Chapter 136: Plea
Ranger
Chapter 136: Plea
By Wanderer D
The flight back to the Avenger was mostly uneventful, save for the myriad of looks she was getting from the other passengers. Word had spread not only about what she had done while on site, but also that Twilight was an alien… and that Sunset was too.
They didn't do anything, or speak to her at all, but somehow, she felt slightly isolated. She wasn't any different… she had the exact same skills, skin, hair color… she was exactly the same.
But now she was a stranger of sort, and even though they all knew she was on their side, she wasn't one of them anymore.
And it hurt.
Through her time in XCOM, she had been one of them. Sure, people thought she might be psychic, but never really questioned her humanity, and that made her sort of part of the pack. It was a reassuring thing and she couldn't deny the fear of losing it all because of this.
But what else was she supposed to do? Force Twilight to stay to keep her secret? Abandon Celestia and the others to whatever fate they would suffer under the current attack? It wasn't really an option.
At least not an option she was willing to consider. Despite her original anger—and her still-remaining need to prove herself a capable and dependable leader to her mother and the rest of Equestria—she wasn't going to let her world suffer.
"Hey," Deadwood spoke up.
He and Ember had been among the last to leave, alongside Tygan, the Engineers that had moved the statue and Estella.
Sunset looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
"Just wanted to say," he continued, shrugging, "that I know it must be hard to not be able to go back to where you belong… to stay and help."
"It's a big thing, Sunset," Ember added, "When we all saw how much you wanted to cross over."
Sunset chuckled. "Was it that obvious?"
"It was." Ember smirked.
"I heard that you were some sort of royalty there," one of Deadwood's team asked. Carol Wood, aka Shogun. "Wouldn't you have rather stayed there instead of getting pummeled, shot or skewered?"
"Nah," another spoke up, Gerry Doyle, aka Security, from Ember's team. "We all know Sunset Bloody Shimmer doesn't just walk away from a fight if she can get injured."
Fabio Giordano, aka Fridge snorted. "I'd rather stand by someone who's willing to take a bullet or a blade for me any day of the week than someone who would just run away to be comfortable."
"Good thing Menace has never been famous for slacking on that," Greg Rose, aka Trojan said next. "Willing to take a bullet. Willing to stick it out."
"We'll miss the nerd princess of awesome," Rainbow Dash shouted back, "But we know where your heart is, Sunny."
Ember placed a hand on her shoulder. "This is home," she said, motioning with her hand at all the people present. Engineers. Scientists and soldiers. "Your home. Your family."
"And we're all glad you stayed."
Sunset looked around. Gone were the calculating looks, and the questioning glances. They all smiled.
So she smiled back. "Thank you."
Lily Shen tweaked ROV-R. Twilight's notes had some interesting concepts related to disrupting the psionic spectrum, and she wanted to test a few out before trying to really implement them into any GREMLIN units.
For one, it was a remodel of the whole thing, and for another, there was always the danger of early implementation not having enough objective testing. With the statue portal on its way to the Avenger, there were way too many fields of interest to study, and too many applications to consider.
Still, her legacy was that of the creator and engineer, and theoretical discourse wasn't enough for her. She needed the elbow grease and the physical results of hard work to feel any level of satisfaction at new projects.
Tygan theorized. She implemented.
She ran a hand through her face and sighed, putting down the tools and returning to her computer, studying the varying lines of code. As much as she wanted to deny it, translating what Twilight proposed into real world… or at least Earth physics was not as easy as turning on a switch.
Chances were she'd have to drag other Engineers into it, and that meant preparing a pitch for the Commander. Resources, manpower and effort were limited in the Avenger, but what mattered in the end were the results, and if she could create a dummy of some sort that presented the idea properly, then she'd be halfway done.
She typed away, frowning when her screen blurred for a second. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, then continued her programming, but it happened again, this time her computer, and all the others were filled with white noise.
"Shen! What the hell is going on?" the radio blared.
"I don't know, Commander!" she replied, looking around as lights flickered. The noise resolved somewhat into the vague shape of a woman, then blurred and distorted until only a red circuit could be seen.
"Shen! He-rrrzzz-lp. Heeeelp me!" a voice crackled through, distorted and extended as the scream cycled, suddenly growing in pitch as the the computers around buzzed displaying lines after lines of familiar-looking code and then suddenly went dead.
"What the fu—" Shen raced to the computers, running scans.,
"Shen?" Bradford asked, running into Engineering. "What was that?"
