• Published 23rd May 2016
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Fallout Equestria: The Light Within - FireOfTheNorth



When Doc awakens in Stable 85 he has no memories. Soon he is thrust into the North Equestrian Wasteland, where danger waits to devour him at every turn. Can he find a path of light through the darkness, even when he learns the truth of his past?

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Chapter 25: Different City, Same Problems

Chapter Twenty-Five: Different City, Same Problems

Rare and I had no choice but to do what the Stalliongrad Steel Rangers said. We were outnumbered, outgunned, and still in a bit of shock from our confrontation with living alicorns. Like when Rare Sparks herself had captured me weeks ago, we were allowed to keep our weapons, though the Steel Rangers kept a close eye on my companion, since her armament could actually do some damage to them.

The Steel Rangers took us in the opposite direction that we wanted to go, southwest into an industrial area. Ruined factories loomed around us, and I wondered which one the Rangers had set up shop in. Perhaps Stalliongrad had a Ministry of Wartime Technology Hub as impressive as Vanhoover’s, and that would be where the Steel Rangers were automatically drawn.

I wanted to ask Rare some questions as we traveled, but it felt like our captors wouldn’t like that, especially given what kind of information would be exchanged, so I resigned myself to thinking back to what I’d heard from the Vanhoover Steel Rangers about their Stalliongrad counterparts. All throughout my travels through the Wasteland, the picture painted of the Steel Rangers was one obsessed with the safekeeping of advanced Wartime technology at the expense of pony life and the good of the Wasteland. That wasn’t true of the Steel Rangers I’d met in Vanhoover, but it had been once. The Vanhoover Steel Rangers’ purpose had changed when Manticore’s Fury became elder, but not everypony had been happy about this. Those who’d disagreed and felt that his policies were a betrayal of the Steel Rangers had left the Vanhoover contingent and struck out for Stalliongrad. Those were the ponies who had captured us, ponies who felt that the Steel Rangers should be the cold, unfeeling, cruel machines that Wastelanders feared, and had believed it so strongly that they’d gone to a completely different city to escape Elder Fury.

We passed a few other Steel Rangers on our way to wherever they were taking us, and I began to wonder how many of them there were. From what I’d seen, the Vanhoover Steel Rangers had sizable numbers, but the Stalliongrad contingent couldn’t have similar numbers, could it? If it did, then why had they split off instead of maintaining control? I soon saw that the Steel Rangers we’d passed were merely guards posted at strategic points into the compound. The Stalliongrad Rangers had piled up rubble in between factories to form a maze around their base, with plenty of half-concealed strongpoints scattered around for them to rain death on any invaders. Given our recent run-ins with flying adversaries, I thought to check out the roofs and saw plenty of places for Steel Rangers to take up positions to defend themselves.

After weaving though the maze of half-ruined factories, we finally reached our destination. They’d set up shop in a massive factory complex that dwarfed the others but was still not as large as the Vanhoover MWT Hub. Out front was a familiar sight, a giant gear-shaped door with “Stable-Tec” printed on it. The Steel Rangers led us in through a train unloading dock instead of the main entrance, and we trotted through the factory floor, where segments of walls, floors, and equipment sat waiting to be installed in Stables that would never be finished. I’d never thought about it before, but everything in the Stables had to be put together somewhere, and apparently one of those "somewheres" was here.

“Elder Prism, we found these ponies wandering around nearby, surrounded by alicorns,” the Steel Ranger escorting us announced as he led us off the factory floor.

The pony he addressed was a mare in combat armor, who dismissed the fully armored Steel Rangers standing before her. As she turned to look at us, a spark of recognition ignited in her eyes upon noticing Rare Sparks, followed by a troubled expression. She simply stared at us for a few seconds, and the Ranger who’d escorted us stood completely still.

“So, you’re an elder now, Prism?” Rare asked, breaking the silence.

“Yes, and I see you’ve acquired a new rank, too,” Prism said as she looked at the symbol stenciled on Rare Sparks’s pauldron, “Though, it isn’t any rank recognized by true Steel Rangers.”

“I’m an inquisitor now, and actually, the Los Pegasus Steel Rangers have used it in the past,” Rare replied, accepting that the tone of the conversation would be hostile.

