Fallout Equestria: Of Slaves and Sacrifice

Chapter 1: Eastern Wasteland

“Even when you feel all alone and you feel that all hope is lost, remember that you are not alone…”

“Yeah right… and there aren’t clouds in the sky…”

Eastern Equestria.

Far beyond the mountain chain that holds what used to be Canterlot, across an extremely irradiated desert known as the Forbidden Zone, lies Eastern Equestria.  Some ponies in these parts doubt that anything even exists past the mountain range that’s always in the distance.  I sure hope there is.  Things around here are far from ideal living conditions.  Sure, there are establishments such as Stable City, Saddletown, and the smaller settlement of 3-Hoof, full of civilized, well-guarded ponies that have some sense of decency and direction.  The rest of this place, however… not so much.  You’d better have a good sense of what’s around you and watch your back, or pay someone to do that for you.  There’s plenty of that to go around though.  Equestria is bordered to the north-east by a once small, but proud kingdom of griffons known as Featherfall, so there’s no shortage of feathered mercs out here.  Of course, they’d also kill you as soon as they’d protect you; caps speak louder than words most of the time.

Living here is, well, living.  Going from town to town, hoping you don’t get a bullet in the head or a collar around your neck is enough to remind you that you are definitely alive.  Not to mention all the nasty beasts every place.  Have you ever seen a ghoul?  They’re disgusting at best, a nightmare at worst (most of the time a nightmare).

Wow, I’m getting ahead of myself here aren’t I?  Maybe a sip of this nice refreshing Wild Pegasus will do the trick… mmm, that’s better.  Allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Vanilla Moonlight, a dark-blue unicorn stallion with a medium length white-silver mane and tail, and a cutie-mark that looks like 3 wavy light-blue lines interspersed with small white dots.

All unicorns have some kind of special type of magic that they can use besides basic levitation.  As I grew older, I found that I had a special connection to one of our most basic needs: Water.  Most unicorn ponies can just pick up water with their levitation sure, but I had the ability to move it around me freely, as fast or slow as I wanted.  I could also change the shape of the water to whatever I wanted or needed, like a big hammer to knock down walls, a key to open doors, or a bridge to get over a river or crevice with.  Eventually I discovered I also had the ability to change the form of water into one of its other types: ice.  Once I discovered this ability, I realized I could be a threat out here in the wasteland.  Any nearby puddle or bottle of water could be changed into multiple spears of ice in just a few seconds.  Of course, this ability caused considerable strain on my magic and body, so I can't just use it freely.  However, it tends to be very convenient when you don’t have any weapons to defend yourself with.

During my youth, I had traveled the wastes with my mother, who was also a unicorn, a grey mare with long purple mane and tail and a limp in her step.  She had injured her left hind leg in an accident when I was little, so I don’t really remember how it happened, but she said not to worry and that she was still alive and well, ready to defend me with her life.  That was just the way she was.  Even in the harshest of times. I was always first when it came to everything.  Food, water, a weapon to defend myself, even toys and other forms of entertainment.  Always about me…

My mother said I was so cute when I was born and that I looked just like my father.  I didn’t have anything to compare that to though, because I never met him and she never said anything about him; it was like taboo to her, so I just ignored that question.  In the Wasteland, you get what you can take, and nothing more.  Try to force that, and you’ll end up dead, just like her…

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I am a wanderer.  There isn’t really any safe place anywhere; even the cities have a short life expectancy.  I guess I learned that from my mother too.  Always try to move, never stay in the same place two nights, keep to the shadows, etc.  But when you are starving, thirsty, desperate for even the smallest of meals or basic clean water, sometimes you have to ignore those rules.  Unfortunately, this was her downfall.  That, and an unending love for me.

It was just another grey evening in a small town ruins we called our fallback spot.  Just a couple small buildings which were perhaps apartments before the war were still standing, with most of the rest of the towns’ houses and other buildings destroyed or stripped clean.  We had taken shelter from the rain that night in the small alleyway between the apartments, building a fire out of garbage and small branches my mother had told me to collect.  We had thought it was safe, but fate has a way of striking when you least expect it.  The smell of smoke and the dim light in the alleyway had attracted some unwanted guests that night: raiders.

I was just about asleep when I heard a cry and a whisper from my mother, “Wake up Vanilla!  Come; hide with me behind that crumbled wall.”

