Day 9 part 3
“So how did your day go Cassie?” Ethan asked as they sat around his house, Dogmeat was contentedly panting next to Ethan, his tail wagging back and forth slowly.
“I accomplished absolutely nothing. I checked Arefu, Big Town, and the people we set up in Paradise Falls, but I didn’t find any evidence of Legion activity.” Cassandra replied with a frown.
“Could your source have lied?” Twilight asked.
“People don’t lie when their feet have been cut off.” Cassandra answered simply, causing Twilight’s eye to twitch. It was easy to forget that the woman could be a cold blooded killer when she needed to be. “So how was your day?”
“Well Sparky almost died of radpoisoning, and her brother almost killed Dave out of frustration, but other than that I feel like I wasted the day.” Ethan replied with a shrug.
“I have the same feeling now that you mention it.” Cassandra replied dryly.
***
“Are you sure that this was the best possible move that we could’ve made sir? Not to question your leadership abilities, but this seems a bit drastic.” Burke asked uncertainly as he looked at the moaning bodies of the former members of Tenpenny Tower, who were currently bound up by their arms, spread eagle on crosses.
“Alea iacta est, the die is cast Frumentarii, what happens from now on is in the hands of the fates.” Octavian replied with a grim smile.
“As you wish my lord, is there anything else you require of me?” Burke asked.
“See to the prisoners; make sure that none have escaped while we have been otherwise occupied.” Octavian told Burke, who nodded and left without a word. He wasn’t uncomfortable with the proceedings. After all, he hated most if not all of the people in the tower; however he believed that Legate Octavian was bringing things to a head far too quickly. With a shake of his head Burke continued walking.
He nodded to two legionnaires as he entered the main room of Tenpenny Tower, before making his way to the basement. There he found two more legionnaires watching over the crowd of slaves.
“Have any been disruptive?” Burke asked the legionary on the right.
“No Frumentarii, they appear to be in too deep of despair to cause any sort of trouble.” The legionary replied with a shrug.
“Thank you.” Burke said, before his eyes ran over the prisoners before him. Burke’s eyes narrowed and his eyebrows came together as he surveyed the unlucky lot with growing frustration. There should’ve been twenty; but Burke kept coming up one short…
***
“Something just doesn’t add up.” Veronica told Arcade as the two of them sat together at the bar.
“What do you mean?” Arcade asked with a frown.
“I mean there’s no way that a woman like Dusk described could’ve come into or out of that bar without me noticing.” Veronica said, her frown deepening.
“Why not, are you magically aware of all attractive women now or something?” Arcade asked dryly.
“How many attractive men are there in here?” Veronica asked, suddenly changing subjects.
“Eight, no offense to Gob but I don’t like ghouls.” Arcade answered immediately.
“Do you seem my point?” Veronica asked.
“Now that you mention it, yeah, I do.” He replied after a minute of thinking things over.
“So now we’re left with one question. Who in the hell gave Dusk that bullet?” Veronica said, before taking a gulp of her Nuka Cola.
“You know, I’m just making a guess here and I could be completely wrong, but I think this may be one of those things that we really don’t want to worry about.” Arcade said with a sigh as he tiredly ran his hand through his blonde hair.
“What do you mean?” Veronica asked.
“I mean this seems like one of those things that if we get directly involved in we’re going to end up with nothing to show for it except a headache and a very serious case of frustration.” Arcade replied with a shrug. “In other words, let Ethan and Cassandra deal with it. Trust me, it’ll save us a lot of pain in the long run.” He added.
“This is like the time that you told me not to have sex with Cass isn’t it?” Veronica asked the Ex-Enclave.
“Yep.” Arcade replied.
“We live in one wild wasteland don’t we?”
***
Wadsworth was still awake. Of course he was awake, he was a robot… above him he heard the telltale signs of Ethan and Cassandra connecting on a physical level, that is to say that they were having mind-blowingly good sex.
Wadsworth snorted to himself at the image (a remarkably un-robotic sound to say the least) and continued his musing about taking over the world. Truthfully it was a pastime to keep himself from going insane from boredom, because honestly what would he do when he had succeeded? Despite his upgrades and his added intelligence he was still essentially a butler, and what would a butler do as ruler of the world?