“So, Inquisitor Rare Sparks, what brings you and your … companion to Stalliongrad?” Prism asked.

“We’re looking for the pony that detonated the Republic of Rose’s megaspell,” Rare announced, which elicited an eyebrow raise from the Elder.

“Elder, do you want us to remain here?” our escort asked.

“The others can leave, but I want you to remain, Paladin Dale,” Elder Prism said before turning back to Rare and me, “You thought you could find this pony in this part of the city? Why?”

“Railyard’s leader told us of raiders in the area loyal to him,” I answered, and Prism swung her head to look at me, “We were looking for them when we ran into those …”

“Alicorns?” Prism said, as if it were the most natural thing, “Yes, they’re quite a problem in Stalliongrad. We’ve had to increase the size of our patrols to counter them.”

“What are they, really?” Rare Sparks asked.

“Well, they’re not deities, if that’s what you’re wondering. The fact that they die should be proof enough of that,” Prism snorted, “We have no idea where they come from or what they are, except that they’re dangerous. Our scribes would tell you all kinds of theories about them; that they’re a unique kind of ghoul, magically-augmented super-soldiers, a previously unknown race, things like that, but however they may have come about is inconsequential. They’re extremely strong, incredibly powerful with magic, and stubbornly resilient to attack. Also, sometimes they’re organized and wickedly intelligent.”

“Sometimes?” I asked, picking up on the odd qualifier.

“Yes, it’s the strangest thing, and it seems to vary from time-to-time and alicorn-to-alicorn. Sometimes they’ll speak to each other, coordinate, or call out to you,” she replied, and I thought back to how one of them had addressed me, “Other times they seem to be animals or in a daze. Strangely enough, they seem even more organized then, as if they were all sharing one mind, but individually they’re far less focused and easier to kill.”

We’d seen something like that, hadn’t we? The orange alicorn who’d originally attacked us hadn’t tried to communicate and hadn’t shown any real signs of intelligence, it’d just attacked. The others were more deliberate in their actions, and the one who’d spoken to me seemed almost like a normal pony, until suddenly he hadn’t. He’d fallen into a daze of sorts, but were the others who focused on him being drawn into that daze as well, or trying to help him escape it? Perhaps the only individuals who would know would be alicorns, but I didn’t think trying to speak to them on the off chance they didn’t kill us would be a good idea.

“But, we weren’t talking about alicorns; we were talking about why you’d come here,” Prism said, “Why are you in Stalliongrad, and why did you go to Railyard for information?”

“We knew Mr. Bucke had traveled to Stalliongrad, but we lost him after he arrived,” Rare Sparks explained, “A pony in the PRS told us that he’d been seen by their surveillance equipment near Railyard, so we went there to investigate.”

“That’s a lie,” Paladin Dale accused, “It has to be. The ponies of the PRS would never share information on their surveillance with an outsider, especially a Steel Ranger, which they undoubtedly mistakenly took you for.”

I got the information,” I offered, even though that wasn’t really what made the difference, “One of their morale officers shared it with me after I helped them unlock the maneframes in the Ministry of Morale Hub.”

“Why in Equestria would they allow you into the MoM Hub?” Prism asked, suddenly profoundly interested.

“I told you, to unlock the maneframes,” I said, “I have some talent with computers and was able to hack them all.”

“The Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad has access to everything in those maneframes then?” Prism asked pointedly.

“Yes, though one of them is still encrypted,” I said, wondering at her interest.

“A treasure trove of knowledge,” Paladin Dale said in awe, “To think ponies like them, but not us, would have access to it.”

“I have decided your fate,” Elder Prism said with a curt nod, “Rare Sparks must be held here by us, to await trial for treason to the Steel Rangers’ code. You are free to go, whatever your name is.”

“I’m not leaving without Rare Sparks,” I said, though I realized I was in no way able to make any threats and hoped she didn’t take it that way.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Prism said with a smile, “If you want to secure your companion’s freedom, then you must do something for us. Knowledge is power, and we cannot allow the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad to continually overpower us. We must have access to the MoM maneframes, and also to their communications, so that we can avoid confrontations with them except at places of our choosing. You will place a snooper in the Ministry of Morale for us, and we will allow Rare Sparks to go about her business with you in exchange.”

