“You are never having bananas again Cadence.” Celestia said solemnly as she put a wing over the smaller mares back, Cadence looked positively upset with herself for all the things she did as she was led away from the court house.
There were a lot of horrible things that couldn’t be spoken of. What could be spoken of, apparently, was the absolute destruction of Shining Armor’s pelvis. He’d recover as medical magic has gone a long way to fixing even the most trying situation, even partially liquefied bone in most of his body and the actual liquefied bone where his Little Shining had been. Shining Armor’s spirit had been willing, but his flesh, bones and pretty much everything else was ultimately far too weak, it was also quite impossible to erase the experience from his memories as it was permanently ingrained into him. In the end it wasn’t just his body that was broken, but his spirit, his mind and everything else that could be thought of.
Shining Armor actually wanted to forget, but couldn’t even with the help of magic. The upsides was that memory erasing magic would never work on him as he now had a photographic memory that was entirely impervious to magic born of the horrific incident. The other thing that wouldn’t work on him anymore was mind control magic, because his mind, body and soul all literally belonged to Cadence until he died of old age and the only way to free him would be to kill him. To note, ‘until death do we part’ took on a whole new meaning where the princess of Love was concerned.
Ponies had considered Celestia and Luna to be fearsome beings, now Ponies knew better as Cadence was the real one to fear. No Pony on Equus would dare laugh at the frightening and horrific power of love.
“They even made it a law, you should be proud.” At least Luna saw this as a positive thing. There would still be bananas around; it was just plain illegal for Cadence to eat them now. Anyone who assisted in giving Cadence a banana would be considered of the vilest sort and would be immediately thrown into Tartarus. “You are after all the first Pony that has ever had a law designed to only affect one Pony in its entirety and it was a unanimous vote no less. You achieved several world records all at once with how fast everyone managed to get the law into place. That everyone agreed to it being completely necessary was an accomplishment!”
-
Gilda had a really bored look on her face, the elevators in this place were too freaking slow! Humans can build spaceships that can jump to other sectors like anyone else, but they can’t build a damned decent elevator that can handle more than a walker without straining?
Also a slight modification to the seat made dealing with her tail a little bit easier, but it was still annoying that the machine was designed so horribly for a Griffon's physiology. As such it was a challenge to pilot because it was made with humans in mind and Gilda liked a challenge.
-
“Here they come, everyone remember your positions. Nobody is to be out in the open unless they can maneuver well enough or do some damage. Take shots when you can, but don’t be brave… are you going to be okay Rarity?” Ember turned to Rarity who was standing on three hooves and she looked okay for the most part. They were two levels up in the cold storage room and they were overlooking the entrance form above, Ember would be at the entrance while everyone else would be in position when they broke through. Not if they broke through, it was definitely when.
“I should be asking you that, you’re going to be fighting the walkers up close. Aside from a broken leg I can still walk. I will agree to stay out of a direct line of fire in the upper floors if it eases your mind.” The walkers were going to be a huge problem and Rarity was well aware that they didn’t have nearly enough ammo to deal with a more heavily armored target. The armor the Humans wore was decent, but Rarity could have designed better given spider silk and time. Specifically, Rarity would have liked to have worked with an Equestrian Orb Weaver’s silk. They only had one true armored person in their group and that’s because she was practically bullet proof thanks to her scales. “I should be asking if you’re going to be okay darling. I know your tough Ember, but you’re not impervious.”
Ember only had three rocket launcher rounds and dealing with the humans had her running low on ammunition for her rifle, she didn’t have infinite resources for her rifle even if rocks were cheap to obtain. At least they had plenty of stolen weapons from the last attempt at breaking the chokepoint.
“I can promise you one thing Rarity. I’ll stay standing long enough to make sure you’re safe, because I don’t like anyone hurting my friends.” If anyone so much as touched or clipped Ember’s centerpiece with anything and hurt her, then they wouldn’t survive the next five minutes of her fury. If they killed Rarity, Ember would probably snap and she wouldn’t be responsible for what she did after that. She wasn’t about to tell Rarity how much the Unicorn really meant to her, Ember had other things to focus on as she checked her rifle and made sure it was fully loaded. “It’s not like I’ll be entirely defenseless, I can use my rifle as a shield and have done so before. If I haven’t broken my rifle on something yet, then I’m not about to do so now. I’m more worried about you. Here, take this energy pistol, you seem to favor them and you could use something that doesn’t need to be constantly reloaded. Save the material pistol for when you really need it.”
Ember’s rifle was made of some of the best ores a dragon could find and forge, all of which were quite rare. Her rifle was as tough to damage as she was; possibly even tougher given it required the heat of a volcano to even forge the parts for it. Every inch of the bulky rifle was made of this sturdy material.
