Fallout: Equestria – The Hogwarts Chronicles

by Fanficwriter1994

Chapter 11: War of the Wastes Part 3

Day Six of the Enclave attacking Equestria.

We heard over the Radio, with DJ-Pon3 having been temporarily shut down until she made a new channel elsewhere, that a Pegasus Ghoul named Ditzy Doo had destroyed three Cloudships using a radiation laden, as she had been overloaded with the stuff saving the famous Stable Dweller, Sonic Rainboom. We had seen the shockwave from here so… yeah.

Anyway, all across Equestria, resistance was beating the snot out of the Enclave forces, DJ-Pon3 had dealt with one of the weather controlling SPP towers, a Canterlot Ghoul and his mouse companion had rammed one cloud ship, filled with Pink Cloud no less, into another cloudship.

The Canterlot Ruins were destroyed, Friendship City had taken severe casualties from the assault, Red Eye, the infamous Slaver leader, was dead from battling the Enclave at his main base, as was his cyborg dragon underling.

Did I ever mention how odd this world is?

Anyway, on our front the Steel Rangers had finally convinced their captives to help them fly the Cloudship I had brought down, a Raptor-class Cloudship, so they could take down the SPP Tower above Ponston. Surprisingly, I was with them, as were many of the older students who had become Pegasi as well as Ruby and Argent.

We all had size adjusted Enclave Power Armor, giving us a nice bit of protection, especially on top of our normal barding which allowed us to shut off the armor’s Anti-Radiation functions in favor of the radiation repelling charms of the barding. Moreover, the Pegasi among the students who had volunteered had their wands integrated into their dominant hand/hoof’s wrist so that spellcasting was easier for them.

What surprised me most was two Pegasi in particular, two Pegasi with the family name Malfoy.

Yes, Draco Malfoy had chosen to join the assault. And with her was Lucius Malfoy, her father. Well, one of them had to be taking the Pegasus form after all, and her mom was a unicorn here. Anyway, yeah. We had some reinforcements there. And while I had heard that Mister Malfoy had been a follower of Voldemort, in this kind of scenario? It’s a boon to have a dark wizard on your team.

What was more surprising was that both Malfoys had equipped the Power Armor and Barding as the rest of us and, unlike with our venture to Stable 111, Draco was also wielding a set of weapons in a Battle Saddle, namely a .50 caliber Minigun on her left, and a Gattling Las cannon on her right. Her father meanwhile had a 9 shot missile pod on both of his sides with two Machineguns on his back for quick swap-out in battle.

In this way they had basically made their roles clear.

For those not aware, which I assume means my readers, we were divided into 3 “Wings”. A-Wing was assigned interception as their role. They were armed mostly with machineguns and other rapid-fire weapons. Their role consisted of intercepting enemy Pegasi and escorting B-Wing members. B-Wing was the bomber category. They were armed with missile launchers and were meant to deal the bulk of the damage on the larger enemy units such as Cloudships and the SPP tower.

Finally we have X-Wing, You wonder why we broke the letter sequence? Well it’s because X-Wing was the X-Factor. This wing consisted of the bulk of our best spellcasters and also our Alicorns. This didn’t just mean myself, Ruby and Argent either, as 27 Artificial Alicorns had joined the assault, quoting that their “Goddess” was dead and their later master, Red Eye, was too. And they were now hoping we had a Gender Changing potion for them to use.

Yeah, turns out they’re all female due to how they were converted and needed some stallions. Nobody would point out how they could probably just get it on with a normal pony, because your average adult Alicorn, meaning all the Artificial ones, was around 6,6 feet tall. Most stallions have trouble getting their hooves that far up, much less getting one up there.

Anyway, putting aside reproductive issues of huge woman horses with wings and a horn who just lost their hive mind goddess, I may have to mention why I’m still a girl when there is a potion like that. The answer may surprise you. We tried.

Yup, we tried it. Didn’t work at all. Even when Hermione and Myrtle tried, it didn’t affect them. However, to test if it was different for these potion-created Alicorns, one who had the mind of a stallion drank the potion and actually transformed into a stallion Alicorn.

