Fallout Equestria
Broken Steel

Chapter 5: Lost

“Motor Runner sir, we have found Stable 108 near Everfree Forest” Announced one of the new Infected Rangers as he approached his new boss.

“108? The cloning and genetics Stable” Motor Runner grins darkly as he turns to the Ranger “Good work, now, prepare a team, we are going to check it out”

“Yes sir” And with that the Ranger turned around to go and gather other infected.

Motor Runner trots over to a window over looking a huge dark chamber with a massive metallic structure standing in the middle with hundreds of cables dangling from it and lots of platforms and scaffolding surrounding it and hanging from the ceiling. He smiled to himself as he looked about the large pony shaped structure. “Soon you’ll be complete and nothing in Equestria will be able to stop us” He says to himself before he begins to laugh darkly.

XXXXX

The huge steel door of Stable 108 was badly rusted and it didn’t look like the Stable would be in good condition. A large group of Infected Raiders stood by the door with four Infected Rangers as they awaited for their leader to arrive.

“C’mon dude, open the fucking door already, I’m hungry” Demanded one of the Raiders.

“Not yet, control yourself” Replied a Ranger.

The Infected Raiders were getting impatient as they were not as organised or had the control of the Rangers. Some were getting violent and threatening each other or even the Rangers they were with.

“Are you sure there are ponies in there?” One Raider asked while finding it hard not to bite his own leg.

“Yes, my E.F.S indicated hostiles beyond the door” Replied a Ranger who had heard the Raider’s question.

“I’m so fucking hungry, come on, open-“ He was cut short when the tunnel was filled with the sound of a revving chainsaw and then the Raider’s head dropped to the floor as a large chainsaw cut his head off.

“Anyone else want to complain?” Asks Motor Runner as he retracted his chainsaw back into his cybernetic foreleg and then using that leg kicks the still standing body of the Raider over.

The Infected didn’t answer, instead the Raiders looked down at the fallen body and some dove on the body and began to eat the corpse hungrily.

"We're ready sir" Said a Ranger as he stepped up to greet his boss.

"Good"

Motor Runner stood by the control panel and examined it before finally gripping the lever in his teeth and pulling it down and letting it go. There was a loud metallic hiss as something on the other side of the door began to move and then a loud metallic clunk rung out as something connected to the door. The Raiders all started to gather in front of the door as it began to open.

XXXXX

Deep inside Stable 108, one of its cloning systems has been stuck in creating the same clone over and over again. The Stable was completely inhabited by the clones of a light green unicorn mare with a silvery mane and tail. The clones were insane, an entire existence with themselves as company and nothing to teach them about using the Stable’s facilities they were unable to be educated so new clones grew up as mad as the others since they learned from them.

Not long ago an Enclave pony found herself lost after being separated from her squad and wound up at the entrance to 108. Thinking she could rest inside before going back out she opened to the door, not realising what Stable she had found, and shortly after entering she was quickly knocked out by a group of clones. She was taken to one of cloning facilities which started to tear the poor pegasus apart, extracting her DNA and adding it to its DNA store.

Armed with fresh pegasus DNA the genetics computer began to cycle through some of the DNA stored in its system and proceeded to begin a new clone. Using the fresh sample as a base line it chooses at random the DNA stored in it wound up being that of Rainbow Dash, the Ministry Mare of the Ministry of Awesome. Due to the age of the stored sample the system needed a fresh DNA sample of a pegasus for it to work. The system then began to overwrite the pegasus’ DNA with that of Rainbow Dash, forming a new clone.

The clone formed quickly thanks to the cloning facility’s advanced cloning process and a fully grown clone was released within a few hours. Robots designed to aid the scientists of the Stable moved the new clone into a recovery room with an operating table so it could awaken. A medical read out from the cloning machine indicated because of the freshness of the sample some of the clone’s original memories had managed to survive but this read out was lost in a decaying mass of pulp that hadn’t been removed for many years since the Stable’s populace is nothing but clones now.

