The wind blew kicking dust up across the street as you walked down the road towards the museum of freedom past the blood and gore of your most recent conquest. With your mind in debate on the approach you flip your coin. Negotiation it is. You took a second as you reached for the door, took a deep breath, and centered your mind. ‘Show time.’
You opened the door and stepped inside. A small set of stairs and a railing lead up to the first floor.
“Greetings~” You called out as the first bit of held fire from the overwatch of the second floor released into your chest to no effect between your armor and the ballistic weave. “from the Sole survivor. General of the minutemen. Warrior of the Wasteland and Overboss of Nuka world.” You add hyping yourself up and attempting to demoralize them.
The raider was confused but reloaded their pipe rifle.
“I am disappointed you would operate in an area within the shadow of my protection without even consulting me.” You add with an annoyed sigh as a second-round slams uselessly into your thigh.
You quick draw your pistol and shoot the raider in the arm, the blow was crippling but not fatal and the weapon fell to the first floor.
“My terms are simple. Bring me all six of the colorful newborn creatures you recently seized from the fluffy pony! Alive or dead, their current state does not matter but all six must be accounted for! Do this and you will be escorted from the commonwealth with what you can carry and provided with provisions for your journey! . . .” You added pausing for emphasis as the raider swore and started making their way across the walkway to elsewhere.
“Do not, and you shall meet the same fate as the Pack, the disciples and the Operators! You have five minutes to comply.” You add with a sigh getting out a water bottle as you waited. You listen to a flurry of activity in the upper floors as the raiders spread out passing the word on to those that might not have heard your declaration.
You silently paced over to the gate ahead of you taking out your bobby pins to work the lock. Before the end of the first minute the gate was unlocked, ‘just in case’ before you doubled back to your original position. You stepped back down towards the exit as you prepared your flare gun and signaling round and fired it out the door into the sky just as you heard the first tell tale signs of fluffy life. A series of peeps and cheeps started to make their presence known from various locations in the upper floors as they seemed to rapidly consolidate in the same place.
By the end of minute three you could hear a bit of argument, it sounded like all but one raider was willing to give up their play thing. After a bit of debate, it seemed like they’d keep all of them and ‘deal with this’. This made you chuckle to yourself.
“One, minute, left!” You called out to the room.
You weren’t sure what you were hearing, it reminded you of the fastening of leather straps. Perhaps they were changing some armor?
They finally came down the stairs to the area across from the entry gate just as their time was running out. He was a lithe and lanky man, probably a full head taller then you. His equipment was dirty and poorly cared for with a bandolier and hip holsters affixed with various chemicals. But what mildly irritated you was the fact that they were wearing the fluffy foals. One had been secured to their helmet and their head strapped to their forehead. Three secured with leather straps over the chest seemingly to roughly cover the lungs and heart. One on the groin and one on the stomache.
‘Please tell me they don’t think this is a~’
“Howdy, im Ted. This is blue, he’s mine so we’re kind of at an impasse here. I honestly don’t care if you’re the general or the overboss or whatever, I aint letting mine go without a fight.”
“Fair enough, Ted. But out of curiosity, what’s with the foal armor?”
“Figure if you want em you wont attack them or the person wearing them. Hell if you make me fall wrong they’re probably dead too.” He adds in a tone as if threatening.
“You did hear that I didn’t care if they were alive or dead, I just wanted them. You’re honestly in no position to negotiate, they aren’t hostages to me.” You add lying while inwardly cursing that such a dumb tactic had vastly limited your potential responses in a fight if you wanted to be the good guy.
“You say that but word gets around about hero’s like you. So tell you what. You leave concord to us and I’ll give you every foal but blue.” He adds taking out a spray can as he starts to shake it casually.
“Unacceptable. I own too many settlements around here, the minutemen alone would deal with you before the weeks out.” You add as your hands get itchy.
“Then every foal but blue and we’re allowed to go somewhere else?” He added with a sigh.
“Nope. You said you’d fight for blue and I said I want all of them. You and me are gonna throw down~” As you say this you step towards the gate. Ted laughs thinking the gate is locked and that he has more time to think of something until the gate swings open. “The rest of you stay out of this if you want to live!” You add with a roar.
Ted fumbles with the container in his hand and it spins around revealing the inhaler on the side. ‘Oh no, not sweet~ delicious…’
“TURBOOOOOOO~”
Ted calls out before taking a massive hit of the container. “ted!” the word ted felt compressed due to the speed they said it.
