Fallout Equestria: S.T.A.L.K.E.R

Chapter 41: All I Know

Humming, something in the room was humming. But what? A vacuum cleaner-a ceiling fan? Nikolai couldn't tell. He wasn't wearing his mask anymore, as evidenced by the smell of dirt, smoke, gunpowder and warm bedding. The smoke didn't smell like burning charcoal or wood-it smelled like burning polymer and clothing.

"Ugheheh-Hoho!" Nikolai coughed and pulled his head up.

"Who-what? How?" A voice exclaimed beside him. Female, but just out of sight. He felt a pillow against his head, a head which hammered with pain from a headache caused by any number of injuries sustained during what felt like a blur in his memory.

"Wow, heh... I really don't get out much." The voice whispered nervously.

Nikolai bounced up to full height in one, big motion. He flexed; his joints felt rubbery. His breath and his lips tasted all dry and salty. He looked down at his gloves and found them in tatters. The leather and aramid add-ons had been burned away, down to raw skin in places. He guessed that he looked pretty nasty. The Stalker patted himself up and down until his right hand grasped his pistol. Nothing was missing. Not that he could see, not that he could notice. He coughed again and spotted the little grey and blue unicorn a little ways away.

"That look," The Stalker began, motioning to his own face, then to hers. "The one on your face, I get that a lot." He coughed into his fist.

"Oh, eugh... Oh!" He nearly doubled over from the cough and lunged forward to grab the desk. Instead his hand caught itself in a magical glow that halted his momentum mid fall.

"I'm no doctor, but you don't look healthy." Nikolai coughed into his armpit, he could taste metal. He had bit his lip by accident, and he reeked of copper.

"Oh, my life is one big joyride." He said morbidly. "How could I not, not look healthy?"

His own words gave him pause. Where was his rucksack? Was everything still there? After all those aerial acrobatics? Nikolai patted his radio with dismay: Part of the casing had melted off near the antenna in neat little talon marks. No time to worry about that right now. He needed Rad-away, and he needed it now.

Radiation, regardless of the form it took-ionizing or magical... It always had a kind of warmth to it. Not a good, comforting warmth. It was sickly, irritating. It got into everything whether you wanted it or not. Like the bloodletting of old, it was no better than poison. Hell, it was poison.

"You know," The Stalker trilled as he bit open the packet and sucked down the gel inside. "I once heard this story about a dude who was stuck in a subway train for like-30 hours, and all he had to eat was a bunch of mayo packets. Goodness gracious." Nikolai felt much better now. He growled and grunted and at last, smiled at the little grey unicorn.

"You have a nice view of the city. Sorry about the window."

"Thanks... Nikolai, apology accepted." She said emphatically, "I'm Homage-Nice to meet you."

The Stalker's toothy smile widened and he scratched his neck, "Nice to meet you too, do you know a eh... Easier way off of this tower?" His face went sour. "Flashpoint, Willow! Aurora! My friends!"

Homage’s face went from curious to concerned. She swayed, and her tail whisked from side to side. Nervous, but not fearful like Chrome. Nikolai had a feeling that he knew word for word the talk he was about to have to give this lone equine tens of stories up in a hotel suite that looked like something straight out of Kyiv's finest establishments.

"Friends-I've-You know," He nonchalantly gestured over towards what remained of the window. "I've got friends. I said told them I would be right behind them... God, how long have I been out?" He stared dumbfounded down at his watch and answered his own question.

"Seven hours!?" The Stalker protested. "Seven? Blin..." He turned to look at Homage. "Wait... You-You just left me here?"

"Well-I-Is it fair to say you looked peaceful?" Nikolai shook his head. "This is not the time Homage, be quiet!" He played with the knob atop his radio, searching for Flashpoint's signal. When he arrived at their agreed-upon frequency, nothing.

The Stalker left his radio on and sighed. He looked past Homage, at the exit and further out into the hall. "Where are we?" He asked solemnly.

"Tenpony...Tower?" She replied slowly. "Was that supposed to be a rhetorical question?"

"No, no-" He complained. "Where in Tenpony Tower am I?"

"My private suite."

