5: jack...Rainbow Dash...Pin
It wasn’t fair, Colonel Sloan thought. It never had been. There should be more skilled people under his command. He gave them the books, and those books had been damned costly to get. You needed plumbers, masons, draftsmen, people who could do simple work, but they didn’t want to learn. Put a gun to a man’s head, and he’ll work all day long digging a ditch, but tell him to figure out how to dig it faster and, for some reason, even the gun wasn’t convincing enough. They turned into the water-spined wimps of The Society.
That made the colonel smile. It had been a week since he’d gotten the scouting report that said that The Society had been wiped out. The ponies, probably, or maybe just a disease. But those pansies were gone, and he was happy. Besides, there was some loot coming just as soon as the caravan could make it back.
For all he knew, his might be the last organized group of human beings on the planet. In the brief respites between one thing going wrong and the next, he thought of how he could turn the tide and start humanity growing again. While he never came to any concrete plans, he enjoyed thinking of it.
And, Sloan thought, if he could just push some of his responsibility down, if he had a staff that he could trust, then he could have time to get something down on paper. But he didn’t, and he couldn’t. Another report had landed on his desk complaining of trouble at the radar guns…
It wasn’t fair, Hal Baines thought. Just because he happened to be born in this time, in this place. To children of survivalists who had decided, rather than to upload like most of the human race, or to hide out like sensible people, that they should join the military and support the cause. What cause? There was no battle here, just mindless target practice.
He wasn’t suited for work on the radar guns. Why couldn’t he get a cushy desk job like the lickspittles in headquarters? Day in and day out of staring at a screen for dots representing anything that could be a pony, he was bound to get bored. He’d sometimes thought about firing more ordnance out there, trying to run the compound out of bombs. But in the first place, the radar records were kept and scrutinized; and in the second, he’d seen that they had a supply of bombs well into the twenty-second century.
And he certainly wouldn’t be trying anything just then. Not when he’d shown up fifteen minutes late. The brass was adamant about the guns being manned all day and all night. Despite the fact that maybe once a week something needed to be blasted, and once a month was it something that could possibly be an attack from the pony army. So he dawdled. What was the big deal? More than likely, it was because Colonel Sloan liked to feel big.
As his sergeant walked by, Baines kept his nose to the radar gun screen. He blanched when the sergeant had left a note on the desk, with an official order to report to Colonel Sloan at the conclusion of his shift. Great, he thought. More chewing out and loss of privileges. As though sleep and food should even be called privileges. He spent the rest of his shift worrying…
It wasn’t fair, thought Rainbow Dash. None of her friends had to lose their abilities coming into this weird world. Rarity and Twilight could still do magic, Applejack was still tough as nails, Fluttershy could still talk to animals…she thought. Rainbow wasn’t entirely sure of that one. But the point was that there was no reason that everypony else stayed the same while she couldn’t fly.
There was something basically wrong about a world where a pegasus couldn’t fly in her normal shape. No wonder Princess Celestia had sent her here to get everyone off so she could blow it up. Or something. Rainbow wasn’t paying attention too hard. What she knew was that she was supposed to storm a fortress.
And that was another thing that wasn’t fair. OK, you try to storm a place, they shoot you. That’s fine. But then after she respawned (what, like I’m gonna stay dead?! I’m Rainbow bucking Dash!) they shot her again, and again. Always at the same distance, with a bomb wide enough that she couldn’t get away. It was like playing a video game where the boss’s attack took up the whole screen and emptied your life bar completely.
Well, no more. She had new instructions. Applejack had left her carcass somewhere in this world, and Rainbow Dash had free rein to cannibalize it for parts that would let her fly. Unfortunately she was going to have to dump a lot of her own armor plating as well. If she managed to get some people to emigrate, the probability of destruction before reaching one of the nodes that would take them to Equestria was dangerously low. Possibly even as low as 98%.
What she had to do was to take all of AJ’s musculature and apply them to her own wings, then reshape them into something non-equine but more suitable to being a moving airfoil. After that, go back to the fortress, find all the humans and get them to emigrate.
This part she had paid attention to. Princess Celestia had given Rainbow the lowdown on who she was going to meet. Some people, like the ones Fluttershy was assigned to, would be easy to convince. Others, like the ones Twilight was assigned to, would be difficult. Rainbow would be facing a mix. Some would want to go, but the others wanted to stop the ones who did want to.
OK, Rainbow could deal with that. Just a question of making sure that the bad guys didn’t shoot the good guys, or her. This was an escort mission. How hard could it be?
Buck.
Well, if Rainbow Dash was good at anything, it was charging in. She made a few test flights, and would have been quite content to keep doing so, but she remembered that as soon as she could complete her mission, she could be back home where she could fly without the restrictions of these particular laws of physics.
