Fallout Equestria: Jakintsu

by Clint Ambrose

Chapter Four: Enter the Jester

Chapter 4
Fiery Entrance

“The elite shock troops of Equestria,” I muttered to myself as I carefully trotted around piles of decaying fecal matter, “Are crawling through sewers to avoid danger. If only Applejack could see you now.”

Gravel Voice Pony, one Master Sergeant SteelHooves, stopped midstride to orient his helmet lamp onto my face.

“Did I strike a nerve?” I asked.

Sparrow stepped between me and SteelHooves. “Flag, rule one of traveling with Steel Rangers,” she said sternly. “Do. Not. Mention. Applejack. While she was the creative impetus behind the program, her legacy—and how exactly we should honor it—is somewhat of a contentious issue amongst us.”

“Got it,” I said.

“The young one has a point,” SteelHooves rumbled in that gravelly voice. “Applejack would not approve of us breaking into her sister’s creations just to loot a few trinkets from them.”

“Orders are orders, Sergeant,” Sparrow said. “Besides, I doubt the ole girl would appreciate us carving our way through the Equestrian Army.”

SteelHooves whinnied and resumed walking. Sparrow and I soon followed behind him.

“So, how do you become a Steel Ranger?” I asked.

“You are born into it,” Sparrow said. “Oh, we’ll have to recruit outside our own ranks eventually, but there are very few civilians left unmarred by the apocalypse. And those that were… we don’t think they have much time before they lose themselves.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Did ponies actually survive the megaspells on the surface?”

“Not exactly,” Sparrow said as the Ranger in front, a buck named Spitzer with twin .338 magnum Light Anti-Machine Machine Guns hung off his armor, raised his armored tail in a halt gesture. We all came to halt, and I drew 68 Laws and snapped on my Eyes Forward Sparkle. The laser hologram spell beamed a heads-up-display directly to my retina, allowing me to see a targeting pipper, compass, threat indicator/motion tracker, and various meters for my current weapon condition, ammo supplies, radiation level (which was rising by about half a rad a second), and overall health. My motion tracker showed two red ticks ahead, panning right to left, soon to enter the sewer tunnel we resided in via a side tunnel.

“Shadow, move up,” Sparrow ordered. A unicorn mare in light recon armor carrying suppressed weapons on her battle saddle sidled past took point as we waited for the red ticks to emerge.

Just as the first emerged around the lip of the side tunnel, I hit SATS and halted time. I wanted to study my enemy.

The “feral ghoul” used to be a pony. Of that I was reasonably sure. But its coat and mane existed only in patches, with diseased muscled tissue exposed throughout. The lipless muzzle seemed to be grinning insanely below eyes clouded by cataracts. They looked like zombies from an old monster flick.

Can you say creepy?

I disengaged SATS to see Shadow put a burst of fire into the feral ghoul’s head, which exploded like a piñata. There was an inequine hissing growl from what I assumed was another ghoul, but another burst of suppressed fire silenced it. “Clear,” Shadow whispered.

Sparrow motioned for us to continue forward. I stepped around to the side tunnel, studying the corpses quickly before resuming my place in line.

“So, what the hell turns a pony into one of those?” I asked.

“Megaspell exposure,” Sparrow said. “For some reason, a noticeable percentage isn’t killed, and they become, well, ghouls like that.”

“Are they always hostile?” I asked.

“Only if we’re insulted,” SteelHooves rasped.

“Ok, that makes sense…” I stopped mid-sentence. “Wait, you’re a ghoul?”

“Back off, Flag,” Sparrow warned. “It’s a touchy subject for him.”

“Sorry,” I said. “My curiosity seems to control my tongue.”

SteelHooves whinnied and carried on, as did we all for a few hundred yards.

“So, uh, I mean no offense,” I started to say, “But, uh, why does SteelHooves seem more or less mentally stable and those ferals… well, weren’t.”

“When the balefire fell, some just had a reason to keep living,” Sparrow said. “Regardless of the horrors they were cursed to become. But when hope disappears, so does the mind.”

I shook my head. “A terrible fate,” I mused.

“You have no idea,” SteelHooves said. “Anypony got some Med-X? My tank’s running low.”

I made a leap of logic. “Your armor dispenses painkillers?”