After that they agreed to wait with their payment until this was all over and they had fulfilled their part of the deal. Though one of the Alicorns went into another room with the new Stallion and… we all know what they did there. Same that a lot of professors did.

Anyway, if you’re wondering about the Steel Rangers, aside from serving as the ship’s anti-boarding contingent as well as intending to board enemy Cloud Ships if possible, we had managed to find an old spell that created artificial wings for non-Pegasi to fly as well as one for them to walk on clouds. These were then translated into runes and spell patterns such that the students who had taken Ancient Runes and the Scribes of the Steel Rangers could modify their armors to have them intrinsically in them.

It’s all kinds of BS what we did in such short an amount of time, but given that we were largely outnumbered, it was reasonable to do. I was pretty sure Professor Flitwick was flexing on the Scribes a bit since he did the bulk of the spellwork on working out how to transcribe the spells into something Wizards could use our methods to create the same spells at a faster rate than them.

Yeah, I had a feeling he was at least subconsciously trying to assert his dominance since, well, he had a girlfriend? How odd was it to think that? Anyway, well, he had impregnated a mare so, I guess instincts took over there too? But the end effect was that as many Steel Rangers as we had gotten ready in under a week, were now able to assist in the assault on the Pegasi strongholds.

To ensure that our ship, which was only a Raptor-class ship even though the Steel Rangers had salvaged the downed ship that had crashed near Hogwarts for weapons and other parts so it was much heavier armed now, would survive an engagement, it was enhanced with the same type of Magic repelling field as Hogwarts. It was a less advanced or powerful version but it would be able to reflect away from the hull up to 9 shots on an equal level of power to the main guns of the Raptor-class.

The ship had also received a significant up-arming in smaller cannons, namely Gattling Lasers, mounted miniguns and even flak cannons. We were going up against Pegasi, not dragons or Zebras so… yeah. Anti-Air defenses are needed. Testing had shown that Pegasi power armor was, while magically shielded, not very good at taking mass damage from flak cannons pumping out hundreds of exploding rounds every second.

As we approached the cloud layer above, I checked my gear again. I had actually a pair of miniguns in a Battle Saddle to completement my favored, and by now enhanced to five-crank capacity, Laser Musket. “So, this whole Dashite thing, it’s just them being salty about Pegasi not all being completely obedient? And nobody thought that’s a weird thing to do?” I asked Light Charge, my wingmate so to speak.

He was in A-Wing and was basically my minder for the mission. “Pretty much, the term was coined because of Rainbow Dash whose Ministry of Awesome formed the foundation of the Enclave but she was against the isolationist policies.” Stated Light Charge, adjusting his own Battle Saddle one more time. He had been given his armor back after a thorough interrogation by the professors.

From the two ships we had roughly 64% of their crews who had joined us, the remaining ones were now prisoners of war. “Man, people really don’t take much to indoctrinate, no matter what world they’re from. Or that stupid tendency to cult forming just happens a lot.” I muttered, then put on my helmet, it had been by now modified to also cover my horn with armor.

“Everypony! Ready yourselves we’re about to break the cloud cover!” Echoed from the internal speakers of the ship as the large deployment doors opened. Outside we could see the clouds rushing by while the machinegun emplacements within the hangar prepped themselves to open fire at a minute’s notice.

Then, we broke through into the sun and several plasma bolts impacted the shield as Pegasi rushed us. “FIRE!” Shouted Paladin Danse as every cannon on the ship opened up on the hostile Pegasi, only Flak Cannons and Machineguns, none of the main armaments though heat seeking missiles didn’t wait much either as a field of death was created on the ship’s starboard side.

“Everyone! GO!” I shouted before jumping out, followed not long after by Alicorns and Pegasi alike while 12 Vertibucks, escorted by 6 Sky Tanks deployed as well, loaded with Steel Rangers or, more appropriately, Applejack’s Rangers.

Ahead of us were two Raptor-class Cloudships, those were the targets of two-thirds of the Vertibucks, the last four were going to the city around the SPP tower. Why? To evacuate all civilians, so that the ships could fire on it once that was done as well as disabling it’s defenses as a secondary objective. Yes, evacuating the civilians was the priority.

