Rainbow Dash - 21st of Faust, 1st year of Harmony
749,567.83 A.H.
Sector 3 Terranite Mine - Sananda, Noctae Sector
Sananda’s bluish sun hung low over the horizon, casting long shadows across the valley. Rainbow and Penny had set up a small camp above the entrance to the mineshaft. Rainbow expected they would be setting up some tents and science stuff over a simple hole in a hillside with some timber framing to keep things sturdy. She wasn’t too far off.
The Terranite Mine’s entrance was an airlock set into the side of the hill their camp was on top of. The entrance was truly massive, a train could have driven inside the mine, with room to spare for several carts on either side.
It was in ruins of course. The doors had been torn asunder and the scraps spirited away into the depths of the mine. Industrial floor tiles lay around the entrance, cracked, chipped, and dented. Various oils and chemicals had soaked into the rusty soil, staining it a dark orange color while painting the rocks a bright yellow.
Rainbow had set up Penny’s sensor grid around the entrance, but she couldn’t help but notice the many tracks left behind by the monster lurking below. The ground was covered in scraps and furrows from where things had been pushed into the mine. Each row was accompanied by deep holes made by rounded triangular spikes which had been driven into the ground about as deep as Rainbow’s leg.
Needless to say, the mare was not looking forward to the night’s encounter.
Fortunately, their camp seemed quite safe. Penny had set up shop a hundred meters up the hill above the mine shaft. The beast’s tracks didn’t come up that high, and the hillside offered a good view of the entire mining complex. While Rainbow had set up the sensor grid, Penny had excavated a cabin-sized area of the hillside, braced it with a habitat-kit, and created a well hidden observation post.
While the single window looking out from the observation post was obvious, the door was entirely hidden, and the window had been treated reflect as little light as possible. Given the beast’s apparent movement patterns, it wouldn’t notice the small strip window. In theory, the outpost was safe.
In practice, Penny had used a laser drill to dig an escape tunnel out the back.
Rainbow sat outside the post’s door, using the vertical hanging, dirt and grass covered door as an awning while she watched the sunset. She’d never enjoyed being underground and wanted to enjoy the sunset while she could. The night was going to suck.
Penny was inside the outpost, performing a third set of diagnostics on her sensor array, and her suit’s systems. Everything was checking out, but something kept nagging at the back of Penny’s mind. A little worry that wouldn’t go away.
Rainbow stretched her wings out behind her as she raised her forelegs over her head, debating going for a quick flight. After all, the camera drone hovering in front of her was broadcasting her every move to what Pan said was sixteen million people.
Rainbow glanced up at the drone and smiled. It’s a good thing I’m used to being watched at public events… Poor guys must be pretty bored though. We’re not doing much. Hey, wait a minute!
Rainbow gently tapped the side of her helmet to activate her comm. “Hey, Pan. Can you put the chat on my HUD?”
“You got it.”
A small section of the valley vanished as a textbox flickered into Rainbow’s vision.
FuzzyLittle: Hey! She’s looking at us. Hi, Blue! 😁
Proteamet: Hi!
Maidericol: Notice me, senpai!
RayneLuna: Hello!
ShcamAnn: Hey, Blue, what do you think about the surfboard so far?
Rainbow triple blinked at the mention of a surfboard. “Uh… I don’t know what you guys are talking about, but I did learn to surf when I was a filly,” she said slowly a small curious frown forming on her lips. “Uh, anyways. I’m kinda bored and being underground all night is going to suck. I thought I’d go for a quick flight around the valley. Anyone got any ideas for some stunts I can try out?”
Rainbow smiled into the camera. There. That should get their attention.
Timuri: Wait, those wings aren't vestigial?! 😮
Latestrepe: 😲 Can Blue fast?
FuzzyLittle: #MakeBlueFastAgain
GeniusAbout: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Ash19256: We saw you try to surf the cargo sled, so we’re making you a null-grav surfboard which can go as fast as you’ll ever want! 😄
Mortaxis: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Optickins: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Rainbow slowly shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Make me fast again? Pfff, please!”
Penny looked up from the work table she was squatting behind and snorted. “Oi, blin! Blue, you should show them how fast you are.”
Rainbow stood up and arched her back to stretch more, giving her wings a quick flutter. “Should? Try am! Can your drone keep up?”
