Fallout Equestria: Monster

“Well?” he asked and my spine locked up. His eyes didn’t leave me, staring ahead like some dead thing. I felt cold. “I’m waiting.”

I couldn’t bear to look at him so I slammed my eyes shut, determined never to open them again. I could still feel him there. Watching me. Waiting for me…expecting…

“You’re pathetic.” The cold started to boil until it turned into rage. I looked up and he was gone, but Rebar was there glaring down at me with that smug grin. Only he was bleeding through a hole in his neck. “You know, being killed by a kid isn’t so bad. At least I didn’t-”

“DUDE, YOU FUCKING SHOT ME!” Brittle spilled crimson from his chest. It was a large stream that flowed down the front and died his coat red. A good look for him…“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU FUCKING SHOT ME!”

“If he hadn’t, one of us would’ve.” Suddenly they were all there. Palm with a crease in her face, Cork on fire and missing a hoof, X in pieces yet somehow standing, Grease less pretty with half a head. “Don’t worry. Someone will do him soon enough.”

“All alone now Shitstick.” Palm laughed and one by one they turned and walked away. Cork never said anything to me. It wasn’t his way. Died with a bang, left with a whimper.

In a moment it was just X left, staring at me from far away.

“Should have just let it happen,” she muttered and then she followed. I felt something twist in my gut...

There was a nudge. I turned and I saw.

Bright green eyes looked at me as everything turned to ash.

“Please.”

I would have liked to say I woke up slowly to some kind of annoying continuous sound. That it took me a minute to remember who I am and where I was. That all I had was something that was basically a hangover without the fun that comes before it.

I would have also liked to say I exploded back into consciousness with a loud yell and a cold sweat on my brow. That my eyes darted around me with the crazed, but oddly perceptive gaze of an animal ready to fight for survival. That would have at least been exciting.

But no, I woke up all at once with a croak that should have come from a stallion ten times my age who had just received a particularly spiteful kick to his balls. It was long and pathetic and made me wonder if I’d turned into a ghoul somewhere along the line.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened or why my side felt like it’d lost an argument with a rabid radhog. Some asshole had shot me. With a pretty high caliber gun too if the area of pain was to be believed. And considering that area was ‘fucking EVERYWHERE’ it might have been more than once. The details were hazy at the moment…

Movement was challenging. No, that’s a lie. It was running a triathlon with four lame legs while a colony of fire ants held a swing dancing competition in my bones. Whichever couple had the third right rib from the top was miles ahead of the others. First place. Isn’t even a discussion.

At least the bed was soft. It was more of an encouragement to lie down rather than sit up, but with how stiff everything was I’d done more than enough of that recently. Besides, I wanted to see what fresh hell I’d been thrown into.

Gray concrete, grey metal, grey boxes. I’d swapped a brown damnation for a grey one. Actually, there was a little brown. The bed, a chewed looking wardrobe, and a small nightstand. There was even a bit of red if you counted the sheets. There were shelves against the far wall. Might have been more, but the room formed a right angle and blocked my view of the door.

It all looked familiar…

Though I hadn’t seen it much before, it didn’t take long to figure out where I was. The back room at market. This was where we kept all our best stuff under lock and key and where Rebar…

And where Rebar slept…

Which meant this was his bed…

That he shared with two other people…

Both of them mares…

“OH FUCK NO!” It didn’t matter how much pain I was in, I finished that damn triathlon! It just so happened that the finish line was the ground. The very, very hard ground. That hopefully hadn’t been sexed on.

Mental scarring and concussion. Two more additions to my growing list of injuries.

With my head spinning from the impact, there was the same chance that I’d stand on my own as me suddenly sprouting wings and flying off. So, I did the drunken pony’s shuffle and felt around until I hit the nightstand. With nothing but prayers holding it up, I put both front hooves on top, an act the swing dancers took as the start of round two, and pushed upwards.

I kept going until my eyes came level with a black, tube shaped object with a dull green screen.

