Fallout Equestria: Wicked

Chapter 2: Flight

A dreamless night made me feel like I hadn’t slept at all. Last night, I saw myself dying at least twice, the harshness of Haygas catching up with me after so many times barely escaping it. Still lying down, I looked to the same cracks on the ceiling than yesterday. This place has seen so much of the lives of the ponies that I wonder how many others noticed this single crack, running from ceiling to floor, circling a window. Well, now it’s not a proper window, just  its old frame held in place by the rest of the wall that threatened to fall with a single strong blow of the radioactive wind.

Tired of staying put, I threw my head ahead, making my limp body keep up with the movement. A big yawn and a little stretching later and I finally get up, walking away from the bed. I felt like the same bag of potatoes that dropped from its bed yesterday, my legs trembling just to do a few steps. Not enough sleep, I thought, drinking a bit of water from a bottle in my belonging. My face distorted into disgust for the taste. Hard to find purified water anywhere, I can’t complain. I looked at the other bed through the bangs in front of my eyes and saw her there, lying, sleeping. A little smile formed on my lips while I used my magic to clear my view and took care of my mane, wearing my once-white hat and my brown, dirt coat.

As I took my first step outside the door, I tripped and fell face-first in the wooden floor. Pain woke me up better than any drink would, as I rolled on the floor, hooves over my aching muzzle. “What the h—“, my scream interrupted by the sight of the tripwire planted in front of the door. It was possible to hear some foal’s laugh echoing in the corridor, but I couldn’t find from where, exactly. Not amused, I disarmed the tripwire with a flick of magic and got up, feeling something dripping from my muzzle, a quick rub from a free hoof answered my question with the scarlet liquid on it.

I went down the stairs, directing myself to the bar. This time, the griffon were not alone, an orange mare running from frying pan to frying pan in the back of the counter, frying some kind of dough while the griffon himself were serving the costumers with pints of whiskey, mugs of milk or bottles of water. I raised my hoof for a moment, calling his attention. The big guy pressed his beak and approached me, muttering between steps something about those damned ponies.

I shrugged and cleaned my throat: “A mug of milk and… what’s that?” I pointed to a plate another earth pony, not very sympathetic, was eating. It looked like bread, but softer and with some kind of liquid dirt over it. In fact, the whole saloon was full of people eating the same thing. “It smells great.”

“Pancakes.” He answered, a bit of pride in his words as he took a more erect posture. “Our specialty. You ain’t gonna find this anywhere at Freeside, The Saddle or even Equestria!” The orange mare kept frying those pancakes like it was the end of the world (again), running side to side while flipping some of the dough with the frying pan, the little beige disks flipping in the air before being caught by the dexterous earth pony. “It’s a delicacy.

“And, by delicacy, I mean it’s expensive. Do you have the caps? Thirty per pancake.”

I almost put both hooves into the air. If you’re gonna rob me, at least say so! A pat on my back and a familiar voice stopped me: “Bring us ten and two mugs of milk.” I looked at the purple pony, again with her longcoat and face-covering hat.  “Good day, sleeping beauty,” I woke up first than you! “How are you?”

“Meh.” As I leaned on my hooves against the counter, the griffon put in front of each of us a mug full of milk and, as soon as possible, he turned to serve the other clients. Discreetly, I took a sip of milk and pointed at him. “He doesn’t like ponies?” I whispered.

“No, he doesn’t like unicorns, that’s different.” she chuckled. How does that make any kind of differ—Then I took a better look around and there weren’t any other unicorn besides me. Oh. “Many ponies here on Freeside doesn’t like your kind too, ‘too full of power’, they say. You know, magic.”

“Yeah…” It was hard to don’t notice that there weren’t nearly any unicorn over Freeside, the majority of unicorns in Haygas belonging to the Saddle. It’s like having a horn equals having a lot of money. If it were true I wouldn’t be here. I floated my mug for another sip and I observed the orange pony piling up five pancakes into a single dish, while preparing others. Probably it was our order. By boredom and instinct, I floated my radio to my ear and turned it on, static greeting me through its signal. Too far for DJ P0N-3, I knew. Stargaze noticed the simple electronic device and leaned in my direction. “Turn it to Radio Haygas,” she asked, “it’s important for our trip.”

“Yeah, sure…” I tilted the knob to the right, making the radio readjust itself while searching for another frequency. After some turns, we could make sense of the static and the radio finally memorized Radio Haygas. The voice that came from the little speaker was really harsh, coming from what looked an old stallion with a ton of life experience.

