Fallout: Equestria, Project Horizons

Chapter 9: Stone

Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons
By Somber
Chapter 9: Stone
"There was no talking. There was no smiling. There were only rocks. "
I was not a smart pony. I'd said it before. Others knew it. I was impulsive. Immature. Reckless. I knew two very smart ponies, though. P-21 taught himself to pick locks and hack terminals when he wasn't even supposed to be allowed to read. He somehow convinced Duct Tape to break just about every rule for fraternization and teach him the skills he'd need to eventually escape from the stable.
Morning Glory was a medical technician of the Enclave. She was younger than me, and she was already working for the only ponies who seemed capable of designing anything new. She could discern injuries and administer drugs at the drop of a feather. She'd even begun researching reasons behind the mental degradation and psychotic tendencies of raiders by analyzing their brains.
Me? I shot things. It wasn't not an intellectually demanding job. In fact, I was pretty sure it was based on one of the top three most common skillsets in the Wasteland. It involved a steady horn, a wanton disregard for personal injury, and lots of ammunition. And when shooting things was insufficient, I swapped to bashing things with a heavy metal stick. The effectiveness of both methods varied greatly from situation to situation. For instance, when I'd ignored the warnings of a young filly, both proved woefully inadequate in preventing her from being torn in two.
So I had come to accept that I was not nor would ever be a smart pony. Thus, when P-21 and Glory stated that I was an absolute idiot facing down five farm ponies almost unarmed and unarmored, I could only conclude that they were right. When they elaborated that I should have involved them because my safety mattered to them, I likewise could only assume that they knew something I didn't.
There was just one catch. It seemed that with two events I had somehow ended up with a rather gargantuan bounty on my head. The simple act of cutting my head and PipBuck off and presenting them to one Reaper named Deus would earn a staggering amount of wealth. Capturing me alive would double that amount, presumably so that Deus could take his time torturing me and violating my anus. He was that kind of pony.
P-21 would have me kill any and all would-be bounty claimants. By attempting to take my life, he assured me, they'd forfeited theirs. Eye for an eye. Hoof for a hoof. Everypony ending up blind and lame. I couldn't do it. Those five ponies weren't Deus. They weren't monsters. They had a need for the money, same as anypony. I could have killed them easily. Playing it back in my head, it wouldn't have taken much. They'd hoped to take me unawares and alone. A lucky shot in the night.
Was I wrong to let them live?
Morning Glory was put out with me for quite another reason. In facing said threats alone, I had somehow violated one of the tenets of friendship. One of us faced a threat, we all faced it. That was apparently a rule of friendship. Trying to protect her was wrong. Better she stood beside me like she had fighting the dragon mutants. She wanted to be there when I fought monsters. When I faced down bounty hunters. When I murdered a roomful of traumatized children.
Didn't she realize I wasn't a good pony? I wasn't a hero. I was just trying to do better because everywhere I looked I saw things getting worse and worse and the only thing that made any sense was trying to make it better. Old Hoss said that Big Macintosh was a hero because he would have given his life for anypony. I sometimes wondered if I could turn in the bounty on myself and split the proceeds among the Crusaders, P-21, and Glory.
She was going to get hurt if she stayed with me. Hurt very badly.
To top it all off, I had a mystery inside my PipBuck. A computer file that was apparently so valuable that my stable had been raided to retrieve it. It was encrypted. Finding out just what it was supposed to do was going to be likewise very expensive, yet it was the only reliable chance I had short of trusting the Enclave, which I wasn't ready to do.
At the moment, though, none of that mattered a damn as I sat in 'detention' in a classroom on the second floor of the Roosehoof Academy library building with P-21, Glory, and the Crusaders. We'd found the academy under 'lockdown'. I didn't want to speculate on what had happened to any students caught in the lockdown two hundred years ago, but at least there weren't a lot of bones in the classrooms. Robronco sentries patrolled the academy perimeter, and so far no bounty hunters had faced the metallic protectors.
The seven of us had stumbled onto the grounds and been ordered to report to the office or face immediate vaporization. I had to admit, I considered the shooting option first and second. But the fact was that the academy buildings were the closest and largest structures to Brimstone's Fall, and if we started shooting it'd not only draw attention but also take away a layer of protection I could use right now. The seven of us had been taken in to see 'Acting Dean Hardy', one of the spidery levitating-style robots.
The office was a complete disaster area, which was actually pretty typical given that Equestria as a whole was a complete disaster area. A skeleton lay in the corner with a bullet hole through its skull. "Please explain why you are breaking lockdown procedures, Miss..." A buzz, click, whirr, and beep. I looked down at some of the yellowed papers on the desk, scanning them for a name.
"Marigold," I supplied, and seizing on a sudden whim I threw my hooves around P-21, who went stiff as rock. "I was just looking for some alone time with my buckfriend..." A glance at the page. "Um... Sureshot? Please don't call my mom." Because she was in a stable and I was pretty sure she'd be miffed if she had to come pick me up from school.
More clicks and beeps. "Miss Marigold, this is the third infraction for fraternizing with male students you've made within two hundred and -bzzzt- years. I'm afraid I have no choice but to contact your parents and have you all report for lunch detention in the library for the duration of the lockdown."
"Yes, Dean Hardy," I said as adolescently as possible. "Can we at least go to our rooms and get our homework?"
The dean beeped as his camera swung from one of us to the next. "Very well. Please carry your hall passes with you at all times or risk vaporization." He reached into the drawer of the dean's desk and withdrew a stack of faded faded paper cards covered in yellowing lamination. Each one hung from a lanyard and still had a faintly glowing glyph stamped on it. "Now please report to detention in room 203 of the library."
