Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn

Chapter 7 - Pony Feathers

Chapter 7

Pony Feathers

"I can't make you trust me. But I'll be damned if I can't make you trust that you'd be doing the right thing."

I never did get used to the cold.

Shivering briskly, I pulled closed the worn black peacoat that I found in a dumpster, buttoning it over the kevlar plates of my security barding.

The black fabric and the cuffs around my fetlocks were worn and frayed from use. I was impartial to ... looting. I wondered if that was the right word. Or was it scavenging? Whatever it was, there was a bullet hole through the fabric over my heart.

Whoever that peacoat belonged to last wouldn't be needing it anymore.

With my back against a wall, I looked across the flea market, ponies trotting from stall to stall, canned food, and other goods clanking inside their bags or held in their mouths. Shivering, I brought to my mouth an apple that Dapple Gray had packed for me, and took a chunk out of it, letting the juices calm my frayed nerves. I had been awfully restless since my meeting with Sterling at the World Tree.

I shook my head, telling myself that I shouldn't have had my expectations so high. I should've learned my lesson the moment I stepped out into the wasteland – no, when I first stepped out that door. I expected too much of the wasteland. I had been wrong about everything so far.

Everything.

I realized that if I had my pistol on me, I would have pulled it on that pony.

But how stupid would that have been?

Fucking stupid. But I tended to be full of stupid whenever I got desperate, or whenever I put my mind to something. I remembered Gail, and how I galloped through a hail of bullets just to save her feathered ass. I was desperate to save the one person I could have called a friend. And at that moment, desperation was as overwhelming of a feeling as the chilling bite of the frozen wind.

In desperation, I had taken risks. My friends and I, even the overmare took risks coming out there in search of a talisman. They were desperate. So was I. But where did those risks take me? Back to square one with a few brushes with death. Saving Gail from those furies was a risk ... but I kept asking myself: was she worth risking my life for?

No. Not those monsters.

But I wondered: were those six thousand Ponevans - the six thousand that Sterling was trying so hard to save - worth risking my life for? As I walked those icy streets among those damned ponies, I got my answer.

Little. By. Little.

For the last two and a half days, I had spent most of my time searching for the Orphanage and the Fallen Angels. I didn't have much luck.

'Please don't say that out loud. Palominos might hear you ...'

'Are you trying to get us killed?'

'How do you wanna leave? Door, or window?'

Those ponies couldn't tell an apple from an orange, because apparently to them, 'door' meant 'window', and 'Orphanage' meant 'death-sentence'. And I couldn't find the resistance unless someone at least kicked me in the right direction.

Just not out of a window.

But nobody wanted to help. Nobody. Not one person wanted to talk about the resistance. The resistance that was apparently trying to save their sorry asses. They were afraid of the Palomino thought police kicking down their doors for saying the 'O' word. The name of the beast – the plantations' and their lackeys' – the Palominos' worst arch enemy: the Orphanage.