Fallout Equestria: Rules of Engagement (MLP:FiM HiE)

You'll have to forgive me for any mistakes I make with regards to the usual layout of these posts, as this is my first day on the forums. It was suggested in the comments of my story that I post it here for some feedback (be as harsh as you like - I've already been chewed out by a US infantryman for this story).

For those of you who don't know what HiE means - it's Human in Equestria (I think you can figure it out from there)

Chapter 1 link

Synopsis: Once upon a time, on the not-so-magical planet Earth. There was a US Marine who signed up to defend his country. He was assigned to a fire team, the fire team assigned to a squad and the squad assigned to a platoon. Together they defended the area surrounding a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan from insurgents. If only it were that simple.

When lone Marine is transported to Equestria he finds a post-apocalyptic wasteland. With no orders, no resupply and seemingly no hope of return, he sets out to find what brought him here, and why.

Apparently the chapter should be posted here as well - formatting's nicer on FiMfiction I think. Read it here if you want, but please like and favorite over there if you have an account.

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Once upon a time, on the not-so-magical-and-actually-quite-fucked-up planet of Earth. There was a US Marine who signed up to defend his country. He was assigned to a fire team, the fire team assigned to a squad and the squad assigned to a platoon. Together they defended the area surrounding a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan from insurgents. If only it were that simple.

Chapter 1: Of New Wars and PipBucks

“As a soldier, you can be sent to any area of the world... you could find yourself alone, in a remote area – possibly in enemy territory. This manual provides information and describes basic techniques that will enable you to survive and return alive, should you find yourself in such a situation.” Preface, US Army Survival Guide.

"– and so I said, 'chicken nuggets? Are you crazy!?'" exclaimed Jackson

The two marines in the Humvee’s back seat roared with laughter. I'd missed the setup so the joke didn't really work for me. I did crack a smile though. Heh. Oatmeal.

That’s right, I’m a Brony. Not that that’s a secret. There are no real secrets in the platoon. Relying on each other for your lives seems to make things like our TV preferences seem somewhat insignificant. So, despite some ribbing (no Jackson, Bronyism is NOT covered under “don’t ask, don’t tell!”), it was accepted just like Andrews’ bottle cap collection, or Jackson’s wild exaggerations of his teenage adventures. Hell, it gave us something to talk about, and when you’re stuck patrolling a the same patch of dirt for eight months – anything – is better than talking about the weather. Lets have an example conversation:

“Hot today isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. Just like it was when you asked yesterday. Just like it has been for the last four months. So when you come up to me tomorrow, and you ask me, ‘Hot today isn’t it?’ my answer’s gonna be; it’s still freakin’ hot, and we’re still in a fucking desert.”

“How hot do you think it is?”

“I hate you.”

My short brown hair was plastered to my head beneath my combat helmet, a few beads of sweat pooling around the follicles creating an itch I’d learned to ignore. Gold tinted Oakley sunglasses rubbed against the chinstrap while shielding my eyes from occasional blasts of light when the sun was unobstructed by cliffs. Ear plugs hung on a cord around my neck. According to SOP’s written by some rear echelon motherfucker they were supposed to be inserted whenever I left the FOB, but seriously? Fuck that. I’d rather hear the enemy coming than die with intact eardrums.

Some people wonder whether humvees are comfortable like the civilian versions. They’re not. Mind you, when you’re wearing eighty pounds of combat gear in a hundred and ten degree heat, comfortable is not a term which is thrown around much. Humvees are utilitarian beasts, and when it’s a choice between a more comfortable seat and an extra fifty pounds of armor on the doors, I know which one I’ll pick. The seat. Man, fuck armor. Standard armor already stops seven six two’s, and if you get hit with an RPG you’re fucked anyway. It’s an anti-tank weapon, and no matter how much armor you bolt to a Humvee it’ll never be a fuckin’ Abrams! Damn PoG’s don’t think like that though. Hur, der Marines ‘er tough, they c’n handle be’in uncomfortable!

Yeah, of course, until it comes back and fucks you in the ass when you jump out into a firefight and can’t run straight.
Andrews was listening to my rant and peeked down from the gunner’s turret.