We’re the good ponies here, we play by the proper rules of engagement. The first part of our mission, that is us Alicorns and the senior students from Hogwarts, was to help protecting the Vertibucks against Enclave forces. Simple enough you may think, but these weren’t exactly the fastest aircraft around and Pegasi can outfly them with ease. It was our responsibility to take them down if we could, though I’d have prefered non-lethal methods but sadly that would be a bit hard to achieve.

As for why we were going into this, well, this was the Enclave’s primary base of operations in the area, this included a small dockyard for cloud ships and several of those, based on reports, were unfinished ships too. Yes, you hear that right. There are unifinished, but otherwise new, Cloud Ships.

This included the far more powerful Thunderhead-class of Cloud Ships. Capturing that one, finishing it and making it a secondary, mobile base for the Ranger chapter, was one of the major goals of the operation. Luckily the shipyards weren’t near the tower, that would suck.

“Hostiles at 12 o’clock!” Shouted Light Charge and yeah, I could see that quite easily.

“All ponies! Weasley Screwer!” I ordered and A-Wing broke into several groups, flying in all possible directions to confuse the… 20-30 Pegasi. “Alicorns! Shields!” I added and moments later shields layered on shields surrounded the Vertibucks and Sky Tanks, not too early either as several missiles rained on us but between Alicorn shields being ridiculous, even my own, we had six green Alicorns, which were able to link up spellcasting as part of their telepathic abilities.

Moments after that, gunfire rained into the enemy formation as they had to break apart to avoid being hit. The Weasley Screwer was a weirdly named maneuver that aimed to confuse the enemy by splitting apart before racing in and starting to attack. Several heat-seeking missiles shot into the enemy Pegasi, taking down each targeted pony as Hogwarts Pegasi starting launching spells of their own.

I was hoping that they would get the hint.

~~~~~~~~~~~O~~~~~~~~~~~

“We lost 68 of our troops already sir! And our weapons aren’t working!” Reported one of the bridge Crew of the Cloud Ship [Blind Vengeance] as it rocked from missile hits against it’s armored hull.

“Continue to fire! Take these Dashites down!” He ordered angrily as Plasmabolts continued to fire into the now evasive enemy ship which was keeping itself perfectly safe from enemy Pegasi and even disrupting the Plasma fire against it with the same weapons, detonating the bolts prematurely with it’s kinetic weapons systems. “Order every pony into the air! This is an order!” Screamed Captain Savage Dive as he gritted his teeth and braced against another detonation.

“Spell Matrix 5 is down! Starboard Plasma Cannon is non-functional!” Reported another of the officers and he gritted his teeth, this wasn’t how it should be.

Operation Cauterize should’ve been a complete rout of those Wasteland scum, but not only was the Cloud Ship ahead of them had been brought down with magical force, but the one sent to destroy the anomaly and capture the magical artifact to the other world was shot down entirely! And that was without mentioning all the losses in the rest of Equestria where there wasn’t a single operation that didn’t end in disaster!

“Boarders! We have been boarded!” Screamed one of his communication officers and his blood ran cold at that. That’s impossible! Where are our troops!?” He shouted angrily as more explosions rocked his ship.

“We’re down to 21% of our aerial troops! Shipboard security is engaging the enemy but they’re supported by unicorns who are using some sort of sleep spell!” Reported the officer from before and Savage gritted his teeth in anger.

“This is an order! Anyone who is knocked out is to be shot! Do not let them capture anyone to brainwash them!” He screamed and horrified looks followed his orders. “Did I stutter? ANYONE WHO DISOBEYS WILL BE A DASHITE TO BE EXECUTED FOR DISOBEDIENCE!!!” He shouted, jumping up, with his Battlesaddle ready to fire on anyone who would dare to oppose him.

Then a gunshot was heard. And Savage Dive fell to the ground with a hole in his head.

“Enough of this madness.” Growled the now former Vice-captain of the ship, Distant Dream, as she stepped over the corpse of her former superior.

“M- Ma’am?” Stammered the sensor officer as the mare sighed, stepping to the ship’s captain’s chair.

“Captain Savage Dive was killed during the fighting in the ship. Do you all understand?” She asked with a stern look and this got no opposition.

It did help that the other ship of their defense fleet stopped firing on the enemy, in spite of no more hits. “Ma’am, w- what do we do?” Asked the communications officer, gulping. This wasn’t something any of them had trained for.

“I suggest surrendering.” Spoke a voice and as they turned around, they found one of the invaders, an Earth Pony in power armor, flanked by two Unicorns in the doorframe. “We have already disabled everyone else of your crew, surrender the ship now and this can be over within an hour.” Stated the stallion as Distant Dream swallowed, not liking this at all but…

“Very well, but only under one condition, you do not harm the citizens in the city.” Stated Distant Dream, looking at the Stallion whose face was fully covered by his helmet.

“Ma’am, you have nothing to fear in that regard. We have sent a team to evacuate all civilians from within the vicinity of our primary target, the SPP tower so nobody will be harmed when we finalize this operation. Now recall what remains of your troops.” Stated the Stallion and Distant Dream sighed, she didn’t have enough firepower here to take on someone in that type of armor.

“Very well. Recall all troops, we can’t win this.” She stated, it pained her to admit defeat but… honestly? The Enclave was losing. They were losing hard! The most successful operation had been destroying Red Eye and his followers and that cost General Autumn.