"Evidently it's not so private anymore." Nikolai joked. "Though, I have given you some new ventilation, yes?"

Homage chuckled awkwardly at his banter, "So... What were you doing before you came through my window?" Nikolai lolled about and rubbed his eyes, sore, like the rest of his body.

"Wrestling with that bird. In the air, you?" The Stalker's attention turned away from Homage. Where was his rifle? It wasn't with him. Had he dropped it? He hadn't. He could have sworn that it was still on-body when he broke through the glass.

"I was-"

"My rifle, where is it?" He interrupted her suddenly, thinking out loud.

"Your rifle?"

Nikolai looked about, then at his feet. Lying near to the bed was his AK 101. Looking, as always, a little worse for wear. The polymer handguard was scratched and burnt in a few places, the barrel was black around the suppressor clamp and the bolt was slightly blued from the constant cycling of thousands of rounds of less than pristine ammunition. The duct tape that held a flashlight pinned close to the handguard was peeled and worn in most places. The only thing that seemed almost brand new was, strangely enough, the scope. That old Soviet hunk of steel and glass could probably have been used as a bludgeon all on its own, and still have retained its zero.

Nikolai picked the rifle up and cradled it in his hands. He removed the safety and pulled the bolt back to the rear to examine the chamber. Empty.

He reached for one of the pockets on his vest and pulled another well worn polymer magazine from within. Empty. He reached for another one, but stopped before it had fully left its pouch. He could feel the plastic tip of the follower where the copper tip of a bullet was supposed to be. How much ammunition had he used?

The Stalker set his pack down on its side and began to rummage and rummage through it. It took Homage dramatically clearing her throat for Nikolai to realize that what he was doing might have been misinterpreted as being just the slightest bit inconsiderate towards the poor mare standing a little ways away, or whatever sap had been in charge of making these sheets and doing the laundry.

"I had several hundred rounds of 5.56 ammunition in my rucksack, the last time I checked it. And now I have-" His hand clutched a heavy peeled carboard box and the wax paper within. "Truly, I was wrong."

"Nikolai can you... Um... Not, reload your magazines on my bed? I need a place to sleep and I would rather not smother myself in gun oil and soot." Nikolai smiled and trailed Homage out of her bedroom.

Floor to ceiling windows and marble floors with sparse bits of carpeting ran the length of the corridor up towards a set of mezzanines in a great room a little ways from the bedroom. The draft was gone now, replaced by the smell of lemons and warm air. Homage trotted on ahead, and Nikolai hobbled behind her, half contemplating using his rifle as a crutch.

"How did you get all this... Space? Are you head honcho or... something? Blin, this is nicer than the buildings on Ministry Row in Canterlot!" Homage eyed him funny.

"No, no! Not at all."

"Then how did you get all of this? Inheritance? I mean-It certainly seems like it belongs to you. I have been stumbling through these halls for the better part of ten minutes, I have yet to see anyone! Come on lady! Spill the beans!"

The little unicorn looked him up and down with a warranted degree of skepticism befitting the strange creature that beat a Balefire Phoenix to death before her eyes.

"Can you keep a secret?" She asked him.

"It depends on the secret. If you have a space ship in the basement-then... No. If you have warehouse with lifetime supply of pickles-then sure! Provided I get exclusive access!" Homage felt as if she had just sneezed too hard. Nikolai had been given a test-and he didn't just fail it, he left the building before it even started.

"So?"

"Maybe some other time."

The Stalker grinned, he could almost smell her hesitation, or maybe that was just his bad breath again. His stomach rumbled.

Homage watched as he stuffed himself full with preserved cake-brick. She smiled at him. "Well if it's any consolation I won't charge you for it." Nikolai looked up from his meal, the light from above illuminated the black rings below his eyes. He rubbed his face and blinked. "The last pony who sat me down for a meal was serving pony- a cannibal."

"Serving... Pony?" Nikolai nodded and pushed the plate away from himself. "Yes- But I suppose that it's rude to talk about that kind of stuff at the table." He looked down at his crumb filled lap, then back up at Homage. "Do you live here alone? Its been quiet. Like, really, really quiet." He motioned down the hallway. Lightning crackled outside.

