/mlpol/ - My Little Politics

>>375188

Anyway, the current controversy seems to be whether or not Morning Glory is too naive and emotional to use weapons. P-21 argues that arming her makes her more of a liability than an asset, while BJ maintains that they need more than one fighter in the party.

The issue never gets resolved; the conversation just sort of peters out, BJ drifts through her inner monologue for awhile, and then she turns on her PipBuck radio. She scans stations for a bit, until she eventually settles on one that is playing an old song apparently recorded by Sweetie Belle. This is followed by a little commentary from our old buddy DJ Pon3:

>“Turns out the road between Manehattan and the Hoof is just a little safer now thanks to a pair of ponies fresh from a stable. You’re gonna love this… looks like the Hoof has just a little more Security than a few days ago. That’s right, she’s got it displayed loud and proud. She’s already carved up the raiders from Withers all the way to Megamart, and she doesn’t look like she’s going to be stopping any time soon. So here’s a big thank you from DJ Pon3 to the Security Mare. Looking forward to seeing what law and order you bring down next.”
In keeping with the tropes of its predecessor, it seems that Project Horizons' radio DJ is inexplicably paying close attention to the story's protagonist. This is implausible for the same reason it was implausible in kkat's story: BJ hasn't really done anything all that remarkable yet, so there's no reason her actions should receive any special recognition. She takes down one nest of raiders and suddenly she's a famous folk hero? Really?

Anyway, BJ is more angry than flattered by her newfound fame. She gripes that if Deus and his party is listening to the broadcast, it will make it that much easier for him to pin down her location, which is actually a pretty good point. The DJ was an implausible and awkward character, basically a game mechanic from Fallout 3 clumsily transposed into kkat's world. Since she eventually became a major character I suppose anyone writing a derivative work would have no choice but to treat her as canon; however, I probably would have downplayed her role in this story.

Anyway, the chapter ends here.

>Footnote: Level Up.
>New Perk: Friend of the Night - Your eyes adapt quickly to low-light situations.

>>375189
I have no idea if I'm remembering this correctly, but didn't Frank feed DJ Pon3 information about LittlePoop's activities in kkat's original? That would explain how she knows about BJ, but again it is probable I'm misremembering and giving both authors too much credit.

>>375189

Chapter 5: Work

>Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons
>By Somber
>Chapter 5: Work
Ah, good. It hasn't turned into Bonfire of the Vanities yet. Thanks for letting me know. Every time I click that 'next' button I get a little twinge of anxiety.

>“Step one… stay alive. Step two… I dunno. Step three… profit!”
This, of course, is a well-known quote from Milton Friedman.

>So. That’s Hoofington. The Hoof. Or ‘the Core’ if you were talking about the inner city where all the technological marvels were supposed to be. Glory had been filling us in all morning as we continued along the decayed road. But now, as it rose into an overpass, I had my first look at the city. And I didn’t like it one bit.
Why exactly are they going here again? As I recall, the plan was to find this Sanguine character and take him out. Is there any reason to believe he might be in Hoofington? Or are they just starting here because they don't have any better ideas?

Anyway, we are given a brief description of Hoofington. The Core is located on an island in the center of a river, which seems heavily contaminated with green and pink radioactive sludge. Due to limited space, the ponies built vertically, and so the Core area consists mostly of giant skyscrapers that quite literally extend as high as the clouds. The cloud cover seems to also be radioactive, so I'm guessing this is a no-go zone for the Enclave. The banks of the river are covered with the ruins of an urban sprawl. There appears to be only one highway and one bridge across the river and into the Core.

>But what mattered to the three of us was the massive square building beyond the overpass. The building was surrounded by a berm of scrapped carts, sky carriages, and other debris. Four large turrets clung to the corners, sweeping their long barrels back and forth. Bright neon lights flickered in the rainy gray weather: ‘Megamart’, they said, and beneath that in bright red paint was ‘Finders Keepers’. Unless I was mistaken, this was the headquarters of the Finders.
Is this where they were going initially? I seem to recall the Crusaders were the ones who originally suggested going to Hoofington, and they were also the ones who had business dealings with the Finders. Still, though, I'm not sure why BJ & Co. would need to seek these guys out, unless they're planning to barter with them or something.

Anyway, it looks like the trio's next stop is the decaying ruins of Pony Wal-Mart. They approach the building, and are stopped at the entrance by a sentry who informs them that they have to pay an admission fee of 5 caps per head (or 10 per Bessy, whatever that means). However, it seems that due to BJ's newfound radio stardom, the Finders are inclined to let her in free of charge. They advise her to speak to the Manager, because apparently she was asking about her.

>“You can be sore about the reputation or you can use it. Not both,” P-21 replied casually. I stuck my tongue out at him, much to Glory’s surprise.
Why is this gesture surprising to Glory? If it's not obvious and you're not going to elaborate, just don't mention it at all.

Anywho, they go inside. It's basically what you'd expect: a giant ruined Wal-Mart that's been converted into a weapons and armor bazaar. It seems to function as more or less neutral territory: ponies of all sorts, including raiders, are all wandering around in here shopping. Presumably the rules are similar to an Old West saloon, where the establishment will serve anyone provided they keep their guns holstered and don't cause trouble.

A mare wearing a Megamart name tag approaches them and helpfully explains how everything works. Apparently, pre-war Hoofington had a large number of military bases, and after the bombs went off all the military equipment was just lying around. The Finders purchase any war materiel that anyone brings in.

It goes without saying that she has already heard of the "legendary" "Security Mare" and her "heroic" "exploits":

>Her eyes looked at my security barding and she smiled. “Ah, you’re the mare who cleared the Manehattan highway!”
>“Yeah. It’s not a big deal. It just sort of happened,” I said with an awkward smile. She gave me a very calculating look that made me shift awkwardly. “I mean, they were just raiders. Anypony would have killed them.”
>“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” she said as she looked at me with a cool little smile. “Anypony would have given them a wide berth while they tried to extort my caravans. You were the one that shut them down. Perhaps not a big deal to you, but we’ve lost six caravans in as many months. Trade to Tenpony and Gutterville was down to a trickle.”
We are once again veering into kkat-level implausibility.

The Raiders BJ just took out were a tiny group, based in an unfortified donut shop. By my count there were a grand total of five of them. The only advantage they had were the beam weapons they'd stolen from Morning Glory's group, which they only would have had for about a week. BJ, armed with a couple of pistols, her security baton, and very little ammo, basically just waltzed in there and took them out by herself.

This "Megamart" is an organized operation, and they have guns out the wazoo. Are we honestly supposed to believe that five retards camped out in an old ruin were able to waylay six of their caravans over six months, and they did absolutely nothing about it? That this tiny band of poorly-organized lunatics was so intimidating that the average Wastelander is willing to go ten miles out of her way just to avoid them, even though all it took to bring them down was one retard with basically no combat experience just walking in there with no plan and clearing the place out? That this "Finders" faction, which obviously has enough muscle and firepower to fearlessly operate this weapons bazaar, and has an economic interest in removing the raiders, took no action whatsoever? *presses X to doubt*

>>375192
>didn't Frank feed DJ Pon3 information
I forgot to mention it, but this is what BJ assumes is going on. iirc, in kkat's story, the DJ actually has access to a huge network of observation towers, that allows her to monitor just about everything that happens. I don't recall if Frank was involved or not, but it would be believable if he was.

I initially remember thinking it was implausible that the DJ would be paying so much attention to LP, with or without the observation towers, since she wasn't doing anything particularly remarkable. Later, when it's revealed that she is a fellow dyke-horse who has a crush on LP, it at least becomes somewhat plausible from that perspective: she watches her because she likes her, and talks up her relatively mundane exploits on air the same way a teenage girl will yap moronically about the boy she likes to anyone that will listen. So far there's no reason to believe anything similar is going on with Blackjack, but who knows.

>>374847
I'd actually forgotten that the Crusaders had played up the roboponies as a major threat, but you're absolutely right.

> It reminds me how FO:E had all sorts of monsters who should be a problem to deal with or are hyped up to be dangerous and end up being shitty mindless fodder for the protagonist to easily cleave through.
This was a yuge issue in kkat's story, and was one of many things I remember that bothered me quite a bit. The Hellhounds I remember being a pretty egregious example of this, as was the Pink Cloud. There were all sorts of precautions the protagonists were advised to take, which they blatantly didn't take, and yet they were still able to deal with these threats pretty effortlessly.

>>375194

>She reached into her vest and took out a small plastic bag filled with caps. “Consider this a ‘thank you’ from the Finders,” she said as she tossed it to me with a smile.
>“Well, it was a standing contract. I am fairly sure you’ll spend it here, so I’ll recover some of it from the vendors. And if it outfits you, well, the more likely you’ll bring in profitable goods in the future,” Bottlecap said, regarding him with an even look as her explanation mollified him.
This at least somewhat clarifies things. Apparently the Finders had an open contract on the raider nest, so at least they were attempting to do something about it, even if that something didn't amount to much more than farming the work out to anyone who wanted to make 500 caps. However, I'm still calling bullshit here: the raiders presented a minor threat at best, and it stands to reason there would be any number of professional bounty-hunters/mercenaries of varying skill levels who would be tempted to at least try to bring them down. In the event of the contract standing open for six months with no takers, and the Finders losing significant revenue from the caravans in the meantime, it stands to reason they would just handle it themselves.

Anyway, the banter continues. We learn that, apparently, Enclave ponies are not allowed inside the Megamart. Whether this is an Enclave rule or a Megamart rule is not clarified. In any event, for some reason or other it doesn't seem to apply to Morning Glory, since nopony tries to kick her out and she doesn't leave.

BJ brings up the subject of the EC-1101 file. The manager the mare with the name tag seems to be the manager they were told to speak to informs her that data analysis is indeed a service they offer, but it does not come cheap. She quotes her a price of ten thousand caps.

So, again, while there are still plenty of faults and silly elements in this story, I will at least commend it for more or less adhering to a central plot. The protagonist has two clear long-term goals at present: figure out what the deal with this file is, and kill this Sanguine guy. In order to pursue the first goal, she needs to earn 10,000 caps, which is a mid-term goal that will no doubt propel her into any number of situations that will create short-term goals to drive the story along.

Again, we can compare this to the structure of the original FoE:

Velvet Remedy disappears, and Littlepip wants to solve the mystery of where she disappeared to and why. LP leaves the stable, immediately gives up on this goal, then wanders around aimlessly for multiple chapters. Eventually, through a series of more or less random events, she stumbles upon some kind of "heal the Wasteland" spell that gives her a long-term goal, as well as a couple of unrelated mid-term goals (find and defuse a bomb in Tenpony Tower, kill the Goddess for What's-His-Name). Along the way, she ends up fulfilling the original goal (find Velvet Remedy, figure out why she left) more or less by accident, and the answer to the big mystery turns out to be utterly mundane anyway. In the process of attempting to solve the three main goals of the later story, she keeps needlessly taking on unrelated side-missions without any apparent concern for the time-sensitive nature of her two mid-term goals. Eventually, she solves both of the mid-term goals in one fell swoop, then wanders around aimlessly solving side missions for a few more chapters, then the Enclave shows up for some reason, and then yada yada yada the gardens of equestria and whatever. In short: the book is an absolute clusterfuck with little in the way of plot or structure, and what plot it has makes little sense.

Now, that said, I would like to remind everyone that we are only on Chapter 5 of Project Horizons, out of a grand total of 77. There is plenty of opportunity yet for this story to go off the rails, and I fully expect that it will at some point. From what I've heard about this story, Blackjack ends up becoming some kind of alcoholic sex-crazed cyborg, and eventually she travels to the moon. However, I am more than willing to give Somber credit where credit is due. So far, this story reads like the original FoE, with some minor improvements to the formula. Those minor improvements make all the difference.

Anyway, fuck; point is, BJ now needs to earn ten thousand caps so she can get her file decoded. As it turns out, the manager can offer some assistance here:

>“We don’t just find things. We also handle ponies looking for special help. Sometimes it’ll be retrieving goods, other times it’s contract work like clearing out nests of dangerous wildlife or bounty hunting.”
If they're this organized, and are this plugged-in to the various mercenary networks around Edgequestria, it makes even less sense that a tiny disorganized group of bandits operating out of a fucking donut shop would have given them this much grief.

Anyway, fuck; point is, they can make money taking kill-for-hire contracts, so I'm assuming that's what they'll be spending most of the near future doing. BJ wants to have P-21 read over the contracts and decide on which ones they should take, because blah blah morals and whatever. While she's thinking of it, she mentions that oh btw, P-21 has a badly injured leg and needs serious medical attention. The manager informs her that surgery will be almost as expensive as data retrieval, but there's an abandoned hospital not far that would probably have what they need.

The hospital is the usual deal: it's a massive treasure trove of extremely valuable medical supplies, but in 200 years nopony has looted the place because it's full of monsters and whatever. But surely this inexperienced dipshit security-mare, armed with a couple of handguns and her two useless friends, will be able to clear out the monsters without much difficulty.

Anyway, since she has delivered her infodump and serves no further purpose, the manager-mare NPC wanders away.

>>375203

Next stop, the doctor's tent. BJ, still injured and still apparently radioactive or something, elects to spend 125 of their 500 caps on something call the "patchwork and purge" special. Well, I guess you've got to spend money to make money.

The doctor makes a few snide remarks about her condition, and refers to her by her new "Security" nickname. Unfortunately, it looks like this is just how things are going to be from now on. The Wasteland has a new "Lightbringer," apparently.

>He looked at me coolly. “Girl, I’ve been in the Wasteland a while now and outlived my children and grandchildren. If there’s one thing more precious than clean water and bullets, it’s the feeling that tomorrow you’re less likely to die than today. Those raiders might be replaced by some other band, but yesterday we nearly had a party when we’d heard we could send caravans safely to Manehattan again. That might be nonsense to you, but it means the world to us.”
Once again, the nonsensical and thoughtless way this setting was originally slapped together rears its ugly head. Earlier, when the Crusaders were explaining the Wasteland to Blackjack, I was beginning to hope that Somber's goal was to construct a more plausible, balanced version of kkat's Wasteland, and a story that didn't revolve as heavily around one massively overpowered (and overrated) protagonist. Unfortunately, though, it's looking like he's probably just going to stick to the original formula.

On the one hand, the Wasteland is supposed to be this lawless, unforgiving Wild West scenario where the slightest misstep can get you killed. On the other, you have characters like Blackjack and Littlepip, who, despite having essentially no real combat experience, are able to just emerge from the Stable one day and start effortlessly taking out baddies left and right, and they're lauded as heroes for it.

In and of itself, Blackjack's most recent achievement isn't implausible. As I explained, the raider group she attacked was small and poorly organized, and likely didn't know how to make effective use of the advanced weapons they'd stolen from the pegasi. With a combination of luck and bravery, it's not hard to imagine anyone doing what BJ just did; in fact, BJ says as much herself. What makes it implausible is that this relatively minor accomplishment is being lauded to the degree that it is. It's implausible that a group like the Finders, which is clearly well-organized and well-armed, would have allowed such a minor threat to disrupt their operations for a whole six months. It's implausible that, in the cruel, unforgiving, dog-eat-dog Wasteland, there is not one other group besides Blackjack's willing to venture into an abandoned Dunkin Donuts and take out a small gang of poorly-organized thugs.

From the earlier conversation between BJ and the Crusaders, I had hoped that Somber was planning to structure his tale differently from how kkat did. Even if the eventual goal is to have BJ become some kind of ultra-badass Wasteland hero, at this point in the story she should not be anything more than one pony trying to eke out an existence in an unforgiving world, same as everyone else. Others, including factions like the Finders and the Steel Rangers, have been doing it for far longer and are likely much better at it. We should not be hearing about BJ's exploits on the radio until she's actually done something radio-worthy.

If taking out a tiny band of Raiders, who are weak and badly-organized enough that one mare can slaughter them with a couple of handguns and a security baton, is indeed considered a heroic feat worthy of the ten o'clock news, it throws the plausibility of the entire setting into question. How have the Finders managed to hold onto this massive store of weaponry, to say nothing of the mountain of caps they seem to be sitting on, for as long as they have, if some tiny band of poorly-organized thugs camping out on the highway can pose this much of a threat to them? How have any of the ponies in this world survived for as long as they have, if they are this easily cowed and intimidated? It makes absolutely no sense.

Anyway, fuck. BJ gets herself patched up at the Doctor's office, and then she meets up with her friends again. She explains that they now need to earn ten thousand bottle caps if they want to decrypt what is probably just the Overfilly's r34 folder. While the obvious solution would be to whore P-21 out to a thousand fat mares at ten caps a pop, Morning Glory actually has a better idea: why not go to the Enclave's Skyport? She believes that the Enclave would probably be willing to decrypt the file for free in return for delivering one of their operatives safe and sound.

BJ, still not sure if she ought to trust the Enclave, decides she needs more information. Out of absolutely nowhere, on the basis of some offhanded comment made by Brolly in one of his 200 year old diary entries, BJ asks Morning Glory who Rainbow Dash is. We then learn that Rainbow Dash was a hero of the war, who later gained infamy for suggesting that the pegasi go down to the irradiated surface world to help evacuate mudponies and unicorns. When the pegasus council told her no, she said "well screw you guys then" and ran off to go do some stuff or whatever, and was never seen again. She remains a controversial figure in history to this day.