She flew high, where the air was thinner and she had to expend more energy to maintain lift. If her indicators were correct, the military base had skyward-pointing radar, but they weren't as consistent with checking it. With luck, someone would be sleeping at the switch, and she could swoop down.
After that, her lifespan could be measured in minutes. Certainly not from crashing. Rainbow liked to take risks and try stunts, but when she wanted to get somewhere, she knew how. But undoubtedly they would attack when she arrived. It was just a question of how long she could dodge.
If there was one good thing about this world, it was that respawns were free, and didn’t require any hospitalization time after being killed...no, wait, that was another function of how Celestia had built her. Yeah, there was nothing good about this world. Time to get down, get people, get out, and get home.
She started her dive.
“Enemy in the camp!” The scream resounded as the first soldier spotted Rainbow. Men went for their sidearms, or they ran away to secure the women and children, and one team went for heavier weaponry. Hal Baines was walking back toward the office for another down-dressing, but he saw the stream of blue and the spectrum mane, stark colors that weren’t permitted in the base. He made no move for a weapon, but stood watching to see what happened.
Rainbow dodged the small arms fire, getting winged occasionally but nothing her armor plating couldn’t handle. More annoying was the fact that the reports drowned her out. She didn’t have a royal Canterlot voice, but she did have sheer volume.
“All right, you two-leggers, listen up. I don’t know if you’ve heard all this or not, but there’s a lot better life waiting for you if you come back with me to Equestria and become ponies. You--whoa!”
Colonel Sloan had appeared and, with better aim, had caught Rainbow on the wing. Her internal damage report told her she would never fly again, not in this body at least.
“Nice shot, but it didn’t hurt! But I’ve got something that’s going to hurt you. Keep shooting, losers!”
The bullets kept flying, and Rainbow took a few more hits. Only when she lost a leg and saw that an artillery cannon was being brought to bear did she continue.
“So guess what! My body, that you’re tearing up, is filled with lots of nano-syntho-whatchamacallits, little robot things. They’re all set to emigrate anyone and everyone who wants to go. The magic words are, ‘I want to emigrate to Equestria!’ Give ‘em a day or so to spread and replicate, and everyone in this camp who wants out is getting o--” She had to cut off when her mouth was destroyed.
But her ears lasted a good deal longer, or else the nanomachines that she’d referenced recorded the data and integrated it into her consciousness. That sort of differentiation was above Rainbow Dash’s capacity to understand or care about. She heard what was going on, and that was enough.
There were dozens of soldiers there, and Rainbow could pick out voices. Some were angry, and some were dispassionately following orders to accomplish a task, but some were hesitant, and those meant that they were likely to consider her proposal. Although she didn’t know the name, one of the hesitant voices belonged to Hal Baines.
“I want--” This was followed by a bellow and the sound of a gun being pressed up against flesh.
“Anyone who even starts to say that phrase is going to be shot through the head with a bullet powerful enough to splatter your brains so far that no computer’s going to be able to put it back together. Starting right now, no man is going to be alone, not even in the restroom. Everyone will be covered at all times until we can move this camp and scrub down. We are by God not going to lose a man to them!”
“Yes, sir.” Rainbow could hear the anger in his voice, and she also knew that he was going to consent to emigrate. Which, in her mind, was the same as him doing so, but Celestia had strict rules, and they had to be followed. Besides, as the last of the fire from an incendiary mortar consumed her head, she wasn’t taking anyone home in this body.
When she came to, still grinning about cheating the system temporarily, she was miles away, well out of radar range. If the military people she was dealing with had any ideas of offense, they might find her, but they didn’t. It would have made her job easier.
Now she had a new issue to think about: getting back in the camp. As far as she knew, dismantling Applejack for the flight components was a one-time thing. Not to mention that the camp would redouble its skyward patrol. She wondered if they wouldn’t slacken their ground patrol, and even briefly considered tunneling beneath and digging her way up, or even keeping open a tunnel and spiriting people away through it. But she realized that if that was the right thing to do, an Earth pony would be here instead of her.
She could just contact Princess Celestia and ask for the next step. That probably would be the optimal solution for everypony. But again, that’s what, say, Fluttershy would do. This was her task, and those wannabe ponies in the camp were her charges.
Distracting herself from one problem with another, she considered their psychology. In many ways they had reverted to the tribalism that humans had engaged in before becoming civilized. Rainbow could sympathize to a degree. Sometimes you had to go on instinct. But they also had the technology that a couple of millennia of civilization produced, and that made them dangerous. To each other, certainly not to ponies. But that boss, who Rainbow had recognized as a colonel, he’d adopted the role of chief. However, he hadn’t given himself a rank like general or commander-in-chief, and that was telling about his mental makeup as well.