“Maligning the armor?” asked Andrews with mock incredulity, “Oooo, tempting fate now aren’t we. Next you’ll be saying you’re two weeks from retirement!”

It was difficult to tell how serious he was being. We joke about fate and superstition, but at the same time we all have our rituals, the things we do just to appease lady fate. Little things, stupid things. Andrews wears a cross around his neck that I’d never seen before we deployed, Jackson listens to the same song, every day at the same time, even the Sargent is not immune. He stirs his cereal three times before eating, no more, no less. And me? I have my Twilight Sparkle. A little blind bag pony that stays in my pocket, where my nocs (night vision goggles) used to be, before they broke (dust proof my ass). We believed in luck, yet mocked the very idea of it. The mind’s way of dealing with what we can’t control.

“Fuck retirement, only way I’m retiring in two weeks is in a bodybag,” I retorted, “I plan on a long and illustrious career of being shot at, blown up and unappreciated in some backwater country.”

“That why you re-enlisted?” he asked more seriously.

“What would I do as a civvie?” I deflected, “Get some shitty ass customer service job and work it for the rest of my life, if I’m lucky? Fuck that shit, I’m a Marine.”

The first Humvee in the convoy exploded. Or at least the front of it did. Supersonic metal fragments pinged off our windscreen.

"IED!" someone yelled.

In the movies, this is where everything would go into slow motion. Real life was not so forgiving. Everything happened nauseatingly fast. No time to think, only react. We skidded off the road in a cloud of dust. I threw myself out of the Humvee, but – blinded by the dust cloud – I missed my footing and fell on my face. Tasting dirt and a trickle of salty blood from a split lip, I rose up into a crouch. I'd managed to keep a hold of my rifle. I could hear rounds being fired, impacting sand and metal. AK's. At this distance my armor would hold, but that didn't mean shit unless I got hit in the chest.
Goddamnit where were they! I scanned left. There up on the cliffs.

"Ten o'clock," I yelled "up high!"

"I got more at three o'clock!" called Jackson, "looks like they're dug in!"

I fired my M4 ineffectually, wondering why the fifty wasn't firing. I looked back and was met with a sight that, upon reflection is horrifying, but at the time was just numbly accepted. No time for feelings. Most of Andrews' face had been blown out by a shot to the back of the head.

"We're too exposed," yelled the Sargent, “get to the cliffs, Pearson, you first, now, COVER FIRE!"

That was me. As my fire team fired off rounds, I sprinted forward for the first piece of cover I could find and dove into a convenient alcove in the rocks. Something wasn't right. I looked more closely and my blood ran cold. There was a wire sticking out of the ground.

"Secondaries!" I yelled, as I threw myself as far as I could back out into the street.

The explosion followed. Focused by the rock walls it threw me like a ragdoll, shrapnel tearing into my left leg. I hit the ground. Hard.

-x-

I guess I must have passed out because when I came to, it was cold and dark. Really dark. A thick cloud cover blocked both moon and stars. Where the hell was everyone? I scrabbled in the dark and was relieved when I felt the familiar shape of my rifle.

This is my rifle, there are many like it, but this one is mine. Without me, my rifle is useless, without my rifle, I am useless.
An adage endlessly repeated by Boots and considered ‘stupid’ by veteran Marines, it none the less provides an idea of the bond between a Marine and his weapon. Any Marine unfortunate enough to misplace his rifle will likely experience a sensation not unlike excreting a number of standard masonry blocks. For those of you who have consumed MREs this will require little imagination.

I switched on the barrel mounted flashlight and the powerful beam cut through the darkness.
This couldn't be right. I looked around and recognised nothing. The Humvees, even the wreckage was gone! The cliffs were all wrong. Hell even the dirt was wrong, it was soft and fine, completely unlike the coarse, sandy grit that filled my boots.
They couldn't just have left me behind! I pulled out my radio and turned it on, cycling through the different military channels... nothing. That wasn't too surprising; the range on those things is only a few miles. I put out a few calls, but I wasn't about to hold my breath.

