XCOM: Ranger
Chapter 247: Remembering
By Wanderer D
"So what am I supposed to talk about here?" Adagio asked, looking across the desk at the counselor. "You know, there's another place where—"
"There's a pony version of me that is a princess," Luna interrupted, "I know."
"Well you both like to take the fun out of life."
If Counselor Luna was intimidated by having a chrono-dimensionally-partially-phased-expat-siren that was the template of which deadly psionic-wielding cyborgs were made of, she did not show it. "You don't say."
Adagio had to admit she was somewhat impressed. "I don't feel like talking much about myself."
Luna shrugged. "Then talk about something else."
Adagio ran her tongue against her teeth as she glanced around the place. "This new Sunset Shimmer," she said, "how different is she from our Sunset?"
"Our Sunset?" Luna asked, blinking.
"I was there when Sunset went to Canterlot High," Adagio said, looking at Luna straight in the eye. "I remember when you took her under your wing after History class, when she broke that kid's nose for bullying Abacus."
Luna's eyes went wide. "I-yes, I remember that."
"I don't have the same intimate knowledge of this Equestrian Sunset Shimmer, other than she's apparently a badass, which my Sunset would approve of."
Luna smiled. "That she would," she acknowledged, then leaned back. "You realize I can't tell you much about Miss Shimmer relating to her mental state. I can just share with you what amounts to publicly known facts." She paused. "Or at least commonly known within XCOM."
Adagio shrugged. "I've got an hour. So far I've caught up to date with most things until Princess Sparkle arrived."
Luna cleared her throat. "Well, I can't tell you much of what happened immediately after, just some general details. I know that shortly after Princess Twilight arrived and a closed meeting with the Commander, Bradford, Tygan, Lilly and Sunset, she was assigned to work at the lab, but also to undertake boot camp in order to have her be ready for this world. And while she was training, Jane and Sunset went on an extended mission to New Appaloosa."
Adagio nodded. "I'm not sure of the personal details between Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom and our XCOM girls, but I do remember what happened. I think it was the first time I was able to take a good look at her through the system. I discovered that Julian had been unshackled, and that he was hacking Jane's pad. There was information about one of the XCOM invaders being heavily damaged, possibly killed."
"That would have been Jane," Luna said. "Sunset managed to get her to the old XCOM Base, and found a video on how to do blood tr—"
"Oh!" Adagio grinned, eyes wide. "The Doctors Gone Wild Video!" She laughed, leaning back. "I remember that, I was laughing so hard I had to phase myself out to let Sunset keep a mostly straight face through filming that."
Luna smiled. "I heard it was entertaining, although Sunset didn't share it with anyone."
"She did promise Vahlen only she would watch it," Adagio said, shrugging, "and only Sunset did."
"True enough, I guess," Luna agreed. "In any case, she transferred blood to Jane and managed to heal her."
"So a blood witch transferred blood to a victim," Adagio mused. "Not the smartest thing to do, unless she wanted to bind her to her will."
Luna grimaced. "I am unsure to whether Sunset Shimmer knew all the risks involved. The pair were recovered and returned to the Avenger, alongside Annette."
"Ah, yes, she's been giving me a wide berth since we arrived," Adagio said. "Not that I blame her, we weren't tight when we were in EXALT, but she and Aria… well."
"It was about this time that Twilight Sparkle went into her first mission… which was a trap set up by a traitor. I know that most of her team, except for Alejandra, were killed, and she herself made into a prisoner of the Assassin before Sunset and the others rescued her."
"Right."
"I don't know that much happened after until Sunset Shimmer's next mission. She left with Mox and Elena to join up with Angel, and they—"
"Angel?"
"Angel is… a viper," Luna said. "She and Sunset might have something going on, although there is a lot of speculation about things."
"Ah, yeah, I remember seeing her in the videos… and I think Chrysalis was in contact with her at some point while being trapped in the Network." Adagio grinned. "I thought you weren't allowed to mention personal details."
Luna huffed, crossing her arms. "That is common knowledge, I'm surprised you haven't heard about it yet."
Adagio shrugged. "So what happened next?"
"I believe that Sunset was almost killed during a chrysalid attack, and her friend and mentor Pratal Mox died as a result of saving her life."
"That's too bad," Adagio said softly, looking down at her shimmering, phased hands. "Mox was one of the few we got through to. Chrysalis and I really liked him."
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not right now… just keep telling me the story."
"Of course." Luna took a deep breath. "After Mox's death, Sunset attended his funeral and was fully accepted as a Skirmisher herself, then she led her team into the Assassin's hideout and, although they were severely injured, they managed to kill her."
"Yeah." Adagio frowned. "It's too bad it had to be Aria, you know? I always thought she had more sense than that. Sonata, I'm not too surprised and Tirek just wants power… but Aria? That siren had a purpose, she had—" She cut herself off and shook her head. "Doesn't matter anymore, does it?"
"It might."
"Yeah, not doing that right now. So, Aria died. I remember that too, shook the whole Psi-Network and sent some upper echelons of ADVENT crying to mom and dad psionic overlords." She snorted. "So, what came next?"
Luna glanced at the clock.
"We still have half an hour counselor," Adagio smiled. "I'll let you do the talking."
"Fine. It wasn't much later on, after Sunset Shimmer had just healed from her injuries, that Twilight Sparkle had to return home." She hesitated. "Apparently something was happening in Equestria and they needed her and her Element to take care of it. That is when everyone in XCOM found out that Sunset and Twilight were aliens, and Dr. Estella emerged as a genius in the developing magi-tech field."
"You had an Element of Harmony in this ship?" Adagio asked, eyes wide. "What the hell?!"
"Is that a bad thing?"
"Like I would know, that's pony-gods level ordnance right there, and I hear that magic can make psionics explode."