“Fillies and gentlecolts, you’re listening to Radio Haygas and this is your host, Mr. Haygas. It’s better to put on my newscaster hat, it’s time for the news: Do you remember that filly Stable Dweller, also known as Light Bringer? Well, it looks like she succeeded. Look up to the skies, fillies, here’s Celestia’s grace again, for all of us. And now, I’ll let you with a classi—“

I smiled when he talked about the Stable Dweller, as I was in one of the cloud-covered areas when everything turned into light. It felt like my eyes were burning, trying to adapt to the sudden brightness, but it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever saw. It was, what, a week ago? I couldn’t remember exactly when, but ever since my journey turned from bad to worse: In uncovered areas of the Wasteland, the heat proved too much of a challenge for a unprepared buck like me, making me drink at least twice the water I would normally. The second dish was served at that moment, breaking my line of thought with desire of eating those strange disk things that smelled so good. Pancakes, I have to remember.

“Ya two makes a cute couple.” What? Was she talking about us? My eyes goggled as I turned my head to Stargaze, as she was trying, and failing miserably, to hold laughter. I think that my reaction was a little worse than it could have been, so I just thanked the orange pony with a question mark and focused onto the pancakes. After a couple of laughs, she recomposed herself and started to eat one of the pancakes like she was a manticore. I gazed at my own plate and ripped one of the pancakes in half, floating the piece to my mouth and, uneasy, I put it in my mouth.

I think I scared her when I put a whole pancake in my mouth after the first taste. It was so good, I couldn’t react in any other way. A whole pancake was too hard to chew and it took many swallows for it to go down, so I should try to hold back. The radio kept floating, giving a background soundtrack to our breakfast, an old pre-war music by a mare that I think was called Sweetie Belle, DJ P0N-3 always played the same music at least twelve times a day, even though his playlist has broadened a lot with Velvet Remedy’s repertoire. Had I dreamt about playing over the radio too? Sure, but it was exactly that: A dream. Like she have read my mind, Stargaze wondered:

“Why don’t you send a holotape to some radio?” I already had thought about that, too, and the answer was simpler than I liked.

“How will I record something without any kind of equipment? And it’s hard enough to find a holotape, worse to find a recorder.” I took another sip, the milk helped to swallow some of the pancakes.

“There’s that, yeah… Mr. Buckle probably knows where to—“

“Who?” It took me some moments to make a simple math in my head and to relate both that Buckle guy and her contractor. Sure they are the same people. “Ah, okay.” I just cut her before she answered.

“If you help him, I think he would be glad to help you with the recording.” Seeing her smile like that without a glimpse of her eyes was really disturbing. I just nodded, without a proper answer. It took us a little more than ten minutes after that to finish our breakfast while I still felt like a million gazes were over my shoulder, the pressure of being unwanted in that place making its toll for me to be sincerely nervous. “Can we go, now?” I whispered to her, close to a whimper. Again, she took some caps and dropped them into the counter, finally getting to the door. As I took my own steps, I saw in the corner of my eye the suspecting movement of those evil-looking ponies from yesterday.

Again?

“Hey, horned little bitch!” Again. “We don’t like your kind here at Freeside, so get fucking lost!”

I put my own sunglasses, a necessary good after a lot of the cloud-clearing, the sun cracking over our heads, and looked at them through the lenses. There were four of them, all heavy-looking and bigger than Stargaze and I. With a sigh, I responded: “I am already going away. What’s wrong with you ponies, uh? Are you, what, thinking-impaired?” It took me a moment to understand what I’ve said. Why, mouth, why.

It wasn’t needed a genius to understand how angry they were, and I made it worse with my foul-talking. I think I inherited that from Ma’, she talked before thinking about it too, but at least her life wasn’t at the line every time she did that. Stargaze smiled, and that gave me a little bit of confidence that, maybe, I would not die today. Then they pulled out shotguns. Damn I will die today.

“What did you said, little bitch?!” He said before pulling his own weapon, a sledgehammer. “Repeat it!” I gazed at the purple-furred pony and she just nodded at me, encouraging me to do as he said. I swallowed and took a deep breath. “I said: Are. You. What…  Thinking. Impaired?” I am so going to die today.