Luckily the shrapnel wound to my leg was not as serious as I’d feared. As I bandaged it, I noticed something bulky under my left sleeve. It was so comfortable that I hadn't noticed it up til this point. Rolling up my sleeve revealed some kind of wrist mounted computer. A small emblem read 'PipBuck 3000'. Weird name.

I was hesitant to press the 'on' button in case it turned out to be packed with explosives. In Afghanistan, paranoia saves lives. Eventually my curiosity won out. After all, someone had gone through the trouble of putting it on me while I was unconscious. If they'd wanted to kill me they'd have done so already.

The monochrome display lit up amber and revealed a map. Wow, retro, I thought to myself. All the sudden my vision flashed and when it came back I could see a compass in the corner of my vision. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. Some kind of retinal projection? Wow, I take back what I said about 'retro'.

There was a direction marked on the compass. A direction I should travel. I looked down at the map and... da fuck? It was navigating me to a place named 'Ponyville'. Since when do Afghans name their towns in English? Someone was having a joke. That or this was some kind of coma dream, still couldn't rule that out, but I couldn't quite bring myself to believe that it was. For now, this was real.

-x-

You’d probably think that as a Marine I’d feel right at home operating alone in what could potentially be enemy territory, that as a veteran of two wars I’d be ready for this. You’d be wrong. Sure I had some training, but I was a Rifleman, not a Commando. I lived and fought alongside my four man fire team, and most of the time with the other two fire teams of the squad backing us up. I hadn’t been truly alone in months and psychologically it took its toll.

With no idea where I was relative to… anything, I figured I may as well follow the nav point. I doubted I was within any kind of search area, heck, it was probably a different country. Equestria came to mind but I dismissed it out of hand. Ponyville wasn’t that unique of a name, and this didn’t much look like a magical utopia to me. If it was, I’d be giving Rainbow Dash a piece of my mind. This weather was ridiculous. I laughed at my own joke, but really I was freaking out. So I fell back on my training.

Right, first things first. Inventory; M4A1 – SOPMOD1, ACOG scope, night vision scope, flashlight, four 30 round mags FMJ 5.56mm, M203 under barrel grenade launcher with three 40mm grenades, Berretta M9, two 15 round mags, multi-tool, med pack, standard combat knife, Dragonskin armor, helmet and ballistic goggles, sunglasses, digital watch, hydration pack, two energy bars, a (useless) radio, an (equally useless) map of the area we had been patrolling and a mission report logbook. To my surprise this was all listed out in my (I guess I can call it mine, it is attached to me after all) PipBuck. Next to each of them was a value in ‘caps’. Whatever those were. The most intriguing thing was the entry for my armor. ‘Dragonskin armor (Human Variant)’. ‘Human Variant’? As opposed to what?

I still couldn’t see much as I worked my way towards the nav point, but the ubiquitous mud I was trudging through seemed to confirm my suspicion that I was no longer in the desert. I swapped out my ACOG scope for the night vision attachment. This meant the sights were no longer zeroed of course, but it’d be good enough for close up work.

Ponyville turned out to be a collection of charred ruins. Only a few buildings were still standing, and even those looked to be on their last legs. No signs of repair either; this town had been abandoned long ago. People had died here. Civilians probably. Who fucking knew really? Truthfully it didn’t bother me. Whoever said “war never changes” never had to worry that any one of the civilians he was supposedly protecting could be strapped with explosives, or been forced to help rebuild a water-pump for a village that may very well harbor the same insurgents who had just sewn the road back to base with IED’s. There were times when a part of me felt it would be easier to just drop a MOAB on the damn villages and let God sort it out; the more rational part of my brain reminded me that ‘most’ of the civvies were decent people, just trying to survive, and that their support was critical to base security.

Being torn so strongly in two directions; helping and harming, saving lives and ending them, my emotions all washed together. Fragile hope and crushing despair, insufferable rage and courageous pacifism, they all collided with one another, creating a kind of destructive interference that just left me feeling numb.