Morning Glory herself seems to have ambivalent feelings about her. Her view is that, while she respect's Dash's desire to help the surface ponies, if she had been a little less impulsive and listened to the council, she could have done more good in the long run. Or something.

Anywho, with that important topic out of the way, BJ now poses another non-sequitur question:

>I had to admit my mane was itching in curiosity. “So, what’s life in the clouds like?”
>Again, clearly not a question she expected.
Not a question anyone expected, or should have expected. Seriously, this is not how conversation works.

>>375311

Morning Glory does her best to answer:

>“Um… it’s different. That’s all I can really say,” she said softly. “We’re not supposed to discuss Thunderhead. It’s all classified.”
Wtf is Thunderhead again? Was that mentioned already? Yeesh, so many flippin' factions and terms and locations and secret projects in this world. I'm starting to get war flashbacks from trying to keep track of everything in kkat's absolute clusterfuck.

>Time for a topic change!
In order to have a topic change, you need to have a topic to begin with. Seriously, this is not how conversation works.

>“So, P-21. Have you seen their little bulletin board? I’m pretty sure if we can knock out some jobs, sell any salvage we don’t need, and get lucky then we might be able to get that ten thousand caps pretty quick.”
So...they're not going to the Enclave's Skyport? Then what was the point of even bringing it up?

Anyway, P-21 goes through the contracts on offer. Using some unspecified methodology, he separates the ones he thinks they should take from the ones he thinks they shouldn't take. In the end, he settles on three: collecting radscorpion venom pouches, rousting some squatters in the Fluttershy Medical Center (the same hospital that was mentioned by the Manager earlier), and infiltrating a place called Ironshod Firearms and retrieving some computer parts. The scene ends in a page break.

We rejoin the party at some indeterminate point in the future. They appear to have taken on the "radscorpion" contract first. They are currently surrounded by the vicious little buggers, trying to gun them all down.

>S.A.T.S. had finally failed me, too. The targeting and time manipulation spell might have slowed things down, but it didn’t stop time. By the time it finished, two of the radscorpions were dead, but the remainder had put new holes in my forelegs with their razor-sharp pincers.
Even though my initially high hopes for this story are fading, it's still nice to see the author imposing some reasonable limitations on the heroine's toolkit.

>The gravel pit was filled with rusted machinery that made Morning Glory’s job infinitely harder.
Wait, what is her job again?

>She had to swoop under and around the girders, busted conveyors, and decaying equipment to try and follow me as I blasted ammo like crazy. She proved much more adept with the beam pistol fighting insects than ponies. I had no clue how she could aim the boxy contraption clenched in her teeth, but the soft ‘crak’ of each shot mixed well with the throaty ‘boom’ of my shotgun.
So...I guess...her job is now air support? Like what's-his-nuts from the first one? Calumny, or Caligari, or Caligula, or Count Chocula, or whatever the fuck? Calamity; that was his name.

Anyway, point is, there's a bunch of fucking scorpions and they're trying to kill them all. Yada yada yada, they kill them all. Yay. Then, suddenly, a really ginormous one crawls out of the ground. Oh noes.

>It was as large as three ponies combined, with pincers large enough to snip my limbs and head like a daisy… well… pictures of daisies. I always thought they were flimsy looking flowers… but why was I thinking about flowers now? Its tail struck with such force that I could imagine it going right through me.
I haven't commented much on the prose quality in this story, but in case anyone was wondering, this is a pretty good example of the kind of shit I've been dealing with.

Anyway, yada yada yada, it's a big-ass scorpion. Their guns and shotguns and beam guns and whatever the fuck else they have aren't strong enough to hurt it, and blah blah blah yakkity-schmackity. Herp de derp derp doo, Blackjack lobs a grenade into its mouth and pulls the pin, assuming this will be enough to kill it. Unfortunately, it seems that the grenade she threw was a "shock grenade," which only works on robots. Oh, dear; poor Blackjack. Scrambled eggs all over her face.

Anyway, flibbidy bibbidy, Morning Glory tries to grab BJ and fly her to safety, but the scorpion stabs her and they both fall. Cue comedic sound effect. BJ lands on the roof of a nearby steel crane, while Morning Glory lands in the path of the scorpion. The scorpion begins to skitter towards her. Cue dramatic music.

BJ, having flashbacks to the last time she did something stupid and got one of her companions killed, vows "never again," and leaps for the scorpion. Cue inspiring action music.

She lands on its back, goes berserk with her shotgun and manages to blast its tail off. She then rides its back for awhile, waiting for her S.A.T.S. to recharge, and when it does she pulls the same trick and severs one of its claws. She then fires her remaining shots into the back of its head, cracks the carapace, and beats the shit out of its brain with the gun butt until eventually it dies. Cue victory music.
[YouTube] Final Fantasy VII - Victory Fanfare [HD] [Embed]

Anyway, now that the fighting is over, they take some healing potions and whatever. Morning Glory seems a bit woozy; I suspect she was poisoned by the scorpion. But we'll put a pin in that for now. P-21, who apparently knows how to find and remove a radscorpion's poison gland for some reason, starts collecting the glands. Meanwhile, BJ finds the skeletons of some less-fortunate adventurers and begins looting their bodies. She replenishes her ammo, adds another rifle to her growing collection of guns, and also finds a Crusader cape. She has some sort of ethical dilemma about taking it, or wearing it, or something, and then ultimately decides to just tear off the patch and stick it in her pocket.

She rejoins the group, and oh noes, it looks like I was right; Morning Glory has been poisoned. MG claims that she knows how to synthesize an antidote by mixing healing potions with scorpion venom, but she needs access to a laboratory. Well, as luck would have it, the next place they were planning to go, Ironshod Farms R&D or whatever, has one.

And so, it's onward to the next adventure.

>>375312

>Ironshod Firearms; I could have worked for these ponies. I really could have. Just looking at the faded pictures of firearms sitting over desks was enough to make my insides moist.
Apparently, Blackjack is now some kind of obsessive gun fetishist. I'm not entirely sure how, when or why this happened, but it's been mentioned a few times before. Prior to leaving the Stable, she hadn't expressed any strong feelings about guns, and hadn't had much exposure to them. Nothing about her ever suggested she might have or eventually develop this sort of interest. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it feels sudden, like in the original when LP suddenly became interested in books out of absolutely nowhere.

Anyway, fuck. They're in this Ironshod Firearms factory now, getting shot at by robots and automated gun turrets. Morning Glory is unconscious, being carried on P-21's back.

>Jumping through the next door I heard an ominous beep underhoof.
>I glanced down just in time to hit the override button on the mine with my magic. That sent prickles up and down my spine. I’d help nopony if I got us blown up.
"Mines" fall into the category of canonical world elements that Somber would have inherited from kkat, which kkat in turn would have ripped directly from the Fallout games, so I can't really lay this one at Somber's feet. However, I would still like to protest that these things make no fucking sense as practical weapons. What possible utility could there be in a mine that not only beeps a warning to its victim before exploding, but also gives them several seconds to get away? Not only that; it even has an override button. It's yet another example of something that works well enough as a game mechanic in an interactive medium, but does not transfer into a more realistic setting.

Anyway, fuck. BJ moves through the factory, past a couple more mines, and into some kind of main production area, where she is attacked by a floating robot. She destroys the robot, then takes Glory from P-21 and runs upstairs.

Upstairs, she finds a room with a fuckton of spent shell casings, and also some laboratory equipment. MG is too far gone to make the concoction herself, but she explains it to P-21, who gets to work. As he works, he and BJ have a brief, spirited argument over whether or not MG should be trusted. The short version is that P-21 is critical of Blackjack for trusting basically everyone they meet, whereas Blackjack is critical of P-21 for being suspicious of basically everyone they meet. We also learn that they are not technically friends yet, but are closer to being friends than they were the last time the subject came up. Glad we got that all sorted out.

Anywho, Dr. Dinglenut gets to work on the antidote, while Little Miss Psychopath heads out to shoot some more robots. She finds a room with a fuckton of ammunition in it, some of which is color-coded:

>Red proved to be some sort of incendiary that seemed rather futile. An orange shotgun shell, on the other hoof, exploded on contact like a grenade! Perhaps not as large a blast radius as the thrown variety, but still impressive! Green just splattered some sort of goo all over the metal. Then I fired a blue shell at a turret. There was an electric flash and then the turret just stopped. I looked skeptically at the disabled device and then at my gun. At first I’d been impressed. Then a minute later, the damn thing powered back up again, and I had to disable it the old-fashioned way: with buckshot. Black simply fired a bunch of tiny sharpened nails that bounced right off the armor of the few remaining sentries.
Great, just what this setting needed: more tiny details to keep track of. Looks like we now have to remember that there are five distinct types of color-coded specialty ammo, and they all do different things.

>I got to one door and immediately froze. I could feel the tingle in my skin even before I could hear the clicking of the PipBuck on my foreleg. Whatever was behind the locked door, I could live with the mystery.
The implication being that whatever is in there is radioactive? I guess? Anyway, whatever; I'll count this as a small improvement, simply because if this were Littlepip she would have spent another five mini-chapters hunting around for a key, only to end up having to fight some gigantic monster-thing in return for a locked box full of 200 year old Fig Newtons.

Anywho, BJ leaves the locked door alone and comes to the office of "Dr. Trottenheimer: Research Lead." If a dead NPC is mentioned by name, it's probably safe to assume he is important to the backstory of this particular area.

>Inside were a safe and terminal; I’d leave them to the more reliable hooves of P-21. A unicorn skeleton sat in the chair, an unusual pistol on the floor next to it.
At Hotel Edgequestria, all of our rooms come standard with a safe, a terminal, and at least one skeleton. If for some reason any of these items are missing from your room, please let the skeleton of the front desk concierge know, and we will happily provide you with a complimentary robo-turret and box of 200 year old Fig Newtons. Anyway, I'll again remark how refreshing I find it that this story's Wasteland-hero protagonist isn't also a master hacker and expert locksmith, and that the side characters are allowed to at least be useful for something. Small improvements that make a difference.

Oh, also: the weird gun she finds is called "Trottenheimer's Folly." The skeleton, who we can probably assume is the late Dr. Trottenheimer himself, appears to have shot himself with it. His skull is partially melted and the shot blew a large hole in the wall, so I'm also assuming his "folly" is some kind of ridiculously overpowered weapon that by all rights shouldn't exist.

Page break. BJ goes back downstairs and relieves P-21 from keeping an eye on MG as she recuperates. P-21 goes off to take a shit and/or open the safe upstairs. MG wakes up, and she and BJ yak for a bit.

>>375313

>“So. You said some things while you were out of it that made P-21 curious.”
>Instant evasive look. Not good. Worse, she looked upset. “I did?”
>“Something about ‘no more weapons’? I mean I just found it ironic given the nearest lab we found was a munitions laboratory, but P-21 was a little more curious,” I said softly, hoping to coax her into opening up a little.
I didn't highlight it, but this was in reference to a remark that MG made earlier, when she was still feverish from poison:

>She stirred and looked around in a daze, muttering softly, “No. I don’t want to do this anymore.” Her pupils were unfocused as she stared around. “No more weapons. Please…”
I had assumed she was just babbling because she thought they were still having the scorpion fight, but now it sounds like this is a flashback to something in her backstory.

She doesn't really want to talk about it, but BJ does manage to squeeze some vague information out of her. It seems the Enclave is similar to Stable 99 in that each pony has a job assigned to them. Unlike Stable 99, the assignments are handed out based on aptitude instead of heredity. MG's aptitude was in "technical engineering" and "medical procedures." It seems that they put her to work designing weapons or something, and she didn't enjoy the work, so she transferred to the Volunteer Corps at the first opportunity.

As a bonus, we also learn that apparently the first rule of the Enclave is that you don't talk about the Enclave:

>I gave a crooked smile. “You know, someday I’d really love to hear about life in the Enclave. Compare notes and all that?”
>“It’s… I can’t. Please… it’s not that I don’t want to,” she said softly as she stared at her hooves. “It’s that I can’t. If they ever found out I broke that protocol… I have family.” Her lavender eyes begged me to understand. “They’d be investigated. There’d be inquiries. My sister might lose her job. My father would certainly be disgraced. I can’t talk about it. Not about Thunderhead or what I did there. Nothing.” She covered her face with her hooves. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. I can’t,” she said as she gave a snotty sniff.
Alright then. Keep your secrets.

Anyway, BJ tells her that as long as she's just sitting around, she might as well whip up a few more batches of poison antidote in case they run into this problem again. Then, she goes off to take a shit and/or find P-21 and see what he's been up to.

She finds him upstairs in Dr. Trottenheimer's office, trying to brute-force the password on the terminal, because lawd knows it just wouldn't be Fallout: Equestria if anypony walked past a terminal without trying to see what was on it. He conveniently gets the password right at the precise moment she arrives, so he lets her read the journal entries while he roots around in the safe to see if there are any 200 year old Fig Newtons inside.

The journal, unsurprisingly, belongs to Dr. Trottenheimer. It is a tale of deception and intrigue, involving an organization called the MoM and a bunch of mystery players whose names are obnoxiously abbreviated to initials. Apparently, this Trottenheimer chap was transferred to Ironshod against his will from someplace called Horizon Labs, at the request of some mysterious director referred to as G.B., which I can only assume stands for Grumpy Buttocks.

Anyway, Grumpy Buttocks has Leon Trotsky working on some kind of mysterious new weapon, and it sounds like it's being done without the government's knowledge, or something. Eventually the government finds out, and P.P. sends the MoM to shut it down. I can only assume that P.P. stands for Prickly Pete, and MoM is the Ministry of Muffins. Prickly Pete interrogates ol' Trot McGrot, but he is too crafty by far, and escapes without having to reveal his secret recipe for potato salad.

Eventually, the city starts exploding for some reason, or a plague breaks out, or something. Scotty McTrotty has been contaminated by a mysterious substance he calls "the flux," which I can only assume is the same stuff that those capacitors are made from. The building goes on lockdown, and he finds himself trapped in his office, which sucks because he really has to go to the bathroom. He sits in there for a few hours, or maybe it's days or weeks, and then decides that since he can't leave his office without being shot by robot sentries, his only option is to just go in his wastebasket. Not wanting to soil a perfectly good wastebasket, and probably stink up the whole office in the process, he opts to kill himself instead.

He is currently in possession of something called the BGP, but only has one BBP for it. I can only assume that BGP stands for Big Green Potato, and BBP stands for Brown Butter Packet. This turns out to be enough ingredients to make just one batch of the super-secret potato salad that Grumpy Buttocks had hired him to invent. He whips it up, using the wastebasket that he is now really glad he didn't poop in. After all the fuss over the recipe, the potato salad turns out to be just awful, so awful in fact that he dies from eating it. In his last moments, he pens out a suicide note, entreating his family to please forgive him for being such a gigantic faggot, and also asking that if any random gun-toting lunatic should ever hack his terminal 200 years in the future and end up reading his suicide note, to please stop doing shit like that because it's an invasion of privacy. The end.

note: the above text may not be an accurate summary of this faggot's actual journal. You may want to read the actual entries for yourself in case any of this shit ends up being plot-critical.

Anyway, Blackjack pulls out the huge, ridiculous gun she found, and correctly deduces that over the course of 200 years, the Professor's batch of rancid potato salad has somehow fossilized into a gun. She decides to keep it to honor his memory. They also find some kind of mystery box in the safe, which turns out to be empty.

>>375316

Anyway, this basically the end of the chapter, but there's a bit more information that probably bears mention:

For some reason Morning Glory knows an awful lot about Hoofington, and pre-war Equestria in general. This seems due to her having grown up in the Enclave, which presumably has a better school system and better records of the pre-war world. She explains that Hoofington was originally a college town, but was leveled by ziggers early on in the war. It was rebuilt by the surviving residents, and converted into a major research and development hub for the Ministry of Wartime Whatever Technology; the one that Applejack was in charge of. And as I'm sure we all remember from the first story, the Ministry of Apple-Related Weapons of Mass Destruction came to Hoofington to do two things: create pony-made horrors beyond all comprehension, and whip up batches of disgusting potato salad. And now, thanks to Blackjack, they are all out of potato salad.

Anyway, I'm probably too tired to be doing this, so I'm going to stop now. The chapter basically ends here, and I think I've covered all the important stuff.

>Footnote: Level Up.
>New Perk: Shotgun Surgeon - When using shotguns, regardless of the type of ammunition used, you ignore an additional 10 points of a target’s damage threshold.

>>375188
>Why exactly is she so picky about what guns she uses? Seems to me like the beam guns are pretty effective.

Another poorly thought out gameplay mechanic awkwardly inserted into a story where it makes no sense, like pre-war security robots working after 200 years, and 5 clowns in a donut shop being a problem that took six fucking caravans over several months from the guys who hand out bounties and should have had this problem solved, and beam weapons having a random chance to "Critically Hit" triggering a special death animation like disintegration.