He sometimes supposed that he would at the very least make it a much tidier place. Then of course he would think of all the work that that would require and his brain would tell him that his mechanical life could only be extended for another hundred or so years. When he added that to the fact that humans seemed to destroy everything that they touched without the proper supervision he decided that taking over the world would be an ultimately pointless exercise.
A particularly loud moan was interrupted by a loud banging coming from the door to the house. Wadsworth floated over to it and opened the door with every modicum of butlery grace. He was confronted by a slightly surprising sight. Herbert Daring Dashwood stood next to Lucas Sims with a desperate look in his eyes.
“A lovely evening to you two gentlemen, how may I be of assistance?” Wadsworth asked politely.
“We need to talk to Ethan immediately.” Sims said simply.
“Master Ethan is somewhat preoccupied, but don’t let that stop you.” Wadsworth said gesturing towards Ethan’s door.
Sims and Dashwood nodded and walked up the stairs before pushing the door open. Lucas’s mouth went wide while Dashwood merely began to chuckle good-naturedly. Cassandra was currently on top of Ethan in a very compromising position; she was also holding a very intimidating ranger sequoia in her right hand that was aimed directly at Sims’s heart. Ethan had also drawn his novasurge, which was pointed at Dashwood.
“Did your mothers never teach you to knock?” Cassandra asked with an annoyed frown before she tucked her pistol back into the recesses of the bed sheets.
“Your butler said that you were somewhat preoccupied, I thought he meant with sleeping.” Sims replied, with a slight flush creeping across his dark features.
“Way to go Ethan, I always knew you had it in you to bag a cutie!” Dashwood enthused, his old face grinning widely.
“Dashwood, what’re you doing here?” Ethan asked as Cassandra moved off of him and began to quickly put on her armor. Dashwood’s expression quickly darkened.
“Tenpenny tower’s been taken over by the Legion; they killed a good chunk of the population and are holding the rest of them as slaves down in the basement.” Dashwood said with a deep frown.
“Fuck!” Ethan exclaimed.
“How did you get away?” Cassandra asked as she pulled her duster on over her armor.
“There’s doorway in the basement and I managed to get through it when they were changing guards.” Dashwood replied. “If I was twenty years younger, I could’ve taken those Latin spewing bastards but…” Dashwood added, trailing off sadly with a defeated shrug of his shoulders.
“Don’t worry, we’ll kill them all. You have my word Mr. Dashwood.” Cassandra said, walking over to him and giving the old man a comforting pat on the shoulders before she went downstairs to collect a few weapons.
“You’ve got yourself quite a girl there son.” Dashwood said, giving Ethan a wink.
“Thanks.” Ethan replied as he stood up naked.
Twilight picked that exact moment to walk up the stairs with the intention of talking to Ethan about ways to help her brother. She was hit by a sudden wave of shock as she looked at Ethan’s (let’s call it a member, less negative context that way…)
“You okay Sparky?” Ethan asked with a grin as he began to pull on a pair of boxers.
“I’m trying to figure out how you avoid falling forward when you walk.” Twilight told him once she’d recovered her speaking facilities.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that I’m hung like a horse!” Ethan told her with a grin. Twilight’s organic eye twitched before she facehoofed.
“Just put some damn clothes on!” Sims nearly shouted. This wasn’t the first time that he’d seen Ethan naked. In fact, he still had a rather disturbing memory of Ethan running through town completely naked, being chased by several equally naked mercenary women. But that didn’t mean that the sheriff enjoyed the sight either.
“What, and deny the world a view of perfection?” Ethan asked with a joking grin as he pulled on his armored pants.
“Ethan, hurry up, we need to plan.” Cassandra told him, rolling her eyes as she came back into the room.
“Alright, let’s do this.”
***
“Auntie, may I come in?” Cadence asked from the other side of the door to Celestia’s room, causing Celestia to look up from her from her latest book, The Immortal Game. It was an interesting take on the alicorn origin story and Celestia had to say that the author certainly knew how to write a good action scene.
“Of course Cadence, come right in.” Celestia replied with a tiny smile. The pink alicorn came into the room looking slightly nervous and very worried. “Is everything alright dear? You look a little off.” Celestia asked.