Penny paused to think then shrugged, making her armor creak. “I don’t know… It will for a while, but if you do that rainbow thing… I’m not so sure.” Penny brought up the chat with a mental command intent on watching the chaos unfold for herself.
Then it hit her. Penny groaned and slapped a hand to her visor, the deafening clang of metal on metal echoed slightly as it ran across the valley. “Oi, blin! Blue, you need to go for a quick flight. I forgot to make sure we can have the Dawn shoot at the beast if we need too. You need to get the overseer’s permission for space to ground precision fire. Okay?”
Rainbow nodded once. “Okay! Uh, but why can’t we use the radio?”
Penny pointed at the ground with one finger. “It’s close to sundown. When the big bug starts its hunting. If it is invisible to cameras across the whole EM spectrum, it’s adapted to being hunted by things which use EM detection, and radio waves are a common biological sense.”
Rainbow winced. “Wait, so, if we transmit something, then it could hear it?”
“Da. Or maybe feel it. Don’t worry about the stream. Nothing natural can sense tachyon pulses… Before you ask, nyet. The outpost won't be using TCS. Not for ground communication.”
Rainbow hummed. “And you can’t route something through the stream to them?”
“Da, we can. But they can’t talk back without getting in the text chat, and I don’t know the overseer’s screen name. I can’t trust these guys to not be a dick and pretend to be him.”
Rainbow tilted her head. “Uh, why would they do that?”
Optickins: To see Penny vaporize a monster from space with lasers. Duh!
Timuri: The sun is setting right now. There’s no way she can make it there and back before it’s down and they need to close the door.
djthomp: I don’t know, I got a funny feeling that says she can.
FuzzyLittle: You can do it Blue! We believe in you!
“Da,” Penny said with a smile.
Rainbow shook her head slowly as she read the chat and spread her wings. “Okay, be right back.”
Rainbow spread her wings, jumped into the air, and took off like a rocket. The camera drone following her turned to keep her in frame then rushed after the cyan mare, turning its thrusters to full to keep pace as Dash accelerated more and more.
The hillside vanished behind Rainbow in mere seconds. The wind rushing past her head flattened her ears. She tucked her legs in to streamline herself, pushing herself faster and faster by the second.
The chat watched in awe as Rainbow began to grow smaller and smaller in the video feed. Her camera drone was built to follow alongside an air car, easily capable of moving at hundred of kilometers per hour. The pony was easily outrunning some of the fastest machines a civilian could buy.
Latestrepe: Woah! Blue can fast! Look at her go.
Ash19256: Looks like we can drop the need for drag-reduction fields. How are you doing that?!
Timuri: That’s awesome! Still don’t think she can make it though.
Rainbow smirked, the wind rushing past her head making her lips pull back. Is that a challenge, Timuri?
Rainbow angled her wings, pulled her legs even more tightly against herself, and gave it her all. Within milliseconds she felt the air around her stiffen as a mach cone formed around her. She pushed harder, and harder, then, with a loud bang and a visible flash of prismatic light, Rainbow vanished from the camera’s field of view, leaving the chat to watch the starburst and rainbow streak of a sonic rainboom.
The chat exploded.
Mocanser: WTF?! LOL!
Reportsig: #BlueIsFast!
Flummox: Did she just break the light barrier?!
Bytechrodu: #BlueIsFast!
Latestrepe: #BlueIsFast!
Proteamet: Holy shit!
Bliconal: #BlueIsFast!
Pellmell: By the suns of Torvan! #BlueIsFast!
Pettifogger: #BlueIsFast!
Sprinkles: #BlueIsFast!
FuzzyLittle: Okay, fuck it, I’m getting whatever transformatives I need to be a flappy pone too! 😍
Usufruct: #BlueIsFast!
Fishwife: #BlueIsFast!
FourHappy: How many calories is she burning?! 😲 What does she eat?!?
RayneLuna: #BlueIsFast!
Flunkgonfly16: #BlueIsFast!
Maidericol: #BlueIsFast!
Wallflower: Blue, if I join Four in being a flappy pone, can you teach me to fast?
Cornucopia: #BlueIsFast!
Magnificent: New hashtag time, guys. #CanWeFastToo?
Pussyfoot: seconded! #CanWeFastToo?
Beanneng: I’m with you, Fuzzy. I wanna fast too!
Timuri: I stand corrected! #BlueIsFast!
Chatterbox: #BlueIsFast!
Optickins: #CanWeFastToo?
Ash19256: I… I think she just went faster than the board theoretically can. 10/10!
