• Published 28th Jan 2018
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Fallout: Equestria - War Does Change - tom117z



It has been nearly two hundred years since the megaspells rained fire down on the world, reducing it to a tainted wasteland. And ever since that day, the changelings have never been sighted in the wasteland...

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32 - War of the Past

Chapter Thirty-Two: War of the Past

“Welcome to the city.”


The early morning sun, as ever, barely made it through the cloud cover we were gliding a short distance under. It had crossed my mind more than once that all Altrix and Moon Blossom had to do was ascend a little further and we could break through those clouds and actually see the sun. Be bathed in its light and experience the day as it was intended.

But we couldn’t do that. If we tried, we might risk being hunted down by a group of angry pegasi in power armour and with a fuck ton of energy weaponry. The last thing we needed was trouble with the Enclave, so we stayed just a little ways under the lowest clouds as we’d travelled across Equestria.

We’d flown for several hours after leaving Buckingham behind, and I had just watched as the landscape passed by below us at an astonishing rate. We were making very good time and had already crossed a little over half the distance to Vanhoover when the night finally rolled in.

We hadn’t been overly keen on travelling during the night, seeing as visibility would have been so low. That, and we were all tired from our earlier fight with the slavers and that alicorn. And that was just us passengers, never mind how Moon Blossom and Altrix were feelings after carrying the Sky Bandit for several hours. So, with that in mind, we had settled down in the middle of an old farm and bunkered down for the night. The Sky Bandit made for good shelter, especially since mere minutes after we’d landed the cloud cover decided to open up and unleash a torrent of rain down on top of us.

Still, seeing as the Sky Bandit had power we were able to stay warm. Hay, it had a working heating unit! That thing alone would have made me a whole heap of caps at Absolutely Everything. Derpy would probably get it to somewhere that needed it for half the price too, she was good like that.

But thanks to it we managed to get a decent night’s sleep. We’d bunkered down in some of the less shredded seats, closed the doors to the old skycarriage and selected first watch. When the morning had eventually come, the rain had died down and we were able to get back on the move in short order.

And now we were here. Or nearly, at least. Vanhoover was approaching fast, the smashed and battered metropolis really being something of a dead ringer for Manehatten. I could spy several tilting skyscrapers only held up by their neighbours, threatening to come crashing all the way down at any moment. Even the still standing buildings looked dangerously unstable, almost all the windows being smashed in and their interiors almost certainly having been picked over time and again by other scavengers.

But which one of those buildings was the one we needed?

“We just flying in?” Moon Blossom shouted back at us, and both she and Altrix slowed our flight a little. “That’s a lot of shit to navigate around!”

“Would you prefer we go in on hoof?” I shouted back to her. “One of the skyscrapers has to be the MAS hub. We could land on the roof if it’s still standing.”

“Tenpony Tower is tall, but nothing like those buildings,” Cobalt pointed out, joining me up front. “Big and obnoxious was more Pinkie Pie’s style, you haven’t even seen her hub in Manehatten. The MAS building here might be smaller, somewhere in the middle of the city centre.

“Then we just look for the signs.” It wasn’t like the hubs were secret locations. “Something will tell us where it is.”

“Look for a building that says: ‘MAS Hub, land here!’ Got it!” Moon blossom announced.

“What dangers await us in this city?” Xena asked cautiously. “Anything unique in the area?”

Cobalt hummed, thinking to himself for a couple of moments. “Well, there’s a stable of unicorn supremacists somewhere south of here, they’re operating somewhere between raiders and an old-world crime family. I’m not sure if they operate as far as the city, but I don’t believe so. Even if they do, it shouldn’t be more of an issue than a standard raider.”

More Stable-Tec experiments I assume. Yay. “Anything else?”

“Nothing notable as far as the Twilight Society is aware,” he answered. “A chapter of Steel Rangers, but that’s to be expected. Raiders, ghouls, a couple of trader settlements. I don’t know much about the latter, but they could be a good place to stop if we need to.”

“I still think we should just fly in and get out. I don’t think we should hang around this place for long,” I voiced my opinion. We were kinda on the clock after all. Besides, who knew what could happen if we just wandered the streets?

Last time I did that I met my marefriend, admittedly. But I still found myself in the middle of a zebra-raider battle. That’s not a distraction we particularly needed.

“We do still need to know where it is we’re flying in and out of,” Xena pointed out. Gah, trust her to find a flaw. “Perhaps, if nothing else, we could do a flying loop around the city and scout out what awaits us? Perhaps locate this hub, and see what might stand in our way?”

“I suppose an aerial view couldn’t hurt,” Cobalt conceded. “But no landing anywhere for now, yeah?”

“Make your minds up!” Moon Blossom shouted at us indignantly. “Ugh, whatever. You ready, Altrix?”

“I… guess?”

