New World Blues

The moon hung high over the Mojave Wasteland, the bloatflies were buzzing, the nightstalkers were rattling, and Veronica Santangelo was getting angry.

She had been sitting on a bar stool in the Lucky 38 for an hour and a half, and when she came in she had the simple goal of getting nicely buzzed, nothing too crazy (if she wanted to get completely shitfaced she would have gone to The Atomic Wrangler, but that place was a bit... rapey, for her tastes) then go up to her suite to get a few precious hours of shut-eye in, it was 3 in the morning, mind you, and she needed her beauty sleep.

That’s what she had been trying to remind The Courier of for the past hour and a half.

“Please Ronnie! Can’t you spare just a sec for your old pal? I doubt it’ll even be that dangerous”

It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep her cool, especially when The Courier was insistent on using that name for her.

“One: you know I hate that nickname, and two: if Doctor Klein says it’s too dangerous, then it is too dangerous”

The Courier gave a snorting laugh.

“C’mon Ronnie, you really think that guy is anything more than an insane floating brain-in-a-jar?”

The ex-Brotherhood scribe had to concede that point. From the stories the Courier had told, the good doctor sounded like a complete raving madman (a few cards short of a caravan, if you will). But still, this was his invention, and he knew better than anyone about how to operate it safely.

And that brings us too what The Saviour of The Wastes was trying to convince our poor power-fisted friend to do.

For you see, after defeating the Giant Roboscorpion, and sweet-talking her brain into coming with her again (a concept that Veronica still couldn’t quite wrap her head around) she had spotted a mysterious looking cave and, on a whim, had wandered inside.

The creature she had briefly encountered inside was still like a burning hot poker in her frontal lobes whenever she dared try and recall it. So she had fled, and got back to the Mojave (after brokering peace with the Think Tank) as quickly as possible.

Veronica had awoken that night too a still-shaking Courier, madly raving about something to do with “A buzzing light that moved faster than a Cazador on turbo” with vague hinting to a “Song on the radio that could make a Deathclaw shiver”.

But now, roughly three months later, The Courier wanted to face her fears with her good, power armour-clad friend by her side.

Problem is, the Transportalponder was only a one-seater, so The Courier had to go alone to Big Mountain, or not at all. A concept she outright refused when Veronica suggested it.

An so that leads us back to where we currently are, that is to say, The Courier trying every twelve seconds to convince Veronica too at least try using the device on both of them.

Veronica was now on auto-pilot refusal, dismissing any non-logic and pointing out the flaws in any half-arguments The Courier presented, but was infact thinking deeply on the issue of how to get rid of the pure annoyance in humanoid form that was constantly pestering her.

The answer, she theorized, was at the bottom of this glass.

She had kept her cool so far, she could at least keep it until The Courier got bored of asking.

That small hope of hers died as quickly as a Radroach in a Deathclaw nest when The Courier released the argumentative equivalent of concentrated machine-gun fire.

“Please Ronnie! Please Ronnie! Please Ronnie! Please Ronnie! Please Ronnie! Please Ron-”

Veronica stood up and decided to intervene before she actually had to kill her long time friend.

“God dammit Jane!!!” The Courier flinched at that, the ex-scribe only ever used her real name when she was truly pissed off “Ok!!! Fine!!! I’ll do it, just to shut you up!”

Silenced reigned in The Lucky 38 for the next few moments, even the humming of the nearby Securitrons seemed to quiet for that short period of complete silence.

The spell was broken by a cheer from The Courier.

“Yay!”

She started rapidly clapping her hands, and very nearly skipped off her bar-stool, while Veronica fell back onto her own with a sigh. All the death and destruction that women had seen, and caused (mostly caused) and she was still as happy-go-luck as ever.

“Ready to go?”

The courier seemingly materialized before her, in full combat armor, anti-material rifle slung over her back, 12.7mm Submachine-gun holstered at her side, ... but... hadn't she just been wearing her regular clothes... never mind. She was about to say how she needed to go and get suited up in her power armor, and fetch her power fist and trusty 44. revolver, but when she looked down, she was already in full power armor (a process that normally took at least a quarter of an hour) with her power fist strapped on, and revolver at her side... no, she wasn't going to question it, she wasn't going to vocalize the impossibility of what had just occurred, sometimes, with The Courier, things just... happened, and you either had to go along with it, or go insane trying to figure it all out (that was what had happened with Arcade Gannon... poor Arcade)

Veronica looked up.

“Yep”

She said.

“Ready to go”

The Courier smiled, and held out the “barrel” of the Transportalponder for her to grab hold of.

She looked longingly back over to her drink, before grabbing both it, and the offered device, holding her glass high in the air, and muttering a quick

“Here's to adventure”

Before downing the rest of her glass. No sooner had the burning liquid passed her tongue, than The Courier pulled the “trigger” on the device...

Nothing happened...

Nothing continued to happen.

“See?”

Said the ex-scribe victoriously.

“I told you it wouldn't-”

Her gloating was interrupted by a sensation not too dissimilar from all of her internal organs being ripped out simultaneously, and then pure blinding whiteness.

                                               ---NWB---

Twilight Sparkle hated Mondays.

This fact may surprise many ponies that knew her -and many more who knew of her- but it was a cold hard truth.

Monday was the most dreaded day of the week in the Golden Oaks Library, not to say that the establishment got more or less customers than average, but for a certain purple alicorn, it was time to clean her feathers.

When Twilight first became an alicorn, she had flown everywhere for nearly a week, even if she just had to pop out the front door to get the milk in, she would hover the few centimeters to the milk, then hover the few centimeters back.

But, as Twilight soon discovered, life isn’t all sunshine and barrel rolls.

She had received a thick tome from Celestia one day... NO! Not like that, you sick freak!... ahem, from Celestia one day which she presumed was some sort of ancient script, perhaps detailing how alicorns came into being... but no, it was a five hundred and seventy eight page volume entitled “Wing Care: The Basics” now, Twilight wasn’t one to be scared away by a high page count -she was more invited by it than anything- ,but there were five hundred and seventy eight pages to cover the basics of wing care!?

And even with the help of her two pegasi friends, it had taken awhile for Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy to feel comfortable letting her do it by herself -though perhaps “comfortable” isn’t quite the right word to use for our butterfly-flanked friend- but she had got it in the end.

She was just about to grab the first of several combs and brushes, when a sharp popping noise announced the arrival of the two most terrifying figures Twilight had seen in her life (and as a pony that had faced down dragons, changelings, mad chaos gods and ancient reawakened evils -to name but a few- that, is saying something) .

                                                 ---NWB---

In the not-so far off city of Canterlot, Princess Celestia was enjoying her morning tea, when she faintly heard the scream of her student turned co-worker.

                                                 ---NWB---

In the cloudeseum The Wonderbolts were having speed and endurance practice, doing continual laps around the stadium.

For a moment Spitfire, captain of The Wonderbolts, thought she heard a vaguely familiar scream off in the distance, and thought for a moment, trying to place it

“Quit daydreaming skipper!”

Came a shout from her co-captain, Soarin’.

She quickly focused back on the track.

                                                 ---NWB---

In the orchards of the small frontier town of Appleloosa, Braeburn Apple was overseeing the planting of a new grove of apple trees when he heard a scream that seemed to tickle his ear-drums it was so quiet.

“Wait...”

He started, why did that voice seem so familiar?

“Oh well, prob’ly nothin”

Little did this apple farmer know, that what had just transpired was anything but “nothing”.