Fallout Equestria: Hidden Gems
Grey.
The walls of the maintenance stalls were...wait, no. That's not quite right...wrong story. My tale started much differently, much more...explosively....
Pain, excruciating pain was my first memory of my life. Darkness and pain turned my senses into an inferno, my ears ringing while the feelings began to slowly ebb, leaving me with a rather nasty headache as I took in my surroundings. Eyes out of focus, blearily looking around when a huge chunk of....something, crashed to the ground right in front of me!
"Gah..! T-the fuck was that!"
Craning my neck upwards, I saw the source of the destruction and.....Celestia be damned, that wasn't good....I was in a concrete structure, massive, polished walls climbing up high above me. Walls which were crumbling and falling to the ground in massive chunks. Stumbling to my hooves, I realized that there was some...kind of covering around me...why was I wearing something like this......orange plastic monstrosity...?
Another crumbling chunk of concrete spurred me forward, landing on something in the distance with a sickening crunch, my hooves clamoring forward as I dashed around the machinery. More and more debris came crashing down, crushing and tearing through all sorts of piping and machinery around me. Chunks of concrete, and torn metal tore at my coverings, lancing through my fur as blood began to well from my wounds, slickening the inside of my suit and making it much more difficult to run in, my hooves slipping in the wet footwear.
Whipping my head around and around as I ran, desperate for an escape from this crumbling building when I finally spotted an exit, the grey light of an overcast sky streaming through into the darkened space. Leaping over an exposed pipe, my back right hoof connected with the surface of it, and white hot pain lit through my body. Melted plastic from my suit strung from my hoof to the superheated pipe as I tumbled head over hooves, crashing out through the entrance into the glaring sunlight, body impacting the dirt as the air was driven from my lungs.
I don't know how long I was out but, when I awoke, hours had certainly passed. I woke with a worse headache but, thankfully, mostly uninjured. "Uggghhhh, gosh that's gonna hurt for a bit..." My muttering voice seemed to spook some sort of....thing? It looked almost like a rat but....sickly and diseased. I'm not ashamed to admit it, I screamed. The rat screamed. He ran off and I, well, pathetically scooted backwards before wincing as dirt worked through the cuts in my suit and into my wound.
After the....creature...scurried away, I finally got a moment to catch my breath and looked at the building I had just escaped from. It had mostly crumbled away, the walls and broken glass looked so...ancient? How could that be? This area was......wait, why couldn't I remember? Wait, why can't I remember...anything? To say that it was panic inducing was an understatement and, to be honest, it took me way longer to get myself under control and my breathing steady. AFter a good bit of hyperventilating and finally getting myself steadied, I finally got a good look at my suit. A orange, old looking sort of plastic, brittle and pale, almost as if it were as ancient as the building I was in. A small box rested on my back, just between my hips and shoulders, my mane covering it somewhat as I looked closer. A small yellow glow just barely peeked out from a crack, filtering through the somewhat foggy, translucent covering over my eyes.
Looking around more I realized that things looked...off... I was clearly suffering from some memories but, something inside me was ringing an alarm bell. Everything around me looked, sick. Withered trees with no leaves. The grass beneath my hooves unpleasantly soft and an even worse shade of green. Dirt and dust picked up by the wind blew gently across the hills nearby. The buildings next to the one I escaped from were just as abandoned and decrepit as their fallen companion. Two similar buildings like the one I was in, and three oddly shaped, curved concrete towers we all nestled together, with a sort of....office building a ways down a path. Clearly this was some sort of important facility, old rusty chain-link fence, coils of barbed wire along the lengths of the facility outskirts. Somepony wanted to keep the place separate from others, and went through much to keep that secure.
After rooting around the other few buildings, well, those I could access, for anypony to ask about what happened, I came up empty. A few hallways were as abandoned and crumbling as the building I woke up in. Door after door leading to rooms devoid of any sign of recent life, cobwebs and trash littered throughout.I pushed through the last door and..."Ahhh! B-buck!!" My shrieks bounced off the walls of the hallways as the skeleton of somepony fell out into the hall with a clatter, dust poofing up into the air. My heart in my throat, and an incredibly unpleasant feeling in my stomach, I looked closer at the...stallion. Carefully lifting his name badge in my magic I found out who he was. Bedrock Barricade. What in Tartarus happened to him.... to this whole place? This whole thing felt so wrong, everything looked so barren and abandoned, my memories seemingly gone, and now this poor, long-forgotten stallion. This was painting a pretty picture.
I tried to...I don't know, but I couldn't just leave him there. I didn't have much skill with physical magic like this but, I never could leave anypony in a state like that just, forgotten in a closet somewhere... It wasn't the most pretty grave, I didn't exactly have much experience with it, but after settling him in and leaving a market, and his badge, as best I could, there wasn't much left for me to do besides leave and try to find my way to some sort of civilization.
Oh how I would come to sorely regret that choice...