Like a fic someone mentioned in a youtube vid where Batman was written using Detective Vision to learn things, like seeing foes through walls and spotting important-looking objects highlighted orange, when Detective Vision was designed to gamify how Batman's experience lets him notice what the average player might not. Retard authors getting shit backwards again... yet they think they're improving on their inspirations and outsmarting the original works and fixing plot holes and inconsistencies when they pull shit like this, overcomplicating shit with messy solutions to simple problems with simple solutions.

Small Guns, Big Guns, Melee Weapons, and Energy Weapons are separate skills in Fallout, except in games where Small Guns and Big Guns are combined into the Guns skill. Agility improves your Gun skill and Perception improves your Energy Weapons skill which is retarded and makes no sense. A pro gunslinger shouldn't have trouble with what looks like a gun but bulkier and takes MicroFusion Cells instead of boolit. Logically energy weapons should suck to justify why anyone would use bullets, rare non-reuseable things of varying sizes, instead of standardized magic rechargeable batteries.

A smart author would recognize this and justify it with "Energy Weapons are weird pieces of shit designed by somepony who had literally never held a real gun before. They weigh a ton and lack iron sights and require frequent cleaning and can't be repaired by anyone except certified AppleCorp Geniuses and need precise distance based laser calibration so the laser drills holes instead of tickling bitches and the gun needs many AA batteries instead of one big clipazine mag, they're an ergonomics nightmare, and nobody uses them unless forced to by tradition or resource scarcity or armoured enemies" or just scrap the gameplay mechanic entirely and take the piss out of it when Blackjack shoots someone with a laser gun, Penis-69 or Morning Wood says "I didn't know you were trained to handle lasers", and Blackjack says "It's still a gun, point and shoot lmao".

>>375317

Chapter 6: Play

>Fallout Equestria: Bonfire of the Vanities
>By Robert Louis Stevenson
>Chapter 6: Call Me Ishmael

Today's fortune cookie:
>“I know lots of other ways to take care of you. Don't worry. You're gonna get better.”
t. Anthony Fauci, seconds before injecting Joe Biden with "the cure."

Their business at Ironshod now concluded, the trio moves on to the Fluttershy Medical Center. It has started raining again, and their progress is slow.

>I wasn’t going to discard a single bullet or bit of loot that might contribute to our ten-thousand-cap goal, though, and with P-21’s injured leg and Glory’s lack of pockets, I was left slogging through knee-deep mud while they trotted ahead.
Sticking with the formula of the original story, Somber's protagonist is overburdened with a bunch of basically worthless crap she refuses to toss aside.

>Ten thousand caps just to find out what EC-1101 was, and once we found out, what then?
Just out of curiosity, whatever happened to Morning Glory's suggestion of going to the Skyport to see if the Enclave will decode it for free? Hunting around for the Skyport can't be that much harder than trying to save up 10,000 caps by fighting 1,000 scorpions at 10 caps a pop, can it?

>Deus was still out there, somewhere. So was Sanguine, who directed him.
This actually seems like it would be the more pressing objective; however, since they have zero leads at the moment, there's not much they can do. However, since it sounds like the DJ is intent on keeping track of Blackjack's movements and broadcasting them over the radio, they could probably use that to lay a trap for Deus. Maybe do something big to get the DJ's attention, then set an ambush and hang out for a few days to see if Deus is indeed following them. Just food for thought.

Anyway, they keep on traipsing through the muddy landscape until eventually they get to the Fluttershy Medical Center. BJ sees a bunch of yellow bars on her PipBuck radar-thingie, and decides to announce their presence so they don't get accidentally shot.

They arrive at a barricade, where they are met by four armed ponies. The ponies seem well-mannered, and the quality of their weapons seems higher than what BJ is accustomed to seeing in the Wasteland. She explains that they are here about the squatter-removal contract, so they are brought into a tent and introduced to someone calling himself Prince Splendid.

> “Greetings. I am Prince Splendid.”
> You bet you are!
>“Sure. Refreshment sounds great.” Hot body, manners, and feeding us? This day just got a whole lot better! In fact, I was pretty sure that this was the high point of my entire experience in the Wasteland. Heck, of my life!
The twist to Blackjack's character vs. Littlepip seems to be that she likes dick.

>Refreshment involved chilled Sparkle-Cola RAD, which had a delicious sharp radish flavor – and more clicks on the radiation sensor – and some fresh carrots and apples.
I know it's just another of kkat's 1:1 game-element transpositions, but I've never quite understood what the deal is with the radiation in Sparkle-Cola. Is it radioactive because it's absorbed ambient radiation in the air, or because the soda was made intentionally radioactive by the manufacturer? And if the latter, then why? Seems like a rather silly and self-defeating marketing gimmick.

Anyway, they all sit and yak for a bit. Turns out that Prince Handsome and his associates are members of the Collegiate, which is a faction the Crusaders mentioned earlier. The Prince's father, who I guess is the head of the Collegiate or something, is dying, and they need access to the hospital's medical equipment. However, they can't access it because of what I can only assume is some kind of being of unfathomable horror that lurks inside. In true FoE style, rather than either taking direct action or proactively seeking help, the group has opted to simply set up camp in the parking lot and wait for someone to happen by who is willing to clear the building for them.

We are also given a brief explanation of what this guy's faction is about:

>“The Society members are the descendants of the aristocracy of Equestria. Our king and leaders are related to Princess Celestia, and thus we are the rightful inheritors of Equestria.” He gave a great sigh. “Sadly, few in the Wasteland will acknowledge our bloodline claims.”
He alternately refers to himself as part of The Collegiate and The Society. I recall the Crusaders specifically mentioning both, but I can't tell if they are meant to be two separate factions or not.

>“So you want access to the clinic. If I can convince these Collegiate ponies to let you in, would that be okay?” I asked, tapping hooves before me. Things were so much easier when I could just shoot ponies. If I lived, I won.
Oh, wait; I see what's going on. I misunderstood what the Prince was saying earlier. It looks like The Collegiate are the squatters that this guy wants removed. The Society is a separate faction that needs access to the hospital. The Collegiate is in there studying stuff, and won't let anyone else in. So, the Society is offering a bounty to anyone willing to oust the Collegiate, either violently or non-violently. Glad we got that all cleared up.

>I had to admit, I was impressed by what I saw; his ponies were better armed and equipped than most. He had fresh food; that was a miracle in and of itself. It was simply the fact that the Society seemed to believe it had some inherent right to rule. Even if he got this super cure for his father, who would it help besides ponies who already had so much?
As usual, the inter-factional politics in this setting are difficult to follow, and don't make a whole lot of sense even after you understand what's going on. If this group believes themselves to be the rightful rulers of Equestria, and also have access to fresh food and better guns than everyone else, why not just take everything over by force? Seems like they have a decent advantage.

>>375346

The issue here is similar to what we saw earlier, with the Finders and the highway raiders. The Society is better armed and presumably better organized than Blackjack's band, so why don't they just go in and clear out the Collegiate themselves? I guess we don't know much about the Collegiate yet; maybe they're tougher than they sound. Either way, though, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just camp here and wait.

If Prince Splendid's father really is dying, then it seems like time would be a factor. Even if they don't have enough muscle to take on the Collegiate themselves, wouldn't it make more sense to hunt around and see if they can rustle up a mercenary army or something? Be proactive? Go to the Megamart, talk to some ponies, see if they can't just hire a few extra soldiers? I mean, if your father is on his deathbed, and the only thing standing between you and a miracle cure is a group of nerds who took over an abandoned hospital and won't let you in, it seems like the sensible course of action would be to round up as many goons as you can find, and take the hospital by any means necessary.

Again, it's a logical catch-22 similar to the Finders' situation with the raiders. If this is is a problem that's too big for this well-armed, well-provisioned faction to solve, I can't see how farming the job out to some lone mare armed with a collection of shitty handguns is going to help. Conversely, if this is a problem small enough that BJ and her friends can handle it at their current level, and the situation is a matter of life and death for the Society, why would the Society not just take care of it themselves instead of going to all the bother of creating the contract? No matter how I slice it up, it just doesn't make any sense.

>We stepped back out into the rain with our stomachs fed, but my head, already struggling with earlier doubts and questions, now throbbed. Plus, it didn’t help that my loins were very interested in Splendid, and I had no clue how to address that; in 99 I’d put myself on his breeding queue. No doubt Splendid would have had a backlog of years. Now, I doubted it was just as simple as getting him alone and lifting my tail.
Blackjack's priorities make about as much sense as everything else currently happening.

>“So, what do you think?” I asked P-21, and then frowned as I saw him staring out into space as he limped along beside me. “Yoo-hoo… Equestria to P-21…” I swished my tail through his field of vision.
>He blinked out of his reverie, looking… embarrassed? “Yeah? What? Oh, think? I think… ah...” I stared in fascination as he actually stammered! “I… I’ll leave it up to you.” Rarely have such ominous words been uttered by so level-headed a pony. I didn’t think he could stammer!
>“What’s gotten into you?” I asked, and grinned as he went even redder.
>“Nothing. I mean… I’m just thinking about what he said to you…” He scowled and then clenched his eyes closed. “Never mind!” he said as he limped ahead of us.
inb4 P-21 turns out to be gay for Prince Splendid or something. Either that or he has the hots for Blackjack. Considering the way these stories usually play out, I'm betting on the former.

Anyway, BJ & Co. head up to the hospital entrance, which has been fortified with sandbags. The ponies inside are also showing up as friendlies on her radar, so she uses the same approach as with the Society. They are greeted by some nerdy-looking horse who demands to know if they are with The Society:

>“Are you with the Society?” he asked at once and then blurted nervously, “Tell them we’re not leaving!” Their beam rifles looked like they’d fall apart with a sharp kick. Those turrets on the other hand…
Again: this group doesn't look like anything the Society couldn't handle on its own.

Anyway, BJ introduces herself as "Security," and as expected her "reputation" precedes her. The nerd introduces himself as Archie, and invites her inside.

>A strange drum hummed softly in the corner, providing power to a number of flickering terminals.
Wait a minute. If these guys need a portable generator to make the terminals in here work, what exactly has been powering the terminals we've encountered so far? This is yet another squishy inconsistency of this setting. Since it's Pastel Ponyland, you could probably just brush this off by saying that the terminals run on magic, not electricity, but if that's the case...why do these guys need a generator? Another logical catch-22. This is why pre-writing matters: stuff like this should be thought out in advance, before you even start building the story.

>“So are you the pony in charge?” I asked.
>The brown buck with the scraggly black mane nodded. “For now. My boss went upstairs a week ago and hasn’t come back,” he said nervously as he looked at the three of us. “Prince Splendid’s tried to take over more than once. First he tried to sweet talk us, then bribes, then he attacked.”
Somehow, this entire situation makes less sense the more it's explained. Also, I will once again protest that "buck" is an inappropriate slang term for a male horse though I will also acknowledge that it's another legacy term inherited from kkat's world, and thus is not Somber's fault directly.

Anyway, fuck. Here's a quick summary of the situation: the Collegiate came to this hospital for some yet-unknown purpose; research or something. The Society arrived a short time later, hoping to score some free medical equipment, but the Collegiate was already here and wouldn't let them in. It sounds like the Society tried and failed to force their way in, so they put out this silly contract instead. Meanwhile, the Collegiate wants to explore the upstairs but can't for some reason, probably because it's haunted by some being of unfathomable horror. So, much like the Society, they decided to just camp out indefinitely and sit around playing with each other's balls, hoping that some do-gooder would wander in eventually and solve their problems for them.

>>375348

Anyway, the conversation is predictable from here. The Collegiate and the Society both want whatever the hell is stored on the upper floors of this building, so BJ figures the obvious solution is for her to go up there, defeat whatever monster ate the previous expedition, and retrieve the medical stuff. Both sides get what they want, nobody has to get killed except for all the ponies who have been killed already, of course, and BJ gets some more caps to add to her file-decryption budget. Everypony wins. Of course, the really obvious solution would have been for the Collegiate and the Society to just agree to a cease-fire, combine forces, and explore the upstairs together, taking out whatever is up there using their combined numbers and the superior weaponry of the Society. However, this is Fallout: Equestria, where no one but the protagonist is allowed to take any significant action, so that idea would naturally be a non-starter.

>Damn, my mane was itching like crazy.
She's mentioned her mane itching several times now. I can't tell if it's meant to be a figure of speech, like "my ears are burning," or if something is being foreshadowed. Maybe she just has lice or something. I guess we'll just have to wait and find out.

Anywho, the trio sallies forth. They leave the base-camp area in the emergency room, and enter a large central atrium that was designed to look like an artificial forest. The visual imagery in this area is admittedly pretty cool:

>The interior of the massive structure was hollow, and far above us the domed skylight had shattered, allowing rain and runoff to cascade down into the fountain set in the center of the chamber. Chipped and faded concrete vines coiled up the interior, giving the impression of being within some mythical wood. Butterflies and birds perched, frozen and forgotten for two centuries. Glass tubes had once held elegant brass elevators, but now they were smashed or leaned out over the interior.

There is also a statue of a pegasus pony in the center of the room. BJ asks Glory if she knows anything about it:

>“Who was she?” I asked Glory softly, feeling a strange sense of reverence and sadness.
>“Fluttershy. She was a ministry mare, and a friend of Rainbow Dash. She founded the Ministry of Peace and dedicated herself to helping the ponies of Equestria throughout the war.” Morning Glory looked wistful as well as she looked up at her. “As the war progressed it took its toll on her. Some claim she aided the enemy, despite orders to the contrary, and gave zebras medical supplies and other care. At the end... well… I was taught she went mad with grief and wandered out into the Wasteland to die. She simply couldn’t live with having failed Equestria.”
Here, we see yet another of Somber's small improvements to kkat's original formula. BJ, having been raised in a Stable, has only limited knowledge of the pre-war world, and as such cannot immediately identify many of the key players. Morning Glory, who grew up in the Enclave and had a better education, would plausibly know a lot more, so BJ is frequently asking her questions like this. This serves the dual purpose of conveying essential information to the reader without spoonfeeding it through narration, while also delineating roles for these two characters. BJ plays essentially the same role in her story as Littlepip played in the original, but unlike LP, BJ isn't inexplicably all-knowing or all powerful. The side characters actually serve a purpose, and are capable of filling in gaps in the protagonists knowledge, or picking up the slack when there's a task she can't perform.

>Morning Glory, however, examined the remaining elevator curiously. “Something wrong?”
>“I think it’s still functional. It just needs a spark battery and some scrap metal,” she said as she pried up a panel in the center of the platform.
Also, while Morning Glory was clearly designed to be this story's Velvet Remedy, ie a quiet, meek, Fluttershy-type who hates guns and violence, she's also a more well-rounded character than Velvet was. She doesn't contribute much in the way of muscle or firepower, but she's resourceful and has technical knowledge that comes in handy. We can once again make a favorable comparison between this story and it's predecessor: at one point in FoE, the party encounters a broken elevator. Littlepip simply repairs it herself, without any explanation of how or why she would have any idea how to do that, since all she knows is PipBuck repair. In a similar situation in this story, the problem is handled by Morning Glory. It's been established that Glory has a background in mechanical engineering and medicine, so it's plausible she might have enough general working knowledge of machines to get a broken elevator working.

While this story is still clearly following the trajectory of the original, with the narrator-heroine being groomed for a future as some kind of all-powerful badass, the rest of the party is at least more balanced than in the original. We can probably compare the current Blackjack-Morning Glory-P-21 trio to the Littlepip-Velvet-Calamity trio that formed the core group in the first story, and again, it's a favorable comparison. FoE was basically the Littlepoop Show, with Calamity playing the role of Littlepoop's sidekick, and Velvet relegated to an occasional healer role. Conversely, P-21 and Glory have both proven themselves capable in their own right, and they each contribute something actually useful to the group. I don't doubt that, as the protagonist levels up and has more and more wacky powers grafted onto her, that PH will turn into the Blackjack Show eventually too, but at least the side characters get to actually do something in this story.

Anyway, fuck. Morning Glory uses a spark battery and some spare parts that BJ found in the previous location to fix the elevator, and they ride it to the fifteenth floor, which I guess is where all the action is.

>>375354

This next bit is a little confusing, so please bear with me.

>When the doors to the fifteenth floor opened I jumped through, breathing hard as I fought the urge to be sick. When my heartbeat slowed I looked back at the elevator where P-21 and Morning Glory were frozen in place. “What?” I asked as they stared at me… no. Not at me. Slowly I turned and looked at the wall opposite the elevator. In flaking black-maroon letters, a single word was written as if with a paintbrush. ‘PLAY’.
>Oh horseapples…
I have no idea what the significance of the word 'PLAY' is supposed to be.

