Fallout Equestria: War Never Changes

by jarmari

Chapter 17

Chapter 17:

We set out early the next morning. Xem hadn't been thrilled at the thought of going home again after so many years but he knew it was of the utmost importance to us and so he agreed to show us the way all the same. We decided to take the sky wagon so we could travel faster. We'd headed to town first, we needed all the help we could get and we wanted to try and recruit Lily to the cause, she had come with us, wearing just simple metal armour, her MDW armour tucked away in a trunk we'd loaded into the back just in case things got really hairy. I had wired the hard drives into the computer on the Quad turret so I could keep working while we flew. DJ Pon3 was playing on the radio in the cockpit.

"And that last selection goes out to my favorite toaster repair pony, thanks again for bringing me those new records, nothing like mixing up the selection some times. Homage wanted me to let you know that she has a special present for you next time you get a chance to visit, whatever that means. Now how about a few more new tunes?" Homage's voice cut out and another song started.

"Boo!" I called. She screamed and dropped the pile of records in magical grasp. I sat watching her on the monitor directly behind her, grinning like an idiot. I had linked in while she was talking and simply sat waiting for her step away from the mic before I tried to talk.

"Geeze Sugarcane, you scared me half to death." She sighed, picking up her records and setting them down on the desk. "What can I do for you?"

"I, uh, have a present for DJ Pon3." I smiled.

"Oh do you now?" She asked, grinning a little. "I hope you aren't expecting a special present too, because I only like Mares."

"Me too." I nodded and she laughed. "I'm in a sky wagon with..." I turned and looked. "Four mares...Lily do you count as a mare?" I called up to the cockpit.

"It's how I normally how I identify so sure."

"Four mares." I nodded, looking back to the monitor. "Lily is a changeling."

"Ooo the possibilities are endless." She grinned. "You still with that pretty pegasus?"

"I am." I nodded. "We're getting married."

She squeed a little, giggling and blushing as only a mare can when you tell them you're getting married.

"She's flying the sky wagon with Lily..."

"And who's Lily?" She asked.

"Her cousin."

"Her cousin is a changeling? How's that work?"

"You're very curious."

"I'm a news reporter, I collect all information."

"Lily was adopted into the family as a baby."

"Oh that makes sense."

"Anyway..."

"Hey Cane, whatcha doing? Who's this?" CB pushed her way in front of me and looked at the monitor curiously. "Who're you?"

"I'm Homage, who're you?"

"I'm CB, how are you in the turret computer?"

"The what?"

"CB..." I tried but was cut off.

"Yeah we have turrets in the sky wagon and this one has a computer in it. I didn't know it could talk to other ponies."

"Normally it can't..." Again I'm cut off.

"Cane why do you have a little filly with you?"

"I'm part of the team!"

I looked helplessly at the others in the cabin but they were either grinning or just watching, content to stay out of the way.

"I'm responsible for her." I managed, cutting off Homage before she could keep going. "CB sweetie, I really need to finish talking with Homage before we get to the village alright?"

She sighed and nodded. "Fine, you never let me have any fun..." She stepped off the bench and moved back to sit with Xem.

"We could have left you back in town with Firebird." I said and she just waved a dismissive hoof at me.

"Kids..." I sighed. "I don't know what made me think I was ready..."

"So she's your daughter?"

"Adoptive daughter yes. Her mother was killed when the Pyro Collective attacked our base." I said softly, but CB wasn't paying attention anymore anyway. "So Ruby and I decided to take care of her."

"Aw, that's so sweet." She smiled. "Anyway, I'm gonna have to get back to this soon so what did you want to give me?"

"Do the computers there still work properly?" She nodded, "and do they still have working storage?" She nodded again. "Can you set them to receive data from me?" She took a moment to poke at it and then came back and nodded again.

"Alright perfect, now you might want to hold onto something for this part." I smiled, hitting a few buttons on the computer. I heard the computer DING on her end as the files started transferring. She leaned closer and looked at the list curiously. "What are these? There's tons of em."

I broke into a big goofy grin again. "Those are songs."

She looked up at me again, clearly not sure if I was serious. "They're what?"

"Digital copies of music. Those records you have were actually old and out of date before I was born."

"What? Really? But how do these work?" She asked, clearly awestruck as the transfer continued.

"The computers are wired into the sound system, same as the record players. You just use the computer software instead of the turn tables."

"Yeah I have the instruction manual, I'm sure I can find it..." She looked back at me. "I lied...I might have a special present for you if you ever make it out to Tenpony Tower."

"Anything I can do to help." I smirked.

"How many are there?"

"A full months worth of music."

"Meaning?"

"If you were to not speak, no news, no intermissions, no breaks, just played music, one song after another, back to back, it would take you a physical month to play every song just once."

