Luna's stars twinkled overhead, an odd moonbeam penetrating the dense forest overhead. The Night Guard had been tasked with removing the threat of these new creatures in the Everfree, preferably non-lethally. They crept through the underbrush, their leader bending the shadows to aid in their concealment. Night Captain Stage Show was one of the rare Night Guard Unicorns, and the only one in the squad. All in the squad had engraved guantlets, stunning runes good for one long-lasting sleep on contact with exposed fur or skin.
As they neared the monsters' hideout, Stage Show masked a pair of Batponies with a short-lasting but effective invisibility spell, and the pair ascended to provide unseen aerial support. At the break in the treeline, Stage Show and his companions steeled their nerves. The things all seemed to be asleep, but there was no way to be sure for those whose faces were hidden. Three unprotected ones were sprawled randomly across the clearing, a slightly smoking fire resting in the center. Two in full armor laid closer to the edge of the clearing, near the ponies.
"Alright," Stage Show whispered, "Guano and Fangs will move in and stun the armored ones first. You'll need to hit their hides directly, if you hit the armor the runes won't work. Flaps, move with me around the clearing, I'll pop a bubble shield over the unprotected ones and let you fly in and ambush them with your stunning gauntlets. This needs to be quick and clean, we don't have the numbers that the Royal Guard did this morning."
With that, Guano and Fangs creeped out of the clearing, as the trees rustled in the omnipresent ominous breeze. With that breeze, came extremely dense fog, leaving the Ponies (and Humans) with a greatly reduced line of sight. Guano's keen Bat sight could barely make out the glowing embers of the fire. He crept up to the closest armored creature, and eyed its armor for exposed points. There were none. Fangs beckoned him over to her mark, and gently gripped the fingers of the left glove the creature wore, and slid it off. She moved her gauntleted hoof onto the exposed skin, the runes shining dimly as they activated and fading away. She nodded her head towards the other armored creature, and Guano returned to his original target. On second glance, this creature was much larger than the other, even in the armor. He reached down, grasped the left glove, and-
"Mutants in the camp!" One of the unarmored ones in the back of the clearing relative to Guano shouted, standing and firing the laser-musket they'd been briefed on earlier at the faintly shimmering shapes of their aerial support. One of them, Nuts, dove towards the creature, hoping to tag it with the stun rune, but a lucky shot clipped her wings and blew away the invisibility spell. She tried to rise and charge the creature, but it raised a bulkier, stouter-looking device and pointed it at her. A blue flash, and she collapsed to the ground, one wing smoldering. Guano hastily worked to undo the glove, but was thrown away from the juggernaut with a swipe of its arm. It rose, unarmed, and retreated towards the other creature, who tossed it the musket it had been using. From the treeline came Stage Show and Flaps, who tag-teamed a sleeping creature wearing some kind of grey suit and no helmet, but one of the bursts from the first awakened creature tagged Flaps, who fell to the ground, convulsing.
"Horseapples, Flaps, you oka-" A shower of gore coated Stage Show's muzzle, and an involuntary reaction of flinching away and opening his mouth allowed a small amount of grey matter onto his tongue. When he regained his senses, and saw Flaps' corpse, flesh and bone missing from the neck up, and realized what had happened, he struggled to not vomit, and spat out Shadow Flaps' brain goop. He launched a magic missile, no longer going for a stun, which careened into the one who'd hit Flaps. The creature dropped to the floor, and the device in its hands flew across the clearing to Stage Show. The small explosion cleared a respectable portion of the fog, and revealed the awake armored creature bearing straight for Stage Show, musket held like a bat. Stage Show desperately grasped with his magic for the device, and mimicked the creatures' movements, as he lined up the focusing dish with the charging beast. As the beast closed in on him, he tugged the trigger, and a blue burst of light shot out the end, and into Stage Show's face. The charging beast collapsed to the floor in raucous laughter, where the other airborne Batpony, Bolts, tagged his now-exposed hand.
