//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10: Nostalgia 
// Story: XCOM: Ranger 
// by Wanderer D 
//------------------------------//


Ranger


Chapter 10: Nostalgia


By Wanderer D






Jane Kelly had heard that in the old XCOM, Skyranger and Avalanche pilots would not mix up with the ground troops. Air Force was Air Force and Army was Army. Now, however, they were all a big family. They all lived in the same ship, after all, and there was only one bar.

The Avenger had no Avalanche fighters, only its own pilots and a few others on reserve or in active duty with the ground troops, and it was their own pilot, Second Lieutenant Dash—aka Firebrand—that she was looking for, and found at the bar, staring in contemplation at a glassful of bourbon.

Lieutenant Dash was one of the few rare people in XCOM that could be total stiffs, and yet have unique quirks to their personalities, such as multicolored hair, which the pilot kept short, most likely for comfort under a combat helmet.

Jane tried to remember what she knew about her: she was just a few years younger than Bradford himself, just barely over forty, having joined XCOM as a promising young air force pilot, and excelled as one of the best Avalanche pilots they'd had before XCOM was betrayed. Legend had it she had not only never been shot down once, but all attacks the aliens had tried against her... had missed. She was just that good.

After the war, she had been one of the few to escape along with Dr. Vahlen and Dr. Shen, joining the latter in his quest to find the one large alien ship they had taken down with Dash's help: the Avenger.

The rest, as they said, was history.

Jane approached the pilot and sat down next to her. "Hey," she said.

Firebrand gave her a look and raised her glass in a small salute. "Jane Kelly. Don't tell me we have another mission? I just poured this one." Dash's voice was a bit raspy, although definitely not making her sound old.

Jane chuckled. "Nah… I just wanted to thank you. If you hadn't been so fast… Sunset wouldn't have made it. I heard that Bradford rode your ass from the Skyranger to the Avenger bridge just so you could take the helm and fly this thing all the way here."

Dash chuckled. "Hey, I am the fastest flyer on Earth, don't you forget that." She took a sip of her glass and then reached over for another glass, threw ice in it and a splash from the same bottle before handing it to Jane. "Here, I know you're Irish, but you should be able to enjoy the best of Kentucky regardless."

Jane shook her head, but accepted the drink with a smile. The pair sat in comfortable silence for a while.

"Sunset..." Dash started to say, pausing to look into the dark liquid. "...she reminds me of myself and my friends, back in the day."

Jane blinked. Lieutenant Dash usually didn't speak much about herself. "Oh?"

"Yeah," the Lieutenant continued. "And it's not just the name."

Jane raised an eyebrow and Dash grinned.

"It was a thing from the area I was born in. I'm not sure why, maybe our grandfathers were hippies or something, but, take my name. Rainbow Dash."

Jane coughed, putting the glass she'd been sipping from down and pounding her chest, before giving the other woman an incredulous look.

Dash's smile didn't fade. "I know, right? It wasn't just me, though, the whole generation above mine and the next… they had names like this too. It was weird to meet a 'Jane' or 'John' in our little city of Canterlot. You can imagine my shock when the rest of the world had much more mundane names."

"Huh. Sunset Shimmer," Jane pondered. "Yeah, that sounds like a name from there too."

Dash nodded. "Yeah, you had me, a gal actually named Pinkie Pie; some jerk named her kid Trixie. Imagine when we found out that was a popular pole-dancer name?" Dash laughed.

It was funny. Jane had never seen Dash laugh. It brought back a sense of wonder in the older woman that made her seem a lot younger. She could really imagine her now as a cocky, young pilot, giving hell to her superiors.

"You can imagine the looks I got when I signed in and my name was on the resume," Dash continued, a bit more subdued. "I had been trained by one of the best, and when she found out what happened to Canterlot… well. She practically forced Bradford to hire me and skip a whole lot of other candidates."

Jane tried to remember anything she might've heard about Canterlot, but the history of the place was sadly straightforward when it came to XCOM: it was one of the first cities openly attacked by alien dreadnaughts.

"I still remember it," Dash said as the silence stretched. "It was just… a normal day, a week before graduation. I had played my last soccer game of the season, and I had gotten a letter of acceptance into the Air Force. Scared a lot of my friends with that, you know? Rarity… Pinkie… they weren't the fighting type. They never really understood why someone would… go kill."

Dash gave Jane an expectant look, and when the other woman said nothing, she smiled. "Yeah, you get it. They're the ones we step up to the line to protect." She sighed. "Only AJ really got me on that… once things had started, Big Mac was going to… ahem, that was her brother, he signed up to the army, but had an accident at the farm before his training even started. AJ stepped in instead."

Dash licked her lips, eyes straying up to the wall, but looking past it as memories flooded her mind. "We met at school… I think we had practice for a singing competition. That's when the sirens just… blasted the alarm around us. Metal things crashed outside the building. I-I looked out the window when one crashed right next to where Flash had just parked. It hit so hard it flipped his car over. Mist came out and… it was like it dragged them back. Whoever went into the mist, never came back.