"Well, the princess took it back… we haven't heard much from her directly since." Luna sighed. "Shortly after Twilight left for Equestria, Menace and Dragon teams were both sent over to New Appaloosa."
"Ah, that's the day the whole place went to hell," Adagio said. "I remember that too… ADVENT was in an uproar, New Appaloosa had been taken over by a hostile robotic force like they had never seen before, the doings of dear Julian and his side-kick Apple Bloom."
"Correct. Apple Bloom was severely injured during a fight and Julian, who has some complicated feelings for her apparently—"
"Speculation, counselor."
Luna gave her an annoyed look. "Julian created an entire process to convert her into a cyborg."
"Right, that, I did know."
"Of course." Luna leaned back. "No one knows exactly why, but shortly after that, during an infiltration mission, Fugue appeared and Sunset Shimmer was no more."
Adagio shook her head.
"Aside from that, and the details of your own rescue thanks to you hacking into our system to let us watch the last battle of Stardust at the Temple Ship, along and the efforts of the commander and several soldiers and mercenaries to extract you, I believe you're up to date."
"With ten minutes to spare," Adagio said, grinning. "Mind if I head out? I'm supposed to meet the Commander after this, and I think I could use the time to center myself."
Luna chuckled. "Sure. But next time, you do the talking."
Adagio was already on her way out. "Sure, sure. See you soon, doc."
o.0.o End Chapter 247 o.0.o
Short but good chapter
Adagio gets brought up to speed and we get an obligatory recap chapter with some nice character interaction and a bit of trivial history. Not bad.
Twas a short but nice filler chapter.
A nice little filler and recap chapter! Hope the next one comes soon!
A little high school-era history and the rest of the recap. Now that Adagio's caught up, it's time to get to work.
A clip show?
Thanks for the brief recap, but still enjoyed and looking forward to the next one!
Were the recap chapters really necessary? *Looks at chapter count* Oh....yeah alright, more then justified. Carry on.
Might? MIGHT?!? THERE'S NO MIGHT OR MAYBE ABOUT SUNGEL, THEY'RE THE ONE TRUE SHIP AND I'LL FIGHT YOU FOR IT!!!
Filler recap chapter. Good for refreshing memories.
Ah, downtime ... wonderful thing that ...
1: comma
2: 'made of' implies she is the material, not the template. What you mean is 'based of', or 'based off of'
"along and the efforts"
"along with the efforts"?
I have finally caught up! Including the chapter that was apparently posted earlier today, which is neat.
It's kind of funny how bits of this story mirror my own playthrough of X-COM 2. I lost Mox, but not Elena, nor my first Templar (who's name was not Laetitia, but he did still have a few close calls with some volatile explosions). The Assassin was the first Chosen I took out, followed by the Warlock, then the Hunter. My first Ranger also had a tendency to carve bloody swathes through my enemies, especially once she got the Katana, and her bondmate was even a Specialist (though as far as I know there were no magical blood transfusions between the two).
But enough about me.
With Galahad joining Princess Sparkle in the side story and Tirlok going out in a blaze of gory, it kind of leaves Bradford and Tygan as the only major male characters currently active (no offence to Geist, but he's been background at best for quite some time). Not necessarily a bad thing, just something I noticed when the three birds of a feather got together and I realized that romance in the story has thus far been exclusively between women. Even Fugue's blood-orgies seem to focus on the ladies.
I'm hoping that Sunset can bring Chimera (I want to call her Menagerie Sparkle, after canon Sci-Twi's evil form Midnight Sparkle) back from the madhouse with her, but given how powerful she is just on her own I rather doubt that she will survive the experience without basically a full reset.
Hmm... I wonder what would happen if she went through the Mirror? Would she turn into a normal pony? A Changeling? Would she still have her modifications when she crossed back over to Earth? The Science is eager indeed...
I'm a bit surprised that no one has clued in on the fact that the Journal, a fairly powerful but still relatively mundane magical item, can send information across the dimensional barrier basically freely, and tried to apply that to the infamously finicky Mirror.
Always.
Ah yeah, someone else got to see it.
Lots of people really want to know.
That does seem complicated.
Ah, so the Sirens did go to CHS in this universe as well. That's interesting. I wonder if that might be used to redeem Sonata.
Good for the reminder of where we've been.
9912433 No, Adagio was a ghost overseeing Earth!Sunset as she grew up.
9912676
Oooh, I see.
A recap done right.
9911164
When it's a commonly used idiom, and is used for a certain effect, it should be just fine. Writers purposely break grammatical rules all the time, even professionals.
How many chapters long will this story be?
9917065
Ep 125 of this story.
9917171
Ah, thanks for clarification.
Yes, I've caught up.
....
Nooooo , I've caught up. No more archive-binging.
At the end of a recap too. pretty appropriate.
Looking forward to seeing what develops here. Especially with what Warlock did to Fugue.
Also got me back into playing XCOM2. Didn't finish it the first time around.
Got the whole expansion set installed this time, just finished the Elena and Mox intro missions. The Lost are fun to fight, though the Assassin managed to injure my rookie sniper during the one turn she was active. Elena and my heavy 'naded her into submission after that.
I'm back to reading and, lucky me, it looks like Adagio was recapping for us. Actually quite useful.
-GM, master of Sonata.
Huh. It seems I've had a spot of luck. An overall if brief recap of the plot 'till now, just after I took a long break?
Very useful.
One chapter left.
248 chapters looked like such an insurmountable challenge, but it all went by so fast!
9912676
I was looking for a note saying that it's a good point to start reading that side story you have going, but didn't see anything. Any chance you could go back and point out when?
So mutch happend and so mutch is yet to come
So... When do we get to the Gem twisting minds?
The rescued Sires is a lot more sane after all...