BOOM!

Damn It can’t I get a break for once?

Me and a squad of the other veteran rangers were sent to kill a courier that someone shot in the head. The NCR apparently has it in for him because they sent us to go and kill him. He must’ve killed a lot of NCR troops if the higher ups are sending all of us.

We weren’t the best rangers the NCR had but damn could we get a job done. What was our job you ask? Well aside from the normal duties of the NCR Rangers, we were the assassins. The higher ups usually send one or two of us to go kill a specific enemy of the NCR. But this was an odd case sent they sent the entire squad to go after him. All 10 of us should be more than enough to handle him; right?

Wrong.

Apparently this guy pissed off the Legion as well. So instead of fighting one guy, we're fighting 6 Legionaries plus the courier. Not that it’s a bad thing for us, since this guy has to fight us AND the Legion as well. There’s no way he’s walking out of this.

Again wrong.

BANG!

Another legionary just fired at my cover again. This rock is getting shorter and shorter with every shot. He must have pissed off Ceaser more than we expected, instead of sending one squad of five or six, Ceaser sent a company of 16 after him.

The Courier guy isn’t helping matters either. Where the hell did he get a minigun? I have no idea but he’s tearing up anyone stupid enough to expose themselves. Thank god he is alone; I hear he is good with making friends. I heard rumors of him traveling with a super mutant, a flying ‘eye’, a robot dog the Kings had, and even once heard he had a Brotherhood of Steel member with him!

K-RACK! Another shot went up at my cover. I risked a peek over my cover and got nicked at the top of my helmet for my trouble. Though it was worth it, the courier is reloading and roughly half the legionaries are wounded. I lift up my brush gun and began firing at the bigger threat: The legionaries.

POW! POW! POW! 3 legionaries went down under my gun in the span of a few seconds. My vision suddenly went black as a legion sniper took aim and shot me in the face. Luckily for me the bullet didn’t go through my helmet, probably because they keep their guns at such poor condition.

That didn’t stop it from hurting like hell.

I fell backwards and hit the ground just as my cover exploded into pebbles. I thankfully still had my brush gun on me and I rolled to a larger rock and hid behind it to check how we’re doing.

What I saw wasn’t very good. Half our squad was wounded, three were dead, one is seriously wounded, and one can’t be found at all. The other half is moving between cover to cover firing at whomever they can see.

Why is all our cover exploding? This doesn’t make sense; the legion members don’t have explosives that we know of and we don’t carry explosives on us.

So that leaves……

I peak over when bullets aren’t flying over my head and my heart sank at what I saw.

The Legion’s remaining forces are getting destroyed by the courier who, by the looks of things, either got his minigun broken, or he ran out of ammo for he is using a FREAKING MISSLE LAUNCHER!? Where did he get that!? From the boomers!?

Hell if I know or not, all I know is that it is working. Their cover is being torn up and they are being hit with shrapnel, explosive force, and fire. Another guy takes a shot at me and I duck back into cover.

I take a deep breath and lift up my helmet to take a sip of water. I know now isn't a good time, but running all over the place in a mad sprint leaves you tired. I quickly down a bottle of water and put on my helmet before someone blows my brain out of my skull.

KA-BOOM! A large mushroom-size explosion appears a few yards away from me as I fly back from the force of the explosion itself. I felt the air leave my lungs as I crashed into the merciless dirt/pebbles. My ears ringing with the intensity of a bomb going off next to you, because you know, that happened.

My body groans and pops in protest as I sit upright and start moving my body to see if anything is broken. I move my left arm, everything seems to be fine. I move my left leg, a bit of pain, probably be limping on it but still fine. I try to move my right arm and a searing pain courses through me, definitely broken. I attempt to move my right leg and for my troubles I get a lot of pain, but I can still move it. This isn’t good. I turn my head and….

I’m the only one alive. My god I'm the only one alive. The legionaries, from what I can see, have been annihilated with bullets. Not one of them had a completely intact body. Some were missing arms, others legs, most decapitated. One or two guys even somehow got blown into pieces, probably from the missile launcher. My comrades….

My comrades are dead…. Oh god they’re dead! I can’t see them anywhere! They must’ve been blown away from that giant explosion. Wait…. What is tha- oh my god it’s an arm! A ranger arm! Completely blown off!

