Unfinished Fallout: Equestria side story

Equestria seems to still be in the throes of a great literary revival, with the new edition of The Book of LittlePip having come out and all.  Not that time has diminished the popularity of the Stable Dweller, the Security Mare, or Argyle Stockings (and her stalwart ghoul mareservant Xyra) that I've ever been able to notice.  It seems only a natural step that once ponies have to focus less on survival they begin to once again create on a rather grand scale.  Hundreds of memoirs have been published, or found, or recorded since the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows to someday serve as a testament to ponykind's ability to outlast its (so far) best attempts at self destruction.  Now, as a pony that reads a lot trust me when I say this is largely for the better.  Also trust me to say as the author that you're reading this is probably going damage the value of that opinion substantially.

My reasons for writing this story are not nearly on par with a desire to record the historic journey that returned the sun and Elements of Harmony to Equestria or of a desperate quest to do better in the Wasteland at its very worse.  No, I'm writing this largely because my 'friends' all have jobs, responsibilities, and other such encumbrances that apparently affect their ability to use a pen to write down their own story whereas I have 'nothing but free time in hospital' and 'can hold a pencil in my mouth'.  Not that I mind I guess, since I don't have anything else to do and can hold a pencil in my mouth.  About the only things I have in common with the great mares of modern Equestrian literature is that I was born in a stable and possess the same equipment between my hind legs.  Of all of us I at least didn't really set off with any grand thoughts in my admittedly empty head all those years ago, I was just following orders.  I'm not entirely sure my head isn't just as empty as it was about twelve years ago now.

Unfortunately, you get what you pay for.  In this case that isn't a whole hell of a lot since in addition to no pay they also didn't give me many instructions beyond telling me to tell you, yon noble reader, about how Detrot (the Carriage City) began its renaissance and became the shining beacon of the Wasteland it is today and how it missed out on being renamed the totally awesome 'Phoenix City'.  Telling that to somepony who freely admits to being rather scatterbrained and shallow (see above) seems to be near a recipe for disaster, or at least a rather sharp narrowing of the scope.  Understanding that then, I hope you (the reader) will indulge me if I tell what I know from the perspective I know best.  

For me at least the whole thing began, I would say, when at the age of six I first left the safety of my stable home.  Only four paragraphs in and I've already managed to get ahead of myself somehow.  Perhaps I should clarify who exactly 'myself' is even if my name's already on the cover or something most ponies probably aren't going to recognize it.  My name is Torchlight as in the Trottingham meaning not an actual torch, though I can't understand for the life of me why my father couldn't have just named me Flashlight II or something I've never understood.  My home was originally made in the same place my mother's (Safety Lamp by the by) family had lived since the end of the war when Carbide Lamp descended into the safety of Stable 76, under the Packherd Carriage Plant.  No doubt he fully intended for his descendents to make their triumphant return to the surface to reclaim the city even if he himself would've preferred to remain down in the tunnels forever, I can't imagine he really foresaw them returning to the mines he'd left for Detrot.  

The whys and wherefores that lead to my family leaving 76 for a time to live in the mining community of Hoofton are a little more then you want to know in this rambling bit of childhood backstory, but I'll get to that later.  Suffice to say it was quite the experience for a filly my age to set off across the vast wastes and a giant damn lake to the Upper Peninsula after having never been beyond the confines of the Stable before.  To say it was a life changing experience isn't too inaccurate I feel, ever since then I've had no desire to be that open and exposed again if I can help it.  

As we prepared to leave the Stable the first real indication I had of what awaited us was my mother's insistence that I receive my Pip-Buck early.  Now that set off alarms since the only reason I could come up with at that age that she would want to actually hand over an electronic device that valuable to me shortly after I had disassembled the coffeemaker was so that her and my father could use the integral tracking system.  If there's one thing I was good at as a filly, other than breaking things, it was guessing.  

Dad (Red Flag, if you were wondering) had travelled far away across the wastes from Trottingham and filled my bedtime stories with frightening tales of what he'd seen when mother was working late so I had some notions of what Detrot would look like above us when Clock Spring opened the door and it certainly didn't include the faded poster's view of a shining industrial metropolis (mainly since those seemed to be contradictory terms even to a filly born and raised underground).  Hiding beneath my parents, I think I half expected a dragon or a radigator to fall upon us from the tunnel ceiling.  Nothing did attack us then of course and with a reassuring nuzzle I was coaxed out from under my father's hind legs allowing us to continue out into the relatively bright day.

At the very least it wasn't raining.  We had emerged from the old brick tunnel that lead away from the massive Stable door, obviously a later addition, under the cloudy gray skies that were a permanent fixture of Equestria until all too recently.  There wasn't much to see beyond the surprisingly dry drainage cut and the towering wrecks that composed the once grand sky carriage factory.  My sense of scale at the time was still badly hampered by the whole 'stable dweller' thing but even to this day I have seen few sights that have reminded me of the grandiosity of Equestria's past then that first walk through the Packherd Plant grounds. Two soft noises nearly threw me back underneath my parents before I determined their source.; two little tags had popped up on my Pip-Buck sitting over the tunnel we had just emerged from (Stable 76) and one centered on what the map showed as a long complex stretching past me on either side beside the cut (Packherd Sky Carriage Plant).  At least now I'd be able to find my way home, I thought.