“How am I supposed to get into the Ministry of Morale?” I protested, “The last time was a special circumstance, and I closely guarded. They won’t just let me in again for no reason.”

“It seems you found your way here for a reason,” Prism said cryptically, “If I’m correct, the only way that they’ll let you go back to the Ministry of Morale is if you’re able to decrypt their last maneframe. Well, it just so happens that in our search for technology, we were able to locate a Ministry of Morale agent with a copy of a maneframe decryption key. The chance that it’s for a different maneframe is astronomical, so you should have no trouble convincing the ponies of the PRS that you are only there to help.”

“And if it’s not the right key?” I asked.

“Then they’ll probably arrest and torture you as a spy,” Prism said nonchalantly, “Also, Rare Sparks will be found guilty of betraying the Steel Rangers and punished, but that’ll still happen if you don’t help. So, what’s it going to be?”

***

Once again, I was in the basement beneath the Ministry of Morale Hub. I really had no other choice but to do what the Steel Rangers said, and they knew it. So far, things had worked out all right. Strict Step had believed my tale of finding the terminal of an MoM agent with the key while scavenging. It wasn’t all that implausible, considering how there were plenty of terminals in the Wasteland that nopony had hacked into. There’d probably be more if frustrated ponies or raiders didn’t insist on bashing in the screens. When he commented on the absence of Rare Sparks, I told him that since I’d only come to decrypt the Ministry of Morale’s maneframe, she’d stayed behind in Traders’ Lane. So long as he didn’t have the surveillance officers look into it, the lie would hold up.

Only Strict Step escorted me into Primary Square this time, trusting me after I’d caused no trouble the last time I’d been here. It made me a little uneasy to betray him after he'd put his trust in me, but I had to do this for Rare. One would think it would be hard to hold Steel Rangers hostage, but this was the second time that this had occurred for Rare Sparks. Maybe it was just my poor luck rubbing off on others around me again. According to my PipBuck, my strength and perception had gone up since I’d entered the Wasteland, and I wondered if I could train and exercise my luck to improve it as well. Maybe the information was buried somewhere in the Stable-dweller’s Survival Guide, but I didn’t have time to consult it right now.

In the maneframe vault, Strict Step watched as I carefully put in the decryption key and quadruple-checked to make sure I’d gotten each of the 128 characters right. After finalizing my entry, I was presented with a prompt asking which files I wanted to decrypt and entered All. The maneframe got to work, presenting a progress report as it ran through the copious number of files, translating them all from gibberish into readable records.

“Is that it? Is it working?” Strict Step asked as the filenames scrolled down the screen.

“Yes, that should do it,” I said as I turned to look at his hopeful expression, “After it finishes running through them all, you’ll be able to access and read every file on this maneframe.”

“Amazing,” he said, and clapped me on the shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”

I watched the filenames scroll down the screen for a few seconds until I was sure that Strict Step had truly left. I hadn’t expected an opportunity like this and had to be quick about it. The Steel Ranger scribe who’d designed the snooper had explained how it worked, and I searched for somewhere inconspicuous to place it. The main cables that ported information from the maneframes to the rest of the building and vice versa ran through the floor, and I pried open the access panels. Following the course of the cables, I eventually found a place where they all came together. Carefully, I placed the snooper, which clamped onto the bundle of wires, after a few agonizing seconds, the light on it switched from amber to green, and I breathed a sigh of relief. After replacing the access panel, I checked to make sure nothing was out of place and returned to the maneframe terminal before Strict Step got back.

“Good news,” he announced as he entered the room, not noticing my subdued mood, “I asked around, and your Mr. Bucke was seen this morning in a raider camp northwest of here. Seems the Copperheads were hosting him, and one of our cameras picked up the whole thing.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said, “That’ll really help out.”

“Hey, it’s the least I can do,” Strict Step said cheerfully, “You helped us out here, after all. As they say in the Wasteland: ‘one good turn deserves another.’”

***

After Strict Step escorted me back to the Western Block, I made my way back through Traders’ Lane and waited for Rare outside the gates. I wouldn’t be going back to the Stable-Tec factory—the Steel Rangers had made it clear that I wasn’t welcome there—so I had to trust them to hold up their end of the bargain. Rare Sparks and I had agreed that this location made the best sense to rendezvous after they released her. Sure, it was a long walk for her, but she was better equipped to take on raiders on her own. Alicorns too, as long as there weren’t very many, since apparently that was something that had to be factored into consideration in Stalliongrad.