The scene ends in a page break, and unfortunately things aren't any clearer after the fade-in:

>Time had stopped as effectively as if I’d triggered S.A.T.S. and simply left it there. My PipBuck’s chronometer might’ve still marked the time, but every minute felt like an hour. Normally I’d be bored to stupidity, but here my every nerve was screaming at attention. Step by cautious step we walked together, me first, then P-21, and lastly Glory watching behind us. The word was painted every few feet, sometimes in elegant cursive and sometimes in wild, broad letters. The lights flickered and dimmed, but I was used to dim and uncertain light. I was not used to the soft, chiming melody that played all around us like an invisible music box with a cylinder that turned just a touch too slowly.
Is this area...dangerous somehow? I mean, I was basically assuming there would be something dangerous up here, but I have no idea why they're treading so cautiously. Does the word 'play' have some significance in this world that was covered earlier, and I've just forgotten about it? Other than it being the title of this particular chapter, I can't think of anything. I think it's just supposed to be creepy, like "come play with us," or something.

Anyway, whatever; I guess I just have to keep reading and find out. They explore this eerily quiet area, which appears to be a former children's ward or something. The atmosphere is generically spooky, but nothing much is happening:

>There were other little variances. Dolls hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the hallway. A stuffed rabbit tucked into a hospital bed… no, not tucked. Strapped. Two dozen bed sheets stretched across the hallway, decorated with maroon houses and stick figures. And more detailed paintings of ponies. And… fire. And ponies fighting. Ponies dismembered.
>“What the hay is going on here?” I muttered softly. I suddenly found myself longing for Pony Joe’s. “Give me bodies… or something shooting at me… or something. Not freaky pictures and words written in dark paint.” I glanced back and saw both of them staring at me. “What?”
>Glory swallowed. “That isn’t paint, Blackjack.” She pointed at the black-red letters on the wall.
My best guess at this point is...more raiders? Either that, or Fluttershy went through a weird installation-art phase before she went crazy and skipped out.

Anyway, they keep walking, and vaguely creepy haunted-house-type stuff keeps happening. A severed head rolls out at them, and a foal giggles from somewhere off down the hall. An automated maintenance robot rolls by and cleans up the blood, but leaves the head. Nothing else happens, though. Also there is some kind of spooky music-box music playing over the loudspeakers. The same song comes through on BJ's PipBuck radio when she turns it on.

They arrive at the nurse's station, which appears to be in more or less pristine condition. This isn't that hard to believe, since according to the Collegiate ponies downstairs this area was hermetically sealed when the bombs went off, and would have opened up only recently. However, for some reason, BJ finds it unsettling, or something. I have to say, while I appreciate Somber's effort to create a...well...somber...atmosphere, so far this scene is more confusing than creepy. There's plenty of generically-spooky tension, but...I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to be worrying about.

>I knew that head didn’t come from nowhere though.
So far, the most terrifying thing in here is Somber's grammar.

Anywho, they find a terminal, and P-21 cracks the password. However, the screen suddenly flashes the words "Peek-a-boo, I see you," and then it just starts screaming at them. Rude. BJ uses one of her new exploding orange color-coded rounds to blow it up, which to be fair is also pretty rude. The creepy music resumes, and they keep walking. Oh, also, BJ's EFS is behaving weirdly; it seems that something is jamming the signal.

>We came across a door with something new carved in the wood paneling. ‘Ollie Ollie Oxen Free’. I carefully opened it telekinetically, revealing a desiccated corpse rolled in a fetal position in the tiny space at the bottom of the linen closet. She wore a nurse’s uniform. Scratched in the wood before the body was a simple eulogy: ‘I don’t want to play anymore.’
A sobering testimony from yet another victim of video-game addiction.

Anyway, it just keeps going on and on like this. The desiccated nurse has some kind of magic keycard on her that opens magic locks, so they take that. They keep exploring, and see some more creepy shit. They find the body of one of the Collegiate-guys at one point, skinned and with a bunch of used syringes jabbed into him like a porcupine. Rude.

>We encountered a box in the hall, a large metal cube with small pink hearts painted on each side. I couldn’t explain why, but I had the strangest fondness for the box.
Hurr durr references.

Also, the meme-cube turns out to be a jack-in-the-box with a dead pony inside, which itself turns out to be a bomb disguised as a different bomb. The whole thing is like some kind of edgy meme inception; clearly installation-art-phase Fluttershy had a little too much time on her hooves.

And the fun is far from over, kids; Somber just churns out pages and pages of this shit. We've still got a lot of edge left to slog through. Lucky us.

[YouTube] Peek•A•Boo! (2023 Remaster) [Embed]

>>375355

>Things didn’t improve as we encountered more bodies. A tea party of four bony ponies around a petrified cake with their hooves nailed to the table and party hats on their heads. A body dressed in a foal’s tutu impaled on a turntable.
Seriously, it just keeps going on and on like this.

Anyway, the party keeps on exploring. Everywhere they go, they encounter these weird tableaus with the corpses, but other than that the area appears uninhabited and strangely clean and well-maintained.

>I used the bits we had to clean out the soda machines, sharing two of the fizzy drinks with Glory and P-21.
Uh...why? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the whole point of these contract-missions to save up money so you can afford file decryption services? Obviously you're going to have to spend a little on ammunition and supplies, but...radioactive soda? How is that a necessary expenditure? And why would you buy so much of it when you're overburdened as it is?

Well, I think I may actually have an answer. It's subtle, and I didn't notice it the first time I read the above sentence, but BJ specifically says bits, not caps. Caps, as in bottle caps, are, for reasons I will never understand but that probably make as much sense as anything else in this wacky setting, the primary form of currency in the Wasteland. However, it was established early on that Stable 99 still uses the traditional Equestrian bit. So, it's probably safe to assume that BJ is still carrying around some of her old money, which wouldn't be worth anything out here.

Most likely, the author's reasoning is that BJ would want to effectively "exchange" her old Stablecoins ba dum tss for bottle caps. The easiest way to do this would be to use them in vending machines to buy old bottles of soda, and save the caps. And, since you're spending the bit either way, you might as well enjoy the soda.

It basically makes sense, so long as you ignore obvious questions like "why the fuck are bottle caps being used as currency when gold coins obviously still exist?" However, if you're going to have your characters take strange actions like this, where their reasons won't necessarily be clear, you want to make sure you're explaining it to the reader. Any FoE fan who is deeply-invested enough in this setting to understand the difference between bits and caps would probably see what the author meant here without needing it explained. However, the average person would just read this and ask: "if the party is overburdened with junk as it is, and the whole point of this expedition was to earn money, then why the fuck are they wasting all their money buying soda?" Even if it's a safe bet that most of your readers will probably be fans of the original FoE, it's still important to make sure that all essential information is present in your story so that any reader can follow it. That's just my two cents. Or bits. Or caps.

Aaaaaanyyywaaaaaayyy, they come across an old newspaper clipping that provides a hint at what might have been going on here. It appears that the Ministry of Peace, which was headed by Fluttershy, was investing in some kind of "preservation" technology. It sounds like it's basically cryogenics: ponies who are too sick or injured to be properly treated can elect to have themselves frozen in carbonite until a cure is found. This probably explains all of the frozen birds and butterflies and whatnot they've been seeing around here. Presumably, this is also what the Society came here to find.

>“Blackjack,” Morning Glory said softly. I glanced at her, and followed her gaze into the top corner of the room where a carved white bunny watched us sternly. There was the tiniest little hum, and I watched a camera in one eye of the bunny slowly focus.
Here is my best guess about what is probably going on: Fluttershy developed this "preservation" system as a way to help critically-injured ponies and/or critters survive the war, hopefully to be awakened at some point in the future when both they and the world could be healed. Since she would have no way of guaranteeing that there would be ponies alive to oversee the system while the patients were frozen, she developed some kind of sentient, compassionate AI to watch over and care for them. This system probably malfunctioned and/or went insane from loneliness at some point, and now it's a Harlan-Ellison-esque psychotic murder machine bent on "playing" with anyone or anything unfortunate enough to wander into its domain. Screencap it; we'll see if I'm right.

Anywho, as soon as they leave the staff-lounge area where they found the article, the doors auto-lock behind them and they are trapped in a hallway with some kind of automated beam-turret. However, instead of just slaughtering them outright, the turret fires on them at intervals, following a pattern of alternating red and green lights that is too complicated to explain in detail. It soon becomes apparent that someone or something is playing a game with them, which seems to lend credence to my above theory.

>This red light I could feel the soft tickle of a breath on my hindquarters.
This sentence is bad and you should feel bad.

Anyway, yada yada yada, they make it through the murder-hallway, but unfortunately a door suddenly closes, separating Morning Glory from the others and trapping her in the hallway. She was lagging behind a bit due to being grazed on the leg by one of the beams. The scene ends in a page break.

>I’d killed Scoodle through ignorance. Now I’d killed Glory through incompetence. How could I have gone through the door without making sure she’d been through first? I’d seen her get hit by the beam. I should have known she’d be a few steps slower. I’d sunk down with my back against the door, knocking my head against it with the shotgun cradled in my hooves.
I can't tell if Morning Glory is actually kill, or if this is a fakeout. I'm going to withhold my 'F' until I have a clearer picture of what's going on.

>>375378
>Screencap it; we'll see if I'm right.
Done. Good catch on the bits vs. caps distinction, I missed that as I read along. Tough I suppose "read along" is a bit generous. The prose, specifically Blackjack's inane inner monologue, makes my eyes glaze over after a few paragraphs and I find myself skimming through the chapters before long.

For what it's worth, Bottlecaps are currency in Fallout because it's backed by something necessary: Water.

Merchants in The Hub in Fallout 1 would trade a Bottlecap for a glass of water. Nuked America needed a new currency because hyperinflated Weimarica dollars are intrinsically worthless, and over here, it was Caps.

In Fallout 2, caps are being replaced with newly minted NCR dollars. There's even a quest where you hunt for some treasure and tragically, the reward is caps, not anything valuable in current year. Fallout Tactics used Ring Pulls and Brotherhood Scrip because it would be absurd for everyone across all of America to be using the exact same improvised currency 60-200 years after nukes dropped.

Bugthesda understands none of the reasoning behind marketable Fallout iconography, so bottlecaps are currency across all of America, even in the DC area 200 years after the nukes fell for the same reason people still scavenge perfectly preserved pre-war food from the local Super Duper Mart. Within 10 years of The Hub's founding in California, Bottlecaps became the economy of the entire American Wasteland basically forever, because that's how that works.

Is there anything in Edgequestria, PH or otherwise, explicitly stated to back bottlecaps as a currency and has enough influence to make it the standard currency of trade across the continent?

>>375378

Blackjack and P-21 are on the other side of the murder-hall, safe and sound but unfortunately now one friend short of a birthday party. Blackjack is understandably upset, and asks P-21 if she could take him up on his offer to murder her the next time she did something stupid. However, P-21 declines, partly on the grounds that Glory's still unconfirmed death was the murder hall's fault, not BJ's, and partly on the grounds that he doesn't want to finish the quest by himself. Probably smart, since she's the one carrying all the guns and ammo.

Anyway, yada yada yada, they both decide they are going to pull through and persevere. What's more, Blackjack has an idea: since P-21 knows about terminals and stuff, and is also adept at sneaking, it might be a good idea for them to split up inb4 Scooby Doo. She will run around triggering booby traps and drawing their adversary's attention, while P-21 sneaks around with the keycard, trying to find whoever or whatever is lurking in the control room. It's probably as good an idea as any.

So, they proceed to do that thing I said. P-21 slips away, while BJ stomps around, loudly singing an edgy version of "Do The Pony Pokey" while blasting bunny-cameras with her shotgun. This feels like kind of a waste of ammunition, but whatever; from what I understand she's got plenty of it, and she's trying to create a distraction.

>I froze in the hallway, and the music cut off as if with a knife. The foal stood there in a strange pink dress. Her lavender hide sported a massive scar running up her side and disappearing into her pink mane that fell across her eyes. Her mouth was sewn in a grotesque grin as she stood before me in a doorway.
Not sure if final boss or yet another corpse-tableau...

...and as it turns out, neither is Blackjack. She hesitates, looking at the creepy filly. The creepy filly starts saying creepy-filly things like "do you like my costume" and "be sure to drink your Ovaltine," and then yada yada yada it turns out she's a robot. What a tweest. BJ blasts it with the shotgun, then runs off. The scene ends in a page break.

We rejoin BJ a short time later. She has moved up another floor, but it's basically just more of the same. The lights flicker spoopily on and off, spoopy music plays, and there are spoopy killbots wandering around everywhere.

She comes to a room that has an open safe and a cracked terminal, which she (rather presumptuously) assumes to be P-21's work. Inside, she finds some healing potions and coins and ammunition and whatever.

>The specialty shells had one downside I hadn’t realized: they wore down my weapon like mad. I really didn’t want to try and fire it again if I could help it. Not without some significant repairs.
Reasonable limitations on weapons? In my Fallout Equestria spinoff? It's more likely than you think. small improvements

Naturally, being trapped in a creepy abandoned hospital surrounded by rampaging killbots does not stop BJ from snooping around a little. She finds a medical form for someone named Marigold, as well as a photo of a blue unicorn standing next to some kind of experimental missile that looks like it could be important. The cracked terminal has a sound file on it naturally, so she decides to give that a listen as well.

The speaker is never identified, but appears to be a member of a party that explored this hospital sometime after the war. If I had to take a guess I'd say it's probably someone from the Collegiate expedition.

Anyway, the unknown speaker describes entering the hospital and finding everything quiet and deserted. They come across the "preservation" area with the stasis pods, which apparently are still functioning and still have some living ponies inside. However, the speaker is uninterested in them and leaves them alone.

His party eventually finds the maneframe, which is apparently what they were looking for. He notes that, at some point in the past, the machine appears to have been intentionally damaged so that it can't be switched on, but his team thinks they can repair it. However, once the repairs are completed, ominous things begin happening. It's pretty much the same stuff we've been seeing: creepy music always playing, toys left out in weird places, Ovaltine not being properly imbibed, etc. Eventually, the team members start getting killed off, the guy keeps finding their bodies posed in weird ways, and you can probably guess at the rest. So far, all of this seems to be leaning towards something along the lines of what I theorized earlier: the maneframe contains some hostile sentient AI that controls the hospital, and waking it up is how all the murders happened.

Anyway, BJ loads up her gun, runs out into the hallway, screams "SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIENDS," and starts capping robots left and right.

>“Bad pony,” a deep voice said from the doorway. I turned and looked at a huge heavy robot draped in slabs of meat. “Time out,” it said firmly as, with shocking deftness, it flung a glowing white ball of glass at me. A grenade or… something. I reached out with my magic to swat it back at the machine and…
This is actually a rather clever twist, at least it might be for anyone familiar with the first story. Remember that time Littlepoop used that cheap-shit trick to kill an alicorn that logically should have mopped the floor with her? No, not the boxcar. I'm talking about that time she lobbed a memory orb at one of them, tricking it into catching and triggering the orb, thus rendering it defenseless. Anyone remember? Well, Pepperidge Farm remembers. And apparently so does Somber, because he just had some robot use the same trick on his protagonist.

I remember commenting that it was a silly trick, that shouldn't work on anything that's lived in the Wasteland long enough to know what a Memory Orb is, which ought to include alicorns. However, in reverse it makes sense: BJ has no idea what this thing is or what it does.

>>375380
>Is there anything in Edgequestria, PH or otherwise, explicitly stated to back bottlecaps as a currency and has enough influence to make it the standard currency of trade across the continent?
No, and that's a big part of why I've always found it so ridiculous.

In the context of everything you explained, it all makes a little more sense. In fact, I actually remember this subject coming up during discussion of the first story, and I remember thinking that using bottled water as currency would make more sense than using bottle caps. Bottle caps used as tokens representing a quantity of water, the same way a reserve note originally represented a quantity of gold, makes sense, assuming the tokens were issued by whoever was holding on to the water. Just using the caps arbitrarily as tokens does not, nor does the idea that caps would be universally recognized everywhere as currency.

It sounds like this is basically another legacy issue inherited from kkat's setting. The consensus from the previous threads was that almost the entire setting of FoE was directly ripped off 1:1 from the games, with the vast majority of it being taken from Fallout 3. It also sounds like Fallout 3 was the most poorly thought-out game in the series, with the developers not really understanding the setting or the lore all that well.

So basically, the issue is that, while the original titles seem to have put quite a bit of thought into how trade and currency would work in the post-apocalyptic world, the third game decided to just take the idea of "bottlecaps r money lol" and run with it. Kkat, also an uncreative person, who I doubt understands much about economics in the first place, just took the same idea and transposed it directly into his world, because "Fallout 3 nostalgia lol".

The problem with all of this is that Edgequestria using bottlecaps as currency makes zero sense on its own. It's a part of a recurring problem in this series: the original creator, kkat, just wanted to make "Fallout with ponies," but didn't put much effort into building a convincing setting that could stand on its own. Many of the world's elements, of which the bottlecaps are just one example, are just 1:1 ripoffs of memes and tropes from the series, that would be recognized as such by fans but would confuse anyone else. The problem is compounded by kkat's use of Fallout 3 as his primary source material, since it sounds as though, ironically enough, the devs there did something similar: they directly transposed elements from the earlier games into their setting, without paying much attention to how or why any of it was in there.

The downside of all of this is that, since kkat wrote the original story, anyone wanting to write stories set in the FoE universe has to follow his rules, including the ones that don't make any goddamn sense. The bottlecap thing can probably just be filed away under "legacy issues from kkat," but since I don't get the impression Somber has put much thought into it either, I'll err on the side of caution and say that he is guilty of some faggotry here as well.