Before I can panic even more the courier stops right in front of me and points a weapon at me. This weapon looks like someone stripped a missile launcher of its skin, modified it to only keep the important bits, and looked very old and very deadly. The ammo inside it is a pre-war made bomb that looks a lot like those mini nukes we were told to collect if we ever found any. Something about being very explosive and contains a lot of radiation or something.

The courier said something that I couldn’t make out due to my ears still ringing. I try to get up but all I was rewarded with was searing pain and a boot to my helmet as my back hit the ground again.

With my good arm I raise Ranger Sequoia and point it at him and try to fire, but all I managed to do in my feeble state was groan and lift my gun halfway before said boot was on top of my arm. He leaves it there for a moment before he takes it off and continues rambling about something. Probably about how he got his gun and ammo since he keeps gesturing towards it.

I took the time he was rambling to get out a doctor’s bag with my good arm, open it up, and treat my injuries with it. My god the things they put in this thing must be magic! My arm and leg are feeling much better already.

The courier takes his ‘gun’ and points it upwards roughly 90 degrees. My hearing must’ve returned without me knowing because I manage to hear him go “sayonara” as he fires his gun and makes a mad dash for the nearest cover.

I watch as the bomb flies upwards and then falls down. I try to move but the doctor’s bag made my movements sluggish and awkward. I can’t even stand up at the moment.

I fall back onto my back again, holding my brush gun and Ranger sequoia, as the bomb flies closer and closer with each passing second. I take this time to look at the specially made hunting revolver and reflect how I got it.

I just passed my 20th year serving as a NCR Ranger. It’s sad really; this is my first assignment with the Ranger gun and I have already messed up horribly. After a long few years of killing every target, once I got this gun it all comes crashing down.

I see the bomb coming right down at me. Well it’s time to see if there is really an afterlife. Wonder where I’ll end up in the next life. Well time to find out.

The bomb went crashing down and I close my eyes in preparation. I take one last breath and…..

I hear nothing and I see nothing but blackness.

A few hours later, its morning; or at least I think its morning. I have no idea how long I was out but the sun is back on my face. I groan and rub a hoof to my helmet and try and clear away the blackness that surrounds my eyes.

Wait…..

What did I just do? My…. Hoof? I shake my head, I am probably just delusional and probably thought I had a hoof. I look at my hoof again…. There it is. A god damn real hoof and I am controlling it. I move my ‘arm’ left and it moves left as well. I move right and it does the same.

“Ok this is just too weird….” I mumble to no one in particular. I try to stand up on my ‘legs’ but all I end up doing is fall onto my ass. I try again and I hold it for a second before I lose balance again and fall foreword. Instead of crashing onto the ground I fall onto my front ‘legs that I still call my arms’ and it feels right.

I try making a step and I'm a little wobbly but otherwise I can stay upright. Ok I'm standing upright. Now it’s time to take a look at myself. Turning my head around I can see... I'm a pony…. Really? A pony? Aside from that fact, everything seems to be ok. I am still wearing my NCR Ranger riot armor, my helmet is still on (It’s kinda obvious since everything is slightly red), I even have a tail! For some reason it’s armored like the rest of my body. My Brush gun is for some reason attached to my armor. No scratch that it’s connected to a saddle that is on top of my Riot armor. Ranger Sequoia is right at my side. Miraculously both guns not only seem to be in working condition, they seem to not have taken any damage from my previous fight!

I rub my ‘hoof’ (don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that) on top of my head and I find something peculiar. I have a horn. What the hell? A horn? That’s weird, am I a unicorn or something? Do I have magic? Well there’s only one way to find out.

I prepared myself to try and see if I do have magic before I realize something. I have no idea how to even try and summon it. Do I make a magic circle or do I have to use my mind like those ‘jedi’ from those ancient holo-tapes? Probably the latter, seeing as I have a horn now.

Using the power of my mind, I imagine a glowing hand of a sort trying to pick up Ranger Sequoia from my side. At first nothing happens. No biggie did you really expect me to be able to do it in one try? I didn’t either. Nor did I expect to the second time, or the third time, or the fourth time.

But when I haven’t even had anything happen by the 30th time that’s when I really start to get annoyed. By the 60th time I'm really getting mad now. I'm surprisingly warm outside but I'm sweating and I'm frustrated. I don’t even know how to do this, and if I can’t do what I think I can, then getting water will be VERY difficult.

