Another escort mission, Free Life and her small group of 5 surviving ponies from Quincy.
We had made our way to Hogwarts, again. And there I woke up. I still shudder at the memory, so many dead. So many dead at my hooves! I- I killed Quirrel too, right? But it didn’t feel like that, like maybe the stone broke before I did any real damage but wasn’t that an explosive in the end anyway?
Those were the kinds of thoughts that plagued me, I calmed down after a few days but, and I’m not even ashamed of saying this, I couldn’t sleep without Lyra and Bon-Bon next to me. Nightmares, I don’t remember their faces but every night I would wake up screaming and crying.
Let me tell you, nightmares from killing a whole group of ponies, especially with no prior experience in doing so, not something I recommend. Up until that point I had never even fired a shot of my rifle outside the firing range that had been set up way back when for practicing with guns. I had only used tem as a sort of last-resort hold-out weapon. Or in other words, it had been for show.
But as soon as I had seen how bad that situation had been, I had rushed in, without thinking and… just started shooting. Spells were so much harder to use in this manner, they need preparation, they need cognizant actions. You must be aware of the spell to cast it. But a gun? A gun is just point and shoot. Even with Telekinesis, which was a far more easily used form of the Locomotor Charm, was barely a thought to use for that.
To put it in the words of Free Life after I woke up again, I had some sort of instinctive hero complex, seeing someone in need of help just made me rush in to give it to them without a second thought for my own safety. I had gotten a clop to the head for that after she said that, saying a filly shouldn’t be this reckless, but she still commended me for my quick action in saving them.
Professor Dumbledore, on the other hoof, had offered to see if she could use a magic known as Negligimency to try and help me through my issues. Apparently the form she would use was beyond the mere reading of thoughts and was instead a shallow dive into the mind.
I don’t know what he did but after what others told me was five hours of both of us being basically comatose, I was at least able to function again, though from what I was told this much wasn’t enough to get it all mended. The best we could do was to continue as best we could with me trying to get to grips with this whole ordeal and, well, I really didn’t want this to become normal for me.
Free Life stayed at Hogwarts with the other Quincy Survivors, partially because she had a better grip on Talisman creation as she, like most Minutemares, had learned how to make her own Laser Musket, which admittedly used parts from other laser weapons but a lot of it was still fully original. She had even given me her own, stating that I could probably use it in the future.
What stood out, somewhat, was the fact that the trade post we had set up originally was by now a small town on school grounds. From what I heard in the five days we stayed, most of the students were living there for now since living in the school outside of the schoolyear was seen by them as quite odd. I had to admit, in some regards I understood it, but I’d still rather live in Hogwarts than with the Dursleys.
Well, not that I would, Lyra and Bon-Bon had actually bought one of the houses that had been set-up in the town while I was unconscious and showed it to me later. I even had my own room, as did Snowy Dreams, though her own was left largely untouched for whatever she would want.
Technically she was 17 now if they didn’t cryogenically freeze her or something, so she was an adult by Wizarding standards. But… I really hoped, for their sakes, that she was able to recognize them when they met again. I don’t want to think about the alternative for them when they had lost so much already. God, I don’t know how to feel about all this, writing all this down now…
Anyway, we hit the road. Again. Third time’s the charm they say, right?
Naturally there was the chance of more Raiders, the term for hostile ponies like the ones I had killed. They were bad news, hunting other ponies, killing, raping, pillaging. They were as far from civilized ponies as possible safe for “Feral Ghouls” like the Hellhound Ghoul I had also slain in that battle. Problem was, the idea of shooting at more of them made my stomach turn.
I can face Voldemort with little problem, but being forced into fighting to the death against ponies, sapient creatures, who were desperately trying to survive, was another thing entirely to me. But, there was no getting around that, we had to make due and with the deadline on our expedition drawing rather close, we decided to hit up the AIRE campus itself, located in Ponston.
Some other places of interest included a Ministry of Wartime Technologies, MWT for short, factory in Mareington, a Ministry of Arcane Science Hub at a place called Ponevac, which appeared to be a settlement more to the West of Mareington. Which coincidetally indicated that was in fact a Motel pre-war rather than a settlement. At least according to Lyra.