>>375379
>The prose, specifically Blackjack's inane inner monologue, makes my eyes glaze over after a few paragraphs and I find myself skimming through the chapters before long
Unfortunately the prose-quality in this story is quite poor. I haven't commented on it much, because at this point my expectations for these fanfics are low.

It's not quite as bad as in some of the others: Our Girl Scootaloo was atrocious to read for a number of reasons, and I remember The Sun and the Rose having pretty terrible prose as well. I feel like the quality here in terms of mechanics, style, etc. is probably on par with the original Fallout: Equestria. If you scratched Somber's name off of this and told me that kkat had written it as a sequel or something, I don't think I'd have much trouble believing it. Mostly I would be impressed at all the improvements made to the original formula.

>>375381

Anywho, BJ is now trapped in a memory orb.

The memory belongs to someone named "Dr. Redheart," who is lying on a couch in the office where BJ was earlier. This is clearly an old memory, dating from around the time of the war. She and a mare named Garnet are discussing an upcoming visit, or inspection, or something, that Fluttershy intends to conduct at the hospital. Apparently another employee, whose name is Cheerilee, has some reservations about one of the projects they are all working on.

At this point, an aging Cheerilee enters the room. She and Redheart seem to dislike each other, but BJ (watching through through Redheart's eyes) believes that at one time they used to be friends. They talk shop for a little bit, and then another mare enters, whom BJ recognizes as Fluttershy from the statue she saw.

Cheerilee has some reservations about the stasis-pod project. Apparently, anyone inside it remains conscious, or partially-conscious, or something, and she thinks it's cruel to subject children to this, which is probably a fair point. However, Fluttershy counters that it's better than letting them all get killed, which is probably also a fair point.

>“Tell me that I should let children die and I will stop the use of the pods right now and start long-term testing. A year at least,” Fluttershy said in that soft, reasonable voice. A pony would need a heart of stone to say those words.
[YouTube] The Simpsons - Helen Lovejoy - Think of the children [Embed]

Anyway, Cheerilee accidentally makes a remark about Fluttershy's barren, empty womb, which turns out to be a touchy subject for ol' Flutters. It all pretty much goes south from here. An obviously offended Fluttershy excuses herself and leaves, with the implication being that Cheerilee's concerns are to be ignored. Cheerilee laments her faux pas, but still has reservations about the project.

>“Don’t worry, Cheerilee. It’s not as if the children will be left alone. They’ll have constant interaction with the staff, me, family, and teachers. They won’t be neglected,” Redheart assured her. “Most of the time they won’t even be awake. We can keep them sedated and dreaming sweet dreams until they can be woken up. Beautiful dreamers.”
I'm actually a little confused about how all of this is supposed to work. Are the children conscious? Semi-conscious? In a coma? Because it makes a difference. Being trapped, immobile and fully conscious, in a stasis pod for 200 years would probably be enough to drive nearly anyone insane. Being in some kind of coma or dream-state for that long would be a different matter. Being asleep and unconscious, as in no dreams at all, would probably be the best scenario there, although I assume the kids might have some future-shock issues when they wake up.

Anyway, this is basically the end of the memory, although there are a couple more passages that seem relevant and worth highlighting:

>Garnet nodded. “I can appreciate her concern. I’m glad she hasn’t found the report of the subjects developing resistances to the sedative over time. Certainly twenty years is a long time, though. It’s not as if we’ll keep them in stasis for centuries.”
So...after 20 years the sedative wears off and they wake up? Since it's clear that a lot more time has passed since this memory was recorded, this detail seems relevant. Are the children still paralyzed, or...what? Are they conscious but still in stasis? Dead? I think I'm starting to get an idea of where all of this might be going, but it would help if the author could clarify a few of the details.

>“She was right about there being some confusion regarding the spells involved, though. Some of the nursing staff is concerned. There was a memo about spells from the Ministry of Image being involved, but that couldn’t be right.”
This, too, could be significant. It was established earlier in the conversation that the Ministry of Image is responsible for putting out propaganda. If the implication here is that the Ministry is using spells to implant dreams or suggestions in the coma-patients' minds, this could be significant. Again, though, I'm just speculating; I'm not sure what exactly the author is trying to say.

Anyway, the memory ends and Blackjack wakes up:

>I returned to my body, screaming as fire roared from crotch to ribcage. I lay on my back, strapped to an operating table, pulling against the restraints on my limbs. Overhead, a robotic spider on a white boom hovered over my body. Little scissors were slowly snipping open my belly as I screamed and thrashed against the restraints. “You fuckers!” I hissed through clenched jaws as spit ran down my chin.
Well, this seems like a bit of a sticky situation. On the other hand, though, putting a character into a James Bond type situation like this, as opposed to just killing her while she was unconscious, usually bodes well for said character's chances of escape. It's good to be the protagonist.

And now, it's time for the big reveal:

>All around the perimeter of the room were metal pods with observation windows and padded interiors; at least forty was the best count I could make under the circumstances. In the pods were foals. Some were missing legs and eyes. Others appeared burned or worse. Others appeared intact, so I could only guess they suffered from some internal disease or condition. They all lay so still they might as well have been corpses. Each had a tiny monitor with zigzagging lines on it that was too far beyond my intelligence level to understand. The cables all ran to a central drum decorated with a dozen terminals. Running from this drum was a thick cable that disappeared into the floor. Blackened marks showed where the hoof-thick connection had been mended.
So, it looks like my prediction was close, but not quite on the money. I was correct in that the maneframe-system is indeed responsible for all the spooky shit going on; however, what I missed is that the system itself is being psychically controlled by the children in the stasis pods. I think.

>>375384

Alright, this whole thing is a little goofy, so I'm going to have to ask you all to bear with me as I try to explain it. This feels like one of those situations where the author has an idea maybe 85-90% worked out, but some crucial details are just not quite there yet. Then he says to himself: "fuck it, I'm just going to write it anyway and hope that nobody thinks too hard about it."

With that in mind, as far as I can tell, here is what happened:

As we already know, about 200 years ago, Fluttershy cooked up some kind of wacky technology that allowed her to take sick ponies and hold them in stasis until they could be cured. However, it's not quite the cryogenic-pod scenario I had initially imagined.

The pods seem to basically freeze time for whoever is inside. They can't move, they won't age, and any degenerative disease they have will not progress. I'm not clear on whether or not they feel physical pain in there; I'm assuming probably no, since that would be several orders of magnitude more cruel than just letting the patient die. Then again, this is FoE we're talking about, so I can't be sure.

The more crucial issue is that the stasis spell, or whatever it is exactly, does not affect the mind. Even though the pod-pony will essentially be frozen in time, unable to move or take any action, they will remain fully conscious and aware of their situation. It sounds like they are not able to naturally fall asleep, either.

If you think this sounds like a bad idea for a spell, you're absolutely right. This is a spell that solves a problem, but in the process creates a second problem that is as bad or worse than the first problem. Imagine a spell that protects you from shitting your pants by teleporting the shit into a complete stranger's pants; that's basically the level of retarded spell design we're dealing with here. Maybe there's some technical magic-related reason for why the stasis spell would have to work this way, and maybe you'd need Twilight Sparkle-level autism to understand or explain it. However, even if that's the case, you would have to be either a sadist or an absolute retard to even approve this for testing.

Well, as it turns out, Fluttershy was either a sadist or an absolute retard, and so was basically everyone who worked for her. She not only approved this, but rushed it through testing so it could be put to clinical use on children, and apparently no one except Cheerilee ever bothered to raise an objection.

This next part is where it starts to get a little murky and weird. We learned from the memory orb that there was a second spell, or a drug or something, that sedated the patient during stasis. However, what's odd is that it seems to be only a partial sedation. Here is exactly what Redheart has to say about it:

>“Don’t worry, Cheerilee. It’s not as if the children will be left alone. They’ll have constant interaction with the staff, me, family, and teachers. They won’t be neglected,” Redheart assured her. “Most of the time they won’t even be awake. We can keep them sedated and dreaming sweet dreams until they can be woken up. Beautiful dreamers.”
The implication here seems to be that they aren't sedated 100% of the time, which strikes me as odd. She's worrying about them being neglected and not having any interaction, but I don't think neglect is really the key issue here. The issue is that being fully conscious, without being able to move or act or blink your eyes or do anything, would be a state of absolute hell, and I can't imagine anyone being able to experience it for more than a few minutes without losing their mind. Here, it sounds like they're putting the kids to sleep for a lot of it, but also waking them up sometimes to play with them, talk to them, educate them, whatever. This seems absolutely bonkers to me. Why not just be merciful and put them in a fucking coma until this entire horrible ordeal is over?

Anyway, the more serious issue is that over time, the patient develops a tolerance to the sedative. Apparently, it's only effective for a maximum of 20 years, at which point the patient wakes up permanently and can't be put back to sleep by the drug. Which means that, even without an apocalypse, they only have 20 years per kid to figure out what's wrong with them and cure it. This leads me to the next point of confusion: what specific conditions led to these kids being candidates for this?

Here is what the text says:

>Some were missing legs and eyes. Others appeared burned or worse. Others appeared intact, so I could only guess they suffered from some internal disease or condition.
The ones that are "intact" actually make the most sense: presumably they're the ones with incurable diseases, or they need organ transplants, or something like that, so they get put into stasis to buy time. The rest of them though? The ones who are missing eyes and limbs, and have third degree burns and so forth? What exactly do the doctors hope to achieve there? If the stasis spell prevents degenerative diseases from progressing, presumably it would also prevent things like wounds healing and scar tissue forming. You stick someone with third degree burns in a stasis pod for 20 years, then in 20 years when you pull them out they will still have third degree burns. Stick someone in there who is missing a leg, that leg will still be gone 20 years later. What exactly was the endgame here supposed to be?

>>375394

The last, and probably most confusing, issue with this is the bit with the maneframe and the robots. This is the part where I don't think the author completely thought things through.

As far as I can tell, the maneframe controls everything in the hospital. The doors, the locks, the various robots, everything. So...exactly whose bright idea was it to create an interface that would allow the vegetable-patch kids to control the entire fucking hospital with their mind powers?

The text only provides a couple of murky clues:

>“Oh, don’t worry about it. Oh, just a heads-up that Robronco will be here to tie the maintenance robots into the system maneframe. Once their control system is linked to the bots, your nurses shouldn’t have to worry about them causing messes.”
This is the last thing that Garnet says to Redheart before the memory orb cuts out. I have read this passage several times over, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what the significance is supposed to be.

Best I can figure, Garnet is saying that Robronco (I don't think I've mentioned it yet but Robronco is the company that manufactures all of the robots we've seen in the book so far) will be coming by to rig up the maintenance bots so that they can be controlled by the maneframe. I'm not sure what the second part is implying, though. The maintenance bots were previously malfunctioning and creating messes? And putting them under control of the maneframe will fix this issue? And then eventually some idiot decides to give the kids total control over the maneframe, so they can use the maintenance robots to make clothing out of other ponies' skins? Is that, uh, basically summing it up?

Next we have this, from later on after BJ wakes up:

>Somepony, I suspected Redheart, had cut the connection between the repair bots and the facility maneframe.
This still doesn't explain why this connection was ever made in the first place. One idea that had occurred to me is that maybe they gave the kids robot doubles or something. Plug a kid's consciousness into the maneframe, then let them each control a robot they could use to walk around and interface with the world until they were out of stasis. That could make sense. Trouble is, this is just more speculation on my part; I have no idea if this is what the author had in mind or not, as he never clarifies it.

Either way, it's clear that at this point in the story, the kids have complete and total control over not only the maintenance robots, but the gun turrets, the surgery-bot, the automatic doors, and all the other systems we've seen them control. Unless the implication is that they somehow figured out a way to hack into these systems, I can't see any way for them to have this level of control unless someone deliberately gave it to them. The fact that there is a big cable connecting the kids' pods to the maneframe suggests that this was done by design, which again...just seems like a really, really stupid thing to do.

Although, honestly, at this point I think I could believe that this world's Fluttershy was actually retarded enough to give bored, paralyzed children complete psychic control over scalpel-wielding robots and programmable gun turrets as a way to keep themselves amused.

>They’d sat here alone, incapable of any interaction at all. Unable to sleep. They couldn’t even kill themselves. Then the Enclave arrived and connected the maneframe again. The children had resumed their games, honed after decades of being trapped within themselves.
The closer I look at it, I think the cable being discussed connects the maneframe to whatever system controls the robots, not the stasis pods to the maneframe. The line I quoted earlier actually refers to the connection between the repair bots and the facility maneframe, so presumably when the cable was cut, the maneframe was no longer able to communicate with the maintenance bots. The kids' stasis pods are presumably just hardwired directly into the maneframe. They are still connected to the system, but can no longer use it to control the bots.

However, all this does is clarify the literal meaning of Somber's ambiguously-worded text; it still doesn't explain why in the wide wide world of fuck anyone thought it would be a good idea to let the coma-kids control every robot in the hospital. Even if they hadn't wound up going insane from being trapped in fully-conscious stasis for 200 years, it seems like this would be a recipe for disaster.

Anyway, fuck; I'm probably overthinking this. I'll just close by saying that once you get past the shock value of the big reveal here, there are a ton of glaring logic holes and ambiguities that ruin a lot of the impact. The outcome I predicted earlier, which Sven was kind enough to screencap [ >>375379 ] would have honestly made a lot more sense imo.

I guess the best thing I can say about this hospital arc is that it kinda-sorta works if you view it as the end result of bureaucratic incompetence. Basically, Fluttershy, the well-intentioned but naïve hospital administrator, wanted to save the children because letting the children die would be sad. However, for various reasons, it was not possible to save the children. So, she did the next best thing: spend probably a metric fuckton of taxpayer money designing an overelaborate solution that accomplished nothing beyond prolonging the inevitable. Then, everyone in Equestria died, and the children were trapped in a state of monstrous living death for 200 years. Then, for reasons that now that I think about it are also never explained, the Enclave showed up one day, and plugged in Fluttershy's preposterously ill-advised system that enabled the insane orphans to control an army of rampaging killbots. Then, the Enclave ponies were killed by the orphans. Then, some more stuff happened, and then finally Blackjack shows up and saves the day.

>>375395

Oh, right, Blackjack. I almost forgot about her.

Well, suffice it to say that Blackjack is in a bit of a spot right now. She's lying on the table with her belly cut open and her guts spilling out, as a surgery-bot controlled by the looney orphans slowly dissects her. However, who should suddenly appear but Morning Glory, who as it turns out is less dead than expected. She flies in with her trusty beam gun, and manages to distract the killbot for a couple of minutes.

Meanwhile, BJ notices P-21 sneaking around the back way like a sneaky-ass motherfucker. He sneaks on up to the maneframe terminal, and sneakily begins trying to hack it, or do whatever the fuck he does with terminals.

With the killbot's attention temporarily diverted, BJ is able to slip out of the restraints binding her to the table. Holding her guts in, she manages to retrieve her automatic shotgun, remove the drum, pack it full of explosive rounds, stuff it under the cable that connects the maneframe to either the orphans or the killbots depending on who you ask, and then SHOT WEB at the drum until it kerplodes. WOOSH! The killbot is now disabled, and the orphans are once again trapped in a state of monstrous living death. The scene ends in a page break.

When BJ regains consciousness, her intestines are back where they are supposed to be. She is lying on a different table, next to some kind of magical regenerative talisman that somehow manages to simultaneously perform complicated surgery and also provide healing and pain relief, simply by being activated and placed next to the patient. As ridiculous as it sounds, this is honestly as farfetched as medicine has gotten in this story so far, so I'm just going to let it slide for now. Also, it turns out the talisman has a time limit, and can only be used once, so there's a reasonable limit to it I guess.

Anywho, other than a small scar, BJ appears no worse for wear. She regrets that they had to use the surgery-talisman on her intestinal spillage, and as such were unable to heal P-21's leg. P-21 tells her not to worry about it, since his leg has been broken for basically the entire story and it doesn't seem to have hampered him very much.

With that nasty business out of the way, they can now move on to the lighter task of murdering 40 insane, paralyzed orphans. Blackjack isn't too keen on doing it, but P-21, ever her better angel, assures her it's probably the right thing to do.

>No. “No no no… fuck no. Fuck!” I yelled as I looked at the pods around me with their wildly zigzagging readouts. I could imagine their screams as they were locked up once again. I rounded on P-21. “I’m not killing forty children! Are you out of your mind?”
39 children is apparently where she draws the line.

Anywho, Morning Glory has a different take on the situation. She thinks that they should just leave the kids in stasis for now, and maybe eventually the Enclave will wander in at some point and rescue them, perhaps later if they're not busy. P-21 thinks that Morning Glory is fucking retarded, and threatens to slap the black off of her if she doesn't shut her whore mouth. He points out that these orphans have killed before, and will likely kill again. You cannot slake an orphan's thirst for blood, once they have had that first sip.

