Chapter 1: Benny shoots a horse
Chapter Text
It was early evening, the sky burning bright orange as the sun set over the Mojave. The six of them — one man in an out of place checkered suit, the five others in various outfits of spiked leather, sat by the water tower. Benny, the one in the checkered suit, dropped yet another cigarette to the ground and crushed it underneath his boot. Benny didn't pick it back up — he was rather poor at covering his tracks, and tended to leave evidence of his presence most places he went to.
At once, the courier the spectacular gang of six had been waiting for appeared at the edge of the graveyard, coming in from Goodsprings. Benny stood up, straightened his suit, and got a decent look at her in the sunlight.
"What in the goddamn…?" he murmured. Benny was not looking at the courier he was set to ambush. He was not even looking at a human. He was looking at a grey horse, with misaligned amber eyes shining in the evening light and a pair of feathery wings plastered to its back.
He had said that a little too loudly, for the horse seemed to notice, turning its head over to where Benny was.
"Hello?" it asked. Benny gasped. The horse was fucking speaking.
"The fuck's going on?" one of the Khans interjected. The group were getting up now, all of them seeing the horse and reacting with equal confusion.
"Aren't they extinct?" Jessup asked, looking between the horse and Benny. How was Benny supposed to know?
"Someone spike our shit?"
"Hi!" the horse said again, using one of its front legs to wave at them. Benny hesitantly raised his hand and waved back. The horse walked (trotted?) over to them.
"What's going on here?" it asked. Benny started internally debating the horse's gender; it had a sort of sweet voice that implied it was female, but that wasn't really an indication of anything, given some of the types he'd seen in Vegas. He also noticed the horse had a sort-of messenger bag strapped to the side of its body, just before the wings. Now that they were closer, he could see that it was short for a horse (from what he'd heard), coming up to just about his neck.
"Why do you have wings?" a Khan asked. The horse smiled, flapping them a few times for emphasis.
"To fly!" she (Benny had decided she was a she) giggled. "Although it's a bit difficult over here. What are you doing here?"
"Waiting for a courier," Benny answered. Why was he having a conversation with a talking horse?
"Oh! I'm a courier!" the horse answered, jumping up in excitement. "It's a very special job, so I can't say anything about it… why do you need a courier?"
Benny made a split second decision. He turned to Jessup, who was holding their designated shovel.
"Whack her," he ordered. Jessup raised an eyebrow, and then swung the shovel over the horse's head. The horse stumbled, her eyes rolling around in their sockets, and then she fell to the ground.
"What now?" Jessup asked.
"I don't know!" Benny yelled. "The courier is a fucking horse! House hired a horse!"
"A winged horse is named a pegasus," one of the Khans said.
"Whoop-de-doo, we've got a wise guy here," Benny snapped. He crouched down to the unconscious horse and searched through her bag. He found the Platinum Chip, a delivery order, and a meagre amount of bottlecaps. He took the chip and slipped it into his pocket.
"What do we do now?" a Khan asked.
"Tie her up," Benny ordered, although not as confident as he was before. "Plan stays the same."
"Her?" the Khan asked.
Benny shrugged. "She sounded like a her,"
"How about we ask her?" Jessup suggested. "When she wakes up."
"Yeah, sure," Benny sighed.
"You sure you want to kill her? I bet there'd be some good money in, like… selling her to some scientist guys. Like the Followers."
"They're doctors, not mad scientists," another Khan shut down.
"We're still killing her!" Benny shot. "I ain't gonna be returning to Vegas worrying about a flying horse breathing down my neck."
"I bet it would be cool to have a flying horse," a Khan mused. "Imagine that, riding into battle on one."
"Those Legion guys have some stories like that," McMurphy commented.
"Should I tie her wings, too?" the Khan who was tying the horse up asked.
"Obviously!" Benny yelled. He finished another cigarette and crushed it underfoot. "Let's start digging the grave. I don't like the feel of this place."
Once they were done digging, the sun had set and they had set alight some of the nearby lanterns to see. This wasn't entirely necessary; the full moon was rising, casting the graveyard in an ethereal silver.
