Fallout Equestria: Wandering Woes

Chapter 2: Bars and Brawls
(Vision)

I opened my eyes to a scene I’m not used to; a bar full of ponies laughing and drinking to their heart’s content. The barkeep is keeping a watchful eye on everypony as I look over to Rogue, he seemed nervous and jittery; had been ever since we came down here.

I murmur to myself, “Huh, so this is what the wasteland is truly like; both rough and tumble, but joyful at the same time. It’s strange to think the Megaspells fell here so long ago, and yet life keeps thriving. Reminds me of life back up above the clouds; man, that feels like a distant dream now.”

I notice a new stallion, a unicorn, coming in through the door. He has a blue mane, a brown overcoat with a blue jumpsuit under it, a saddlebag, and a pipbuck, also an eyepatch over one eye. One of the stranger things I’ve seen in my time here, but not the strangest; that would be a mare pouring honey all over herself, and then running around a bunch of Bloatsprites she managed to find somewhere, and then ran through town. It was a less than pleasant experience.

The new stallion sits down and the bartender starts pouring him a drink, seems like the stallion’s a regular around here, although he looks rather stiff.

Rogue patted me on the shoulder as sound starts coming back to me, “Hey dude, you alright?” He asks with a worried look. I look back at him and gave a confirming nod, “Yeah, just got a bit focused. Sorry.”

Every so often during the talk between me and Rogue, I would look around the room, being a sniper up top meant I got rather used to getting a feel for a room and the ones inside of it; made me lose a lot less fights that way. Around the bar, I noticed most of the patrons have been giving the new guy a rather wide berth, though it seems kinda odd for so many ponies that have been roughhousing for hours now, sometimes playfully, and other times... well, one of them tried to pick a fight. The window next to us has had a rather large hole in it since. They hardly noticed when me and Rogue had walked in, which makes them giving him a wide berth rather strange considering we’re both pegasi. I assume this is from him being a regular, maybe one that was rather violent if provoked; better be cautious around this one.

I look at Rogue for a moment, “Hey, see that new guy over there? He seems like he might be top dog round here; I’m gonna go say hi,” with a concerned look, Rogue states, “You sure, dude? We have quite a lot of heat on our backs; burdening them with a fight here...might not be the best idea.”

I laugh as I stand up, bringing a bit of attention upon myself, “Ha, we’ve been through worse; a little dude like this ain’t gonna bring us down.” Rogue gives a sigh before taking a rather long drink and leaning back. Considering everyone in the bar was now looking at me, except for the new guy, Rogue was rather easily blending in “Heh, your funeral, dude.”

I give another of my signature grins over my shoulder and start walking. To the stallion’s credit, he doesn’t even look in my direction as I sit down next to him, either he’s an idiot or he has a lot on his mind. I’m going to go with both.

“Hey barkeep, give me one of whatever he got.” The barkeep looks at me and says the same thing he did when we arrived. “I only serve one drink here, bucky; applewhisky, same as my name.” I give him a slightly irritated look, second verse same as the first it would appear. “Alright then, give me some applewhisky, I guess,” I tap the new dude on the shoulder, “Can’t believe this dude only serves one kind of drink, eh, Cyclops?”

He sighs a bit, “Great, another one that calls me that? Man, that name is going to follow me forever,” He takes another swig from his bottle, and Whisky pulls out another one in front of me. Like he said, it was the same he gave everyone. I pour it into a glass and get some sip, I vaguely feel weirded out, but I ignore it.

“So what’s with the eyepatch, eh? Seems like you’ve gotten quite a rep around here,” I say to him as I finish off my glass, feeling the effects wash over me slightly; damn, that’s smooth. He looks at me particularly irritated; probably because I’m disrupting him getting him some sip. “What’s with the scar on your neck? Couldn’t pay the whore?” The pony shoots back as he begins to collect himself and stand.

I narrow my eyes, Rogue immediately standing up with his hoof on his gun, every pony in the entire bar gets quiet as all eyes are on us. The glass in my hoof cracks with how hard I am squeezing it, “What did you say?”

