Fallout Equestria: Ballad of a Rogue Ranger

Chapter one: Defrost

‘In Celestias’ name it’s freezing,’ the thought filled my head, letting the steady beat of the equipment run its course as it resonated in my ears. It hadn’t been anything new to me anyway, just something you learn to deal with when you’re a pony-cicle.

Then again, reality has a nasty way of smacking one in the face.

‘Wait… why was I feeling this again now? the last time I had was back when… oh shit!’ My eye lids snapped open after that thought crossed my mind. It had been a while since they had worked, and the light of whatever shined back at me was certainly giving them a crash course.

The inside of my cylinder still had frost on the glass, and with a hoof as I tried to scrub the thin layer to the side, I still managed only a few inches of view to see in to the area. Yet, even as I looked through the thinner coat of ice on the outside, I couldn’t make out a thing. No technician, the lights were dimmer than I remember, everything just seemed… dead? Hopefully, it was just my eyes readjusting.

The rapid beeping from just by my cylinder finally caught up with me as it bounced back and forth in my ears. Whatever had happened to my home for the last who knows how long, it wasn’t happy with its current predicament. As for me? I just wanted to know why somepony wasn’t opening this damn hatch already!

“Let’s see here,” I tried to rummage my way around the tight confines of the capsule, which must be said is not the easiest task. Feeling yourself out in a space this cramped after being put in a freezer for what seemed like a long overdue nap can certainly make a pony groggy… Cut me some slack will ya?

Going from left over dinner to escape artist didn’t seem to be a good career change for me. Especially given that from what I could feel from around my hooves it was all just the smooth interior of our chambers.

“Damn it!” in hindsight headbutting the door may have not been the smartest thing, but it did remind me of the horn I had to use. Plus, something else there poking out at me in the dull interior.

The emergency release we weren’t ever really trained on when it came to this stable, hell we weren’t even told much about our stay. Only that it would work to preserve us over the course of years until things had died down so our bodies would still be ‘fit as a fiddle’ the salescolt had said. Slowly I grabbed the handle with the yellow aura from my horn as I gave it a twist.

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

‘Stable-tec built to last,’ my eyes rolled to the emerald reflection of them against the frost that still lingered. Finally, after some fiddling and rather impressive contortionist skills if I might add. Both hoof and horn finally managed to find their mark on the stubborn piece of metal, the orange fetlock of fur barely stood out from the light that dwindled around me, but with both of them working against the handle it gave way with a snap.

Hatched opened, and… oh? So that’s what happens when you don’t use your legs for a while? The taste of the cold steel floor wasn’t all that flavorful against my lips, but with a struggle some footing was made. Was it just me? Or did the entire room have a chill to it? Even with the thicker stable jumpsuit for storage, I could still feel the nip against my neck.

“Ugh…” the yellow and red hairs atop my thankfully thick skull had grown a tad during my time out, even covered some of my eyes, nothing a quick whip couldn’t fix. Wonder if we got any barbers down here in the stable? Which reminds me, “… Hello? Anyone there?”

Okay, so there was a world of difference between standing and walking after not moving for so long. Meeting the floor once more taught me that really quick. Steadily with a bit of luck working in my favor I managed to stabilize myself on all fours, a feat that given how much commotion I seemed to be making.

Not a soul came out from anywhere to investigate.

It may have taken a few steps, “…Ouch…” the word passed my lips for probably the fifth time as my muzzle grew sorer. Yet, a much overdue eventually later, my legs decided they still had a job to do.

The cylinders I passed by all seemed to still be frozen shut. A thin sheet of frost formed on the glass windows to those that lay fast asleep… odd, why was I awake? I hadn’t been a part of the stables crew. “Is something wrong?” the question fell to only my ears as I made my way down the long corridor towards the stair case with other residents on either side.

A few more beeps on the other hoof grabbed my attention as I went, it was a terminal at the start of the room. Overlooking all those that resided in this wing, a simple thing, and one that any creature would have been able to view to check the status of all those on ice.

A view that showed nothing but flat lines.

I wasn’t a medical pony; I knew a decent amount to know to keep blood in my own body… usually.

But I had seen enough shows, and read enough books to know a flat line in any sort of medical degree was a bad sign. With what my legs allowed, I ran up to the nearest chamber and scrubbed against the pane of glass that separated us from the outside world.