-x-

Gunshots. In my experience there's one surefire way to tell some 'tough guy' from a soldier. When startled, 'tough guys' freeze, their reflexes deadened over the years to demonstrate they have no fear. Soldiers duck. Fragments of brick and mortar sprayed from a nearby wall as it was struck by a bullet that I had little doubt was meant for me. I ducked behind said wall, and considered my options. My adrenaline kicked in full force and I felt like I could go hand-to-hand with a fucking bear!
I took a deep breath and controlled myself. I switched the safety off on my rifle, setting it to single shot with a satisfying ‘click’. I had to PiD (positively identify) the shooter. I did *not* want to be responsible for shooting some over-zealous young ANA (Afghan National Army) soldier, even if he had taken a shot at me. It was very dark after all, and he could probably see by my silhouette that I was armed.

The ANA was... not the most professional of armies. The training we gave them was, by necessity, limited, and they had a somewhat alarming tendency to get high on hash and opiates prior to or even during battle. This wasn’t to say they were useless. Far from it. We had to count on the fact that eventually they would be able to keep the peace if we were to have any hope of ending this war.

On the compass (which still kind of freaked me out, being superimposed onto my vision) a red bar seemed to indicate the position of the shooter. Useful, but it still didn’t tell me his intentions. Deciding that popping my head out into view of what I was ninety percent sure was a sniper was probably not conducive to staying alive, I explored other options.

“US Marines!” I yelled out, “identify yourself!”

There was no response. I racked my brain to try and remember the phrase in Dari, the local dialect, but was drawing a blank. Fuck. We’d always relied on the terps (interpreters) to interact with the locals. ‘US Marines’ should have been clear enough anyway. It’s not like that needed a translation.

I had an idea. In daylight, it would have been far too obvious, but in this darkness it just might work. I was betting the sniper wouldn’t have the benefit of night optics. Pulling my combat knife, I stuck it into the mortar between two bricks close to ground level. Making as little sound as possible, I removed them, creating a hole large enough for the rifle and its scope. I lay prone behind the wall poking the barrel through the gap and activated the night vision scope. With a high pitched whine the area beyond the wall lit up in fuzzy green detail. What I saw shocked me, which was quite a feat considering my already elevated state. What I could see was, without a doubt, a facsimile of Rarity’s carousel boutique. Who had built it, and why, was beyond me, but right now I had more pressing concerns. I had to identify the sniper before he spotted the faint glow given off by my scope. I flicked on the infrared laser, the sight wasn’t zeroed, but the laser was. Zeroed at 100 feet mind you (it was offset from the barrel), so if the shot was further, I’d have to adjust my aim right. The invisible beam glowed brightly through the scope cutting a swath through the air as I looked for my target.

Now it wasn’t unusual to see horses in Afghanistan, nor even for insurgents to fight from horseback, so when I looked through the scope and saw something vaguely horse-shaped I wasn’t particularly perturbed. As I looked closer however, I saw two things wrong with it. The first was that it was wearing some kind of armored barding, which quite frankly was ridiculous. Insurgents could rarely afford armor for themselves, let alone their horses. The second, and more important problem, which I had to believe was some kind of trick of the light, was that it was riderless, and somehow levitated a rifle above its head.

I took my eye away from the scope and sure enough, I saw what could be the faint glow of telekinesis around the rifle, about 50 yards away. Which meant... which meant that... fuck. Which meant I was seeing things. The rider’s clothing must be deflecting light peculiarly, messing with the scope. Not being completely insane, as far as I knew, I wasn’t willing to entertain the other option that was staring me in the face. Still, I had PiD’d the target. He was definitely armed and, even if I couldn’t see him, from his armaments he was definitely not NATO or ANA.

“Cleared hot,” I whispered to no-one, not used to working alone.

This wouldn’t be the first person I’d shot, but it still wasn’t something I enjoyed. I went over my rationale again. If the rider was going to see my scope glow, he would have fired by now. I was well aware that he was probably not alone, and if I fired I would give away my position as surely as sending up a flare. The fact that I couldn’t see anyone else through the windows was making me nervous, they could be trying to flank me. Could I slink away without being seen? Probably not. There was a lot of open ground before the next piece of cover from the sniper.