Harris cowered in the treeline, obscured by fog, as the three remaining winged mutants attached wristbands to his disabled comrades. One of them walked over to the horned one, and jostled it with its hooves. The horned one groggily stood, and a gold aura surrounded its horn and each of the wristbands. Without any notice, the horned one and the Brotherhood troops disappeared, leaving only the three not-dead-or-unconscious mutants and their dead-or-unconscious brethren behind. The three live mutants hefted the bodies of their comrades onto their backs, and disappeared into the opposite side of the clearing.
Harris emerged, and surveyed the scene as the fog cleared conveniently. Blood stained the grass in a few scattered locations, and collected the remaining gear. Vargas' Mesmetron appeared to have been taken by the attackers, but an AER-9 and Microfusion Cell still leaned against a trunk. He slung it around his Enclave uniform, loaded a box of cookies and an MRE into his murse/satchel, and began walking in the exact opposite direction as the attackers at a generous pace.
He walked for what seemed like hours, which it was, until he came spotted a dim yellow light through the leaves. Dehydrated and exhausted, he stumbled to the light and discovered a small shack, various items that would've reminded him of Point Lookout if he had ever left the Vault. He peered into the window. A mutant, similar to the one who had attacked them when they first set up camp, but sporting yet another different pattern and adorned in jewelry, stood with its tail facing him.
He steeled his nerves, nestled the rifle in the crook of his shoulder, and gulped for good measure. He stood in front of the door, and discreetly twisted the handle and pushed slightly. Locked. He took two steps back, bounced in place for a much longer than necessary moment, and shot the handle, and lobbed his foot at the center of the door.
Considering that he had shot it with a rifle that produces a beam of something-thousand somethings, and the door was made of wood, which combusts at something-something somethings, his foot flew through my butt of hot ash which he proceeded to fall through, coated in burning ash.
"Oh god, why!? And I'm supposed to be the smart one!" He rolled in agony on the dirt floor of the hut, bumping into tables and furniture and the like.
"Your mind seems to work on a lower fraction; perhaps you should proceed to Ponyville, lest you become a Manticore's supper ration?"
"AGGGGGHHHHH- did you just call me stupid?"
"I rarely intend to offend, but you just demolished my door, so paying is the first in the list of reparations I recommend. Unless you would prefer that I continue, then please, take a tissue." The mutant held a pristine box of tissues in its stubby limb, one of which Harris gratefully took, as he stumbled to his feet. He wiped the now-cooled ash from his face, and promptly collapsed back to the floor.
"Welcome to Equestria, soldier, or so I infer from your uniform. I present to you the magics of deceit and chloroform."
Luna had been delegated by Celestia to preside over the court from dusk till dawn, and as such rarely dealt with serious issues. Tonight, however, as you can infer from the prior events this chapter, housed fairly serious issues. Currently, Luna stood outside a high-security dungeon cell with a multitude of quite rowdy bipeds within. Next to her stood Stage Show, an ice pack hovering against his head and the weapon he had taken pointed at the cell, and Skywatch, both wings in a cast.
"So these..." Luna paused.
"What? Uh, Princess, sir- ma'am." Skywatch asked.
"We- I'm pausing so thou may fill in what they're called."
"Sky, did you catch anything?" Stage Show said.
She shook her head, "As far as I know, they're probably some kind of warrior. Some of them have suits of armor, tougher than steel they are. The others, with those uniforms? Maybe the armored ones are guarding them."
"What would thou believe they are being guarded from?"
"Princess, I can assuredly say I have no idea. I say we just start the normal POW interrogation process, and continue from there." Stage Show's words were laced with a small amount of venom from the night's earlier events. "How are the wounded doing?"
