I knew that! But what does that have to do with what we are doing here?"

"Back in my school days I scribbled on my own operating system, later I got hold of a diamond shape lunite crystal."

"So it is a spell matrix then?"

"Yes, one with everything that ever passed through the Ministry of Image. Not just the things I personally worked with, everything the ministries wanted censored, every top secret project, every inconvenient truth. Everything"

She gasped, or tried to by the sounds of it.

"Isn't that treason?!"

"Technically no, I had clearance to do so. Miss Rarity expected me to keep track of things, and that includes keeping a back up in case our systems got compromised. It never leaved the premises, wasn't connected to the rest of the system and only I knew how to access it. Apart from the minister and myself, no pony actually ever knew that it existed."

The thing I neglected to mention was that it was a contingency in case the old principality ever fell apart. Of course, not even Rarity knew that part. She was busy with her own desperate scheme, rivaling my own in how illegal and blasphemous it was. Wonder if any of those little statuettes are still around?

By now we had reached the correct floor, the ministry mare's office was on the front towards Ministry Walk. Mine on the other hand was down the corridor, and was more a small library than anything else. I looked at the old weathered door.

Head Archivist Golden Starlight

The ministry hub was relatively clean from the pink cloud so the plaque was still readable, and the lock on the door was still operational. I entered my key, turned and opened the door. Yet another wave of nostalgia washed over me, but this time there was something else as well. A glimmer of familiarity, a soft golden glow from the crystal as it rested gently in this nightmare of a place. I had said that it was a gift from a lover in Vanhoover, true enough, and nopony ever bothered to question if it was something more.

I grasped it in my magic, and felt like I was properly alive for the first time since the world ended. It had waited patiently for my return all these years, my half of Project: Orichalcum as we had once named it. Unfortunately, Equestria would lie in ruin for several decades if not centuries more as she was long gone. Spirited away by a spiteful star.

Silver Spark. She is an arcano engineer that managed to keep up with me in my prime. It... is still possible. I turned to look at her when I noticed something. She was alone. I had led a zebra into the core of equestrian politics and secrets. To the Ministry of Image at that.

The door to Rarity's office was wide open.

"oh no..."

The book, I had completely forgotten about it!

Sprinting out into the corridor and towards the office I found Zirkei standing there in a trance. Their eyes transfixed at the desk where the black book was hidden. It had already reached out to them, this was bad, real bad.

My rifle levitated up, I breathed out and fired. The azure beam hit, and the striped shaman appeared to blink in surprise as their body glowed for a moment and turned to a soft blue dust.

There was a spectral scream of rage and frustration.

I grasped the zebra's staff in my magic grip, held the lunite crystal and grabbed a dazed Silver Spark. A flash of light and we were gone, away from the accursed artifact before it could do any more harm. How could I have forgotten that it was there, and how it was sentient?? My mind was finally slipping after all these years.

***

The foul wasteland air tasted as wonderful as water from a mountain spring, the wind was wild and screamed as a banshee and the ground was dry and dead. On the mountain in front of us it stood, Canterlot. My home, the center of it all, accursed and rotten for our crimes and it had failed. I had broken free from its alluring grace and its corrupted spirit, and I had brought with me one of those it once claimed, a wonderful mare who persisted through it all.

For the first time in over a century my heart was filled with hope and something else... Joy perhaps? Tranquility? After all this time there was something worth fighting for, it taken a century but I had reclaimed it.

Project: Orichalcum.

I hugged the wonderful mare who had waited for me all these years, who would help me set things right.

"Goldie? How long did I wait?"

"Long enough, Silver. Long enough."

But she was staring blankly across the desolate wasteland, covered in an eternal darkness only lighted by the faint light of balefire and the rotten carcass of our old home. The wind screeched and tore at our manes, in rage at our survival and my plans to finally put an end to this madness.

***

We were travelling on the old railroad west, to Vanhoover. Barely a single week had passed before she broke apart. She was an intellectual, she could figure out what had happened to her friends, to her relatives and to herself. In her pain she prayed to the princesses and was met with nothing but silence, they were long dead. Wastelanders don't know it, but we proper equestrians know what it is to live in the presence of a true alicorn and can tell that the the princesses really are gone.

Time is a cruel enemy, as we grow old we forget things. If we didn't, we would go insane from the memories we keep. The joy, the sadness, the suffering. Ghouls aren't unique in that they can become feral, it happens to all of us when we have lived past our time. Our tormented souls scream for peace and quiet, for the pain to finally end.

She had been trying to save my mother for my sake, it was the one thing that kept her going. When I returned and put her to rest, I had taken that from the poor mare. Her mind had finally cracked, and it was my fault.

As such, I am once more alone.