What was my evidence for him being hostile? He’d seen a lone, armed figure walking towards his camp and taken a, literal and figurative, shot in the dark. Hell of a reason to kill somebody. I might have done the same thing! Fuck this war. Why couldn’t this shit ever be black and white? Give me a bunch of God-damned Nazi zombies to kill any day.
The RoE (rules of engagement) were clear. I could shoot him now, and I was probably going to have to. Completely inappropriately, a thought crawled into my head as I felt a piece of hard plastic dig slightly into my chest. What would Twilight Sparkle do in this situation?

Probably go insane like me, and start thinking about imaginary characters. Fuck. No. I knew what she’d do. She wouldn’t do anything. If her friends were here, she would take the shot, to protect them – just as I had in the past. By myself... by herself, she wouldn’t do it because she would never be able to live with herself afterwards, even if it was self-defence.
But I wasn’t Twilight Sparkle.

I calmed by breath, exhaling slowly and aimed roughly half a meter above the horse’s head, where the rider’s chest should be.

I was a Marine, a trained killer.

I pulled the trigger.

My rifle cracked authoritatively, the vibration knocking the scope out of focus.

“Piece of crap!” I muttered, smacking it with my gloved hand, “Never see this shit in Call of Duty.”

The scope sputtered, cutting to black, then blurred back into focus. I looked and observed... no effect on target. The rifle was still right where it was before, appearing to float amid the blackness. Seemingly without warning it started firing wildly. A trained individual should have been able to spot my muzzle flash; the insurgents were many things, but highly trained was not one of them. At this rate he’d run out of ammo before he even saw me. Right, I thought, new plan. Wait till he starts to reload, then shoot the horse and run. It had always seemed kind of slack to me to shoot enemy animals (a favorite tactic of the insurgents was to strap IED’s to pack animals, the safest way to disarm them being to detonate from a distance), they didn’t have any choice after all, but if it was him or me, it was going to be him.

I shifted my aim slightly lower, keeping the laser on the horse’s head. I might as well make it quick. I saw the clip drop from the – supposedly – floating rifle and took the shot. This time the effect was immediate, the rifle clattered to the floor, followed shortly by the horse. The gunman was still nowhere to be seen.

I rose up into a crouch and started moving away from the wall, but then I saw another red bar on my HUD. This time I knew what it meant. I spun left and flicked on my flashlight. My assailant was shocked by the sudden brightness, but not as shocked as I was. There was no denying it now. This creature, charging at me with a rusty machete clenched in its teeth, wearing blood stained leather armor, was a pony. Not a small horse but an, honest to god, fucking FiM, G4 pony. The enormous eyes and bright blue coat left no doubt in my mind. Leaving me to wonder what substance I could possibly have consumed to make me trip balls like this. Fortunately I didn’t have time for a protracted questioning of my sanity, my survival instincts forcing me to accept instantly what would no-doubt have taken hours of intense introspection to come to terms with; I was in Equestria.

The pony resumed his charge. While the RoE was strict, (not that I was under any obligation to follow it at this point), charging a US soldier with a rusty knife was still more than enough to get you shot. That said, the RoE was far from my mind as I fired two rounds into his center mass.

He stumbled and fell, a pool of blood spread out like an oil slick in the blackness of the night. My Little Pony, laying in a pool of blood. The show was just about the only thing in my life that I had considered wholly pure and innocent. It would be a lie to say I’d never imagined living there. Of course something so pure could never survive contact with me.
Three more red bars, behind me this time. Eyes in the back of my head, I was starting to like this PipBuck more and more. Flicking off my flashlight I sighted my first target, and fired.

The shot went low, the green pony stumbling as her foreleg shattered. Another gunshot rang out, but not mine. Fuck that hurt. The round hit me in the shoulder, fortunately it was of low caliber and my armor did its job.

I rounded on the shots location and put a round through the offending pony’s head. I turned to face my last opponent, but he was already upon me. At the last second I think he may have realised the folly of going up against a creature twice your size in hand to hoof combat, but any such thought was cut short as I brought the butt on my rifle down on his head. There was no cute little staggering around like you might expect from a cartoon pony. Instead he hit the ground like a sack of bricks.