I blinked. Then I rubbed my eyes to make sure they were working right. After that I reached out and tapped it. When it was proven to be real I turned it around.

Long live the Ash Queen was carefully etched above the glass with the precision of someone who called themselves an artist. It was a sentence I’d seen many times in my youth and heard shouted twice as many. A little stroke of vanity on her part. The most she would allow herself.

In my hooves I held my birthright. The last worldly reminder I had of my mother.

If it was here, then it wasn’t on Rebar’s leg…and Rebar wouldn’t dare take it off…he probably wasn’t smart enough to know how...so the only reason it would be here and not on him was…

That he got shot to death by a little foal.

I stared at the thing in disbelief. Which turned into a smile. Which became a laugh. Which built upon itself until the dancers decided to switch to the can-can. It was deep and straight from the gut. A way I hadn’t laughed in years, maybe in my whole life. I laughed so hard I fell over backwards and nearly broke another bone. And that STILL didn’t stop me.

Everyone I knew from foalhood was dead. Everyone that used to run with my old gang. Everyone I’d ever served under, I’d ever bowed to, I’d ever scraped my knees and said ‘yes boss’ to was gathering dust and here I was holding my mother’s PipBuck, alive and laughing my flank off!

It was almost surreal. The death of all my gang mates. Becoming the last Asher. It was almost like a dream. Maybe I was dead too. Maybe this was the afterlife. Maybe saving that colt had earned me enough brownie points to bump me down a rung on the punishment ladder. Maybe I got to taste paradise before being sent to my final destination.

I guess it didn’t matter. The point was I had it. Granted, I wasn’t entirely sure on how it worked or everything it did. I knew it had a radio and something to do with combat and that it could shove off anything less than a megaspell without a scratch and honestly, that was enough to know I wanted one. Specifically this one. This one that had been stolen from me seven years ago.

Without wasting another moment, I slapped the thing onto my right leg and snapped it into place.

There was a short jolt as it fired up. I’ll admit it, the thing was old, even by today’s standards. I think it was one of the earlier models so I wouldn’t be able to turn invisible or send a signal five miles or…what else did those stories say  these things could do? Create life?

Some wordsflashed in front of my eyes, but I ignored them. Words really didn’t rate high on my importance list, especially when my fur was standing on end. There was something happening, but what it was or why was a little outside my comprehension. And by that I mean I’d need to be a pegasus to reach it.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, a little white line popped up right at the top of my vision. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that it scared the crap out of me. Would have been literal if there was anything in my stomach at the time.

My head jerked back and the little line shook and spun. I blinked and turned my head to the left, watching the ticks move steadily to the right. The letters S and W swung into view. Part of my brain made the connection to South West.

I had a compass! A magic compass! Made out of sparkles!

I am even more embarrassed that I can’t think of a better description for what came out of my mouth than giggling.

A little beep brought me back to the device itself. Apparently the spell matrix was done doing whatever it was spell matrixes did. I moved it up to my face and nudged the little button with the word STATS under it.

“…Damn.” In proper medical terminology, I was FUCKED UP. Minor concussion, several broken ribs, half healed bruising, cuts covering my right side, malnourishment, dehydration, over a hundred rads, plaque…

It was impossible not to move a hoof to my side. There was cloth there, but not the kind I usually wore. In fact, I wasn’t wearing any of that. Someone had taken my clothes and replaced them with bandages. A lot of them.

I can’t say I wasn’t grateful…a little weirded out at the prospect of someone undressing me…

The door creaked.

A gun. I didn’t have a gun! There could be anything around that corner and I had nothing to defend myself with! I could barely move!

Had I been through worse? Probably not. I was well and inescapably fucked! I could hear it moving around down there. Hooves on stone so it was probably a pony. That was good. Shot was slightly preferable to eaten alive. Unless it was a feral. Or a radhog! I didn’t want to die to a radhog! Not even for the irony of being eaten by something that tastes so good! Did radhogs eat meat? Either way it wouldn’t be happy to see me after I ate so many of its fellows. Its delicious, delicious fellows.