"Yes, I do. I like it up here."

"What do you do for a living?"

"I'm an entertainer."

"I... I'm a Stalker. I Look through garbage for cool shit. Usually that cool shit glows and does cool stuff. Magical artifacts."

Nikolai didn't give the unicorn his life story, he really mostly just apologized for the window-though he swore it was pure coincidence and insisted that he would not pay repair costs. Homage didn't care, she was still enamored by the sheer randomness of his arrival. She trotted off, leaving the hungry Stalker to finish the food that she had given him.

"Mpfh, this is perfect. Perfect." He looked up: Gone.

He thought he had heard hoofsteps earlier, evidently he hadn't imagined them. His face had been in the plate the whole time.

"Hey, lady! Homage?" He sat upright and stood up. "Where did you run off to? Hey! Hey! Lady!" He clapped. Nothing.

"She abandoned me." He thought while he nodded to himself affirmatively. "Hide and seek? Or maybe she went off to use the restroom? No, blin. That wouldn't make sense-who spends twenty minutes in the..." Nikolai stopped his train of thought and walked off.

Stairs, more stairs. And a fountain! Nikolai found himself in another portion of the tower. He poked the water fixture with his Geiger counter. Unirradiated, safe as the water from the talisman in his rucksack. He gazed beyond the fountain. A pair of double doors with the words and a sign above them that read: Twilight Sparkle Athenaeum.

"Nyet. Not a chance, whenever her name pops up, bullshit follows." He looked up, at the top of the mezzanine just beyond the fountain was a another set of double doors. A sign above the doors declared:

M.A.S. Emergency Broadcast Station

Authorized Unicorns Only

"Huh, an entertainer?" He started up the mezzanine, contemplating a dozen different little scenarios in his mind.

"Broadcast in Progress." A glowing sign told him.

Broadcast? Broadcasting what? Nikolai had passed through the doors of the broadcast station and come upon a recording studio. He had never actually been in one before-he was a listener of music; Many of his fellow humans, Flashpoint, and, most recently, Aurora, had informed him of his less than pleasant ability to sing terrible renditions of well composed music. In a manner which they sarcastically dubbed to be no better than the telepathic-psychic molestation of a mind reading alicorn.

But this wasn't like any recording studio he had ever seen before. Screens, buttons and dials everywhere. The FM frequency of a channel was listed over one screen. Nikolai spun on his radio and tuned it past his usual channels. Something stopped him, if only for a brief moment. His eyes went wide, he swallowed hard.

Camera feeds, footage. Not from within the building, not even from around the city. From across the entire continent. Hundreds of locations flashed by on a dozen video screens. Cities, old military bases, random spots in the middle of nowhere. Not grainy either, high, high resolution, live time video feed. He saw Salt Cube city, Whiskey Springs, Desolation Wilderness, that one place with the castle, Garden, so many other places that he had passed through. Many more that he hadn't.

This wasn't a broadcasting station at all. It was a surveillance hub.

He noticed sprite-bots through a couple of the screens. He walked over and set his hands on the desk. Was this what Watcher had meant to tell him about?

He returned to his radio knob, it found itself at a station that Nikolai had heard only a few times before.

"Hello Wastelanders! This Is DJ Pon3: Bringing you the truth no matter how hard it hurts..." The voice went on. But it went on in two places, on his radio, and in the studio, right beside him. The Stalker began to connect the dots in his head. The robots, the cameras, the convenient timing. It all made sense.

He set his right hand on his sidearm and turned around, there, standing behind a microphone, not ten meters away from him. Was Homage. But it wasn't her voice. This one sounded older, and male. The little unicorn's eyes locked with The Stalker, her voice trailed off.

Nikolai had found the culprit. He had found Watcher.

The two of them stood across from one another, neither speaking a word for what seemed like half an eternity, until Nikolai broke the quiet.

"The hell I went through to get here." He cursed under his breath. "You've got some explaining to do. I see now, why you were not so forthcoming with the exact details of your profession. I'm not mad, I just want to know, why? Why have you been following me-watching me? Don't lie, don't make me play twenty questions with you."

