A Journey in Steel

by Lusaminia

Under Smoke and Rain – Part 4

Six children and one alicorn on the verge of a mental breakdown climbed their way back up to the control room of the Taranis. Jeanne was standing there in horrified silence as she watched what seemed like an ordinary if rather large air unit fly in. There was a large cylinder sticking out of its center, multiple tubes pumping glowing red energy into the tank itself. Twilight could tell from a simple glance she was looking at magic, the cylinder likely some sort of storage device for it.

While it wasn’t the fastest piece of machinery Jeanne had ever seen, it was certainly far faster than any tank. It was rapidly approaching them, the twin guns mounted to it rotating faster and faster by the second. Having more than learned her lesson from the previous two surprise strikes, the Taranis’ AI quickly activated its shields. It proved to be just in time as machine gun fire descended upon them from above, sparing them the brunt of the initial attack.

“This must have been what Tempest was talking about earlier,” Malt muttered. “The thing she called a test.”

“The energy that thing is exuding….” Sheena said in terrified awe. “How much magic is powering it?”

The magic-powered air unit flew in front of them, matching Taranis’ pace as the tank continued to move along. Twilight couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but there was something about the machine in front of her that scared her. The magic was familiar, oversensitized everything around it yet somehow feeling dulled. She couldn’t get a proper idea of what was causing it, and the idea that she couldn’t understand it infuriated her a little. Once it was inevitably trashed, she would tear it apart to find out how.

“Attention Taranis,” a low, thundering voice shouted inside the enemy air unit. “Equestria is under the rule of the Storm King. You have already lost. Surrender, and you will be allowed to live in chains among the rest of your kind. Refuse, and you will be annihilated.”

“Really nice options, but I think we’ll choose to escape with our freedom intact,” Malt replied, looking with pure rage and hatred at the machine before him. “Besides, I doubt you really stand a chance against the Taranis.”

“Yes, for your own sake, it would be best to not try and fight us,” Britz said with a nod of agreement. “We had to take down far worse than you.”

“And as long as we work together as friends, nothing can stop us!” Twilight exclaimed. “Not you, not Tempest, and not even the Tarascus! That is the power the magic of friendship has!”

The Gasco children all pumped a fist into the air following the alicorn’s speech, giving a determined “yeah”. Jeanne smiled brightly and nodded her head, fully believing in each of those before her. The pilot of the air unit didn’t respond, instead treating the words of the Taranis’ crew as a go ahead to fire. Soon machine gun fire trailed in red light was pounding against the Taranis’ shield and front, the former proving more ineffective against whatever was powering the machine. None of it managed to pierce through in that immediate burst, but Jeanne knew it was only a matter of time until her true body’s metallic exterior gave way.

Thankfully, Twilight and the Gasco children had already started to make their way to the guns, Britz, Sheena, and Malt taking their places while the rest stood ready for whatever was to come. In an attempt to match what the air unit had thrown at them, machine gun fire rained down on where it was. Except, by the time it reached where the air unit was, it had become where it wasn’t. At a speed no heavy air unit should have been able to move at, it effortlessly dodged bullet after bullet, making the precious bits of ammo wasted.

As it then returned fire onto the Taranis, Malt noticed it had gone rather still. His cannon fired, striking dead center but doing absolutely nothing to the tank. In fact, Twilight seemed to have a more clear reaction to the hit, feeling her heart leap in her chest. She paid it no mind, even as something in her being started to shake as Britz and Sheena landed a few hits of their own. It was only when the air unit had stopped firing and moved moments after Britz and Sheena had started firing again did that odd feeling leave her. It left her with an odd sense of relief.

Malt took a risk and fired where he believed the heavy air unit was gonna be, but he had fired too far behind. The heavy air unit had already passed that point by the time the shot had gotten anywhere close. Gritting his teeth, he tried again and was met with the same exact result. He was going to fire again, but Hanna put a hand out in front of him and took his attention away from his target.

“We don’t have the ammo to afford missing. Firing blindly isn’t gonna get us anywhere,” Hanna told him. She then looked at the ceiling. “Jeanne, do you have any way to keep it still?”

“No. My influence is limited to the Taranis alone, and it has been that way since arriving here,” Jeanne explained. “I also forbid any of you from stepping foot near the soul cannon unless absolutely necessary. I will not see any of you die here today.”

The enemy brought the attention of Jeanne and her crew back to the battle before them, Malt and his friend using what limited time they had to attack back. None of it gave ample time to penetrate and break through the thick layer of armor protecting it, but some small dents and scrapes. It didn’t amount to serious progress, however, and before long it once again stopped firing and returned to zipping around too fast for anyone to have hopes of hitting.