Once the moon had risen above the peak of the Lucky 38 Tower in the distance, the horse started to move. Benny and the Khans, which was not the name of an up-and-coming band about to grace the New Vegas nightlife, looked at her with trepidation and a little bit of wonder as she woke up. The horse managed to arrange herself into a sitting position, which was rather impressive given that her hooves had been tied up (the Khans weren't really sure how to tie up a horse, and so had tied her legs in pairs at the fetlocks). She blinked a few times, looking at the gang with some confusion.
"Sorry," she said, a little sheepishly. "I think I fell over…"
"What are you?" Jessup asked.
The horse narrowed her eyes at him, as if he'd made a social faux pas, "I'm a pegasus. My name is… um, Derpy Hooves… but someponies call me Ditzy Do… or Muffins. I get called a lot of names."
The Khans shared a few looks at "someponies."
"Why are you a horse?" one of them asked. Derpy tilted her head in confusion.
"I was born like this? Why am I tied up?"
"So you don't escape," the Khan answered. "Why are you here?"
"Because it's the way to New Vegas," Derpy explained, her tone of voice resembling the way one would speak to a three year-old. "I've got to deliver something there."
"How does a horse become a courier?" a Khan asked, mostly to himself.
Derpy straightened with indignation. "I'm a pegasus."
Benny sighed. "Let's just get this over with," he decided, standing up. "I'm sorry about this, kid," he started, pulling out the Platinum Chip. "From wher—"
"Hey!" Derpy interjected. "That's the thing I'm supposed to be delivering! Give it back."
Benny blinked.
"No."
Derpy looked crossly at Benny. "You give it back, mister! Or else!"
Benny just shook his head at Derpy. "It might seem like an 18-karat run of bad luck. But the truth is, the game was rigged from the start."
The overdramatic speech finished, Benny pointed his immaculately well-maintained pistol at Derpy, and fired two rounds at her skull.
Before we go further, there is a thing one must know. Derpy Hooves has this effect on her surroundings known as a "negative probability field." This means that, in general terms, unlikely things tend to happen around her, and these unlikely things tend to be bad. So the "negative probability field" could be simplified to a "bad luck field." It's a rare scientific phenomenon that means that the strangest misfortunes tend to occur when Derpy's around, affecting both her and those around her. In this case, however, it worked out in Derpy's favour.
The first bullet hit Derpy in the left of her forehead. The bullet broke open her skull, but miraculously entered the cranial cavity at such an angle that it slid around the edge of the bone, circling around the brain in a full loop-de-loop. The bullet exited through the same hole in Derpy's skull, flying out and blowing apart a piece of fence.
The second bullet completely missed, as Derpy had fallen to her side before it could make contact. It hit a bloatfly in the wing, making it veer hard to the left and hit one of the Khans. He stumbled backwards, fell over the rickety wooden railing of the cemetery, and rolled all the way down the hill. Jessup yelled at and whacked the bloatfly with his shovel, which promptly exploded, squirting its insides all over Benny's checkered suit.
"Euch," Benny grumbled. Despite his appearance, Benny had spent a good portion of his life as a tribal out in the Mojave, and so had gotten a great deal of creature gore on him in the past. He was just a bit miffed at the wonderful custom-made suit being ruined. He made a mental note to screw over Jessup at some point in the future.
"Okay. So now we bury the pegasus and never think about any of this again," Benny ordered. The Khans nodded. One of them moved to dump Derpy in the grave, but jumped back in bewilderment when she started moving again.
"That wasn't very nice, mister…" Derpy moaned as she bled out.
"Fucking hell!" Benny yelled. "Why isn't she dead yet?"
"Maybe your gun's off?" McMurphy suggested. Benny gave him a nasty side-eye. "Just shoot her again, Benny."
"What if the Legion stories are real?" another Khan suggested. "And she's all immortal and shit."
"The horse isn't immortal," Benny told himself. "We'll just bury her. She'll bleed out in the dirt."
"Alright," the Khan agreed, pushing Derpy into the shallow grave. Derpy raised a weak hoof in protest, but fell into the pit nonetheless.
"You're not scared to shoot it again?" McMurphy asked.
"I'm not scared of the fucking horse!" Benny protested. "I'm just not going to waste a bullet on her when she's just gonna bleed out all on her own!"
