Heroes (XCOM: Ranger — Fanfic)
Sunset's Isekai
Heroes (XCOM: Ranger — Temporary Hiatus)
By Wanderer D
"I'm tired." Adagio grumbled, stepping aside as much as space allowed in the hallway of the Avenger to let the group of angry humans pass. While there was a (very) surprising amount of tolerance in their gaze, it still hid under that the hurt and fear and wariness that was to be expected, after all, she looked almost exactly like one of their frequent enemy troop units.
Considering the nature of XCOM, that was as best as she was going to get from the crew in general, and it was admittedly a surprise. XCOM had been notorious through the last war on how xenophobic and ready to kill aliens they had been… granted, with good reason.
Despite that, her little Chrysalis and her troops had pushed back and almost defeated the first invasion force, before the mythical Elders had finally taken control of Earth. And yet they survived and here they were twenty years later.
Once they had walked past her, she continued walking, glancing over at the Dragon barracks, and wincing when she noticed Ember sitting on one of the beds next to the only survivor of her team, Breaker, as they sat morosely in the middle of packing their teammates things away.
Adagio bit her lip and made to walk inside when a hand on her shoulder stopped her. Deadwood shook his head, patting her on the shoulder after a gentle squeeze. "I don't think that's a good idea. And you look exhausted… go take a rest, I'll talk to her," he said, and walked inside. The siren-turned-Codex sighed. It made sense. Just about everyone in Ember's team had died in the process of saving Adagio herself after all. She was probably the last Equestrian Ember would want to see and not be able to kill.
Shaking her head, she decided to go to the small room they had carved for her near the engineering bay, where they figured she'd feel most comfortable. Because machines or something. Maybe it was really because of Apple Bloom needing someone that would understand. Either way, the younger woman was not around and that was fine by her. Chrysalis didn't have time at the moment to talk, and Adagio probably needed a break from those glances as much as the crew needed a break from seeing her around. Some sort of shut-eye, as useless as they usually were, could help. She just hoped the floor was as comfy as she remembered it wasn't.
She opened the door to her room and blinked, then stepped back to look down both sides of the hallway to make sure she was on the right level of the ship and also facing in the right direction. Yep. This was apparently the right place.
So why was there a bar in here?
The bell rang its silvery chime, making Sunset look up from her books. She rubbed her eyes and yawned, stretching a bit before placing her bookmark on the book she was currently reading and putting it and the others away behind the bar. She quickly wiped the area clean—just in case there was any dust from the books—and waited for the hesitant steps to reveal her newest guest.
It was Adagio—but not an Adagio she had ever seen before. She was wearing an army overall, but the parts of her skin that were exposed, revealed a metallic sheen to it, with hints of circuitry barely visible under it. Her hair was made of pure energy, somehow still retaining its shape.
The siren had been about to ask something, but had immediately stopped, staring with her mouth open at Sunset herself, as if she had seen a ghost. "S-Sunset?"
"Um, hi?" Sunset said, after a moment, taking note of the badges and the patch on the upper arm of Adagio's uniform. "Welcome to Sunset's Isekai, my little bar in the multiverse. I'm sure I look like a Sunset Shimmer you might know, but I'm not her."
Adagio studied her for a moment before slumping down on one of the stools. "Did I finally break?"
"Nope, it's real," Sunset assured her gently. "You um… you're XCOM?"
"What?" Adagio looked up, then followed her gaze to her arm. "Oh. Nnnn-ot exactly. I'm borrowing this while I'm staying with them." She glanced around, narrowing her eyes as she stood up and took a picture of Sunset with the sirens from the wall. She studied it as she went over to sit again. "So another dimension, huh?" She snorted. "Why not, I guess. Wouldn't be the first time it happened."
Sunset smiled and went over to get a menu while Adagio studied the picture, a melancholic look crossing her features for a moment. "I guess it's good to know that in other universes we're not so messed up."
