Fallout: Equestria - Wasted Innocence

Chapter 2
The Surface
"Learning is easy, it's applying your knowledge that's hard."

Looking out over the ruins, the wind whipped my mane and tail, blowing dust around huge clouds. It was like a giant fan that was everywhere all at once. Looking up, it looked like it went on forever. Same went for the landscape—it went on forever, as far as the eye could see. My stomach clenched tightly at the sight of it all. The very overwhelming feeling of sadness and violence was extremely heavy in the air.

Slowly walking away from the stable tunnel, I began realizing more and more just how hostile the outside really was. The ground was covered in dust and dead plants, what I assumed to be trees heavily burnt and dead, and the once great roads of Equestria, broken and sunken into the ground, twisted out of shape. The area was surrounded by what appeared to be broken bits of—what I read about in a book—houses, but, at the same time, they looked nothing like houses, only partially built and burnt pieces of sticks. The sickly greyish-bluish-green sky gave no comfort to the fire-bleached wasteland.

I had always heard that the surface was gone, wiped off the map in a flash along with every last pony who used to inhabit it. I had imagined it as just a vast nothing, but looking at it then only served as a dark reminder of the past. We were never taught what had happened outside. We were only told that the world ended when the Megaspells came and that the radiation would kill us immediately after exposure, yet I was still alive and breathing, and alone. At least in the stable, the hum of the fluorescent lights, creaking of aging pipes, and mechanical whirs of machinery hung in the air; outside though, there was little but silence, apart from the whistling of the wind and the crunch on the ground under my hooves. It wasn't Equestria, not the Equestria I had learned about. It was more like hell, if hell weren’t hot.

The road I walked on was long and straight—well, as straight as it could be. There were a few buildings along the way that were made from concrete. I could recognize the materials, having poured concrete in the stable.

I never stopped, never wanted to. If subjection to the outside world were the punishment we got for something that happened over 200 years ago, I couldn’t stop. I couldn't stop thinking about every pegasus who had ever lived in Stable 82. We were the only pegasi ever in the stable. The pegasus race had everything ripped from them over a deal gone bad. We had horrible jobs, were treated like outcasts, and if we made friends, they ended up as outcasts themselves. We even lost our birthright, having never been taught how to fly.

I was lost in thought for a while, so deep within my mind and trying to understand what had happened back at the stable, that I never noticed I had walked right into a small area upon a hill that still had intact structures, walls, pointed roofs, and windows. Now those were the houses I recognized from the books I had read as a filly. Every house had its own story, its own family that had created its past, which were frozen in time unless somepony disturbed it. Well, if there were any ponies left to appreciate it. But since it was only me, I guessed it would be okay to explore a little. I chose a house at random to explore. If I were the last pony alive in Equestria, how could it hurt to walk into a house and take a peek, right?

Walking up the short, broken sidewalk and up the steps to the door, I slowly pushed it open with a creak to find that the inside, apart from being incredibly dirty and covered in dust, looked perfectly fine. My hooves knocked on the wooden floors, and the tool belt around me clinked ever so quietly. I peered from room to room in the darkness of the house. My pipbuck clicked once or twice every few minutes, alerting me that some small areas were lightly irradiated. My guess was it had been irradiated when the windows broke.

Pushing a door open, I could see there was a small set of stairs leading to a room under the house, a pungent almost rotten smell came up from the stairs. I let out a small cough, covered my nose, and turned to leave the room, slowly shutting the door when I heard a scratching sound come from the bottom of the house. Walking backward, not wanting to find out what was making the sound, I kept my eyes on the door and made my way into another room, closing the door slowly until it clicked. Turning back around to face the room I was in, the first thing I saw was a small banner hung from the roof reading 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY'. Party hats and flat balloons were lying everywhere, and a photo lay on the table. The photo was of a filly, a pegasus filly surrounded by unicorns and earth ponies.

My mind couldn't grasp what was depicted in that picture—they all looked so happy, yet, in the stable, we were shunned just for being pegasi. The confusion banged around in my head for a while. Why was I so different, and why did it look like things were better when this photo had been taken? I shook my head and headed for the entrance. I'd had enough of that place.

Walking back outside to the dust-covered wasteland, I had so many questions about the life I had been forced to live for many years. What was wrong with me? What was so wrong with pegasi? Why do these pegasi so happy in the picture but in the stable life was hell?