"Right," McMurphy responded. "Sure you don't want to like, sell the corpse? I bet those sciency types would love to dissect it."
"It's probably just some irradiated outlier," Benny shrugged. "How she… got the Platinum Chip, I ain't got a clue. Probably all rolled up in House's schemes. But it doesn't matter anymore, because Little Miss Pegasus is dead."
Derpy shifted a little in the dirt.
"So let's just get out of here, and you'll get your pay, and it'll be over. 'Kay?"
"Sure," McMurphy agreed.
Once they'd finished burying Derpy, the crew of now five men (the Khan who had rolled down the hill had been eaten by some scorpions by now) moved down to Goodsprings. Benny hoped to never really think about that whole incident again.
It was roughly six days later when Benny was in his little workshop in the Tops, half-listening to the radio which he had turned on to cover up the sounds of him working on Yes Man. He wasn't a fan of the music, but kept the radio on for the news, for it would be unbecoming for the head of the Chairmen to not be up-to-date with local news.
"A package courier found shot in the head near Goodsprings has reportedly regained consciousness, and has made a full recovery. Now that's a delivery service you can count on."
Benny stopped dead in his tracks. Very slowly, he put down his tools, closed up Yes Man, re-activated him, and stood in front of him.
"Yes Man, how do you kill a horse?"
Chapter 2: Arcade doesn't understand pegasus magic
Summary:
Arcade Gannon is sent to investigate a strange creature. Derpy Hooves meets a new friend
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Arcade Gannon stood at the door of Doc Mitchell's house, wearing a dust-stained lab coat and his trademark resting bitch face. He was approaching this whole thing as a silly quest to get him out of camp for a while. Julie liked talking about the importance of social interaction and engagement with the outside world, and given that Arcade hadn't left the Fort in roughly two months, he could see why Julie might want him to get out a little bit. Of course, sending him off to Goodsprings of all places to investigate what was almost certainly a hoax wasn't what he would consider an appropriate way to rectify that. But Arcade wasn't getting anything done anyway, so he went along with it. It was because of that that he now stood here.
He knocked on the door and waited. A few moments later, a bald man with a white moustache opened the door.
"Good morning," he said. "Are you Doc Mitchell?"
"That I am," the man smiled. He looked over Arcade's coat. "You must be the gentleman the Followers sent over."
Arcade nodded.
"Well, come in then. I have to warn you, she's a strange one."
Arcade entered the house. He was beckoned to a door on his right, which led to a makeshift medical clinic, with a sectioned-off chem synthesis area in the back left, a few stretchers scattered around, and another bed at the back left. Standing awkwardly in the centre was the creature Arcade had been sent to verify the existence of.
Derpy was currently investigating the floor, putting a hoof on each floorboard and slowly putting weight on it, listening to how creaky it was. She looked up when the two entered the room, and then raised a foreleg to wave at them.
"Hello again, Doc!" she said pleasantly. "Your floorboards are loose."
That horse is talking, Arcade thought. He didn't know horses could talk. He didn't even know they were still an existing species.
"That they are," Mitchell agreed. "I'm sorry for springing so much on you so quickly, Miss Hooves, but this man right here is, um… what's your name, sir?"
"Arcade Gannon," Arcade answered, looking at Derpy dumbfounded.
"Yes, that's it. He's here from the Followers to… well, honestly, I called him here because I had no clue how to treat you," Mitchell looked down awkwardly. "Was hoping he would know something."
"Well, it's good I turned out all right, then!" Derpy giggled. "I gotta say, thank you so much, Doc! I really thought it might've been it, there."
"Hold it for a second," Arcade said. He was feeling very much out of his league here. "I thought I was here to identify a deceased creature."
"I guess I did say, "likely deceased upon arrival." See, I reckoned she was a goner," Mitchell responded. "Old Victor dug her up and propped her down at my door. Bullet hole in her head. Like I said, no clue how to fix up a… her. I stabilised her condition, but I was banking it all on you knowing how to treat her. And then she woke up ten minutes ago and gave us both a right surprise."
"A bullet hole?" Arcade yelped. "Who went around shooting this thing?" Looking closer, he could see a mark just above her left eye, a lump of severe scar tissue that confirmed the story.
