Fallout Equestria: Good Pony - Chapter 1

 

Your brown hoof fiddled with the knob on the radio until a clearer channel came in.

 

 

You pulled up from the radio, annoyed by the same song being repeated today. The Forecaster really loved that song, if only DJ Pone-3 came in more clearly when the Pegasus were working on the weather. Green Grotto was in one of the areas where the Lightbringer's tower-things didn't work so well, and Pegasus actually had to come work the clouds, so the crops would grow, and the reservoirs would refill. Your Ma said that when she and your Pa had arrived, Green Grotto had been little more than desert and blasted ruins, and that's why they'd chosen it. It had been called Glowing Grotto, back then, too. Barely inhabited by more than a few ghouls. The Ghouls had stayed, the nearby ruins of Maripony in the same canyon were one of the last sources of good Radiation in Equestria. Had been, now it was running low. Enough to sustain the local population, but not much more. The Water Barons had gone out elsewhere, hauling out barrels full of rocks and gravel and bringing back irradiated water for the thirsty population of Ghoulish New Canterlot Citizens. The nearby Ghouls had been pretty happy lately, though. They had some new help excavating the ruins, large robot ponies with screen faces. The machines had begun excavating the ruins, moving around rubble and hauling back chunks of machinery along the gravel-filled potholes of the local road.

 

You stopped to watch them work, still waiting on the lazy pegasi to finish thei-- one of the machines broke from the makeshift wagon train. It rapidly drew closer, it was dragging along something with a single one of the claw-ed appendages that it had where a pegasus would have wings. You could tell the moment the machine realized you were there, the screen on its face and flanks flickered to life, switching between a few different caricatures of police officers and firefighters before settling on an animated cowboy. You tilted your own hat with a little bit of annoyance as it approached, raising up to all four of your hooves.

 

"Howdy!" The machine shouted in the shrinking distance, bringing along a large piece of carrion.

 

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"Howdy." You replied. A very tired howdy, indeed.

 

"Ah was just engaging in a honest day's labor, when I stumbled upon the Princess's [ROOT ACCESS UNAVAILABLE]. I realized she'd be mighty cross if I went and did nothing, so I took a quick detour to come ask for some assistance!" The machine continued to drag the thing closer, bloody streaks filling the ground behind it. The horn sticking from the rotten skull was unmistakable. It was a pony, a large pony. If the bloody remains of the wings clinging to its back were any indication, then it was one of the Goddess's old alicorns. They'd occasional dig up one of their skeletons or mummies, but this one was particularly-- wet and putrid, for a corpse that old.

 

"Ah'm sorry, I don't think ah can help, Mister, unless you need help diggin' a grave." You took a few careful steps forward, keeping your posture low almost submissive, as you interacted with the machine. Aging aggression sensors weren't worth gambling on.

 

"He isn't dead, kind sir." The machine spoke, grabbing your hoof as you got close enough. You squeaked.

 

"This isn't--" You objected as your hoof was shoved into the mass of rotting meat. You bit your tongue, the sun had warmed the flesh up to an unpleasant degree, the wet tissue nearly melting beneath your-- bu-dum. " Oh.

"I can't help--" You started. The blue heart on your flank tingled, "Ah-- if she's an alicorn, we- we might well be able to do--" The empty sockets of the skull looked at you, leaking a mysterious kind of pale-pink fluid. The heart on your flank burned, "--of course, robot mister, we'll do our best."

 

The robot nodded as it released the grip of your hoof, "Mighty thankful, Brookback."

 

He shuttered, having purposely avoided letting any of the machines know his name. Appraising the once-pony revealed that he didn't have-- anything-- to work with. It was a pony skeleton and cartilage, minus half the wing structure, with most of the flesh burnt or rotted from the bone. It was producing blood, but as fast as that blood was being produced it must be pushed out onto the open ground, as part of the putrid trail it was creating. First step was to stem the bleeding from... everywhere. Brook started breaking down his options. He didn't have artificial skin, nearly enough bandages for the entire surface area. No- wetsuits, hazmat suits, or even a vault suit. He had-- his hooves carried him quickly around the back of his house. The sound of his mother yelling something graced his ears, but he didn't have time to respond, running out back to pull the tarp from the generator that was held out back, running back towards the sick pony.

 

The gray and brown unicorn mare stood above the corpse, bright blue aura lifting one of the limbs to examine it, "Ah. Brook, are you gonna help me bury this thing?

 

"Nah, Ma, she's still alive." Brook slipped the tarp up under the alicorn with his mouth, his mother's magic joining the effort to get the creature into the dirty tarp.

 

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"Brook- you can't-- you're not gonna be able to help this pony, and even if did, she'd just wake up and attack us," The mare started speaking. (Brook stared at her, then at his Cutie Mark, then back at her.) The argument ended. A pony isn't given the luxury of choice when their cutie mark is telling them something, attempting such is like attempting to hole one's breath until one dies. She sighed, and finished, "What can I do to help?"