Adagio glanced at the menu the bartender Sunset gave her and her eyes immediately zeroed-in on a specific listed item. She smirked. "That brings back memories… really old memories. I'll have a glass of Medovukha."
She watched with interest as Sunset brought up a small oak barrel and opened it up. She blinked when she saw the deep, golden liquid in there, and also got a whiff of it. "That's… aged Medovukha," she said slowly, flashes of a long, long, long ago lost life crossing her mind for a second. "How did you get it?"
"I visited a world that was very similar to some Earth's time period closer to the 10th century of most earths. There were plenty of Vikings and such, and I got several barrels of aged Medovukha."
Adagio chuckled, putting the picture down and tracing her fingers fondly on the wooden surface. "We used to make this… my family and I, before I became a siren." She blinked. "I had forgotten that little detail."
Sunset left the barrel on the counter and scooped up some Medovukha for Adagio and herself, pouring them into two glasses. The fermented honey's smell made Adagio's mouth both water and also, somehow, remember. She hadn't liked Earth's Medovukha that much, since the accelerated process produced a lesser product in her opinion, but this…
She sipped the cup, allowing the sweet flavor to coat her tongue and spread through her senses. Even the modifications she had suffered hadn't taken away her ability to taste and enjoy food and drinks… and this, this was bliss and nostalgia and memories and… so much more.
"Why don't you tell me about it?" Sunset asked. "We have all the time you need here."
"Let me guess, time dilation?"
When Sunset nodded, Adagio had to chuckle. "Once again, I'm in one of those." She swirled her drink ponderously before giving Sunset a brief nod. "Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that."
She watched as Sunset walked around the bar and sat next to her before picking up the picture she had grabbed from the wall. In it, Sunset, Adagio, Aria and Sonata were all smiling complacently at the camera, silly grins on their faces. Oh, there were hints there, of the struggles she and her sisters were going through, but the honest smiles were really the important thing. They were together, happy, and a family.
"We weren't always sirens," she said, her thumb rubbing the frame gently. "At least not in this… part of the multiverse. We all started as different types of ponies, a long, long time before Sombra or Starswirl even set foot in what would become Equestria," she began, taking a deep breath. "I was the first of us three to become a siren, a solid two hundred or so years before Sonata. Aria was just… I think half a century after me. In any case, I was originally a Pegasus Pony witch, and my name was Sivil."
"A Pegasus witch? Kind of like a Zebra Shaman?" Sunset asked after sampling her Medovukha.
"Sort of," Adagio said, lifting the glass into her hand. The golden liquid inside could have been her own blood in this form of hers. She took a sip, humming in appreciation. "It was typical life back in those days. The kings and queens, the lords and great wizards of the world were creatures that existed, but had little to do with us. We understood magic a lot differently back then, even unicorns. It was entirely visceral. To pursue it was to surrender to forces you could barely grasp more than working with them as the modern magic system works now.
"Medovukha… I didn't taste it until the day I left home. It was reserved for very special occasions, and me leaving in search of an apprenticeship with a wizard was just that for our family. We cracked open the one my father had left fermenting when he had married twenty years before, and we prepared a new one… to be opened a few decades later by somepony else." She sighed. "That was during the time that a wizard name Murthod rose to power… he commanded magic that would stop time, but in a strange, destructive way that broke the earth and split the seas freezing them. I watched as whole parts of the continent itself were cracked like eggs and trapped—with all ponies and creatures and plants within—in a stasis-like state, stuck in time and space as the world moved around them.
"And those were the lucky ones. Others areas were nothing but dust, as his victims and everything else within that field of his were accelerated in time beyond anything possible to any other being. Their loved ones had to watch them die over a period of minutes. Babies becoming children, then teens, then adults, then elders, then dying, all the time staring at the unmoving world around them. Other times, I even found areas where time was running backwards."
Adagio sighed.
"That's… much worse than Sombra," Sunset said. "I don't think monsters like that existed in my original Equestria."