Railistr: #CanWeFastToo?
Mortaxis: #CanWeFastToo?
Islandclic: #BlueIsFast!
ConspiracyTeenz: #BlueIsFast!
djthomp: #BlueIsFast!
Rainbow was unable to read the chat. The mining center came up way too fast for her to spare a single second. Rainbow flared her wings and twisted her body, managing to slow herself down just enough to thud hoof-first into the airlock with enough force to send a painful jolt up her legs.
Ignoring the minor ache, Rainbow flapped her wings to gracefully flip herself over and plop onto the concrete entryway in front of the doors. She trotted up to what was clearly an intercom panel and while trying to press the one marked ‘front office’ accidentally mashed everything on the keypad.
A heartbeat later, and the intercom opened a comm channel with Rainbow’s armor and a sexless mechanical voice spoke to her. “Oh, it’s you. No wonder everything got pressed. How— How do you even hold things?”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. That stupid question again? Even in space… “With my hooves. Duh!”
The voice sighed. “Do you need something? Is everything alright? We’re in lockdown here.”
“Penny wants to know if we can take a shot at the monster with her ship if we have too.”
“I’d rather you not. There’s too many drones flying around for even modern targeting sensors to find a clear line of attack. Her ship is what, a thousand years old?”
Rainbow shrugged her wings. “Something like that… Thanks. I’ll let her know. Oh! Uh, can we do it as a last resort?”
The voice was silent for several seconds. “No. If we need to kill it from orbit, we’ll use our shi—”
The voice was cut off by another more faint voice in the background. “Sir! I can see it. Kalvil was right, it’s not invisible to the naked eye.”
“What?! Bullshit! It doesn't show up on camera. How can you see it with your binoculars?”
“These are analogue ones, sir.”
“No, I mean— It should be invisible on those wavelengths!”
Rainbow winced as her comm hissed in her ear. “Rainbow, it’s Pan. Penny has the scans. She needs help right now. Get back right now!”
Rainbow turned around, sprinted across the steps and took to the air once more. It was go time.
Okay, Rainbow. There’s a big evil monster thing. Penny will have the data she wants when you get back. She needs my help. There’s only one thing I can do to something that big.
The mare angled upwards and climbed as high as she dared go. The alien atmosphere was much thinner and shallower than Equus’, and far more dry. Rainbow frowned as she circled over the command center, searching for even a hint of a cloud. There wasn’t any to be had.
Rainbow grit her teeth and took a deep breath. Guess I’ll make my own.
The mare narrowed her circles, speeding up with each loop all the while focusing her magic into her left wing. Her feathers dragged through the dry air, stripping what little moisture she could from the sky.
The camera drone caught up to Rainbow right as the mare’s wing began to trail wisps of cloud. The chat had ten seconds to wonder how in the void, spinning in a circle would help Penny. Then, it was finished.
Rainbow reached over to her wing and slipped the cloud from her feathers with one hoof, split it in half, and wrapped the halves around her forehooves.
Millions of people across the galaxy demanded explanations on how exactly someone could just grab a bunch of water vapor with a hoof.
Pan’s voice crackled in Rainbow’s ear. “Dash! Hurry! The thing smelled where Penny is or something. It’s headed right for her!”
Rainbow nodded and narrowed her eyes to focus on the distant mineshaft. “On it!”
Rainbow flapped her wings as hard as she dared. She couldn’t risk going supersonic now that she was carrying her cloud. If she lost it, she would have to make another, and that would mean around a minute of work in the much dryer air above the mine.
The command center’s heat helped condense moisture near it. I won't have a chance at getting anything near Penny. That place was a desert!
Rainbow shot across the sky, the mineshaft growing ever larger. Her ears perked despite the wind blowing them down. She could hear something. Something loud, something—
A terrifying, horrendous, mechanical screech shook the air. The sound invoked the image of a cat being fed into a blender while young foals screamed in horror as some sinister force compelled them to watch the poor animals demise.
Rainbow yelped, nearly wetting herself in fright as the beast’s roar sent icepicks of fear straight into her heart. She pushed the fear aside and raced forward, her eyes quickly finding the source of the noise.
Rainbow’s eyes widened in terror as she saw the monster. It was easily thirty meters long, and six wide. It stood on at least a hundred large spear-like legs, invoking the image of centaur like monstrosity with a centipede for a body, and a shark-headed dragon’s upper body for a head.