"I...I...I..Cane...You're..." She stammered, looking kind of faint.

"Hey, you're welcome." I smiled. "I might be going to my death soon and I'd hate for all this music to be lost."

"There's so much work to do with these..."

"Well they'll all sort into folders once the files finish sending, all the genres broken down for you, and then again by artist. I suggest starting with the 'Classic Rock' folder and working your way out from there."

"You're the boss." She nodded, watching as it finished, all the files vanishing into a dozen folders. My Pipbuck chirped and showed me the transfer was complete so I cut that link.

"Well try not to weep too much when you listen to the greatest music ever to grace your ears."

"I'll try..." She nodded, already burying herself in the huge list of Artist sub-folders inside the classic rock main folder.

"Start with the Hoof Beats, then the Stones, then The Who..."

"The what?"

"No The Who, I don't have anything by What."

"Huh?"

"They're in the Alt. Rock folder."

"Who?"

"No they're Classic Rock."

"KNOCK IT OFF CANE!" Crackshot snapped, smacking the back of my head, making me lose my concentration and break out laughing. "She doesn't get it and you're just confusing the poor mare."

"I...What?" Homage looked from one to the other.

"It's a very, VERY old joke...it was old before our parents were born." Crackshot explained. "Hoof Beats, the Stones, Queen, The Who, The Eagles, Deaf Leopard, the GUESS who, yes they're different from The Who, Step-in Wolf, The Birds, and Jefferson Skywagon." She finished. "You can make your way through the other music on your own time."

Homage finished writing the list she'd started with me and nodded happily, then looked back at us. "So wait, what makes you think you're going to your death?"

"We're going to investigate a Zebra village that was attacked by the Pyros and see if we can find some clues..."

"Still working on that eh? Well good luck. Lemme know how it turns out. Things aren't going so well out here either. The Enclave looks like they're rallying to attack..."

"Oh shit...well if we finish our stuff I'm sure we can try to come help."

"Hey, it's not your fight."

"It's everyone's fight, we all live here, we're going to stand for being bullied by a bunch of stuck up pegasi who think they're better than us." Crackshot said.

"We are better than you!" Ruby called from the cockpit.

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah I do."

"Just fly the wagon."

"Uh...guys, fun as this is I have to get back to work...DJ Pon3'll kill me if he catches me slacking off."

"Yeah yeah of course, you get back to it." I said. "I'll call you if we survive."

"Thanks Sugarcane." She smiled, the screen blanking out.

"Well she seems nice." Crackshot grinned.

"Yeah she does. I guess that Toaster Repair Pony she keeps talking about makes her happy." Ruby said.

"Well we can't all be wasteland DJ's or heroes."

"Who in their right mind specializes in TOASTER repair in the wasteland?" Xem asked.

"No clue, but they're good enough for Homage they're good enough for me." I shrugged. "I couldn't fix a toaster very well."

"You used to build robots for a living."

"Okay so MAYBE I could fix a toaster." I laughed.

"Alright everyone we're coming down one mile south of the village. If there's anyone around that doesn't want to see us we don't want to tip our hoof too soon." Brutus said as the sky wagon made it's way down. We settled in a small ditch and everyone unloaded.

"Crackshot, Xem and CB, you three are going to guard the wagon while we're gone."

"Yes sir." CB saluted, grinning to the zebra beside her.

"Ruby, go with Cane, Lily you come with me. We'll split up when we get into town...major or important looking buildings first, keep an eye out for computers so Cane can have at them for info."

"You got it boss man." Ruby said, coming over and bumping my flank. "You gonna keep me nice and warm on this trip?" She asked me, putting a good amount of emphasis on a sultry voice, wrapping her head around the back of my neck and kissing my jaw.

"You're insane, you know that right Ruby?" Brutus asked, shaking his head.

"Crazy like a fox!" She grinned, pushing herself back and and starting away towards the town in the distance.

//////////

We ran into a problem...a BIG problem.

"There's gotta be dozens of them." Ruby said, peering at the bustling groups in the streets off in the distance. We'd barely made it to the outskirts of the village when we noticed movement. We took up a place on a hill and had found dozens of occupants in the town, all going about seemingly normal daily life, except for the fact that they all had Pyro masks around their necks, or on their faces, they looked like any other wasteland village. Guards patrolled the streets, they didn't seem to have any pegasi, but there were a number of watch towers with 3 or 4 ponies in each, watching every direction.

"I say we go in for a better look." Brutus insisted. We hadn't even reached a point where we'd have broken off into teams so we were all still hunched together.

"I could..." Lily offered, transforming into a green Earth Pony buck. "You have those masks without glyphs right?"

"We didn't bring them." Ruby said, shaking her head. "Didn't think we'd need them, and figured it was more important for the others to learn how to change them so that we could take ponies out of the fight without hurting them, and you'll draw attention without one."