XXXXX

The clone awoke to the sounds of blood curdling screams and gunfire somewhere in the Stable. She looked around only to find the room she lay in was unfamiliar to her. “Where am I?” She asked herself out loud. She meeped as the voice she spoke was not her own. This made her then look at herself, she saw cyan coloured fur covering her body and stretching out between her hind legs is a multicoloured tail which were not her own either.

The pegasus began to panic as with no memories of before waking up and the unfamiliar room plus the screams outside was enough to scare anypony. She was loosing it fast. She rolled off the table and landed on her hooves. She was made aware that she had wings on her sides which she found she could flex and move with ease, as if she had known how to use them before.

The clone’s panic began to rise the more she heard the screams, fear starting to get the better of her as she began to run around the room looking for a way out. Not recognising anything she passed the door many times before finally it opened and standing on the other side is a pony dressed in the hides of other ponies and a wielding helmet covering his face which had been painted on to give a scary looking face. The pony had dried or drying blood on his fore legs and was giggling insanely as he saw the young pegasus clone. Letting out a terrified scream she flared out her wings and with a strong beat took flight. Not expecting it the scary pony dove out the way as the pegasus shot past and flew up the hallway.

None of the ponies she passed looked friendly and thankfully the sight of her flying overhead seemed to stun them enough to stop them from attacking her. She didn’t know why and she wasn’t going to stop to find out. She was lucky that the halls were just big enough for her to fly through and she followed the halls with the scary ponies all the way up to the huge steel door were a calm and collected looking pony standing nearly twice as tall as the others stood with a smaller pony in a bulky suit of armour covered in spikes and blades. She let out a scared eep before beating her wings harder and shot out of the stable leaving a rainbow trail behind her, leaving the two ponies in surprise of what they had just witnessed.

“Err…should we got after that?” Asked the armoured pony.

“No, it’s not important, the useable tech in this stable is what’s important” Replied the larger pony in a calm manner, like the sight of the fast moving pegasus didn’t affect him. Instead he simple just readjusted his mane and suit as the wind caused by the fleeing pegasus ruffled up his hair and suit.

“Yes sir”

XXXXX

Several hours of flying wasn’t good on the new clone’s wings and she was feeling drained of energy. Panting heavily she looked for a place to land. Luckily for her a small house on top of a hill came into view and she began to rapidly descend, faster than she’d like. Falling too quickly she realised she was going to crash and so she aimed herself for one of the large open windows on the upper floor of the house. The house was an average two story detached house which luckily has weathered well as it was mostly intact and looked in surprisingly good condition despite its age. She tucked her wings in tightly to her body as she came to the window and with a soft crash she landed head first into an old mouldy bed which softened her landing a lot but gave way as its rickety old frame collapsed from the impact and she landed in a heap on the floor by the wall after rolling off the bed. Letting out a tired moan she passed out on the floor.

The clone woke up the following day feeling stiff and sore from how she passed out. She had slept on her neck with her back up against the wall and her hind legs dangling almost in her face.

“Ohh, Sky Fire, what have you done to yourself this time?” She asked herself with a moan. She shot her eyes open as she recalled her name. Rolling over and back onto her hooves she looked herself over thinking that it was all a dream but her hopefulness vanished when she looked upon her now dirty cyan coat.

“Why do I look like that traitor Rainbow Dash?” She asked herself but again she stopped and tried to think. She remembers her name at least but now she remembers the name of a traitor but she can’t remember why.

“What’s happened to me? Why can I remember my name and hardly anything else? Why do I remember Rainbow Dash and why do I remember that she’s a traitor?” She asked herself again out loud but her questions went unanswered. Sighing and hanging her head in defeat she began to walk through the house as she went to find a bathroom. She walked down the hallway to the stairs and noticed a door facing the stairs was wide open and it opened up into a small bathroom.