~~~~~~~~~~~O~~~~~~~~~~~

In the city, organized chaos was reigning.

The Applejack’s Rangers that had landed there were organizing a steady evacuation, even helping out those who needed help moving as they didn’t want to leave anyone without their belongings for this operation’s success alone.

“Please come this way ma’am, the area around the SPP won’t be safe much longer!” Called Rainy Weasley as she was trying to make an elderly mare come along.

“No, I refuse to obey some no-good terrorist! Attacking the Enclave, such savages!” Exclaimed the elderly pegasus mare as she was doing an impressive job holding onto her doorframe as Rainy was pulling on her with magic.

“Ma’am, we’re going to destroy that damn tower so it stops blocking the sky from everyone down below! Now stop acting like a little foal and be reasonable!” Snapped Rainy before deciding a new approach, namely by sending the mare backward, turning her around and flying her out.

“You good for nothing-! Your manager is going to hear about this!” Exclaimed the mare as Rainy rolled her eyes and put her with some of the Rangers before going inside and packing up anything of value she could find before trotting out again.

“Good luck, my mom has no issue with this and we have summer vacation, so I don’t actually have to listen to any of my teachers.” Remarked Rainy, yawning as if she wasn’t even concerned as she basically packed up for the self-entitled mare. “Why do I feel like Muggles have to deal with this stuff a lot more?” Wondered Rainy, then shook her head as she deposited the mare’s belongings outside the blast radius and continuing on the mission at hoof.

~~~~~~~~~~~O~~~~~~~~~~~

Elder Artoria Maxson couldn’t say she wasn’t pleased, Operation Clear Sky was going perfectly so far.

Admittedly, she had come in with a bit of overpreparation, for all the archaic ways of magic the Hogwarts faction used, they certainly had an interesting way of using patterns. For a start, they didn’t recreate the patterns of magic itself, rather they used “Runes”, of which there was a variety of such but the most common was the Elder Futhark. What was interesting was that they were letters, not patterns.

While transcribing spell patterns onto objects such as crystals was a good way of enchanting them, Runes were much more stable, far more conductive and extremely precise in the way they operated. The meaning of each rune individually or as a collective held power, and one single pattern could be used to invoke a variety of different spell effects by simply adjusting which were activated.

On top of that was Arithmancy, a study of numbers and their magical significance. This field of research, completely foreign to the Steel Rangers, allowed the Hogwarts teachers to near effortlessly calculate what each pattern signified, how to translate them into runes, and what sequences were needed to complete the process. That took a day to recreate the Hogwarts magic repelling ward.

And that was by twice the length of the rest, the longest time needed to do so.

“Elder Maxson? Volunteer Weasley has just reported in, the entire area we are to bombard is evacuated with belongings included.” Reported one of her Rangers, having communication devices with the volunteer force from Hogwarts helped certainly.

“Good. Status on restoring the burnt out talismans?” She asked, it was a bit of a problem with near-system hits on these ships, the Talismans weren’t very good at keeping themselves in shape when they were rattled by heavy weapon impacts.

“90% operational Ma’am. Paladin Danse is reporting 89% readiness and [Steel Heaven] is approaching optimal firing solution.” Artoria smiled under her helmet, a custom one for her as a Unicorn but still a fully enclosed helmet nonetheless.

“Good, let’s clear the skies of our home, shall we?” She asked, feeling quite happy with what was about to happen.

