You want to know something? Trying to do better hurts, and it hurts a whole lot. I've never been the best pony at anything as far as I can tell and I haven't always been a good pony, but trying to do better really hurts cause every time I try to do better something seems to always go wrong and leave me in pain; emotionally, physically, or mentally.
Thing is, I don't mind the pain that much. It's not like I'm one of those weird ponies who likes to be punished. It's just that, I feel if I can do enough, for enough other ponies, I don't mind having to suffer a bit to make things better for others.
As for who I am, my name's Scopes, I'm a unicorn, a mare, and this is my story.
Well mine and a few others.
BANG.
One radhog.
BANG.
Two radhogs.
BANG.
Three radhogs.
BANG.
Four radhogs.
BANG.
And five radhogs.
With the fifth shot the last red blip disappeared off of my the Eyes Forward Sparkle my Pipbuck always displayed in my vision, anytime, day or night. Even with the blips gone I kept watching through the scope of my specially modified, high caliber carbine just to see if anything else decided to climb out of the burrow the radhogs had come out of.
"Looks like you got them all Scopes," a voice called from behind me, jerking me out of the little world inside my scope.
"Yeah," I replied as casually as I could as I put my riffle back in its holster along my left side before letting go of my telekinetic hold on the weapon. Still I didn't turn back to look at the owner of the voice as I watched a group of armed ponies head towards the dead radhogs.
"Scopes, You seriously need to loosen up. This area got cleared out by the Steel Freaks last week so I'm surprised there were even radhogs here. Besides, Gun Smith says the food will be ready soon and once the newbies get back with the hog meat and prep it we can head to bed," the voice continued.
Giving a relenting sigh, I turned to face the owner of the voice, my longtime companion and fellow caravan guard; Heavy Armor. Heavy Armor, a mare who despite her name was actually rather petite though I had seen her shrug off enough gun fire and beatings to know that her dainty appearance was only skin deep as she was our little caravan's close combat expert apparently she had picked up and incorporated a bit of zebra combat, though she hadn't been willing to tell me where she had learned it despite our long relationship.
"You know I don't like relaxing when we're out here, Armor," I shot back at her as we made our way towards the fire in the center of the camp where Gun Smith was ladling out healthy servings of radhog and cabbage stew.
"You don't like relaxing anywhere unless I make you, Scopes," Armor sniped back. A statement she she followed up by moving up close to and quickly giving my cheek a lick.
That action certainly shattered whatever calm I was feeling as the moment her tongue had left my cheek I was moving.
I wasn't sure where I was moving to, but I was moving.
Turns out I was moving directly sideways and straight into one of the wagons that had been pulled into the center of the camp and only made a dull thud as I made hard contact with the hard metal of the side wall.
Coming to my senses after the impact, I was greeted with roaring laughter of everyone around the circle who had seen what had happened along with a quietly chuckling Heavy armor who was standing a few feet away from my prone form.
I was determined to save my wounded dignity as I got back to to my hooves, even as I felt myself blushing in embarrassment.
At least by the time we made it to the camp fire the laughter had petered out to only a few chuckles.
"So is it true you are thinking about leaving Scopes?"
That question brought an immediate and rather shuddering halt to the conversation around the fire as I pulled myself away from my stew.
"Where in Celestia's good name did you hear that?" I asked back, looking towards the speaker. It was one of the wagon pullers, Hauler, now the eyes of the group went from me to him as he struggled to answer.
"Um... just around camp," he finally said, rubbing a roof through his greasy mane.
That was not the answer I wanted, so for the time being I returned to the last of my stew, keenly aware of all the eyes drilling into me for an answer. Eventually, I finished, and I set the bowl down, the spoon seeming surprisingly loud over the crackling of the fire.
"Yes, I am planning on leaving when we arrive at Damarescus," I finally replied having drawn out the silence as long as I felt prudent. There was a shuffling near Gun Smith and I watched as one of the other guards hoofed him a small bag of caps.
A raised eyebrow from me only received a mischievous smile in return from the old pony. I considered the situation for a moment before shrugging as I listened to the questions coming at me.
"For Goddesses' sake why?!"
"You can't leave us Scopes!"
"How long have you been planning this?"
The questions kept coming for a while till finally I held up a hoof to forestall anymore of them. Taking a breath I got myself ready to answer their questions. These were friends and companions of a year or more in Gun Smith and Heavy Armor's cases and at least they deserved answers.
"First, I'm leaving because I think it's time for me to do so. Second, I can and will leave. Third, nearly two years, so I didn't just decide this on a whim," I said calmly. I could feel the familiar tension building up from when I looked down the scope of my carbine, but I knew that right now, there were no enemies here.
