Twilight had absolutely enjoyed her night looking at the objects that were laid out before her. Though she knew not what they did, she had a feeling that she was at least making progress towards the answers. With the leg computer she was able to change the image on the screen by turning the little knobs that had obviously not been designed for the pony hoof. Some of the screens held a long list of words that she could not read but she vowed to figure it out at some point, maybe even getting some help from the creature in the hospital. Turning the dials on the device eventually led her to what appeared to be an incomplete map that went straight to her library, an arrow even showing her location. It seemed to have been mapping out everywhere it was taken, even during the chase that took place the other day.
Setting the computer back down on the table she stood up and made her way over to the basement door. There were a few other things that had caught her interest when she had first gone down there and she wanted to take a look at them. Walking down the stairs she quickly made her way over towards the table holding all of the creatures possessions, she had even taken the time to organize them into orderly groupings so as to properly catalog them. What she wanted sat at the end of the table waiting for her. Reaching out towards them with her telekinesis she picked them up before turning back for the door.
Back at the table she set the two new objects along side the computer, a new stack of paper sitting on the floor ready, in preparation for her notes. Not wanting to wait any longer she lifted the bag again and ever so carefully emptied its contents onto the table and watched as bottle caps came pouring out.
“Huh, I wonder why a creature, with obvious technological advances, that could very well surpass our own, would carry around a pouch full of these things. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Bringing one of the bottle caps closer to her face she could see the writing that curved along the edge, only proving to frustrate her even further at inability to understand them. Her investigations were interrupted however by the sound of a knock on her door. Twilight looked over to Octavia who merely shrugged before going back over her music sheets, ears now swiveled facing the door. Curious as to who would be up this late at night besides herself, she made her way over to the door and upon opening it she was greeted by a pair of lunar guards. Her curiosity immediately changed to worry upon seeing the guard's serious face, but unlike their normal expressionless seriousness that they always presented to the public, there were signs of worry ever present in his eyes and posture.
“Um, can I help you?”
“Ms. Twilight Sparkle?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“Both the Lunar and Solar guard are currently going around and warning all residents to lock their doors and windows as the creature that was being held at the Ponyville hospital has escaped. We are advising all residents to remain indoors and if they see the creature to send a message to any of the guard. There will be increased patrols in the area for your safety. You have a good day ma’am,” and with that the two guards turned and walked away to go to the next home.
Twilight gently closed and locked the door before turning back to a now worried Octavia, who sat waiting for Twilight to say something.
“Well, I am sure they can find it again. I mean its not like it has any of its weapons and armor.”
This seemed to comfort the earth pony as she returned to her notes with Twilight sitting back down next to her. Scooping the bottle caps back into the bag with her magic she changed her interest to the last item on the table. It was the one thing out of all the objects, minus the bottle caps, that she could not understand its purpose. It consisted of a red glass tube that was encased in white metallic alloy, shaped to fit the creature’s appendage. The white metal had a scorch mark that she would have to guess happened when Rainbow Dash shocked the creature with that lightning bolt. It must have been damaged from the electricity, like when the creature’s suite was damaged at one of the joints.
The sound of a metallic click brought Twilight back from her thoughts and from how Octavia gasped next to her, she would not like what was behind her. Slowly she turned to face the source of the disturbance and brought her face to one barrel of the many weapons the creature carried with it. What scared her even more other than the fact that the creature was standing before her with a weapon, but that it was infact wearing all of its armor and belongings again and the open basement door behind it further confirmed this.
The armor encased creature slowly raised its claw-like appendage and pointed at the items on the table before turning it over so that it had the flat inner surface facing up to hold them. Understanding what it wanted, she let her magic flow into her horn to grab the items but as her horn began to glow the creature reacted. With lightning like reflexes it reached out and firmly grabbed hold of her horn barking something at her. The sudden movement caused Twilight to lose focus and release her magic and didn’t dare try again in fear of the creature’s next reaction. It slowly let go of her and upturned its appendage again waiting for them to act.
Carefully Twilight grabbed each item with her mouth starting with the bag of bottle caps, then the unknown device and finally the leg computer. She watched as it secured each piece somewhere on its armor, but when it came to the computer the creature moved the weapon from its right appendage to its left while still pointing it at them, then it carefully opened up the band that secured it to its leg before once again attaching it to its own leg. Once attached, it promptly shut off the music making the room go quiet, Octavia and Twilight remained as still as possible to see the thing’s next move.
