My Little Fallout: New Vegas
Chapter Five: Mine Kampf
"You alright, Twilight?" I asked.
"Yeah," she responded. "Just a bit tired, that's all. I haven't stretched my magical muscles in a while. Metaphorically speaking, of course."
I raised an eyebrow. I figured Twilight would be a lot more exhausted after creating a bullet proof shield out of thin air. "You're sure? 'Just a bit tired.' That's all?"
She nodded. "I'm still fine to walk, and if push comes to shove, I can still make another force field if need be."
Smiling grimly, I said, "I've got a feeling that we'll require your... talents again today." I glanced around, suddenly realizing that we were just standing around, chatting, in the middle of the NCR Trooper's camp. I hadn't even checked if there were any other guards nearby. "Twilight, keep an eye out for movement," I ordered. "I've got to see what these assholes have on them."
With Twilight on guard, I walked along the dusty, cracked road over to the trooper with a Service Rifle, the late Private Edwards. The first thing I checked was the Service Rifle, as it would be extremely useful in any future encounters with raiders, mutants, or any other problems that could be solved with bullets. Which, now that I think about it, is most of them.
Sadly, the Service Rifle was seemingly ravaged from the reflected bullets: there were holes and dents along the entire gun and the barrel was bent thirty degrees further to the right than it should've been. Goddamnit! I thought angrily. I thought the clip ran out, not that the gun was turned into fucking scrap metal from the ricocheted bullets!
Grumbling to myself about the injustices of the Mojave, I quickly searched the dead trooper. If I had the time, I would've taken his armour as well, but I didn't want to be caught with my pants down. Literally.
Forty-six 5.56mm rounds and a flask of water were all I managed to grab off of the trooper. Sighing, I made my way over to the lieutenant and repeated my shakedown process. Hayes had a handful of 9mm rounds on him, along with a syringe of Med-X and his own 9mm pistol. The gun was in worse condition than mine, but I kept it anyway. I rather enjoyed fiddling with spare parts and making modifications to my guns when I had some downtime. A shame my downtime is practically non-existent.
With the fresh corpses successfully looted, I motioned for Twilight to follow me. We headed towards Primm proper, but we were forced to stop before we made much headway. In a seemingly recurring theme, the pony saved both our lives again, but this time with curiosity rather than a bullet-proof force field.
"What's that?" asked Twilight when we were crossing a mostly destroyed bridge with whole chunks of concrete missing from its skeletal structure. She pointed her hoof at a small, circular object that was on the ground right beneath my foot: I was in mid-step when she asked. I looked down and a small red light winked back at me.
"Oh shit," I exclaimed, carefully putting my foot anywhere but its previous course. "Good eye, Twilight. Frag mines are really damn hard to spot if you're not looking for them. If you hadn't said anything, I doubt anyone would be able to find whatever was left of us."
The unicorn blanched from my description. She looked at the mine with curiosity no longer: she looked at it with fear and apprehension. "Can we disable them?" she asked.
I shook my head and said, "I certainly can't. Explosives aren't my weapon of choice. Sure, I've tossed a few grenades here and there, but disabling frag mines is far out of my league." I scratched the light layer of stubble on my chin, an idea forming. "I may not be able to... but you could."
"What?! I can't disable it! I don't know how!"
A wolfish smile appeared on my face. "I didn't say anything about disabling them..."
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"Are you sure that this is a good idea?" asked Twilight. "What if... what if I can't keep the shields up?"
I waved off her concern. "Don't worry about it, you'll do fine. Just remember: one mine at a time." Taking a deep breath, Twilight nodded and closed her eyes, a familiar purple aura engulfing her horn.
My brilliant plan had been to have Twilight pick up the mines one by one using the same small force field that she had used on the Powder Ganger. Since it seemed to contain the explosion and muffle the sound, I figured that it would work as a kind of 'minesweeper'. In theory.
I watched with rapt attention as the first frag mine lifted up into the air, the semi-opaque shield completely surrounding it. After a short but violent shake, the mine exploded, causing a brief flash of light and a light 'boom' to originate from the encased mine. Twilight levitated the sphere over the road and let go of the spell, causing the remnants of the frag mine to fall to the ground in a pile of metal powder.
She repeated the process three more times to remove the remaining mines while I anxiously kept looking around, expecting someone to try and sneak up on us. Thankfully, no one did.
"Alright...t-that's the last one," panted Twilight. "We can... go across now..."
Call me crazy, but I had a feeling that Twilight was neglecting to tell me something. "Your magic tires you a lot more than you're letting on, doesn't it?"
Twilight looked up at me, surprised. She only managed to hold my gaze for a few seconds before dropping her head and looking at her hooves. "It shouldn't, but it is. I know that where I'm from, magic was easy to cast. I could levitate objects all day if I needed to." She sighed, then continued. "Here though... it tires me out a lot more than it should."
Some things are too good to be true, I thought. "Ah well," I said. "Considering that nobody else in the Mojave is capable of doing what you can do, Twilight, I think it's only fair that you can't use as much magic as you normally could. After all, we have to give everyone else at least some chance, don't we?" I concluded, trying to bolster the unicorn's confidence.
It worked. Smiling, Twilight responded, "I suppose your right. I'm sure being grossly overpowered wouldn't make for a very good story when I return home."
"That's the spirit!" I exclaimed as we walked towards Primm.