I sigh and unconsciously move an imaginary right arm to open my packs and get me a bottle of water. What surprised me the most was when I brought that imaginary arm back; there is a bottle of water floating right in front of me. The bottle was surrounded with a cowboy brown aurora? I can’t really explain how it looks.

I moved the imaginary arm to set the bottle down and lift up my helmet. I'm sure I might be able to hold the bottle and lift my helmet but if I'm wrong I don’t want to lose my water. Once my helmet was up I let go of my ‘arm’ from the helmet and picked up the bottle again. The water felt refreshing down my throat.

OH! That’s why it didn’t work! I was imagining just a hand where I got it to work by imagining an entire arm. So maybe now…..

Using my newly found knowledge I was able to lift up my revolver with only a grunt of pain. Where my horn connects to my head is some mild pain. Huh, so it’s like a muscle; I have to train it to make it stronger. Good thing I didn’t try to hold up the bottle and my helmet.

After putting the gun away I finally went around to looking at my surroundings. Urban. That is one word to describe this. It looks like if Freeside was enlarged to a massive city sized area, but shrunk down to have ponies live comfortably.

I look at my left ‘front leg’ and check my half operating Pip-boy. My radiation detector isn’t going off, that’s good. My inventory sorter tells me that I have a couple bottles of water, a dozen or so Nuka-Cola and Sunset sarsaparilla, a hundred or so spare 40-70 Gv’t rounds, a few pounds worth of food rations, roughly 500 caps (good thing I turned my paycheck into caps before I started the assignment), a few pounds worth of medicine supplies and three weapon repair kits. It’s a shame the map and the radio don’t work. Maybe I can have someone here fix it for me, wherever ‘here’ is. I'm just happy the inventory sorter, my radiation detector, and my compass with the presence detector on it still work. I think V.A.T.S. still works as well.

My compass picks up a couple signatures to my left. I turn to face these signatures and I see something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.

Right in front of me, is a griffon, a pegasus, two unicorns, and a pony with armor that looks like the brotherhood of steel armor, expect its red. The others were wearing the same armor, probably a gang or something.

We did nothing expect stare at each other for roughly a minute. Occasionally one of them would blink. We shifted our hooves left to right every now and then. That is until I spoke.

“Umm hi?” Was all I could say.

“You know you look terrifying with those red eyes your helmet has right?” The griffon says once I finish speaking.

“What?”

“Yeah. You look terrifying. It’s like I'm staring at a blood hungry diamond dog with those red lenses.”

“Umm thanks?”

“Oh! Where are my manners? I'm Stark, I'm with the Talons. The pegasus here is named Dusty. Don’t mind him much. He doesn’t talk a lot. Those two unicorns are the twins, Clover and Daisy. The Applejack ranger there is junior paladin Macintosh, or Big Mac if you prefer. What’s your name?” Stark asks me. I am surprised yet suspicious. Out in the Mojave, manners are very rare. People speak very bluntly and whoever has manners usually wants something from you. Stark reminds me of that one guy the Courier drove off the strip, what was his name? Benny? Yeah! That was it. Stark reminds me of that Benny character.

“I’m called Marcus. But you can call me Ranger if you want.”

“Ranger? Why Ranger?” Daisy asks me. She sounds young. If the voice of a pony can be compared to a human’s, she is probably no more than 19 or 20.

“Because that’s my job. I am a NCR Ranger” I tell her without emotion. The one known as Big Mac moves his head in a scoffing motion. I think.

“Really now? I don’t remember the New Canterlot Republic having these ‘rangers’ besides allying themselves with the Applejack’s Rangers” Big Mac says. His voice was gruff, like it either seen a lot of yelling, smoke, combat, or all three. In all likelihood it’s probably the last one.

There’s one detail that I still don’t understand. “New Canterlot Republic? Who are they? I thought the NCR was the New CALIFORNIA Republic?” I told them

“What? Have you been living in a stable or something? The NCR as far as I know, has always been the New Canterlot Republic,”

“What? What’s a stable? Do you mean vaults?”

“What in Sam’s hell is a vault? They’re stables!”

“They’re vaults!”

“Stables!”

“VAULTS!”

“STABLES!”

“GOD DAMN IT! You’re insane! They’re called vaults! Next thing I know you’re going to say my Pipboy isn’t a Pipboy!”