~~~~~~~~~~~O~~~~~~~~~~~

I smiled as I handed a stuffed animal to one of the foals that I had to evacuate, it was apparently based on a Ursa Minor, a pre-war ursine creature resembling a nightsky in coloration.

The filly had lost it a week earlier and had insisted on finding it before going, but I had convinced her that my Alicorn magic could find it very easily but only if she went with her parents and the big metal ponies. Turned out, Usi had been under their couch the whole time.

“Geez, I think I now know how dad feels because of his work.” Spoke up Rainy as she come to land next to me, drawing my attention to her as both Argent and Ruby landed next.

“What happened?” I asked, the three of them had been in the primary evacuation convoy after all, escorting the Vertibucks carrying the ponies meant to evacuate the civilians.

“Self-Entitled old crone who wanted to report me to my Manager of all things. Do I look like I work for some grocery store?” Asked Rainy and I giggled at that shaking my head.

“I can’t say I had that problem, most of the foals I herded to safety were pretty nice and their parents were able to see the, well writing on the wall.” Stated Ruby, stepping up. She was probably one of the smallest ponies around in our physical age range so… yeah.

“Hmph, I had to deal with off-duty guards, they were so stand-offish I had to hex them and move them myself. All 30 of them, out of a pub.” Stated Argent and after a second of staring at her, we all fell into laughter at that image of little Argent doing that.

“You enojoy being able to cast spells now, don’t you?” I asked smiling, it felt right, she had been denied her magic at birth, so why shouldn’t she?

“I certainly am. Hermione has been a great tutor, more than those self-help pamphlets I had in my office.” Stated Argent, nodding. None of us pointed out that those were a scam, given they were targeted at Squibs, who had no natural magic.

I was about to make another comment when a bright flash illuminated us and, as we turned around, we saw Plasmabolts shoot from the three Cloudships, racing to the SPP tower and in a single Salvo, destroying it. “Huh, guess mission accomplished.” I stated and the others nodded. It certainly looked like we had cone as we had planned.

~~~~~~~~~~~O~~~~~~~~~~~

Nightmares, my old foe.

Well, it was quite normal by now, killing ponies made me relapse but I was glad that this wasn’t staying for long. “Greetings once again, Rose Evans.” Spoke the deceased ruler of Equestria as the nightmare gave way for the starry dreamscape of the princess.

“Nice to meet you again Princess Luna. Thanks for, you know, this.” I stated, rubbing away the tears that had formed even here. The only positive part was that I was able to function consciously during combat now. I wasn’t sure it was a good thing or not but I hoped I wouldn’t go crazy and go American Highschool on anypony.

“Thy worries are quite easy to see, little one. It is good that you see the negative side of such development but we believe thee need not worry of being corrupted. Thy dedication to others is too great.” Spoke up the older Alicorn and I chuckled as she laid down, basically inviting me to lay at her side.

“I hope you’re right. And I’m glad we were able to stop any civilians from dying too.” I stated, smiling a bit as the atmosphere was quite nice and, somehow, I could feel the bodies of my moms next to me too.

“You are very welcome young one. By the way, we were thinking about something.” Stated Luna and I looked at her, curious.

“Would thee like some lessons on Alicorn magic?”

Author's Note:

Level-Up!

Guns: +10 (50), Repair: +1 (31), Survival: +6 (40)

Perk Gained: Night Person

Special Perk Gained: Eye of the Moon: You have gained the blessing of Luna, granting you better sight, Perception: +1