Fallout Equestria: A Hole In The Sky

Chapter one: Cold

The Fear in my brother’s eyes, is what sustains me.

--

Cold.

In Stable 2 it was always a nice 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and I had never experienced a wasteland winter. Sure the wasteland had some cold nights, and the rain was like ice water, but that was nothing like what I felt now.

I awoke on the cold ground, there was no wind, and it was very dark. At first I though I had sent my self to a land with no sun, then my eyes adjusted to reveal the root cellar I was laying in, the dragon fire portal behind me. I began to panic; where were my friends? “Calamity! Velvet! Xenith!”

I felt warm, strong legs wrap around me. “Wow, easy Littlepip, I recon you’re a little spooked.” Calamity, I wasn’t all-alone, my heart began to beat at a more normal speed again.

After releasing a sigh of relief. “What happened, how long was I out for? Why did I fall unconscious?” I asked, knowing Velvet would probably have an answer.

Right on cue her voice floated over to my ears. “Well now, it would appear that three portal transports, in a single day put a little more strain on your body. I recommend some rest.” Well I never really followed her advice before, and I felt fine, better actually, maybe some non cryo-sleep is what I needed. “More worrying is that some spider thing bit you while you were passed out, Xenith killed it before it could inject you with much venom.” She said gesturing to a splatter on the ground, of what was once a four-legged spider thing, nasty.

I got up and examined the cellar; it reminded me an awful lot of the cellar the entrance to stable 2 is located in. There was a difference however, I looked like any farming equipment that may have been there, had been replaced with crates of necessities; food, blankets, matches, and cloths, which were in four separate sizes, implying a family of sorts.

Next I examined a map that was set out on a table, ‘United States of America’ it was called. It was subdivided into 50 different sections, with a place called ‘Canada’ occupying a large portion of the north. A large amount of southern section was outlined in red, and much of the map scribbled over in grey. In one of the scribbled over parts, one called ‘Alabama’, which was practically cut in half by the red line, had a single tack in it. The map looked a war map. On the bottom it was scribbled “Tact = you” which was helpful. I pocketed the map and continued snooping.

Beneath it in one of the crates, was a stack of newsprint, with scribbling on it. This was useful, so I could learn how this war started, and then I may learn how to end it. First off was a report titled “America Strengthens Isolation”, the article was about how president Noah Grace had installed some new policies to further isolate the USA from the world, more interesting was the note saying “Grace is hiding something”. The next news headline was “12,000 US Rangers deployed to Alaska, Brutally Slaughtered” the headline summed it up nicely, 12,000 soldier had been dispatched to Alaska to quell an uprising, and they all died when their ship was bombed. The writing simply said “Bullshit!”. The next article was titled “Biological breakout in New York”, apparently New York was closed of due to a disease. The writing however said “Since when does a disease cause mutation, and LASERS!?” that is strange. The final one simply read, “Attempted president assassin caught” it was on how a ‘Susan Hale’ had tried to assassinate president Grace. From what I could make out of the writing, Susan’s brother was one of the army rangers sent to Alaska, and that she must have found out something. To sum it up, I was in the cellar of some paranoid pony, or rather person. I took note of how the pictures in the news presented bipedal beings, with, claw things.

I finished scanning the cellar, and my gaze fell upon a rack of weapons. This was no mere paranoid person, this guy was preparing for war, which was completely justified in this case i guess.

One of the weapons caught my eye, I had lost my sniper rifle and zebra rifle during the enclave invasion, and here before me was a high quality, wood finished, beautiful sniper rifle. I telekinetically brought it over, the grip was thick, and rounded, obviously meant for those claw things rather than a mouth. The other off thing was the technology; it was a bullet gun, yet on the side of the scope there was a spark pack like thing. I looked it over a bit more until I found it’s class; the L-23 Fareye, an good name considering that it was a sniper rifle. “Hey Calamity! I just found a rifle that’s almost as nice as yours!” I called over, to which he only snickered. Then I noticed Velvet didn’t have her combat shotgun, dam it why didn’t she bring it here! “Velvet, you need a gun weather you like it or not.” I said as I tossed an odd combination of a double barrel shot gun, with a pump action.

