Fallout Equestria: The Light Within

by FireOfTheNorth

Chapter 63: War Never Changes

Chapter Sixty-Three: War Never Changes

We returned to Capital City with the lightning-caster, but with one pony less than when we’d set out. At times during the journey, I caught myself staring at the weapon balefully. If we’d never gone to retrieve it, then Rare Sparks might still be alive. I knew I couldn’t cast the blame on the Wartime invention, though, nor the Alliance Council who’d sent us to the MAw Hub in the first place. It was true that if they hadn’t sent us after it, then we never would have been in the situation where Rare had been killed, but it wasn’t like they’d killed her themselves, or probably even thought about her. They were hoping I would die, and Rare Sparks had just gotten caught up in it. If it was anypony’s fault, it was mine, but I quickly crushed that thought before it could grow. I couldn’t blame myself any more than I could blame the Alliance Council or the MAw employees of a century-and-a-half ago who’d installed the traps. All I could do was try to move on and keep it from happening again, even if it was difficult.

Rare Sparks wasn’t my oldest friend in the Wasteland. I’d met Sage, Price Slasher, and Spruce before I’d ever gotten to know Rare. Velvet and Charity in Stable 85, and Flint, Rogue, and Inkrose in Sundale had been my friends as well, but they’d all preceded Rare to the grave. The first time I’d met the Steel Ranger, she’d still been a member of the order, and she’d captured me. I’d come to know and trust her in our adventures together—that was the difference. She may not have been my oldest acquaintance in the Wasteland, but she was the one who’d stuck by me and been nearest to me the longest. So much had happened since we’d set out together to investigate the Republic of Rose crater and hunt down Mr. Bucke. She’d been the one to accompany me on my first journey to Stalliongrad; the visitors’ book we’d been issued by the PRS bore her name as well as mine. Together, we’d met and freed Ache, and we’d both been there when she’d lost her memory. She’d outlasted Ache as my companion, and also outlived Roaring Thunder. She’d given up her place in the Steel Rangers, the only family she’d known for years, in order to stand by my side. She’d built the gadgets that jangled around in my saddlebags and plugged into my PipBuck. She was the one who’d improved my magical energy rifle beyond what Wartime ponies could imagine. It was her we had to thank for the Clinic, our means of transportation that drastically cut down travel time. She’d seen Mr. Bucke brought to justice and been there when I’d discovered the truth about my past. She’d helped bring down the Northern Lights Coalition and had been there with me the whole time.

It was going to be tough to live without her.

I felt I’d composed myself the best I could when I met with the Alliance Council to present the lightning-caster. I had no desire to keep the weapon for myself, not when it would just remind me of the sacrifice paid to get it.

“Very good,” Major Scepter said as the lightning-caster was carried out of the council chamber by a Defender, “With a working copy, hopefully they’ll be able to replicate it in the workshops downstairs.”

“The real difficulty will be getting access to the workshops,” Chill Berth said, “There are still a lot of nasty defenses in place down there.”

“If you want me to head down there next, you can just say so,” I said, a little peeved that they were talking as if I wasn’t in the room with them.

“No, we have a different job in mind for you. Some of our allies don’t want to pitch in for an attack on the Stalliongrad Expeditionary Force,” Aze said, glaring at the Stalliongrad delegates, who glared right back, “We need you to go to Stalliongrad, scout things out in the PRS, and make sure that there’s nothing for them to worry about there so they can start sending their militias here.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Fire Opal, the delegate from Castle Bridge said, “We’ve already begun to move who we can out of Frostpoint and Northern Cross and back to Stalliongrad, but we can’t leave Stalliongrad if the PRS has an opening to capture our homes while we’re away. Surely you wouldn’t send your own militias to Stalliongrad if the Steel Rangers were in a position to take your settlements while you were gone, would you?”

There were some grumblings at that from some of the Vanhoover delegates, but they all seemed to get the point. I couldn’t fault the Stalliongrad settlements for being cautious, though I wasn’t sure why it was necessary that I do the work anypony could do, unless … it was a very time-sensitive issue. With the Clinic, I could travel to Stalliongrad and back far faster than anypony else. That had to be it, not that the council knew I was a wanted stallion in the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad and wanted to put me in danger.

“Will that be all?” I asked, and the council dismissed me.