Homage looked up at Nikolai. She didn't seem scared, she didn't act guilty. She just looked... Confused. Really, really confused.

"Nikolai- Don't..." She stepped away from the microphone and cocked her head.

"You don't what, huh?"

"I don't know what you're talking about! Yes, yes I'm DJ Pon3-But I've never heard of anyone named Watcher."

"Тоді поясніть це! Поясніть камери! Поясніть розмовних роботів-ботів!Then explain this! Explain the cameras! Explain the talking robots!" Nikolai demanded. "The pony in the mechanics shop told me that they could be piloted via a remote source! I come here and I see all of this." His brow drew low, he had to think.

"I have been through hell over the past month. I am so, so far from home. And this robot comes along, with a voice that tells me that someone has been watching me-me and my friends. I walk hundreds of miles, fight-run from horrors beyond my own simple minded comprehension, and when I finally make it here: Contempt and empty threats."

He pointed at the myriad of screens behind himself, accusing her.

"I want money. I want something, anything valuable as compensation for the act of coincidental horseshit that brought me here!" He was fuming now. "God, fate, luck. There must have been a reason. After all that, it could not have been a scam..." His fury melted away into despair. "What if it was a scam? No, no. It can't be!"

And so his despair in the moment, once fury, turned to curiosity. He had done more in last few months of his life, than he had in the decades before it. From the moment he had snuck past the military guards and stepped over the border into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, to the moment when he had stepped through the doors of the broadcast center. There was a reason, maybe it was just one big wild adventure.

"Or maybe it is all just one big test." Nikolai blurted out. "Maybe I am the next Strelok? Maybe I drank too much for my own good today? Perhaps I have had too much cake?" He looked at Homage again and smiled, his hand eased off of his pistol. He walked around towards one of the desks and slumped over a chair.

"Go on!" He encouraged her, "Tell me your side of the story! Spare no details, Homage!" The little unicorn flinched and gave him a strained smile.

"This emergency broadcasting station," She started. "Was built by the Ministry of Arcane Sciences with input from the Ministry of Morale, before the Great War they were involved in more than a few widescale projects which revolved around mass surveillance of Equestrian citizens."

"Big Brother." Nikolai summarized with a wag of his finger. "The only one who has any fun is the хуліган doing the spying." His finger made its way over to Homage.

"A what?" She asked.

"A hoodlum!" Nikolai threw his hands up in the air. "A psychopath! A degenerate tyrant! A control freak-menace to civilization!"

"Well, I'd like to think I'm doing good with it. You've heard DJ Pon3 on the radio before, right? I'm trying to help."

Nikolai shrugged. "I have stumbled across your programing a few times-and folks talk about you like you're some kind of celebrity." He tapped a boot against the floor. "Is that microphone still recording?"

"Nope."

"Good. Your programing sucks." Homage pulled herself back, her ears flattened against her mane.

"Let me clarify: your selection of songs is... Painful to the ears. Good lord, it's like listening to a commercial for toy dolls. You all sound... So, so innocent-Ponies in general. You make threats-even when you are stabbing someone to death-committing atrocities! Your voice, your appearances all throw me off."

Homage laughed at the criticisms. "Well, lucky me you're not the one in charge of this station." She shifted her eyes coyly. "I am." The jaunty notes of Bandit Radio filtered in through the speaker of Nikolai's radio, drifting across the room until it stuck Homage's ears.

"She might be telling the truth, she might not be."

"I really wish I could help you Nikolai..." The DJ admitted. "As sudden and- bizarre and-unexpected as your appearance was, you're not too bad. You're not exactly a paragon of good either and-To be honest, you're not like any pony or-creature that I've ever met or seen or heard of before."

"My friends." His stomach tied itself up into a dozen little knots. How could he have neglected to remember? It was like this, it was always like this. No matter how hard he tried to stick with them, he kept getting separated from them. He was a Loner after all. The worn, sooty patches sewn onto the shoulders of his jacket, those little radiation trefoils, proclaimed that.

"Your friends?" Homages voice rose. "You've got friends? More creatures like you? Out there?" She stood up to all fours and trotted towards Nikolai. The Stalker stood up to meet her.