It was then that Twilight, though a little shaken up by the repeated odd sensation she got each time the tank was hit, got an idea. For any other unicorn it would have been dangerous, but it was clear that Tempest wanted her to be brought back alive. That meant they wouldn’t fire on her, even if she was standing out in the open. Without the steel walls, her magic could reach out, grab a hold of the heavy air unit, and keep it still. It was an idea that would work for any other units that tried, but she was in a clearer mind set now than when they had just escaped Canterlot.

“I’ll stop it. Once I do, I need you all to hit it with as much firepower as you can,” She called out.

Before anyone could stop her, Twilight teleported onto the Taranis’s top, in clear view of the enemy before her. Technically she would be able to do what she was about to do inside, but she wanted to make sure her grip on the target couldn’t be weakened by anything. A trail of machine gun fire just barely missed her, the result of her enemy having started to fire before she had teleported. The welling panic inside of her tried its best to escape, but Twilight found the power to hold it in for a later point. Her focus had to be on stopping the enemy’s movement alone, and nothing else.

Her horn glowed, magic lashing out and grabbing a hold of the heavy air unit. It tried to struggle against her grip, but one did not simply break free of an alicorn’s spell. Like her friend Applejack and the ponies of Appleloosa, Twilight refused to let it simply escape her magic-made lasso. With a yank of her head, she tipped it forward and threw it off balance, Twilight able to see the top of the cylinder. There was a decent chance that it might simply crash into the ground if she let go, allowing the Taranis to simply crush it under its treads, but she hadn’t thought about it at the time.

“Alright, take it down!” She shouted.

While she didn’t hear it herself, she could only imagine that Jeanne had delivered her message for her. When the first cannon shot hit she nearly lost her grip in surprise, that strange feeling causing her mind to wander. The more and more shots that came, the harder and harder it was to focus, especially with the consistent machine gun fire coming from the other two gun spots in the tank. It was hard for Twilight to maintain her focus, and each explosion that hit the captive enemy made her heart lurch in fear and terror. The reason why its destruction hurt to watch evaded her.

Then, a cannon shot hit the cylinder feeding the heavy air unit and burst it open. As if willed by some unknown force, Twilight made to call out. The only thing that stopped her being the fact she had no idea who it was she was calling out, and the implosion of the highly concentrated magic right in front of her. She couldn’t maintain concentration, finding her entire being lurching back, hooves seeming unable to stop their movement. A tear fell down her face for an unknown reason, watching as the similarly stunned enemy before her continued to be bombarded from the Taranis.

No longer did the heavy air unit’s damage seem to affect her mind, proving that it had something to do with the magic. Her eyes looked behind the enemy, and a figure suddenly caught her eye as they fell to the ground. Unfortunately, the sudden explosion of the heavy air unit blocked her from being able to swiftly notice who or what it was. With her hooves no longer moving backwards, Twilight took a tentative step back towards the front of the steel behemoth she was riding atop of.

All the while, the kids below celebrated their victory.

“That’s what you get for underestimating the Taranis!” Chick cried out happily. “You Storm King bastards can’t take us out!”

Multiple other cheers called out, no one noticing that the Taranis had stopped. Everything in Jeanne told her that they had to keep moving and get as far away from Canterlot as possible, but the part of her coding that was more human than machine took over. It was something that became very, very easy for her since arriving in Equestria thanks to the help of the Elements of Harmony and the Princesses of Equestria. Emotion was still odd to her in some aspects, but through their teachings of friendship she had learned when one needed to stop.

So when the AI had noticed a pony erupt from the destroid cylinder, she nearly yelled out herself in disbelief.

“Um, Jeanne?” Sheena called out, the first to come down from the high of victory. “Why aren’t we moving?”

Her words caught the attention of the other children, allowing them to notice exactly what Sheena had noticed. The Taranis had indeed halted its retreat, leaving them confused and worried. Hanna was the first to find out the answer, traveling up to the Taranis’ command room so that she may see clearly why it was. Her eyes widened, paws going to her muzzle as she tried to hide the gasp of terror and pain that had crept its way up her throat. It wasn’t long until the others joined her side, all of them sharing similar if slightly different reactions.

“Oh… oh no,” Britz muttered.

“They… that’s where the magic was coming from?” Socks asked, looking at Sheena. “Did you know?”