I backed into a corner, using the tiny nightstand as cover. It wasn’t like there was anywhere else to go. And it was SOMETHING between me and the unknown. Even if that something was a cheap bit of wood that was leaning pretty heavily to the left and looked like it was about to fall…

I was so dead.

The clip-clop of the hooves grew louder with the beat of my racing heart as I sunk further behind my pathetic shelter. The hallway wasn’t that long. It wouldn’t be more than a few seconds before it was there. Actually less than a few seconds. It was in front of me before I even knew it.

It might have been a unicorn in a past life. It was hard to tell now with all traces of fur and skin gone. The muscle beneath was a reddish-brown and looked only partially rotted. An effort had been made to hide it behind a leather vest and a saddlebag, but even those looked a bit eaten. The teeth were fully exposed and looked dull and sharp at the same time, hanging beneath two eyes that had taken the color of spoiled milk.

The milk eyes found mine and for a moment they just stared. Then they blinked. I blinked back.

“The fuck are you doing?” Skinny asked as one might ask a three year old with his head in the toilet.

“Umm…I thought you were I radhog.” I had not yet left my claimed corner. That was probably the reason behind the staring.

“A radhog…that concussion must be worse than I thought.” He approached the bed, reaching into his saddlebag for something. I didn’t leave the corner. I liked it. It was kind of warm and certainly more comfortable than that cesspit of a bed. Skinny seemed to like it less. “I might be a zombie, but I’m not going to bite. Get out of there!”

“Alright, alright, damn…” I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to eat me. Never seemed to like me the few times we’d met. Never seemed to like any of us come to think of it, though that’s to be expected. I probably tasted like shit either way.

So I crawled out from behind my nightstand and shuffled over to him. He kept digging through his bag. Part of me wanted to ask. The rest just didn’t care. Thus began a civil war over all the parts of my mind. It took thirty seconds for the ask portion to carve out enough territory to force an unconditional surrender.

“So what are you looking fo-AHHH! MOTHERFUCKER!” The swear was for a needle that had been jammed, without warning I might add, into my neck. He kept it there for a second or two, then just tossed it at the wall.

“Med-X,” he answered simply. Almost as if I wasn’t imagining his bones cracking open in the center of a cheery blaze. “You really should be in bed.”

“That bed over there?” I motioned with my head towards the mattress. Might as well be radioactive to me. “I’m not spending another second in that thing.”

“Why not?” His raised an eyebrow…or he would have it he still had any hair whatsoever. “It’s a perfectly fine bed. I’d dare to say it’s lavish considering where we are. What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s Rebar’s bed.” I told him, as if that explained everything. Apparently it didn’t since he kept staring at me like I was a moron. “The bed he did things in? With two other things I had the pleasure of watching die earlier?” It wasn’t that hard to figure out why I’d be burning the thing at the earliest opportunity.

“So? It’s a perfectly good bed. I think it’s even stuffed with real feathers.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that three people I hate fucked on it. The stains must be cleansed! And the only way I’ll accept is through fire!”

“…Fine. Do what you want.” He turned and started headed back the way he came. I had won! Now I just needed kerosene. “There’s food out here. You haven’t eaten in three days.” Kerosene could wait, or at least that’s what my stomach was screaming. I ran- “And walk slow! Just because you can’t feel it doesn’t mean every step isn’t tearing the fuck out of your insides.” I calmly trotted up beside him.

“So, what’s left in this shithole?” The pantry had an uncomfortable echo to it even before all this shit. Even if it had only been one person eating for three days, feasting was pretty far off.

“We’re sitting pretty. There was quite a bit of food in those carts. A lot of it was blown to pieces, but there’s more than enough to fill our guts.” Oh yeah, the caravan. I’d completely forgotten why we’d started all this in the first place. “Managed to salvage a few brahmin steaks too. Kid wasn’t too happy about it, but he’ll get over it.” And the kid…forgot about him to.

