Chapter 249: Loadout
XCOM: Ranger
Chapter 249: Loadout
By Wanderer D
Chrysalis' office was too small for gathering all relevant staff, so she had ordered the hangar to be cleared of personnel, and forbidden access to it for anyone not directly contacted by her or Central.
Now, right off of the Skyranger's ramp, they had set up a very large table. Several large screens had been brought from the labs, and long tables had been lined to the side with several pieces of equipment stacked on them.
A heavily reinforced box stood far from the other equipment, tightly sealed, and marked dangerous. Even though there was nothing else to it, while it stood under a spotlight, it gave off an ominous aura, almost as if things were slightly lesser around it, and the shadows cast by it were darker than they should be.
For the most part, those already there gathered around their comfort zone.
Gilda, Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash hovered around the area where Apple Bloom and Shen were setting up equipment on the long tables, alongside schematics for Skyranger upgrades and different scanning devices. A suspiciously large metallic box stood next to them, drawing more than one questioning look.
Elena, Angel (on loan), and Jane stood in a loose circle with Ember, Breaker and all six members of Wolf Team. The group were off to the side, near the lockers which were located closest to the staff entrance. Near them, but not quite part of their circle, was their newest loan from the Skirmishers: Gorack,who looked more bewildered than anything.
Estella was on her own, checking several screens across from the engineering section, on the other side of the large, central table. Several smaller tables were set around her small station, containing devices and oddly enough plenty of crystals. Had Twilight still been in their world, she'd probably be helping her set that up. Still, she didn't seem bothered by being the lone scientist in the room, running from one screen to the other and bringing up esoteric graphs and info that escaped the comprehension of many people in the room.
It didn't take long for everyone to quiet down as the staff entrance to the hangar opened and Chrysalis, Anette, Laettitia (Luna), Tygan, Sweetie Belle, Adagio and Central stepped into the room. Everyone stood at attention and saluted as The Commander stood next to her seat at the head of the table.
She nodded to them, allowing all the gathered soldiers, scientists and staff to shuffle to their seats as well before sitting down, followed by the others. Chrysalis took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Okay, let's get this started."
She glanced around the table. "I've called you all today because we need to stop Fugue, The Hunter, and Chimera. It's about time we consolidate all our assets for this purpose."
She met everyone's eyes firmly. "As you all know I have a history with a Sunset Shimmer, and like all of you came to respect and love our new Sunset as part of XCOM, an amazing soldier, and loyal to all of us beyond the confines of species, world or even dimension. If we can bring her back… we will try.
"But that is just an ideal solution. Outside of Sunset being an excellent soldier, Fugue is a risk we cannot afford to allow to exist. We all saw what our unexpected enemies are capable of, and we cannot allow them to attack and derail us if we have any hope to save humanity from the Elders.
"We have been in communication with Twilight Sparkle in Equestria with the assistance of Princess Luna, and have been informed that they have reached the general location of the magical item that they believe can cure Sunset of the bloodlust that consumed her. They expect to have it in their… hooves… within a few hours."
She bit her lip and shook her head, grimacing. "I want to believe it's true. But even if they get it, we cannot simply assume it will work. We need to plan for the worst, and she is just one of several problems we will face. Luna?"
Luna rose to her feet, brushing a strand of Laetitia's hair from her face. "You have all seen the same basic information we have: Sirens are usually created after a pony or creature from Equestria sacrifices themselves for a greater cause. That the siren's gem is created in the process to secure what is essentially their soul and central being, initially to allow them passage through otherwise debilitating effects, until their mission is over, after which the gem is all that remains, and eventually grows into a new version of themselves after they passed away."
She pressed a button and one of the screens lit up with a picture of one of the blood-red gems, as well as a picture of Fugue, where her gem could be seen glinting in the light.
"The issue oddly enough is," she continued, "that Sunset Shimmer never died. Through the history of my world, blood witches and warlocks have been the worst of those that fall to forbidden magic. Whatever the exact reason for this is irrelevant at this time. It's simply fact… sirens would usually be born from those that stopped these creatures. However, somewhere along the line, Sunset started forging her own gem… which shouldn't have been possible."
"The running theory is that Sonata was somehow responsible for this," Adagio said, drawing their attention. "I'm not entirely sure how, but when they came in contact during the mission to rescue Apple Bloom. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, she either accelerated the damage, or started something."
"On that topic," Tygan interrupted, "Perhaps it's best to let us continue from here. Intel has correlated sufficient data for us to assume with very little doubt that Sonata—also known as The Hunter—is allied with this Earth's Twilight Sparkle, also known as Chimera."
A crack made everyone look at Ember, who had completely crumpled a metal mug into a misshapen mass with her hand. "That thing is not Twilight Sparkle."