“Good enough! Let’s take her in, mind those buildings!”

Our speed picked up again, and I looked downwards as the first few buildings of Vanhoover passed beneath us. We were definitely within the city limits now, and the buildings only got more clustered the further in we were going to go.

I couldn’t really see any signs of life so far. At least not recent, an old Red Rocket I spotted looked like it had been more to and decorated by raiders at some point in time. Not anymore, though. The building was blasted up and completely trashed, probably by the Steel Rangers if I were to judge the damage. Or maybe they just cooked up a bad batch of moonshine, who knows?

“Do you see anything?” Xena asked, and I glanced back to find her cosied up next to me by the window. Cobalt, meanwhile, had returned to his seat on the other side of the ancient bus.

“Not yet,” I answered her, returning to look out the window. “Still one hell of a view though, right?”

“If only it were of more than ruins and corpses,” she mused. “Do… you think that, maybe when all is said and done, the changelings will let us stay?”

“You want to?” I asked her.

“The last time we were there, they had rebuilt so much of their hive to its former glory in such a short space of time. Seeing a community living as things once were was… nice,” she admitted, resting her head on my shoulder and making my heart beat just that little bit faster. “And they may need more help after Kronos is defeated.”

I guess they would. Their troubles wouldn’t end with the slavers, who knows what will happen after we’ve kicked his ass?

“I mean… I’ve always wanted a house,” I admitted to her, and I saw her glance at me curiously. “It was what drove me before… well, all of this. And I guess… What does it matter if it’s above ground or below it.”

She smiled. “It would be comfortable at least. And maybe- Wait.”

I saw it too. There, out the window, a small fiery flash in an old overgrown park between several old buildings. I started to feel some small measure of alarm as I tried to get a good look, seeing what looked to be several people down there. What was…?

“FUCK!” Moon Blossom shout as the whole carriage suddenly shook and I found myself hitting the deck!

I heard pings and pangs as Celestia knows how many bullets hit against the side of the Sky Bandit! Everything shifted dramatically as Moon Blossom and Altrix pulled us into a deep dive away from the incoming fire, conducting a very sharp turn away from whatever was happening down there and back the way we came.

I stayed down, noting that we were still in a severe descent towards the ground. I looked over to Xena, and she was on the ground right next to me. We remained still as our winged friends finally started to level out the sky carriage and winced when a noticeable bump signalled that we had landed.

And then everything went silent. Though, training my ears in, I could still hear some distant pops and bangs from an ongoing battle.

“So much for a quick in and out,” Cobalt snarked me from his seat.

“Shut it!” I retorted, getting back up to my hooves alongside Xena and taking a gander outside the window.

There appeared to be a fresh bullet hole in it, and on looking past the glass I could see Moon Blossom and Altrix hurriedly unhitching themselves from the Sky bandit. They had landed us in between a couple of crumbling buildings in some old driveway. Ahead of us was a cluster of old rusted vehicles that blocked much of the way, and behind us was the street where we’d made the initial landing before they’d presumably pulled us in here. Out of sight, for the most part. Good thinking on their part.

I latched onto the doors with my magic and opened them up, hopping out of the Sky Bandit and quickly trotting over to our flyers.

“What the hell was shooting at us?” I asked Moon Blossom.

“We were a bit busy trying to keep us in the air to notice,” she shot back. “Some assholes. What else is new?”

“There were a lot of them,” Altrix noted worriedly, finishing getting herself free from the reigns.

“We should head back, carefully,” Xena opted. “Someone may yet need our assistance.”

As I said, distraction.

“Alright, gather our stuff and get ready to move,” I said to the others. “Think our ride will be safe here?”

“Obscured, yes,” Xena responded. “Safe, I would imagine not.”

“Really wishing I had some trip mines around now,” Moon Blossom moaned with a pout. “Hey, is the engine and stuff all good? We took a few hits.”

“It looks okay,” Cobalt reported, and looking towards him it looked like that was the first thing he checked out on disembarking. “So long as it doesn’t get found while we’re gone it’ll get us back to the hive no problem.”

I do like some good news.

Stepping out into the street, my eyes and E.F.S. failed to spot anything particularly dangerous in our way. I could still hear the distant fighting, though.

“Follow me, it’s this way.”

We reluctantly left the Sky Bandit behind, being sure to leave nothing of particular value inside that we couldn’t afford to lose. From there, we headed towards the sound of the fighting while avoiding the streets as much as possible. We moved through the back alleys, trying to get to the park we’d seen from the air. I half expected my PipBuck to create a map marker for it, but the only marker that was on my E.F.S. remained for Vanhoover city centre in general.