I swallowed.

“So…he’s here is he?” The chances of this going well were roughly on par with Princess Luna descending from the sky and carrying me off to her moon palace to be her companion and lover for all eternity.

“Of course he is. You think I’m going to leave some foal all alone on a fucking battlefield?” Skinny was not one of us. He had a deal with us, but he made it very clear that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with us beyond that. Course, he’d apparently saved my stupid ass so maybe I wasn’t one of ‘us’ either.

“No, I guess not.” Good guys always had to make everything difficult. “He’s not going to be pleased to see me.”

“He doesn’t have any reason to be.” I could have mentioned that I saved that brat’s life. I could have, but it would hardly earn me any points and I was already in the negative. If the conversation continued, it would just get worse and worse. Both of us knew this, but it wasn’t like we had anything else to talk about.

Oh wait, I had a PipBuck now.

“So how the hell did you get this thing off anyway?” I still had that compass up. Kind of weird really. Still, it was something I’d have to get used to. Along with the slight glow and the extra weight. Worth it though. Hopefully. “Everyone else had to hack off the leg. Still took them a couple weeks of fiddling with the locks…”

“Yeah, well I’m over two hundred years old. I was around when some egghead first came up with the idea for them. Should have seen the advertisements.” I think he actually cracked a smile there. Couldn’t blame him. You could still find some legible posters here and there. Some of the corniest shit I’ve ever seen. “Anyway, you learn this and that over time and it’s just something I picked up somewhere.”

We stepped out into the main room. It looked exactly as it did three days ago. Minus most of the vicious raiders. We started heading for the coffee shop turned pantry. Come to think of it, that used to have some nice ads. There was this one with a couple of mares and DAMN. Too bad someone stole it. The jerk. I hope radroaches chewed his cock off.

“I’m surprised you gave it to me. These little wonder-gadgets are pretty hard to get ahold of.” Never learned how Charcoal got one. Then again, who cared? I had it now. Nothing else mattered.

“I don’t trust them. Tendency to cause trouble. Would have given it to the kid but he’d just try to break it. Still, didn’t feel right just leaving it there, so…here you go.”

“Gee thanks. I’ll treasure it always.”

“Of course you will. You have no idea how to get it off.”

“True.” Couldn’t hop across the counter this time. Not without tearing my ribcage in half. So I had to go the boring way with Skinny. How long did it take shotgun wounds to heal anyway? I was asleep three days. That should have taken care of most of it, right?

“So, you in the mood for anything in particular?” The corpse hadn’t lied. The shop was overflowing with boxes and cans. I hadn’t seen that many pre-war beans since that bunker with the ghoul that wouldn’t shut up about how ‘THE STRIPES ‘RE COMIN TAH TAKE MAH GUNS!’ What a loudmouth he was. Had some good rifles though.

“I’d eat the grass outside if there was any.” Or if it wasn’t all the color of shit that’s been out in the sun too long. Which made no sense since they never got any sun to begin with. Which also calls into question how I knew what shit looked like when it got a lot of sun, but this comparison is starting to get away from me.

“I got something that tastes about the same.” He tossed me a can of cram. If it was anything like the last hundred cans of cram I’d had, his description was spot on. It was followed up with a bottle of water.

“Wow. I feel like a king.” I popped the top of the can and started shoveling the mush inside down my food hole. Yep. That was the taste of shit-grass alright.

“Isn’t that your title now?” He leaned against the wall opposite me, digging in his saddlebag again. “You’re the last Asher so you must be the king.”

“Yeah. I guess I am.” The can was discarded, it’s contents finished in twenty seconds flat. Then I stood. This was an official proclamation after all. Couldn’t make those sitting down. “I, Matchstick, Ninth Ash King of the Wastes, hereby relinquish my title and all of the duties and assets accompanying it, save for the PipBuck which is my crown for it is attached to my leg and a bitch to get off. So says the Maker of Cinders and may any who would challenge him be burnt by the fires of Tartarus.” With that out of the way, I sat down and got to work on the water.