There was still plenty of time in the day, so we could leave immediately after stocking up on supplies. Some time on the road could be good, time when Sage, Zherana, and I were alone to talk about Rare Sparks without interruptions of PRS scouts, raiders, or NEA politics.

“Wasteland Doctor! Doc!” Violet Night called after me as I trotted out of the MAS Hub.

“Hi, Violet Night, what have you been up to?” I asked.

“Oh, you know, same as always. Searching for DJ Pon3, taking odd jobs sniping for the Crimson Tide—I mean, the Defenders. This alliance is pretty amazing. The cloud cover will disappear before you ever get the settlements of Manehattan to work together,” Violet Night rattled off, “Hey, did you hear the news?”

“What news?” I asked, unconsciously continuing my course as we trotted along, Violet Night hurrying up to trot next to me.

“A megaspell went off at the Ministry of Awesome Hub!” Violet Night said passionately, “There have been so many megaspells going off here in the north lately, you’d think that this is what it must’ve been like on the Last Day!”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” I said, remembering that I’d been present or somehow involved at each of those megaspell detonations at the Republic of Rose, Quarry, and now the MAw Hub.

“Is something the matter?” Violet Night asked, craning her neck to examine my face more closely.

“Well, I was kind of at the Ministry of Awesome Hub when the megaspell went off,” I admitted, “And … Rare Sparks didn’t make it out alive.”

“Oh, no,” Violet said, “I’m sorry. I could see the two of you were close.”

“Yeah,” was all I could say. I wanted to say more, to talk about all the time we’d spent together, but those were the only words that made it out.

“Would you like to talk about her?” Violet asked gently.

“Yeah, that would be nice,” I said.

In the course of our walk, I’d led us to where the Clinic was parked in Sorceress Square. Violet trotted up ahead of me to open the door to our mobile home.

“No, wait,” I said as I noticed the light above the door, but it was too late.

The door swung upon, revealing Sage seated at her radio equipment, microphone in front of her, headphones over her ears, horn aglow as she used the voice alteration spell she’d learned.

“… that’s all the news for today, children,” she spoke with the voice of DJ Pon3, loud and clear, “This has been Radio Free Wasteland, and your host, DJ Pon3.”

As she took the headphones off and turned around, she locked eyes with Violet Night. Both mares wore expressions of astonishment on their faces, Sage because somepony other than me and Zherana now knew her secret, and Violet Night because she’d finally managed to locate DJ Pon3, who’d been right under her nose most of the time. Violet Night had completed her quest and found DJ Pon3, but now what were we supposed to do? I hurried her into the Clinic and shut the door so we could figure this out without onlookers.

***

Violet Night was overjoyed, of course, to finally have found DJ Pon3, the very reason she’d left Manehattan and come to the north in the first place. Understandably, she had many questions for Sage, not least if she’d deceived her this entire time, including when she’d gone to her to ask how to contact DJ Pon3 as she’d done in order to get my attention when the Vanhoover Spire was occupied by the NLC. That was when I’d first met Violet Night, but Sage hadn’t been DJ Pon3 yet then, nor had Sage and I been quite so well-acquainted. Inevitably, Violet had to ask Sage if she would accompany her to Manehattan to become a DJ Pon3 that would broadcast to the entirety of the Equestrian Wasteland. The answer to that was no. Though she was no longer as involved with the Defenders as she had been, she wasn’t ready to leave Vanhoover yet. She (and I) still had business to take care of here.

Despite the immediate rejection, Violet Night still held out hope that Sage would accompany her to Manehattan eventually, if only to train somepony there to be DJ Pon3. Sage and I both had to admit that it was a possibility. With this in mind, Violet Night didn’t intend to lose DJ Pon3 now that she’d found him. She insisted on accompanying us and staying close to Sage, and there was no deterring her.

She accompanied us to Stalliongrad in the Clinic on our mission to allay the fears of the Stalliongrad settlements that the PRS was up to something. After losing Rare Sparks so recently, it almost felt like we were replacing her with Violet, even if the Manehattanite sniper did her best not to step into the hole Rare had left. Still, it was inevitable that she’d do so, and it turned out to be a good thing. It was good on that drive across the empty Wasteland that we had somepony else to talk to about Rare and didn’t just turn in on ourselves. With all the bonding in grief that could occur on a two-day trip, Violet felt like one of the team by the time we arrived in Stalliongrad.

