Twilight hurried after the makeshift stretcher, her breathing quick and short, and her eyes wide with worry. The two burly stallions who were carrying Rainbow Dash behind them took a sudden turn, causing the purple Alicorn to stumble slightly but she was soon after them again.
They finally made it to the medical center. Twilight gasped in shock once she saw the state of the building. Walls barely holding, pieces of the roof completely eroded, and vines wrapped around everything. The inside of the center was slightly better. With the floors slightly cleaner and vegetation was lacking considering the outside. The alicorn snapped herself out of her viewings, right now Rainbow needed her.
***
A few moments earlier
"RAINBOW!" Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle rushed forwards to where they heard their pegasus cry out. When they turned the corner, their panic increased tenfold. There on the floor lay a twitching body, fur completely blackened, and the air smelt like burned flesh. Twilight almost thought that Rainbow was dead but then the pegasus groaned weakly.
"Fluttershy! Go find the others! I'll try to find a doctor!" Twilight snapped off the orders and turned her focus back to her friend, not bothering to see if the timid pegasus actually left or not. Careful to not make the situation worse, Twilight slowly wrapped her magic around the burnt body and lifted Rainbow Dash beside her. The alicorn soon set off, wandering the streets asking creatures where the nearest doctor was, all the while casting worried glances at her friend.
Soon enough, after the fifth creature or so, Twilight finally received an answer. Twilight hurried as fast as she dared with the injured pegasus as she wove between creatures and scrap piles, garages and projects. When she arrived at the location, two stallions rushed out with a stretcher to meet them.
***
Twilight sat next to the stretcher off the newly patched up pegasus. Rainbow hadn't uttered a single coherent word since the accident, but she had been mumbling quite a lot. After a careful wash, Rainbow's fur looked less black and some color could be seen, but it was still hard to discern what hue her mane was. Twilight hung her head, cursing her lack of knowledge in Jaegers.
A small knock caught Twilight's attention and she realized that her eyesight was blurry of unshed tears. After wiping her eyes with her fetlocks, she saw Rarity leaning in the doorway.
"Hi darling." Her voice forlorn.
"R...Rarity..." Twilight choked a sob. The white unicorn murmured a comforting sound and trotted up and placed a comforting hoof on her shoulder.
"It's alright darling. Rainbow's going to be fine." Rarity's voice, despite being soft and comforting, there was still a hardness to it that allowed Twilight to hang onto some hope.
"Yepperino!" Pinkie's voice interrupted. Twilight smiled slightly as she watched the pink pony pop into the room from a trash can. "Dashie's too awesome to die!"
Despite the cheerfulness of Pinkie, Twilight couldn't help but flinch from that word. A feathery embrace wrapped around her barrel, startling Twilight. She looked up and saw Fluttershy with similar wet eyes, but the butter pegasus smiled tentatively.
"I...I don't understand...how can you be f...fine with this! Rainbow almost...died!" Twilight stuttered, her speech slurred by tears and grief.
"Darling, we may seem calm and collected, but I assure you that we are anything but." Rarity tilted her head allowing her frazzled mane to tilt to one side and smiled softly. "We have just gotten better at hiding our grief in order to help those who need comfort more. In this particular case, it is you, darling, that we are comforting."
Twilight sniffled, "thank you girls."
***
Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, roamed the streets and alleys of Dodge City. She looked at the various creatures who were working on similarly varied projects. However, whenever she got close to seeing what the thing they were actually working on, her vision would be blocked by some other creature or something else would catch her attention. After the seventh time of being misled, Twilight decided she had enough.
The next creature she would come across, she would interrogate them. It just so happened that they turned out to be Rivets and Bolt from earlier.
"Lookie here, Bolt. Miss Twilight's back, now ain't that a surprise." Rivets, the red earth pony with a purple mane, grinned. The pony next to him, an another earth pony with a lighter red coat and a light blue mane.
"That it would seem, Rivets." The two brothers trotted around the particularly large metal piece and stopped in front of the alicorn, still wearing their self-satisfied grins. "What can we, your most humblest of servants, for you for you, our most esteemed guest?"
Twilight frowned at the vocabulary but didn't mention it. "What is everycreature working here? As regent, I demand to know!" The two brothers cast each other looks that got the alicorn worrying. "Look, I just hate being in the dark. Can you please please please tell me what you guys are doing? I won't report you if that helps?" Twilight pleaded, making her violet eyes go wide.
"Oh, alright." Rivets muttered something incoherent before waving for her to follow. While he did that, Bolt saluted and went back to what he was doing earlier. "Yer lucky you caught me in a fine mood. So, my dear regent, let me take you on a tour of the crib!"