“Along with a suite of other combat drugs,” Sparrow answered as she levitated over a bulk bottle of the painkiller, lifted a hatch on SteelHooves’ armor, and slotted the powerful painkiller into place. “Healing potions, Buck, Psycho, Dash…”

“Whoa nelly,” I whinnied. “That’s a hell of a lot of addiction in your suits.”

“It’s only injected in extreme need,” Sparrow said. “Officers can reset the parameters of their squad’s suits remotely, weaning addicts off cold turkey.”

“Smart,” I said. “But why would SteelHooves…” A lightbulb went off in my head. “He became a ghoul in his armor, didn’t he? He’s… merged with it, hasn’t he?” If balefire was, well, based on fire, then in theory there’d have been a range at which his armor could have save him and melted into him.

“Yes I have,” SteelHooves said.

We’d already walked about five miles that day. If he was fused to his armor, then every step, every movement would put him in agony I couldn’t comprehend at that point in my life. That he lived with that and still held onto some shard of hope that kept his mind from becoming feral was remarkable.

“Sergeant SteelHooves,” I said, “You are one tough son of a mule, and it for whatever its worth, but you have my respect.”

SteelHooves scoffed and continued walking, passing beneath a stream of meltwater from a storm drain in the street above us. My PipBuck started clicking ominously as I neared the stream, so I hopped to the other side of the tunnel, landing on a trash can lid that rang like a cymbal, my wings unfurled to help me make the next leap back to the walkway along the side. The Steel Rangers turned towards me, their head lamps spotlighting me.

“What?” I asked just as the light from the storm drain ceased. I slowly rotated my head to look at the storm drain.

The robotic arm on the other side held an integrated Gatling gun that was rapidly spooling up.

“Shit!” I cursed, pumping my wings and leaping into the middle of the sewer flow as a torrential rain of tracer rounds traded positions with me. My PipBuck began ticking rapidly, unhappy about my current location. I was engulfed in a telekinetic field as Sparrow pulled me free of the radioactive muck and threw me onto the walkway. I staggered to my hooves as shouts on the streets began to filter through the storm drains.

“NEMG,” Spitzer hissed. “Nice going, FNG.”

“Spitzer, lead us out of here,” Sparrow ordered. “Steel Rangers, three, two, one…” Sparrow spun around and leapt into a gallop. “CHARGE!”

I found myself running at full speed with the thundering herd of Steel Rangers down a sewer tunnel, my mother's heirloom bouncing against my chest on its short steel chain. The Rangers shouted war cries through their external speakers as we ran away from the enemy. I didn’t know what was going on, but I learned one thing very fast—don’t get between a charging Steel Ranger and a wall on a corner. They tend to use the wall as a springboard. I figured the risk of getting shot was better than getting between a Ranger and a wall when they decided to become equine bumper wagons, so I quickly made my way to the back of the herd. Of course, this meant that I had a front-row seat as ponies in combat armor started diving through ponyholes, weapons at the ready. I levitated out my PDW and 68 Laws, stopping at turns to spray a hail of suppressing fire back towards our opponents before they got a shot on me. I was at the rear, and I was also unarmored!

I came around a T-intersection to find myself in the way of Sparrow and Spitzer, who were running back the opposite way that the Rangers had turned.

“Dead end!” Sparrow shouted.

I spun around, seeing a dozen ponies in combat armor spill around the previous turn. I triggered SATS, and used the precious moments of stalled time to think. My PDW probably wouldn’t penetrate their armor, and it certainly wouldn’t down them fast enough to spare me. I needed to shove them out of the way, or at least keep them from aiming at me…

Bingo.

I fired up my horn and disengaged SATS. I pushed my newfound magic farther than I had before, sweeping the refuse and fecal matter off the sewer floor into a swirling vortex that I that I sent barreling down the tunnel. The veritable shitstorm gained mass as it went, slamming into my opponents at the other end. When the shit cleared, all of them were buried wither-deep in crap. One mare had become entangled in a shopping cart, although how that got into the sewer, I still have no clue.

“Get,” came a gravelly order from behind me. “Down.”

I ducked just in time for SteelHooves to salvo off a hail of grenade and missile fire at the center of the tunnel. The roof cracked and groaned, then collapsed in dusty chaos. I pulled myself to my hooves and glanced at the Steel Ranger ghoul.

“Good thinking,” I said.