----
God I hate putting this thing back on, stupid needles always irritate the skin for a while. Well what skin is left anyways.
Finally reunited with her things, the Lone Wanderer just had to find Dogmeat and then they could get the hell out of there, she just need to ask where he was. Looking the two ponies over she could see that they were absolutely terrified of her which only made her feel a bit guilty since they had done nothing to her. It was the armored ponies that had done that.
After getting her thoughts in order she asked, “Do either one of you know where my dog is?” She waited a few minutes for them to react but she only received confused and scared looks in return, she nearly face palmed at the stupidity of her question.
If I can’t understand them why, on God’s brown radioactive earth, would I expect them to understand me.
With the Blackhawk still in her left hand, she reached out towards the stack of paper with her right and took the top couple of sheets. Next she scanned the table for a pencil but found nothing but feathers, from some sort of bird, with ink on the ends. Setting the paper on the table she ignored the quills and reached into a side pocket and retrieved a small worn out pencil. Keeping an eye on the two ponies she began to draw, nothing too elaborate but something to get her point across to them. She quickly sketched a rough drawing of herself and Dogmeat standing next to each other, circling her companion in the picture. When she had finished she showed them what she had done and watched to see if they understood what she was doing.
The purple one seemed to examine the drawing closely before turning to its friend and speaking to it, “I-I think its looking for its pet.”
The grey one seemed to respond to whatever the purple one had said, since it too said something, “Do you know where it is, so this thing will leave?”
The conversation must have been taking a turn for the worse as the purple one’s ears pressed back as it replied, “Yes, Fluttershy took it to her cottage, to take care of it. It is her area of expertise after all.”
“Then what could possibly be the problem Twilight, all that we would have to do is show it and hopefully it will leave us alone.”
The purple one glanced over at the Lone Wanderer before it replied, “I am worried about what will happen if it doesn't just leave. I have a plan but its going to require your help."
The grey pony's expression seemed to sour and whatever they were discussing had started to worry her a bit. To try and speed up the process she began to tap on the picture with some force to show her lack of time and patience.
From what seemed like they had reached an agreement the purple pony leaned over and bit down on the end of a feather and began to draw as well. Once finished the pony slid the paper back to her for her own examination.
With her attention briefly off the ponies, she did not see the horn on the purple unicorn flare to life for a brief moment, unlocking the front door, before dying back down.
The drawing from what the Lone Wanderer could tell was a depiction of her following the two ponies to what looked to be another home with her dog waiting. She knew it wouldn't be as easy as that with other ponies on the lookout for her, so that only left one option for her to take to get them there. Stealth.
Finished she brought her attention back to the two ponies and was uncomfortable with how they watched her as if waiting.
“Alright lets get this over with, sooner I find-,” whatever she was about to say next was interrupted as something clamped down on her back.
“I told you I wouldn’t let you get away with taking one of MY CUPCAKES,” it screamed next to her head.
With the sudden wait difference and without the motors in the right leg to compensate she started to lose her balance but was just barely able to remain standing. Seeing its chance the purple one blasted her with a beam that finally pushed her over the edge and onto her ass. The suddenness of it all caused her to squeeze the trigger and sent a round through the ceiling above. Taking the distraction the grey one bolted for the door.
Oh no you don’t.
Firing a round at the pony, she was too late as the pony made it out the door, the round obliterated the place where the doorknob once was leaving a fist size hole. Now she had to deal with the two ponies still there and get to Dogmeat before the escaped pony got help.
Fan-fucking-tastic
One of the problems with power armor was that you could never reach the small of you back, so if anything ever decided to stick itself to your back, like now, it generally took a squadmate to help out. Not having a squadmate on hand at the moment she was going to have to improvise. Not being able to reach the pony she had to use the only option available to her and resorted to slamming her back into the nearest bookshelf much to Twilight's dismay. She had to repeat the process a couple of times before the pony finally fell off her back and to the floor. It laid still on the ground unconscious from the repeated blows. Now that she could see it, she saw that it was in fact the pony that had attacked her back in the cupcake shop.
Enough of this.