"Dammit..." She flashed and returned to normal.

"There aren't that many of them. I say we attack!" Brutus said, stomping a hoof in the dirt. "We hop in the Skywagon and strafe those mother buckers. They don't have any decent Anti-air weapons that I can see. Those flamers will be USELESS from the distance we attack..." He was cut off when a half dozen sky wagons appeared from the opposite direction. "Or maybe they have their own armada..." He gulped.

They came down towards a clearing on the far side of town and started to drop to the ground, but amazingly vanished from sight as they did.

"Whoa whoa whoa, what the hell?" Crackshot asked, looking through her binoculars.

"Where are they going?" Ruby asked.

"Well spank my ass and call me a filly..." I muttered, looking through my own binoculars, then down at my pipbuck.

One of Ruby's wings came down on my rump. "What is it my little filly?" She grinned.

"It's the Delta site." I gestured to the blank space where the sky wagons had now all vanished.

"The WHAT?"

"When Crackshot and I returned to my office to clean out the rest of the stuff, I authorized Crackshot in the system so it didn't try to kill her. It told me it couldn't authorize her for the Delta site because it had been removed from the network. I figured it had been destroyed, but this is it..." I was scrolling through old data on my pip buck. "I only ever came here once, while it was still being built..." I found an old map of the area around the delta site and it was a small town with a predominantly Zebra population, nodding to myself. "This was supposed to be the 'top secret' facility. The really powerful stuff was made here. Huge power supplies, tons of simple storage that could be converted into offices or labs or anything we needed. It was meant to be as malleable as we needed...and it had a cloaking spell placed on it so no one could find it easily...I don't know why I didn't think about it sooner. I guess when it was first pointed out I didn't even know about Venture, so it didn't occur to me, but this has to be their base of operations. That's why no one could find them. They have a cloaked building, the town just looks like any other town."

"Well what do we do?" Brutus asked.

"We go back to town, we regroup and we come up with a plan. I was ready to scout the town, to scavenge data and supplies, but I was NOT prepared for this."

"Alright, we go back to town then. We'll come up with a new plan and we come back in force."

We withdrew quickly and quietly. When we got back to the sky wagon the others seemed surprised to see us so soon.

"What happened?"

"The whole town is swarming with Pyros. This is their base." Lily said. "It's time to go home for now."

//////////

Brutus, Crackshot and I spent the whole flight back deep in conversation, while I taught them everything I could about the delta site from the data I had on the scavenged hard drives and my own fuzzy memories they came up with the plan of attack for how to take the town.

"We're going to need every solider willing to help, every one willing to take up arms and come with us."

"Well we know everypony in the Collective is on board." Crackshot said.

"Probably anyone else in town that has ended up a refugee or suffered a loss from the pyros will be with us I'm sure."

The skywagon suddenly lurched to a stop and I pitched forward, smacking my horn against the turret computer and cracking the screen.

"Ruby! What the hell?" Brutus demanded, pulling himself back up onto the bench he'd been sitting on.

"You guys need to look outside..." Ruby called. She turned the wagon and the back door opened. We were still hundreds of feet in the air, looking down at Maneville, there were massive smoldering piles all around the town, I could see the main gate lying about 20 feet inside the entrance to the town, small forms ran about frantically, dozens of buildings were on fire or had collapsed completely.

"Fuck..."

Footnote: 50% to next level

This fanfiction is based on Fallout Equestria by Kkat; a familiarity with the source material may aid your understanding.
You can read Fallout Equestria by Kkat on Equestria Daily
The Fallout: Equestria logo used above was designed by DotRook, who, according to the original deviantArt page, allows usage in supplementary materials created for and associated with the series. Images really do make a difference, so he has our eternal gratitude and respect.
If you enjoy Fallout Equestria Side Stories, you will want to check the Fallout Equestria Side Stories post on Equestria Daily and the Fallout Equestria Side Stories thread on Ponychan
The Ponychan group is also a hatching ground that you can join if you want to share your experience, writing or comments with us.

Author's Note:

Yeah I know I spelled Def Leppard, The Birds and Steppenwolf wrong in the story, THAT'S THE JOKE! :P

This chapter has the distinction of being the only one I wrote completely at the office, and in the span of two days, and all of it completely on FIMfiction. This is the first chapter not to be written on my laptop and then posted to the site...just thought I'd share that little tidbit.

Comments

[Killer-931]

Wow! new chapter already? remember not to rush it and pace yourself. have a pinky

[Alamut]

Heh you were really serious about posting it so fast I'm considering it only a filler - the next one will be surely interesting

[jarmari]

1813245

You saying this one wasn't interesting?

[Alamut]

1813584
Nope Just some random encounters. The best part was actually Sugars Well spank my ass and call me a filly... comment