The Humans were about to make a large push and those trapped in the frozen storage room had to be ready for it. Everyone that was thawed out had started trying to move the mostly thawed out people out of the way of the oncoming trouble, others wouldn’t have the chance to thaw before trouble struck. If it wasn’t bad enough that people were dying from being frozen, there was a chance that frozen people would die before they could be thawed out if they weren’t dead already. They barely had even twenty able bodies capable of fighting, which wasn’t much. The Humans had seven walkers and more than sixty soldiers inbound.
After handing over her energy pistol to Rarity, Ember turned around and jumped over the nearby railing. Once she landed on the ground in a crouch, she stood up and started walking towards the open entrance. She readied her rifle and her eyes narrowed as she heard them coming, she took up a position next to the doorway and glanced out of it. The Humans would send the walkers in with the next wave and they would be ready for them, now they just had to wait.
People were going to die, that much was a certainty and Ember could only pray that Rarity wasn’t one of the ones who were killed. As selfish as such a thought was, at least they moved as many of the frozen statues out of the way as they could, looking up the dragon could see that the Pegasus Ponies were ready to deal with the walkers as best they could. They could get lightning from water, but it took time and energy. The Pegasi could only make so many lightning strikes with what they had and what they had was definitely enough to drop one walker, at least two.
Every little bit would help, like the entrenched Ponies that could wield the machine guns Ember procured from the last two waves. The Pegasi could use their wings to pull the triggers on the machines guns that seemed to be a staple of the armed Humans and a strong enough Unicorn could use them as well. Rarity was not among that number as the machine guns were a bit heavy for her. Rubis had the right equipment for wielding the machine guns with a bit more agility, but the two machines guns she was equipped with probably wouldn’t have the puncturing power to deal with the incoming walkers.
While the Pegasus and three Unicorn Ponies could wield the guns in their own ways, the five or so Earth Ponies weren’t going to be much help in that area. The Earth Ponies would stay out of the way and or help get others to safety if there is an injury. They could even deal with the soldiers if they could get close enough, but going near the walkers was right out. Flesh Tender would attempt to stay entirely out of the fight and heal whoever the Earth Ponies brought to him.
The worst thing that could happen right now was a siege, they didn’t have the food or supplies to hold out forever and they needed the enemy to come to them. Ember crouched by the door, propped her rifle on the overturned vending machine blocking the doorway and aimed at one of the figures down the corridor and carefully prepared her shot. She exhaled, one pull of the trigger and a rock moving at high enough speeds to break the sound barrier ripped into the helmet of a Human down the head on hallway. The body flopped to the floor slowly growing stiffer as if a puppet just had their strings cut, rigor mortis would begin setting in pretty quickly.
“Holy fucking shit, they just took down Clements!” The Human’s voice carried pretty far and she wasn’t wrong; Ember had trained herself for situations like this and her rifle had single, burst and full automatic for a reason.
That guy Ember just shot didn’t need a magma round and she really needed the Humans to be provoked and on the offensive, those who were trapped in the freezer did not want to be waited out. A quick death would be better than a slow one, there were also worse things than death and she had seen some of them.
“Did you make them mad? I am hearing noise of moving machinery!” Rubis was one floor up on the block Rarity was. She was lying prone with one of the machine guns aimed toward the entrance.
“We need them to come to us! If they trap us in here and try to wait us out, then we’re just as good as dead!” Ember was prepared for the storm to come and she’d likely survive it, she’s survived worse and would try to save as many people as she could. “Now quiet, we got incoming!”
-
“This is Hazard Spider, move everyone move in one group at a time and kill anything moving in there. I want west wing to take the lead, followed by east and then my group personally.” Hazard Spider was Commander John Quelk’s personal walker and call sign; he wasn’t very amused to lose one of his own men to a rather impressive shot.
It just had to be the bounty hunter Flamethrower, it was clearly a taunt directed at them to come get her. While he wouldn’t admit it to his subordinates, the taunt had worked quite spectacularly. He’d make sure the Bounty Hunter didn’t survive this day even if she somehow miraculously managed to defeat more than a platoons worth of men and the six walkers he called in. The special weapon on Hazard Spider didn’t care how tough you were; there was no surviving it. If he had to, he’d waste the shot of it to bring down one alien woman.
-
It wasn’t hard for Ember to notice the movements when there was return fire from all sides, only one group was actively moving on the frozen storage doorway. It the group oncoming was from the right, she didn’t panic and carefully picked her shots and fired every now and then. Accuracy was more important at the moment as she didn’t want to waste ammo on ineffectually hitting the walkers.