 

"She's an ali-corn, right? Probably kept alive by rad-i-ation, and now that she doesn't have any, she's gonna start dropp'n quick. And then after that-- uh-- she needs water-- and after that-- we need a better way to keep her insides inside, something more like skin." Brook's eyelids fluttered as he continued to work through the problem. He bundled the remains of the mare up as he spoke.

 

"We have-- we have some drained energy cells in the shed, when the caravans come by we can get something better for her. I'll see if any of the Medical Textbooks we have mentions anything that can help with the... skin... problem." The grey mare looked up. She was better in a book than with her hooves on a pony. Her little Brook was built for this, the look in his bright blue eye was entirely focused.

 

"Thanks, ma." Brook nodded, barely reacting as his hooves practically pulled him over to the shed.

 

Index returned inside, knitting her brow as she made her way over to the collection of books she'd spent her free life building. She fancied herself the closest thing to a librarian the town had, and Brook always puffed up when he said that his mom was a librarian. The stallion was so much like his father, especially now as he attempted to pierce the veil of an impossible problem, the only pony capable of seeing something better upon the other side. Maybe, just maybe, she could help him. Her hooves pulled a book. Her eyes scanned tables of contents. Her mind flipped back through pages she'd one read. She returned the book. This cycle continued until she hit the end of the row, out of space. She sighed, pulling one of the many ancient magazines from their pile and flicking through as she considered how she'd tell Brook that she couldn't find anything. Then her eyes stopped, "Huh. Fish Skin, really?"

 

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Strawberry Dream's ears flicked as she heard her name called. Her break wasn't supposed to be over yet, and the yelling was coming from below. Glancing down revealed a pony rapidly approaching her position. The stained white felt of the Stetson gave him away, quick. Brookback. A sweet colt, barely out of his teen ages. He waved a hoof up at her and called again, slurring her voice with his accent. She pushed off the cloud and lowered down slowly, "Hey, Bluebutt, what's up?" Brook hunched down, taking in a few deep breaths, "Need water, water in a tub up at tha' stead, pony's hurt real' bad and I'm runn'n on some real borrowed time." Strawberry knew that the worried horse was good for it, and that the normal jovial stallion was in quite a bit of stress, "I'll be right over. Just flag me down where I'll need to let the cloud out." Brook rushed back, pulling the bundled meat and tub out front, motioning the pegasus to come over and fill it. Strawberry suddenly grew a ton of questions she did not want to ask, so she leaned down over the edge of the cloud. "Hey Brook, you know this water isn't the cleanest, right? They roll in from the rad-lands, we're supposed to let it run off into places, so it filters through the dirt first." "Weirdly counting on that, right now, Strawr'berry." Brook laughed and called up. Strawberry shrugged her shoulders and emptied the cloud into the rotten meat bucket. She'll have to ask him about this later, "Well, good luck with whatever you're cooking up there." "Big thanks! I need ta crack open some old ee-cees now." Brook called out. Strawberry left right as Brook got to work. Resurrecting the alicorn was actually quite a lot like farming. Brookback even read about them growing plants with just water and nutrients, called hydroponics. Okay, it was less like watching a plant growing, and more like watching a pony rot in reverse. Soft flesh firming up, brightening. Flesh regrowing where it was lost. The murky water turning first a bright red, and then the same kinda pink you only see when really strong earth-ponies bleed. Brook kept replacing the water and eventually fertilizer as the creature kept growing. He got to go fishing with his mom, catching some really big rad-reapers and skinning and descaling them together. The skin fit weirdly around the alicorn, and she still needed a bunch of bandages, but it meant she could be taken out of the water and put on a trained saline drip they'd acquired, bandages holding the poor thing together as she assimilated the new parts, but assimilate she did. Pale white skin grew pink, a thin fuzz grew into bands of purple and white across the strange alicorn's body. Feathers grew along the wings as the small missing bones replaced themselves.

 

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Brookback had only met a hoofful of Alicorns, but he could quickly tell she was different... broken. Like somebody had sawn an alicorn and normal pony up and stitched them back together. Short white forelegs, long purple backlegs. Mess of mismatched teeth. Her white torso was too small, her too-small lungs wheezed in her sleep as she took in deep breaths. The purple alicorn neck and head looked silly hanging from it. The layer of delicate skin, the velvet, that grew over her horn was white towards the base, transitioning roughly to purple, giving the illusion that the sharp alicorn horn had burst a unicorn's. Her ears ended in soft white bundles of fuzz.

 

One day her eyes opened as Brook watched, bright and yellow, cat-like, with splotches of the pink. They scanned around the room slowly, before focusing on Brook. She spoke, her voice was scratchy but warm, "Hello, Little Pony, my name is Twilight Sparkle, and I think I might be the Princess now."

 

FALLOUT EQUESTRIA: GOOD PONY

 

Desu Archive: https://desuarchive.org/mlp/thread/42458319/#42462553