“Littlepip, I though we were trying for diplomacy, and I told you to rest!” Same old Velvet. This would take some persuasion.

“This is an active war zone, priority one is survival, besides they might be a race that admires combat.” I responded, no need for mintals there.  She grumbled something about reverse-progress, and took up her new shotgun.

“Calamity, these shotgun shells are much larger than the ones for my combat shotgun, why is that, and will they work the same?” Velvet had visibly recoiled at the shear size of the shell. What would need that to be killed?

“Well that first part is easy, that’s a 12 gauge shotgun rather than a 20 gauge, the second part is a little tricky, but I’ll guess that it should work fine.” Calamity summed up with his near infinite knowledge of all things that shoot.

The last thing I noticed of interest was an audio recording. I decided that since I couldn’t count on a safe period any time soon, I might as well listen to it now. I popped in my ear bloom, sat down and loaded it of to my Pip Buck’s cassette player, that was a gift from Homage, and it hooked up where a stealth buck or transmitter would go.

A voice that had a thick Enclave like accent flowed out of the ear bloom. “Well, the enemy has finally reared it’s ugly head in an attack that the government can’t just cover up. We lost the entire west coast, the only safe area it behind the Liberty Defense Perimeter. I’m well with in the perimeter, so I guess I had an extra year or so before they break through. They will break through, I heard from a friend that the ‘Chimera’ or what ever they are called swat sabers out of the sky like they’re insects. For this reason, I have been teaching the wife and kids how to shoot, hell I’m teaching old Jonas to, I guess he’s been helpful enough on the farm to live. Never thought I would trust one of ‘them’ with a gun. I’m recording this for future generations to learn about this nations final months.” (Author’s insert: I do not condone, or support racism in any way, this is the 50’s in the Deep South, so just trying to be accurate with the attitude of the time that’s all.) Well that was a little too much like some recordings from the wasteland for my comfort.

I got up, it was time to make a difference. “Ok let’s get going, according to the map we’re with in the secure perimeter, so there shouldn’t be much to worry about.” I put the sniper on my back, where it felt familiar, and drew Little Macintosh. As I walked up the stairs to the exit of the cellar, I noticed something; fleshy tentacles suck to the walls. My mind raced, tentacles mean those freaks from Old Olniegh, the bio outbreak in that state was taint, I threw open the cellar door expecting to see those tentacle horrors. What I found was worse.

--

I was staring up at the sky, a sky with near complete cloud cover. Much too similar for my tastes.

More specifically we were in the burnt, skeletal remains of a barn. From what still stood, it resembled the Sweet Apple Akers barn. The fact that it was still standing told me that, by rough estimation, the fire had only happened roughly a year ago. Then I looked at the area around me.

“Littlepip? Are you sure that the world hasn’t ended yet?” Calamity asked, he to had noticed that the entire countryside was burnt.

“I’m not getting radiation so it must not have ended yet.” That’s if these mega spell bomb things that this world uses have radiation.

“Littlepip come and see this.” Velvet called, her voice sounding pained.

“Velvet what’s wrong?” Calamity called and in a storm of feathers was at her side. I rushed over and took a look.

In side of a burnt up farm house lay 4 skeletons huddled up in a corner, and a fifth with a chard shotgun standing just a little of to the side. My slightly over active mind began making a tale, I envisioned an attack, Jonas the hired help, taking up the gun so the man from the recording could spend his last moments with his family. The wasteland had hardened me, but thinking of how families died would always bother me.

“Velvet, we’re going to stop this. We have to.” The combination of Calamity holding her, and my words seemed to do the trick.

She stood up, and put on a strong face. “Alright let’s go.”