Dash caught a flash of yellow and focused on it. The monster had plunged one of its bulging taloned arms into the observation post and plucked Penny out like a chip from an open bag. Fire and smoke belched forth form Penny’s shoulder mounted rocket pods. Her arms pulled and pulled against the beasts grasp while her suit’s integrated lasers sliced at it’s armored hide, all to no avail. Her legs were braced against the beast’s jaws, jamming them open for the time being.
It looked like a living, breathing being, but was made from metal. It’s bright silver hide moved as if it were made from mercury, even rippling as Penny’s micro-rockets skipped off its impenetrable silver armor while her laser beams reflected off its mirror-like hide.
Rainbow’s ears flattened as horror made her freeze completely. Only instinct kept Rainbow from plummeting out of the sky. The monster before her was something from her nightmare’s nightmares. The way it moved, as if it was alive. The way it sounded, as if inside its armored hide were something truly grotesque. The way Penny’s T-34 in all it’s technological glory and might, was only managing to annoy it.
Rainbow’s comm crackled, snapping her out of her terrified stupor. Penny’s labored voice filled Rainbow’s ears. “Blue! Blue shoot it! Get the EMP rounds loaded and shoot it! It’s not an animal! Shoot it now!”
Rainbow shook her head to try and clear out the rest of her terror. “I— I’m—”
Rainbow watched as the monster’s metallic fangs began to glow. The heated teeth began to bite into the T-34’s compressed alloy plating. Penny wouldn’t last much longer in the beast’s jaws.
What can I do? Rainbow wondered to herself as the camera drone following her managed to pull up next to her once more.
“Chert voz'mi! My suit can’t take this much longer! It’s going to kill me, cyka! ” Penny snapped.
Rainbow’s eyes narrowed as her courage returned. The only thing I can do.
Rainbow took a deep breath and flew up while moving towards the monster. Her wings began to burn as she focused every drop of magic not spent on her flight into the clouds on her hooves. The fluffy white strands began to dim, turning gray, then black.
Thousands of hours of trade school and work experience rushed through Rainbow’s mind as she broke every single rule in the Thunder Storms section of the Occupational Safety Hazard Association’s rulebooks and charged her cloud's past 3.6 Hurricanes.
Rainbow bit her lip as her hooves began to burn. Not even a pegasi’s electrical resistance could completely shield her from what she was doing. “Negative charge… Air to ground… Four point three Hurricanes…”
Penny squirmed in the beast’s mouth, ripping her left leg free and kicking the beast’s nose with as much force as she could muster. Twenty hand-sized shark-like fangs flew out from the monster’s four rows of teeth is penny’s armored foot slammed into them.
It screamed in rage. Not pain. Not even one single drop of pain. Only rage.
The hideous sound made Rainbow loose track of her cloud’s charge. The two void-black clouds sparked and cracked as the electrical arcs crackling around them shifted from blue to white. Rainbow hissed as the voltage finally began to do more than itch and burn. She could feel the electricity starting to cook her skin.
Okay, so this armor is very conducive. Good to know.
“Penny!” Rainbow yelled into her comm. “How much of a shock can your suit take?”
Penny kicked out at the monster once more. This time her foot connected squarely with its nose, creating a ringing much like a power hammer striking its anvil.
“Been hit by lightning. Was fine. Why?”
Rainbow grit her teeth against the burning. “I’m going to try to fry this thing!”
Rainbow clapped her hooves together, and her cloud exploded. A thunderclap rang out, shaking the ground beneath Rainbow almost as much as the violent movements of the monster below. The camera drone’s feed whited out as the pegasi-generated bolt of lightning exploded form Rainbow’s hooves and followed the path she willed it to travel.
The white hot ribbon of plasma streaked through the sky, making the alien atmosphere glow purple as it burned the air on the way down. The bolt connected with the monster’s silver hide, and the beast’s screech made Rainbow wish she was deaf.
The lightning bolt scorched a hole through the living metal skin, causing a huge patch of the armored hide to explode, flying off the thing in globs as if a piano had been dropped into a pool of mercury.
Lightning danced around the hole blasted into the creature’s lower back, the loud pops of frying electronics went unheard over the monster’s screeches. The plume of blue smoke, on the other hoof, did not.