"You are correct," the Commander replied. "Whoever that was before, she—like Aria and Sonata before her—is no longer the Twilight Sparkle she was before. And more importantly, never was our Twilight." She met Ember's eyes with her own. "And she will be dealt with like we deal with any enemy that hurts our team."
Although her jaw was still clenched, Ember nodded, acknowledging Chrysalis' promise, so the commander nodded at Tygan, who stood up, pushing his glasses up with his finger.
"After some experimentation with theories left behind by Twilight Sparkle, Miss Marilla—"
"Glimmer!" someone who sounded a lot like Gilda called out.
Tygan gave her a look, then cleared his throat. "As I was saying, while we worked with the notes left by Twilight, Estella made a startling connection."
Grinning nervously, Estella took the spot, bringing up her presentation. Lunattitia and Adagio both leaned in, studying her notes and graphs. She was literally presenting to masters of the topic. She hadn't felt so nervous since presenting her thesis in college.
"It is my theory that Chimera was involved with the development of Sunset's gem," she said. "I don't believe she knew this would happen, exactly, but Chimera had ample opportunity to study Sunset Shimmer when the Viper King captured her, and—if working with Sonata and possibly Aria as well—enough chances to experiment with their gems as well."
"It does seem to match her unhinged sense of science," Tygan added. "While it's clear that Chimera based her work off of Dr. Vahlen's experiments, developing these… mutations is beyond reckless."
He stood at the other side of the monitor Estella had shown her theorems on and put up the screenshots of the monsters they had faced so far. "At this moment in time, we have encountered modified sectoids, (with far greater powers than others) as well as a Berzerker Queen, Archeon King, and the deceased Viper King."
"It stands to reason that these are not the only monsters Chimera is creating, if she's basing them off of ADVENT's troops. We can expect her to follow her tendencies and present us with a mutated Chrysalid and Muton at some point," Estella added. "But that's not all…"
Shen took her queue, standing up to stand where Tygan had, while Apple Bloom took Estella's. "Chimera has also added modified MECs to their arsenal, thanks in no small part to somehow getting their hands on what remains of Julian."
"He was able to hack past my defenses and control my body for a short while," Apple Bloom said. "Shen and I have gone over the details, and we believe we should be able to fight back more efficiently, especially with the aid of some… gifts from her father."
"In order to fight all of these enemies, we have developed our own weapons to the point where we believe we stand a fair chance," Shen said. "With the assistance of Vykass and the other original aliens, including their very own Sectoid Commander, we have developed equipment that can disrupt their mind-control attempts when directed at those of us that are not magical."
"Why the distinction?" Szymon Zajac, aka Hunt, the grenadier from Wolf Team asked.
"If an alien tries to force their psionics on a magic user, their heads will explode," Annette explained.
"Damn, how do I become magic?" the soldier muttered, earning himself an elbow to the ribs.
"In any case," Shen continued, "the resources and knowledge we obtain from the old base, added to the friendly alien's advice, have resulted in advanced laser weapons that we can use effectively against ADVENT and Julian."
Jane raised her hand. "Apple Bloom mentioned a gift from your dad? What did he leave for us?"
Shen grinned. "This is SPARK."
The large box next to the weapons table hissed open, and a MEC, somewhat resembling the ones from ADVENT stepped out.
"GREETINGS."
"Project SPARK was my father's next development in the war against the aliens," Shen explained. "Mechanoid soldiers that could fight with us, and also in the process reduce the number of lives lost. I have several possibilities to upgrade SPARK, not in small measure thanks to Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, who provided their insight into these kinds of machines, but also the best armor materials.
"At this time, I've upgraded SPARK to what I call a "knight"." Shen glanced at Chrysalis. "Um, I hope you don't mind, Commander, but I want to honor Stardust with the nomenclature for the SPARK units ranks."
Chrysalis smiled a bit, nodding. "Continue."
Shen nodded at Scootaloo, who reluctantly stood up. "Alright, listen up. Part of the problem with most of your armors is that with the lack of some sort of exo-skeleton to help carry alien alloys, they become impossible to wear without eventually crushing you under their weight. However, the SPARK unit doesn't have to worry about that. I worked with Shen to make an alloy that will withstand several rounds of attacks from most ADVENT weapons, and is all but impervious to heat and acid."
"For my part, Ah helped program the cyberwarfare suites for their programs, increased their hacking capability, and their firewalls… along with mine. Needless to say, Charles Shen was a genius, and having studied the real material he left behind, I'm confident we have solid soldiers on our side."
"Additionally," Estella spoke up, raising a hand, "with the help of Princess Luna, we developed a basic anti-magic field around the SPARK units. They won't be able to survive long against Fugue, but if it's just a throwaway attack, they should have a higher chance of survival."