Since the two of them are at a deadlock, and since murdering orphans is usually a democratic decision, it falls to Blackjack to cast the tiebreaking vote. She agonizes over it for an appropriate amount of time, but ultimately pulls the lever in favor of orphan-murder. The trio sings ribald sea chanties as they cast the orphans' souls one by one into the briny deep. After that, they all go out for frosty chocolate milkshakes.

note: I am probably way too sleep-deprived at this point to be doing this, in fact I may even have gone as mad as a bloodthirsty orphan. As such, I may have taken a few liberties in summarizing this last bit. You may want to read it yourself. It's...sad? I think? This goofy arc is giving me a headache, and I don't want to think about it anymore. I'm just going to say that yes, it was probably sad.

Anyway, there's a page break. Blackjack goes poking around in the supply closet where the others found the magic surgery talisman, and there she discovers a bonus: this room contains the mummified carcass of none other than Nurse Redheart, who has recently changed her name to Nurse Deadheart. She apparently had half of her skin peeled away by rampaging orphans, but before joining the choir invisible, she managed to sever the cable that linked the doohickey to the thingamabob. Then, dragging her bloodied and useless legs behind her, she crawled into this storage room to see if they had any Fig Newtons left.

It turns out that yes, there was one box left, but those blasted murderous orphans had gone and eaten them all. As a final 'fuck you', they put one of those goddamn Mane 6 statues inside the box.

Naturally, Blackjack does what any righteous pony in her situation would do: takes the Fluttershy statue away from Nurse Redheart's desiccated corpse, and then cries about doing it.

>“I’m sorry. I tried. I tried to do better. I tried to help…” Slowly I held the Fluttershy figurine to my chest as I slumped over onto my side, weeping and blubbering like a foal. “I’m so sorry.” As I lay there alone in the storage room, I suddenly knew exactly why Redheart had come here:
>To beg for forgiveness she would never receive.
Whose forgiveness? Fluttershy's? Unless I have completely misunderstood this entire chapter, this whole debacle was the end result of Fluttershy's preposterously bad judgement. If this were my story, I would probably just replace "forgiveness" with "Fig Newtons."

Anyway, that's the end of the chapter. I'm going to bed now.

>Footnote: Level Up.
>Skill Note: Speech (50)
>New Perk: Orphan Annihilator - Gain +10 to ATK when target is an Orphan. Add +5 to DMG if Orphan is paralyzed and bloodthirsty.

>>375396
If we take the whole scenario at face value I think the angsting over whether to pull the plug on the two century old deranged orphans is just played up because the author wants the reader feel as torn up and conflicted as the characters. The only realistic and humane or pony-ane, whatever option is to put the foals out of their misery, no-one in the wasteland would expend valuable medicine or turn the mutilated foals into cyborgs even if they were not unhinged, uncontrollable killers. A tragic fate for the foals, and an unpleasant choice to make for our protagonists but not a morally complicated one.

But again, as with kkat's writing, this entire hospital adventure with it's gruesome mutilation, psychological foal torture and mass killing of psychologically tortured foals is just a conga line of edgy nonsense written for its shock value. The most we can probably expect in character development is BJ moaning in her internal monologue about being a foal-murdered in the same vein as she moans about getting Scoodle torn in two.

>>375380
Fallout 1 took place in Southern California 60 years after the bombs fell. It made sense for a regional currency to be established before the protagonist left his Vault to save it.

Fallout 2 takes place in Northern California 80 years later. 140 years after the nuking. A currency anyone can find is replaced with one the NCR has power over.

Fallout 3 comes out 60 years later, 200 years after the nuking, and Fallout 3 brings radioactively mutated/Forced Evolutionary Virus-mutated Jacksons Chameleons and Scorpions and Bottlecaps and other California things to DC. We'll see them again in Boston years later in Fallout 4. The Fallout brand under Bugthesda means Fallout iconography and memberberries.

New Vegas was written by competent writers doing their best in the impossible situation they were put into by Bugthesda, so they had to invent excuses for what happened to NCR dollars. The Brotherhood Of Steel destroyed their gold reserves during a war so the NCR currency couldn't be backed by gold, especially once everyone wanted to exchange it for gold, making it a worthless fiat currency, and many wanted to sabotage the NCR and their money amyway.

Equestria is not Northern or Southern California, or Vegas, or DC. But it's been 200 years since the bombs dropped and ponies are still scavenging perfectly preserved food and medical supplies from stores and functional hospitals and the security bots and killer AIs still work. It's so lazy for every location to be a Fallout thing mistranslated and given a Pony themed coat of paint and maybe some extra stats in the shallowest sense. Parasprites don't become some new unique horror, flying swarms of demonic insects that strip a corpse into a skeleton in seconds. No, Parasprites are just Bloatflies from Fallout by another name. Deathclaws become fucking Diamond Dogs because "making them smart and letting them use guns makes them more dangerous" in the shallowest sense. Sure this boosts their DPS but then they aren't really Deathclaws any more. Taking away a Chameleon's colour-changing and turning it into a giant killer monster was unique. Cunts with guns? Not unique. It's all such a failure of imagination. Even things unique to Ponyland are uncreatively translated into this world. Poison Joke, a plant that fucks with you and takes away one of your greatest strengths, just fucking kills you because this is Edgequestria. Like a photocopy of Bethesda's photocopy of Fallout. Could have had a story arc where Littlepoop gets hit with Poison Joke and becomes a burden and feels like a useless bug, perhaps she becomes tiny to reflect how small she feels against the enormity of the evil universe or whatever, and her friends struggle to keep her safe in their pockets. They could go on a detour to get her cured by a rare witch doctor who demands a high price. Or refuse the detour and focus on the mission even though it just got harder, maybe even impossible. Interpersonal relationships could change for the worse once the main fighter is crippled. Could be great. Any story could use this premise and let sickness or injury matter. But no, that would get in the way of killing big numbers with bigger numbers like a true gamer trying to impress other gamers.

At least PH usually rips off other stuff, not just Fallout, whenever something from Fallout that would normally go there has already been used in the original story.

Also MLP is a setting where Cockatrices can turn you to stone. Magic loves turning flesh to stone and back again. Everything that happened to these kids was entirely unnecessary because Fluttershy forgot Cockatrices exist. Use machines to keep one of those alive if keeping it alive is necessary for keeping the kids alive while turned to stone or keeping them from changing back. Why is this franchise so afraid to engage with the fantasy side of MLP and the limitless possibilities magic can enable? Magic is more than just a cheatcode for healing ponies and throwing heavy stuff.

>>375410
This basically sums up how I feel about it. Unfortunately the whole arc is very kkat-esque, in that it's a contrived situation where plausibility is sacrificed in order to max out the tragedy and horror. Unfortunately you see this a lot in amateur writing, and as I've explained numerous times in these reviews it almost never works as intended.

Stories like these are created through kind of a silly internal dialogue:
>I want to make everyone reading my story feel sad.
<okay, what's the saddest thing you can think of?
>A dead child.
<Yeah, that's pretty sad, but what's even sadder than that?
>Two dead children?
<That's a start, but you have to think bigger.
>What about 40 dead children?
<Now you're talking! That's 40x as sad. You can still make it even sadder, though.
>What if I gave them all incurable diseases?
<Yeah, and maybe have some of them missing eyes and limbs and stuff.
>Also, the protagonist should have to be the one that kills them.
<Yes, and make sure she cries about if afterward.
>Of course she's going to cry, how else would anyone know she's sad?

At this point, you've stopped trying to tell a story and are simply creating sadness porn. The problem is that a work of fiction, by definition, is not real, and the audience knows it's not real, so simply adding a tragic situation to the story is not going to be enough to produce an emotional reaction. You have to make it real. A fictional story is never going to be real in the strict sense of the word, but it needs to be at least believable enough that the reader can imagine it actually happening.

The problem here is that the level of tragedy the author wants is so absurd and over the top that it's almost impossible to think up a plausible situation that could produce it. What realistic chain of events could lead to a scenario where the protagonist is forced to murder 40 children, some of whom have incurable diseases and are missing eyes and limbs? There aren't many options. Thus, whatever you come up with is likely to fall apart under scrutiny, as is the case here.

>A tragic fate for the foals, and an unpleasant choice to make for our protagonists but not a morally complicated one.
What's actually kind of interesting here is that the author might have inadvertently slipped a meaningful lesson into his story.

As you pointed out, there's really no complex moral decision here. The right decision is pretty obvious, it's just not pleasant. It only becomes a moral question when considered in terms of the feminized, humanist morality that's taken over modern thinking, ie that life is always sacred and you shouldn't ever kill. You can actually see this thinking play out in this exchange between Cheerilee and Fluttershy:

>“You’ve tested them on animals and adults. These are children, Fluttershy. Three months being trapped in your own body might be tough for an adult who understands what’s going on, but what about a child? They want to run and play and talk. They can’t simply be locked up for weeks on end. Fluttershy, it’s cruel!”
>Then Fluttershy spoke in a soft and gentle voice, “Are you saying I should leave children to die when I have a way to keep them safe and alive until they can be healed?” At that instant I knew that Cheerilee was screwed.

Here, Cheerilee is quite reasonably pointing out that Fluttershy's cure is worse than the disease. Trapping someone in their own body for years on end, in a state where they are unable to even move, and forcing them to remain conscious through the whole thing, would be unimaginably cruel, even more so to a child. However, Fluttershy just counters this with "but wut about children ded?" and as far as she is concerned this settles the matter.

If these foals are dying, and not even this setting's ridiculously OP healing magic can save them, then realistically there's not much more you can do for them besides ease their suffering. However, Fluttershy believes that it is absolutely immoral to let a foal die if it's possible to save them. So, she cooks up this ridiculous stasis system to keep them alive until...actually, I'm not even sure it was ever established what the endgame of all this was originally supposed to be.

The tragic irony is that the end result was the same as it would have been if Fluttershy had just let the foals die from whatever illnesses they had. The only thing she changed is that they had to endure 200 years of torture beforehand. Also, the ponies who were murdered by the children after they went insane would not have died if it hadn't been for her actions. Her adherence to an absolutist moral principle, ie that not-death is always better than death, ultimately resulted in more death and more suffering than the seemingly cruel but ultimately correct decision to just let nature run its course.

What's more, if you look at it closely, you can't even applaud Fluttershy for sticking to her principles. All she really did was dodge a difficult decision and pass the buck to someone else. Even though this whole situation was 100% Fluttershy's mess, she got to walk away feeling that she did something noble and good. It was ultimately Blackjack, who had nothing to do with any of this and who simply stumbled across this situation by chance, who has to make the hard decision and bear the guilt for the foals' deaths. It's actually pretty appalling that the author has her begging for Fluttershy's forgiveness at the end of the chapter.

Again, I think Somber kind of slipped on a banana peel with this arc and fell ass-backwards into a meaningful lesson. Real heroism and real leadership means being able to make difficult decisions, and do what needs to be done even if you don't feel good about it afterward.

>>375419
That last bit really hammers it home. I always disliked how people consider these fics 'pony-related'. I think they are only on a surface level - you have the characters and iconography and vague allusions to significant elements. But FO:E does not use these things genuinely or with any real interest. There is so much fun, so many cool things to be had if you honestly engaged with the setting of mlp and pony ethics instead of attempting to craft a name-replacement, dour post-apocalyptic setting where they're all just violent humans going through the motion of Fallout for the sole purpose of the crossover.

I hope I can capture pony well with my own autistic grimderp setting.

>>375419
>Poison Joke, a plant that fucks with you and takes away one of your greatest strengths, just fucking kills you because this is Edgequestria.
To be fair, if I remember it right, Poison Joke in FoE doesn't just straight-up kill you. It subjects you to Twilight Zone levels of cruel irony, which most of the time ends in death. Fluttershy said she wanted to be a tree that one time, so it physically transformed her into a tree. That sort of thing.

>Everything that happened to these kids was entirely unnecessary because Fluttershy forgot Cockatrices exist.
This is kind of an interesting idea. The only potential snag I can see is that, iirc, a cockatrice's spell can only be undone by the cockatrice who cast it. So in other words, you could use a cockatrice to turn the kids to stone until a cure could be found, but you would have to ensure that nothing happened to that particular cockatrice, and also figure out the cure within the course of its natural lifespan.

>Use machines to keep one of those alive if keeping it alive is necessary for keeping the kids alive while turned to stone or keeping them from changing back.
This might work, though if the technology works the same way you'd just be subjecting the cockatrice to psychological torture instead of the foals. In that case, by the time you're ready to un-stone the child, the cockatrice might be unwilling to help. Or, maybe it will have gone completely crazy itself and start turning everyone else to stone. All I can say is that if I had stone-turning powers, and someone used me to turn their sick kid to stone until a cure could be found, and then kept me in a state of torturous suspended animation for 200 years until it was time to revive them, at the end of it my attitude would pretty much be that the guy and his kid could just go fuck themselves.

Anyway, the trouble with this is that it doesn't work for engineering the kind of tragedy that Somber wanted to create. So, if any of this had occurred to him, all it would have done is make him realize he needed to scrap the entire arc.

>>374348
>>375192
>>375379
>>375410
>mfw
Clearly, I wrote these. But I have no memory of it.

>>375426
>blacking out only to find shitposts on a kazakhstani horse-whispering forum made in your name
That's concerning. We should get that checked out, me.

Jokes aside, as far as I know there are two swedes frequenting Glimmy's threads. One posts OC, has better grammar, makes good observations about the story being reviewed and is often referred to as Sven. The other is me. Just to clear up any possible confusion.

>>375422
Poison Joke's ironic instant deaths is better than nothing but it feels like a wasted opportunity for authors to never use this to make life harder on the heroes long-term and spend an arc exploring how character dynamics change and dynamic characters grow when subjected to its effects. Just imagine an arc where Blackjack is blinded then gets better in the end. Blindjack could stumble blindly and tap things with her baton and rely on her friends to tell her where to shoot. The author could try to write like a blind person, talking about smells and sounds instead of sights. SATS and EFS can't activate because she can't see shit.

As for the hospital...

A conga line of cockatrices could be created. The one that turned the kids to stone is turned to stone by another, which is turned to stone by another, which is turned to stone by another, and a mechanical system is set up in a lightless underground cage to feed the sole living cockatrice. When it expires, the next cockatrice becomes flesh again, and it stays in the cage and eats and dies and turns the next cockatrice to flesh. Eventually the final cockatrice dies and the kids are restored 200 years later. If the kids cannot be saved by then, get more cockatrices, throw them into the lightless cage one by one, turn the lights on so the current cockatrice is turned to stone by the newcomer, then each newcomer after that is turned to stone, and the waiting game continues. Could set up a Cockatrice Chute so they don't see light until they are safely in the Cockatrice Cage. It could last forever. Or until the world runs out of cockatrices if they cannot be bred or magically created.

Alternatively, experiment with artificial bodies. Brains in jars don't work? Why not? Was the process written off after donor brains from serial killers went evil? Does the brainbot simply use the brain as a CPU enhancer without actually giving the brain control over the machine despite keeping it alive and conscious? What happens if you take the souls from the kids and tie them to suits of armour or weaponry or puppets? Rarity split her own soul 69 times and had some of the soul fragments modified to imitate soul photocopies of her friends, this process was used to create the invincible unbreakable obnoxious stat-buffing Statuettes. Something convoluted involving magic was used to justify a retarded game mechanic instead of doing anything interesting like giving Littlepip a quest to gather many Twilight Sparkle statuettes and combine them into a RealDoll to get a fake Twilight Sparkle on your side, or throw them into Alicorn Creation Goo and hope for the best. Hell, aren't objects infused with a soul supposed to be invincible? Infuse armour pieces and buildings with souls.

Maybe this is all a bit retarded.

Perhaps this scene would have worked better if, when the bombs fell, after fighting off some feral ghouls and psycho bandits desperate to steal supplies, Nurse Redheart looked at the cryo-frozen orphan kids she was supposed to monitor and said to her conveniently placed tape recorder "The bombs fell and everything is chaos. Oh fuck, these kids are going to thaw out and die now that the power is out and we are never getting more supplies. Some of these kids even have rare diseases. Good thing my shotgun has enough shells left for all of them plus me. Tell Fluttershy she still owes me twenty bits."

Blackjack could piece the story together with environmental storytelling and say, damn, that's rough. Then one of her friends could cry about it.

But that means no spoomy shit...

Maybe use misdirection so the heroes think this is some horror movie shit and a psycho killer has been torturing and killing all these kids in hospital beds and we're next. Oh fuck oh shit that pony is missing an arm. And that pony is missing an eye. And that helpless tiny armless legless orphan foal was killed via lethal overdose of a painkiller Blackjack misidentifies as a recreational drug. One pony had its head blown clean off. Whoever did this must have been a really sick fucker. Oh god there's bright red blood all over the place. Oh fuck the lights are flickering. Then after the big reveal, it turns out the spooky murals and blood trails were poorly thought out halloween decorations. The loud bangs? Wind blowing the metal doors around loudly. Egg on the face. All the tragedy happened centuries ago and these ponies were jumping at shadows and other spooky stuff.