It was then that she proved even more invaluable. Whether or not they were focused on Vanhoover, as soon as the PRS spotted my face on their own turf, they were sure to have me detained or maybe even shot on sight. The same went for Zherana and Sage, who were known associates of mine even if they’d never entered the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad; if Peach Cream captured them, she might try to use them to draw me out. Violet Night, however, had no connections with our band that the PRS knew about, so she could enter the PRS, or at least Traders’ Lane, without being arrested on sight. To ensure that no suspicion was cast on her, we had to park the Clinic a long way away from the PRS in order to let her out, just in case the cameras scattered throughout the city were watching. It took her a whole day to travel to the PRS, gather information, and return, but when she arrived after sunset, she brought good news.

“The PRS has devoted all their resources to the Expeditionary Force,” she reported that night, “Rio said they’ve only got enough soldiers left to patrol the Stacks and the agricultural districts.”

Railyard was one of those agricultural districts. It was tempting to try to raise a rebellion in the Stacks and use the distraction to retake the land that had once been Railyard; it would be risky, however, and I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d go about, so I forced myself to forget the idea. If all that was true, then Vanhoover was where the militias of the Stalliongrad settlements were needed. Like with the NLC in the not-too-distant past, the PRS Expeditionary Force was too large for the Vanhoover settlements to face on their own.

“All this is trustworthy intel?” Zherana asked me.

“Rio wouldn’t lie about this. About the value of items in his shop, maybe, but not about this,” I said confidently. Though I’d only met the stallion a few times, he seemed decent, and he was a friend of Price Slasher’s.

“It isn’t just what Rio said,” Violet Night added, though she’d nodded in agreement with what I’d said, “Other than the soldiers who patrol the fields where Railyard was, the PRS has completely closed itself up inside its walls. There were no PRS soldiers in Trader’s Lane, and no officials at the Visitor Ministry. I can’t think of any reason for them to have done something like this other than that they don’t have ponies to spare for guard duty because they’re all in Vanhoover.”

“Right, that settles that, then,” I said, “That’s sure to be enough to convince the Stalliongrad settlements that they won’t be in danger if they send help to Vanhoover.”

It did prove to be sufficient, though it still took a little persuading to bring some of the settlements around to actually committing their forces to the fight in Vanhoover. Reluctance to honor the alliance could be a problem, though hopefully it would dissipate with time. No matter what some of the Alliance Council members thought, I was not Lord Lamplight, and I would not allow cameras to be set up all throughout a settlement in order to force them to honor their agreements; it had to come freely.

That was another benefit I was glad to have and hadn’t much considered. For some reason or another, the delegates from the Stalliongrad settlements hadn’t elected to share the truth about my past with their leaders. Not once was I accused of being Lord Lamplight while I was in Stalliongrad. Did they intend to keep this to themselves? I realized that nopony in Capital City had seen me differently when we’d last been there, so they must not have shared it while we were in the MAw Hub, at least.

That didn’t guarantee that they hadn’t shared it with the citizens of the Vanhoover settlements while I was away here in Stalliongrad. Word traveled slowly between Vanhoover and Stalliongrad, except when it came to important official communications, like the call to arms against the PRSEF; that was transmitted by the old NLC towers set up along the road. The chain of them was nearly complete, and soon instantaneous communication would be possible between any settlement in Vanhoover and Stalliongrad. For now, there was still a delay of a few hours while a pony ran the message between where the chain of towers from one city stopped and the other began, but that would be eliminated in the next day or two, judging by what we’d seen on the drive here.

In the end, Neon, Stallion Hill, the County of Rain, Castle Bridge, and the Old Guard all agreed to assemble their forces and send them to Vanhoover for the big confrontation with the PRS. All of them had expected to face the PRS one day, but none of them had considered that they’d be doing so with the help of other settlements, and in a city other than Stalliongrad. As soon as I’d gotten their assurances, we returned to Vanhoover in the Clinic. The Stalliongrad settlements didn’t have the benefit of motored transport, though, so they would arrive in Vanhoover much later than my friends and me.