Deadwood leaned back, grinning. "I'm liking our chances more. How many do we have?"
"Um… two."
"Okay, less than earlier, but still feeling good."
Chrysalis stood up. "I have been working on the strategy we'll use… with Sweetie Belle and her sister's help, we have put in motion the plan to lure Fugue, the Hunter and Chimera, as well as their toys to a location of our choosing." She walked around the table to stand in front of the Skyranger. "Make no mistake, this will not be easy… but it's not a situation we can ignore if we hope to survive, let alone win this war. We need to save Sunset, and take the others down."
"And if we can't save Sunset?"
Chrysalis glared at Jane, but didn't answer immediately, instead walking over to open the ominous box and extract a smaller one from within, which she threw across the table.
Jane caught it, wincing.
Chrysalis wondered if Jane had done so because she had felt the anti-life field on it thanks to her own magic, or if it was because deep down, she didn't want it to be necessary. But that was unimportant. There as after all only one way that Chrysalis could answer her question. "If not… you know what to do."
o.0.o End Chapter 249 o.0.o
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It´s Alive ! The Son has returned! Welcome back man! Thanks for this chapter!
The Return of the King
Seriously, glad to see this is back up. There's nothing quite like seeing an age old fic revived.
It's aliive o.o
Habemus chapter!
Welcome back!
Dang! Has it really been three years? Anyway welcome back.
A surprise but a welcome one!
Welcome back!
Welcome back
… How does the AMF react to Psyonics?
The once a day updates were a little insane tbf
nice to see this updated
11197729
Can't have been.
*Looks at chapter upload dates*
Holy shit... It was...
I`m really glad to see this story updated again! Welcome back.
Nice to have you back
If Angel and Sunset don't end up together with possible snekpone foals there'll be blood though
Thank you for the chapter
Welcome back buddy!
Take your time with the updates, burnouts are no fun for ANYONE!
Welcome back!
Nice to see you back! Will there be more chapters over on Algae Photis as well or are you going to be focusing on this one? No pressure and no rush, just to remind myself to look over there from time to time if needed.
Welcome back. Choose your own pace, obviously you don't need my permission for that but I'll say it anyway for support cause emotions aren't always logical and you're 100% in your right to write or not write at whatever pace. You're a proven writer with multiple stories that many people, myself included, love. I will always have a bookmark on this story even if it's on hiatus or canceled cause the journey so far has been worth rereading it multiple times already. I hope that knowing that so many others like me enjoy this story might balance out any bad faith criticism.
I was reluctant to go back to this.
My mood for this story soured a lot with the inclusion of Fugue. It's a good idea on paper, but the execution ended up with something so overpowered that it sucked the fun out of any conflict she was in and made ADVENT lose a lot of its threat, the most notable being the fight with the Warlock, where despite being one of the only warriors that wields the power that can actually hurt Fudge, the battle was still incredibly one sided and ultimately made Tirek's character feel largely inconsequential on its own, only having importance because of what he allows others to do. Also, the attempt at showing some sort of, I want to guess morality in Fudge with the whole scene with the city being punished by one man's wishes felt incredibly pretentious.
The fact that these problems remain fresh in my mind despite so long a hiatus shows how much they bother me. However, if the story went how I wanted it to go, it would be because I would be writing it myself.
This chapter does give me a bit of hope of reigniting my love for the story. Some things that I believed were going to be literal Deus Ex Machina's to solve the impossible question of how does XCOM don't get immediately one-shotted by blood magic? are proven to be, at least for now, reasonable. And Chimera is still a much more compelling and entertaining antagonist than Fugue.
Here hoping for at least some decent resolution for the Fugue fiasco, and seeing how the story ends.
Sir, you've included me in your work without permission... Please, carry on.
(seriously, I've had this exact same exchange at work. More than once.)
Holy crap I forgot this existed but now all the memories of how good this is are coming back. I am so happy this is still going
Huzzah! It returns
11198315 Fugue. Also, I really enjoyed writing that short chapter. It's also never been intended to give her morality unless you want to give it to her. She essentially mentally-f*cked up this dude by piling the guilt of something he had no chance of averting anyway, but he chose to think it was his choice that affected the outcome.
Fugue was always planned, and foreshadowed. If anything was an issue, it was that my daily routine demanded writing sometimes without moving the story further than it should have, but there was always a plan and there were always reasons for everything. Tirek was canonically (and in this fic), a thief of power, and he never fully realized what the gems could do, relying more on the power he had over the others with manipulations and the gifts of the Elders, rather than real merit of his own.
11198672
My apologies for mistaking the name, a bit embarrassing to be honest.
Fugue, as I said, yes, it's foreshadowed and I was looking forward to it, and it's a nice idea on paper, but again, it ended up being just an overpowered thing that just wasn't fun to read and detracted from the other threats in the story. I don't know how more time of writing could've solved that.