In the distance, I saw a small fire burning just outside what looked like an area in the road that had been surrounded by storage shelves on the top of the hill. As I began to get closer to it, I began noticing a few familiar objects, couches, chairs, and unlabeled bottles filled with whatever was in them. I barely just got outside the area when I heard a raspy gruff voice behind me.

"You're a lil’ ways from home, arn’t you, filly?"

Turning to see who had talked to me, I was completely shocked to see another pony alive out in the wastelands. Yet I couldn't think of a single thing to say. The pony had leather strapped to their body everywhere and was armed to the teeth with more guns than I’d ever seen in one spot, let alone carried by a pony. Their mane was chopped all to hell, and they looked like they meant business. Keeping perfect eye contact with me as they walked around me and to the front of the small, thrown-together fort they had constructed out of junk. They kept staring at me, looking at me up and down as if to size me up or something. The whole interaction started to make me feel quite uneasy.

“Oh well, time to die."

Wait just a minute—I never ever got a word out to answer this crazy ass stallion! I had no idea what to do. My body froze. I couldn't move or talk as I watched him raise a gun and aim it directly at my head, then look a little disappointed when I didn't raise a weapon of my own. I had nothing to protect myself with—I only had a belt and saddlebags full of tools, and yet the pony was immediately ready to kill, only having met me 30 seconds prior. I hadn’t said a word, yet his response was “time to die”. Who was this crazy bastard?

"C'mon, fight back! It's boring if you don't." Anger started to boil over through his voice. "C'mon, you little bitch, let's go!" He turned his head, holstered his gun, and looked back at me, smiling a bit. "I'll just have to beat you to death with my bare hooves. I'll send you straight to fucking hell to burn with the rest of them!"

I did the first thing that came to mind—I pulled a wrench from my tool belt and flung it at him, hitting him directly in the forehead. it made a sound as it bounced off and spun off somewhere behind him, making him stumble a bit, shaking his head and holding the spot the wrench hit. I took off down the dusty slope of the hill. Almost immediately, I lost my balance, sliding on the dust and dirt and tumbling headfirst down and sliding sideways directly for a tree, slamming into it and flinging me sideways. My body shifted into a roll, going over rocks and debris, and didn't stop until I hit a large concrete pipe at the bottom. My head hit first, sending my body into a backward roll over the top of it, making all of the tools in my belt fall out and causing one hell of a metallic ringing noise as all of them bounced and slid down each side of the pipe. I landed on my back on top of it, and my body slid off of it down the other side. The pain in my head was almost too much to see straight, and the ringing in my ears about made me deaf, but I was still alive, thank Luna. I tried standing up, and I fell as soon as my hooves hit the ground. I couldn't feel my right foreleg or my right wing, both just laid on the ground, limp. I couldn't run or hide, so I pressed my body up against the pipe as tightly as I could and hoped the pony trying to kill me would lose interest and walk away.

I could hear them at the top of the hill laughing, probably because I had taken the ride of a lifetime down the hill. I directed my eye to my limp foreleg while I was lying on the ground. Trying to get a clear look at my pipbuck through my blurred vision, I could tell it was picking up a radiation reading, and the animated pony had places all around it saying 'crippled'. The ringing in my ear was probably preventing me from hearing the clicking from the Geiger counter on my pipbuck, and my vision was so bad now I could barely see anything at all. My head was in bad shape, and I felt weak and sick. I had never had a head injury until then, and it really just made me feel like I was slowly dying.

I laid my head on the ground as my eyes began to flutter. The only thing that brought me back was a burst of three extremely loud cracks coming from right behind me. I knew the sound to be gunfire.. Looking up, I saw the silhouettes of two ponies. One exchanged gunfire with whoever was on that hill and the other bent down in front of my face, saying something I couldn't hear. They yelled something that sounded like, "You're coming with me". I just shrugged and mumbled, "Whatever". Then, everything faded to black.

I woke up sometime later, lying on a cot, with a dim light hanging above my head. My head was absolutely killing me, and my vision was still blurred. I was just grateful somepony found me before that crazy pony did. I turned my head and tried to look around the room, not that it would have done me much good since I couldn't see much anyway. At least the ringing in my ears had subsided, and my body felt much lighter. I closed my eyes and laid there for a while.

I was almost asleep when the opening of a screeching door and the sound of multiple hooves walking in jarred me awake.