“Are you alrig-!” was about all that had gotten out.

The coolness of the cylinder might have worked to get ice on the outside window, but the nearly mummified corpse of the pony inside begged to differ on how well some of us had been preserved. One after the next, I went and checked all those in my wing, and each one told the same tale.

Something had gone very wrong in Stable 100.

A curious nerve pinched in the back of my mind, as I walked over to look out at my chamber. Resident 070- Wildfire it had read from across the control panel, right next to the display of Emergency Thawing Procedure.

I hadn’t designed it, or even knew how it worked in detail. I knew enough though on talismans, matrixes, and basic common sense to understand how it all fit together for these things to work. Mine on the other hoof had several wired in to it from an open access port, that shouldn’t have been there from the original.

A few life support talismans to keep the blood pumping for a creature inside, some oxygen filters and spell matrixes to pull the carbon dioxide from one’s body and replace it, even various nutrient injectors to keep the minimal level of functions working. Every chamber had a backup or two as one’d expect, but the bundle of extras coming from mine just seemed like overkill. All cutting-edge stuff for the magical land of Equestria, and all seemingly failed in the chambers I resided with.

All save my own.

That nerve got the best of me, “Was it just my wing?”

Suddenly, blood managed to find its way to my legs and force them working once more as I nearly propelled my body down the wing to that staircase, and promptly found myself quite literally taking to the sky. A tumble down a flight of stairs later, and I found what had tripped me up. The pile of bones part way down the stars could have broken my neck! However, the remains were ignored as there was someone else, I had to check on.

Getting to my hooves once more, the trot kept me on my hooves in case there were any other surprises along the way. It hadn’t been a super large stable, you didn’t need to be when most of your residents were in a freezer. Yet, as I got closer to the next wing, I could feel my heart getting faster.

A tap to the door switch later, and a groan, showed a wing that wasn’t in much better shape than my own. The light flickered only showing me half way down the long hall till the next light decided to get some life in it, and the various pipes and wires that came through in places all seemed to have a good layer of dust on em. It was all so… quiet? No, wait… there’s that beeping from before. The terminal at the front of the room still glowed with that eerie green tint they always had, and this one didn’t read any different signs.

Flat lines all across the board.

All save one, that one just read Disconnected.

Then again, I shouldn’t have needed a terminal to tell me that one, it was the only chamber open. From the countless chambers on either side of, and the torn-out control panels. Either somepony had been doing a little sabotage work, or they needed parts. There this one chamber remained open, and largely intact. Just like mine had been. Might have not had access to the resident logs for who went where, but I can read a name on a screen to the other chambers with a body in them.

“Yours isn’t here…” it was both a relief, and at the same time a worry on my mind now, “…so where’d you go?”

Trotting back to the skeleton I had found, there was the thought that it was who I was looking for. Alas though, the bony appendage on that skull of theirs told me all I needed to know. This was a unicorn, and I was looking for an earth pon-… oh what have we here?

From the skeleton’s fetlock atop its own stable tec jumpsuit something still remained, a Pip-Buck, “I’m… sorry about this,” with a smooth tug from my horn, the bones fell through and I brought it up to my own leg and wrapped around. An older model, didn’t need any fancy key to remove it, all the better for me.

Still I had never used one of these things before, they were just starting to become a thing. Immediately my vision lit up with the display from the device,

Scanning…

New user identified…

Checking authorization…

Confirmed…

Validating vitals…

Verifying Spell Matrix Master Key…

Configuring Eyes Forward Sparkle…

Charging S.A.T.S…

Checking inventory…

Please stand by…

…

Configuration complete.

Alrighty then! That’s going to take a bit to get used to. Still, with everything it was showing me now in my own eyes, I could see the usefulness. What I couldn’t see however, was whether or not these red bars in my vision were above or below me. The skeleton must have been a worker for the stable itself, thankfully luck had been on my side a little more. With a grasp from my horn I pulled out the IF-21… err… 10mm pistol from its holster.

Odd… why would a stable of largely frozen dwellers need an armed guard, because of those red bars? Only one way to find out, and with that the holster made its way around my waist.

From the stair case the skeleton remained below as I went higher in the structure itself, passing my wing and on towards where the conscious maintainer would… well, maintain. It wasn’t like most atriums from stables that I had heard of, mostly just a little opening with some artificial grass to relax on under a synthetic tree or two with a dawn’s morning light projected overhead. Something to give the Stable employee on duty a way to unwind during their time.