The metallic horror dropped Penny to the ground and wheeled around to face the entity that dared wound it. Rainbow gulped as the biomechanical monster’s black, dead eyes locked onto her. Despite their lack of a pupal, she knew the dead orbs were looking at her. Even worse, the things screams were not screams of pain.
It was still only angry.
Penny hit the ground and rolled to her feet. Her armor’s HUD shrieked at her, warming her of over a dozen different minor points of damage. Her suit shook as she stood up each leg’s servos and hydraulics working at bairly sixty percent power after keeping the thing’s mouth open.
Penny looked out through her suit’s visor. The monster had taken her completely by surprise thanks to her using her sensors instead of the clear visor normally hidden behind her hood’s blast-shield. Now that her foe wasn’t invisible, it didn’t have surprise on its side, and was distracted, the Chernin hunter could plan.
Rainbow yelped as the mechanical monster lunged for her. The massive metallic beast shouldn’t have been able to jump nearly twice its height, and yet it did. Rainbow’s wings buzzed like a saw, carrying her just barely out of reach of the thing’s snapping maw.
The monster slammed back into the ground, the impact knocking Penny off her feet. She climbed back up, reaching up to her pauldron to draw her sword, believing that perhaps a micro-edge vibroblade could do what AP rockets couldn’t.
Then the hole Rainbow had made in the monster’s armor came into view.
Penny’s eyes locked onto the hole in the monster’s back. Rainbow had managed to hit it just behind where the upper body connected to the centipede section. Blue smoke still billowed up from the wound, which was now starting to ooze yellow coolant.
Penny checked her suit’s weapon systems. She had ten rockets left, and another twenty seconds of laser cutters. Hardly ideal, but it would have to do.
“Blue! Keep him distracted. Shoot that lightning gun at him again. Hit the face!”
Rainbow nodded as the orders came over the radio. She smiled shakily at the monster and let herself drop down again, hoping it would jump for her. Just in case, she decided to try taunting it.
“What’s the matter, shark-bug? Can’t catch one little po—”
The monster jumped again. The beast twisted in the air, one of it’s two taloned hands stretching out as it twisted and writhed, stretching out just far enough to snag Rainbow with the tips of its pony-length claws.
Rainbow’s armor crackled and hissed as sparks flew from its internal force fields. The monster’s very touch was siphoning power away from the shields while an unseen force physically peeled them apart like a child unraveling a sweater.
Rainbow’s conscious mind vanished in a sea of desperate swearing, flailing, and instinctive magical surges. The depleted atmosphere bent and warped as pegasi magic summoned a blizzard mixed with a thunderstorm.
The air temperature dropped to near zero, covering the monster’s overly fanged maw with tiny flecks of frost as what little water in the alien air froze instantly. Yellow and blue bolts of minor lightning blasted from the small clouds around Rainbow’s hooves. The bolts ripped into the monsters talons, peeling away it’s alien armor, blob by blob. But she was unable to do anything approaching her overcharged bolt’s damage.
Penny swore under her breath as she pulled herself back to her feet yet again. As she stood upright, Rainbow’s peril came into view, and Penny knew what she had to do.
The Chernin woman jumped, ignoring her T-34’s servos protests as she landed on the monster's back. The beast turned, wondering what had dared attack it while it dealt with the tiny nuisance in its grasp. Penny focused her mind, locked onto the gaping hole in the monster’s armor, and fired all of her remaining rockets.
Ten AP rounds flew from her shoulders on columns of fire, each of them arcing through the air as they made their way for the marked opening. As if it sensed the danger, the monster twisted its back to move the hole away from the attack.
The rocket’s guidance systems didn't care. They shot past their target, turned around in a sharp hook, and plunged straight into the pony-made chink in the beast’s armor. Flashes of fire peppered the large hole while several systems exploded as depleted uranium penetrator cores smashed crystal, perforated graphene, and tore through silicone.
The monster shrieked, and its talons convulsed. Its claws punctured Rainbow’s armor as if the plates were mere paper, and sliced into Rainbow’s rear legs, dragging some of its own living metal armor into the wounds.
As Rainbow screamed in pain, Penny ran along the monster's back, her sword held in both hands. She reached the open wound in a mere three strides, flipped the blade around, and plunged the full length of her sword into the monster's body.
The beast shook, thrashing and writhing as the blade was wrenched free, only to plunge home again and again, following the paths the penetrator cores smashed through the monster and cutting more and more deeply into the monster’s systems.
