Fallout Equestria: The Tale of the Soldier

Chapter 3: The Hunt Begins

“Revenge, we all want it. But just how far are you willing to go to get it?”

“You really are serious about this aren’t you?” Bloody 2 asked me as I walked towards the edge of the camp.

“Eeyup.” I replied, “No matter what DJ-Pon3 says, there is no way a stabler brand new to the Wastleland could clear out a raider camp all on her own, and I know about Calamity’s policy. How much he hates raiders.”

“Soldier, don’t you think that you are letting your hate for him blind you from the truth?” She asked.

“Of course not! Okay maybe...Okay yes, I am just using this as an excuse to go find and kill him.” I replied.

“That’s what I thought. Now, you cannot go face him alone, remember last time?” She said.

The scar on my face throbbed, “Yes, of course. Kind of hard to forget the feel of your own blade cutting into your skin.”

“Now, stay here, and I’ll go get Snipes and Heavy, that way we will outnumber him when we do find him.” Bloody 2 said, before turning to head back into the camp.

I sat down and sighed, “I swear that mare thinks she’s my mother!” I muttered.

*** *** *** ***

And so it was, Bloody 2, Snipes, Heavy Stomp, and I set out across the Wastelands for a singular pony. Hell, I even told the other Commandos to leave the Everfree forest to leave and make a base at the best possible point they could. As I later found out, that was for the best, once Red Eye started torching the damned place, we were probably one of the reasons he did.

First, let me talk to you about Snipes and Heavy Stomp; Snipes was, as her name suggests, a sniper. The best damned shot I have ever seen, she can take the wings off a bloatfly from a kilometer away. She took up arms with the Commandos after we raided a slaver train, which I often did on my own without pay. I found her in the back of one of the wagons, beatened, bruised, and raped. I will admit, it was probably one of the few times I have ever felt truly sorry for somepony, so I took her under my wing. Turns out that she had been captured when her old rock farm was attacked, and that she usually watched the field workers, soon she evolved into our best sniper.

Now, onto Heavy Stomp. I honestly don’t know much about his time before he joined with the Commandos. All I do know is that he used to be a Steel Ranger, but he got tired of it and ran, did mercenary work of his own for a bit, then found his way to the Commandos. He tends to not talk, preferring action to words, which is one of the reasons I like him. Oh and Snipes is a unicorn and Heavy is an earth pony, that about covers it, now onwards.

As we trotted along, I would constantly look over my shoulder, watching the Everfree Forest slowly roll away into the distance. The fires of Ponyville had since ceased and now there was no smoke to speak of coming from the old town, I looked back to my front and sighed, “Let’s get this over with.” three ponies stood still on the road, which I knew what it meant, some raiders hoping to get some helpless ponies bottlecaps. As we approached the makeshift checkpoint, one of the raiders held a hoof out. “Hold up, that will be 200 bits. Pay up, or leave, or if you refuse to leave; die.” the raider said, who was probably the most educated of this raider group, who likely had friends hiding nearby.

“Fine.” I said, getting into my saddlebag. I brought out a large sack and spilled it in front of the raider, “200 bottlecaps.”

The raider stepped up to it, not expecting such an easy give-up, especially from ones as well armed as we were, “Uh fine. Go.”

As we went through, I noticed the friends that I knew were hiding among the grass along the sides of the road. “Soldier, why did you...” Snipes started to whisper to me, with which I simply shook off, leaving the others confused as we went down the road, but it would soon become clear to them.

*KA-BLOOOM!*

The explosion rocked us, making three heads instantly snap to me, seeing a sly smile on my face, I shrugged innocently, “I might have accidently grabbed the Bottlecap bombs instead.” I said with a smirk, looking back to see wisps of smoke rising up from where the raider checkpoint used to be.

*** *** *** ***

“So what do you want us to do?” I asked the head of the caravan that had seen us and stopped us hoping to hire us on some job.

“We wan..no, we NEED you to go out to a place a good 20 or so miles...” The stallion started, but I held up a hoof.

“We use kilometers sir.”

“Oh yes of course. It’s a good 30 or so kilometers from here, packed to the brim with raiders. We can’t go on without riskin’ a major raid.” he restated.

“I’m sorry sir, but we’re on a mission right now and we can’t afford any distractions.” I replied calmly to him.

“Can you afford an extra 1000 caps?” the stallion suggested. Damn, if there’s one thing being a mercenary for so long has taught me, never ever pass up a well-paying job, because who knows when the next will roll along?

I bit my lip, I wanted to find and kill Calamity, but, a thousand caps, just for doing a little more killing, “I guess our current client can wait a little bit.” I said in the end.

“Oh thank you!” The stallion said, instantly relieved, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You have no idea how much this means to us! OR to anypony else that goes down this road!”

“Our pleasure.” I said, eyes a little wide, taking a few steps back from the clingy, thankful stallion, “I guess we should get going then, you know, to clear out the raider fort.”

“Oh yes of course! We’ll be here!”

“Yes, of course you will, now goodbye.” I said, before finally making my way out, quickly followed by the others.

“Wow, a thousand caps just to kill some raiders? That is amazing!” Snipes exclaimed.

“Yes, but 30 or so kilo’s is about a half-day’s trot, and then we will have to clear out the raider’s, them come back. So we will probably be off-task for more than a day, and we still have quite a ways to go to New Appleloosa.” I said, as we walked past the caravan.

“Don’t worry so much Soldier, Calamity will be there, no doubt about that.” Bloody 2 said trying to comfort me.

“Yea yea, I just want to get this done and overwith, now keep an eye out. If that place is as chock full of raiders as that caravan leader said, we will probably run into some on our way there.” I replied to that, after which we fell into silence, watching the area around us.

*** *** *** ***

“FFFFFUUUUU-!” I cried out, right as the grenade landed right in front of us, and blew up right in up in our faces, cutting my curse short with a BOOM! Luckily, it landed just far enough away to not instantly kill us, but the shockwave was still powerful enough to send us flying back. I landed painfully on my back, pain shooting through my body as I felt shrapnel in many, many places. I looked over, unable to move from where I landed from the pain as I saw the armored form of Heavy Stomp, still standing, firing at the charging raiders.

All I heard was the dulled out sounds of explosions and gunfire, and some extremely distant and dulled voice yelling at me. I eventually saw Bloody 2 run over to me, wounded and bleeding herself, and she started injecting something in me. I felt the pain slowly slip away as she delivered the painkiller and my mind started to clear and my hearing return. “Come on, don’t die on me now!” I could start hearing Bloody yelling at me, but I couldn’t respond, I still couldn’t do anything. Just lay there as Heavy Stomp fended off the raiders alongside Snipes, who got the least hit of the three unarmored of us, and Bloodu 2 tended to my wounds.

I finally found I was able to move my mouth and, I guess I was delirious at the time from the blood loss, decided to say, “Beautiful weather we’re having today.”

“Yes, good. Tell me about how it’s beautiful.” Bloody 2 said after being taken aback a bit. In hindsight, this makes perfect sense, because in the state I was in, talking meant good.

“It’s, it’s...it’s...” I faded out.