This place now however, just looked damn depressing. Whatever those bars were, they certainly looked like they had the run of the place. Bits and pieces of the fake grass and tree had been chewed on. Trash from spent rations had been scattered. Even what looked like oversized cockroaches were here and there… or at least what remained of them.

But a roach couldn’t be that big, could it?

What really grabbed me though, were the sounds coming from the employees dining area. With a round chambered my back slid against the door to the room, and with a quick flick of the switch it opened like a very under oiled machine with a loud squeal. If I thought I might have gotten the drop on whatever was inside, the screeching of the door would have thrown that out the window.

Inside though, I couldn’t see anything. Maybe it was the flickering lights that seemed to be present everywhere in this place now, or perhaps those bars were shorter than the counters that the lone employee would make their rations from. No matter the case, I could hear the scurrying, and it was getting closer.

My eyes trained down the sights like I had learned to do from years back at work, though shooting a target was different from shooting a living thing. No matter, red in an E.F.S. was something that was hostile, for all I knew it could have been what killed that pony on the stairs.

Out scurried a few of those overtly sized roaches…

“Are you kidding me!” I had expected something a little larger, maybe a diamond dog? They loved to dig and might have been able to get in a stable. This was just… pathetic.

The three of them fluttered closer to me with their wings and started trying to nip at my hooves, seemed that this jumpsuit was still good for something. Though the few ticks of radiation I got from each bite begged to differ on that matter.

Okay, not so pathetic, but still…

A few swipes of the pistol later and a number of satisfying crunches, and they had met their end. strange though, I couldn’t have pictured these things causing one employee to pass and the whole stable to go up in flames… metaphorically of course.

“So, what had happened?” the unnerving silence didn’t have an answer.

With the projection overhead going from dawn to noon, the light picked up with it significantly. Good thing too, because I doubt, I would have noticed the plastic shimmer from by the tree. There on the blades of ‘grass’ rested an access card, a few bottles of Sparkle Sola, one long since spilled and the other not opened, and with what might have been a box of cookies if the roaches hadn’t gotten to them.

“A fitting break meal if there ever was one,” carefully I pulled the unopened bottles’ cap off and took a tug from it as I slipped the access card in my pocket… Damn! Even after who knows how long, these things really don’t lose their flavor! “Wait… what’s the date anyway?”

The various menus on my Pip-Buck popped up, ‘let’s see… Status, Inventory, Map… ah! There we-’…

I might not have been the best at math… but that can’t be right.

Couldn’t be right.

A number like that would hit you like a bag of bricks, or a bag of C-4 with the detonator in your hoof. Math might have been a nuisance in school, but it didn’t lie if done right. Fake grass or not, it was still comfy enough to slump down to after realizing that you’ve been a pony-cicle for so damned long.

How much had changed on the outside I wondered; things hadn’t ended the best but there should have still been something out there that was surviving. How long ago had it been since things in this stable started to turn for the worst? How much longer could I have been out and still survived? What was I supposed-?

As much as I might have wanted to contemplate life there for the rest of time, and play twenty questions with myself. A trip that long in the freezer did keep one thing waiting… I had to take a leak. Passing through where I dispatched the roaches did yield me something good at least. The door slid open, and this must have been where the Stable-Tec employee that was awake laid their head after the day.

Good thing too, I was about to do the same. After relieving myself, the next thing that I could figure was freshen up, a shower was long overdue after all. With the water washing over my mane, I just stood there trying to keep some sense of normalcy going. Just like nothing had changed from the day I woke up before coming in- “Damn it!” I shouted out as the water went from lukewarm to something out of Tartarus.

No matter what I tried to fiddle with it, it stayed boiling… somepony needed to check the heater in here. Either that or the princesses just didn’t want to give me a break to collet myself from everything I’d just learned today.

As weird as it might seem, I was tired, and while the bed was dusty from the time that had passed since its last occupant. The mattress was still just as soft, at least softer than my chamber, and as my head rested back against the pillow one thing only went through my head.

‘A hundred and seventy-five years…’ that voice in the back of my head told me, before I had to repeat it myself, “… I’ve been on ice for the last hundred and seventy-five years.”