“Back at ya,” SteelHooves said, then turned and charged off down the tunnel.

Wait. SteelHooves had complimented me?

Unusual to be sure.

My reverie was disturbed as the nearest ponyhole on this side of the collapse slid open. I let off a burst of suppressing fire from my PDW, and took off running down the tunnel. This wasn't over yet.

*** *** ***

We had been running through the sewers for the better part of an hour, occasionally laying down a hail of suppressive fire, before we hit a blast door that sealed off the tunnel. This tunnel was larger, large enough that four powered armored ponies could stand flank-to-flank in it.

“Spitzer, what is this?” Sparrow asked.

“It wasn’t here last time!” Spitzer replied.

“Look at the cameras,” I said as I telekinetically ejected the buckshot loads from 68 Laws and reloaded with TS sabots and an AP round for the rifle barrel in the center. “Seems like a security system to me. Must have passed a dozen others along the way. Probably detected our gunfire and sealed.” I pulled out my PDW and my supply of incendiary shredders—off which I only had thirty five. I topped the mag off with JHP rounds and charged the weapon.

“Well there isn’t another way out of here,” Sparrow said as an enemy soldier rushed around the bend. I triggered SATS and gave him a full dose of 68 Laws. The four shotgun barrels roared as the tool-steel sabot rounds—a primitive armor piercing load I’d developed back Stable 68—erupted from the barrel at nearly fifteen hundred feet per second. The 6.8mm rifle round beat them to the target, cracking the ceramic trauma plate of the stallion’s armor. The massive sabot rounds tore through the meat of the torso like cuisinarts. A spray of gore erupted out his backside.

“Fuck that noise!” I declared as I snapped the breach of my Drieling open, auto-ejecting the spent brass and tossing in a speed loader. “I ain’t dying here!”

“Neither am I,” SteelHooves said from my side. He fired off twin missiles that bent around the corner and detonated a second later with a massive concussion.

“SteelHooves, you were supposed to turn in your thermobaric munitions,” Sparrow stated.

“Put me in front of a firing squad,” SteelHooves challenged.

“Yeah, like that’d do something meaningful to a Canterlot ghoul,” Sparrow said.

My mind catalogued the tidbits that ghouls came in flavors—I had more pressing concerns. Also, terrible choice of wording. Flavors of ghouls. Yuck.

“What about that ponyhole?” I asked, pointing to the ladderless surface access.

“We can’t fit through that,” one of the Rangers said.

“I can,” I said. “Give me your comm protocols and I can call for help on my PipBuck from clear skies.”

“There’s not any reinforcements in this area,” Sparrow said, shaking her head.

“Maybe I can get around to the other side of the door and open it from there,” I offered as a grenade came sailing around the corner. It was wrapped in a telekinetic field and flung back, by whom I didn’t know.

Sparrow sighed. “Flag, Shadow, get up there and do it. Go!”

I spread my wings and leapt forward, jamming my hooves into the ponyhole shaft. I scrambled a moment and got my hooves onto the remaining rungs of the ladder, then climbed up to the top. But instead of a ponyhole, this was covered in a trapdoor that locked from the other side. I cursed and banged my hoof against the trapdoor with a resounding bang that almost drowned out the more important sound.

Something rattled atop the trapdoor.

I grinned wickedly.

“FNG, open it up!” Shadow hissed below me.

“Hold on t'ya horses.” I broke open 68 Laws and unloaded the shells, patting myself down with a hoof to find a particular ammo pouch… ah, there they were. I loaded four shells and snapped the weapon closed. A few exploratory taps located the source of the rattle. I held the drieling a few inches off the trapdoor, and fired a single barrel.

The report was deafening, but an exploratory push told me I’d missed the lock. I mentally cursed and adjusted the fire selector. I put three rounds of door-breaching ammo into the trapdoor, and this time, it opened. I heaved myself onto the surface, then drew my PDW and scanned my surroundings. I was in a guard shack in a parking lot for a shopping mall. EFS said the coast was clear. I grabbed my rappelling gear and tied off a line to the shack, then threw the other end down the hole. “All right Shadow, come on up,” I hollered, then I began looking for the door. According to my PipBuck’s automap, there should have been an access hatch fifty yards due west…

Right in the middle of an apartment building. I cursed as I heard the funneled reports of Steel Ranger weaponry firing in the tunnel below.