“Why would a MAS hub be in a motel? Isn’t that some sort of super important research facility?” I asked as we made our way to the said hub first, it was more valuable, arguably, than the loot we could possibly get from the MWT factory. Not to mention it may have some info on the AIRE and it’s activities, which was more commonly now known as the Institute.
Right, I may need to mention that. According to Free Life, there was no known faction called the Arcane Institute of Research and Education, only one known as “The Insittute”. According to her this was an extremely shadowy organization which operated a number of synthetic ponies, not just robots but synthetically made flesh and blood ponies. This, coincidentally, was first observed 14 years ago, well within the timerange of Snowy’s kidnapping.
Coincidence? I think NOT.
Anyway, point is that we were in need of information and had to get them as soon as possible, our timelimit was coming up after all. School was going to start soon.
“I remember the place, the hub wasn’t under the motel but not far from it either. Maybe they have built a settlement through this motel or built one around the hub?” Suggested Bon-Bon as we continued on our way. Admittedly the idea made sense, the hub wasn’t far from the township’s waypoint, so that would make some sense. The map itself certainly wasn’t detailed enough to make out the geography, nor did it have any kind of township map.
It took us a full five hours to reach the town, we barely paused so that another one of us could take over pulling the cart and we were literally after a while staying in there when not doing that. However, Ponevac come into visual range and…
“Pony Resort, No Vacancy?” I asked, barely able to make out the outline of where the various missing letters had been and left a discolored outline in the sign. It was kind of funny, the ponies had taken Pon-e-Vac and just made Ponevac out of it. I had a feeling there would be some place with a name which the inhabitants would be incredibly ashamed of if they knew the meaning.
“The place certainly has seen better times, that old Spike Gift Shop is still standing though.” Noted Lyra, pointing to a huge bipedal structure in the form of what I guessed may be a young dragon? Not sure about that. It certainly looked the part with the purple scales, green crest of spikes along the back of the thing and all. I could also see the glint of a gun or something from the open mouth.
I could also see that the town was using the old resort/motel as a sort of entry area with a large wall made of overturned cars encircling several old and new buildings beyond what had been the original perimeter of the motel’s land.
In the distance there was also a tall tower-like structure visible, South of Ponevac and I was pretty sure beyond the town’s defenses, so not really part of it. “So, should we go inside and check it out?” I asked, as we all disembarked from the cart to look at the ticket booth of all things that stood at the entrance of the town.
“Well, it would be best if we can get some information, maybe they know something about that hub we don’t.” Suggested Bon-Bon and, after a short bout of discussion, we decided to head inside. Naturally it was at this point that another pony interjected.
“Welcome in Ponevac, are you a Caravan family?” Asked the receptionist, an Earth Pony mare, speaking in a bit of a bored drawl.
“We’re explorers, but we do have some wares to sell. We come from up North, at the new place called “Hogwarts” if that name rings any bells?” Asked Lyra, as one of the two adults of our group she took the position of leader for now, which was weirdly my position.
“Ah, right the Caravan traders mentioned that place, big castle, green fields and a forest, surrounded by some hyper powerful barrier right?” Asked the pony, still sounding bored somehow. Clearly she didn’t care much about that. “50 Caps for entry. Per adult and 25 per foal.” She added in a complete nonsequitor.
“Wait, 250 caps just for entry?” Asked Bon-Bon in disbelieve, and I couldn’t fault her, this made no sense at all!
“Town’s rules, not mine. The Steel Rangers raised the prices to keep undesirables out after they took up shop here.” Stated the mare and we all stopped. Steel Rangers, Free Life mentioned them, a faction made from descendants of wartime soldiers, elite soldiers of Equestria more precisely, equipped with power armor and the most powerful and advanced weaponry of the country’s military. Well, short of the elite Pegasi soldiers.
“Well, that got quite complicated then. Are they the “Keep Ponies safe from dangerous technology” or the “Keep Technology safe from Pony use” type?” Asked Lyra, she had a few choice words when she heard what the Steel Rangers had devolved into since the war.