The bathroom was small, as soon as she entered she had the toilet to her left in a gap between the wall and the bath tub. The toilet looked like someone too a sledgehammer to it as the bowl had been shattered. The bathtub was empty but had plenty of dirt collected on the bottom and was mostly intact apart from the missing taps and plug. Directly in front of her stood the sink which also looked intact but was riddled with small cracks, the bowl of the sink was like the bath and covered in dirt. Above the sink hung a medicine cabinet with a mirrored door, the mirror was mostly intact but had a couple of cracks in the glass but thankfully didn’t ruin the reflection it gave. She was able to get a good look at herself now and sure enough, the face she saw was indeed that of Rainbow Dash.

Staring at herself in the mirror she did all the usual tests to see if what she was seeing was indeed her. Moving her eyes, fluttering her eye lids, moving her head side to side and even moving up a hoof to prod her cheeks. Finally she sighed in defeat as she accepted she had somehow taken the appearance of the Ministry Mare.

“This doesn’t make any sense, what was that place I woke up in?” She again asked herself a question she couldn’t answer as she used a hoof to pull open the medicine cabinet. There were numerous bottles of pills and some with liquid in them. She scanned the few shelves and found only a hoofful that she could still use. Rad-X, Buckout, Stampede and a bottle of Healing Potion. She paused as she seemed to instantly know she could use them and suddenly a new memory came into her mind.

“I am, or was an Enclave Field Medic, that explains how I knew which medicines I could still use” She said to herself feeling a bit happier to have remembered something else but that brief feeling of happiness faded as nothing else came with the memory.

Closing the cabinet with the chems and meds balancing on her back she closed the cabinet with a wing and as the door closed she caught the reflection of her flank in the mirror. Sitting on her flank is the cutie mark of Rainbow Dash, the cloud with the red blue yellow lightening bolt.

“Oh, no pony is going to going to believe that I’m not Rainbow Dash if the see that”

Back in the bedroom she crashed in she started to root around. None of the dressers she pulled open had any clothing she could wear as what she did find would likely disintegrate as soon as she picked them up. In one of the draws she found a note on stained yellow paper. The note was just a password to a safe or something but she pulled the note out of the draw and set it on the bed with the medicines she had gathered.

Her search for anything useful brought her to a large wardrobe in the far corner of the bedroom beside the collapsed bed. Gently opening the large doors she found the bottom half of the wardrobe had drawers and the upper half had several formal suits and dresses hanging from hangers. The suits and dresses were moth eaten and looked like they’d fall apart at any second. Not wanting to cause any further damage to the dresses and suits she concentrated her search in the drawers. The upper drawer had nothing of value and so she started opening the bottom, larger drawer. She grunted as it took some effort to pull the drawer open as it was heavy and once she had it pulled out she was looking at a top of the range security containment unit with a bullet proof glass cover.

“Wow” She said in amazement at what she could see still preserved in the vacuum sealed containment unit. Folded up neatly in the centre is a purple flight suit, a set of purple rimmed goggles with yellow lenses but made to look like two semi-circles set at angles to give an angry appearance on the wearer. In other spots around the suit were black saddlebags which bore a winged skull mark and a pair of mouth operated magical beam weapons and several small spark cells to power them.

“Now that’s awesome” She said to herself as she looked over each of the items. She soon noticed writing etched into the glass which read.

Equestrian Sky Guard
Shadowbolt Division

Lieutenant Nightwing

“Lt Nightwing, some poor pony who probably served with Rainbow Dash during the great war” She thought to herself as she continued to look over the glass cover and soon noticed a small keypad in the bottom right corner of the glass cover. Looking back to the bed she looked at the note with the password. She thought, what the hell and took the note over to the container and gently prodded at the keypad, inputting the code into the keypad.