It would take time for Rare to reach Traders’ Lane, so I hadn’t gone directly to the western gate. I’d stopped in at Rio’s shop and asked him what he knew about the winged unicorns we were nearly been annihilated by. His answer was more or less what the Steel Rangers had told us. Nopony knew where they came from or what they were; they just knew to steer clear of them at all costs. For some reason, they seemed mostly to leave ponies alone and had never been seen near the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad. They had become more active in recent years, though, especially since the Steel Rangers had arrived after splintering off the Vanhoover contingent and began killing them on sight. Other than Harmony Tower to the far northeast, there were no settlements to the north of the PRS, those who’d lived there having now fled to the east or south to escape the alicorns, which were far more prevalent in that area. Only raiders were there now, and that was where we’d have to go to find Mr. Bucke.

I was beginning to worry that Rare would never show up, when she finally arrived at the gates to Traders’ Lane. She told me that the Stalliongrad Steel Rangers had kept their promise, letting her leave almost immediately after the scribes reported that information was coming in from the snooper[LS6]. The holdup had come later, when a group of raiders with a grenade launcher decided to pick a fight with her. The grenade launcher had made it difficult, to be sure, but the real reason it had taken so much time to take them out was that she had wanted to keep one alive. Unfortunately, the survivor had nothing to tell about Mr. Bucke or the NLC, so she had no new information to bring me.

That was fine, since I had the news from Strict Step. We headed immediately to where he’d marked the location of the raiders on my PipBuck’s map. They called themselves the Copperheads, and thanks to Strict Step we had all kinds of information about them. We knew their numbers, who their leader was, and what kind of weapons we’d be facing. Mr. Bucke’s presence there today wasn’t the only proof that they were part of the NLC, either; they had a microspark generator and a radio tower, which we could see as we approached.

The raiders had set up shop around an old auto-carriage and chariot service center. The useless vehicles had been stacked into a wall around the parking lot using the construction crane teetering over from the abandoned lot next door. From a vantage point atop the crumbling wall of a nearby schoolhouse, I surveyed the raider camp with my binoculars. The numbers were as we’d expected: thirty-odd ponies wearing ancient jackets with a coiled snake on the backs, the symbol of some ancient gang. There was no sign of the leader of the Copperheads, so I assumed she was inside the service center, which I couldn’t see from my angle.

Carefully, I climbed down from my perch and joined Rare Sparks on the ground, where she was finishing up attaching her helmet. No point in taking a chance now of losing her head. This was an NLC gang, which meant they’d have better weapons than typical raiders. Strange how that was becoming the norm the more I traveled the Wasteland, and soon the “typical” raider might be as well-equipped as this scum. Yet another reason to stop Mr. Bucke and the NLC from handing out any more weapons and gear to the scourge of the Wasteland.

Two raiders were stationed as guards outside the camp’s entrance, both lazily smoking and unprepared to use their weapons. I lined up my magical energy rifle on one of them and depressed the trigger. The shot missed his head, singing a hole through his jacket instead, but I instantly cast SATS after firing the first beam, and in slow motion I was able to hit him with the next shot, turning him to ash. The other raider began to notice her friend’s death, but I had the upper hoof with my spell and burned three holes through her before she could reach for her weapon.

An arch of auto-carriages covered the camp’s entrance, but the entrance itself was just a scrap wall with a door set into it. I pushed the door open with the barrel of my magical energy rifle, counting on the element of surprise to see me through safely for the few seconds I needed. Almost immediately, the raiders inside spotted me and began firing, but I dropped two of them with shots from my magical energy rifle before diving behind a pile of tires.

“Rare! Come on in!” I shouted, puzzling the raiders shooting at me.

Rare Sparks launched three grenades at the camp entrance, and soon it was gone, the blasts leaving a large hole for the Steel Ranger to stride through. Her minigun roared as it tore through the raiders who didn’t manage to make it to cover in time. Somepony threw a metal apple at Rare, but they’d released it too soon, and it bounced off her back before landing near me. I grabbed it with my magic and threw it as quickly as I could, but it still barely cleared the tire pile before detonating, covering me in a small avalanche of bits of rubber.