Thus the seven of us became the newest students of Roosehoof Academy. "That was brilliant!" Glory gushed as we trotted by Robronco sentries urging us to get to class. "How did you think of that?"
"Do you have any idea how much time I spent in detention?" I asked her with a grin.
"Oh!" Suddenly she went red.
I blinked at her and then grinned. "Let me guess: your first time?"
"Well... yes," she admitted.
I put a hoof around her neck and pulled her close, grinning at her. "Well then, let me give you some advice. Always sit in the back row. Always pass on notes. If the teacher asks what you're doing, the answer is 'working', not 'studying'. Oh, and remember: you have a bladder the size of a pea."
"You really were in detention a lot," Glory muttered with some worry as I lowered my hoof. She looked over at P-21. "You were probably a much more diligent student," she said to him. I winced. Please don't bite her head off, I silently begged.
Thankfully, he was in one of his more wistful moods as he looked at the decaying library. "No. But I would have been," he said as he looked down at a textbook showing two red-striped zebras. I thought they looked a bit like hooved candy canes myself. I looked at the caption beneath. 'The Proditor, or 'traitors' in the zebra tongue, were those few zebras willing and allowed to fight for Equestria against their own kind. Using talismans to permanently alter their stripe color, they fought with distinction until being phased out due to security concerns after the Battle of Shattered Hoof Ridge.'
I noticed the Crusaders were looking a bit nervous. "What's up?" I asked them. "First day of school jitters?"
"No," Allegro protested, trying to look tough.
"It's just..." Adagio muttered, "...there's supposed to be ghosts here."
I would have laughed, but then again I laughed when Scoodle had seemed afraid in the boneyard. Not again. Besides, with the Wasteland, who knew what you might run into? "Well. If there are, they'll have to get through me first!" I replied. Sonata looked a little more at ease, at least.
Using their hall passes, P-21, Glory, and the Crusaders dispersed from the classroom and set about looting anything edible, drinkable, or medical they could get their hooves on. If they found an armory here, well... that'd just show how hardcore Cheerilee made education prior to the bombs going off. This left me alone in the second floor of the library and looking out at Brimstone's Fall. And we were doomed because I was going to have to come up with a plan. Me. The not a smart pony.
Brimstone's Fall wasn't much to look at, really; just a round, jagged hole punched in the badlands' surface. It had been a gemstone mine. Then, during the height of the war, a dragon had fallen right on top of the mine workings. The 'Shadowbolts' pegasus strike force, along with heavy ground support, slew a powerful dragon allied with the zebras, but hundreds of soldiers had died before the dragon perished. I knew all of this because there was a framed news article hanging next to the window.
In two hundred years it hadn't changed much. It lay right beside rail lines stretching to the southwest, towards Fillydelphia. On the surface were a large administration building and two long barracks-style houses. Since I didn't see any slaves, I assumed that they had to be quartered underground. Two nested chain link fences topped by razor wire surrounded the hole and the three buildings, with a guarded hoof bridge built over the rail spurs where they passed through the fences. A chain link gate blocked the space under the bridge. Maybe we could find--
What the fuck? I stopped and stared at the corner of the room. Had something just moved? One of the Crusaders playing a trick on me? My mind finally cracking? Slowly, I rose to my hooves and checked my E.F.S. Nothing. My eyes scanned the room thoroughly, mane itching like crazy. "Huh..." I muttered. Nothing at all.
Bullshit. In the Wasteland it's never nothing. I put my back to the wall until the others returned. It happened again; I'd swear that I'd seen some dingy papers shift on their own right before the six entered the room. I rubbed my eyes, but then the others were inside. "You okay? You look spooked," P-21 said concernedly before he tossed me a Sparkle-Cola.
I caught it with my magic and deftly popped the top. It was warm, but it was Sparkle-Cola. "Yeah. Just trying to figure out how to get in there," I said as I scanned the mine once again for some chink in their defenses. The guards moved in threes and fours. There wasn't the slightest bit of cover to use to approach from the ground. And then there were the neighbors. Along the highway between the mine and the road was a strip mall. Most of the shops seemed more or less intact and there was a large gathering of ponies there. At least twenty or so. "Allegro? Who're they?"
He trotted to the window and I held the binoculars for him. "Oh, them. Pecos. They're just a gang outta Flank. Not as crazy as raiders. They usually work protection for the slavers."
Great. Between the Pecos and the slavers I was looking at forty or fifty enemies. "They're not slavers?"
Medley huffed, "I told you but no one listens to me. Slavers gots ta have a license outta Paradise to be slavers. Otherwise they'd just make slaves of each other. The licenses are, like, super expensive."
"Explains why they could afford my bounty," I said as I pursed my lips. Then I frowned as I watched a train come out of the mine. It was only four cars, which were being hauled by a dozen slaves as a slaver liberally lashed them with a whip. To my amazement, I saw several zebras among the slaves! I supposed slavers couldn't be choosers. The train slowed to a crawl as it passed under the bridge, the guards above sweeping their weapons while two ponies checked beneath for escapees. Once past the checkpoint, the train started to crawl towards Hoofington.
"Where are they going?" I asked.
"Tracks lead to the tunnels. Ain't safe down there. Ghouls and worse. Not sure where they go past that," Allegro said with his own curious frown. I chewed on a hoof as I looked down at the strip mall again. If I attacked the mine, then the Pecos would reinforce the slaver guards. If I attacked the Pecos and lived, then the mine would be alert. I looked from pony to pony. They all wore cowpony hats and leather jackets with some twister or tornado patch on the back. Better yet, this gang was co-ed.
I smirked. "Hey, P-21. Think you can sneak down there and snag me a hat and jacket?"
"Why? What are you planning?" he asked with a frown.
Something not too smart. "Well, if we're going to be stuck in detention all day, at least one of us needs to be in a gang."