4472593

There was a flash of magic and then there was a hiss as the air pressure inside the unit stabilised and the glass cover was released and slid back to give Sky Fire access to its contents. She stepped closer and took a deep breath. The container smelled of freshly washed fabric with a hint of lemon. She cooed from the fresh smell and reached in to pull out the suit. It had a black neck and chest with a V shaped yellow zigzagging pattern which separated the black chest from the purple suit. On the flanks of the suit it had a winged skull cutie mark and it had black hooves which were separated by the same yellow zigzag pattern that surrounded the leg to separate the black hooves from the purple legs.

She squeezed her way into the suit which she found clung to her body and fit perfectly. “I guess one size fits all” she chuckled to herself as she then pulled out the black mask and slipped it on. After threading her rainbow mane through the slit in the back of it she adjusted it so it sat right and then she suddenly felt a tingle go through her body and she noticed the rainbow mane hanging in the corner of her vision turn a dark blue. “What the?” She asked herself as she then focused her eyes onto her exposed nose that the mask didn’t cover and saw that the once cyan fur was now a dull light blue grey.

She slipped on the saddlebags which had a loop harness that fitted around the base of her wings to keep them firmly on her flanks with a strap going across her back. She then placed the meds into one bag and the two beam pistols into the other. Finally she picked up the goggles with her teeth and trotted back to the bathroom to see herself in the mirror and sure enough, her once rainbow mane and tail was now a dark blue and her exposed wings and muzzle had turned to a light blue grey. “Looks like this suit had been magically enchanted to change the appearance of the wearer…hmm…this works for me, at least while I wear this it can hide my Rainbow Dash appearance” She said to herself as she then slipped on the goggles to complete the Shadowbolt outfit.

She smiled to herself as she looked at herself, she liked what she saw. “I have to admit, this suit makes me look twenty percent cooler than…” She stopped as she realised what she just said, something very well known to be said by Rainbow. “Did I just?... oh no no no…. I am Sky Fire….SKY FIRE!!” she almost screamed. Turning away from the mirror she ran back into the bedroom and looked out the window, it was getting dark outside. She spread her grey wings and with one strong beat of her wings she took off out the window and began to fly away from the house. She didn’t know where she was going nor cared at this moment as she didn’t remember anything other than who she used to be.

“I am Sky Fire… Sky Fire” she kept telling herself as she flew.

XXXXX

A couple of days had passed since Motor Runner and his Infected came down on Stable 108. His Infected has killed and eaten all the clones and his Infected Rangers has been checking the Stable’s systems to see weather they were salvageable.

“Well Sergeant, what’s the condition on the Stable?” Motor Runner asked as he approached the leading Infected Ranger in the Atrium. There were several Infected Raiders feasting on a corpse in the far corner while others milled about looking bored and trying not to eat themselves.

“Not good I’m afraid sir, most of the Stable’s systems are on the verge of failure and can you taste that coppery taste in the air? The air purification talisman is damaged. I think this Stable has about two to three years before the air in here becomes unbreathable”

Motor Runner looks down and frowns. He needs the pristine technology, otherwise his plans for Equestria will be tainted and damaged. “Is there anything at all worth taking?” He asks hoping this wasn’t a wasted trip.

“Well, strangely enough the genetics labs and cloning labs appear to be in full working order, that pegasus that escaped had only just been created”

“I see, well at least we can salvage the labs” A thought then came to mind, perhaps removing one of the cloning machines and keeping it running he could keep his control on the infected by creating clones just for them to eat. That would stop most killing each other just to satisfy themselves. “See about taking one of the cloning machines intact, it can prove useful, as for everything else, strip them down to the base components and take them back to the Hanger”