“Can’t say I was expecting that.” My eyes lit up when I saw what was in those saddlebags. A pack of premium Lucky Strike smokes.

“Trust me, the title’s more trouble than it’s worth. Every single Ash King before me has met a bad end and only one was worth a damn. Not saying anything about the Queens.” I chugged the whole bottle even faster than I engulfed the cram. My PipBuck made a clicking sound. A little note appeared saying I had gained +3 Rads. Neat. “Mind sharing?”

“What, these?” He pulled one from the box and lit it with a spark from his horn. Lucky, pointy bastards. Going around with lighters attached to their foreheads. “They’ll give you cancer.”

“You’re having one.”

“And there’s no part of me that isn’t overflowing with cancer.” He took a long drag and blew the smoke out in a ring (away from me I might add).

“Whatever. Jerk.” I suppose I couldn’t really complain. It’s not like I got them enough to build up a dependence. Still, smoking and pyromania go hoof in hoof. There was a certain look I had to maintain. It wasn’t all about arson you know.

“I’m sorry, who saved who’s life not three days ago?” If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he actually looked pissed off. But who could tell with that face?

“I saved a foal’s life. That’s worth more points.” Previous twenty-seven years of debt notwithstanding.

“Points?” He actually stood up this time. Managed to last seven minutes without hitting a landmine. Beat my last record with Skinny by six. “There’s no points! This is life! There’s no arbitrary number saying how much good karma you’ve built up! That would be fucking stupid! Not even zebras are that black and white!”

“You can bitch about it till the sun explodes. I still got more points.”

“Oh please. If anything, you have negative points.”

“And you don’t?” He looked like he had another comeback, but it died somewhere near his lungs. Guys like that always had something they didn’t want to think about. Good way to shut them down. “Knew it. Talk all you want old colt. You’re just a-”

“Hey!” Suddenly he was there, standing right next to me in the doorway. The little unicorn with the green eyes. They seemed especially bright from the flames of hate burning in them as he stared at me.

I didn’t say anything. It was kind of a shock to see him really. Not too long ago I had saved his life. Then he turned right around and saved mine. If circumstances were different, the two of us might have cracked smiles and laughed about it.

As circumstances were, he said this:

“We should have shot him!”

For a moment, neither of us could really think of anything to say in response. Wouldn’t have been surprised if we blinked in unison.

“Well that was fucking blunt.” So much for everyone wanting to kill me being dead. Though I guess that wasn’t truly possible. Labels had a tendency to stay stuck forever and cause all sorts of problems. My problems usually involved bullets. “Is that how you thank everyone or just me?”

“THANK YOU?” I set him off, now his little head was going to explode. “HOW ‘BOUT I-”

“Don’t.” Skinny got between us quicker than I could believe. For a stallion whose muscles had started to rot, he was pretty spry. “Don’t start fighting now. There’s no point.”

“No point?” I, as a raider, have seen many death glares in my life. I have seen them from both sides and all angles. From people in all different walks of life. I even spent time perfecting my own. One to sling at people who were about to become messes. In other words, I’ve seen a lot of angry people. I still maintain that colt had one of the scariest faces I’d ever seen. “HE-”

“Saved your life. And you saved his.” Skinny never missed a beat. Ever. “Both of you are all paid up. It’s already over. Deal with it.”

The kid looked between the two of us. There was a fifty-fifty chance his hooves were going to be at my throat in an instant. More than fifty actually. I would have been surprised if anything else happened.

I was very surprised.

“Okay.” His voice was flat and tight. There was a lot crowding behind it and I didn’t want to be there when the barricade fell. The colt turned and stormed off without another word.