During those ten days that we had to wait for the entirety of the NEA forces to be gathered together again, my friends and I continued to help out the NEA in thwarting the PRS’s plans in Vanhoover. The Alliance Council didn’t send me on any more suicide missions (I wondered if the news of Rare’s death, reported by Sage as DJ Pon3, had caused them to reconsider sending me places where those around me were likely to be killed as well), but they still kept me busy and looked on me with distrust. I was happy to be of use to the NEA, but I was beginning to worry that they might never trust me again, and wondered what the Alliance Council might order when they reached a final decision on me. What might I do if the North Equestrian Alliance, which I’d worked so hard to build, turned against me? These questions and possible courses of action plagued my thoughts as I helped fight the PRS, with Zherana, Sage, and Violet Night always at my side.

When the Stalliongrad forces arrived, I thought that things would come to a head; instead, the leaders of the NLC decided to deliberate. The Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad Expeditionary Force was a foe that had to be fought intelligently, not just charged at head-on. Plans were needed, but I didn’t know how excessive they needed to be; I was no grand tactician, so there was no reason for me to be at the meetings to discuss the NEA’s approach, but I still felt left out when I wasn’t invited or allowed anywhere near the gatherings. I’d been involved in the planning during the Siege of Burnside, but now I was unwelcome. Alarm bells continued to ring in my head that I should run or stand up to the Alliance Council, but I continued to ignore them.

In the end, all the planning was for naught anyway. Three days after the Stalliongrad forces arrived in Vanhoover, word reached Capital City that the PRS had moved first. Having tired of being thwarted in their attempts to set up a base in the center of Vanhoover, the PRS had decided to go for an existing settlement. The Strip was under attack.

***

I ran along the street, firing my magical energy rifle as I went, armored hooves sounding loud against the cement. The PRS soldiers were firing back, and I jumped behind an armored auto-carriage in order to take cover from their shots. The auto-carriage had been brought along by the PRS. I never knew they’d had military vehicles, but apparently they’d dug them out of storage for this attack. Little good this one had done for them; it was powered by microspark cores, and would probably never run again without significant repairs after it had been hit by a blast from a lightning-caster. The NEA had managed to replicate the weapon we’d retrieved from the MAw Hub a few times, though they weren’t a common sight on the battlefield, and as I understood from hearsay (not being privileged enough anymore to get the details), there weren’t a lot of materials left for making them. They were a specialty weapon and would never be widespread, but they’d done their job here well enough, paralyzing PRS fighting vehicles and power armor.

I tossed a trio of metal apples over the armored auto-carriage as my opponents did the same, and ran for the next cover I could see, a storefront that had had its display window destroyed. With my power armor, I was like an armored auto-carriage myself; of course, there was bound to be a lot of fighting before the day was out, and I tried to avoid whatever hits I possibly could, especially since the power armor wasn’t holding up or fixing itself as well as it once had. I cast SATS as I cleared the blasts of metal apples and targeted some PRS soldiers who hadn’t been caught by my own thrown explosives. There was no shortage to choose from, and I was able to take two down with my magical energy rifle before the spell wore off.

Once within the shop, I took a moment to analyze the battlefield and decide where to go next. The Strip had been built so that there were only two entrances. In order to reach them, one had to travel down streets whose side alleys had been blocked up, making it dangerous to split one’s force and attack both sides at once (it would be difficult to respond to threats on one side with reinforcements on the other) or to leave one side undefended (because enemy reinforcements could enter unopposed). The PRS had decided to completely ignore the precautions the Defenders had taken, and had blown up the barricades of scrap, rubble, and auto-carriage wrecks that had been put in place to funnel attackers toward the gates. This allowed the PRS to surround the Strip in an uneven ellipse. Forces were focused at the gates, but there was a continuous ring of soldiers around the Strip along the perpendicular and parallel streets.

The NEA leaders had quickly thrown together a plan to relieve the Strip, especially after news that the barricades had been destroyed reached them. The Stalliongrad forces would focus on attacking those besieging the western gate, and the Vanhoover forces would focus on the eastern gate. This excluded the soldiers from the Old Guard, who’d attack the northern edge of the PRS ellipse and try to split them, and the militias of Boring and Capital City, who’d do the same on the southern edge. There weren’t enough NEA fighters to completely encircle the PRS forces, but there were enough to press in on them and try to squeeze them out.