Footnote:
SPECIAL: James Pearson
Strength: 7[+]
Perception: 8[+]
Endurance: 6[-]
Charisma: 4
Intelligence: 6
Agility: 6
Luck: 4

Perk added: Marine – Your years of combat experience grant you +1 to Perception and Strength as well as a 25% accuracy bonus when wielding rifles or semi-automatic pistols
.
Trait added: Human – Your dexterous hands give you an extra 15 points each to repair and survival, but you suffer -1 endurance and -50% movement speed over open ground. Due to your alien appearance equine characters may flee from you or attack without provocation.

FiMfiction Link (All chapters)

Welcome to the forum! Please check your sanity by the door.

Out of interest which of the other FO:E stories have you read?

Origional
Project Horizons
Pink Eyes
Heroes
Equestrian Wetgrave
Forgotten Light
Once More Unto the Breach (somewhat inspired by mine)

and a few more minor ones

You know, my inner fanboy really wants to see the protagonist look at his PipBoy to discover little cartoon men showing off the various uses of his stuff. Of course, I know that's illogical, but then that fanboy replies, "It's magic!"

I already said everything I could on the current chapter, so instead I'll ask about the art. Did you do it yourself, or did you purchase a commission?

Great, I just broke my favorite keyboard Just found out.

Anyway - wouldn't it be funnier (and more informative about the world) if he saw cartoon ponies showing off the uses?

As for the cover - neither. Originally I drew this cover:

But after a few hours an eager fan drew me a new one:


Which I tweaked in photoshop:

That's rough, buddy.

It would actually. Though I suspect he would still see Vault Boy instead of Vault Colt in the Pib-Buck when the perk or item is human-specific. Sort of like how Vault Girl doesn't show up in the Pip-Boy display unless what's being looked at is only usable by females or involves them in some way.

Hmm, I see. Though, it's interesting that none of those images show him wearing a Pip-Buck 3000 or Pip-Boy 3000, or even, heck, carrying around the 2000 model somewhere on his person.

The first image doesn't contain a pipbuck because I suck at drawing and it was traced from a photo, in the second two, his left arm is out of frame. There is a reason he's got a pipbuck (and that it's nonstandard - notice it has 360 degree SATS) - and when he finds out what that reason is, it may not turn out well for him...

edit: no wait, that's is right arm... the artist drew him left handed.

Just assume the picture is mirrored.

Ah, I found this thread. HAI there! Welcome to SB, where the word "restraint" is met with confusion.

Smashing fic so far, keep going!

Actually, I think there's an option in Photoshop to mirror an image.

Also, something worth mentioning is that you should make an effort to explore the other parts of the board. It gives you some good times, and gives your name more exposure so that people are more likely to check your fic out . . . Wow, first time I've given advertising advise in months.

I'm glad you feel that my story is worth advertising!
I just chuck a link in my sig and hit the forums!

edit: Oh, and I could mirror the image, but then the text would be backwards, because all I received from the artist was a .jpg, so I would have to re-draw the background behind it.

Also, then the flag would be on the wrong arm...

Hmm, 55 readers have been directed to my story from this thread... I wonder how many of them will come back to comment...

Oh, I can imagine a decent number will comment once more gets out.

As to the story itself, it is an interesting concept and is structurally sound so far, however there are a couple of things. One a concern, the other what some would consider a major problem.

The first is simple: As you have said you read a good deal of the FoE stories, you have a very good idea of how everything works and what is suitable for the universe. The main thing is probably avoiding interactions with other stories where there is no mention of a human obviously(So some distant chunk of Equestria/beyond the borders/ who knows where) And so on.

The other thing however is the "MLP fan ends up in Equestria(or variant thereof)", conveniently avoiding the fact that in that case you have a new universe and species, and for all intents and purposes said universe's god (even if only related by species. No one seems to focus on that save maybe two stories, and even those were kind of bleh due to poor handling.)

That never seems to be brought up, and on top of that the whole "MLP fan goes to Equestria" thing has kinda been done to death and beyond. Just browse through every third or fourth fimfiction submission these days.

If you felt like doing it, I would suggest having it be a person from a Earth with no MLP series, simply to avoid the cliche, and to make something new in the process. After all, this is the first "Human in FoE"! story I have seen.

I would answer your points separately, but I'm afraid they're all quite inter-dependent.