Adagio laughed. "Monsters. I suppose... " She licked her lips. "Despite everything, I did well for myself, married. I had two foals…" She frowned. "They were caught in the acceleration field along with my husband… I… don't remember their names." She closed her eyes, shaking her head when she felt Sunset's hand on hers. "It's been millennia. I've coped with the loss more than once and… it was another life.
"I swore revenge, and found my way to a forbidden magic…" Adagio looked down and away from the bartender. "I ripped my soul and very essence and stored them outside of time. I used the forbidden magic, giving myself to it, promising everything and enjoying the ecstasy of being one with it to obtain more power than I could have ever imagine. I laughed as others perished around me and my gem grew from the darkness of my heart. But I remained focused enough to make my way to Murthod and ripped him to shreds!"
Sunset remained silent, letting her regain her breath. "That was the last the world knew of Sivil. My duty done, my body finally succumbed to the magic and was destroyed alongside Murthod. My gem fell into the ocean… and years later Adagio the siren emerged." She snorted. "You know the rest of the story, I suppose, unless after that point your recorded history is drastically different than mine. I fed off of the fear and pain of ponies and other earthbound creatures as an immortal predator… but at least… at least my magic was gone. When Aria's gem arrived, and then later Sonata's, I cherished them, helped them emerge and had them join me in our depredations of the land-bound until Starswirl sent us all packing into this world as humans."
Sunset nodded. "That last part is very similar to the story of the sirens in most places. In some, they were wronged, in others they simply were monsters."
Adagio drank the rest of her Medovukha, tilting her glass to allow Sunset to pour her another one. "How nice must it to be to have an excuse to destroy others."
Sunset sighed. "I think most of them know that what they did was wrong, regardless of the reasons."
"Hurray for self-awareness then." She touched her glass against Sunset's. "I can't even say we did it to survive. We just did it because we wanted others to hurt." She glanced down at the picture. "The three of us against the world that forgot we were heroes that sacrificed our very souls to save it. Against a world that forgot us. A world that didn't spare a thought to our loss. A world we thought—at the time—we had wasted ourselves saving."
Sunset nodded, surprising Adagio, who leaned back to study the bartender. "Beyond the fact that I am surprised you're still giving me more to drink, I'm surprised you haven't called magical lightning to strike me where I sit."
Sunset laughed. "If you're here, a lot more has happened since then. Plus, you're wearing an XCOM uniform. How the hell did that happen?"
Adagio snorted. "Fair enough." She took a drink and set her glass down, glancing again at the picture. "The three of us arrived here during medieval times. We… did a lot. We didn't change our ways, just our victims… and we became creatures feared by the mystics of this world through several decades, until we met Sombra."
"As in King Sombra, only human version?"
"The one and only," Adagio said, nodding. "He was one of Aleister's crew. Hocus-pocus, hermetic summon of ancient evils. Stuff worthy of dear Howard's twisted imagination." She sipped her glass, and sighed. "But he… he was the real deal. I don't know where half the things he had came from but a lot of them had… they knew. And well, we were some of those eldritch horrors after all, so it was a natural partnership. Plus, he had contacted the Elders."
"So that's where XCOM comes in," Sunset said, nodding. "Ethereals are infamous across the multiverse for their insidious ways. I'm just glad they don't exist in the same universe as the Sith."
Adagio raised an eyebrow. "Since I have no idea what you're talking about, unless you actually mean Star Wars, I will nod and smile for now." She did. "But yeah, bad news. If you're familiar with XCOM's history, then you probably know the tale. We started Exalt, betrayed Earth's governments, fought XCOM, betrayed some more and… when the world was given to them, Sonata and Aria betrayed me."
Adagio closed her eyes, allowing the flare of anger welling within her to dissipate as best as she could. The last thing she needed was to blast the bar with a psychic wave. This Sunset had some good alcohol here.
"What happened?"