"Yes-No! A pegasus, a zebra, and a bat pony."

"And you." She added. "You guys must never run out of things to talk about."

Nikolai deadpanned. He was usually the only conversation starter amongst them. Things that he liked to talk about (and there were more than a few things) were usually discussed over and over and over again between him and the trio of equines that went around with him that he would sometimes have to resort to the karaoke which his compatriots thought was the devil's voice incarnate. And then, a crazy, crazy, crazy idea wove itself in Nikolai's mind. An idea which he couldn't help but propose to Homage.

"How would like to pack up the radio act and come travel with me and my friends? I'm a pretty good cook; I can make almost anything look appetizing."

Homages face went a little pale, her eyes went wide. She had been beyond the walls of Tenpony Tower before, she had lived beyond them. There was a reason why she was living here now. This was one of the few bastions of civilization left on the surface. It certainly wasn't perfect but-but she would never leave it again if she could help it. Plus, she was expecting company soon... And Nikolai's appearance had been a freak accident!

"Word has it there was a shootout a few floors down yesterday, three guards were wounded-one is near death. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

Nikolai cracked a grin. "No, no I wouldn't."

"They said the shooter disappeared without a trace." Homage quipped. "Gone, without a trace. Investigators found casings leading up to a broken window. They're claiming it was some sort of piece of pre war technology, what do you think it was?”

"Aliens. Ghosts." He surmised, trying to hold back the sarcasm in his voice. "Magic-anything could happen out there in the Wasteland, maybe one of those things found its way in here,oooo....shpoooky." He wiggled his fingers in Homages direction.

"I guess he has Celestia to thank that the Tower PD are as bad at their jobs as they are."

Nikolai arrived at another question: "Do you know any place where I could make a fortune easily?"

And it was here, in this statement, that Homage found a way that she could easily rid herself of the weird thing that had crashed through her window. She asked if she could examine the screens behind Nikolai, he sidestepped and let her trot by. She lit her horn, and a screen flickered and spun past a half dozen more scenes until it came to something, someplace, that Nikolai had never seen before.

The view was coming from within the trunk of an old tree just off of a two land road. A little ways away was a ruined billboard, a little further from that. Homage's horn whirled, and the vast grey, black, and green splotch in the distance came into focus.

It was a city, smaller that Manehatten, bigger than Salt Cube. Ruined, wrecked. Residences, factories, radar arrays. At the center of it all was a cluster of buildings which rose above the rest. Bathed in the green glow of Balefire Radiation. Amidst it all, a single black obelisk rose up from the earth, rising above the clouds.

"Hoofington. I've never been that far south myself.”

"How far is it?"

"If you're walking?" She questioned. "A few weeks if you don't run into any trouble. Though from what I can gather, these days it's closer to a month and a half. It's right up against the border with Zebrica. You're traveling with a zebra, right?" Nikolai rolled his when he heard her comment.

"I don't understand how you people can come up with all of these names for places. Where I come from-it's originality! Most of the time. But I can guarantee that you'll never hear about a place named 'Humansland' or 'Footington' or, 'Hairhatten'!" Homage looked at him incredulously.

"See how weird and-eh... What's the word-Uncanny? Yes! Uncanny! See how uncanny that sounds? Exactly! But I digress, Homage. Hypothetically, if I wanted to go there-to take a complete whirl-around turn from this place and head back south, what rewards would await me. Pray tell, do you have any specifics?"

Homage gave him a funny look of, "What do I look like to you; A Laboratory Technician? A historian?" She was neither. "Prewar technology, magical artifacts." The little unicorn surmised. "Not without trouble, of course. Even I can't see everything. The Core-the center of Hoofington is one of those places. But based off of the stories I've heard from ponies who've tried to venture into it, and I do mean try-there haven’t been a y survivors.”

"I understand what you're meaning to say. But lady, I've seen some shit. I've seen a lot of shit in the last month alone. I don't care, I really don't. I want money. I want a great big pile of it that I can lounge on. I want money that I can use to make more money with."

The Stalker contemplated his next words. What would Willow, Aurora, Flashpoint, what would they think of this new plan? There was nothing for them in Manehatten, nothing in easy or practical reach. But this new place: Hoofington, as dangerous as it sounded, held a promise of real reward.