Luna replied, "Most of the unconscious ponies have awaken no worse for wear, though Nuts may never fly again. The crash landing combined with that laser musket you say hit her wing, which from what we have observed has charred the skin and fur on the area of contact and even fused some of the smaller bones together. Our sincere condolences over Flaps' demise. It is quite curious how she reacted to the weapon that merely induced sleep on the others in your squad." She noticed one of the unarmored creatures stir. "Remember, remain calm, they cannot hurt us from within the cell. We have their weapons and have layered the cell in more containment contingencies than the First Canterlot Bank's vault."
One of the creatures stirred, and Skywatch gulped, "It's waking up. Get ready..."
"Ugh... my head... and arm... and... oh..." It moaned in a considerably deep voice. It was clad in one of the aforementioned suits of armor and towered nearly a whole pony over Stage Show, horn included. The thing noticed the situation, and sat down on a wooden bench next to one of the unarmored ones. The unarmored one was aesthetically similar to an ape, but its structure differed considerably. Luna assumed the armored ones appeared the same. The awake on sat silently, barely moving.
"Thou hast the right to refrain from responding, but anything thou speaks may be used against thee in court of law. You are a prisoner of Equestria and her territories." Luna bordered on her Royal voice as she administered the Mareanda Rights to the creature, which surprisingly was able to remain stalwart. Maybe the armor dampens sound? Luna thought. Her increased volume had an unintended side effect as the creature on the bench next to it stirred. It stood roughly a hoof shorter than the armored one, and lacked any visible mammary glands, so she assumed it was male.
"Fuck me, what was the plate on that... wait, we don't have any trucks..." A patch of black fur rested on his head, and his skin was a dark tan. "Don't fucking tell me we got captured by muties." It whispered to the other one, which was entirely audible thanks to a No Secrets Auditory enchantment on the room.
"I don't think they're muties, now that I've got a good look at 'em. They look like those toys, the Galloping, no, Giddy-Up Buttercups. Yeah, those. Maybe they're some kind of pre-war thing?"
"Could be, who knows where that portal took us. Speaking of portals, where's Harris?"
"I think he escaped. Be very, very careful not to tell those perverted Buttercups. He might be our only chance of getting out of here." Luna made a special mental note of that.
"Well, it looks like they're waiting for us to start." The armored one stood after it spoke at a normal volume. The unarmored one stood soon after it.
The armored one went to the back of the cell to rouse the other creatures, and the other one stood at the front, erect and staring down Luna.
"My name is Aarōn Vargas, Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel. What is yours?"
"We are Luna, Princess of Equestria."
"We must be quite special if the Princess is shunning all her work just to see us."
"We are a diarchy, my sister rules during the day. I believe you know why you are here.
Diarchy? Weird, never heard of one of those. Still, better keep up appearances. Vargas replied, "Any force we have used was in response. We were attacked upon entering Equestria."
"By whom? The first squad to report contact with you in the Everfree Forest states they were fired upon by your people first."
"Squad? If one person is your definition of a squad-"
"Just one? The squad that reported contact with you consisted of over a dozen ponies." She shot a look at Skywatch. "There seems to be a misunderstanding."
"I can assure you, we arrived and were almost immediately ambushed by a unsettlingly pink... pony, you say you're called?"
"Correct. Where might this pony be?"
"Well, after subduing it, we hung it from a tree that was producing copious amounts of sap, and then rested. So whoever attacked us should've seen it."
"Stage Show, please tell me you didn't leave an Element of Harmony alone in the Everfree Forest!" Luna harshly whispered.
"Well, now that I look back, they say hindsight's 20/20 and such, there might have been an... oddly colored tree at one end of the clearing."
"Geez, these things sure are great hiders. And with those Night Guards, ooh, this is so fun! I haven't even found one of them yet. I guess they have had a bunch of time to hide, though. I'm still stuck to this tree." Pinkie reached into her mane and removed a small vial of sulfuric acid, "You never know when this stuff could come in handy. Just like the chloroform I gave to Zecora! I wonder if I've given everypony enough time to hide?"