"She was unarmed and was being attacked by a raider about a mile outside Sweet Apple Acres. I'm telling you, Frost, she nailed that motherfucker with a pipe wrench right between the eyes, it was the funniest shit I’ve ever seen. That was before she took a spill down the hill and hit that old culvert." It was a mare's voice. She seemed to enjoy it. "She's lucky we were there, or else she would be dead right now. Took multiple healing potions to get her to stabilize just enough to get her here, but now what? We are miles away from the settlement, and we don't have the proper medical gear to give her proper treatment."

She had somewhat of a raspy and sweet yet authoritative voice. Reminded me of Miss Cherry from the stable. I heard hooves get closer, and I winced a bit when I felt somepony mess with my head. Maybe they took some sort of bandage off my head next to my right ear.

"Oh, good, you're awake! You took quite a spill, filly. How are you feeling? You about died on us." She spoke in a really soft tone.

"W-where a-a-am I-I?" It was hard to talk.

"Where are ya? Well, you, filly, are in the middle of hell, but not to worry, you are in the care of the best unicorn in the world. My name is Ivory Jade, dunno why my parents named me that but that's my name."

She spoke a bit too fast for my liking, and her personality was really bubbly, which would be kind of cute if I hadn’t felt like somepony closed the stable door on my head. "So are you, like, a medical pony or something? Came to make sure ponies don't die out there?"

"Oh, Celestia, no, we saw you fuck up that raider, then you took a spin down the hill, and CRACK! Got smacked on the ol’ noggin at full speed, and I had to come to see if you was okay. I told Frost, ‘We better zoom down there and make sure she’s okay.’ He didn't want to at first, but we scooped you up, and away we went. Now you're here, and… I'm rambling again, aren't I?"

Oh, goddesses, I couldn't even keep up with her. "How long?"

"Has it been? Four days."

"Four days!? I've been recovering for four days?"

Unbelievable. One pony tried to kill me, and the other took care of me for four straight days. It was hard enough to wrap my head around the entire situation, but, then, I had something new to juggle as well.

"Okay, let me get this straight: I got kicked from my stable due to something that happened 200 years ago, Equestria is pretty much gone, the first pony you call a raider tries to kill me after only seeing me for 30 seconds, I fell to my almost-death, and you find me and take care of me for what you say is four days?" The words that came out of my mouth sounded crazy, but I guess it made as much sense as the rest of the world. "So what actually happened to me? How bad was it?"

The cream-colored pony with the blonde mane sat and stared at the ceiling for a moment as if she was lost in a trance, then took a deep breath.

"When you fell down and went boom, you hit your head hard enough to cause some swelling inside your noggin. You dislocated your right foreleg and your right wing—it's okay, because I reset them both for you—you broke a rib, fractured vertebrae, and I'm pretty sure you also have hemorrhaging in your eyes, but I'm not sure, I'm not a doctor." She looked so proud and even giggled a little with a huge smile as she explained everything.

"If you aren’t a doctor, then how do you know all of that?" A pony doesn't just know all these different ailments unless they actually were a doctor… could they?

"Your pip-thingamajig, silly filly. Those things are amazing; they tell you exactly what is wrong with you, everything you are carrying, hell, they even tell you where you are and how to get to places. Didn’t they ever teach you how to work it?"

They actually never had taught us how to work those things in 82, they just threw them on our legs, had a pipbuck technician lock them on, and off to work we went.

"I gave you what healing potions I had, but you still need at least a few more hours of bed rest to feel better. You do not want to be up movin’ and groovin’ when that healing potion wears off, trust me. I've done it, and it is not pretty, believe me. This one time, I took it and decided to try to go for a run, yeah, biiiig fuck up on my part. Nearly killed myself." She ended the sentence while placing a bottle of water next to me. I hurriedly picked it up and guzzled the water down as if I had never had it before.

I chuckled to myself softly, laying my head on the pillow that I assumed the mare had provided for me, only raising up to sip from the bottle periodically. A thought crossed my mind: the pony was an earth pony, an earth pony taking care of a pegasus. It was unheard of, at least from Stable 82's point of view. I raised my leg and wiped and rubbed my eyes a couple of times to make sure I saw things right. Sure enough, there stood a, quite pretty, mare.