A raider came out of nowhere, darting around the tire pile at me, and she was on me before I could do anything about it. She was wearing a strengthening augmentation on one of her forelegs, and I jerked back as she swung it at my head, having no intention to let it be turned to pulp. The power-hoof struck the tires, misshaping them, but she quickly pulled it out and aimed another thrust at my head. This one I blocked with my foreleg, and the armor protected me from the worst of the damage. The bones were intact but I’d have a bruise, and the impact had jarred my shoulder out of its socket. She was too close to fire at with my rifle, so I grabbed my ripper from its sheath and fired it up. The weapon roared with glee as the teeth spun, and I swung it through the mare’s foreleg, slicing it off, though not at all cleanly as my machete would have done. While she was still in shock, I jammed the tip into the side of her neck, quickly tearing the flesh away and killing her. As the raider collapsed wetly to the ground, I sheathed the weapon and mentally reminded myself to clean it later.

After resetting my shoulder, I emerged from my cover and fired my combat shotgun several times at a raider approaching me with a spiked club. A bullet dinged off my helmet, and I ran for the cover of a sky-chariot that hadn’t been turned into part of the wall. A raider with a hunting rifle had been the one who’d hit me, and I fired back at him with my magical energy rifle, managing to injure him enough that he ducked down behind his cover and didn’t show himself. A raider with a flamethrower emerged from the building, and I cast SATS before lining up a shot on her fuel tank. Magical energy beams pierced the tank and ignited the fuel within, turning the mare into a fireball that took out three other raiders around her, including the one I’d forced into hiding.

A raider with an assault rifle battle saddle fired at me from the side, a few of her bullets striking unprotected parts of my body, and I fired back with my magical energy rifle until she collapsed and her pip on my EFS disappeared. I removed the bullets from my body a little quicker than I probably should have and downed a healing potion. While my wounds mended, I fired on the remaining raiders and turned another to ash.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Rare had run into trouble. She was jumping and dodging around erratically, trying to avoid grenades falling around her. Two raiders on the service center’s roof had grenade launchers and were raining them down at her. I grabbed a metal apple from my saddlebags and chucked it up onto the roof, using SATS to make sure my throw was good. The two raiders were blown away, and Rare resumed her destruction of the raiders around her with her minigun, shotgun, and grenade launcher.

One of the service center’s doors began to roll open as I finished off another raider with my magical energy rifle. What stepped out was a pony in makeshift power armor, somewhat like what I’d seen at Bunker Hill. The mare operating it had a welding mask over her face, but her distinctive spiked helmet, where one of the spikes was her unicorn horn, allowed me to identify her. This was the Copperheads’ leader, which meant I couldn’t just use metal apples (or my last metal pear) to blow her up, not if I wanted information on Mr. Bucke. Flames billowed from the flamethrower on one side of her armor, and the barrels of the magical energy minigun on the other side began to spin.

The Copperhead leader seemed to be focused on me, which was fine; Rare Sparks was still a little tied up with the other raiders at the moment, and that magical energy minigun would do real damage to her armor. I had to keep this power-armored pony busy for long enough that Rare could help, and possibly even weaken her a bit. Energy beams lanced toward me, and I made the unorthodox decision to run toward my opponent. Her flamethrower belched fire, and I quickly dodged to the side, barely escaping the flames. She was surprisingly quick in her armor, almost as fast as a real Steel Ranger, and my plan to run around the flames to behind her and detach her weapons proved fruitless as she kept me at bay with a steady stream of fire.

I continued to run as she fired her magical energy minigun at me, careful that the stream wouldn’t be directed toward my friend. I needed another way to get at her, and finally I had it. Her power source was on her back, a miniaturized microspark generator. If I could disable that, then her armor would be too heavy to move in, since it wasn’t enchanted like real Steel Ranger armor. I still had to get in close, the same problem as before, but I didn’t have to stay out of her sight near as long. It would be far quicker to sabotage her reactor than to detach her weapons.