Leveling her revolver on the pony she pulled back the hammer and was about to fire when she felt a force pull on her arm. Unsheathing her shishkebab in her left hand, leaving the revolver still on the pony, she looked at what was pulling on her arm and found the purple one pleading for her to stop. Or at least that is what she thought it was trying to ask, it was kind of hard to tell, luckily though there faces displayed human like expressions otherwise she would have not a clue in the world.
Taking the point of the blade the Lone Wanderer tapped the drawing of her and Dogmeat and with much anger in her voice said, “Bring me to him now.”
The pony must have understood, or at least could put two and two together, when it lowered its head and motioned her to follow it out the door. Wanting to get out of there as quickly and quietly as possible she holstered her revolver but kept the blade of her weapon close to the pony as a reminder as they went out the door.
----
“Oh no, that thing got Twilight. I need to get help.”
Standing up Spike stepped away from the hole in the floor, that had caused him to wake up in a scare, the purple and green baby dragon ran over to the table that Twilight used to hold all her scrolls for the princesses. Grabbing two scrolls he quickly wrote down what happened before bathing them in his dragon fire. One for Princess Celestia and the other for the Captain of the guard, Shining Armor. He just prayed they would be able to get here in time before anything worse could happen.
----
The Wanderer had force them to take things slow on their way to where Dogmeat was, always staying in the shadows as much as possible. The last thing she wanted was for the armored ponies to chase her down the street again with a damaged suit of power armor. There was no way she could keep ahead of them now with the weight she was carrying and no power coming from the armor in her right leg to counter it. It took them close to an hour before they were finally on the other side of town, the entire time she could see a dramatic increase in activity as more and more of the armored ponies ran around looking for her. She suspected that the grey pony had to be the cause of that.
She was running out of time and was becoming more and more aware of it as the sun slowly rose above the horizon. Soon there wouldn’t be any more dark alleys to hide in and no place to hide, she needed to finish this and now. Another ten minutes passed before they made it to the outskirts of town, when all of a sudden the pony she had been following stopped and looked at her. Raising one of its hooves it pointed to the cottage out in the distance then pointed at Wanderer and then back at the cottage.
Finally.
The only problem with it being way out there, it was a long way to go and there was little to no cover in between. She was going to have to sprint the distance or as much of it as she could in order to lessen her exposure. Sighing in irritation she scooped up the purple pony, which gave a yelp of surprise, she ran as fast as she could. To say it was tiring to run in underpowered power armor would be an understatement, each second put her closer and closer to exhaustion and that much easier to capture again.
----
It was such a lovely morning to take care of the animals. The birds were happily chirping and all of her furry little friends were running around playing and having fun. She just loved these kinds of mornings nothing seemed to ever go wrong. She had one new friend with her today though that she needed to check on, he hadn’t been eating or playing with her other friends and it worried her. He may have been bigger than the others, he being roughly as tall as her, he just stayed near a window most of the previous day.
He seemed to be waiting, not for his injury to heal that had healed shortly after she took him into her care. Whatever his owner gave him had taken care of the wound but she still wanted to keep an eye on him just in case. Coming back inside she found him once again lying in front of the window watching, his bowl of food still full from the previous day. Angel was laying next to him, the little bunny had taken a liking to the dog which surprised her in a good way, she was aware of his unruly behavior when it came to others and it made her happy to see him get along with somepony. The little bunny had even gone as far as to share his spot on the couch which he wouldn’t even do with Discord or for that matter her friends.
When the guards had taken the creature away to the hospital, until it could be relocated to a more permanent holding facility with medical equipment, she had been the only one able to approach the dog while the others even her friends had received angry growls when they tried to approach him. It took awhile before he finally let Applejack and Pinkie Pie pet him but the others were still unable to approach him, even biting at Rainbow Dash when she dared get too close to him. This didn’t faze Rarity much, while Rainbow Dash only just gave him the same glare that she had been giving his owner later that day. Twilight on the other hoof only became more curious as to meeting his owner and learn about the two of them.
It took only a little to convince the guards to let her take the dog, they didn’t have anyplace to keep it and like everypony else they could not approach him. That left only Fluttershy to take him and since she was also the local veterinarian she was more than qualified.