Zherana, Sage, Violet, and I were with the Vanhoover forces in the east, and we faced stiff resistance from the PRS. The defenses outside the settlement that the Defenders had set up in order to protect themselves from assault had been captured by the PRS (though some had been properly destroyed before they could be taken) and turned against us. The PRS seemed content to fight us while pounding away at the Strip, trying to break in and seize the settlement. The Defenders inside the Strip’s walls were no more inclined to surrender than those without, though, and they’d all received mercenary training from before they could even wear a battle saddle or hold a pistol in their teeth.

The shop I was in was near one of the defensive lines held by the PRS, and I was having a difficult time firing at the PRS soldiers without getting bombarded in return by minigun fire. Some of the PRS soldiers threw Maretov cocktails my way, setting the building ablaze, and I quickly ran deeper inside. The stairs buckled and splintered beneath the weight of my power armor as I climbed, but I made it up to the second floor, where the fire was already spreading. Orienting myself, I charged west and crashed through a wall, bricks and plaster falling off my armor. I was in an office space, and I continued to charge ahead, knocking aside chairs and desks, until I found another staircase leading up. I considered a bit before ascending and then trotted in the direction of the sound of gunfire.

I was on the third floor of the building now, and I overlooked the defensive line from behind. The gates of the Strip could be seen from up here, and they didn’t look to be in very good shape. Defenders atop the Strip’s defenses continued to fire down on the PRS, but most of their heavy weapons had been taken out, and the positions they were in were not the original fortified positions, which had been destroyed or abandoned. I couldn’t see much else from my perch, but I could see that I was in an ideal position to disrupt the nearest defensive line here in the south, a line that was being breached in the north by the Tartarus forces.

Pulling off my saddlebags, I took the last of the rockets I had for my rocket launcher out of them and set the ammunition on the floor next to me. I loaded one rocket and aimed down the reticule at a group of PRS soldiers clustered around a magical energy minigun that was vaporizing the New Sundale militia. Sage was with those under attack, her shield raised to protect whomever she could. The rocket flew true, and its explosion destroyed the minigun. The PRS soldiers nearby search for where the rocket had come from, but I’d already loaded a second one by the time they located me.

I continued to fire rockets until I was out, and my efforts had paid off. The PRS line had lost too many ponies too soon and was beginning to collapse, Defenders as well as ponies from Burnside and New Sundale pressing forward and driving them back. One of the PRS soldiers fired a rocket of their own up at me, and the floor nearly collapsed around me. As it did, my rocket launcher fell, nearly striking another soldier. On the way up here, I’d noticed the stairs to the first floor had been blocked by the Defenders to keep attackers from using this place as a vantage point (not counting on them charging through the walls of other buildings to get here, apparently), so there was only one fast way down. I jumped through the window I’d been shooting through and counted on my power armor to keep me alive when I landed.

It was a little jarring, but there was no damage or injuries—at least to my body and armor. In my jump, I’d neglected to aim for a landing and had ended up atop the rocket launcher I’d dropped. Not that it was much of an immediate loss, since I had no more rockets on hoof to fire during this battle, but it had still been a useful weapon against armored opponents, especially after the missile pods on my power armor had run out of ammunition. It was a little jarring, but there was no damage or injuries, to my body and armor at least. In my jump, I’d neglected to aim for a landing and had landed atop the rocket launcher I’d dropped. Not that it was much of an immediate loss, since I had no more rockets on hoof to fire during this battle, but it had still been a useful weapon against armored opponents, especially after the missile pods on my power armor had run out of ammunition.

There were PRS soldiers in every direction but behind me now (thanks to the building), and I let loose with my magical energy rifle, firing until the microspark cell burned out. I took some hits, but there was nowhere to take cover at the moment, and my attacks allowed the NEA forces to catch up to me. Zherana was among those that joined and then passed me, driving the PRS back.

“Not bad,” the ghoulified zebra said by way of compliment as she stayed by my side.

A sniper fired at us from ahead, the shot nearly taking one of Zherana’s already substantially ragged ears off. I searched for cover, but there was none here, so I charged ahead to join the NEA at the next defensive line. The sniper’s rifle rang out again and a griffin from Tartarus fell out of the sky, landing heavily near me. The next time a sniper shot sounded, it came from behind. The sniper ahead of us fell from her tower, her body limp.

“Not bad,” Zherana said again, complimenting Violet Night’s shot.