I began checking my Pipbuck’s radio, I knew they had radio here; it’s how we knew there was a war in the first place. Each channel I tried was dead, until I switched to one that crackled with static, and had dreadful quality. Homage would not be impressed with it at all. “This here is the northern Oklahoma hunting force, and we would like to warn any settlements in the state that we saw a large movement of Chimeran forces moving in the direction of Haven. Residents of Haven, I would recommend you lay low for this one, however, if you know you pissed of the chimera, or revealed your selves, then prepare for the fight of your lives. We will try to pick off some stragglers, but you’ll have to deal with the main force.” The next report was about some missing child or something. I turned my pip buck off, since it was rather uninteresting. The first report told me something, there was still fighting, and the Liberty Defense Perimeter had definitely been breached.

This was problematic, judging by the map, the scale on the map, and the distance between Oklahoma and Alabama, we wouldn’t have to worry about walking into the Haven firefight, but we were close enough, that there could be a different battle nearby.

We walked on, my eyes scanning the area, not everything was burnt, a little farther up the road we traveled on there was a hill with a bit of a forest on it, but in the immediate area there was nothing but ash, dirt, and an alarming amount of bullet cases, everywhere. Up ahead and a little off the road, was a massive cone like object that looked like it had fallen from the sky.

I approached cautiously, it was like nothing I had seen before, and with a life in a stable, 2 months outside, and this being another world, didn’t say much. “Hey Calamity, you think this could have started the fires.”

My rust coloured friend flew around it. “ Nope, unless it’s an air fuel release system, because I don’t see any ruptures from exploding, just a few slats that opened.” Then he when on murmuring something about the applications of an air fuel bomb of this size.

I looked it over, the metal was edgy and jagged, it had what kind of looked like 4 bloat sprite wings on it’s top. I approached it; it didn’t look at all like what the locals had so I assumed it was of ‘Chimeran’ origin. As I stared at it, I felt compelled to touch it, similarly to how I felt compelled to read the black book, I made the connection to late as my hoof rested against the metal.

My vision exploded, through the gold haze I could make out a creature, it had six glowing gold eyes, and let out a mighty roar. When I snapped out of it I stumbled backwards and desperately crawled away from the object. “No, No, No, No, No, No!” That caught my companions’ attentions.

“Littlepip, are you scared of it?” Hmm was I afraid of the giant metal spire that just gave me some form of vision, better question: How the fuck Xenith though just appearing in front of me like always would help I don’t know. I simply made me practically jump and hover in the air like Pinky Pie.

“Celestia’s explosive ovaries! What the fucking hell Xenith!” Well not my best curse, but cryo has a tendency to mild one’s mind.

All my companions were giving me very concerned looks now. “It’s ok, I’m fine, the metal was just cold, nothing is wrong, let’s keep going.” I didn’t like lying to my friends, but I knew that seeing things is always bad, and I don’t want my friends worrying about me. I can’t have them worry about me, not when an entire planet is at stake. I’ll tell them if it becomes to much.

“Littlepip, are you sure, because that wasn’t like you.” Well when Calamity asks questions, he sure goes right for the throat.

Putting on my best ‘I’m not insane’ face I turned to him. “I’m fine, I guess my pipleg doesn’t like cold metal.” That raised a question in my mind, why was it so cold, it could be winter, but the trees way over there hadn’t lost their leaves yet, and this was a farming area, so it shouldn’t be this cold.

--

We walked on; we passed more ash, more burnt farmhouses, and more skeletons. There were two distinct types of skeletons, the ones that belonged to the creatures depicted in the newspaper, and a second, a more beastly and animalistic kind, that to my silenced horror, I noticed had 6 eye sockets. With a sickening shudder I kept moving.

Off in one of the burnt fields was a crumpled mess of steel. We left the road to see what it was, Velvet was using this time to let Pirelight do some hunting, Calamity had decided to get an aerial view of the area, and Xenith was starting a fire. This left me alone to observe the wreck. It was a tube like craft, made of metal, wit an opening at the front, leading to some sort of crumpled turbine. It had a set of wings by the front, which had missile pods on their undersides, and a set of wings at the rear, as well as a fish like vertical wing. On the wings was the acronym USAF, I though of what that could mean, USA was United States of America, so the F was; Flier, Fire, Fencer, Fighter, that made sense, United States of America Fighter! Then it popped in to my head and just felt right, United States Air Force. How did I know that?