“They’re the Ponston Chapter, main chapter of the area at that. And it’s the former, thank Celestia for little mercies.” Stated the mare, whose name I still didn’t know yet, but as Lyra was starting to haggle with her I turned my attention to the town, trying to figure out where we could get information.
Naturally, first idea would be asking the Steel Rangers, but who was to say they wouldn’t turn us around and demand we leave the tech alone? Yeah, we needed to figure out what was on the inside of that place, maybe there were notes we could take back to Hogwarts, some magic-tech device we could use, anything that could help Hogwarts.
“What’s going on?” Asked a voice at that point and as I turned I saw a stallion in full on power armor approaching with two others with him. The Stallion was an Earth Pony, lacking a horn and, obviously, also lacking any wings. His body was covered fully in armor though he wasn’t wearing a helmet so I saw that he had a dark brown coat with a black mane. Mounted on his armor were a Minigun and what looked like a missile rack.
The two others were a young Unicorn mare with a yellow coat and brown mane. She wore red bardings under professionally made chest armor and at her side was an energy rifle. The third member of the group was another unicorn, a stallion again. He wore a jumpsuit with several pieces of armor on and had a large laser rifle on his side.
“Ah, Star Paladin Danse. Nothing much, these ponies come from that Hogwarts place that displaced the Sanctuary Hills area apparently.” Explained the mare as if this was of no concern to her. Yeah, I didn’t like her much.
“Lyra Heartstrings, I’m a survivor of Stable 111 and this is my wife Bon-Bon. I take it from your armor that you’re with the modern Steel Ranger faction?” Asked Lyra, eyeing the stallion cautiously.
“I am ma’am, and I would like to know what is with these creatures, they appear to be Alicorns for the most part but I can’t even tell what the two bipedal ones are, or how there are Fillies of those abominations.” Stated Danse, frowning at us which made me in return frown.
“What makes you think they are abominations? They’re all students from Hogwarts, transformed into those forms by the transit into our reality. Not to mention, what is your issue with Alicorns? Did something happen while we were frozen?” Asked Lyra, taking a defensive stance between us and the trio.
“Frozen? What do you mean by that?” Asked Danse instead of answering, glaring at Lyra as the younger Stallion took his weapon into a ready stance.
“Bon-Bon, myself and 2498 other ponies, were brought into Stable 111 when the Megaspells were detected. We were put into cryo stasis for the last 200 years but around 16 years ago, someone using access codes of the Arcane Institute of Research and Education tricked the maintenance staff during one of their routine maintenance cycles to let them in, killed the workers and abducted our daughter, Snowy Dreams. Of the 2500 ponies in that vault, only 798, not counting Snowy, come out alive with systems failing.” Stated Lyra and that seemed to surprise Danse at that.
I decided at that point to step forward myself. “Okay, can everyone calm down? I think I can feel static electricity with how tense this situation gets.” I stated, looking between them before sighing.
“Paladin, I hate to say it but the Filly has a point.” Spoke up the young mare, eyeing my as she did. “Reports did indicate that there were four Alicorn fillies and two more that were in a strange mixed form between Alicorn and their original form.” She continued to reason with the Paladin which seemed to calm him somewhat down.
“Good point Scribe, there is no reason to start hostilities with foreigners. However, I must ask what all of you are doing here of all places. Ponevac is Steel Ranger territory and your own is far to the North of here.” He asked, turning to me as if Lyra wasn’t important.
Well, I wasn’t exactly known for my subtlety. “We want to explore the MAS hub, to see if there is anything we can use to either bring our school back home, or establish a connection to Earth, our home planet. We’re willing to offer trade deals if that is what you want, we got enchanted equipment made with a different style of magic, we can reproduce items you have, including weapons and ammo, and our teachers can probably set up Anti-Radiation stuff too?” I suggested, kind of losing steam after a while.