You had a few choices here but regardless, you needed a counter due to you being at a slight heroes handicap and would probably only have time for one. You trusted your speed, especially while not in your power armor. This meant if you took a hit of a similar speed up/perception altering chem you’d likely be a bit faster then ted and if ted took a second chem you’d have the reaction speed to keep up in the binge off. While remaining slightly slower the alternative was a perception booster that would allow you to follow teds increased speed and hopefully respond but you’d be at risk of falling behind if it became a contest of who can take the most drugs the fasted.
As you reached for your pocket Ted was already making their way back towards and up the stairs, apparently, they weren’t going to fight next to a large hole in the floor. Honestly you couldn’t blame them. Your hand gripped a tin with the word ‘orange’ written on a piece of tape as you popped the top and put some orange mentats in your mouth.
With your new perception Ted was now moving at somewhat normal speeds, unfortunately your own movements felt slow by comparison. Ted reached into a lunch container and pulled out a variant of psycho and injected his arm as you made you hopped to the slope from the basement to the stairs and made your way up. In a fit of rage ted proceeded to hurl the metal container at you but thanks to your agility and perception you were able to narrowly avoid the container that wedged itself in the wall below.
You had unfortunately chosen poorly, with your heightened sense of perception every anguished peep, pained chirp and panicked scree was like nails on a chalkboard of your mind. You would need to end this quickly. Meanwhile Ted grabbed the combat knife wedged in the table and proceeded down towards you.
Placing one leg forward onto the next step you settled into a defensive stance to hopefully break the charge as you prepped your arms. Ted did not go for the presented leg, no they were coming in for the kill meaning they would have to lunge far with a short weapon. Suddenly your pip boy flashed with the acronym ‘V.A.T.S’ and time slowed further as you palm struck from the left above the elbow on the exterior of the armor and from the right on the interior wrist to dislocate the elebow before you proceeded to use the dislocated limb to hurl them over your shoulder and onto their back behind you. Teds leg landed on an exposed bit of wooden support beam that was sticking out of the floor that had collapsed into the basement. A spurt of blood from the leg and a series of pops from their back from the stairs impacting several points of their spine.
Unfortunately, it was not standard psycho, it was Psycho buff. Ted Noodle armed with his bad arm into your cod piece before yanking with his good arm at your shin. You both screamed, you more in mild irritation of having your balls grazed until you too fell on the stairs and Ted starting to slide down the floor towards the metal door ended up pulling you along with him.
“You son of a~” you griped as you raised your right leg and slammed your foot past teds attempt to block and into their shoulder as teds feet contacted the door and started pushing away so they weren’t in a squat lending a counterforce to your own blow. The two of you scrambled to your feet, Ted slipped for a moment as with a dislocated left elbow and a dislocated right shoulder they couldn’t use their arms to push off the floor.
“Come on then!” Ted responded spring forward to lunge their face towards you.
“Fucking psycho…” you grumbled knowing Ted would likely not surrender for a good minute. “You’ve got no arms left to fight!” You add stepping to the side and kicking the bleeding leg from behind to knock Ted onto his back once again in the hopes of sparing the foals before pulling out your pistol and popping them a few times in the right leg to hopefully prevent them from standing up.
You got a little irritated as Ted did a crunch and tried to bite your armored leg before shaking them off and putting a boot on his neck to keep them in place. “Stop it!”
“Im Invincible!” Ted added with a bit of a flap that seemed to use the last of their energy.
“You’re a looney.” The sole survivor responded.
“No wait~ im done…” Ted adds as the massive surge of pain and clarity worked its way through the waning chemicals in their system. “Take your spoils. . .I’ll miss you blue.” Ted adds trying to hold back his emotions. Sleeping with that warm fuzzy white noise generator was the best sleep he’d had in months. Might have been the only sleep he’d had all week.
As the lone survivor began to work the straps he caught the silhouettes of the raiders upstairs out of the corner of his eye. They observed the conflict, but they seemed willing to let you take what you wanted now. Blue seemed to be in the best condition of the colorful foals, apparently ted actually treated them with relative decency. A few stains around the mouth made you think at least an attempt at feeding had been made even if unsuccessful. They all desperately needed a feeding but thankfully they weren’t newborns and were bigger then Daisy and Durums foals which is probably why they were still alive.
What once was a Red Unicorn filly had a wound where they horn would be and had been pricked with needles with particular attention paid to the hooves. Odds of survival were low but possible.
The yellow Pegasus had its legs and tail joints dislocated or crushed in many places but they had been strapped into place too tight and choked to death mid fight.