"I have no idea, Central, but it was using my dad's code." She kept typing desperately, trying to triangulate its origin point before suddenly stopping and shaking her head. "Of course, how could I forget?"
"You know who did that?"
"I can only think of one other who might've used my father's coding. And we know exactly where they are."
That was when a beep came from Bradford's comms. "Central, we have a signal on one of our hidden frequencies. You won't believe who it is."
Lily stopped typing, frowning as she heard the report.
Bradford exchanged a look with her. "Surprise me. I'm in Shen's office right now. Send it over."
"Transferring to Engineering," the comms operator announced, and the large screen on the wall turned on.
The background was surreal. A hut, made of metal parts, inside a cave, where alien plants grew, and in front of the camera was none other than ADVENT's very own announcer: Sweetie Belle.
"I repeat, this is a message for XCOM," the celebrity said. She looked bad. Hair disheveled, eyes puffy, a cut on her cheek and burn marks on her clothes. "New Appaloosa has been taken over. Please. Please help. Only two of us managed to escape. The city is completely quarantined. There's hundreds of civilians in there." She looked on the verge of tears. "Sunset. Jane. Please, if you're there, if you can hear me. We need you."
o.0.o End Chapter 136 o.0.o
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My little pony 2: xcom: age of ultron: the julianing
With the statue portal on it's way to the Avenger
1. Its.
Huh, ADVENT attack to get at Julian or Julian set this all up to get to Lilly?
Either way I'm hoping he has kept Apple Bloom alive for rescue, but this is XCOM.
Ooof, thats a heck an end to the trio. Poor lot.
So sweets and maybe scoots got out, bloom could be dead or juilian might try his hand at making the old mech units.
And so we get into the Shen's Last Gift arc proper. Interesting to see what Julian's up to.
I really do hope XCOM manages to recruit him, he's too much of a character to ignore.
"Help us Sunset Shimmer, you're our only hope."
T
Well the next mission is set.
Oh goody, an entire campaign chock full of purely robotic enemies: the one kind of enemy that blood magic is useless against and doesn’t mind awful much when you try stabbing it. Something tells me this is gonna be Jane’s time to shine.
Also, what’re the odds Sunny still walks out of this coated in blood?
9020037
A 100%... well the robotic equivalent.
And where is Applebloom?
9020111
Julian took a liking to her, so I'm strongly suspecting he made her into a cyborg and it was her who tried to contact Lily through her computer.
Two seperate distress signals, one known, one unrevealed. The unknown could be a few possibilities, particularly Vahlen or Sci-Twi, or an another that I'm not aware of or have forgotten at this point. Adagio could be an out-of-left-field possibility, but that seems slim. Julian could be using Apple Bloom, but unless he provided Shen's name, I can't recall any reason she'd even know it.
In any event, the next few chapters are virtually guaranteed to have something interesting and likely unexpected. I can't wait.
Help is on the Way! But whatever happened Dosen't sound Good.
Only two? That's. Unfortunate.
9020223
No! Not Tom!
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/007/113/64131_-_Dan_Tom_Dan_sunglasses_tom.png.jpeg.png
9020037
That's a sucker's bet. She'll find blood somehow. And if they can't bleed, she'll MAKE them.
Oh, that definitely isn't good. Crises aren't content to wait while XCOM uncovers the secrets of another universe. Time to see what Julian's been up to.
9020474
Well to be fair it may not be enemy blood, and that's concerning.
9020037
Oh don't say that. It'll end up being Jane's or AB's.
9020037
here's a little trick, if you keep close attention to the notes, and i mean real close attention, only three types of enemies are truly robotic, the rest are simply cyborgs. andromidons may be corrosive but it's still corrosive blood.
TIME TO BRING THE FIRES OF LIBERATION!
9021547
I’m not sure how to follow that up, so I’ll just be cliché.
I tried finding a remix/cover, but the original was actually better.
Help us, Obi-wan, I mean, Sunset Shimmer, you're our only hope.
Well, it makes sense that XCOM wouldn't just be waiting around twiddling their thumbs while Twilight's solving her problem in Equestria. I note there are hundreds of civilians captured so Scootaloo / AB are likely still fine. I'm curious about the other cryptic voice trying to contact Lily, but that'll have to wait for the mission.
I have difficulty remembering that Julian started off homicidal in the game, because I always applied his voice pack to my custom-built SPARKs. You get a funny few lines of dialogue first time you do that.
I guess Julian got found out...
This only end in one of three things:
- Advent is killing and destroying indiscriminately
- Julian is killing and destroying indiscriminately
- Both sides?... are killing and destroying indiscriminately