One shot between one of the two moving walker’s legs and a human went down screaming with a hole where there crotch was, Ember winced slightly as that was quite a cringe worthy shot. It didn’t matter what gender you were, that had to hurt.
Ember ducked out of the way of the return fire as several walkers unloaded volatile energy projectiles against the vending machine blocking the outside of the door. She popped up and continued to return fire upon the humans.
The walkers were pretty fast when moving in a straight line; however they had slow tracking and turning. It made it rather easy to get up close and personal with them with her blaze bayonet. Right now she was dealing with the Human soldiers by shooting around the walkers that were being used as moving walls.
Magma rounds might have been capable of doing some serious damage to the walkers, but it would still be using up a lot of ammunition to puncture the canopy. Another Human went down missing an artery; seriously what kind of armor were they wearing? It looked like an energy dissipating plastic that didn’t really protect from direct head on hits very well.
Ignoring the machine gun rounds bouncing penetrating the EVA suit and bouncing off her sales to leave splotches of breach gel where she’s been hit, Ember fire the last few rocks from her gun before ducking down to reload.
The battle really hadn’t started yet, it would only start when the walkers inevitably reached the door way and forced the repeatedly damaged vending machine out of the way. Which was what happened in the next few seconds as one of the walkers finally decided to speed up and ram the vending machine out of the doorway; Ember quickly ran away from the door and turned to stand her ground in the middle of the empty central aisle.
Ember turned her right side toward the doorway and held her rifle up like a shield in front her body, her tail shifted to the left and thus she provided a smaller profile to shoot at. The first walker burst through the door followed by the other one and a group of Humans, Rarity and the others knew what to do already.
The second fired several shots at her, the first and third of which she blocked with her rifle and as the first walker raised its sparking claws of its left arm to punch her. Its fist slammed downwards, but it hadn’t hit Ember who just leapt up onto to the arm and with two steps she already half way up the walker. She stopped for a second to let the other arm come in trying to knock her off.
Ember leapt upwards and landed on the other arm, she brought her rifle around with the second barrel lighting up and blazing with heat. She cut the arm free from the machine; before it fell away she kicked off it in a twirl to swing twice at the canopy creating a large molten X. The first swing having been upward and the second downwards following Ember’s counter clockwise twirl and leap.
The pilot didn’t have much time to do anything after that before Ember planted her feet underneath the center point of the molten X on the canopy and kicked off while firing into the center of it.
The first walker was down, collapsing as the pilot flailed in his death throes to hit the controls and making the machine topple over. The person died to several close range magma rounds and the second walker stumbled back in shock. While this was going on the Humans that had followed them into the room were quickly being gunned down by bullets streaming in from the two nearby blocks above them by the entrenched Ponies and Parrote.
The lone walker backed off and started to fire at Ember who took up her stance to shield herself with her rifle again as she slowly made her way forward, the two other walkers arrived and started to add their fire power to the blasts they were aiming in her direction. She actually needed to dodge now and avoid taking hits. Her rifle wasn’t being damaged by any of this and if it had been, then Ember would be a hobbyist weapons designer.
The walkers looked apprehensive when it came to approaching Ember, given how she took down one of them and they currently weren’t giving her an opening to get close to them. Sure the shots they were firing would sting a little if Ember did get hit by them, but they wouldn’t do nearly as much damage as physically hitting her. That and Ember was still carrying a rocket launcher strapped to her back, so she was still the bigger threat and needed to be to keep them off of everyone else.
If the walkers weren’t going to come to her, then she’d go after the Humans to keep them from getting up the stairs at the ponies shooting them from above. She spun around several shot and leveled her gun past the walkers and started gunning down the Humans trying to reach the stairs that were, she leapt back to dodge the several shots and ducked down barely getting clipped by a blast of energy to the top of her helmet. The force of the grazing blow had still knocked her down with a grunt.
Ember rolled avoiding the claw that slammed into the floor next to her, the cracks in the shape of spider webs showed how powerful the blow would have been. Not necessarily deadly, but it would have been pretty painful and death might have followed while she was out of it. She jammed her rifle up directly at the canopy and moved the blaze bayonet up slightly and then downwards to point directly into the small hole and the frightened eyes beyond it, she fired one shot and the machine attempting to back away went very still.
Even as she rolled backwards, Ember was caught in the explosion as the two other walkers fired on the back of the one that had charged her downed form; they blew it up intentionally trying to take Ember out with it. Instead the dragon was sent bouncing for a good twenty feet between the two blocks; she landed on her side and quickly lifted her rifle to block the several shots coming at her. Landing on the rocket launcher hadn’t been pleasant on Ember’s back and she hoped she hadn’t damaged it, who knew what Chrysalis would do if she didn’t bring it back in good condition.