"A very mean man," Derpy grumbled. She didn't chastise Arcade for calling her a thing, but she very much wanted to. It was a bit mean. "He took my package, too!"
"What..?" Arcade was not having fun today.
"Yep. She was working as a package courier, found a delivery order in her bags," Mitchell answered.
Arcade breathed in deeply. It was all very much very quickly.
"So… you referred to her as Miss Hooves," he said out loud, trying to get his bearings with this whole thing.
"He's very polite!" Derpy interjected. "My name's Derpy Hooves, mister."
Arcade looked at her strangely. Doc Mitchell chuckled.
"Yeah, that's not what I'd name her, either," he commented.
"The, the request mentioned wings. It said she was a pegasus," Arcade added. Derpy nodded.
"I don't understand what the fuss is," she said, unfurling her wings from her back. Arcade stared at them, utterly dumbfounded. Derpy shifted uncomfortably. "Are you done staring, mister?"
"Um, yes," Arcade responded. "Do you have a tape measure?" Doc Mitchell nodded. "Do you mind if I measure your wingspan?"
Derpy looked down at the floor. "Um, if you want to, mister."
Arcade was given the tape and went about doing so. Once he was done measuring, he went about measuring the length of Derpy's body.
"I don't understand," he said, which was a very frustrating thing for him to admit. "The wing-to-body ratio is all off. There's no reason for these mutations to be here, you can't fly."
Derpy giggled. "I can fly, mister!"
"How?" Arcade was sure that this creature was messing with him.
"I'll show you," Derpy said. She trotted outside, opening the door by biting the doorknob and tilting her head. Outside, she squinted, blinked a couple of times, and then leapt off the ground. Arcade watched in utter befuddlement as Derpy flew through the air, did a loop-de-loop, and then hit the ground, stumbling and falling flat on her face. She got up, shook the dirt out of her mane, and grinned at Arcade.
"H-h-how?!" Arcade yelled. "Your wings are too small! They shouldn't generate enough lift for you to fly!"
Derpy giggled again. She was beginning to like Arcade. He said such strange things.
"Well, duh!" Derpy laughed. "Everypony knows that! It's our magic that makes us fly!"
Arcade didn't say anything for a bit. Doc Mitchell just shook his head and went inside to grab some stuff.
"Magic isn't real," Arcade finally said.
Derpy shook her head. "I thought you were a scientist, mister!"
Yes, because all scientists know intrinsically that magic is real. Arcade would've screamed.
"I don't know how you're flying," Arcade groaned. "But it's not magic."
"You're a bit silly, mister," Derpy said, smiling. Arcade couldn't tell if the smile was a "you idiot" smile or a "you goofball" smile. He could hardly pick up on human social cues, and now he was talking to a sentient pegasus. What a day.
"Any… it's not magic. There's a cause behind that, and I'm going to find out what it is," he resolved.
Derpy kept smiling at him. Arcade's ramblings and obsession with discovering this 'truth' made her think of Twilight Sparkle and her whole ordeal over the Pinkie Sense. She hoped Arcade wouldn't try to strap her into a machine or anything. Although, really, the colt (no, he wasn't a colt, of course, but she didn't know what word to use to describe him and just saying 'male' felt a bit weird and creepy) looked like he wouldn't harm a hair on her head. But he did seem like the perfect target for some light teasing. Vinyl would call it "ragebaiting," while Octavia would pretend that she had a more eloquent, refined way of saying the exact same thing, going on about words like "jest" and "chaffing," but in reality her go-to-phrase for describing sort of thing was "taking the piss."
Derpy hoped she would see her friends again, soon.
But enough of that, she felt seeing Arcade's reaction to flight was funny. She flapped her wings again and started hovering about a winglength above the ground. "Well, I think the cause is flapping my wings, mister!" she giggled.
Arcade's expression was priceless. But Derpy could tell she was doing a bit too much now, so she settled down on the ground. Not only was the flying getting to Arcade (what a sensitive one he was), but it was somehow already tiring her out. The air must be thinner over here.
"I'm sure you'll figure it out," she said, tilting her head. Arcade nodded.
"I will," he affirmed determinedly.