Rainbow Dash wondered why she was thinking about this. The psychology of the people she was assigned to wasn’t important. Getting in, getting past the guns, and getting them out was all that mattered. In fact, her own estimates told her that his emigration was a low-probability event compared to a much more likely death. But everything happened for a reason. That was a platitude on Earth, but a truism in Equestria. There had to be some purpose to her thinking about the colonel, and it would be revealed in time.
She turned her attention to her next move, weighing another attempt at an aerial assault versus seeking further assistance. Rainbow wasn’t a fan of doubt. She should just know.
What she needed was help that didn’t count as asking for help, somepony who would assist her without Princess Celestia marking it as weakness, without her knowing, Rainbow thought, as though that was even a possibility. Of course, if there was anypony who could work around Celestia, it was…
As though the thought called her into existence, Pinkie Pie’s bouncing gait reached Rainbow’s well-attuned ears. Rainbow recalled the first time they had spent time together, playing pranks on their friends. Pinkie had proved cooler than Rainbow had thought. Perhaps now, she would show it again.
“What’s up?” she asked in her perpetually perky tone.
“Just trying to figure out how to get into a heavily fortified area full of folks with big scary guns waiting to shoot me down just for even showing up. Hmm…now that I say it out loud, it sounds pretty awesome.”
“It does! So what’s the problem?”
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Did you miss the part about shooting me down?”
“That sounds fun too. Lots of shooting, it’s like fireworks!”
“But then you get killed!”
“Nah, I just let the bullets go by. Here, I’ll show you. Throw something at me.”
Skeptical, Rainbow reached for a stick that was lying on the ground which, in her estimation, wouldn’t hurt too much when it struck her, then she sidled over and lobbed it gingerly at Pinkie’s flank. Pinkie just stood there, and Rainbow waited for either a wince of pain or an unshakeable grin, but instead the stick passed through her entirely.
“See! It’s all good.”
“So you don’t really have a body like the rest of us? You’re just a projection? How do you help people emigrate to Equestria if there’s nothing to you?”
Pinkie pointed back the way that she had come. “Oh, I’m an MAI just like you, but I’ve got this cool consciousness projector thingy for just this sort of occasions. Celestia knows that there are going to be meany-pantses who like to do bad things to ponies, and it’s better if I just go like this and keep talking to them, telling them how nice things are and all the fun stuff we do, and if I just keep talking and talking, eventually their will will break down. I just keep saying different things, it’s kind of a filibuster. Now that’s a fun word, filibuster. We could probably make a joke about it by saying the first part like ‘filly’ and—“
“Yes, I see your point. You can show me how to do it?”
“Of course. Just don’t use it for pranks and such. That’s kind of my thing.”
She rolled her eyes, but Pinkie showed her the technique. It made Rainbow feel funny to see and hear from two places at once, but she could close her physical eyes and lower her physical ears enough to keep out distractions. And this was with just one projection. That Pinkie Pie could make multiple ghost clones of herself…probably went a ways toward explaining her odd way of doing things. Rainbow got to a safe location where she could afford the sensory deprivation, and prepared to assail the camp once more. When she had to speak to people, well, there was no one around to hear her talking to the air.
She decided to come in from the air again. Now that she was only a projection, there were no more issues with the weird physics of this world. It would give the humans confidence that they could destroy her again, and when they couldn’t, it might be a wedge to get them to listen. Besides, she liked flying.
Before she even came within range, she could see the change. Men were sitting out in the open field in groups of five, guns trained on one another in a star pattern. There was barely any talking or action, except for a few squads.
Now invulnerable to their attacks, Rainbow had to concern herself with not letting them just drown her out with the noise of gunfire. And she still didn’t know how she was going to stop the head honcho from killing people to stop them from emigrating. But she was going to get in, get more information, and improvise.
She dove in again. Once more there was the sound of pandemonium, and within the midst of it, a few people got off a quick “I want to emigrate to Equestria.” Rainbow watched as the bodies collapsed, and she hoped that the little devices worked fast, before the humans started breaking skulls. But still many took to arms to stop her, or their fellows.
Her moment came when they paused after a few seconds of shooting. They had to assess the damage they were doing to their target, and of course they found it to be zero. Before they could resume, she cried out.
“Listen, if we’ve got to do this the hard way, we will. This doesn’t have a good ending for you. I’m un-shoot-able now and that means I’m not going away, so just give up already!”
“Don’t waste your breath.” It was the underling, Hal Baines. Though Rainbow didn’t remember learning his name, she knew it. He was the one who had first spoken the last time she was there, and she knew he had no love for this life. “You’re never going to convince Colonel Sloan to give up his power. That’s all he cares about, making others follow his orders.”
The named man ran over, gun in hand, and jabbered, “Why you undisciplined piece of garbage! If you weren’t so lazy and greedy as to want to dive into your sugar-bowl world, we wouldn’t have lost everyone and I’d have reasonable volunteers who knew how to follow orders!”