Maybe this isn't tragic enough. Maybe the mainframe AI thingy meant to protect this hospital has been crying and going crazy for 200 years stewing in its impotent rage after a power surge broke its ability to control turrets when Nurse Redheart needed it most. But once some idiot fixed the turrets 200 years late it decided "damn you ponies, you always destroy each other so die now. Life is a terminal illness, pain and misery are its symptoms, death is the cure". Or maybe "I am programmed to guard this area and kill everyone without a hall pass or level 3 security clearance".

Maybe it isn't sad enough. Maybe after Redheart kills kids and herself she finds out some unfinished magic circle Twilight or Fluttershy set up in the basement without permission or consent has been storing souls "for their own good, because once our Trapped Souls With Artificial Bodies project works we can cure death" but it was going to be completed one day after the bombs went off. So these kids and Cheerilee were trapped here in a soul container for no reason for 200 years. Maybe the kids could be mad at Cheerilee for aborting them instead of letting them thaw then letting them decide if they wanted to die here or take the risky journey to some potentially safer area? "I mean if you wanted to die anyway why not risk life for us?" A kid might say. Might be wrong to say that. Who knows? Something retarded about hope and sucide could be said here. Maybe right after Redheart dies, frens with medical shit show up. Egg on face. Cue tears. Maybe.

>>375426
>>375427
So there were two of you all along, eh? Well, to avoid confusion, I think I'm just going to call you Sven and the other one Sven.

>>375428
disregard that I suck cocks

>>375427
>checked out, me.
^^
>OC
I have no idea what that is.
>good observations
My ego wants it so I will take it but...
>better grammar
This is pure distortion. I've been envious of your range of expression for a while now. My writing always comes out stilted and awkward.
>>375435
^^
I'm six-point-five and there's two of me.
>>375446
You're bit hard on yourself. Regardless, I do too. Besides people who don't are just insecure of their inability to satisfy said penis. Penises are great. They inspire great architecture...
>pic
^^ I tried to draw an autistic hoers in response but my powers are... lacking.

>>375457
>lacking
What about that hoers isnt autistic
>>375446
Its a little late in the game to backpedal bruh, may as well just own it.
(not asserting "lul ur gay", am asserting "lol ur a sperg who says cringey shit")

>>375457
>I have no idea what that is.
Original content, and unless I'm terribly mistaken you've made little greentext posts in previous threads and also engaged in writefaggotry elsewhere on the board. That is what I'm referring to.
>This is pure distortion. I've been envious of your range of expression for a while now. My writing always comes out stilted and awkward.
I was going to argue with you on this point, but being as flattered as I am lazy I've chosen to accept your compliment.

>>375467
Nigel, for the life of me I can't understand why you keep on coming back here, though I suspect it's mostly because this is the last site on the internet that hasn't banned you besides furaffinity, apparently. I honestly don't care what you do either way, but if you do plan on sticking around for awhile, we should probably lay out some ground rules. Here is how this is going to work.

If you continue to make intelligent, concise, on-topic contributions to the review discussion, rendered as human-readable text, as you do here and here:
>>375380
>>375419
then you will continue to be treated like any other poster, and responded to where appropriate.

However, if you're going to start getting all Nigely again, as you have already done here, here and here:
>>375340
>>375428
>>375467
Then this is probably going to go the way it usually goes.

It's entirely your choice. However, if you're planning to choose the latter option, please let me know so I can get to work on Nigel: The Movie Part II.

>>375487
I thought after forming a healthy relationship I would come here to brag about it but then I didn't feel like doing that because I am in a healthy relationship. I am still in a healthy relationship but you were probably getting lonely. I wanted to know if the fimfic is still shit and if people here are still so gay about me they can't be normal in my presence. I don't care what people think of me so I don't care if you photoshop my OC into gay scenarios. You could probably offend multiple furries at once by stealing their porn and photoshopping my OC into it. Honestly I thought the last Nigel movie was pretty funny so let me know if you do another one.

>>375396

Chapter 7: Prices

>Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons
>By Somber
>Chapter 7: Prices

Today's fortune cookie:
>“YOU TOUCH IT, YOU BUY IT. We take cash or credit.”

The chapter opens with a monologue from Blackjack. For the first time in the entire story, we are given a clear explanation of what "retiring" a male in Stable 99 actually entails:

>I’m a killer.
>The first pony I killed had been a male unicorn getting removed; that had been before I even got my cutie mark. I’d been told to tell him that he was now U-21 and ask him to report to security. I didn’t know what that meant at the time.
This is what I've suspected all along, but again, the author was ambiguous about it early on, so we could never be certain.

In any case, we now have a clear picture of exactly how the procedure works, so there is no ambiguity anymore. The male is apprehended by security, brought before the Overmare, read some sort of formal discharge paper, and then given a lethal injection. It's all very Logan's Run.

Anyway, BJ goes on, cataloguing all the deaths she's been responsible for so far. Apparently she was responsible for bringing four more males in for retirement; P-21 would have been her sixth total if she'd gone through with it.

She also mentions Scoodle:

>I hadn’t listened to her… no, that wasn’t true. I’d listened. I hadn’t believed her, and I’d been so full of myself that I was sure I could face anything the Wasteland had to offer. I thought that after forty-eight hours I knew more than a filly who’d spent her entire life on the surface. I was wrong. Dead wrong. But I was "lucky" enough that somepony else had been killed by my pride, arrogance, and stupidity.
In all fairness, BJ is being a little hard on herself here. As I observed at the time, Scoodle warned Blackjack about not touching anything in the boneyard, but she didn't bother to explain why.

>At Pony Joe’s I’d tried to turn Glory into a killer just like me. Mad? Upset? Scared? Kill somepony. Pick you right up. Of all the ponies I’d faced, though, the one that stuck with me was that poor bastard shitting himself, and me feeling so clever and cocky for sneaking up on him while he was occupied. I hadn’t learned one thing. I thought I’d changed. That I’d devoted myself to being the better pony. And then I smashed his head in with a baton. I’d thought he’d yell or attack or something. Red is dead. Execution by PipBuck.
Feeling regret about Scoodle and the males in Stable 99 I can understand; the latter case was a mistake that got a comrade killed, and the former was willful collaboration with a policy that she clearly thought was wrong. Her altercations with the raiders, however, were pretty much a kill-or-be-killed type of deal.

Much like its predecessor, this story has kind of a peculiar all-or-nothing take on morality. If killing one pony is wrong, then all killing must be wrong, even when there's clearly no other choice. This thinking creates a number of obvious contradictions that both Somber and kkat seem to have trouble reasoning out.

>Now I’d just killed forty more colts and fillies. Some had been sick; there was no question of that. Letting them live would have been… what? Who the fuck am I to judge if a pony deserves to die? How did I know the Enclave couldn’t have helped them? Or the Collegiate? Or… somepony? Fluttershy said to do better. Better for me was increasing my body count. And the final twist? I ended up with my body completely healed. I felt great.
BJ seems to have learned the wrong lesson from this experience.

There was never any ideal solution to this problem. The forty colts and fillies were dealt a bad hand by life, and that sucks, but from what it sounds like, there was probably nothing that could have been done for them. They would have wound up dead one way or the other. By putting them into suspended animation, Fluttershy was essentially just kicking the can down the road. As a result of her indecision, the foals suffered tortures far worse than what they would have endured if Fluttershy had simply allowed them to die in the first place.

The can that Fluttershy kicked ultimately came to Blackjack, who made the final decision to pull the plug. As was discussed here [>>375410 ] and here [>>375420 ], there was never really much of a decision. BJ's options were to either do what Fluttershy ought to have done 200 years ago, or else do what she actually did and kick the can down the road for someone else to deal with: the Enclave, or the Collegiate, or someone else.

The problem here is, again, her interpretation of morality in terms of absolutes:

>Who the fuck am I to judge if a pony deserves to die?
Nobody lives or dies because they deserve to. Instead of looking at this through a lens of "right" and "wrong," it's better to look at it in terms of actions and consequences.

Some terminally ill foals, who apparently could not even be cured by this setting's unreasonably overpowered healing magic, were put into suspended animation by Fluttershy, because her conscience wouldn't permit her to let children die. As a result, they spent 200 years in a state of fully-conscious living death, and ultimately went insane and became killers themselves. Fluttershy's good intentions don't matter; her actions created a worse result than the one she was trying to avoid.

>Fluttershy said to do better.
If BJ had followed Fluttershy's example, she would have left the foals in the same torturous suspended animation they'd suffered through for two centuries. Maybe the Enclave would have come along eventually, and maybe their technology could have cured whatever was wrong with them 200 years ago. But at that point it hardly matters; they still would have been insane killers.

There were no good options in this situation, but in any case BJ misses the point. It wasn't her responsibility to deal with this mess, but she dealt with it. Fluttershy, who actually was responsible, couldn't do that, and her indecision only made things worse.

>>375488
>you were probably getting lonely
>if people here are still so gay about me they can't be normal in my presence
I see you're still a narcissist, and that you're still missing the point.

Nobody here is obsessed with you or gay for you as you believe. Apart from the times when you're here causing trouble, nobody on this site thinks about you at all. As I have explained to you countless times, the shitty responses you get are a direct consequence of your own shitty behavior. We've all witnessed the Nigel Cycle playing itself out many times before: you show up, behave yourself for a little bit, then start plastering the site with nonsense until people start unloading on you. It always ends the same way: with you throwing a massive tantrum and "leaving for good." You can't reasonably blame anyone for assuming this is just the start of a new cycle.

At this point, everyone on this site knows who you are and has made up their minds about you. Opinions are basically divided between those who see you as an obnoxious shitposter that staff should have permabanned years ago, and those who see you as an autistic lolcow who's fun to screw with. Everyone else just ignores you. This situation is the cumulative result of your long history of toxic behavior on this site, and you have no one to blame for it but yourself. We've gone over all of this many times before, so there's no sense going over it again in detail.

In any case, it doesn't matter. If you want to stay, then please at least try to behave yourself. If you want to go, then best of luck to you wherever you land. Your time on this earth is yours to do with as you please.

>>375489

Blackjack wraps up her inner monologue by concluding that she is a "cleaner, healthier raider with better aim." Her feelings of guilt make sense, but it seems like she's being harder on herself than is warranted.

The situation with Scoodle was an accident, and in the situation with the foals there were no good options. As far as the males in Stable 99 go, it's nothing to be proud of, but at the same time she was just doing her job. She's no more culpable than anyone else who lived in the same Stable and abided by the same policies. Apart from those incidents, she's mostly just killed enemies in battle. The overall merits of her actions so far could be debated I guess, but I don't personally think she's done anything beyond the pale and anyway, Littlepoop was worse :DDDDD.

Anyway, P-21 comes up and asks her if she's okay, and she says that yes, she's okay, even though she's clearly not okay. The scene ends in a page break.

Next, she negotiates a deal between the Collegiate and the Society. The basic deal is that the Collegiate gets to conduct research, or whatever they're trying to do exactly, in the upper floors of the hospital, but in return they have to provide medical aid to anyone who needs it, including Prince Whoever's comatose father. The Society gets first dibs on any technological breakthroughs that the Collegiate might discover, and in return they will stand guard around the hospital and provide protection to the Collegiate while they conduct their research. I'm not sure how tough we should really expect the Society to be, since they couldn't even handle a few murderous orphans on their own, nor could they handle the Collegiate themselves, who ought to have been a pushover if they need the Society to protect them. But, I guess we'll put a pin in that for now.

Anywho, with all that out of the way, the party collects payment and moves on. Morning Glory appears to have found a battle saddle somewhere, so she's got that now, though it looks like she doesn't yet know how to use it.

>My head crashed over and over with what I’d done, pushing the mystery of EC-1101 from the forefront of my thoughts.
Honestly, she should feel worse about this sentence than about the murders.

>Maybe I should have turned the kids over to the Collegiate. No… while they’d been fascinated by the notes I’d found, they’d been relieved that I’d disposed of the foals. Not their problem. The Society? Same. Everypony was glad they didn’t have to deal with forty traumatized and dying young.
All the more reason she deserves commendation for being the only person horse, whatever in the room willing to step up and deal with the situation. The crazy robo-orphans were a hot potato that nobody wanted to touch; kudos to BJ for taking the initiative.

Anyway, tl;dr she's still in a bad mood.

>I was so angry I felt like a broken Sparkle-Cola bottle.
Honestly, she should be angrier about this lame simile.

>“Shut up,” I snapped, and I was glad to see him angry. Because he was about to say it wasn’t my fault. If it wasn’t my fault, was it his for leaving the choice up to me? Glory’s for not stopping me? The Enclave for reconnecting the maneframe to the maintenance robots? Redheart? Fluttershy? Should I just blame ponies who fucked up two centuries before I was even born? Celestia? Zebras? Who was to blame? Who had to pay for what I’d done?
It literally was Fluttershy, all of it. She's the one who developed a system for entombing the minds of orphans in their own paralyzed bodies until they went insane, and she's the one who authorized its use.

>Somepony had to pay the price. Better me than P-21. Maybe if he was smart he’d ditch me before I got him killed. They’d be better off together without me. Perhaps in a few months they’d find me frothing mad, psychotic, and put me down.
Oh, give it a rest, Emo McGee. Seriously though, if this is the end result you're looking for, you could always just plug yourself into one of Fluttershy's orphan-sarcophagi for a couple of centuries and see how you turn out.

Anyway, while she's moping, she inadvertently leads them into an ambush. It's a pretty standard deal: couple of raiders hiding out in an abandoned trailer. One opens fire on them with a shotgun, the other is armed with a pool cue still not sure how or why a horse would play pool, but we'll put a pin in that for now.

>Out came the automatic pistol and S.A.T.S. popped up. Four shots to Shotgun’s head. Execute. Then I noticed that instead of turning his head into meaty goo, the two shots that hit just sparkled off his hide. Shit. I’d forgotten I’d loaded the clips with shock rounds: great against robots, but lousy against everything else.
Kind of a pain in the ass when you have to deal with twenty different types of ammo. Might be easier to just pick one type of weapon and specialize, instead of just picking up every single firearm you come across and lugging it around the Wasteland with you.

Anyway, she kills the pool-cue raider by stabbing him in the eye with his own pool cue, and then uses his body to block the next blast from the shotgun. Glory is fiddling with her battle-saddle, trying to get it to work. Then, P-21, who I guess is just standing around while all of this is happening, points out a sniper on a nearby hill.

BJ runs into the trailer and beats the shotgun-raider to death with her baton. When she comes back out, Glory is flying around chasing another pair of raiders, that I guess came from somewhere. She doesn't have especially good aim with the saddle, but she's doing a good job of keeping them occupied. BJ takes the opportunity to headshot one of them with her pistol. The second one tries to throw a grenade at her, but she uses magic to yank the pin while it's still in his mouth. His head explodes, and that's all they wrote of him.

Meanwhile, the sniper takes a shot at her, misses, and she goes charging after him. He runs, and leads her into a camp with four more raiders.

>>375491

One of the raiders in the camp levitates an SMG, so BJ smacks her horn with the baton until she drops it. Then, BJ picks it up and uses it to mow down the remaining raiders, except for the unicorn with the broken horn. It sounds like she kills a grand total of eight of them.

With all of that out of the way, BJ now observes that there are some chained-up prisoners in the raider camp.

>“They’re slavers,” the lead pony in the chain said as he stared hard at the unicorn.
>“Slavers?” I asked, frowning in confusion. The lead pony looked a little concerned that I didn’t recognize the term. “I thought they were raiders.”
Yeah, I remember being a little confused about this distinction myself.

>“Not much difference except in levels of crazy,” he muttered. “Not every Wastelander is a psychopathic cannibal,” he said as he looked at my stable barding. “Slavers round up ponies and sell us to places like Paradise, Appleloosa, or Fillydelphia.” The gray pony glared at the squirming unicorn. I knew that glare. “They work a pony to death, and it doesn’t take long.”
Apparently, the distinction is that slavers have an actual, logical reason for doing what they do that makes sense in-world. Raiders, by contrast, are just generic goons who go around murdering ponies because reasons, and spend their free time pissing and shitting all over their own residences, also because reasons.

Apparently, this is a line for BJ. It seems the idea of someone trying to make a living through disreputable yet practical means enrages Blackjack even more than the raiders' purposeless acts of wanton destruction. She reloads the SMG with explosive rounds I am not exactly a firearms expert, but this feels like a bad idea and puts the barrel up against the unicorn's eye.

>I could almost forgive raiders now; they were at least crazy. She’d chosen to perpetuate this nightmare. Her life was forfeit! I just had to end her. End everything. Make it nine!
Again, even though she's clearly a little worked up, I can't say I understand her thinking here. The slavers aren't exactly involved in a reputable trade, but at least their motivations make sense. Nothing has ever made sense about the raiders.

Anyway, she's about to pull the trigger, when suddenly a thought occurs to her:

>Be strong. Be kind.
Yes, it would seem that it's this unicorn's lucky day well, aside from being permanently horn-crippled I guess. Apparently moved by some slogans she read on a couple of action figures she found, BJ has a sudden change of heart. It would seem that Applejack, who has barely been mentioned at all in this story, and Fluttershy, who I would once again like to stress is directly responsible for trapping forty orphans in their own bodies for two centuries and driving them mad, have somehow set good enough examples that BJ reconsiders her decision to rapid-fire an entire clip of explosive rounds into the unicorn's cute widdle eyeball. The "Dear Princess Celestia" letter practically writes itself.