Doc Mitchell came back out, holding a strange sort of leather bag in his hand.
"Got your bags for you," he said. "Now, normally I'd like to do a good check-up, but given you seem to be flying around alright and I don't know how you work anyway, I think I'll let you go. Here's your stuff."
Doc Mitchell handed Derpy the saddlebag, who strapped it around her barrel, just behind the wing joints. After that was done, Doc gave Derpy his Pip-Boy, saying "I think you'll need this," and then sent the two off on their way. Where were they going? Well…
"Where are you going?" Arcade asked Derpy as she trotted down the street. Derpy stopped and put a hoof to her chin in contemplation.
"I think I'm going to go there and ask about the mean men," she said, pointing to the Prospector Saloon. "And if nopony knows anything, then… hmm. I might ask the nice robot who dug me up."
That was not a nice robot, Arcade knew. The bigger question, of course, was why the hell did Mr. House want this winged, sapient equine alive? Did she perhaps have the codes to a nuclear arsenal imprinted on a pill next to her heart?
"Alright. Well, listen, Miss Hooves. I know this might not be your priority, but I really would like to get you to the Followers of the Apocalypse," he told her.
"Followers of the Apocalypse?" Derpy repeated. "They sound like scary ponies."
"It's… they're not scary. We're doctors," he elaborated. They weren't ponies, either. "I promise, we're not scary."
"Okay," Derpy narrowed her eyes, but otherwise seemed convinced. "Well, where are they?"
"Just outside of New Vegas," Arcade said. "If you check your Pip-Boy, you should see a map…"
"A map?!" Derpy's wings perked up in excitement. "Oh goodness, there's a map?" She raised her Pip-Boy to her face and fiddled around. "Oh thank Celestia! There's a digital map here! You know how hard it is to navigate with a paper map while flying through the air and you don't even have any thumbs to grip the map properly! Oh, I need to thank Doc Mitchell again!"
"Yes, well…" Arcade awkwardly waited until Derpy stopped spinning around with the utmost joy. He really wanted to tell her to stop being so jolly and get serious, but looking into her glowing eyes killed that thought instantly. So he waited and when she had calmed down a little he marked the Old Mormon Fort on her Pip-Boy's map.
"Well, that shouldn't be too long," Derpy thought. "I really do need to recover my package, though. I'll try to stop by after, though."
Arcade sighed. Derpy was clearly a sapient being with thoughts, feelings, desires, and a right to self-determination. But on the other hand, she was a scientific curiosity the likes of which had never seen before, and he really wanted to get her to the Followers. If anything else, House wanted her alive, which meant he wanted her, which meant there was something to be gained from her. Ergo, more reason for the Followers to take her in before someone worse did so.
And people would come for her, he was sure. Word spread quickly in the Mojave, and a talking horse with wings would be on everyone's minds soon enough. There'd be hunters looking for her as a trophy, or more erratic and mad scientists who would probably dissect her… alive.
Arcade couldn't just let her go. But he couldn't force her to come, either.
He thought about everything for a while, cursed Julie for sending him on this mission and whoever shot Derpy for setting into motion this whole course of events, and then he opened his mouth.
"May I come with you, Miss Hooves?"
Derpy looked at him for a moment, then smiled.
"Well, if you really want to! I don't know why you would, though. I really don't know where I'm going to be going, so I think that means you don't know where I'm going, either. Unless you can see the future." She looked at Arcade and giggled again. "I don't think you have the mane for it, mister."
Arcade frowned. Derpy kept smiling at him.
"You ready to go, then?"
"Sure," Arcade groaned.
And so they went over to the saloon in search of some answers, or at the very least directions.
Notes:
Derpy is enraging Arcade on purpose and she will continue to do so because he's a silly little man who needs to realise magic is real
TheLordOfDarkNeo on Chapter 1 Sun 12 Oct 2025 05:07PM UTC
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A_Sleep_Deprived_Gremlin on Chapter 2 Mon 24 Nov 2025 05:51PM UTC
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Idealman115 on Chapter 2 Mon 24 Nov 2025 05:58PM UTC
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BalticSpectre on Chapter 2 Sun 30 Nov 2025 07:47PM UTC
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