“Paladin Danse, sir, these claims seem to fit with reports from Caravans that went there. According to them, there is a huge Radiation-Scrubbing field all around their territory and based on my scans, none of the fillies is showing any radiation exposure. In fact it looks like the radiation isn’t even coming within a meter of them. Same with the two mares though there are trace amounts of radiation.” Reported the young mare, her horn had been glowing the whole time so that was interesting.
“I see, however I can’t allow you entry into the hub, it is Steel Rangers territory and only members or those deemed trustworthy enough are allowed to do so.” Stated Danse and… huh that was interesting actually.
“Then what do we need to do to be trustworthy? We don’t really have any arcana-tech or whatever aside from these Pip-Bucks, and we kind of produce these things by copy-pasting them with a spell from our world.” I asked, lifting the device to make a point.
Somehow, his frown didn’t sit well with me.
~~~~~~~~~~~O~~~~~~~~~~~
Paladin Danse was a proud Stallion and member of the Steel Rangers.
He believed in the creed to protect pony kind and to collect the tools to make a better tomorrow by recovering lost technologies and reverse-engieering them so they could be put to good use for the better of all.
It didn’t sit well with him, however, to take foals with him, but sadly as it turned out, the two mares weren’t soldiers and the six fillies, for a lack of a better term in his opinion for the bipedal ones, at least had a variety of spells, including one that was explicitly made to disarm an opponent. The leading filly, Rose Evans, had demonstrated that on his order by casting the spell on him.
And ripping both of his guns off their holsters so they had to be reattached properly.
//Sweet Celestia who come up with that spell?// He thought with a shake of his head as he, Scribe Hailing, as well as the fillies Rose, Ruby and Raining, made their way through the ruins of Mareington to the MWT factory. Funnily enough the party of Hogwarts delegates had planned to go there next to scavenge for anything they could use.
It was quite interesting what they had to offer, for example Rose had insisted on giving the scribe one of the specialized bardings that had been produced by their teachers. It was a trade good technically, but she had reasoned that a gift of good will was far more valuable than anything. Said Barding was a far superior piece of armor to the one the Scribe had been wearing, being a chest and flank armor with a pair of large saddlebags, expanded on the inside so much that each side could hold a hundred times their external volume in contents and charmed to be weightless.
On top of that little benefit, the barding was enchanted to project the same Radiation-scrubbing field that the fillies enjoyed, a small forcefield was also included, enough to take a hundred small-arms rounds or a dozen heavy rifle rounds, as well as a minor healing effect.
He had to admit, this thing reminded him of Powerarmor, and his suit’s systems could pick up that it was the same set of enchantments on the bardings of the fillies. One thing was for certain, these wizards didn’t do things in half-meassures.
To add to this, the three fillies with him were all Alicorns, not artificial mutant Alicorns, but proper ones, even if they had been transfigured from another species by coming here. Their natural skill at flying made them incredibly useful as scouts and their magical abilities were not only impressive, but useful too. The “Alohomora” charm for example rendered regular lockpicking completely obsolete.
Then there was the fact that they had intrinsically preset spells at their disposal, a simple chant was all they needed to activate it, the magic twisting into the spell patterns with the ease of a gunshot and it’s trigger. Best of all? Rose had, without prompting, started teaching two of these spells to the scribe, namely Alohomora and Locomotor, a type of telekinesis spell which was easier than telekinesis as it didn’t need active concentration to maintain.
//Heh, filly probably doesn’t think information sharing to be detrimental, she’s a kid after all, and from a school. But if the students learn this much so easily, what can the teachers do?// He thought, thinking back to a particular potion he had heard some of the other fillies talking about, namely Hermione Granger, one of the bipedals, had been discussing with Knight Raising Tensions his accusations that they probably had a way to infiltrate it and were just a distraction.
She actually brought up a potion that could make them able to turn into someone else but pointed out in the same breath, how that potion was humans-only, meaning that by all likelihood, it wouldn’t properly work either with their new bodies or the transformation into a pony. Species Divide and all that. She also displayed some horror at the idea of anyone testing this on someone or themselves.
“Wait you’re searching for the Institute?” That caught Danse’s attention, Hailing had been talking to the filly about why they had even brought the two mares with them.