Still, we hardly needed it. The gunfire got increasingly louder as we got closer to the site of whatever it was that was happening. I also spotted a sign reading for the ‘Spitfire Memorial Park’ in the direction we were heading. Eventually, we even got close enough to this park that a few red bars were beginning to appear in my vision. Standing in that particular alley, the next street along seemed to hold a gate for the park. It was a black barred fence, the actual gate being a large arch that held the name of the location in what were probably once sparking golden letters. Not so sparkling now, though.

“Let’s stop here,” Xena suggested. “Any further and we will be dragged into this fight without knowing why.”

I hummed, looking away from the gateway and around the alley. Just behind us, there was a metal stairway leading up the side of a three-story building that bordered the park, and it looked to go all the way up to the roof…

“Up there,” I told the others, causing us to double back a little to the bottom of those stairs and begin the climb.

It was a quick hop up. Moon Blossom and Altrix didn’t even bother with the stairs, they just flew their way up to the roof. Show-offs.

Still, the roof was mostly flat and had a hatch that would allow access to the top floor right next to an old ventilation unit. We ignored them both, slowly making our way to the edge of the roof that overlooking the park and looking inwards.

Shit. What the hell have we just walked into?

There were zebra here. A lot of zebra. And facing them was an almost equal amount of heavily armed uniformed ponies. Several of them were sporting combat armour with the symbol of two wings bisected with a sword, all of that wrapping around an apple containing three cogs, and each of those cogs had a small familiar starburst inside of them.

The symbol of the Steel Rangers.

The infantry wasn’t alone either, they were supported by several ponies in full T-45 power armour, each one having a missile launcher or a minigun strapped to the sides.

Every single bar inside that park was red. Steel Rangers and zebras alike.

“The Remnant…” Xena whispered in horror, looking transfixed by the other striped equines. “No… Here of all places…?”

“The what?” Moon Blossom deadpanned. “What’s with the skirts?”

“Those are traditional legionnaire armour barding,” she retorted. “And these zebras are not our friends.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that when they shot at us. Thanks for the tip, though.”

“They have some mad idea of continuing the great war,” I finished answering for Xena, who to my concern was… Well, she wasn’t looking particularly great right at this moment. “Stripe and I met by killing a whole bunch of them. They were chasing her because she refused to sign up.”

“And perhaps they never relented,” she muttered, drawing out her sniper rifle. “Let me see them.”

She rested the weapon onto the roof, surveying the ongoing battle through the magnification of her scope. The rest of us still had a pretty good view from this rooftop, though. And the two sides weren’t exactly subtle about their carnage.

The Zebra Remnant were taking shelter in one corner of the park, ducking behind old playground equipment, rocks, trees, benches… Anything they could, really. The Steel Rangers weren’t being so cautious, their power armour units just approaching slowly across the park as living cover for the less armoured knights that followed in their wake. Most of the latter were equipped with magic laser rifles, firing red beams of magic from their battle saddles as the zebras returned fire with more traditional projectile weaponry.

There were two loud ‘thwoosh’ sounds as a Steel Ranger in power armour unleashed two rockets from his battle saddle, both projectiles streaked past our rooftop and spiralled down behind a cluster of trees where two zebra stallions had been taking cover. The entire cluster was consumed in a large explosion, and both their red bars blinked out.

“Who do you think attacked who?” Cobalt mused. “The Remnant because the other side are ponies, or the Steel Rangers because the Remnant have stripes on their hide?”

Honestly, I could see either. But then again, did it really even matter? It was like watching a snippet of the war two hundred years ago, and it was probably just as pointlessly destructive.

“They’re not there, good…” Xena muttered, looking up from her rifle. “But the Remnant appear outmatched. I imagine they will pull back soon.”

There was a shimmer behind the Steel Ranger lines, and two zebras that were previously obscured by stealth cloaks made themselves known and quickly pounced on two of the lesser armoured infantry. The large knight and paladins up front were surprisingly quick to react, however, and quickly turned to fire on the two. One was quick enough to do an impressive backflip to safety before retreating beneath the cloak, but the other was gunned down in a hail of 5mm bullets.

The distraction was a good time for the Remnant to jump from cover, however. One shot from what sounded like a hunting rifle hit one of the power armoured Steel Rangers, hitting a weak point in the neck that sent their corpse crashing to the ground. Another zebra pulled out a small sparking apple shaped object and threw it towards another cluster of rangers. There was a shout of alarm, and several managed to sprint away with a surprising amount of agility before there was a loud crackle of energy. The EMP grenade hit two of the rangers, and their armour sparked as it shorted out entirely, trapping the ponies inside.

But despite that, the Remnant were still heavily outgunned. But they hadn’t been planning on winning with that move, but rather they had used the momentary chaos to jump from their cover and conduct a fighting retreat towards the gate. Several were cut down in the effort, but more than a few made it out of the park and made their way down the street with several of the heavily armed and armoured rangers in pursuit, the lesser armoured ones remaining behind to see to their trapped brothers and/or sisters.