"Listen, I've gotta go. We've got business to attend to in New Pegasus,” she said as she sifted around in her saddlebags. "Wait at least two more hours before trying to walk and about a day to fly from the extra stress on the wings and all holding your weight up off the ground. There's a settlement about three miles north of here, Buckinghoof—a stupid name, but has good ponies—ask for Nurse Light Heart, she's a friend of mine. Oh, and please wait until your vision clears up. Stable dwellers have a hard time adjusting to natural light. I put some stuff in your water that will help you sleep."

My eyes shot open as I lowered the bottle from my mouth. It was already over half gone. Had she planned to put me to sleep so those raiders could find me and do whatever they wanted to me? I tried to pick my head up, but I could feel the heaviness in my body and in my eyes—I couldn't keep them open. Before I knew it, everything went black.

I woke up later that evening, the room was mostly black except the green glow coming from my pipbuck. I looked around a bit as I sat up a bit wondering where that mare and her friend went but from the looks of it they were long gone by now and I was all alone...again. I rolled off the cot knocking over a table in the process and causing everything on it to clatter on the floor or make the sound of breaking glass.

"Fuck me sideways, always fucking something up." I muttered to myself raising my hoof to try to use the pipbuck light but while doing that I noticed something strange, my map was opened and a marker was placed yet no location was named, 'Buckinghoof'. That mare knew how to operate pipbucks better than I did, but how? I was in no mood to try to solve the mystery of a stranger who kept me from dying. My wing and leg felt a lot better now but damn didn't have to run off on me like that. "Stupid name good ponies it is I suppose." I turned on the pipbuck light and walked through the room to the door pushing it open to see the moonlit landscape that awaited me with sadistic arms.

Nothing happened after that, It was a very quiet walk through the wasteland, one that kept me on edge the entire time. The buildings and roads look downright ominous in the dark only lit slightly by the moon. The sky looked just like what we imagined as fillies in 82 except much much bigger and there wasn't nearly as much wind here. Every little noise made me jump or hide behind whatever I could find. I hated being out here alone.

I did feel slight relief when I saw a building with lights in a few windows and it lined up perfectly with the location of my pipbuck. the building was four floors tall and had Buckinghoof written on the side of it, I had never seen anything like it, It was huge, and one word remained on its side still flickering every so often 'MALL'.

Upon reaching the front gate I was greeted by two unicorns with guns on their sides and what looked like security helmets on. I stopped directly in my tracks and stood for a moment not knowing exactly what to do. Do I trust these ponies or do I just turn and find some shack to sleep in till morning?

"Are you just going to stand there and stare or are you going to state your business?!" One of the security ponies called out, he had a very demanding voice and I did not doubt that he would shoot me at the first chance he got if he thought I was being suspicious.

Swallowing hard I knew It was a long shot to try to reason with these ponies but maybe I should just tell them I'm looking for a place to crash and they'll let me waltz right in...yeah right. I took a deep breath and with a shakey voice, I yelled back.

"I'm out here just wandering around the wasteland, I don't know what I'm doing, I've not been out here long and I just need a doctor y'know because I was attacked earlier and this really nice mare helped me and said I need to come here and see a doctor and...Please don't shoot me!" Yea I'm pretty sure I just fucked that whole thing up

There was a bitter silence in the air, nothing but the sound of the wind for what felt like forever until a loud metallic booming noise came from the other side of the gate these ponies were standing in front of. The wall moved in two separate directions revealing a set of glass doors directly behind it. I took a breath and sighed in relief.

"Please step forward!"

I began walking slowly toward the front gate and looked up at the multi-storied structure that stood before me. As I got closer I felt more and more nervous about entering the building, thoughts racing through my head about what these ponies could be capable of doing to me. Walking past the security they never looked at me, kept their eyes on the wasteland and never flinched.

I stepped on a rubber mat type of thing and the glass doors slid open, I was immediately hit with so many different senses, smells of foods, ponies walking back and forth, and the lights, so many different lights, and....a light grey pony wearing a red vest.

"Welcome to Buckinghoof, please come on in and enjoy yourself."
My head cocked in confusion. "Wait so no interrogation, checking for weapons, trying to shoot me first?

The pony who greeted me at the door laughed and looked around the building entrance. "Oh deary me no, but if you are found to be a raider or you try to pull something in here like shooting, stealing, killing, rape, etc.....we will kill you, slowly."