The Infected Ranger nodded and moved off to gather some of the Raiders to begin the tasks given to him. Motor Runner began his own little exploration of the Stable. He trotted down the halls of the decaying stable, moving through the living quarters and recreational areas before walking up some stairs until he found himself at the door to the Overmare’s Office. The door didn’t open and nor did it open when he pressed the door control button so with a smile he raised his cybernetic foreleg and flexed it slightly and it seemed to split in half lengthwise. Sharp curved teeth that looked like Hellhound claws came out on a chain that ran all the way around the split and then a revving engine sound started and the teeth started to move until they were encircling the split at high speed. He pushed his chainsaw forward and the strong sharp teeth easily began to cut through the metal of the door and he cut a big enough section of the door out so he could walk inside. Once he was finished cutting he retracted his chainsaw and nudged the freed metal with a hoof and it fell inward, giving him access to the office.

There was a blackened skeleton of a pony sitting in the Overmare’s desk chair. It seemed the last Overmare locked herself into her office and died for some reason, maybe because of the cloning machine making repeated copies of that one green mare. He walks over to the desk where he sees that the terminal is still active. He frowns as it was flashing with warning signs. The Ranger had been right, the stable was on its last legs. The most worrying warning was that of the Reactor Core, it was on the verge of meltdown. It was clear the Ranger hadn’t made it to the Reactor Level to assess it. “How unfortunate, I guess I’ve wasted enough time here, I’ll let the Infected bring back as much as they can before this place kills who’s left” He said to himself coldly as he started to walk out of the office. As Motor Runner made it back to the atrium he was approached by the Sergeant.

“Sir, the cloning machine is being disassembled to be ready for transport back to the Hanger”

“Good, I’m going to take a quick look around before I head back, keep the salvage going and bring back what you can”

“Yes sir”

Motor Runner nodded to the Ranger as he started to make his way to the labs. He did feel disappointed that Stable 108 didn’t offer much in technology for the resurrection but it did offer some and every little bit moved him that much further to his goal.

“Once I have you operational, no pony will stand in my way” He said in his head, smiling coolly at his long envisioned future. “All Equestria will tremble at the sheer sight of us, and no one will dare stand in our way, not even the Goddess and her army of alicorns”

As he continued walking he remembered some of the things he read regarding his project, or really, her project. “Oh Applejack, I wish you were here today to see your vision finally coming to life. You wanted a machine that can protect Equestria, soon, it will have it” He grinned darkly. “I also have to hoof it to Blueberry Muffin, her super sized Railguns will give it quite the punch indeed” He then began to laugh, his dark sinister laugh.

XXXXX

While flying over the wasteland, little bits of her memory had returned. She remembered now that she was living in a wasteland that was the result of the Great War where both sides launched megaspells that put the world into darkness and chaos with the deaths of millions. She remembered that Rainbow Dash had abandoned the pegasi after Cloudsdale was destroyed to help the ground ponies. She remembered having medical training somewhere, remembering things like healing major injuries and some techniques used to help others. But she still didn’t remember anything else. She was still clueless to where she came from, how she wound up in 108 and why she looked like Rainbow Dash.

“Stupid memory, why won’t you work for me?” She moaned to herself as she flew. It was the dead of night now and if it wasn’t for her yellow goggles she probably wouldn’t be able to see where she was going. They seemed to give her some low light vision.

She was getting tired, she had been flying again for hours and her wing muscles were starting to hurt. Looking down she spotted two ponies walking up a path below her. Before she could think if she should go down to check them out or not she felt a searing pain in one of her wings and it seized up stiff. “Oh, not good, whoa” she cried as she started to drop out of the sky.

“Mayday, mayday, pony going down” she shouted as loud as she could to warn the two ponies below her but they stopped and looked around to try and find the voice. She was coming down right on top of them now. She could see the taller of the two is a striped pony while the smaller is clad in armour like those she saw at the door of 108.

She was heading right for the taller pony now. “Oh shit” she said as she realised she was going to crash into him. “Look out below” she screamed. This time the striped pony looked up in time to see her and then…CRASH!!!

(Author notes: Re-read and modified mistakes i missed before, thank you for reading)