The stranger turns to look at me, grinning as he sees the effect that statement had, “Oh, I’m sorry, did mama not let you finish before she died?”

The air seems to grow cold for a moment, all patrons in the bar immediately dive for their weapons; Rogue has readied his towards the stranger, and the bartender just lets out a deep sigh. As I lunge forwards, intent on making this bastard’s stomach come out of his throat, the entire bar is rattled by the doors swinging open with so much force, I’m amazed they didn’t just come off.

“WHISKEY! WHERE IN CELESTIA’S GOOD GRAVE IS DITZY?” A dark green pony, who’s almost as big as my dad, walks through the open doors, wearing a mishmash of clothes and armor. The few parts of him that aren’t covered are scarred to the point that I could barely tell his coat was originally green. He looks like someone woke him up out of his grave, on the wrong side of the coffin, and then pissed in the water he calls coffee.

Whiskey puts down whatever he was holding behind the bar, and pulls out a glass, proceeding to dry it, the rest of the bar seems to relax but all eyes stay on me, Rogue, and these two strangers. “She went travelin’, ya idjit, haven’t you heard back from her?”

The new stranger seems slightly panicked, but other than that, he seemed mostly pissed, “Look, she was supposed to be back a week ago and I haven’t heard anything.”

Whiskey sighs once more, seemingly tired of this; maybe it was a regular occurrence. “Well, Tolson, if you are really that worried, you know there are some raider camps around the area; Ponyville to the east, Old Appleloosa to the South. If I remember correctly, she was heading to Ponyville; but these days, you could be dragged anywhere in a week. Been hearing tales of a lone wanderer, seems to be a thief from what we have heard. They might’ve taken her; however, considering Derpy, she probably just made a new friend.”

I see this Tolson figure giving off a visible sigh before he starts to point around the bar, he appears to be recruiting ponies. However, I think his eyesight was a bit lacking, ‘cause he kept pointing in between ponies or even at walls. One of the patrons in the bar shouts out, “Why in the seven hells of Tartarus would we go with you? We know everypony you’re around tends to die somehow; not like we would know.” Tolson takes a look around the bar, I assume he’s trying to pinpoint the stallion; he proceeds to take the door he just freshly cracked and throws what parts he could at the fellow. The hole in the window grew two sizes that day. After that, he finally managed to actually point at the pony he was referring to, which so happened to be the bastard in front of me.

“Hey, Cyclops, you can take anything we find as your reward from me, so long as we get Ditzy, I could care less what you find or who you kill.” The asshole glares at him, clearly irritated from previous events as well as current ones; probably the lack of a drink in his system. “My name is Roasted, jackass...”

“I couldn’t care less what your name is, Mister Roasted Jackass; I just care that you help me or you get out of my way. I’m sure Whiskey would prefer that hole in the wall not to grow any more.”

Roasted glares and uses his magic to pull his saddlebags onto his back, “Whatever, I’ll come with, just because it’s probably gonna be a library; I swear if even a single book gets damaged by you, I will rip off that shotgun off your back and feed it to you.”

Tolson looks at him with a goofy smile, “My friend, if you touch this here Airsupport,” he taps the gun on his back, “It’ll be so far up your rear end, you’ll be spitting out her shells for a week.”

As I’m staring at this smiling, psychopathic...guard? He looks like one at least. I feel a hoof on my shoulder as Rogue calms me down and speaks up, “As much as this bar fight would be an interesting time, to say the least, you said earlier you were looking for volunteers to find your friend?”

Tolson looks at Rogue for a second, well, I assume he is, his eyes are focused on the wall at the moment. He then speaks up with the same, rather disturbing smile, “Yup, gotta find Ms. Ditzy and her assistant; you can just call her Ma. They may be at a local raider camp to the east near a little town called Ponyville. They haven’t been back for a couple days, and although this is rather common considering Ms. Ditzy’s… habits, I suppose you could say, it’s still rather worrying cause her trips don’t usually take a week; more like 2 days, tops.”