I woke up immediately and followed her.  I had learned to keep quiet and just trust her when it came to things like this.  She knew what she was doing.  Soon enough, six disgusting, dirty raiders came through the north alleyway and made their way to the fire.

“Somepownays still here!  They can’t ’ave gotten far!  Search this place up and down, you retards! I’m getting hungray!” said one of the raiders, whom I assumed was the leader.

He and one of the other raiders, earth ponies, were carrying shotguns on their backs, a unicorn had an automatic pistol, and the other three, who were also earth ponies, had what looked like wood planks with nails in them.  Even with mine and my mother’s magic, we couldn’t hope to beat them in a fight.  The raiders began to spread out all along the alleyway, combing up and down trying to find us.  For a few minutes we sat there, still as statues, behind the crumbled wall of the eastern building.  Eventually the shouts and profanity stopped and we had thought they were gone, so mother decided to take a look around the wall.  She was met with the dirty face of a mottled tan buck with a nail board in his teeth.  “Oh no…”

At once the raider let out a squeal of delight, signaling the others and attacking my mother with a swing of his weapon.  At that moment, mother took the nail board in her magic and away from the raiders mouth, then swung as hard as she could, cracking the skull of the pony before her.  The body went limp and fell to the ground as she yelled out “RUN!”  We picked up our saddlebags and dashed out from our hiding spot as the raiders closed in around us.

“This way, Vanilla!  Use your magic to put up a wall and cover our escape!” as she nodded to the south entrance.  I focused my magic on a puddle made by the rain and began to form a wall with it all across the alley.  I focused hard again and used my power to turn the water wall into ice almost instantly, as sweat formed on my head.

“Hey!  What the fuck it this shit?!  Break this shit down you retards!  They won’t get away!”  Their leader spat as I heard shotgun fire pepper the wall I had made.  It began to break almost immediately, and I regretted not having the time to put up a bigger, thicker wall, but there was no time for that now.

As we ran towards the exit of the alleyway, two more raiders appeared in front of us, both with what looked like pipes in their mouths as they blocked our exit.

“Get out of the way, damit!”  I yelled as I focused on another puddle nearby and formed a dozen floating ice shards, and ran at them full speed.  The looks on their faces were priceless.  I drove eight of the shards into the left pony, a nasty looking tan mare with a blood spatter as a cutie mark, and she fell to the ground spurting curses and some other noises I couldn’t understand.  The other raider took the chance to charge at my mother, so I turned and tossed the remaining shards at his backside, piercing his hind legs and flank, knocking him to the ground at mothers’ hooves.  She put on a sympathetic smile as she looked at him for a second, and then crushed his skull with the nail board.  At that moment the wall I had made fell, and the whizzing sound of a bullet went past my left ear.

“Yeaaahhh!  We got you now you stupid fucks!”  one of the raiders yelled.  I tried to use the puddle next to me to form a wall around me and my mother, but it was too late…

The sound of shotgun fire filled the cold, late-evening air as I watched my mother fall to the ground, just a second before I formed a wall around the both of us, thicker and stronger than the last time.

“NO!”  I screamed as I ran over to her side, kneeling before her still body.  I picked her up in my hooves and saw that it was worse than I thought; she was bleeding through more than dozen holes in her chest and neck, and the blood was coming out too fast.

“Nonono, oh no!  Stay with me Mom! Hey, hey stay with me! Hold on, you’re going to be okay! Just hold on! I’ve got some bandages in my bags and…”

“Vanilla, stop…” She opened her eyes and looked right at me with tears in her eyes.  “S-Save yourself… don’t waste those bandages on me… you might need them…”

I began to feel the tears form in my eyes as I spoke, “But if I don’t, you’re going to die, Mom!  I can’t let that happen!”

The gun fire and sound of boards hitting the ice got ever louder as the leader screamed at the top of his lungs, “Neeaahhhhaaaaa!  Why don’t you come out and play, little pony?!?!  I broke my other toy, but I still wanna play more!”  The ice wall started to crumble as I tried to keep my mother with me.