He answered me like the mature and gentle pony he is: With a punch. I was knocked down, the perfect position for him to just punch my head in with the sledgehammer in his mouth. The sharp, loud noise over my head made me cringe, and I dodged as fast as I could the falling sledgehammer, cracking the ground under its impact. He took a step back, blood dripping from his gums, and the smoking revolver on Stargaze’s mouth was cocked once more.

“You… bitch!” He punctuated his offense spitting blood on the ground, not aware of my proximity of his own sledgehammer, hit by the longcoated pony with a shot in its head, the impact itself enough to loosen the grip of the little big monster in front of me. That was a one-of-a-kind opportunity that I couldn’t lose, as I grip the sledgehammer with my magic and, shutting my eyes, threw it against his right hindleg.

By his scream, I think it hurt. I threw myself up again, taking distance from those shotgun-wielding ponies while Stargaze aimed at them with already proven pinpoint accuracy. “We don’t need to end this in a bloodbath,” I tried to negotiate, letting go a breath I didn’t knew I was holding, “and it’s your choice.” I floated the sledgehammer closer to me, marking my words.

“You fucking assholes, the Fiends will know about you!” Wait, who? As they went away, their leader limping, I dropped the sledgehammer and my legs gave in, making me sit after such dangerous situation. I tried to control my breathing with some deep breaths, failing at that too, while Stargaze holstered her weapon. I think my doubt was so obvious that she approached me and cleaned her throat.

“The Fiends are a bunch of junkie ponies that calls themselves a gang. Not as bad as raiders, but just as dangerous.” She offered me a sip of water from one of her bottles, that I kindly accepted. Quite refreshing, besides the taste.

“It’s better if we go a little faster, then, isn’t it?” I finally had enough strength to pull myself together and got up. Many looks came from some of the destroyed buildings around us, and many more from the pub we were, making me uneasy. I don’t like this place at all, caps or not.

The only advantage is that we were already on the right side of the Saddle, so we wouldn’t need to cross that place again. That was a curious road, with so many intact buildings and a lot of neon signs, with casinos everywhere and drunken ponies roaming the streets like their lives were being sucked by all that light… I promised myself that, one day, I would be kicked out of one of those big casinos for winning too much. What a dream, right?

We kept going until we reached a blue bus broken between two big destroyed buildings, the so-called Freeside gate. With a thud, the double door was opened and she walked through, as I gave the last glimpse on that wretched hell that I would not return to so soon. The dust floating inside the bus gleamed in sunlight, quite a sight for such surroundings. I passed through quite quickly, watching as Stargaze spoke with some kind of caravan. Two armed griffin with some kind of magical weapon kept close attention to me and, after she signaled for me to approach, they kind of relaxed.

“This is going to be part of our way home, Note. This kind pony will guide us to Friendship City and, from there, we’ll travel on foot.” I couldn’t see who she was talking about, so I just nodded and entered the cart. “I’m Sharp Note, pleased to meet you…”

“Soarin’, named after an old Wonderbolt.” He said, and it took me just a moment to understand that he was a pegasus: We would be flying to Friendships City. I… don’t like pegasi. I know, I know they weren’t that bad, but they really screwed everypony in the wastes just because they were stuck-up hypocrites. The Enclave attack was just the tip of the iceberg, but at least it ceased. He noticed how uncomfortable I was, then added: “I know it’s partially our fault, but don’t blame every pegasus because of that.”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, nodding. I knew that, but it’s still a pretty hard thing to forgive in such little time. Again with a precognitive ability I couldn’t comprehend, Stargaze entered the cart and sat by my side, taking her hat off and leaning her head into my shoulder. “Can we go now, love?”

I stumbled over words before just nodding, my face redder than the cracked ground around Haygas, and Soarin’ took flight with both griffin by the sides of the cart, protecting us and the various crates behind, probably of some kind of alcoholic drink. I understood that we should act like a couple so we wouldn’t be suspect, and while she had her hat it was easy, as I didn’t saw her face. She was, well, beautiful, and I need to praise that, but… Damn, this is going to be a loooong trip.

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Footnote:

Perk Added: Friend of the Night (Your eyes adapt quickly to low-light conditions.)

Lvl. 2

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A/N: If you read it, rate it, comment it. I would love critics and, if something's strange or plain simple wrong, tell me, I'll make sure to correct and to not repeat the same mistake. Thanks for reading. Oh, and Merry Christmas, forgot about that, yeah.