She continued to fire her magical energy minigun at me, getting better at predicting my movements now and burning a couple holes in my precious doctor’s coat and singeing my tail. As I ran in toward her, she switched weapons just like before, and I cast SATS in the split second after she stopped firing her minigun and before she began to fire her flamethrower. With slowed time, I ran around her in the opposite direction, placing myself before her minigun’s barrels for just a moment but out of the way of her flamethrower. She didn’t have a chance to react before I was next to her. My ripper was already out, and I swung it at the wires leading away from the microspark reactor, tearing them apart in seconds. Her armor shut down almost instantly and she collapsed to her knees, unable to move.

Now that she was no longer a threat, I surveyed the field to see if any other raiders remained. Rare Sparks had finished up the last of them, and was trotting toward me to assist in the interrogation. The Copperheads’ leader was still able to fire her weapons with her magic, but we stayed well clear of them, and she wasn’t able to adjust her firing position. Eventually, the mare gave up on shooting us and started to laugh, her voice echoing against the welding mask.

“He told us you’d come. He told us to kill you,” she laughed, clearly insane (which wasn’t terribly uncommon among raiders, I imagined.)

“Who did? Mr. Bucke?” Rare asked, her voice also modified by her headwear.

“Oh yes. You’ve really got that smooth-talker worried,” the raider cackled, “He’s gone to his bunker to hide.”

“The bunker, where is it?” I asked.

“Calm down, I’ll tell you,” the raider said, “Not like it’ll make a difference. You’re going to kill me either way, but I don’t owe that stallion nothin’. The entrance is in the maintenance area of the subway station due east of here. Let’s see the worm wriggle his way out of this.”

***

The Copperhead leader was true to her word, and we easily found the subway station. She really had had no reason to lie to us, other than stubbornness or spite, but we couldn’t know if she’d told us everything until we found Mr. Bucke’s bunker. I was familiar with Vanhoover’s subway system but had never heard anypony mention Stalliongrad’s. At first, I figured it was because we hadn’t been in the city all that long, but soon it became apparent that it was a different reason. Stalliongrad’s subway system had never been completed. The station was surrounded by a construction site with a mostly intact fence and “Coming Soon” signs. The cavern beneath the station was largely unfinished as well. The rail lines had been put in place, but there were no trains on them except for a boring machine waiting to drill out a tunnel that would never be completed. The tunnel stretched farther in the other direction, but it came to an abrupt stop at a cave-in before it reached any other partially-completed stations.

Finding the maintenance area was easy, since it seemed to be the only completed part of this subway station. Our hoofsteps echoed as we trotted through the abandoned hallways, and something must have heard them, since red marks began to pop up on my EFS. I drew my combat shotgun and advanced more carefully as the marks moved around us, making their way up to us. I heard the fluttering a split second before our adversaries showed themselves, and I realized what we were facing.

A swarm of radmoths flapped through the doorway ahead of us, bumping against each other to reach us. I fired my combat shotgun repeatedly, tearing the bugs apart and splattering their insides across the walls. I kept my body pressed against one side of the hallway so that Rare Sparks could shoot past me with her shotgun, but still the radmoths kept coming. Eventually, I needed to reload my shotgun, but instead, I pulled out my ripper and powered it on.

Just like in the Traders’ Lane hardware store, the chainsaw-sword tore through the radmoths effortlessly. One of them did manage to get past my swings and tried to grab at my face with its hairy legs, but I batted it away with a foreleg. As I advanced, I began to slip on the bug parts coating the floor and carefully held the ripper away from my body so that I wouldn’t tear myself apart if I fell. Soon the hallway was clear of radmoths, but there still remained some red marks on my PipBuck.

To preserve power, I shut down my ripper, but still kept it in front of me as Rare and I crept down to the lower levels of the maintenance area. A door, jammed open with a screwdriver under the sliding panel, marked the divergence from the normal. Through the door was a catwalk suspended over a large cavern, rickety stairs leading down to a dirt floor. Construction lights were scattered around, cables running from them to a metal wall set into the cave wall, in the center of which was a heavy door with a security terminal next to it.

“Halt, intruder! You do not have access here!” a robotic voice came from below.