“Flag, can you see a ponyhole?” Sparrow asked over her external speakers.

“Negative,” I said, looking back down the ponyhole. Tracers and shells were flying in both directions down below. “It’d be inside a building if anywhere. I don’t know if you have enough time for me to find it.”

“We don’t have a lot of options,” Sparrow said.

“No you don’t,” I said. “SteelHooves! Blow the roof! It’s only about five feet deep, you’ll open up surface access.”

SteelHooves responded with a single word. “Move.”

I sprinted away from the ponyhole, desperate to cover as much ground as I could. The asphalt heaved and shattered from the twin thermobaric missiles. A hail of disintegration grenades vaporized holes around the crater’s lip, expanding the cracks and fissures until a forty foot section of the parking lot collapsed into the tunnel below. I grabbed my rapelling lines and threw them over the edge.

“Everypony up!” I shouted. The power armored Rangers leapt over the lip in a display of brutish power while the unicorns scrambled up the edge. Another salvo from SteelHooves sealed the tunnels behind us.

“Well done, everypony,” I said.

“That was some quick thinking,” Sparrow said, landing beside me and folding up her armored wings. I noticed Shadow being strapped to another Ranger’s back, a nasty gash on her head and several bleeding holes in her recon armor.

“Not fast enough for everyone,” I said. “And I guess we should get moving before they find us again.”

Sparrow sighed. “Alright, listen up, everypony, we’re moving out. Hopefully we can get ahead of the NEMG and stay ahead. Sergeant.”

“You heard her, my little nimcompoops,” SteelHooves said, shifting to his hooves. “Spitzer, on point. Smiles, Ducky, take…”

Krang. SteelHooves buckled, a fountain of gore exploding out his side.

“Sniper!” somepony yelled.

“The office building!” somepony said. “Third floor!”

“Rangers, suppressing fire!” Sparrow shouted. All the Rangers turned towards the office building to our east and started pouring fire into it. The façade deteriorated in hooffulls and great gouging tears as everything from pistol to howitzer rounds tore at the enemy’s cover. I pulled out my PDW and started hosing the empty window frames.

My mind switched gears of its own accord.

ooo OOO ooo

I was hosing down targets on a balcony above me on the alien ship. Three-fourths of a mag from my PDW later, and I had cleared all the Cylonics from the room. I glanced backwards, checking on the colt slung across my back. He was breathing, but still hadn’t awoken.

“It’ll be alright, Reggie,” I said as much to the colt as myself as I renewed my run down the corridors. The entire vessel rocked violently, throwing me to the floor. I staggered back onto my hooves and pushed my telekinesis to place Reggie back on my back. “It’ll be alright.”

An oodalekka slithered around the corner, four fullmen karabins held in its tentacles. I ripped off a burst of PDW fire into the creature’s face, stalling for time as I drew my own karabin. A searing bolt into the monster staggered it enough that I could telekinetically disarm it. I turned the weapons around and used them to annihilate their former master.

My PipBuck chimed, and the EFS hologram scrolled text. “Comm signal found: Intraship Equine Frequency.” I pressed buttons and operated dials, swapping my PipBuck to radio mode and tuning into the new channel. Hazard’s voice came through the static.

“…message is a warning beacon, hence the lack of coding. We are aboard a starship of extraterrestrial origin. The inhabitants appear hostile, and… they’re doing things here. Creating an invasion army the likes of which we’ve never seen. Handheld megaspell firearms, invisibility, and… some sort of unkillable abomination made from the souls of ponies. A small group of equines and I have taken over the ship’s bridge. We’ve… come to a concensus. We will attempt to move the ship out of orbit and self-destruct. If anyone is receiving this… get ready. We might be able to destroy this ship, but whatever these things are, wherever they’re from, more will be coming. I’ve heard the world was destroyed by megaspells. Well, I think these things were waiting for us to do it, to catch us at our weakest when we can’t defend ourselves. But if all of you down there band together, we CAN win this. We CAN beat them.

“And Flag, if you’re hearing this: get off this ship. Bumpkins says that there are escape pods on the ship’s exterior. There’s nothing on the surface for us, but there’s a life for you and the colt. Get him off. Warn everypony, no, everyONE that’s left. Make sure there’s an army capable of defeating these bastards. Message now repeats.