Now that she had finished all the animals that normally stayed outside, all that was left was to feed Angel and to do that she would have to prepare that in the kitchen. Even though he could be picky at times, she had started to work him out of it and expand his tastes. It was while she was in the kitchen that she heard the sounds of barking, coming from the living room area, followed by a knocking on the door. She had not heard the dog ever since taking it into her care and was surprised to hear its deep bark out of nowhere, but had to guess that it had to do with whoever it was at the door.
Leaving the unfinished salad dish for Angel she left to answer the door. Fluttershy didn’t receive many guests other than those who needed their animals looked after, due to how far she lived out of town, it was strange that somepony would come by so early. It was a pleasant surprise to see one of her friends Twilight standing there when she opened the door.
“Oh, hi Twilight. I didn’t expect you to be coming by this early in the morning... Not that I mind or anything.”
When Twilight didn’t immediately respond Fluttershy’s demeanor turned from that of carefree happiness to her normal shy weariness. She didn’t get a chance to word her concern as, seemingly out of nowhere, the creature materialized beside Twilight with a sword like weapon to Twilight's throat. Fluttershy gave a cry of surprise as she fell back into her home for safety, Angel running to her side to protect her.
----
Huh.
The Lone Wanderer had not expected to find herself standing on the doorstep of the butter yellow pony from before, but that wasn’t her concern at the moment. That could wait for later. Not wanting to waste even more time she did what she thought would get Dogmeat’s attention the best.
Removing her helmet with her free hand and holding it at the ready to put back on at a moments notice, she took a deep breath and whistled. The effects were near instantaneous as Dogmeat came running full tilt out the door to meet her. She knelt down to greet her longtime companion and wrapped her arm around him nearly forgetting where it was she currently stood and the dangers that there were for staying for too long.
It was when she placed her helmet back onto her head did she see the red markers begin to pop up as more and more hostile forces came within her Pipboy’s sensory range and was startled when a large host of them suddenly appeared at once, as if they had been there the entire time but only just now wanted to be seen. Turning to face the forces approaching them, she now understood why the sudden explosion of hostiles. What stood before her were numbers she had not seen anywhere in town and could only be achieved if more had arrived from other towns or a stronghold and even more just appeared in flashes of light by the second. It was unsettling to her if anything.
There were three ponies that stood out amongst them though, standing at the front and center of the group poised to strike at any sudden movement that she might make. The one that stood on the far left was similar to the other armored ponies but where the others wore a bright and shining gold armor, this one had a deep shade of purple that must have signified its rank amongst them. It looked extremely pissed at her and it seemed to only get worse when she raised the blade of her weapon and let it rest up against the purple pony’s throat. If it could kill with glares alone, she would be mere ash like the mutant creature she vaporized when she got here.
The pony that stood in the middle was a mystery to her, it was a white pony with what seemed to have a constantly waving mane as if caught in an ever constant breeze. It stood roughly as tall as herself but unlike the smaller ponies it had both a horn and wings. On its head rested a golden crown and had a more calm expression while its eyes told another story, like the pony to its left, it was absolutely furious with her and was probably a hairs breadth away from attacking her on the spot.
The third, that stood on the far right, was similar to that of the tall horned winged pony but stood a head shorter and had a midnight blue coat with a mane that looked like it held the very stars. Unlike the taller one though, it had difficulty holding back its emotions as they were plainly visible on both its face and how it stood, but unlike the others it had a hint of curiosity in its eyes at the being that stood before it.
Not daring to turn her back on the crowd before her she asked, “Well Dogmeat this seems like a bit of a situation, got any ideas?”
Dogmeat’s only response was a mix of barks growls and whines.
“Yeah, I’m not liking our chances much either here boy. I do have one plan left though, stay close.”
Igniting the blade of her weapon the the purple pony gave a mixed cry of shock and pain as the the flames singed part of the coat at its throat. The action was followed by a collection of gasps and shouts from the armored massed before her. Forcing the pony next to her to walk, they slowly started circling around closer and closer to the forest edge. If any of the ponies tried to take a step closer to them she would press the burning blade closer to the hostage’s neck and let the cry do the translating for her.
With the forest to their backs she spoke again, “OK Dogmeat, on the count of three we run.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“THREE.”
Together the two of them spun about and charged into the forest that stretched out before them, a conglomerate of guards went in after them in hot pursuit.