"Sombra and Tirek," Adagio whispered. "They stole my gem and… they gave me away to the Elders when I refused to be subservient to them. I was stuck into a machine… injected with things, transformed… and used as a living computer alongside XCOM's Commander to control humanity and run millions of simulations through her brain." She grinned. "But something happened then… something they didn't expect or know about." She looked up at Sunset. "I traveled. The Commander had a deep connection with her best soldier, Sunset Shimmer… Earth Sunset Shimmer, who was the worlds, maybe the galaxy's most powerful psychic. Certainly on par with the most powerful Elders.
"Through that link, and through my gem, and through the magic that had bound my soul outside of time, I was able to… sort of ghost into the past. One moment I was screaming as I was put into the machine, the next I was staring into the eyes of baby Sunset Shimmer." She grinned. "And I don't know how you looked as a baby pony, but let me tell you, the human one? Adorable."
Sunset huffed, shaking her head. "Don't start. Still, I can't believe you'd be happy with that."
"I wasn't," Adagio agreed. "But I was stuck… I didn't know Sunset could see me sometimes, but I was there. I watched her grow, and met her best friend, Chrysalis, in Kindergarten." She laughed, the fond memories chasing away the lingering pain of her sister's betrayal. "Those two were inseparable for the rest of their lives. At one point… Sunset started talking to me, she had visions of the future and even knew when she'd…" She sighed. "I grew fond of both of them, you know? Watching them play, grow, make mistakes, fight, make up… it was a life I had never lived. In all my centuries of life, I never had that… my one chance had been taken away thousands of years before and now, even though I couldn't participate directly, experiencing that changed me.
"I helped Sunset through her training up to when she joined XCOM. I guided her, I helped her figure out her visions and even used the information of what I knew was happening to make XCOM stronger… against myself and the others, ironically enough, although I wasn't able to change my past." She sighed. "The Earth lost. I was still betrayed, Chrysalis was captured and Sunset… she died." She felt her eyes growing watery, rubbing them with a paper towel. "She… she was dying. I was in the present and in the past, hacking the Avenger… I created a psychic channel when they were able to witness what was happening and started to shout to her to get up… she heard."
Sunset was looking at her with rapt attention, eyes wide.
"I… had to watch her die as she took with her the alien's mother ship," Adagio said in a low voice. "And just before she died… just as I told her my real name and what she meant to me… the family I never had… she accepted me when I called her sister."
Adagio took a deep, shuddering breath, gulping down and sniffling before swearing under her breath and downing her Medovukha. "After Sonata and Aria's betrayal I never thought I'd call someone that. I never thought I'd let anyone in." She snorted. "Guess she proved me wrong."
They remained quiet for a time before Adagio spoke up again. "After that, I was trapped with Chrysalis. I tried to reach her, but I couldn't send more than some empathic thoughts, and the music from Sunset's mp3 player. I knew she'd get rescued, XCOM wasn't destroyed completely when the Earth was taken over. It was a matter of time before she was released, and she was my only hope… it paid off. But at a great cost of lives."
Sunset reached over to squeeze her shoulder, and Adagio nodded thankfully. "So, what is going on now?" the bartender asked.
Adagio licked her lips, pondering how to phrase things. "We… need to save the Equestrian Sunset Shimmer and… destroy another siren." She shook her head. "Right now… I need to at least earn the trust of XCOM and well… I'm an alien."
Sunset rolled her eyes and raised her glass in understanding, drawing a chuckle from Adagio, who toasted along with her.
It had been a long time since she had talked about that stuff, and somehow getting it off her chest had lightened her mood. She took another drink of her Medovukha. "I haven't talked about all of that with anyone… even with Sonata and Aria… we only talked at most once about our lives before. It… feels good to remember."
Sunset leaned over and pulled her into a hug. "That's what I'm here for. To talk, to listen… and to help, if I can."