“Yup, we suspect they were the ones behind the kidnapping of Snowy, because the Arcane Institute of Research and Education had it’s codes used by the ponies who took her, and killed all the workers.” Explained Rose with a frown on her small face. Danse remembered this Snowy being mentioend by the mares as their adopted daughter, who had been abducted.
“Ouch, well now you got the “Enemy of my Enemy” point on your side.” Stated Hailing and this made the filly stumble a step though he had to commend her reflexes as her wings beat a second later to stop her from faceplanting on the spot.
“Wait, you guys are against those Institute people too?” Asked Rose with a blink and he didn’t need a spell to tell him that the girl was entirely serious in her surprise. Well, it did lend credence to her previous statements that she hadn’t said that to pull them onto her side.
“The Institute misuses technology, no idea in what way, harming the ponies of Ponston’s surrounding area.” Stated Danse, deciding to weigh in himself. “We of the Ponston chapter are dedicated to the original mission of the Steel Rangers, protecting the citizens from such horrors. Elder Maxon has declared it our prime priority to seek out the Institute and put an end to them and their schemes.” He explained as the filly caught up to them, a smile forming on her lips.
“I’m glad to hear that, I haven’t heard much good about them except about how good the school was before the apocalypse, but I can’t accept them just abducting toddlers while leaving 2500 innocent ponies to their fate for no damn reason other than no caring!” She exclaimed and Danse smiled, the sheer vigor in the filly’s words certainly raised his spirits there.
“Well said Rose, still hard to believe that even those pony replacing monsters would sink to such lows. Wish we could find some teleportation jammer so we don’t need to keep the base occupied by most of the chapter.” Stated Hailing and Danse nodded… until he noticed the filly stop.
“Something the matter, Rose Evans?” He asked, turning to her, the surprised look on her face was quite strange in his opinion.
“Wait, you guys need an Anti-Teleportation ward? Oh boy howdy you’ll love professor Flitwick.” She finally stated before coming back to their side.
“Professor who?” Asked Danse in confusion, he could discern this was likely one of her teachers, seeing as she often referred to professors.
“Professor Filius Flitwick, he’s Hogwarts’ Charms teacher and the head of Ravenclaw House. He’s a master of charm-type spells whose very purpose is to imbue magical effects into objects and people. Alohomora is a charm, Wingardium Leviosa is a Charm. I’m 99% sure he can make something to block magical teleportation, Hermione told me that Hogwarts is protected against something like that already. And if he can’t alone, I’m sure the professor for Ancient Runes can help. She made the runic combinations for all the enchanted stuff we use!” She explained and Danse, very suddenly, felt like he had just stumbled into an old, untouched cache of Arcano-tech in mint condition.
“Solar Flaring Orgasm of Celestia, you’re joking right?” Asked Hailing and earned the single most confused expression from the filly that she had given to date, her face scrunched up in a way that was unique to pure and unadulterated confusion.
“I don’t think there is enough soap to wash that out.” She finally stated and Danse very nearly laughed at that. Good point but to be fair, swearing was appropriate.
“Well filly, I believe we just found something worth trading a weapon’s cache for. I will speak to the Elder after this, a meeting between your school’s leadership and him to discuss this would likely be for the best.” He stated, not bothering to hide his mirth at the sheer coincidences that had befallen him. First, a small group of ponies who literally waltzed into Steel Ranger territory to seek entry into their base, willing to trade armor comparable to light powerarmor in protection, and now they found the teachers could solve one of the biggest issues, if not more.
“I wonder what they’ll say about those enchanted water filters to purify water from magical radiation.” Muttered Rainy at that point. Way too loud to pretend she hadn’t wanted them to hear this and, quite frankly? Danse was going to need them to give him a report on what was possible for masters of their magic. Because if they could reverse engineer that, then there was little that was impossible he imagined.
“Oh dear Celestia, a source for Water Talismans, you foals don’t know how valuable that is!” Exclaimed Hailing as Danse rolled his eyes.
Way to expose it, Scribe.