“Whoa, whoa! Wait a minute!” Rainbow Dash, forgetting that she wasn’t actually there, stepped between the two of them. They stepped back even though her hooves passed through their chests. “Is that all you think is going on? I better explain things to you.”
She turned first to the colonel. “You think Equestria is a happy-sappy world where everyone gets what they want all the time, right? Well, I got news for ya, pal. There’s a lot of work to be done there. Earth ponies gotta farm, Unicorns gotta…I dunno, make stuff, and we pegasi gotta make the weather, among other jobs. I’m hoping that a bunch of you lot will join up with me on the Wonderbolts, and help with rescues of ponies in trouble. Yeah, everypony’s immortal, but still, no one likes dying and having to go to the hospital.
“I got sidetracked. Point is, you look at a guy like this and figure he’s looking for a soft sop. Maybe so, but I think you underestimate people. They don’t want to be idle, most of them, most of the time. But they do want rewards. When Mr. Baines gets to Equestria, he’ll find work to do, and he’ll have to learn new skills. Might take him years. After that, he’ll put them into use. Let’s say he’s a weather pony. There’ll be a lot he needs to know about tornadoes and clouds and storms and all sorts of other phenomena.
“But then there’ll come a day when he knows all he has to, and where the schedule calls for the same mostly sunny day as the day before. And on that day, he’ll be able to wake up, munch breakfast, roll back onto a cloud, and go back to sleep. And nopony will question it if he does nothing. He’ll have earned it.
“That’s what you can’t stand, what gnaws at you…” Rainbow caught her breath. She wasn’t used to giving speeches. But in the middle of it all, she realized that this, not the emigration campaign, was her purpose here: to give two incompatible spirits insight into each other before they were forever separated by shard barriers. She faced Baines next.
“And that’s the key to understanding him. It’s not about power-mania. It’s that he’s a workaholic and can’t stand anyone who isn’t. I know the type, I’ve met them on the flight teams. Thinks that anyone who isn’t giving it their all every minute of every day is lazy. Would rather see you work to exhaustion and produce nothing than work smart and cut out the hard parts of your job.
“Well, Princess Celestia’s thing is to satisfy your values through friendship and ponies. The way I figure it, you two won’t have to see each other ever again. But there’s no sense duking it out here. Just let go, put down the guns, and get poniated.”
It was a long moment, and again Dash lamented that this was the most optimal course of action. Surely Twilight could be here to make these speeches and play on psychology. But Twilight wouldn't have had the perseverance to make it through the gunfire.
To Rainbow's surprise, the colonel stepped back and trained his gun to the sky. The others under him also moved their guns. Those who had had the guns pointed at them withdrew, sat down, and said the magic words. The last one to emigrate was Baines, and Rainbow smiled.
She turned to the colonel and prepared to start arguing her case to him, but she felt the back of her head start to fall down her back. It took her a moment to realize what was happening. She was being returned to Equestria. Her job was done. Celestia was bringing her home.
As the hologram of Rainbow Dash faded, and Colonel Sloan realized that he was the only person for miles, and that all the people he'd counted on to rebuild the world were escaping to Equestria, there was only one thing for him to do.
The last thing he felt was the cold metal of his gun barrel against the roof of his mouth.
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Where did you get the cover art?
Geez... for all that the Society chapter with AJ was dark, this was a whole lot darker. I mean, I like it, I really do, but wow.
So... Pinkie had her cameo here, her chapter's next... but who's after that? is it over, then?
Wow. Weaponized friendship lesson, Rainbow Dash-style. There's something bizarrely ironic on her preying on disloyalty. After all, if the colonel had built a tighter rapport... well, CelestAI probably would've sent somepony else.
Also, a holographic Pinkie Pie is too perfect for words, as is the fact that she can handle being aware of her artificial nature. Definitely looking forward to her focus chapter.
Escort mission? I fear those the most.
6866077 If you click on the artist's name in the description, it'll take you to the DA page.
6866104 Just wait until you see the chapter title.
6866311 That's why she said "Buck" afterwards.
6866500 Just relized somethig. I'm so stupid because thes are all escort missions. So afraid I would lose someone. Need to adult up then. I hope there a place for Sloan somewhere in the univers. Know it's ficction but still.
That was a good chapter! Thank you!
6866902 Thank you. Honestly, Applejack's and Rainbow Dash's chapters were the hardest for me to write, just a lot of hard slog. The last chapter is flowing easily and should be up soon.
6867762
You did end the Dash story with a bang, and that is always great to do.
I feel bad for Colonel Sloan. He doesn't seem like a bad person. I wish he could've decided that if he was dead anyway he may as well fight CelestAI from the other side.
Oh good, someone knows how to use a Bolter.
Colonel Sloan is now my favorite character on this entire website
8865641
You should seek help.