“What the hell is a ‘Pipboy’!? We have Pipbucks!”

“ENOUGH BOTH OF YOU!” Clover yells at us, surprising all of us. His voice sounded young yet it had a voice that had authority and anyone that heard it would stop and listen to. “You aren’t from here are you?”

“Gee what gave you that idea? The fact I’m totally clueless as to where I am, the fact that everything I said sounds strange to you guys, or the fact that my armor has never been seen from around here and my gun isn’t a commonly found weapon!? Oh! That reminds me, you guys have 40-70 g’vt rounds in this wasteland right?”

“Well it’s not really a wasteland anymore. Ok yeah it is, but we’re doing our best to clean up. We got one step done, all the radiation is gone now” Daisy tells me

“Yeah we have that type of round, why? Your guns take that size?” Stark asks me.

I nod and magically remove one of the spare rounds from my saddles and shows it to them, “These rounds yes?”

Stark looks at it, deep in thought then nods his head. “Yeah, we have those rounds here in Equestria. Though we don’t have any on us, you’ll have to see the shopkeepers for them.”

I nod my head in understanding. I was about to open my mouth when a shot rang out and a bunch of pony-fied mercenaries came out and surrounded us.

“TARGETS!” We all screamed.

“Everyone form up! Make a ring with our asses in the middle! NOW!” I ordered them and they complied. I stood with Big Mac to my right and Stark to my left. The raiders have us surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. But we outmatched them. We were professionals with hands on training with a fair fight if not one sided fights. These guys are used to bullying, no way to gain true combat experience.

Using my newfound knowledge of magic, I had my magic grip the lever of my brush gun and rapidly fire as I let V.A.T.S. do the work for me. My compass is providing me with more than enough targets to fire at. My magic was working overtime between cocking my brush gun and reloading it.

Whenever V.A.T.S. ran out of action points I tested my accuracy without V.A.T.S. surprisingly it’s not too hard once you get the hand of it. I just had to aim a bit to the left with my built in crosshairs.

About a minute has passed since the first shot and the mysterious forces are dead. Well they’re mysterious to me. I'm sure my companions know who they are. “Soooo” I start. “Anyone know who these guys are?” I ask as I walk (trot) over to the corpses and begin to loot their bodies for anything useful.

“Yeah, they were Red Eye’s forces before the Great Battle. Now they are just another Raider group trying to carve their name in Equestrian history.” Big Mac tells me.

“Yeah what did these guy’s call themselves this time again? The great Khans or something?” Stark asks the group.

“I don’t know Stark, I thought you knew” Clover replies with a smirk.

“Yeah, I think they did call themselves the Khans. With a K if I remember correctly too” Daisy says, ruining the joke. Stark sighs.

“Alright then. Let’s loot the bodies and head back to camp” Stark says as he starts looting a promising looking body.

I already collected a fair amount of extra bottle caps, a few dozen rounds, a couple pistols that look like they are held in the pony’s mouth, a chainsaw sword, and a bunch of water along with some food.

Once everyone, including me, finished up looting we all gathered up together again.

“Okay, We’re all done looting yes?” Stark asks us. We all nod. “Ok good. Ranger, come with us. I’m sure you have nowhere to go and we could use your help. Oh and we can help you get the must-know of the Modern day Equestria.”

I nod my head. Yeah it’s a good plan and he’s right. I have nowhere else to go and it’s my job to protect these ponies. Even if they aren’t My NCR citizens, they still are NCR citizens and it’s my job to protect NCR citizens. Plus getting filled on the history wouldn’t hurt.

“OK good. Daisy when we get to camp, give Ranger The Book of LittlePip for him to read, ok? Big Mac you’re with me. I have to go deliver a report to Calamity and the higher ups.” Stark tells his group.

“OH! And ranger?” he says looking at me. I stare at him, waiting for his reponse”

“Welcome to the Fillydelphia Warzone, Equestria”

Footnote:
Quest Skill learned!
Back to the basics: your unfortunate transformation into a pony has made you sluggish and awkward. You are returned to level 1 and your stats and skills are reset.
Level up!
Rapid reload: You are a quick learner! All guns reload 25% faster for you.
Bonus!
Your training with the NCR has done you well. You reload and draw your weapons an additional 15% faster!