Several pony-shaped robots were scattered about the cavern, the red pips on my EFS. They weren’t attacking us yet, but I had the feeling they wouldn’t wait long, and I didn’t want to fight them exposed on the catwalk. I drew my magical energy rifle and cast SATS while locating the one that had spoken to us. A couple shots into its conical head fried its circuits and it toppled over. Before I’d even fired, the other robots had begun yelling and firing their weapons, and magical energy beams lanced around me. I galloped across the catwalk as fast as I could and bounded down the stairs three or four at a time until I reached the ground.

As I got my bearings, a robot approaching me exploded from a shot from Rare Sparks’s grenade launcher. More of the explosives rained down as she made her way across the catwalk, targeting the robots whenever she could. I ducked behind a pile of crates with the NLC’s faded logo on them and used them as cover to trade shots with two robots awkwardly trotting toward me.

I took both of them out, but didn’t notice another robot flanking me until I felt a fiery pain in my left hindleg and fell to the ground. Another magical energy beam lanced over my head as the robot approached. I began to fire back, but the front of this particular robot had been reinforced with panels to displace magical energy, and I didn’t do much damage. The robot’s demise came as Rare Sparks jumped off the catwalk and landed on it, crushing it with her Steel Ranger armor.

She spun around with her minigun, pausing to turn each robot to scrap before moving on to the next. I began to move toward the bunker door, firing my magical energy rifle as I went. There were more robots here than I’d originally thought, and their magical energy beams filled the air, permeating the cavern with the smells of lightning and ash. A rocket flew over my head, barely missing me, and I pinpointed its launcher. A robot that looked sturdier than the others, but otherwise had the same shape apart from the missile pods at its sides, was anchored in place and firing missiles. One hit the ground near Rare, throwing her off her hooves. I pulled a metal apple from my saddlebags, removed the stem, and rolled it across the ground at the heavily-armed robot. The first metal apple stopped short, but the explosion sent a column of dirt in the air, obscuring the robot’s vision and targeting long enough that I was able to throw a second one, this time with the aid of SATS. It struck true, blowing the robot’s legs off and leaving it helpless. Just to be sure it wouldn’t start firing again, I blasted it with my magical energy rifle until smoke rose from the unit.

With Rare’s minigun and my magical energy rifle (and occasional metal apples) we made quick work of the remaining robots. I sustained a few more burns, and patched them up with a healing potion and magical bandages. My body was feeling the toll of fixing itself up in this way, and I knew that I really needed to rest and let my body heal itself for once instead of forcing it to all the time. There was no time for that now, though.

Mr. Bucke’s bunker awaited us, and I eagerly hacked into the terminal. It was the only way through, since the bunker door would be impossible to breach even with Rare Sparks’s armament. I was able to hack in surprisingly easily, but when I tried to open the door, all I got was an error message.

This door has been sealed from the other side. Per directives, this door can only be unsealed from within.

There had to be a way around, and I searched for it, but none was forthcoming. The only way to open the bunker was from within. I tried everything, including trying to convince the maneframe that this terminal was within the bunker, but nothing worked. All I was able to do was dig up more information on why the bunker could only be opened from within, which was most interesting.

There was another way into the bunker, a way that couldn’t be unidirectionally sealed. The bunker, as it turned out, was not really a bunker at all, but an ancillary compound attached to Stable 76. It was strange that Stable 76 would have a secondary exit, something I’d never heard of other Stables having, but that wasn't its only odd feature. My research revealed that, besides this and the main entrance, there was another way into Stable 76. Apparently, this Stable was attached to a Stalliongrad Stable network, something else I’d never heard of. Any Stable I’d come across before had been completely isolated, but this seemed to suggest that some of Stalliongrad’s Stables were connected, possibly even all of them. If anypony would know the truth, it would be the ponies of the PRS, who had originally come from a Stable themselves. There was another way in, which meant Mr. Bucke hadn’t kept us out; however, it also meant that he had another escape route, and we had to find its exit before he did.

Level Up
New Perk: Flame-Resistant – Flamethrowers and similar weapons only do 50% damage to you, and you will never be turned to ash by magical energy weapons.
New Quest: The Grand Experiment – Find a way into the Stalliongrad Stable network.
Energy Weapons +4 (71)
Explosives +3 (56)
Medicine +1 (56)
Melee Weapons +4 (45)
Sneak +4 (63)
Speech +4 (54)

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