A fact confirmed by my E.F.S. as I looked over every pony except those standing guard. Only when I looked back over the group it wasn't. Where everypony was, sure enough there was a friendly green marker, but scattered among them were a growing number of hostile red markers. It took only a fraction of a section of a second for the information to be processed, but my life time of instincts was far ahead of my thought process as I jumped to my hooves shouting, "We have company! Everypony get ready!"
Those words and their trusted source i.e. me, sent everypony scrambling. The wagon pullers went diving for cover as they began readying their hold out pistols and shotguns. The caravan guards sprinted to their designated positions that left my wounded pride healing at their efficiency as they took positions in armored spots on top of wagons and readied rifles and grenades.
I quickly took my own position atop of the wagon in the center of camp as I readied my rifle and began searching for targets, Heavy Armor patrolled inside the perimeter checking on various ponies and making sure nothing had slipped inside.
"Scopes!" one of of the other guards called from his wagon.
"Yeah, what it is it?" I shouted back, bringing my rifle to bear in that direction out of fear and perhaps even hope he had spotted something.
"The guy who sold you that thing swore on his life it would take a lightning bolt to break that thing right?" the guard called back.
"Yeah he did so that means we likely really do have enemies nearby, we just can't see them yet," I shouted back at him. Quickly I sneaked a look down at the sleek black device on my right foreleg. The pony who had sold it to me said he had found it while raiding some Ministry of Awesome building. He had proceeded to load it with the standard Pipbuck fare, but it had never worked right for him ,but he was thrilled when it worked for me and I had been willing to purchase it.
To date it was the most expensive thing I had ever bought; thirty-five hundred caps, even after the haggling. I wasn't going to complain, never ever, the E.F.S. had saved my and the caravan's rears more times than I cared to count and the other features it came with were nice to have on an everyday basis.
And right now, the thing certainly didn't look broken so I was inclined to trust the information it was giving me.
Five minutes without contact.
Then ten minutes.
Everypony was getting jumpy, the slightest sounds were causing me to shift my target left and right and look for something to shoot. Nopony was saying anything, but we could tell that whatever was out there certainly had a hell of a lot of patience. Most of the blips on the E.F.S. had stopped moving about, frighteningly, most of them were nearly overlapping the friendly green ones, a fact I had relayed to the rest of the caravan who had taken that fact as well as could be expect.
Heavy Armor had just come around my wagon and into my field of view on another of her spiral shaped patrols through the camp when all hell finally broke loose as our enemies finally decided to show themselves.
The ground beneath Heavy Armor literally exploded as something large and gray with massive teeth erupted from a hole beneath her. I met Armor's eyes and saw my own shock mirrored there as the creature coming up from below separated her hindquarters from the forward half of her body. I watched as the remains of her body tumbled forward, her blood staining her gray coat a dark red.
It was quiet for a moment, completely quiet as the creature that had torn from the ground looked at Heavy Armor laying on the ground before it. Then somepony started shooting as I heard another hole open in the ground. That was all the encouragement I needed to start firing.
The creature in question had been reaching down to grab Armor when I sighted in, not even using the scope and pulled the trigger.
Now let me say something here, my special talent is ranged combat, not just firearms, but any sort of combat that takes place at a distance, I can always make seemingly impossible shots at ranges no one else can. Here though, I was barely twenty feet if that from the creature that had just killed my best friend.
For me, putting the round through its head was a walk in the park.
Squeezing the trigger of the carbine with my magic, I heard the gunshot and saw the result as the .30-06 hollow-point round slammed into its head and out the other side in a spray of red and gray flesh mixed with little white chunks of bone.
I stood there on top of the wagon as I tried to process what had happened.
Heavy Armor was dead.
My brain kept telling me to sit down and cry. To lay down and mourn that my best friend since I had been a small filly in the caravan was dead. My instincts though, were telling me otherwise. They were telling me to get up, get into the fight and take revenge for what had happened.
And my instincts won out as another of the creatures shot up out of the soil to my left. The sight was jarring enough to get me out of my stupor and moving. Before the creature had even fully left the hole it was in, one of my .30-06 rounds slammed into its fore head and out the back, sending it toppling backwards into the dirt, the top half of its head strewn across the ground behind it.
I put down two more of the creatures as them attempted to climb up into the center of our camp before I noticed the dots on my E.F.S. moving away from me and towards the outer right of wagons. Hooking my hooves around the ladder at the back of the wagon, I slid down to the ground in a quick, practiced motion, my gun floating evenly in the air next to me as I chased after the dots.