Twilight followed the younger brother as they trotted through the cluttered streets, awe was evident on her face as she beheld each new wonder. According to Rivets, creatures of all over started flocking to Dodge City because of the Jaeger manufacturing factories. Here, using the scraps of broken or unused Jaeger parts, they would build their own metal monsters.
Each creature, no matter their nationality, had similar stories. Stories of woe and tragedy originating from Kaiju. Their shared hatred for the beasts allowed for this community to grow and expand as it has done right now. Because of Rivets, Twilight saw another perspective of creatures and their sufferings. She finally understood why Rarity came here of all places.
"So can I see some of the finished Jaegers? If you have any?" Twilight asked, but before Rivets could answer, her eyes lit up. "Have any of you piloted your Jaegers before? What about fight a Kaiju? Is this considered illegal? Do you get arrested if authorities find out? How many creatures do you have here? What about..."
"Princess!" Rivets yelled, breaking off her rant. Twilight blinked, then blushed slightly. "S'alright to ask questions, but bless me, that tirade nearly wore my ears off! Anyhoo, I'll try to answer some of yer questions." The duo rounded a corner, nearing several warehouses and away from the larger scrap piles. "Aye, we have several finished Jaegers, more then you would normally guess, I assume. Yes, most of the completed and nearly finished have been piloted, but no, we haven't actually fought with them yet."
"Actually, that ain't entirely true, now that I think about it. There was a Earth Pony duo called Cherno ad Alpha, both from Stalliongrad, who participated in a fight many years back. Nocreature is entirely sure what happened to them after that." Rivets fell into silence, lost in thought. Twilight allowed for the silence because it allowed for her to process the new information. Suddenly her guide stopped causing her to stumble off of him.
"Wha..?"
"Ms. Sparkle, I present to you our mighty Jaeger army." Rivets grinned and bowed, his hooves slowly shuffling to one side so he wouldn't obscure the alicorn's view.
Before her lay a marvel. Warehouse doors stood open, some didn't even have walls or doors, and some didn't even have a roof. But all of them contained a Jaeger. Although smaller then the crown-backed ones, they were still impressive in their own right. Twilight walked between the warehouses, her mouth slightly open as she stared in awe. Because of this, she didn't notice the workers also stopped and stared, after all, it isn't everyday you see the Monarch in the gritty parts of Equestria.
Twilight's gaze swooped from on Jaeger to the other. Warehouse #3 had an incredibly shiny unicorn Jaeger, a mounted cannon was on it's back, and the connpod sparkled with dark energies. Several Crystal Ponies caught her eye as she glanced at them. One of them even looked slightly familiar.
Warehouse #8 was another interesting one, holding a Jaeger that contained similar tech to the ones Changelings use for their Jaegers. A horn that split into two sharp points on the connpod gave the suggestion of being a Kirin Jaeger. Her suspicions were confirmed when two buff Kirin walked out of the backrooms with magical metal alloys in their magical grasps.
Twilight was surprised to see two residents of Ponyville in Warehouse #12. Vinyl Scratch and Octavia were blasting their uncharacteristic music for all to hear. What was even more surprising was that the speakers came from a Jaeger that looked like a combination of Earth Pony and Unicorn. Twilight took an hour or more to interrogate the two mares on how they achieved drift compatibility when they were two different species. The short answer, they didn't know. This frustrated the alicorn quite a lot and amused Rivets immensely.
In Warehouse #17, Twilight saw a Jaeger that was piloted by eight different pilots. It was a engineering miracle and Twilight wanted to know how all of it worked. But just like Vinyl and Octavia, none of the pilots, not even the engineers, knew how it worked. They just knew it worked.
Several Warehouses housed more Jaegers of different creatures, from Zebras to Hippogriffs, from the tall Saddle Arabians to the even bigger Dragons. Several Yaks and Changelings were to be found as well. Warehouse #32 even housed a Sphynx, but it was just a Sphynx and not a Sphynx Jaeger. But it was interesting enough for Twilight to sit and talk for several hours. By now, Rivets had excused himself, saying he needed to help his brother. Twilight didn't even notice.
Night had fallen when Twilight finally came back to the medical center, a bright smile on her face as she recalled all the new things she had learned. Of how incredible a community can be if properly motivated. The closer she got to where Rainbow lay, the harder it got to smile, so she let it drop altogether. She made it to the cot within a few moments and saw Fluttershy sleeping nearby. Twilight smiled softly and levitated a blanket over to the yellow pegasus before looking at Rainbow Dash herself. The burn marks were slowly fading, allowing her blue fur and cutie mark to show up more clearly.
Things were looking up, it seems.