The beast dropped Rainbow and turned to try and swat the armored Chernin off it’s back. Rainbow was having none of that. The mare forced her way through the sea of pain and delirious gripping her mind, opened her wings, caught herself as she fell, then flew back towards the monster. Her left hoof drew back as she approached it’s left eye, her cloud crackling yellow as her magic charged the cloud once more.
Then she let her hoof fly.
The thundercloud exploded against the monster’s eye. While only a fraction as powerful as her first blast, the lightning raced through the metallic monster, melting, fusing, and burning hundreds of subsystems as the bolt raced through the monster's secondary circuitry, straight into Penny’s sword.
The sword plunged forward, bridging the outer and inner layers of hardware right as Rainbow’s lightning reached the base of the beast’s upper body. The electricity flowed along the blade, burning out its power systems and melting its molecular edge, but racing straight into the silver monster’s main power relay.
A flash of purple fire explode outwards from the gap in the beast’s armor, charing Penny’s armor. The beast froze in place, it’s joints creaked and groaned as inertial dampeners powered down, the molten slag of the relay dripped down inside the beast, shorting out more and more systems until with one long slow groan of stressed machinery, the rampaging horror stopped still, at last looking as dead as it had always been.
Rainbow laughed nervously and slowly turned around, flying away from the destroyed monster before landing on her now quivering legs, then collapsing to her belly, still laughing nervously.
Penny pulled on her sword. The blade refused to budge, the power serge having welded it into the monster’s body. She let go and climbed off the corpse, slowly backing away from the monster until she reached Rainbow’s position.
“I don’t think it’s dead,” the Chernin confided.
Rainbow nodded. “It’s so not… We just like, knocked it out, didn't we?”
Penny nodded once. “Da… My suit’s servos are shot… It’s saying my spleen burst… I might have a concussion too… Cyka! This thing is above my weight class. I need it to not exist. Help me carry my flight pack to it.”
Rainbow looked up at Penny, her entire body twitching with adrenaline. “Why?”
“It’s nuclear powered. We’re going to blow the fusion cell and slag this… Thing.”
Rainbow knew that was a terrible idea. In every other circumstance known to mortal kind. But here? Here is was barely sufficient.
“Okay.”
The two limped their way into the destroyed observation post. The two worked without words, running poorly on adrenaline and terror. After a few minutes spent moving chunks of earth and rock aside, the T-34’s flight pack was pulled out from the rubble and dragged over to the unmoving monster.
After constructing an earthen ramp to push the flight pack up onto the monster’s back, the two wedged it into the hole in its armor. The moment the pack was as deep in the hole as it could be, penny simply ripped the case off, bypassed the safeties and set the core to overheat.
While the Chernin worked, Rainbow used a welding laser from the tool kit to fuse the pack to the monster’s internal machinery. If it came back to life, it wouldn’t get the improvised nuke off it’s back.
The two finished working as quickly as they could. The moment the improvised explosive was set, Penny picked Rainbow up, put her on her shoulder and limped down the hill, moving as fast as her protesting servos would allow.
Rainbow clung to the armored suit as tightly as she could. Her hind legs burned like they were on fire, and her forehooves had something similar going on, but she couldn’t tell if it was less severe, or if she’d lost too many nerve endings to tell. Rainbow looked over her shoulder at the frozen monster and winced. “S— so uh… We kinda sorta have had a few ponies dabble with non-magical power systems. Don’t nuclear batteries not really explode? They just scatter radiation around, right? Will that mess up it’s computer parts?”
Penny laughed nervously. “Nyet… Nyet… Is fusion power core. Not fission. When it overheats, control systems fail… Runaway fusion reaction. All the fuel goes up at once. Not all fusion packs do that. Just ours. The Chernin made ones… It’s not because they are bad. It’s because… Moments like this…”
Rainbow winced, Penny's voice was not just trembling, it also cracked and squeaked. The woman was terrified out of her mind.
“Uh, we’ll be out of the blast, right?”
Penny nodded. “Da. Da… We are now… Don't look back.”
Rainbow decided to close her eyes. “Is your job always like this?”
Penny laughed and stumbled as her suit didn't quite register her neural commands correctly. “Yebat' net!”
“That didn’t translate.”
Penny sat down and gently picked Rainbow up and set her down in her lap to protect her from the pending shrapnel. “Nyet… I… This was… This armor is made for war. Against biological things. Against light mechs. That was… I don’t know!”
Rainbow shivered. “That was… That was a demon.”