“I won’t let you hurt yourself for me, baby…” she said as I felt her body spasm in my hooves.  “I am your mother… now do what I told you… and get… out of here…”

I began to cry as I yelled out, “I won’t let you down mom, I just won’t…”

She interrupted me as she whispered, “Remember what we always… talk about… you take what you can get… and nothing more…”  I watched with a rising fear as she closed her eyes, and spoke with the last of her energy.  “I love you… Vanilla Moonlight… and … nothing more…”

As she said her final words and then went limp in my hooves, the wall fell and the gun fire ceased.  The lead raider approached me and snickered, “Now, my little retard, I’m going to play with you until you break too… hehehahaha!”  The raiders surrounded me in a circle as the leader got closer and closer.  The rain started to get heavier, as if the goddesses themselves were weeping for my loss.  But nothing had gotten through to me, just hate and anger passed through me now.

As I lifted my head and looked straight into the lead raiders’ eyes, still holding my mother in my hooves, I focused my magic on every droplet of rain in the alleyway.  Each rain drop turned into a tiny, sharp needle of ice as a chill came over the area.

“What the fuck is this now?  Some little fucking show to put on before you die?”  The leader sneered.

I continued to look at him with my piercing gaze as a second layer of overglow covered my horn.  “You killed… my mother…”

The leader pointed the shotgun inches from my face.  “Maybe, if you give us everything you have, we might let you have a head start before we kill you, too!”

“You DID take everything I had, you shithead!”  I yelled as I rose to my hooves.  “Now I’m going to take back what you owe me…”  The ice needles I had made began to rotate in the alleyway and slice up everything in the area, the flesh of the raiders included.  “Nothing in the wasteland is free… You owe me for her life, so I’ll take your lives... as PAYMENT!”  I screamed as I filled the alleyway with icy death.

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That was 6 years ago, just about.  After I gave my mother a proper burial, I decided that I would take it upon myself to protect the weak, try to be the good guy, a hero of sorts.  Of course, this only made me a bitter pony, eventually demanding payment up front in the form of caps, booze, and guns in that order.  The reputation that i had wasn't anything special; i was just another merc or gun-for-hire like the rest of the lone wanderers out here.  Drinking didn't set me apart from the rest either.

I took out an almost empty bottle of Wild Pegasus and frowned.  “Aww man, I hate running out of booze.” I said as I walked west down what used to be a major highway of sorts.  As I downed the last of the delicious numbing nectar, I came upon a small shanty village that reminded me of those old western towns they used to build back before the war.  Hey!  Yes, I’m a drunk wanderer with less than optimal survival gear and only one weapon to speak of, but my mother still taught me a few things, like history and simple math.  So back off!  Anyway, this small town consisted of what looked like a dozen or so crude houses and one larger building in the middle.

“Oh, please be a bar, please be a bar.”

As I approached the town, I began to hear gunshots in the distance.  Not uncommon for the wasteland, so normally I don’t pay much attention to it.  This time however, the sound was coming from the other side of the town.  I started to trot a little faster and brought out a pair of binoculars I had found in some old ruins not too long ago, and took a look in the direction of the gunshots.

It looked like the town ponies had gathered on the west side of town and were barricaded behind makeshift metal and dirt walls.  I quickened my pace and ran into town to ask what was wrong.  As I approached the barricade, I realized exactly what was wrong.  The red and black armor or the ponies attacking the town made it all too clear… the Crimson Tide.  The major slave trading “business” in Eastern Equestria, the Crimson Tide was basically an army run by some sadistic ponies up north.  For every 20 ponies out here, one of them is a member.  They say they want to do good for the land and that they need help, so they pick up “volunteers” who become slaves, and run them into the ground until they are useless then shoot them because they are taking up space.  Of all the terrible things you could do to a pony, taking away his freedom is the worst.

I have had run-ins with the Crimson Tide multiple times in the recent past, mostly because they tried to put a collar on me.  Lately they have been stepping up their "recruitment", not just attacking caravaners or the occasional wanderer with a couple members, but instead sending larger groups and attacking small and relatively undefended towns.  At the rate that they are going, they'll have the whole of Eastern Equestria in their hooves in just a couple years.

One of the ponies of the town saw me coming up to them and shouted, “Welcome to Jackknife stranger.  I’d give you the tour but as you can see, we’re under attack by those damn slavers.  You got any combat experience boy?”

I ran up and took a position next to the colt and took out the one weapon i had, a rusty hunting rifle I had procured earlier in the week.  “Sure I do.  This is the wasteland after all.  But I don’t have too much ammo for this shit rifle; don’t suppose you have any rifle ammo, do ya?” I asked as I loaded the rifle with six of the nine bullets I had.

“Of course we do.  Sandy!  Toss me a box of hunter rounds, will ya?”  He shouted at a brown mare with a golden mane and tail standing atop a makeshift guard tower.