“No, and I don’t think Twilight knew either,” The felinko answered, distraught. Her eyes couldn’t look away from the blood covered cyan body that law below the Taranis. “It’s like what Blutwurst was trying to use my people for.”

The mention of the alicorn momentarily snapped Malt out of his own despair-induced stupor, looking around the command center. “Wait, where is Twilight? Don’t tell my that she's–”

His answer came as a more lively form than what they were staring at flew down from the Taranis’ top. Multiple of the kids cried out to Twilight over the intercom, pleading for her to return back inside the Taranis, but her course never changed. The Princess of Friendship’s ears might as well have not worked, not even the sound of nature reaching her as she touched the ground and slowly made her way over to the figure before her. What had once been a single tear on her face had already turned to many, many more. As she stared down at the pony that had come out of the cylinder, she hadn’t expected them to be moving or even breathing.

Yet, with the shallowest of breaths and cloudiest of eyes, the pegasus under her looked to the princess. “Hey Twi. What… what happened?”

“R-R-Rainbow?” Twilight whispered, her voice cracking as she tried desperately to pull at least some tiny part of herself together. “Rainbow, are you… what did they do to you?”

“I… I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rainbow replied, a weak cough erupting from her throat, blood splattering onto the ground below her. “It hurts… pretty bad though. Guessing those creatures did something horrible to me.”

“D-d-d-don’t worry about it,” Twilight said, her magic wrapping around her dear friend and lifting them onto the alicorn’s back. “We’ll get you some help, don’t worry. There has to be something in the Taranis that can help.”

She started to dash back, only to stop as she recalled what Britz and the others had told her earlier. Everything but the ammo, of which Equestria had no use for, had been stripped from the Taranis long, long ago. There was nothing in there that could help Rainbow, and she knew that a long distance teleport to some place like the Crystal Empire would be too much for her friend to handle in this state. She would die mid transport, and if she couldn’t get Rainbow anywhere then… Twilight felt what cake she had eaten during the festival start to rise from her stomach and horrid acknowledgement of what was coming.

“No. No. No no no no, Rainbow no I can’t… oh Celestia,” She said to herself, hooves moving in a thousand different directions, leaving her doing more of a dance than actually making progress in going anywhere. She looked back to her friend, who was grinning at her in some feign show of happiness. “Rainbow… I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Those kids got to it, right?” Rainbow asked, Twilight letting out a loud and shaking exhale in response. “You all got to the Taranis, right? That’s why you fought… whatever that thing was. Right”

“Y-y-yes,” Twilight said, trying to put a smile on her face, doing her best to ignore the fact she could feel Rainbow’s blood starting to pool on her back and stain her coat. “We got the Taranis. We’re gonna stop them, don’t worry. We’re gonna get everypony back and we will all stop them.”

Rainbow closed her eyes. “Then… it was worth it.”

Her final word was said so quietly Twilight nearly didn’t hear it, eyes going wide in terror. She lifted Rainbow off her and lightly shook her friend with her magic, trying to get some response. All she got was the lifeless nodding the pegasus’ head toward her.

“Rainbow? Rainbow?!”

---

Deep within the Everfree Forest, on a tree made of crystal, a red gem cracked. The others with it lost their shine and started to slumber.

Author's Note:

This hurt to write. This really, really hurt.

Comments

[OP Omni God-Emperor Doom]

WHAT THE ACTUAL F***!!!!!!?????

That's it! The Storm King AND TEMPEST CAN BOTH F***ing DIE!!!!!!!

NO "redemption or forgiveness" bullcrap for Tempest!

Despite this rather surprising and tragic setback. I hope Jeanne can use her you-know-what simulation to save Rainbow Dash, and not make this permanent.

Otherwise, I don't know how this story can ever achieve it's own True Ending ( Everybody/Everypony survived. )

P.S. I still won't forgive Tempest for being no better than the likes of Blutwurst. And deserves to be punished that she will never forget, nor be forgiven too easily like in canon.

[OP Omni God-Emperor Doom]

Umm? Hello?

[OP Omni God-Emperor Doom]

..................

[Lusaminia]

11636801
Sorry for the lack of update. I've been completely focused on another story and found it was best to focus all my attention on it.

[OP Omni God-Emperor Doom]

11636896

How's it going?

[Lusaminia]

11692156
It's been good. Sorry that it has been so long since I've had a story update. Still working on that other story and my one attempt at working on something along side it ended with me being unable to focus on both at once.

I promise, I will get back to this story. I just have no idea right now when that might be.

[OP Omni God-Emperor Doom]

What!? This is canceled!?