It was at this point that two more walkers moved in and started to fire upon her, the Humans were having a far easier time of taking out the armed ponies than they were taking Ember down. Having four walkers concentrate their fire on her made her feel proud that she had at least kept them off of the Pegasi.
She got to her feet while continuing to block the constant fire and planted her rifle on the floor while holding it up one handed against each shot, her left claw had a death grip on her rifle to make sure it wasn’t knocked away from her. She was trying to avoid any other part of her body getting hit as she shifted to the left or right her profile not small enough to avoid being shot at by four the encroaching walkers. Using her right claw she pulled her rocket launcher up from her back to her shoulder and managed to get the tube in position for firing. She had one shot and she wouldn’t be able to reload it while fighting like this.
It was a good thing the walkers had clustered together to focus on her; Ember braced herself as the recoil was going to be a little troublesome and pulled the trigger. The dragon was flung back five feet wrenched by the rocket launcher pulling on the strap as it fell back down to sitting at her back; she quickly sat up as the rocket hit home on the second walker from her left and damaged the two next to it. Half the walker she hit had been blown away in the explosion.
“Now would be a good time to lend some help here!” Ember shouted up to the others fighting on the blocks.
“We are a little busy mon amie!” Rubis called back out of sight and from the sounded of it duel wielding machines guns coming from the left, the flash of them firing could be seen up the stairs.
“Excuse me if I’m not happy with killing so many people!” The scream of a Human followed Rarity’s tirade and a body fell to the floor in front of Ember with an energy wound cauterized where the guy’s liver used to be. “I don’t mind shooting monsters, but this is ridiculous and every pony here will need psychological help after this if they live long enough!”
“Well I can’t handle them until these walkers are down!” Ember was once again using her rifle as a shield as she started to slowly move forward while avoiding what shots she could. The walkers were thoroughly focused on her to the point that their shots were actually pushing her back with their shots, she could feel the extensive strain she was putting on herself.
As if in response to Ember’s complaints the clouds at the top of the massive room started swirling and the sound of thunder cracked throughout the room before a crash hit and the walker to Ember’s right went down in violent flash and explosion of energy. That’s when it started hailing on the Humans, in the shape of sharp pointy icicles.
Frost Wind and the other Pegasus Ponies had come through for the rest of the defenders; they got off one lightning bolt and decided to just do something else as lightning was not Frost Wind’s specialty. Frost Wind’s specialty was in cold weather operations and nothing said dangerous like sharp icicles going through helmets and brains, the incoming Humans faltered at the sudden well aimed hailstorm of death. The icicles weren’t strong enough to go through the walkers, but at least the infantry weren’t doing so hot while the Ponies took cover from the sudden change of indoor weather.
“This won’t last for long; take the other two out while you can!” Frost Wind’s voice was heard from above and he sounded rather tired, he did just push a lot of magic into focusing and controlling the weather with an extremely scary precision. The icicles were raining down at random, but there were not falling anywhere near any of the entrenched Ponies.
Ember took this as an opportunity to close in with the last two walkers.
-
Hazard Spider stayed in place and hadn’t moved since the start of the battle and frankly Commander John Quelk was surprised by how many people they were losing, especially to the sudden indoor ice storm. One would think they’d use explosives, but they still had a lot of merchandise in frozen storage that was on ice. Also explosives would have been a pretty bad idea when Pegasus Ponies blasted grenade back in your face with a burst of wind from their wings, a single Unicorn’s telekinetic abilities would have been able to stop explosives and send the explosives back as well. The infiltrator that took down the experimental alpha wolf robot was obviously a powerful unicorn.
None of the ponies in the cold storage room would be able to deal with Hazard Spider, but he needed to actually use his special weapon on the one major problem that took down four… make that five walkers. The bounty hunter was proving to be enough trouble to warrant the use of his ace in the hole.
Hazard Spider spread out its four legs and clamps unfolded from the ground and started to pin the machine in place by locking it to the floor. At the back of the large four legged yellow and black machine a large device rotated into place at the top of the machine above the pilot’s canopy and energy started building up in the large gun.
Commander Quelk didn’t care about his people or the walkers that were in the way, they were dead already anyway and they have obviously failed him. They were dealing with a bunch of cutesy fucking little colorful dumb naïve equines, how were they putting up this much resistance? Well one of the key reasons behind their resistance wasn’t about to exist anymore and he didn’t think he needed his special weapon for anything else today.