I reach over and grab a shot of the name brand of this tavern, Whisky’s Whisky Whisky. Odd name, but for here, it seems kind of normal. As I down the drink and slam it on the bar, I look up; intending to decline Rogue’s original offer, before he pats me once more on the shoulder and whispers to me, “Vision, we are running low on supplies and have been for a while, and this could be a promising venture for us. I think we should take him up on this; who knows, we might also be able to use him to help solve our own little problem.”

I took another shot; it’s surprisingly smooth, although I may be drunk. Either way, thinking about it, Rogue is right,.This psychopath and this Roasted Jackass may be a difficult group to control, but at least we wouldn’t be sitting ducks in a barrel that’s on fire begging to be shot. Well, not the first to die in there anyways, that’s the cannon fodder’s job.

“Say we do go along with you, what’d we get out of it? I would rather not waste my life, nor my ammo, on a worthless endeavor just to find a pony. For one thing, I don’t know, or care, much about this pony. For a second thing, you said she was in a raider camp? She’s probably dead by now in that case, and I personally don’t like shooting corpses, thank you.”

This pony, who I didn’t realize was even capable of looking at me, started to walk up to me. The odd thing was his hazy, clear green eyes focused entirely on me, and me alone, and I could practically taste the amount of putrid bloodlust coming off of him. Even Whiskey seems on edge with a hoof on whatever is behind that bar. My focus returns to Tolson as he attempts to speak, clearer then he had previously, no gruffness to his voice as it rumbles through the bar. “Boy, no one would be alive if that were so. If you even think about shooting them, your head will be rolling across the ground so fast, you’ll see your own body fall.”

He punctuated those last words with a step closer to me, the glare from his eyes felt like daggers dragging themselves across my skin, and for just a second, they glanced at Rogue.

He takes a moment and sighs before stepping back “Look, you can have anything you want from that camp, considering it’s a raider camp, I imagine they have plenty of supplies. Celestia knows they have stolen plenty from here, at least, I think so. Not quite the best at seeing them do it.” He looks at a wall again for a moment then gives a goofy grin, “Now mister, uh, Chicken Wings? Are you comin’, or stayin’?”

I am not entirely sure if this dude is high, a psychopath, completely bat shit crazy, or just an asshole, I’ll just go with all of them. That being said, he sounds like a really nice person...to throw at people if they bother me. One less bullet in me, one more scar within his side; fair trade. “Ya know what, buddy, I think we’ll take you up on that offer, getting supplies would be nice, and seeing some bullets slapping you like your terrible ex marefriend, would be hilarious.”

He looks at a chair with a very confused face, “What’s a marefriend? I am friends with quite a few mares and they are all wonderful company; wait until ya meet Ma.” He looks at another chair near the bar, “Oh uh, Cyclopes… say, did you get smaller? Oh, never mind that, are you coming or are you gonna be useless while I journey with Wing 1 and Wing 2?”

Mister Roasted Jackass over here looks at Tolson for a second, probably confused on where he was looking, seems to be a common trait now. Before getting up, slamming down some Whiskey’s Whiskey Whiskey and muttering, “Again, it’s Roasted Cashew, not Cyclopes; but yes, I’ll go with you and these two, uh, chicken wings, if you’re so hellbent on finding them. What makes you so certain that they haven't been eaten yet anyways? Considering most raiders are cannibals.”

Tolson actually looks at Roasted, the chair, possibly, forgotten. “Look, they have skills the raiders wouldn’t kill them for. Namely Ma, plus raiders aren’t that stupid. They’re stupid, but they ain’t that stupid. Also the day you piss off Ma, is the day they become you, Mister Roasted Nutless; she’s one scary lady.”

Considering how much bloodlust I could feel from Tolson earlier, anyone that can scare him so much he calls them scary, I don’t think is going to die easily by just some raiders. Well, in any case, this shouldn’t be too difficult of a journey and we should be able to get back somewhat quickly, and I can get back to drowning myself in Whiskey’s Whiskey Whiskey.