“Maybe,” Penny agreed with a slight nod of her head.
The fusion core detonated. A brilliant light washed out everything for several long seconds. A deafening WOOOM! accompanied the light.
Rainbow spared a moment to look up the hill. A large chunk of the hill was gone, replaced by a crater filled with a pool of molten metal and scattered chunks of metal demon. Her ears finally relaxed. “It’s dead now.”
Penny sighed in relief. “Good.”
Rainbow took a deep breath. “You saved my life.”
Penny laughed nervously. “You saved mine! I’m not trained to fight… Things like that. Nothing I’ve ever gone after could bite through my armor… There are holes in my leg!”
Rainbow looked down at Penny’s legs and winced as she saw holes melted through the plate in a bite pattern. Oh man I can see the wires and stuff… If it bit me it would have cut me right in half!
“This suit… It’s enough to protect me from everything I’ve ever gone after. Few animals can really put me in danger in here. That thing did… It almost ate me. If you hadn’t…” Penny gently hugged Rainbow to her chest and looked down at the little pony through her visor’s narrow slit. “Rainbow, you are my blood-sister now. Da?”
Rainbow rustled her wings. “Heh… Yeah. Why not? You saved me too. That was… That was the worst thing I’ve ever been in. And I helped fight an angry goddess once.”
Penny sighed as a horrible realization came over her. “Think you can save me again tonight?”
Rainbow frowned, her wings flaring in alarm. “No.”
Penny raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“My legs are on fire. I think they are cut real bad. I need medical help, NOW.”
“Ah! No problem,” Penny said as she reached down to her suit’s left leg and popped open a storage compartment. “Pick out the big green needle and jab it in somewhere. I made stimpacks for ponies before we came down here. I told you I brought medical supplies, da?”
“Nyet,” Rainbow replied as she fished out the appropriate needle.
It was large, easily six centimeters long, and held what looked like two shot glasses of bright green liquid. Rainbow winced, turned around, and jabbed the needle into herself through one of the claw marks in her armor.
Rainbow frowned as no pain came from the needle plunging into her flesh. “Huh… That should have hurt.”
Penny winced. “Ooo… Dead nerves. You need that.”
Rainbow nodded and pushed the plunger down, injecting the stimpack into her left thigh then pulling the needle out, putting it back into Penny’s armor, and closing the compartment.
They sat quietly for a few moments. Just letting the shock wear off. Rainbow’s squeak of irritation was the first thing to break the silence.
Penny turned to look at Rainbow. “Ey?”
“It put my legs to sleep,” rainbow admitted.
Penny laughed. “Da… They do that… So, that lightning… How did you do that?”
“Pegasi can control the weather around us. I made a thunder cloud. I was Ponyville’s weather team leader. Blizzards are my specialty but I’ve always been good at lightning.”
Penny nodded once. “Lucky me… Can you make a new cloud?”
Rainbow moaned and resisted the urge to look around herself.. “Oh, Luna… There’s another one of them, isn’t there?”
“Nyet,” Penny sighed. “We did half the job. We need to check the place the demon mecha came from. Make sure it’s safe down there now.”
Rainbow whimpered and looked up at Penny with pleading eyes. “D— Do we have—”
“Da. We do. Is job,” Penny said in a hollow voice.
Rainbow sighed and opened her wings slowly. “Okay. I’ll make another cloud.”
Penny gently reached out and pushed Rainbow's wings against her sides. “In minute… I definitely have a concussion. I’ll need… Ey, fifteen minutes? Should be healed by then.”
Rainbow sighed in relief and curled up in Penny’s lap, happy to have something huge and metal between her and where the monster’s corpse was. Consciously, she knew it was dead. Subconsciously, she expected the thing to reform like a Timberwolf and eat her.
“Yeah… Yeah a break would be good,” Rainbow agreed with a happy twitch of her tail.
The two sat in silence again, simply letting time fly by as they rested wordlessly, completely unaware of how completely insane the chat was going, and how viral the fight’s video clip had become.
Their enjoyable silence was shattered as both their comms lit up with an incoming message, the text filling their HUD.
Incoming call from: Slavyaninkorol' Borris
Rainbow eeped , jumping slightly as the pop-up and melodic ringtone startled her. “Eeep! Who the heck is that?”
Penny sputtered and immediately accepted the call. “Anno, papa. How are you?”