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The trepidation I'd felt about venturing into the terrifying wastes quickly subsided as I soaked up the glorious damp air blowing down the tracks, the squish of mud beneath my hooves, and the lonely silence that held sway over our surroundings as we trudged onward to the beginning of our journey.  It was replaced by a profound desire to return home.  Or at least to go back to the where the factory buildings hadn't toppled over yet.  Finally my dad showed me on his Pip-Buck our first stop on the 'Mercury Continental Highway', no doubt wishing I'd remained in awed silence a little longer.  When I asked why it wasn't labeled on mine, he shrugged and muttered something about the Pip-Buck 'learning along with you' or something which was often his answer to a question when a better one eluded him.  Shrugging that is.  He always did a lot of muttering when I started asking him questions about how Pip-Bucks worked when it seemed entirely reasonable as the one who maintained them he should have the answers.

Somehow the caravan knew to expect us, which after the way he was already avoiding answering my questions it didn't seem wise at the time to press him why they were waiting or how they knew we were coming.  Time has since provided me with the answer, but at the time it all seemed a bit mystifying.  To be fair, I probably would've come up with at least a decent theory if I hadn't been trying my very best to not complain about how cold it was or how muddy my hooves were.  After all, mother had said I was old enough for my very first Pip-Buck and old enough to make such a long journey with them hadn't she?  That meant I had to be as tough as they were, so I held my head high and pranced alongside of her only occasionally taking sidelong glances at the areas where rubble had drifted down against the railroad tracks we were following.  

I made it almost to the Highway before my lapses in attention sent me headfirst into the roadbed thus setting a brilliant example for my future plunges to cranial self-injury.  While I was busy discovering that the surface of Detrot was just as hard as the stable floor while having the distinct disadvantage of being rather damper.  Thankfully, once my mother stopped nickering (never have figured out why the sight of her daughter tripping made her laugh that much) she relieved my miserable sniffling by picking me up and setting me on her back.

With the advantage allowed me by the lofty height of my mother's back I could see all the way to the base of the fallen railroad bridge that lead down onto the carriageway and the waiting caravan.  It wasn't a very grand affair.  A few wagons and pack animals under the command of a stern old mare that my parents addressed their conversation to while I examined just about everything else around my mother's neck.  There were a few other ponies , namely the two large red colts hitched to the wagon and a purple mare haggling with a rather dreary looking blue buck over some odd looking things I guessed were fruit.

Therefore I believed, and still do, that I handled the sudden appearance of a small pink blob in the rather serious caravan mistress' brown mane rather well, matching the wondering stare of its blue eyes.  Filter Paper (aforementioned stern mare whose attention I was desperate to avoid out of instinct) didn't seem disturbed by the filly in her mane and my parent's didn't seem to notice, leaving me locked in a mortal struggle with the pink haired mystery pony.

"Hello!" it proclaimed cheerfully when Filter Paper paused in some vital discussion of our route.  Keeping my cool I responded in kind with my own much perhaps slightly less grating "Hi."

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Much of the caravan's route through Manechigan was too frozen and desolate to support much of anyone let alone a large population of raiders, slavers, or even the usual subsistence farmers once you passed the ruins of the old Solo Flight Air Base.  Even inside the limits of what had been Detrot the city's population seemed disinclined to rouse themselves from their own labors or travels to molest our convoy.  Catch told me it was because of some group of ponies called the 'Neighborhood Watch' who helped check the rowdier elements from time to time.  Enough to put the fear of the Goddesses in them it seemed.  Or perhaps, I thought as we passed maybe the third family scraping at a sodden plot of plants, there was simply nothing left in Detrot that anyone would want to steal.

That was, of course, before we passed the shattered gates of the Air Base for the first time.  My Pip-Buck began to click steadily as we passed by the vast pony made complex of rusting hangers and the plain strewn with strange craft dad called 'Vertibucks' and 'Raptors' that had once been part of the mighty pony war machine.  Judging by how solid most of the base's buildings still looked, much tougher then the ruins of civilian homes and businesses we'd passed so far anyway, it seemed that there'd be ponies all over the place to get at whatever pre-war treasurers were contained within.  Or maybe that was just me.  I asked dad that, why nopony had stripped the base but this time I got his other standard non-answer which was a stern warning to avoid whatever it was I asked about (closets at Hearth's Warming, his workbench, the engineering spaces, cookie jars before dinner) under the threat of punishment.

So I decided to give up on it, and other then a few longing glances at a pile of otherwise intact looking carriages at the main gate I slowly tuned Catch's babble of Detrot trivia back in to see if I'd truly missed anything.





Torchlight Character Notes Yay!!!

Safety Lamp: Mother of Torchlight and Stable 76 surgeon; average size earth pony mare, slightly heavy build, light green coat, two-tone purple mane (short and messy) and tail, cutie mark is a white cross outlined in gold, eyes almost always closed; How does she see?

Red Flag: Father of Torchlight and Pip-Buck repairpony; average size pegasus stallion, athletic build, orange coat, grey mane and tail, military cut, cutie mark is no longer visible due to burn damage; Bravest pony.  Ever.  Has seen the sun

Orange Shellac: Noted refurbisher of damaged goods; tall unicorn mare, average build, light brown coat, mane and tail dyed pink, tends to be long and tangled, cutie mark is a pile of orange shavings; What the hell is 'shellac' anyway?

Afternoon Delight: First pony to jointly hold the titles Mayor of Detrot and Overmare of Stable 76; average size unicorn stallion, thin build, peach coat, well kept cyan mane and tail, cutie mark is a boat propeller on a piece of paper, never seen without his notebook; A total nag

Royal Lace: Detrot doctor and cyberpony; large earth pony mare, average build (for her friggin' size), cadet gray coat, shaggy, lemon yellow mane and tail, badly cut, cutie mark is a cracked clock face, has a Pip-Buck hanging around her neck; One weird mare.

Torchlight: Mare of many trades; average size earth pony mare, strong build, cream coat (what's left of it), barn red mane and tail (what's left of them), cutie mark is a torch over an open book., a complete ditz; Me!