Fallout Equestria

Chapter 9.

Clouds.

When I first stepped outside into this new world, the world was impossibly big, the sky terrifyingly high. Now, the omnipresent clouds -- shifting, boiling, darkening with rain -- was just another ceiling. Grey, like the one in Stable maintenance. Only rarely, like on that first night, would small fissures open in the cloud cover, like gaping wounds that would slowly heal. The tantalizing glimpse of a bright, wondrous blue above, cheerful and serene, tempted and tortured those living in the gloom below.

"Littlepip," Velvet asked, her own thoughts not far from my own, "Does the air seem strange to you outside? The day is so warm and bright, and yet the air is... sickly. I feel so eager and yet so hesitant to be enwrapped by it."

"Like it's poisonous," I agreed. Calamity said nothing. I supposed that to him the air was the air and had always been like this.

The strewn wreckage of pegasus vehicles, cast from the sky when the metropolis of Cloudsdayle was obliterated in a single hoofstomp, stretched on for miles. Some of the sky chariots and wagons were marred further with the old skeletons of the poor ponies who were struck dead or mortally wounded by the megaspell, but whose bodies were not wiped from existence entirely.

The mountains rose up to either side of the valley, sickly grass forested with blackened trees. New plants grew around them, feeding on their corpses. Up and ahead was the worn and faded image of a giant Sparkle~Cola bottle, the stylized carrot immediately identifying the drink even though the words on the sign had faded too severely to read. A badly faded yellow pony with a pink mane was holding it aloft in nearly orgasmic glee. According to Calamity, these giant signs, called billboards, had once littered every major skyroute between Cloudsdayle and other cities, advertising goods and services from all over Equestria. I could spot a second billboard on the opposite side of the valley perhaps half a mile further down. Even from this range, I thought I could recognize the familiar image of heroic pegasi with rainbows exploding across the sky behind them as they swooped over the armies of wicked zebras. Better Wiped Than Striped.

A large, enclosed delivery wagon lay battered, bent and sunken partially into the ground. I spotted on its side what appeared to be a business logo -- a pattern of seven ascending circles -- which struck me as strangely familiar. I didn't have to ponder it long, for as we drew closer, my PipBuck's automap christened it: Wreckage of Ditzy Doo Deliveries. Now I remembered where I had seen the pattern before -- on the interior title page of The Wasteland Survival Guide.

Calamity was looking at the wreckage with similar comprehension. Velvet looked between us, confused at why we had stopped to stare. "What?"

"This is where Ditzy Doo fell," I said, feeling awe and intense sadness. This... this would have been her only grave marker, had she not suffered a stranger fate.

"Who?"

"Ditzy Doo," I repeated, lost in my own thoughts. I was trying to imagine what it had been like. Velvet, who did not know the name, gave me a look indicating just how helpful she felt that answer was, and turned to Calamity.

"Ayep."

Velvet nickered and walked past, circling around the back. Moments later, I heard her call out, "Littlepip, would you please come look at this?" Her voice had a tone of... hope? I trotted around to find her (not at all like a little puppy at her owner's call).

Boxes and crates littered the ground around the back of the Ditzy Doo Deliveries wagon, and many more were toppled and crushed inside. Some had been torn open, all had been looted for anything of value. Except, that was, for a safe and a footlocker in the back. It was the latter which had drawn Velvet's excitement because, while identical in make to every other footlocker I had run across, the markings were very distinct: three bands of yellow, the center one with a pink butterfly emblem. This was not a medical box, but the colors and symbol were clearly those of the Ministry of Peace.