Rainbow blinked once and with some curiosity accepted the call. Her ears were immediately assaulted by a combination of sounds which her brain was barely able to decode as a mixture of hardbass and folk music, faint weapons fire, and the hum-thud of a chernin mech suit.
Rainbow’s face scrunched up as she tried to work out why all of those sounds could come together, then a surprisingly normal, though heavily accented man’s voice began to speak. “Opa! Penni, make Blue pick up her comm.”
Rainbow cleared her throat. “H— Hello. I’m here. My name’s Rainbow, though.”
“Nyet!” Penny’s dad declared. “Is Blue. Nice to meet you.”
Rainbow sighed as she realized that’s how she would be known to everyone in the galaxy.
Penny frowned and closed her eyes to listen better, desperately wishing the call had included video feed. “Papa? It sound like you’re in the pelmeninator and shooting handguns out of the cockpit. What are you doing?”
Rainbow’s tail stood up in alarm. “Wait, he’s doing what?”
The distinct sound of a building exploding and then collapsing into a rubble pile made Dash wince. “Ah, is nothing to worry about, girls! Cousin Anatoli got himself kidnapped again. I’m picking him up to take him home. Sorry for noise. Let me adjust the mic gain.”
Rainbow looked up through Penny’s view slit into her eyes and quietly whispered. “Is your dad crazy?”
The Chernin man laughed at Rainbow’s ‘joke’. “No, is only Borris.”
Penny shrugged. “He does this sort of thing a lot… Uh, not call I mean. It’s been what, seventy years?”
“Ey, my little girl wants space, she gets space! It would be nice if she wanted to visit more but, she’s not so little anymore and can do what she— Opa! That’s where you were hiding, ey?”
Penny’s father went silent for several long moments. Despite the mic tweaks, Rainbow still heard several quiet explosions, and what sounded like a large handgun being fired every few moments.
He’s on the phone while rescuing a hostage… Penny’s dad is either insane, or insanely good… Or whoever he’s fighting sucks on toast.
“So! About why I called,” he resumed after a short silence. “Are you girls okay?”
“Da, papa,” Penny said, nodding to herself. “Wait, you know I called Blue my— You watch my stream?!”
“Why the blyat would I not watch my little girl’s stream?” Borris demanded, genuine hurt in his words. “If course I watch! My little girl is a great hunter. She makes me a proud papa! But, when I see her nearly get eaten by… Some kind of, eh... Centi-shark? Well I get worried. I noticed you two got a little chewed up. Ey… Literally. What papa wouldn’t call and see if his little girl needed some supplies dropped for her?”
Penny winced. “Oh… Yeah. That was all broadcasted.”
Rainbow winced. “Might have been a bit scary for TV. We won't get fined will we?”
Borris laughed. It was a hearty sound, the kind of laugh that brings a smile to anyone’s face. “Nyet! Nyet! I know you two have more work to do, so I wont keep you long. Penny, Blue, I’m sending you money. Penny, buy gas. No buts. Just do it!
“Blue, buy you and your other poni friend really good radiation suits. You are going to come over for dinner after you finish playing, okay? You save my little girl’s life, I cook you meal fit for ten kings! Maybe help you with better armor too, ey?”
Penny winced. She hadn’t been back home in forever. The idea of going home didn’t sit well with her, but she knew if she didn’t bring Rainbow to Chern, her papa would bring as much of Chern to her as possible.
“Okay, papa,” Penny said with a resigned sigh. “We’ll see you soon. Tell mama Blue loves tarki plov.”
Rainbow’s eyes lit up at the mere mention of the single best thing in the universe. “Mmmm… And it won’t be cooked by someone who never made it before!”
On the other side of the connection, Borris could hear the drool and ecstasy in the pegasus’s voice, and smiled. “Oi, blin! Sounds like I’ll have to cook it. You know mine is better. I’ll see you girls soon! Is not everyday you get new daughter, especially not a cute blue furry one who can cook monsters a hundred times her size. You’ll fit right in with our family, Blue! See you soon.”
The comms went dead. Rainbow looked up at Penny and smiled, then flopped down in her lap exhausted. “Let’s sit here for like… At least another fifteen minutes.”
Penny nodded, groaning at the thought of going back home, and the sudden knowlege that her father watched every one of her episodes. “Da… Vodka?”
Rainbow didn't even blink as Penny produced a bottle of vodka from one of her suit’s compartments. Instead she nodded. “Da.”