On the main structure, there was the words F-86 Sabre. That seemed like a model name. Beside that was a symbol, a red and white band, with a blue circle baring a white star.

The opening to the cockpit was a shattered glass bubble, inside was a skeleton, one of the local types. Another word came to mind: Man. I didn’t know how I though it up, or what it would have even meant. I shook my head then continued looking. There where control panels, and leavers everywhere. I looked over the body, and I noticed something in the ashes. A magnum, it was black, with a charred wooden handle, and a red button, again with the random technology. I found some bullets for it and looked them over, there was something different about them compared to a normal round. I pocketed the gun and it’s ammo, it was no little Macintosh, but I wanted to know what the button did.

I backed out of the machine, and found my self looking at the nose of the craft again, by the main opening, were 4 smaller holes, with panels, I telekinetically opened the panels, and my jaw hit the ground. Luna clop me with her wings, 4 mini guns?! With two rocket pods and 4 mini guns I wondered, what could take one of these down? Then I remembered the recording.

“I heard from a friend that the ‘Chimera’ or what ever they are called swat sabers out of the sky like they’re insects.” Once again my vision was tinted gold. I was a strange clawed bipedal being, I watched as 3 Sabres streaked across the sky, and then in rapid succession were shot down by the towering quad legged war machine on the horizon, and it was flanked by two more metal behemoths. I snapped back to reality, maybe ‘too much for me to handle' was coming sooner than expected.

I needed to take my mind off it. I approached my friends. “Littlepip, what is that thing?” Velvet asked as she watched Pirelight eat a large bug thing, which sent a shot of gold through my vision when I first looked at it. “You’re a good hunter, so majestic and proud.” She cooed in her melodic voice.

“I don’t like where this is going, that thing over there is called a Sabre, it has 4 mini guns and 2 rocket pods, and yet according to an audio log I found, they aren’t capable of stacking up at all against what they were fighting.” Velvet took her eyes off Pirelight for the first time since the start of the conversation, and Xenith who had been doing some weird zebra stretch/meditation that involved her standing on one hoof, fell over at those words.

Velvet quickly regained her composure. “Well good thing we’re here to make peace not fight. With any luck this war will end before the month is up.”

With a rustle of feathers Calamity landed by us. “I’m not so sure, while I was up there, I saw a tower stretching to the sky, and giving what happened to our world after the towers were built, we’re looking at another 200 years of turmoil.” Wow, so I wasn’t the only one drawing parallels to our world.

I pulled out my sniper rifle, and aimed down it’s scope, which was not chipped or scuffed mind you. On the road, just at the foot of the hill the setting sun glinted off the wreckage of a convoy. “I see a convoy up a head, maybe there will be some clues there.” My companions simply shrugged and moved on with me.

--

The walk to the convoy had been uneventful, those weird bug things, occasionally tried attacking us, but it turns out they are pretty much this world’s radroach, and they really didn’t like our resident balefire phoenix’s fire. I looked behind us, the trail of dead bug things was being picked over by some black birds.

I eventually got bored of walking, and tried the radio again. Once again I was greeted by a crackle of static. “This is the Farmer’s Union survivalists, we have enjoyed having the town of Haven as out peaceful neighbors for some time now, and would like to report on the situation. Well we would like to announce, that the actual town of Haven has been wiped out, but the townsfolk were successful in evacuating most of the population, and they did quite a toll on the Chimera with, relatively speaking of course, low casualties. Good job Havenites, I would ultimately chalk that up to a win!” Good to know someone was successful today.