The peach earthy had rope marks under its front hooves, likely held aloft under its arm pits. Cause of death repeated blunt force trauma and broken ribs. If you had to guess the thing had been used as a speed bag.
If it wasn’t for the glaring color difference of the ruby red horn you might have mistaken the black Pegasus for an alicorn. Apparently, someone had shaved the pegasus’s forehead and glued the red unicorns horn into place and there were little bits of a plastic attached to make it look like a circlet crown that you missed under the fur. They were still wearing a small dress that look like it had been made for dolls but were otherwise unharmed. Poor little princess.
Last was a smokey colored earth filly, you noticed this one tried to peep and chirp but you heard nothing. This one had been surgically muted but was otherwise fine.
“Normally ted, I’d give you a stim pack and let you go. But as overboss I keep to my terms. The rest of you have ten minutes to get outside and disarm for your escort or im coming in after you. Ted defied my request and must die. May you be welcomed in Valhalla.” You add with a single ‘pip’ to the forehead from your silenced pistol.
You gather up the foals and head to the front door as a flurry of activity occurs upstairs. As you step outside the museum you see a small group of Minute men poking over the previous battle. “General.” One adds with a salute seeing you as the others come to attention.
“At ease. The raiders inside have surrendered, if they step out and disarm Escort them out of the commonwealth before returning their weapons. If they resist you may execute them, I’ll walk you to red rocket to pick up some provisions for the travel.” You add heading over to a nearby set of sandbags and making a pile of foals while waiting for the raiders to show up.
As they stepped out and noticed you they complied and set down their weapons, 8 raiders in all. You line them up against the wall and hold a shotgun on them as you send two of the three minutemen to sweep the location in case someone was hiding. After fifteen minutes they returned, and you parted ways at the red rocket gas station as the raiders were escorted Northwest.
You teleport to the institute and head to bio science. You submit the deceased foals for autopsy and get an assistant to help you treat the injured foals after you get them fed via nurse mare. Now slightly more comfortable and exhausted they fell asleep making medical work simpler. You would not be able to replace reds horn with the previous one as it would probably just prevent new growth if any from the stump and it was considered not time/labor effective to install a replacement especially since that could cause an infection in the skull/brain if they weren’t careful. It would likely come in deformed or simply dinky but they’d pull through with rest and milk after the wounds were treated and brushed with a liquid skin patch for synth skin. You’d make sure to pick some of that up for your own fluffies as you got a rundown on how fluffies interacted with medicines which was concerning since it could likely lead to a lot of accidental deaths for an infiltration unit. Then again, unfinished product.
It was decided that the reds horn would likely fall off the black pegasus in time so left it as is but you’d make a note to color it black with a sharpy later so red never got jealous that their sibling stole their horn.
The smokey earthy was a bit of a complication at first. They could do an operation but the odds of survival at this age were low. With some creative thinking it was decided to do the operation later so they’d instead install a collar to wear low on the neck and set it up with a voice module to produce the sounds the throat was trying to produce for now. This also allowed you to program the voice as you saw fit which you thought you could have some fun with.
The department wanted to keep the foals for ‘observation’ but you knew if you left them here they’d remain here utterly. You pulled rank and took them home with you in the hopes of convincing the mother to return.
Appearing in a flash in sanctuary hills you made your way along the street until you came upon the fluffy nest. Peach was sitting on her butt back against the inner tree while listening to Phanes but staring longingly at peaches foals. She missed her own children but this helped a little.
“Daddeh Back wiff babbehs?” Durum added mid return from the poop zone.
You hold up a finger to shoosh him. “Yep. Just fed them but the foals have been through a lot though so let the others know to try not and wake them.”
“Got it.” Durum added walking back to the tree to let peach know that daddy was back with the baby’s but they were sleeping.
It took everything in peach’s power to prevent herself from calling out ‘BABBEHS~’ as daddy approached with her 4 remaining foals. She did rock onto her side back to the stump and nodded to place her foals against her stomach. You did so and the sleeping foals snuggled in to their mothers fluff with contented sleep peeps. Her tears of happiness were mixed with tears of concern.
“Im sorry girl. The meanies had hurt your yellow and peach babies too badly for daddy to help.” She huu’d silently leaning over the remaining foals.
You were tempted to leave things as they were and pick up the investigation tomorrow. But if there were any other time sensitive incidents you knew it could prove deadly to the fluffies. You decided to spare a half hour petting daisy until she fell asleep. Then you stood up and made your way out of the settlement, across the bridge and into the back hills to look into the next location.