Tirek... Fair. It isn't a thing I really like in writing but it fits him in this universe.
11198822 If I'm completely honest, I really think the way I was writing made it a more difficult thing to digest. Fugue's arc should have been tighter in general, but pumping out words asap wasn't the best way for me to do that.
11198823
Yeah, I've seen that having a self-imposed deadline or things like that can eat through a writer's quality and their enthusiasm with a story.
A more relaxed approach will surely help you with it. This is still one of the most high quality stories in the site.
Best of luck!
I was so worried this was a bad April fool's joke. Glad to see you returning to form, D 😊
IT RETURNS.
I'm just going to blame this decade's crappy start for everything as I have been since COVID hit, and hope things continue to improve on your end.
11198672
I just finished re-reading this
Now on to the pony side
I was hoping, I was waiting and at long last it's here. Ranger is back and I can't be happier about it.
Not only this is the best MLP/XCOM crossover I've read but the first ever long fic I've read and one of the stories that built my love for crossovers. There are no words to describe how happy I am to read another chapter even if it's just a small filler.
Thank you D for the job you've done and I'll be waiting for the next chapter.
Yay your alive. Finally I know your ok, and take your time no need to rush in fact don't rush. Don't listen to the mean, rude comments, if they don't like your story the oh well, just remember there are people who love your story. So just take your time and don't stress out about it. And let the journey continue.
Verbally went "oh shit..no way"
Wasn't expecting a new chapter but it's a welcome surprise.
Welcome back! Always nice to see a fic rise from the ashes of a hiatus. I remember really enjoying this fic so I'll just re-read the whole thing to refresh my memory. Good luck with the fic!
I have loved your work since i first found this site. So glad to read the next chapter in this story and excited to see what comes from your other works.
Wait wait wait, did I miss something? Last I heard Rarity was only aware of her sibling's existence and had gone missing. Where was it that they've gotten back into contact with each other?
Wait, I just realized they are only now unlocking laser weapons?!? How have they survived this long without more losses? This fic actually inspired me to play XCOM 2 and I had plasma before I took on the second Chosen stronghold- which I'm just barely passed in my first playthrough. Guess they're playing on a higher difficulty (or I should have focused more on the Shadow Chamber).
11201404
X-com 2 doesn't have laser weapons at all, they're replaced with magnetic accelerators based off of ADVENT's infantry weapons. I seem to remember it was also mentioned much earlier in this story that EU/EW era laser weapons were rendered largely obsolete by ADVENT's armor - so this is an entirely new brand of more powerful laser weaponry that's capable enough of dealing with ADVENT's refractive armor to be a direct upgrade to the magnetic guns.
I'm so glad this story is finally back. I have loved every word and was so worried that it was going to end up another story on permanent hiatus.
I'm so glad this is back, thank you so much for your dedication to writing this fic Wanderer.
11201404
The order of operations in terms of tech, ‘beating the game’ progress, and taking down the Chosen progress are all significantly variable based on your personal priorities. You can get to at least one of the Chosen bases before even mag rifles if you push it, you can beat the game without taking out any of the chosen for good and again without even mag rifles, and you can make near zero progress on either goal until after getting plasma if you so choose (I tend to like doing this, because I like playing with well-seasoned, OP troops when doing anything remotely scary)
Welcome back, story! It was cruel to be left as we were, on the cusp of the plot noodles collapsing into one beautiful dish : )
Nice to have more of this; thanks. :)
I don't put it beyond Jane to shot Sunset even after she has been rescued. Eighter telling herself she just turn in time again or rather not even trying to make excuses simply wanting revenge.
Jane go through thick and thin with Sunset and Sunset rescued her and make her magical so any Psi attack on her will meet failure, but she seem adamant on petty revenge...
Not going so far as killing a ally to get a anti magic bullet, but dealing on mid mission or picking it up from a fallen squad mate
HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT its back! fuck yeah D, welcome back to the story
Good to see SPARK back.
Hopefully they get more use out of Mechanized troops than I have throughout both EW and WOTC...
I don't know if I'm just too aggressive, or what, but not being able to take cover is rough.
I'm sure they have latent defense, but it does nothing compared to full cover, and as a result they get hard targeted.
We shall see though.
Onward
11444054
The problem I have with the SPARK is it’s material cost; it’s expensive, and I could put those materials to other uses, like more WAR suits.
I probably got more use out of the MEC trooper out of anything, whilst the Goliaths feel a bit gimmicky until you develop the last tier.
We need more Spark Power
1 per Team perhaps?
11829642
They're not exactly cheap to make.
2 Elerium Cores, 100 Supplies, 20 Alien Alloys, and 5 Elerium Crystals, and like, a week of time.