Fallout Equestria (With bonus sidestory and 10yrs after)

Chapter 3: Guidance

Chapter Three: Guidance

“Books!  I’ve read several on the subject.”

Daylight.

I had never seen the sun before, and it was fair to say I still hadn’t.  But the power of its light filtered down through the thick angry, cloud cover, turning a sickly color yet still brighter and warmer than the humming lights of Stable Two.  The air itself looked somehow wrong in the light, off-color.  But everything was illuminated. I could see motes of dust and ash floating about the room (I wondered how healthy it was to be breathing it), and for the first time I really grasped the expanse of the outside.

It made me want to hide under the window.

While working up the nerve to step into the (very, very big) outdoors, I preoccupied myself with opening the locked chest I had discovered the night before.  It took two of my bobby pins, but it was worth it!  Inside was the most beautiful dress I had ever seen!  Such lines, such folds of fabric, and the colors -- elegant and regal -- yet the fabric was light, breezy and did not sag!  It was a dream!  Sadly, a dream for another, taller pony.

Joy and disappointment mixed in equal measure.  But even if I could not wear it (at least not without some major tailoring), it was the prettiest and most cheerful thing I had seen since leaving the Stable.  Carefully folding it up, I slipped it into my saddlebags.

Mindful of the sniper pony from the night before, I stood back, behind the cover of an overturned table, and used my magic to open the door.  A tarnished bell hanging above tinkled cheerfully.  Muted sunlight poured in.  The sounds of outside flowed into the room.  The twitter of birds, the far away sloshing of the river.  Fresher air pushed back the stale.

Cautiously, I moved into the doorway and looked about.  Post-apocalyptic Ponyville was a rotting skeleton of a once homey little town.  Between collapsed buildings and burned homes, the streets were littered with rubble and refuse.  And everywhere, garish paints of depravity and grotesquery.  The graffiti was not limited to outside; the raiders had defaced the Carousel Boutique with an almost ecstatic fervor.  I turned from the doorway, my gaze following the lines of profanity that curled up the walls towards the rafters.  And shrank back, choking in revulsion at what the sunlight revealed above me -- dozens of dead and desiccated cats had been hung from the ceiling like decorations.  I had slept directly beneath three of them.

I took an involuntary step back, one hindhoof out the door.

BEEP.

What was that?

BEEP.

I turned and spied the half-buried orange disk in the ground just outside the door.  A little red light was pulsing on it.  BEEP.  BEEP.  BEEP.

“CLOSE THE DOOR!”  The voice came out of nowhere, tinny and mechanical but somehow full of urgency.  My heart lurched and I jumped back inside, slamming the door hard.

The explosion just outside tore the door off its frame, hurling it and me back into the room!  I crashed through a tattered vanity divider, the smoking door landing over me. “Ugh!!”

I was more shocked than hurt as I slowly dragged myself out from under the door.  My ears were ringing.  A trap.  No wonder the raider ponies hadn’t invaded while I slept.  They had left a present instead.

“Hurry.  There are more on the way.”  I could barely make out the voice; my ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton candy.

“Who are you?” I queried, but moved to throw my canteens over my neck while magically drawing out the combat shotgun.  I had been dismayed to learn that it had only had one shot left; but if a raider pony stepped through the door, I intended to make it count.