At first when I was writing the story it was my intention to make the character a non-brony, with no clue about anything. This ended up being difficult for several reasons - the first of which is that my audience are Bronies. How much more difficult would it be to write scenes where the main character has to learn everything that the audience already knows? What would be his motivation for exploring history? Learning the fate of the mane six. Why would he care? Plus I just wanted to skip that entire 'where the hell am I, what are these creatures' phase. They always feel rushed in terms of realism, but no matter how short they are they bore the audience, because they of course already know everything the protagonist is working out and just want to get it over with. There is the option of making it a plot point with misunderstandings, but it's still fraught.

The second is that I needed to have a common knowledge base with my protagonist - I don't know enough about being a Marine to write every scene from that standpoint. Sure I could have chosen another common thread, I could have made him a gamer, maybe an engineer, a writer, maybe even a medic (I have some knowledge there), but if I wanted to have a connection which all my readers could relate to, why not a Brony.

Third, it's a challenge. Yes there have been many HiE's, but not many good HiE's. It's difficult to write HiE's and especially Brony HiE's without them turning into self-insert drivel, I wanted to prove that it could be done well (not to say there arn't other examples). I guess I'm just weird like that. FoHiE's are rare, and, not to sound arrogant, but there aren't any good ones yet. I want there to be.

Forth. His FiM knowledge is commonplace amongst characters in the FoE universe and is essentially historical at this point. The mane six were well known public figures. My story won't experience the 'he knows too much' problems associated with 'FiM fan in Equestria' fics because I have excised FoE and Fallout from the universe which he comes from.

I don't think the 'God' thing is especially relevant. There will be minimal contact between my story and others. There may be some references, but definitely no non-cannon interactions. By virtue of my character's alien appearance he has more than enough motivation to try and maintain a very low profile. I'm thinking of heading around the Everfree towards the Western mountains (Afghanistan is fairly mountainous) - I don't think there's anything on the map over there at the moment.

FUCKIN' YES.

I thought your sig was part of your comment and I was confused...

Play Saints Row 3. Then you might understand. Or, a more cost-effective way, watch Saint Row 3 on youtube.

I have played the game, I just thought that you thought that my fiction involved Saints Row somehow.

I must thank you for image of Pinkie Pie running around with dildo-bat and beating Discord with it.
/The Horror/

I just realized how easy it would be to make a video like this - just take the shot of pinkie pie waving a rubber chicken, and overlay the dildo-bat... SB what have you done to me?

Please for the love of god don't post it here if you do
Seriously after some recent NSFW incursions the moderati are on the warpath

That aside the story is looking great, Id love to read more keep it up.

Also welcome to SB, where arguing about how many kilotons of TNT a Rainbow Nuke is equivlent too is a highly serious and intensly debated topic.....we will take your innocent ponies and turn them into avatars of Dakka and Overkill.

And it has been only ONE day. There is not escape now.

Well, your response shows that you have clearly put a lot of thought into why the story should be the way it is, so that is a plus.

As to the matter of how to explain "What is this place", "What's going on" and so on, there are a number of ways to do it. I know that some ways would be to explain things somehow as they come up. So the protagonist in a story could go along until he finds someone willing to explain things. You can also always use the "Explained offscreen" way. (EG "I hadn't planned on sticking around, but after they told me about some crazed bunch of cyborgs running around killing folks in a quest of revenge I felt I could be of more use in the small town than out on the road."

Of course, there is also the simple saying of "Don't explain what is not yet needed". You can have a big old exposition dump or long needless paragraphs of dialogue that are awkward to read, or one or two directly related to immediate events sprinkled every few chapters throughout the story designed to paint a greater picture.

Still, I will be hanging around since what you have is interesting.

If I read the first chapter correctly, one of the raiders is still alive, albeit with a shattered leg. Is that correct?

The one that got bonked on the head should be alive too.

That is correct - assuming she doesn't bleed out, and is carrying a potion or something, she should be able to limp away. And the one who was knocked out with a blow to the head should survive, assuming he didn't sustain enough damage to cause a fatal brain hemorrhage.

Edit: If anyone was wondering where this thread went, it was somehow accidentally deleted; it's back now.