It was definitely a good thing we hadn’t tried to go through there.

“We should go,” Cobalt stated. “Those helmets have Eyes Forward Sparkles. They might spot a couple extra tags on a certain rooftop.”

Point taken.

We moved back from the edge of the rooftop and back towards the staircase. Moving quickly back down them, we started to retrace our steps through the back alleys and away from the park. A short way in, however, we altered course to move more towards the inner sections of the city. We still had a MAS hub to get to, and since it was in the opposite direction those combatants had gone…

It was a while before we stopped moving, and several larger buildings started to crop up the further in we got. Eventually, however, we emerged from one of the alleyways and onto the road connecting to a roundabout that led off in four directions. Past the roundabout directly ahead of us, the collapsing skyscrapers of the city centre loomed over us, and it was in that direction we needed to be heading. But looking around at the others I could see that we were all slightly winded from our run through the city, so glancing across the road I located an old bar of sorts that looked like a good place to rest.

I gave them a nod, crossing the street while keeping an eye on my tracker for any marks for hostiles. Only one appeared as we hopped through one of the long-smashed windows of the bar, but the radroach that it belonged to made the wise decision to crawl back into its hole and disappear.

We all breathed a sigh of relief, taking a good look around the place as we collected ourselves and got our bearings.

The bar was well and truly trashed. The tables and chairs were all splintered and strewn about the place, most of the stock behind the bar looked like it had been long trashed. Even the Sparkle-Cola machine, much to my dismay.

“Welp, fuck that noise,” Moon Blossom announced with a huff. “If you need me, I need a drink. There’s got to be something left behind the bar, so if you’ll excuse me…”

I rolled my eyes at the pegasus as she hopped behind the bar and begun her search, though my brief jubilation fell as I saw Altrix retreat off to one corner to just… sit. By herself.

She was still having a tough time, then. Our close encounter back there definitely did little to help with that.

“I’ll see what I can find in the back. Give me a shout when we’re moving,” Cobalt said, glancing at Altrix and sighing. “Good luck.”

I bit my lip as he trotted away. With the others all doing… something or other, that just left Xena and I standing by the window we’d entered through. And as much as I wanted to try and help Altrix again, well… Xena wasn’t looking too hot either.

Fuck, it left a sour taste in my mouth, but… Well, I had to see to my marefriend first.

“Hey,” I said to her, and she only slightly glanced at me. Yeah, something was really bothering her. Three guesses what… “About the Remnant back there…”

“Still my past hounds me,” she muttered, sighing before sat down with her back pressed against a wall. “I had thought it done after Manehatten. Now… Well, it appears I’ve brought death to the ponies of this city.”

“Don’t be daft,” I gently scolded her, sitting down by her side. “It’s not your fault those jackasses came here.”

“Oh, but it is. Do you recall what I told you when we first met?”

“Aside from that you’d shove that sniper up my ass if I did something bad?” I joked, and there! I even got a small smile out of her! Progress!

But it fell away all too quickly, and she looked towards me with a look of complete seriousness in her eyes. “The Remnant operate almost exclusively in the Hoofington region. They don’t go elsewhere without an express reason to tear them away from their ‘holy war’.”

“And… you really think they hate you that much that they’d send a second group after you?”

“If they have gotten word that I had been sighted in the north of Equestria, then it is probable. The Legate has many eyes and ears,” she explained regretfully. “And perhaps more this time. My first insult was refusing to join, the second was successfully killing the first group sent after me. Now I’m not just a heretic, I’m a threat.”

“They sound obsessive.”

“They’re the kinds of zebra that continue a war that ended two centuries ago.”

“Point.”

She hummed, bringing up a hoof to tiredly run against one of her eyes. “That must be it, I see no other reason for their presence in this city.”

“Maybe we will find another reason?”

“That would be relieving, if not concerning in its own right,” she mused. “But if they are hunting me, they clearly do not know my exact location, seeing as they were in Vanhoover before us. But they will continue the search, they are nothing if not persistent.”

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to make sure they don’t find you. However hard they search, I doubt they know where the hive is, and there’s no way that Kronos or any changeling will be willing to share. They can just roam around, pick fights with the Steel Rangers and turn up no particularly gorgeous zebra mare until they all get shot or go back to Hoofington with their tails between their legs.”

That actually got a full-fledged chuckle out of her, and that heartbeat of mine shot up again when I found her hoof gently taking hold of mine.

“HAHA!” an obnoxious raider decided to break up the moment as she emerged from behind the bar and dumped a crate full of brown bottles onto the counter. “Who wants beer?”

She stopped, blinking as she stared at the two of us as we glared back.

“So… did I interrupt smoochy times?”

Neither of us could suppress a groan.


Footnote: Max Level