“This is going to be a problem later, isn’t it?” At least he was open about wanting to kill me. An eight year old might not seem like much of a threat, but after all the assassination attempts I’d seen, been targeted by, or been a part of, I’d learned to take this stuff seriously. Good thing I was a light sleeper. Sort of.

“No. It won’t.” He returned to his previous place and lit up ANOTHER cigarette. Now he was just taunting me! “There’s a town three days from here. Both of us will be gone by morning.”

“Huh.” I moved a little closer and sat down, hoping to get a whiff of that sweet, sweet poison he was breathing. “So that’s it then? Just fix me up and waltz off without so much as leaving a bill?”

“Oh, there’s a bill.” Should have kept my mouth shut.

“Dare I ask what it is?” What did I have that a two hundred year old skinless wastelander could possibly want? My gun was a joke. My armor probably had a hole in it large enough to fit my head through. Only thing left was the PipBuck. “It’s not sex stuff is it?”

“No,” he said a little more forcefully than was necessary. “Honestly…one of the carts was still salvageable. Kind of. It moves.” Salvable as firewood maybe.

“I don’t own the carts. Take them.” The kid probably owned the carts through his parents, but then again he was a foal with no gun so property laws were stacked against him.

“The cart isn’t the point.” Carts were never the point. It was the cargo people lived, bled, and died for. I knew what he wanted to carry. There wasn’t much else here. Only one real question.

“How much?”

He didn’t bat an eye.

“Everything. Food, ammunition, weapons, scrap, as much as it will carry. Worth a lot to the right buyers.” He wasn’t even going to pretend he needed it. Just sell the lot for caps and be done with it. Never mind that most of the weapons here had nothing to do with that caravan or the fact that he was just as much at fault for its destruction as I was.

“Oh I see your game now!” I wasn’t just going to sit down and get robbed. So I stood up and advanced on him. Words carried more weight from striking distance. “Play the good doctor rewarding an act of kindness then take everything he’s worth when the healing’s done! Didn’t know that syringe was full of snake oil!”

“I’m not taking everything. There’s another town a week to the north. You’ll get enough to reach it. And a better rifle. An automatic from the war.” A week of food and a gun that stopped shooting straight a hundred years ago. How fucking generous. “I already fit it to your saddle. The rest you can consider payment.”

“I’m a fucking Raider! I don’t pay for anything!” Now I knew how the kid felt. I was right in front of him, very little keeping me from merging my hoof with his windpipe. All it would take was one little lunge…

“YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS!” Suddenly we were eye to eye. He was ready to fight. Had been the whole time. And I wasn’t sure I could beat him. Even with the Med-X it was harder to move than I’d like. And how many whacks would it take to re-break a rib? How likely was it to puncture a lung?

And there was something else. A low hum. He was using magic. Using it to shift something in his saddlebag. Something that was definitely not more smokes.

Of course he was packing. He’d be stupid not to.

“Fine.” I backed off. No point in angering him further. Not now, after I’d just taken so much lead. And something told me the ghoul wouldn’t gloat before taking the kill shot. “If you’re still here when I wake up I’m blowing your fucking head off.”

“Don’t worry about it.” His bag shifted again. Out of the fire for now, though his eyes made it very clear the flames hadn’t gone out. They probably never would.

I backed out of the shop. Hopefully the brat hadn’t taken up stock in my room. A pissing match wouldn’t help anything. Not when I was unarmed and my ‘savior’ was more than biased against me. If it comes right down to it, who's getting shot? The foal or the Raider?

Not a hard guess.

Still, I’d won. All the others were dead, I had my mother’s crown, anonymity, an assault rifle, and a week’s worth of food.

I suppose I could do a lot worse.

PipBuck acquired!

(Former) Ash King (Trait): Whether you’ve relinquished it or not, you’ve inherited a cursed title. Anything that creates ash (explosives, MEW, etc.) gets a +5 to skill and a bonus 5% critical chance. Regicide, however, is a big threat as your enemies’ criticals do double damage.