As I got closer, the gunfire died away enough for me to hear the shouting from the ponies in this spot. Several of them I recognized from dinner, but two in particular though, Hauler and Gun Smith.
"What the hell are these things?" Hauler shouted.
"Hellhounds!" Gun Smith replied followed by the BOOM of his customary shotgun, "Only I've never seen them this poorly armed!"
Armed? That thought sent me puzzling and apparently it sent Hauler on the same path as me cause he asked exactly what was on my mind.
"What the hell do you mean armed? They don't need guns!" he shouted.
"Don't need them but they normally have energy rifles, strange thing is I haven't seen a single one," was Gun Smith's reply.
They didn't get any farther before I joined the group by hoping onto the side of their over-turned wagon to put a round into a hell hound that had stuck its head out of its hole for just a little too long.
"Scopes, good to see you!" Gun Smith called to me from his position on a boulder next to the wagon as he gave a short wave before continuing, "Where's Armor?"
My expression must have said enough because I didn't even have 'she's' out before he nodded to me with a sad expression saying, "She's dead then... I'm sorry to hear that, but we need to fight if any of us are going to get out of here."
"So figured..." I grumbled under my breath as I lined up my next shot.
Fire.
Fire again.
Fire again.
Fire some more and eventually reload.
The fight went on for what felt like forever, though even though I knew it was only a half hour. As the time dragged by, we could hear as other pockets of resistance went silent as they were overwhelmed by hell hounds that seemed to just keep pouring from the ground.
I fired my rifle enough that eventually a round failed in the chamber and the thing blew out the bolt on me leaving it useless without a lot of repairs. That left me using a pistol Gun Smith gave me until hauler was killed at which point I took the semi-automatic rifle he had been using.
At some point during the fight, Gun Smith and I had traded places, he had set himself up inside the wagon with what was left of the ammo and I was out on the boulder using the better position, S.A.T.S (Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting System), and raw talent to kill all comers.
That spot change is probably the only reason I lived.
Dumping the last clip from the semi-automatic rifle, I looked to Gun Smith to see if he could toss me anymore clips like he had been before. Instead, all I got was a sad shake of his head before he tossed a shiny black box to me which I caught in my magic and brought to myself to look at despite the hectic situation. Looking back up at Gun Smith, I saw him smiling as he disappeared in a spray of dirt, metal from the wagon, and flesh and blood.
Pulling the case to my chest, I watched as the stallion who had raised me disappeared in a flash of violence. I had always known my friends, and even I would probably die out in the wasteland, but I had never expected it to be all at once to a bunch of damn dogs.
Seconds later I was aware of a very sudden, very sharp pain in my back legs as I felt the odd sensation of flesh tearing away from bone as I was suddenly catapulted off of the boulder and onto my face in the dirt.
Rolling over I was confronted with a large hell hound. Screw that, they were all large, but this one was a fuck of a lot bigger than the others. Also marking it as different were cybernetic parts covering and replacing various sections of its body. The eyes were what really separated it though. All the others had had eyes like wild animals, this one though had eyes like a malevolent monster as it stepped over the boulder to approach me.
I struggled to keep the cyber hell hound's gaze as my vision began to blur. I wasn't sure why I couldn't see right till I felt tears cutting tracks down my cheeks through the dirt in my fur.
The hell hound stopped a few feet shy of my rear legs as it loomed over me, perhaps appraising its prey. Desperately I began struggling with the box Gun Smith had given me when it gave a small click as I began trying to force it open with my hooves. When the box opened, two things fell out, a small Pipbuck audio record case and an impressively large handgun.
Quickly scooping the gun up in both hooves and magic, I pointed it at the hell hound whose seemed to swell as if daring me to fire as it displayed a frightening number of scars. Some were claw and blade caused, but others were clearly gunshots and did little to reassure me as I pulled the gun's trigger with my magic as I closed my eyes.
There was nothing, no noise, no hell hound, no anything. Only then I opened my eyes to realize everything was still there, but seemed frozen in time. I blinked again and this time realized what was going on.
I was in S.A.T.S. except there was a message in the middle of my field of view.
Experimental Arcane Weapon "Courage"<
User magic level at 78% of normal levels<
Do you wish to fire? Y/N<
The idiocy of being asked if I wanted to fire the gun didn't sink in at that moment, but I certainly did answer the "wish to fire question" by selecting yes in the S.A.T.S. vision.
Once the yes had been input there was a brief pause before the gun in my hooves gave a click and a whir, followed by the brightest light I had ever seen.
A/N: Alright, so this is the first chapter and I hope you enjoyed it. I would enjoy critiques if you'll give them. Most of all I want to thank kkhat for creating the fallout equestria world.