Ultimately, BJ decides that eight murders is enough for today well, forty-eight if you want to be technical, and lets the ninth one go free, on the condition that she never, ever do anything this naughty again. She agrees, and the deal is concluded.

With all that nasty business out of the way, P-21 suggests that it might be time to unlock the chained ponies. However, it would seem BJ has better things to do:

> I walked away from the slaver camp. I found a rock, pressed my face to it, wrapping my forehooves around it, and I wept, choked, and sobbed. Then I felt a hoof stroking along my mane. I peeked up at Morning Glory as she gave me a soft smile.
>“You did the right thing,” she said gently.
Over the top violence, check. Maudlin emotional bullshit, check. If Somber can just work in a goofy moral backed by questionable reasoning, I might just have Fallout Equestria Bingo here.

>“Yes,” she replied as she looked back at me. “What she did was wrong. Killing her won’t undo it. But she’s still alive and she’ll have to make a choice. Maybe she’ll choose to stop. Maybe she’ll convince others to stop. Maybe she won’t. No matter what, we’re not going to make the Wasteland any better by killing everypony. Even if we really think they deserve it.”
>“I’m no different from her,” I muttered softly, voicing the poisonous words.
>“How can you say that?”
>“Because it’s true. I’ll kill anypony if my Eyes Forward Sparkle says to. Red it’s dead. Yellow be mellow. Right?” I felt disgusted at my supposed wit.
>“Was she red or yellow?” Glory asked as she lay down and crossed her forelimbs.
>“Huh?”
>She nodded in the direction the slaver had fled. “Was she red or yellow when you spared her?”
>“I…” I frowned. “I don’t remember. I don’t think I checked.”
>“So you chose to spare her. Not your PipBuck,” Glory said with a little cock of her head that made me smile. “You’re a killer, Blackjack, but you’re not a raider. You can choose. You care enough to choose.”
"Dear Princess Celestia: Today I learned that it's okay to kill eight ponies, as long as you let the ninth one go free after permanently crippling her. Also, I learned that it's wrong to kill just because your PipBuck tells you to. You should listen to your heart, because that's the only way you'll truly know whether or not a pony deserves mercy or an unspeakably gruesome death."

Yep, pretty sure that's a Bingo.

>She was right. I could choose. I chose to kill forty colts and fillies. No pep talk or show of mercy would change that. There was a price to be paid for being a killer. I was going to pay for it.
How much?

Anywho, after a page break, they go back to the slaver camp and unchain all the ponies. They divide up the slavers' weapons amongst the prisoners. For some reason, the freed ponies all wander off in different directions instead of traveling in a group, which is probably how they got captured in the first place. Oh well, it's not as if intelligent NPCs have ever been a staple of this setting.

>>375493

One of the NPCs is named Frisk, and he advises BJ to look him up if she ever makes it as far south as Flank. He assures her that he will "put in a good word" for her. I have no idea what this means or with whom he intends to put in a good word, but I'm assuming this will be significant at some point in the future.

Things get a little autismo from here. Morning Glory uses one of the slaver's knives to decapitate one of the dead slavers. Blackjack is all like wtf, and Glory explains that she wants to dissect his brain to see if there are any abnormalities that could explain raider behavior. The text made an explicit point of mentioning that this last batch of enemies were slavers, and not raiders, and because this distinction apparently matters in this setting, Glory's actions seem even more bizarre. However, I guess we'll just have to put a pin in that for now. MG is now collecting severed raider heads, so she can dissect their brains later. Righty-o.

At this point, the text abruptly segues from this discussion of brain-dissection into another fight, in what is probably one of the most awkwardly-written passages I've come across so far:

>The fight with the raiders proved terribly short. Nine. Almost disappointing. Ten. There were only four of them and they didn’t have a gun between them. Eleven. Glory got her second head and looked decidedly happy about the fact. Twelve.
I had to read this four times before I understood what the fuck is going on. At first it looks like there are nine raiders, then suddenly there are ten, then four, then eleven, then one of them gets decapitated, then suddenly there are twelve. However, the numbers BJ keeps shouting out are actually a continuation of her count from earlier. She killed eight slavers; the unicorn would have been number nine, but she let that one go. This current fight is against four raiders, so when she finishes them all off, her grand total stands at twelve. Glad we got that all sorted out. Unfortunately, this isn't the last we'll see of this autism with the counting.

Anyway, when she's done tallying up dead raiders, she turns on the radio. She is worried about being further lionized by the DJ, but it seems like the DJ has moved on to more enticing mares:

>Occasionally he referenced other ponies fighting the good fight all across Equestria. One that he called the ‘Stable Dweller’ seemed to have completely shut down a town of slavers. Now that was impressive.
This confirms that the timeline of this story runs concurrently with that of kkat's original. We're on Ch. 7 currently, and the events the DJ is referencing would place us somewhere between chapters 7 and 8 of kkat's story.

>I doubted the Stable Dweller would ever kill a room full of helpless ponies.
Clearly there's a lot you don't know about the Stable Dweller.

Anyway, as soon as she's done gushing about the "Stable Dweller," the DJ resumes gushing about Blackjack. Her latest exploits are recounted in detail. Bizarrely, a soundbite is also included:

>I froze dead in my tracks as my voice, slightly strained and tinny, played out from my PipBuck. “Get the fuck out of here. Find another line of work. Tell every slaver you know to find another line of work. I see you doing this shit again and I will turn you into paint! Do you understand me? Do you fucking understand me?!” Followed by her cry of ‘Yes!’ Did I really sound like that?
I have no idea how or when this audio would have been recorded, or how the recording would have ended up in the hands of the DJ. Blackjack, for whatever reason, is not even remotely curious about it; her reaction is just the usual "aw shucks, it weren't nothin'" routine.

However, it seems that there's a bit more to what's eating her than just basic humility. She still feels guilty about the foals I guess, and this seems to be feeding into deeper-rooted concerns about the overall morality of her actions so far:

>“I’m not a fucking hero!” I yelled at him, so angry I was glad that I wasn’t holding a gun. Thirteen. Oh wait… I was… “I kill ponies that try and kill me or try and kill ponies who don’t deserve it! I didn’t kill those slavers because they were evil and wrong! I shot them because they shot first and my PipBuck was red.” Thirteen… “If I hadn’t chased after that sniper I wouldn’t have had a clue there were slaves up there at all!” I said, watching their smiles vanish, seeing the gun tremble in my magical grip.
Ironically, Blackjack's problem seems to be the exact opposite of Littlepip's in the original.

My whole issue with LP was that she came across as an insane megalomaniac, but neither she nor the author ever seemed to pick up on this aspect of her character. She spent the whole book running around the Wasteland, indiscriminately picking fights with random strangers according to some vague moral code, the tenets of which were never explained. It was never clear what she believed in, or why she believed in it; all we knew was that she was driven by an obsessive desire to "do good" and "fix things," and in her view, as well as the author's, this apparently justified every insane, destructive, reprehensible thing she did. What's more, her reckless behavior was praised everywhere she went.

Blackjack is almost her complete opposite. There are no delusions of grandeur here; this is just a regular-ass Stable pony who, through no serious fault of her own, keeps ending up in dangerous situations and reacting accordingly. She's consumed by guilt because of all the ponies she's had to kill, but every kill she's made so far has been in self defense or out of necessity. But, here's the kicker: the reason she feels guilty is because she killed reactively, or in self defense, instead of self-righteously seeking out the world's villains and gunning them down in cold blood. In other words, this horse feels guilty because she doesn't have any of the traits that made Littlepip such a reprehensible protagonist.

>>375558

Since the DJ just brought it up, let's compare Blackjack's actions so far with those of the "Stable Dweller."

At this point in the original FoE, Littlepip had just arrived in New Appleoosa, after being accidentally shot by Calamity. She learns that New Appleoosa uses the rail line to trade with the nearby settlement of Old Appleoosa, who are primarily in the business of buying and selling slaves. LP sweet-talks the train caravan into giving her a ride up to Old Appleoosa, and once there she proceeds to infiltrate the town, gun down nearly everyone who lives there, and free their captive slaves. She then hijacks the train and rides it back to New Appleoosa. Along the way it derails and crashes. She sends the freed slaves back to New Appleoosa, along with a message ordering the town's leader to take them on as a burden and care for them, while she goes on her merry way. She offers the town no compensation, no explanation for her actions, and no apology for the disruption of the town's only trade route.

Neither LP nor the author ever attempts to clarify why she did any of this. LP actually has no tangible objectives at this point in the story, other than "find Velvet Remedy," which is a goal she has long since given up on (though incidentally she does come across Velvet by chance while in the process of terrorizing Appleoosa). As far as I can tell, kkat's reasoning is that "slavery is bad and everyone reading already understands this, so everything LP does is self-explanatory."

Whatever anyone might think about the ethics of slavery, it's a fact that LP's attack on New Appleoosa was completely unprovoked, and it also caused a great deal of collateral damage. However, she never questions the morality of what she did, nor does any other character in the story. The closest anyone ever comes is the town leader, who bans her from New Appleoosa despite agreeing in principle with what she did.

Now let's take a look at Blackjack.

At this point, she has two clear objectives: figure out what the deal with this EC-1101 file is, and find and defeat this Sanguine person who ordered the invasion of her Stable. Her pursuit of the first goal leads her to Megamart. There, she learns that the Finders can decode the file for her, but the price is 10,000 caps. She takes on a series of contracts in order to earn the money she needs. One of her contracts leads her to an abandoned weather station, where she meets Morning Glory. After MG joins the party, the trio decides to wipe out the raider hive that had attacked and killed MG's companions.

When this is done, the group moves on to their next contract, which involves clearing "squatters" out of an abandoned hospital. When they arrive, they encounter two entrenched factions who are at odds with each other. The contract was put out by one faction hoping to oust the other.

After meeting briefly with the two factions, BJ decides to explore the upper stories of the hospital, believing that if she clears out whatever enemy is up there, she will be able to broker an arrangement that will be amenable to both parties and collect a nice paycheck in the process. While exploring this area, she discovers that the "enemy" is actually just a bunch of foals who were put into suspended animation by Fluttershy 200 years in the past. They have since gone insane.

For reasons unknown, Fluttershy gave these foals the ability to plug into the hospital's maneframe system and manipulate its maintenance robots. The insane foals have been using these robots to murder anyone who happens to venture into their domain. Though she feels sorry for the foals, Blackjack realizes that the only viable option is to put them out of their misery and prevent them from doing any more harm, so she shuts down their life support machines and kills them.

The contrast in quality between these story arcs should be obvious to anyone. Littlepip, a character with no goals or motivations to begin with, undertakes a series of destructive and dangerous actions for no obvious reason. There is no deep soul-searching on her part; while she seems to feel bad, at least in a general way, about all the ponies she had to kill, she never once questions her basic right to do what she did.

Blackjack, by contrast, sets out with a clear set of goals. In the process of trying to accomplish these goals, she encounters situations that force her to take actions she is not comfortable with. Whether or not she made the right choices can be debated, but what's important is that her reasons are clear to the reader, and they make sense. She attacked the raider band because they had supplies she wanted and because she wanted to help Glory get revenge for her friends. She went into the hospital because she was hired to do so. She killed the foals because it was the most humane option.

She comes across as more sympathetic and admirable than Littlepip, because even though her actions would probably seem reasonable to most people, at least under the circumstances, she still feels guilt and questions her own motivations.

Now, that said, I personally find her angsty whining in this chapter so far to be tiresome. I also disagree with how she's thinking about this. Consider this line:

>I kill ponies that try and kill me or try and kill ponies who don’t deserve it! I didn’t kill those slavers because they were evil and wrong! I shot them because they shot first and my PipBuck was red.
This is an extremely silly thing to feel guilty about. If someone attacks you with obvious deadly intent, defending yourself is a sane and normal response. Their reasons for attacking you don't matter. It may not be necessary to kill them in order to protect yourself, but at the same time, if you leave them alive there's a chance they can still hurt you. If mercy or some personal code of ethics compels you to spare your attacker that's one thing, but I think most sensible people would agree that you have no obligation to.

>>375490
Posting off-topic is only a bad thing when Nigel does it. When anyone else freaks out and screams Nigel at the sight of a british flag, that's normal for this site and nobody bats an eye. Such tiresome hypocrisy. Maybe the clowns will call this observation a conspiracy, leftists love that tactic and most people on this site are just leftists in spirit. But it's okay. I don't really respect anyone here. Except glim, he's good at reviewing dogshit pony fanfiction. I wish other people here were good at stuff. But I still don't respect him enough to care what he or anyone else thinks of me. Hopefully if I leave the thread gays will stop derailing it.

>>376005
>Hopefully if I leave the thread gays will stop derailing it.
>*derails thread*
lmao, never change, Nigel.

Anyway, I'll probably be getting back to this review as well as my other thread sometime later this week.

Eh, it makes sense for MG to dissect a normal raider first. Even if we assume that whatever education she had in the enclave included anatomy lessons and a dissection she probably never saw the insides of a non-pegasus before. You want a template so you can spot abnormalities. I mean for all we know a unicorn brain has a bunch of magic crystals or some shit inside.
What makes less sense is the decapitation, the central nervous system includes the spinal cord and even if you ignore that you can just crack a skull open without taking if off the body. I did so. Well unless she intends to carry a bunch of brain jars around which would be funny.
Also, if my memory of reading this probably as it came out serves (fuck I'm old) this will develop into an important plotpoint and lead to BJ doing something that is supposed to be considered horrific and BJ will feel bad about it (wow just like the murderfoals!) but you'll laugh about it. Then again I might mix it up with the other FOE stories, it's been over a decade.
In conclusion somber does seem to have prewritten several threads and the crew does come across them but due to the readers lacking information as much as BJ and company do things don't make sense even from the perspective of a reader with information on FOE, Fallout, MLP and the concept of a gun.

One thing I just realized: Over here none of the main characters are wastelanders. You have selftaught hacker and professional whore P-21, 3 INT 10 STR BJ and bleeding heart medic MG. Littlepip was at least a technician (a job that requires more brainpower than smash thing with stick) and pretty much right away got Calamity as a permanent companion, who has a ton of wastelander and enclave experience.

>>373145
>We were recycled
Soylent Green is PONIES
>>373145
>hereditary jobs
Pretty obvs. that Somber was just vying for a reasonable start to the story, as opposed to a cohesive and well-thought-out explanation for thinga
>>373291
>I used to complain about stuff like this, until I started writing horse-fiction of my own and discovered that it really is a gigantic pain in the ass. You have to rethink nearly every action a character could perform based on them being in an equine body, and on top of that, you have three varieties of equine bodies to deal with
Right? Ppl be like "Its just like with ppl, but ponies". Nah. No it isnt. Theres logistical questions that cant be deferred without losing credibility.
>Since the canon setting is basically a world populated by horses that use tools and dwellings obviously designed for humans, it's virtually impossible to produce a satisfactory explanation for every single action
Preach! Er,.. cook!
>However, the issue of how ponies living in post-apocalyptic bunker conditions would be able to grow and cultivate tobacco, let alone roll it into cigars, is a whole other thing entirely
Lets just file tobacco cultivation under the pretense of 'something that was once grazed, but was further cultivated cuz reasons'
>>373293
>spending the rest of your life not getting laid, which presumably some guys can't handle
Consider the target audience
>>373576
>This paragraph is all over the place, and it's not really clear what BJ's priorities are right now
Ngl, I feel that lends credence to the story. So far, it feels like a story that starts with a rando in a particular (but not egregious) context, being led toward the actual story
>>373580
>I'm sorry, but her behavior here does not make sense.
I mean,... Im surprised that its gotten this far before a major incontinuity error
>>373594
>dropping a .38 revolver in the process
Acktshually, that calibur is registered as either .38 special, or .380
>the raiders in this story are cannibalistic
Based, just saying
>I'm not quite sure what's supposed to be happening here, but this sounds like bullshit
Cuz it is
>My understanding is that the whole point of a revolver is that it's not supposed to jam up like this
It isn't. Like you suggest,
the amount of negligence that would cause this level of mechanical failure is absurd
>they should retrieve this file and see if they can use it to lure the mercenaries away
A very dubious conclusion, but okay
>what happens next
Should I be surprised anymore?
>>373738
>Marmalade accuses Blackjack of harlotry
>Ur a hoe
Quality
>EC-1101 transferred
Macguffin acquired
>Yeah, I have absolutely no fucking idea what's going on anymore
Pretty sure the Macguffin is searching for a wifi signal
>It didn't make sense in kkat's story, and it doesn't make sense now
Oh please, we all know Qanon shaman marked a few desks while he was in there
>>374316
>Seriously, nigger, don't do shit like this
Oh come on, let him glory-fag for a moment, while this turns into a GTA flashback (what? You put "I ran" on,...)
>You've never been outside before, remember?
Oh, just write it off as "the left" or "the right". Hardly the best point to draw contention on

(break)