“Fresh blood out to help us poor townsfolk huh?  You sure he ain’t just some Tide spy tryin’ to flank us from behind?”  The mare gave me a nasty look before turning around and firing her rifle to the west.

“I doubt it,” the colt said.  “The Tide likes to show off what they got, and I ain’t never seen a member not wearing that uniform.  Now give me those damn bullets before we all have collars around our necks!”  The mare, Sandy, just gave me another bad look before she kicked a box off the tower and to my hooves.

“All right, how many Crimson are out there?”  I asked the silver colt as I levitated the rifle and aimed down onto the highway.

“I think a dozen or so.  There were more but we took care of ‘em.  But we’re running out of hooves to shoot them with.  We already lost Hiccup and Barshine.  Lefty and Vector are wounded.  It’s just Sandy, Blackberry, and I, plus you.”

I assumed that Barshine was the bartender, and the words just fell out of my mouth before i could think, “Oh no, the bartenders dead?”  Wow Vanilla, of all the bad things to say…  The colt just gave me an irritated look before pulling out a shiny apple-looking thing out of one of the boxes.  A grenade.

He gave it to me and said, “You got magic!  Use it to throw that thing as close to those slavers as possible!”  I took the explosive ball of fun and pulled the pin.  As I tossed it out towards the slavers, I heard the screams of “Get down!” and “Look out!”  The explosion blasted apart the ground in front of one of the slavers and both of his front legs were blown off.  A lucky piece of shrapnel whizzed through the air and caught another slaver in the neck, knocking him to the ground and making him bleed out.  Two down, ten to go.

I heard the twin crack of a battle saddle and saw two more slavers go down.  I turned to see a larger black stallion with a green mane and tail, whom I could only assume was Blackberry.

He gave me a smile and said, “Howdy there stranger!  Playin’ target practice with us today?”

I gave him a smile back and said, “Sure, what’s your high score?”

Blackberry just laughed, “My record?  Seven, and I already got five today!  I’m gonna beat it, just three more kills to go.”  The silver colt just glared at the large black stallion, and Blackberry suddenly got serious.  This colt must be like the sheriff or something.  Then I felt the intense stinging sensation in my right front leg and knew that I had been shot.

“Fuck damit that hurts!”  I yelled as I took aim down my rifle’s sights and fired at the closest Crimson I saw.  I fired 3 shots at my target; the first two just grazed off the armor the pony was wearing, but the third shot hit him right between the teeth.  The pain in my leg got worse as I shifted positions, then I aimed again at the closest red and black armor that was still standing.  I saw my target, but before I could fire this one dropped.  I looked over at Sandy and she just smirked before taking another shot and hitting one of the slavers in the shoulder.  She only took two shots and two ponies were down.  I wish I was that good.

As I looked down my sights, I saw one of the unicorn slavers take out a long tube-like weapon and lift it over his head.  “Shit!  A rocket launcher!  Everypony, get down!”  The silver colt yelled before I heard the sound of it firing.

WHOOOOOSH-----------------------------KABLAAAAMMMM

The rocket hit directly in the middle of the barricade, sending scrap metal and dirt everywhere.  My rifle was knocked out of my magic and tossed a few feet away as i was knocked to the ground.  Blackberry was sent flying back into town, while the silver colt fell to the ground beside me.  “Fuck me, I’ve been hit.”  He said as Sandy fell off the tower with a thud and lay there, moaning.  I reasserted myself and levitated my rifle back to me, took aim down the barrel, and fired.  Or tried to fire.

“My gun is jammed, shit.”  I looked around for anything else useful, and then it hit me.  “Hey, hey silver!  Do you have any water I could borrow?”

He struggled to his hooves, and then looked at me funny.  “T-The names Freeshot.  Why would you want water in a time like this?”

I gave him that I-know-what-I’m-doing look and said, “Just trust me on this one.  I’ve got something to show you.”  He shook his head, then nodded in the direction of the town’s center, and I saw a well standing next to the larger building.  Just what I needed, I thought to myself.

I limped over to the well as fast as I could as the sound of gunfire continued and looked down into the pit.  Sure enough, there was plenty of water, though I’m sure it was irradiated, just like everything else in the wastes.  But radiation didn’t affect my magic the same way it did my body, so I lifted a good sized amount of water out of the well and limped back to the now destroyed barricade.  When I got back I noticed that Blackberry had actually managed to get back on his hooves and run back to the barricade ready to fight again.  What the fuck was he, a Steel Ranger?