He liked using Hazard Spiders special weapon; the raw power behind it was intoxicating.
-
After blocking one enormous blow, Ember finally lost her grip on her prized weapon. She tried to hold onto it as she was flung away from the blow that launched her entire body into the air, her rifle landed off to the side of her and she grunted when she landed on her face and belly. She was quite dizzy and the shock of that hit had been pretty bad. Ember’s Trailblazer didn’t look to be damaged, but she wouldn’t reach it in time before the walker was on top of her as it was in the middle of charging her.
Given the fact that her helmet was cracked and damaged badly enough already, Ember ripped it off took out one of the two rocket launcher rounds she had on her and threw it at the walker, while quickly inhaling and then exhaling a small but highly condensed ball of fire. The walker didn’t stand a chance as its forward momentum had the explosive rocket bounce off the canopy. That’s when the fireball struck the rocket; both Ember and the walker were blown away by the blast.
“Ember, oh my goodness darling, tell me your okay!” Rarity had to quickly perform a three legged scramble backwards from the edge of the second floor of the block she was on; she didn’t want to be hit by the sudden amount of machine gun fire directed at her by the Humans still managing to survive the ice storm below.
What Rarity had seen was Ember still form out on the floor, she was groaning and her EVA suit was completely shredded. At least she was alive in some sense; she had other things to focus on as she fired another precisely aimed shot at the Humans who were using their own dead as shields from the ice storm.
The blast had laid out Ember, it didn’t hurt very much and she was already in the process of staggering to her feet despite the constant amount of machine gun fire directed at her. She had successfully taken out all six of their gathered walkers for this attack. Holding a hand in front of her face to shield it from the incoming metal that bounced off of her claws, Ember slowly started to make her way for her rifle and then she saw something going on down the corridor something building up and bright.
“Rubis, Rarity, anyone else, there’s one round left for the rocket launcher!” The Parrote looked to Ember and was wondering why the dragon was informing them of this fact. It became a bit clearer when Ember suddenly tossed the rocket launcher and the last shot for it bodily away from her into another aisle. “Don’t…”
It had been nice to hear that Rarity was worried about her; if it had to be the last thing Ember heard from her then she was glad. She was currently in quite a bit of pain and what was about to hit her would likely kill her; she couldn’t get out of the way of it in time.
Ember always knew she was tough, intimidating and brave; she also had a kind heart and loved her friends. In the end she hoped her hoard continued on to better things. Well she finally knew what the cause of all those melted buildings in Gravenstein was, because she was about to experience it for herself.
The last thing Ember saw was a bright light filling her vision and all the walkers being vaporized, she closed her eyes and felt little else beyond that moment.
A large beam ripped through the ground floor of the frozen storage room and vaporized anything that was nearby the solid stream of raw energy that ripped through the room like a hot knife through a wet tissue paper. Any Humans that had been on the ground floor of the frozen storage room died from heat exposure even if they hadn’t been directly struck by the beam, two Pegasus ponies melted into nothingness and everyone else felt the extreme amounts of heat. Of the few Humans that were on the staircases, some had died and others had been high enough to survive the large beam only to be gunned down seconds later by Pegasus Ponies who weren’t going to sit and gawk at the damage. They did their militaristic ancestors proud by taking advantage of the situation.
Rubis almost felt her feathers lighting on fire, they hadn’t mostly thanks to the cold air in the room and that she had been one floor up from the blinding beam. The massive beam cannon dug a shallow furrow through the floor and the walkers that had been in the path of that were all molten piles of slag from all the raw energy. Continuing to shift her gaze to the right to follow the beams path, she now saw a large hole at the back of the frozen storage room; the beam had chewed through a lot of solid rock.
“Ember she is… non I shall not think of it.” There was an ominous sound that had Rubis on edge and the remaining Humans were swiftly dealt with. They had lost more than eighty percent of their number in the firefight, those that were thawed and capable of fighting, but thankfully the Earth Ponies saved thirty percent of the eighty that were casualties of the fighting and became severely injured as a result.
It sounded to have a four legged movement and quite heavy. Slowly the imminent demise of all still awake and aware in frozen storage room strode forward through the doorway. It was a large yellow and black four legged machine, with rotary mounted cannons on its shoulders and two claws like the rest of the walkers and it stomped forth. It even had what looked to be a shield generator mounted on its back alongside the large folded up tube shaped device, the other walkers hadn’t had that kind of luxury of having shield generators.
“None of you are leaving this place alive.” The voice calmly spoke from the machine to everyone in frozen storage, it didn’t sound smug or full of itself. It sounded like the Human was stating a simple known fact.