"Everyone was screaming. Pinkie dove under a desk. Rarity… she was trying to calm the others.. that's when I saw it. This ship that blotted out the sun. I remember the vice-principal's voice ordering all of us to get into the tornado shelter area and then… a column of fire just… cut through the building."

Rainbow Dash shuddered, taking a long drink. "It wasn't a hard decision to join the Air force after that, and then come to XCOM. My mentor had been hired by Bradford already to head the Avalanche squad and she wanted the best."

Jane nodded. Talking with the older soldiers was always like this. She herself had vague memories of when she was a child about what the world was like… with no ADVENT to pull curtains over their eyes. It was distant and almost felt unreal. It had never been perfect… but it had been theirs.

"Anyway," Dash said, drinking down the last of her drink, "Sunset. She reminds me of them. I feel a little like I knew her from back then, you know? Maybe her parents were from Canterlot or something."

"When I saw her… that… that thing, the Assassin… she gutted Sunset like a fish, Jane."

Jane nodded.

"And she held on. Something like that would have killed anyone! But I've seen what force of will can do… the commander is like that. Fluttershy—all my friends were like that too." Dash looked down at the bottle before grabbing a shot glass and filling it up. "I guess, what I'm trying to say is… I'm never letting my friends die again. Not on my watch. Not if I can help it… and you guys are my team. Menace. Maybe even my friends."

She stood up and walked over to the memorial, where Jane had just noticed a small framed picture of a bunch of young girls. It was very old, and faded, but she could make out Dash's multicolored hair among them.

She watched as Dash placed the shoot in front of the group, then walked quickly out of the bar, leaving Jane alone.

"Friends, huh?" Jane muttered. She glanced at the picture—mirroring Dash's earlier salute with her glass—and downed the last of her bourbon.





Even though Sunset was not acknowledged as a psychic herself, she'd never felt comfortable around Templars. It wasn't that they shunned her… it was that they expected her to be like them… and treated her as such.

The Templars she had met before had decided to call her 'little sister', because they could feel her presence in the psychic network, and she could clearly feel them. They assumed, therefore, that she was also a psychic, perhaps one of XCOM's infamous psi-ops. The problem with this was that she really wasn't a psychic and mixing her magic with their powers was… volatile.

And now, she was with a Templar that was examining her with said psychic powers to make sure her healing was complete. And she had to keep her magic contained in her core, or there would be one Templar less in the world due to violent psychic feedback.

This proved one thing for sure, however: Geist was insane.

"Okay, it seems your healing is complete. There's no muscle degradation, all the layers have healed fully and while you might feel a bit sore, it's going to be mostly in your mind," Laetitia said. "Your healing ability is… amazing."

"Yeah, well, it carries a heavy price," Sunset said stretching. It did feel sore. "It's not a thing I can just use. My blood abilities are taking a hit for a while now."

"So it's not something you can use on demand?" Laetitia asked as Sunset started getting dressed.

"No," Sunset said, shaking her head. "I have a very limited supply of… energy for that kind of thing. Some of the very basic abilities I can do for a long time without much problem, but healing like that uses a lot out of me. If I was stabbed again like that right now…" She shuddered, her hand gingerly touching the place where the blade had struck. "I'd bleed out like anyone else, no matter how much I tried to work around that."

"Sometimes I really wonder where you're from," Laetitia said, getting to work on putting away all of her equipment as well. "You take too casually to powers like these."

Sunset's hands closed tighter around the piece of armor she was holding. She took a breath and donned the rest of her equipment. "A place I'll never be able to see again. It's beautiful. And full of very kind… people. I was loved there, and cherished and—heh." She shook her head, a self-deprecating smile in her face. "It took me three years of hell here to understand just how much I lost."

Laetitia nodded, having waited next to that door for Sunset to come over and follow her. "It seems that you have a lot of regrets," she said as they walked down the empty hallways of the Templar HQ. "Isn't there anyone you could reach out to? Tell them you miss them?"

Sunset's mind went back to her diary.

"I see there is," Laetitia smiled, looking at Sunset's face. "We've only known each other for as long as we worked together on your injury, Sunset, but I believe you are a good person. I'm sure they know it too. Give it a try."

"Yeah," Sunset sighed. "I'll think about it. It's been some time."

"Better late than never," Laetitia countered with a shrug. She led Sunset to a large double door. "And here we are…" she faced Sunset and shook her hand. "Best of luck, Sunset Shimmer. I hope that the next time you visit we won't be talking with you in bed all the time." She grinned. "Unless you invite me to join you."

"I—"

Whatever she was going to say was interrupted by Bradford emerging from behind the double doors. "Sunset, good to see you on your feet. The commander has a mission for Menace, if you can take it."

"I-I just... gah!" Sunset shook her head, ignoring their bemused looks. "I'm fine. Fine. Let's go." She glanced over at Laetitia. "And you… that was mean."

The woman laughed, winking at Sunset and waving as she turned around to leave. "I will see you around, Sunset Shimmer."

"Yeah." Sunset couldn't help but smile. "Yeah, I'll see you around."


o.0.o End Chapter 10 o.0.o