We reached the convoy near dusk. At the front was some sort of machine, with four wheels, and a machine gun mounted on the roof. Next was a six-wheeled vehicle, which had a trailer, on that trailer, was a fucking tank! Finally bringing up the rear, was a vehicle, that looked a lot like the farming vehicle, the only difference, was that it had a mini gun mounted on the roof, and the white star that symbolized the American military. I went around back.

In the back, we found many things. Calamity was scooping up all types of ammo, Velvet was looking over a white metal box with a red cross on it, that contained three canisters of a strange glowing green fluid and a strange gun thing, and Xenith was staring horrified at a picture of some soldier’s kid, with her pet rabbit. I however, had for all intensive purposes, hit the jackpot, in my hooves, was a weapon labled: Marksman 3 round burst ion burst rifle. My weapon set was complete.

Then I looked at the skeleton I had taken it from, in it’s arms was a metal box, I pulled it over and opened it. Inside were an audio recording, and an acrostic poem.

Human:

Humorous

Underdog

Mighty

All caring

Not going down with out a fight!

I popped in the recording, and let it play. “The Chimera went all out today, they’re attacking the LDP with their entire fleet, that means if we win this, then we win the war. However, if the LDP is breached in even one place it’s open season on all 80 million people within. We have been dispatched to support one of the towers dividing Alabama, our job is critical, and we can’t fail. Our motto here is hope for the best prepare for the worst, and I must say I never really knew what that meant, but this is the first time I’ve felt like we can win!” I looked at the skeleton; the war was lost before this poor sap could even fight.

== (i will use these to signal a change in perspective)

While I did that:

Down the road, 2 Chimeran drop ships flew forward with purpose. One stopped and hovered at the farm an unauthorized rift had opened at. It released it’s load of a squad of Hybrids lead by a Steelhead, while the second continued down the road to search for the travellers.

==

(what i listen to while writing this part)

Youtube Video

I removed my ear bloom, and heard the noise of engines, and I rushed out of the vehicle to see a flying monstrosity that would have given a skytank a run for it’s money. I stared wide-eyed as it approached, hovered, and opened fire on us.

Doors opened up and from a blinding gold light the six-eyed monsters emerged. I raised Little Macintosh and fired, hitting one square in the chest, it didn’t seem to mind much. Then it returned fire in a way I didn’t expect, a single beam of light connected me to the barrel of it’s weapon, It didn’t hurt at all which was extremely odd. The other creatures fired, forcing my companions and I behind cover, the beam bent and followed me. Ok so it was good for not loosing your target in a fight. I discovered it's true purpose when it fired, the energy rounds curved around my cover, following the beam, and right in to me.

I screamed as the rounds tore through me. I was seeing red, and flashes of gold, as they struck. I looked to my friends, they looked shocked, completely stunned that these creatures were curving energy bullets!

There was a pause in the fire, the beam disappeared, and there was the sound of reloading. I tried to levitate Little Macintosh out of cover to blind fire, but I found myself too pained to focus.

There was the sound of multiple explosions, a sniper rifle, some burst fire, carbine fire, and finally, a incendensary grenade. Just like that the drop ship was out, and the Chimera scattered or killed. Calamity scooped me up and we made a mad dash for the hill the fire support had come from. As we ran there was continued assault rifle fire, as well as a strange beam being fired.

We reached the forest, the ‘humans’ I guess, should be right around this area, but in these low light conditions, there was no one. “Hey thanks for helping us, we would like to meet you.” Calamity was answered by a sudden rush of movement and sound.

Two figures de-cloaked, and another two, wearing some sort of leafy camouflage sprung out of hiding, weapons bared. They wore gas masks, and h moved like a highly trained military kill team. One new word came to mind: Specter.

--

Trophy Unlocked: Back in the Saddle!

Requirements: shoot, explore, and discover.

Author’s notes:

I promised longer chapters, and belive you me, they will just get longer.

Little pip is turning!

What bit Little Pip:

http://resistance.wikia.com/wiki/Spinner

Thanks to regolt for translating that quote for me.

Yes I actually listened to the inception theme for that end fight.

Dear: Equestria

You are all doomed.