The sniper had set up atop the roofs of the skyscrapers around the Strip and managed to get around far more quickly than I could comprehend. Some of the Defender radio chatter talked about a mare jumping from building to building, but I couldn’t imagine Violet doing something like that. Then again, she hadn’t been around for that long, and I’d only met her a few times before she’d joined us. Maybe she was full of surprises.

A column of lightning shot past me, and I shied away, lest my power armor or PipBuck get fried. An exuberant pony with a lightning-caster battle saddle galloped past, heedless of the fact that he’d almost hit me with his fancy new weapon. The PRS, understandably, was fed-up with the lightning-casters robbing them of their advantage with power armor and had been waiting for somepony with one of the prototype weapons to reveal themselves. Rockets and mortars rained down around the stallion who’d just passed me, and I was caught in the blasts as well, thrown off my hooves.

Klaxons rang in my ears, warning me that my power armor was damaged, but I ignored them as I struggled to my hooves. Dead ponies and pieces of ponies lay piled around me, the outcome of the vicious PRS attack. The PRS soldiers took advantage of the sudden gap created among the charging NEA forces to rally and drive us back. The thin line of NEA fighters separating me from the charging PRS forces vanished as they were cut down. In seconds, the PRS surrounded me. I stepped forward, and nearly stumbled as my power armor faltered.

“No! No! No! No! Not now!” I yelled as the heads-up-display and status lights within my helmet began to grow dark.

My movements slowed to a stop as the power armor became unmovably heavy. The spell that strengthened me enough to wear the armor had failed with it. There were safeties to get out, I knew, and I tried them, but only my helmet popped off, the rest of the armor too damaged to let me loose. I was frozen in place as PRS soldiers surged around me, some of them taking shots at me, but not concentrating enough to go for the head.

Zherana whirled into my vision and ferociously attacked the PRS soldiers around me. She’d picked up a submachine gun off the ground and fired precise bursts into the faces of the ponies she galloped past, sending puffs of red mist out the backs of their heads when their helmets didn’t stop them. One was wearing a full mask, and she spun around before jamming the SMG through one of the glassy eyes and into the eye beneath.

She left the submachine gun embedded in her foe as she tackled another PRS soldier, snapping his neck before moving on. The PRS soldiers were firing at her instead of me now, as I struggled to force the legs and belly of my power armor open with magic. Zherana snatched a ripper off the ground and decapitated a PRS soldier before bucking his head at one of his comrades. As she recoiled, Zherana rushed in and stabbed the spinning blades through her unprotected throat.

The zebra agent dodged and ducked and weaved around the PRS soldiers as they tried to take her down, but still some of their shots managed to hit her. She was leaving trails of ichor in her wake as she kept the PRS soldiers away from me. My legs were free, and I struggled to move the plates along my belly to free myself, to help Zherana out. She rolled under a PRS soldier, disemboweling her, before throwing her ripper through the air to impale another soldier who’d been approaching me with a pistol pointed at my head. It went off as she fell and the shot grazed the armor around my neck, but I wasn’t dead yet.

Zherana weathered several blasts from a shotgun as she charged its wielder and twisted his head around backwards. Diving over the falling body, she wrenched the shotgun out of his battle saddle and fired it off at a group of PRS soldiers before throwing it at them. She charged another pony and spun her around before throwing her at the group recovering from being assaulted by a shotgun in an unorthodox way. The metal apples on her belt had had their stems removed, and she exploded as she tumbled into them, taking three of her comrades with her.

Sage rushed up beside me and examined where the armor was stuck. I was surprised to see her, until I realized that the NEA was beginning a counterattack. Zherana had blunted the PRS charge with her defense of me and allowed the NEA to recover. The zebra was still at it, knocking the PRS soldiers around like bowling pins. She had been severely hurt, though; her movements often seemed like a dance, but now she was staggering around. There was no less speed to her movements, but there was a loss of style. She seemed to be berserk as she tore PRS soldiers apart.

She was still a highly skilled zebra agent, though, even in that state, but like everypony else in the Wasteland, she couldn’t be perfect all the time. A harpoon flew through the air, fired by a PRS soldier with a bulky battle saddle to accommodate it. Zherana spun around with her rotted foreleg around a mare’s throat, and the harpoon pierced her victim’s head. However, it didn’t stop there, and impaled Zherana through the brain too. The two of them collapsed to the ground, heads pinned together.