Surprised, Adagio hesitated for a moment before returning the hug. She'd wanted to do this with her Sunset Shimmer for so long. Her human sister who had sacrificed herself to give the world a chance. She sniffled. "You're ruining my tough girl reputation," she muttered into the bartender's hair.
"Blame it on the Medovukha. I won't tell."
"I think I will."
Her room was just as she had left it. Except there was a cot and a small bedside table with a drawer in it now, courtesy of some unknown Samaritan that had seen it fit to give her something to lay down on. "Well," she mused as she sat on her cot, "at least it's softer than the metal floor."
She chuckled, laying down on it. Despite the fact that her hair was pure energy, it still felt normal under her. When was the last time she had slept? Four decades or so?
Adagio snorted. If she was honest with herself, she hadn't really slept in much longer than that, but for some reason she felt that tonight… tonight she could. Just one night.
Just one night… to dream. Before the nightmare made of blood magic that was roaming out there in the world came to hunt her down.
And maybe, if they survived, she could bring Chrysalis over to the bar.
End Chapter
A crossover with the story XCOM: Ranger, which I hope to get back to soon enough. I was originally intending to write Adagio's story as a stand alone, but I figured it worked just as well here and it made the writing happen. 
Have some art from Adagio's memories:
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When are the SG-1 chapters set please, within that series? I've seen seasons 1-8 but not the Chrichton and Aeryn years.
10492214 Before S5E21 (Meridian)
Celestia: Of course, she was! Would you like to see the photos?
Isekai: Mommm
You somewhat did the one thing I wanted decides obviously saving sunset
You mean shine?
About time you crossed over with your own story
The picture is very sweet and beautiful. Now I kinda spoiled the xcom story for myself 🤣. I'm only on chapter 23
That’d be a nice chapter.
Great chapter. I kinda wanted to hug Adagio, which takes some doing.
Adorable picture, I also am looking forward to more XCOM:Ranger whenever you get around to it.
I never played the Xcom games but this story sounds way Darker than what I usually read.
Though it was a nice chapter. Glad that Adiago got some closure
I wonder what the sucess/fail ratio of XCOM universes are compared to say 40K?
A nice chapter, I think, and nice art; I'm glad the words flowed for you. :)
10492253
I'm not convinced Celestia actually has the relevant foal pictures, but full-grown mares are still adorable enough that it doesn't matter.
10492366 I meant "sheen" but either way I mistyped it. Thanks!
Always good to see more of Ranger. Adagio definitely needed this. That it's a Sunset offering the chance to decompress... I'm honestly not sure if that makes it better or worse.
10492705
Depends on the Celestia. And given how many may have access to the Isekai or other forms of multiversal travel—Merodi Universalis is presumably active at the moment—the ones who didn't have the opportunity to take photos of their own Sunset may still have foal pictures of others.
10492705
She took the album out once at the end of Bar Days in the Multiverse chapter.
.....Adorable.
10492620
external-preview.redd.it/Fv7GyTwMEK3kCu7nh0QFa3PzETPAOj--8IYnA6Rrq3E.png?auto=webp&s=74f3e590153b160ec48d30a29461a249944dba88
I hope this gives you the motivation to write up the next few chapters
... you know what, I think I'm going to read xcom ranger. That suddenly seems like a great idea.
Sorry, your room has been cancelled. This place is a bar now
Heh, point.
Became a siren? Huh.
Yea, she actually means Star Wars
Wait, how did she figure out this Sunset was a pony?
Ah, yes. I see
Remarks and corrections:
> who was the worlds, maybe the galaxy's most powerful psychic.
Missing apostrophe; should be "world's"
> She chuckled, laying down on it.
"[lying] down on it"
10506578
Could be far worse. She could be trying to earn the trust of the Imperium of Man.
Whew from the title I was thinking you subtly telling us that the XCOM: Ranger story was on hiatus. Plz don’t let me be right.
Getting a 404 on the image in the AN.