As I approached the half destroyed barricade, Freeshot asked me, “What do you plan to do with that?  You know it’s just water, right?”

I gave him a big smile and snickered, “Just watch.”

With the remaining five slavers closing in and Sandy and Freeshot out of the fight, it was time for me, the stranger who didn’t even live in this tiny town, to step up.  I focused on the water and formed it into ten medium length spears, and then I used my special magic to turn them into ice in an instant.  Blackberry just looked at me like I was the single greatest pony he’d ever seen.

“Woah!  That’s fuckin’ cool dude!  How’d you do that?”

I looked over my shoulder and said to him, “I’ll tell you after this, ok?”  I hid behind what was left of the wall and told Blackberry to do the same.

The slavers were foolish enough to just come waltzing into town, not thinking that there might still be ponies able to fight them.

“You got enough collars, right?  Don’t want to leave any potential goods behind.”  I heard one of the Crimson say.

“Yeah yeah, don’t get you tail in a twist Knockoff.  I got plenty.”  I heard one of the others say.  As soon as one of the slavers came around the barricade, I threw two of the spears right in his chest, and he fell, spasming before the other four could react.  I took this moment of opportunity to leap from behind the dirt wall and toss the rest of my spears at them.  Seven found their targets, stabbing three of the slavers and knocking them down.  The last Crimson Tide slaver, a unicorn, tried to levitate out his rifle, but I dropped the spears and focused my own magic on the rifle.  I managed to take it from him with relative ease, as he was still in shock from the surprise I gave him.

As I floated the rifle to me and aimed it at him, he gave me a most terrified look.  I aimed down the sights, and then asked him, “How much are you getting paid to do this, huh?”

He stammered and answered slowly, “I-I-I’m getting p-paid 1,000 caps for this, w-we all are, or were…”

I looked up from the gun to look him right in the eyes. “So, was it worth it?”  Before he could answer I pulled the trigger and turned his head into slush.

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“Thank you for all your help, Vanilla Moonlight.”  Freeshot said as we stood inside the large building in the middle of the town, which was a mish-mash of a hospital, general goods store, sheriff’s office, and yes, a bar.

“Yeah dude, we couldn’t have done it without you.  If you hadn’t come along when you did, we’d all be in dead or worse, slaves.”  Blackberry chimed in.

Sandy was the last to speak.  “The whole town wants to thank you for your efforts, so please take this as a token of our gratitude.”  She tossed me a bag filled with 300 caps, two dozen rounds for my new and recently repaired rifle, some fresh water, and… YES!  A full bottle of Wild Pegasus!

“Well, you are all very welcome.  Tell the doc thanks for patching me up, and make sure to get yourselves ready for another attack.  You never know when something bad will happen.”  I gave them all a big smile as I talked.  “Thanks especially for the booze.  Man I love this stuff.”

“Just go easy on that tonight.  I know you’re going to celebrate your victory and all.”  Freeshot warned.  I knew that!

“I’m always careful.  It’s how I grew up.”  I glanced over at Blackberry, who looked anxious, so I asked him, “Hey Blackberry, what’s up?”

He looked at me all bashfully, then blurted out, “Show me that sweet magic trick again!  It was so awesome!”  I looked at him with a smirk on my face.  He was like a hardened bad-ass on the outside, but a little colt on the inside.  I couldn’t help but laugh at him, and as he got a confused look on his face, I took out one of the bottles of water in the bag Sandy gave me.

“I think I can do it one more time before I go.”  Blackberry lit up like a campfire as I levitated the water out of the bottle, the spun it around me at a high speed.

“Yeah, that’s it!  Awesome!”  He yelled out.  Some of the other ponies that were here to congratulate me had gathered around from the sound of Blackberry’s enthusiasm.  “Oooohhhh, ahhhhhh…”  The ponies were in awe, like they’d never seen a unicorn do tricks like this before.  It felt good; not in a show-off kind of way, but in a way that made me feel like they needed this, even after what I had done for them not two hours ago.  Anything to get their minds off the wasteland just a minutes trot away from this building.  You take what the wasteland has to offer, nothing more.