“I’m fine personally, but I’m very worried about Shining and Twilight.” Cadence replied.
“Oh yes, Luna told me that you saw him today, something about a bootie call.” Celestia said with a smirk.
“It was nothing of the sort, and I wish Auntie Luna would stop making those types of insinuations.” Cadence said with a very put out look on her face, and Celestia had to stop herself from unleashing a very undignified fit of giggles at it.
“She can’t help it dear; she’s the goddess of sex.” Celestia told her niece with a shrug
“No she isn’t, she’s the goddess of the night, that doesn’t automatically mean sex!” Cadence shot back.
“Dear, she’s immortal. She can be the goddess of bats if she wants to be and no mortal could stop her; not that I think that that would be a good thing for her image. Then again she did look amazing in that Batmare costume last year at Nightmare Night, so it might be a good look for her.” Celestia told her with a shrug.
“Auntie, that’s not at all what I wanted to talk about.” Cadence told Celestia with an annoyed glance.
“Sorry dear, when you’re as old as I am you become easily distracted.” Celestia said with a grin, which caused Cadence to sigh tiredly.
“Anyways, Shining looks really, really bad, almost as bad as he looked after the wedding.” Cadence told her aunt, forging on and ignoring her Celestia’s attempts to change the subject.
“What do you mean?” Celestia asked, her ears perking up with interest; she cared very deeply about Shining Armor even if he did occasionally annoy her.
“I mean that he looked like he was on the verge of a violent mental breakdown.” Cadence replied flatly.
“How so?” Celestia asked.
“His eyes were tired and bloodshot, his fur was messy, and his mane had old dried blood in it. Auntie, he’s always been very clean, the first thing he does after he fights a battle is take a long shower, but right now he’s covered in dirt, grime, and old gore!” Cadence exclaimed.
“That doesn’t sound good.” Celestia murmured to herself.
“And the worst thing is that I essentially told him that instead of whining to me he should be looking after Twilight!” Cadence added, before bursting into tears and hugging herself to her aunt’s larger frame. “I don’t know what I was thinking saying that, I’m a horrible wife!” Cadence added.
“Never say that Cadence, you’re the best wife that a stallion could ever ask for.” Celestia said as she wrapped her wings around the smaller alicorn. “Shining will be fine, he’s a soldier and he’ll soldier through this like anything else.”
“That’s just it Auntie, ever since the wedding he’s changed. He doesn’t act the same way he used to, it’s like he’s afraid that I’ll shatter if he’s not careful enough with me.” Cadence said her tone growing desperate.
“Is there a particular time that he acts like this or is an all the time thing?” Celestia asked.
“Well, umm…” Cadence said shakily without really saying anything.
“Dear I’ve lived forty thousand years and some change, there’s nothing that you can say that I either haven’t experienced or heard of before.” Celestia told Cadence.
“I had no idea you were so old, you look very good for your age.” Cadence replied.
“Thank you dear, now tell me and stop changing the subject.” Celestia said forcefully.
“It’s during sex.” Cadence said softly, with a deep red blush.
“I see; what does he do during sex?” Celestia asked.
“Well, he gave up being on top.” Cadence said a little nervously.
“Well that doesn’t sound too bad dear; it just means that he wants you to do more of the work.” Celestia said with a chuckle.
“Dammit auntie take this seriously!” Cadence shouted before she blushed in embarrassment. “Sorry auntie, I’m a little hormonal right now.” Cadence said softly.
“Oh I know the feeling, don’t worry about it dear.” Celestia replied with a shrug.
“It’s just unlike him is all, I think something happened.” Cadence said quietly.
“We’ll all talk it over when he and Twilight get back, until then try and stay positive.” Celestia replied.
“Alright auntie; thanks for listening.” Cadence said with a slight smile before she left the room.
Celestia once again buried herself in her book.
“Heh waffles.” She said with a laugh. Outside a storm was blowing in, but the celestial monarch never looked up from her book as lightning flashed outside her window, after all it was only a storm…
Twilight Sparkle perk gained
Unknown mutation- what will it do? Even the gods don’t know yet