Sage and I together managed to extricate my body from the power armor at last, and I ran over to Zherana. Before I reached her, she pulled herself off the harpoon, and I had the hope that she’d survive, but it was a futile hope. A ghoul could take much more hammering than a pony, but not even Zherana could hope to survive that. Her body was unresponsive to her will, and she was barely able to raise her head to look up at me when I reached her.

“My oath is now fulfilled,” Zherana whispered as she looked me in the eyes with her one eye that hadn’t been torn out by the harpoon, “Now you can release me.”

Lips peeled back from rotted gums and teeth in what might have been a smile as she cracked her last joke, before she settled back onto the pavement.

Why? Why did Zherana have to die now, so soon after losing Rare? It wasn’t fair, but nothing was, was it? Was this my destiny now? To see all my friends die around me?

“Doc,” Sage said tenderly but earnestly as she put a hoof on my shoulder.

We were still on a battlefield. The NEA was fighting to save one of their settlements, Sage’s home settlement. Tears for Zherana needed to be shed later; there was still work to be done here. With Sage’s help, we brought Zherana’s corpse over beneath my power armor, where it would be safe until the battle was over. I pulled my saddlebags off of the power armor and pulled out the Yellow doctor’s coat I kept in there when I had my armor on. Clad as the Wasteland Doctor again, on the battlefield in that distinctive yellow coat for the first time since I’d gone to Sat-Con to learn the truth about myself, I marched on into battle.

The following fight passed as a blur. In addition to the defenses the Defenders had built, the PRS had set up defenses of their own. It was tough going, always another PRS soldier to fire at or take cover from. The NEA continued to advance, but that advance was often stalled, and this happened more and more often as we got to the dense defenses near the Strip’s east gate. I could see the gate from ground level now, and the PRS had broken through. Given how densely they were still packed, though, the Defenders within the Strip were giving them plenty of trouble as they tried to advance. Still, the smoke that rose between the skyscrapers wasn’t a good sign.

We’d been locked in position for a good half hour at the point when unexpected help arrived. Rushing up from a side street that led off to the south, ponies in power armor came pouring in. The NEA forces had no standard style, and sometimes that was the case even within a settlement’s militia, so it took me a bit to identify who the power armored ponies were affiliated with. I realized, with a start, that they were Steel Rangers of the Vanhoover contingent. An army of them poured up the street and smashed through the PRS, who’d lost many of their power armored ponies early on to the lightning-casters.

After that, between the NEA and the Steel Rangers, the PRS combatants were repelled. They were forced to abandon their assault on the Strip, and began to flee up a northern street before their only means of escape was cut off. The Defenders within the settlement forced them out as well. On the west side of the Strip, I later learned, the Stalliongrad forces had fought the PRS off all on their own, a great boost to their pride and self-confidence when facing the dragon on their doorstep. Everything seemed to be going fine, until the fighting subsided, and the Steel Rangers started to chase off NEA fighters who were trying to loot their fallen PRS enemies for weapons.

“Everypony disperse!” the augmented voice of a Steel Ranger paladin commanded, “All the technology left by the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad is claimed by the Steel Rangers – Vanhoover and Stalliongrad contingents! Stay clear or you will be fired upon!”

That was an unwise thing to do with so many armed ponies who’d just come out of a battle around. There were many more NEA fighters than Steel Rangers. Even if the number of ponies with power armor in the NEA was about a third of the Steel Ranger numbers, the fight would be slightly to the NEA’s advantage, except for the fact that they were exhausted from fighting the PRS and many were likely low on ammunition besides. To fight now would be to lose and let the Steel Rangers subjugate Vanhoover and possibly also Stalliongrad, if the contingents were working together.

“No!” I said as somepony stepped forward with a lightning-caster, “Not now! Save your strength for another day! They only want the PRS’s tech; we can still reclaim our own!”

Neither the NEA or the Steel Rangers seemed to like this idea, but they begrudgingly each kept to their own duties of recovering power armor and energy weapons. That didn’t mean that one side or the other didn’t take something that didn’t belong to them when nopony was looking, but fighting didn’t break out over it. Another war had been averted, or maybe just postponed.

[Max Level Reached]
New Quest: The End of the Road – Decide what to do next.