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As I said my goodbyes and trotted west out of Jackknife, it was beginning to get late; the clouds were a darker grey now.  I guessed it would be a couple hours before it got dark out, so I decided to wait until then to find some shelter for the night.  As I kept going down the highway, I managed to scavenge a couple things.  A couple saddlebags with four bottles of Sparkle-Cola, some bandages, and a canteen half full of irradiated water had caught my attention, more than the skeletons that they were attached to.  Those poor souls…

After about an hour and a half of trotting, I came upon a pretty big hill on the north side of the highway.  It was almost dark and I could see a few small buildings near the top of the hill, so I thought I might go check it out and see if I could find a few things or even a place to rest for the night.  As I made my way up the hill, I could see the faint silhouettes of the houses.  They were mostly destroyed, with a couple of the houses somewhat intact.  When I got within a few meters of the place, I began to hear small rustling in the bushes and shrubs that surrounded the top of the hill and all of the houses.  At first I just thought it was the breeze, but after a minute I could sense that it wasn’t just the wind.  Maybe it was just a few irradiated critters?

Critters it was, although not of the four (or more) legged kind.  Bloatsprites, and lots of them, came out of the bushes and started to shoot those spike things at me.  I managed to run beside one of the houses to take shelter from the little horrors’ attacks.  I wanted to save my ammo and my clean water, so I took out that canteen I had found and floated out all of the water that was in there.  As I began to form the water into small spikes, I heard a shriek from somewhere inside the little town.  I finished forming my weapons and turned around the wall to see a small figure, which looked like a young filly, running for its life from almost a dozen bloatsprites!  I jumped out of my hiding spot and yelled, “Get down!” as I flung the ice spikes in the direction of the nasty creatures.  I heard the distinctive popping sound of dying bloatsprites as four of them dropped to the ground.

I got a closer look at the little figure as it ran by me.  Yes, that was definitely a filly, maybe a colt.  It was wearing a cloak, so I couldn’t see its face or anything.  But what the heck was a kid doing out here at this time of night, with no other ponies around to protect them?  My attention was focused back on the creatures as two more joined the six I had missed with my first attack.  I sighed as I brought out one of my bottles of fresh water and began to form it into more ice spikes.  These things were such a nuisance!  It wasn’t even worth wasting water on these nasty things, but I had no other choice.  Before I was done making my weapons, the bloatsprites got within firing range of me and began to attack.  I managed to dodge all of them but one, which grazed my flank and drew fresh blood.

“Oh crap, that’s gonna sting later.”  I muttered to myself.  I finished my spikes and then got an idea as I glanced down a dead end between two houses.

I ran towards the dead end with the stupid creatures following me, and then stopped as I reached the wall.  I turned around and within a few seconds, the ugly things filled the entrance to the alley.  Before they could attack, I focused my magic on the entire width of the alley, and fired my weapons at the disgusting things.  They fell into my trap perfectly, and all of them burst and hit the ground as my spikes shot out of the alley.  Satisfied, I made my way back to the center of the town and looked around for that little kid.  Hopefully they had gotten to safety.

I began to call out for them to come and see me.  “Hey!  Hey kid!  Come on out, I took care of those things for you!  Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you!”  I trotted around the area for a good few minutes calling out before I gave up.  “Huh, guess they ran really far away.  I hope they're okay.”  I said to myself as I started to go back the way I came.  Right as soon as I hit the edge of the empty town, the kid came out of the shadows and stood in the small dirt road I took that ran up here.

“Hey, there you are!  What are you doing out here this late at night, all alone?  Don’t you have somepony taking care of you?”  I began to feel anxious when the kid just stood there, not saying a word and barely moving, for a couple of minutes before it looked up at me and took off it's hood, so I could clearly see their face.  Yep, that's a filly alright.  She was a cute little yellow filly with a short spring green mane and pretty blue eyes.

Before I could ask her any more questions, she spoke up in the cutest little squeaky voice, “Yes, he’s a unicorn all right!”  I was so confused…  Who was she talking to?

WHACK!

I felt something hard smack the back of my head as I fell to the ground.  The pain was intense for a few seconds, but it began to fade as I started to fall unconscious.  The last thing I heard and felt was a shuffling of hooves and a chain being put around me.  But that wasn’t the thing that bothered me the most.

This little filly took off her cloak before I closed my eyes, and I saw the most unusual thing… were those… wings?

Footnote: Level up

New Perk: Survivor:  Living in the wasteland has hardened you.  You gain +10% Rad resistance, +1 damage threshold, and a +10% bonus to your movement speed.  Neat!