"Is there any way that I can hurry things along?"

"There's a functioning armored train line about 25 miles southwest of Bucklyn."The tickets are costly, but from what I've heard they get the job done good enough. And they should be able to take you all the way past Fillydelphia and the Canterhorn Mountains. When do you wanna leave?"

"Soon! Please!" The voice in her head pleaded.

"Why, I'll leave as soon as I've have another nap on that awesome looking couch down by the fountain." Homage realized that Nikolai might not be so quick to want to leave for the outside world so soon. The Stalker looked at her, then again at the screen, then back at the doorway.

"Yeah, um... Sure! Sure! Yeah, you can do that!"

Drip-drop-drip-drop.

Rain droplets rolled off of his coat, he was standing outside of a coffee shop. Old Soviet style block apartment buildings ringed either side, a bus rolled away from the curb. The smell of wet dirt and coffee overwhelmed The Stalker's nostrils. It made his stomach rumble: He hadn't had real, fresh, full strength coffee in a long, long time. He stepped off the sidewalk and pushed his way inside. It was busy, about two dozen people sitting at tables, another few waiting in line. No one paid him any attention. He waited in line. He looked over at the wall. There was clock, and a calendar.

A tube tv over in the corner was playing a news broadcast. A dull, soulless looking woman rambled in Ukrainian about the weather against a plain ocean blue background. Nikolai hardly paid it any mind, except for one little thing.

Pripyat.

The word stuck out of the broadcast like a sore thumb. Nikolai turned to the man near the television. "Can you turn that up?" He asked him. The old man laughed.

"Why bother at all with the news? Young man, can you just look outside? The local news could say that it will rain Vodka tomorrow, and no one would care."

"Local?" Nikolai asked him. The Stalker paced back and forth, gesticulating as he went. "What do you mean by that?"

"Are you new to town, a new worker at the Power Station?" Nikolai looked at the old man strangely. No matter how hard he focused he couldn't quite get the old man's face to come into clear view. "Yes, Chernobyl. It powers this whole region. I work there myself, you know, a few decades ago none of this was here..."

"I... Have to go." Nikolai turned to leave.

"Ok," The man replied with a laugh. "Anatoly Dyatlov, welcome to your new life, new comer-" Nikolai shuttered and the world melted away. The people around him faded like ghosts, everything aged, his Geiger counter ticked. A strong wind blew dust into the coffee shop.

A dying memory, that was what that was.

Something rumbled and crashed outside. Something was coming. In a flash of bright electrical light, Nikolai's vision went dark, and then bright again, and his eyes shot open. He felt like he had fallen back into the couch.

"Ah! A bad dream, that was all that was." Nikolai didn't feel hungry. With waning vigor He stumbled down the hall, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His radio was beeping, his PDA too. Perhaps it was his friends?

"Homage! Homage!" He called down the hall. No voice met his response, he turned back to look at the fountain. There was something there, a box. He jogged back to it. There, he found a note taped against the side:

"To Stalker,

I'm on errands. Don't go looking for me. I've left you some food, and a map that will take you out of the tower without being spotted it security, it will lead you onto the monorail line out of the city.

P.S,
I wasn't sure how to spell your name, but I wish you the best of luck in making it back to your friends.

-DJ Pon3

Nikolai ripped the letter off of the box. He folded it up, and stuffed into a jacked pocket, carefully seating it amongst half a dozen other trinkets.

**

Drip-drop. Drip-drop.

Rain struck the eyepieces of The Stalker's mask. He stood in the middle of the tracks, staring west. A silent white tear of lighting hit one of the ruined skyscrapers behind him. A short burst of gunfire rang out somewhere below him. He gazed at Tenpony Tower, now only a little ways behind him. He fiddled with his radio, looking for a certain channel.

Kzhk! Kzhk!

"Друзі мої, my friends. I'm still alive! And I'm coming for you."

He swapped channels again and looked back up at Tenpony Tower one last time.

"Thank you." He murmured under his breath. It felt epic, it felt grand, but there was no one there. Nikolai turned and walked off down the tracks.