“This is an automated broadcast by Petty Officer Hazard of the Equestrian Navy. This message is a warning beacon, hence the lack of coding. We are aboard…”

My PipBuck’s EFS popped up a new tasking. “Escape!”

Simple enough.

I set off with renewed vigor.

ooo OOO ooo

“Flag! Flag! Snap out of it, Flag!” A hoof slapped me across the face, and I snapped back to reality. Sparrow had a hoof on my shoulder, and her other had been the one that just slapped me.

I shook my head and swore. “I’m back, I’m back, what’s happening?”

“Snipers got us pinned down,” Sparrow said. “Anti-machine rifles and Dash guns. I sent Ducky and Spitzer to clear out that apartment building, you’re to assist them. I’ve got other teams in the adjacent buildings. SteelHooves and I will stay out here and draw their fire. Got it?”

“Roger wilco,” I said, drawing 68 Laws into my telekinetic grasp. I rushed over to the apartment building, a .50 cal round buzzing over my shoulders. I somersaulted through a plate glass window, rolling across the floor and smashing into a dinner table. I rose onto my hindlegs, looking around the apartment. Finding the front door ajar, I walked out into the hallway. No targets, but I mentally kicked myself for not clearing the doorway like I’d trained in SPAT. I rotated the bit on 68 Laws so it’d fire from the shoulder, and wrapped my forehooves around it. This let me sight along the top without taking the Drieling’s massive buck to the teeth. I would shortly learn that this was how the griffins had intended the weapon to be fired, and that it’d been converted to pony use decades later.

I crept up the stairs, sweeping every angle as I rose. “Ranger?” I whispered, hoping for a response. I walked onto the second floor landing, seeing a broken Mr. Hoofshake custodial robot sitting in a corner next to a radiator. I quickly looked into the apartments along the hall, and not seeing anypony in any of them, I took the stairs at the opposite end of the long hallway to the Mr. Hoofshake. But once I got to the third floor, I quickly backed down, inspecting the far end of the hallway.

No Mr. Hoofshake. The robot had moved. The robot was functional. The robot had orders to play dead. The robot had something giving it orders.

We were going to be ambushed.

I walked into the nearest apartment and slid down into a belly crawl, hoping to avoid notice by snipers. I wriggled my way to the nearest window, then picked up a kitchen chair in my teeth and bashed the glass out with a twist of my head. An anti-machine round tore the chair from my teeth, jarring my mouth into numbness.

“SPARROW!” I shouted, hoping to be heard over the near constant barrage of AM gatling guns and a grenade machine gun. “SPARROW!”

“FLAG?” came the distant reply, drowned out by a far more eminent mechanical voice.

“For Equestria, dirtbag!” The Sergeant Hoofshake—the militarized model of the custodial robot—shouted as it began firing blobs of disintergration magic into the room with reckless abandon.

“AMBUSH!” I shouted, rolling onto my back before dropping into SATS. I cued up targets and gave the machine all five barrels with the targeting spell. A birdshot shell slamming into the optical tracking sensors, two shells of double-aught buckshot hammered the weapon armature, a TS sabot blasted through the main hull, and the 6.8mm AP round shattered the glowing levitation talisman. All that happened in less than a second.

“DESTROY THE ROBOTS!” I shouted as I rolled onto my knees and then rose on my hindlegs. I remembered that the few maintenance model Mr. Hoofshakes in Stable 68 could be used as remote camera platforms. I turned my head back towards the window and shouted a final warning. “THEY’RE ACTING AS SPOTTERS!”

No sooner had I finished saying it than the exterior wall turned into Swiss cheese as a heavy machine gun opened up. If I hadn’t of moved, the rounds would have torn me to pieces.

Eeyup, definitely acting as spotters.

I reloaded 68 Laws and swept my way back into the hallway. No new targets. I quickly climbed the stairs to the third floor, and came around into the hallway.

Face to face with a garishly pink three-legged semi-equine guard robot. It was the size of a filly or colt with a rigidly mounted head and neck that ran parallel to the back. The optics sensors looked like a pair of sunglasses, and the mouth was opened to reveal a twin beam emitters and a machine gun barrel.

I twirled back around the corner as the robot opened fire, gouging great chunks of rotting plaster out of the wall as bullets tumbled by. “Lethal force may be used without notice,” the robot chimed.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I demanded as I broke open 68 Laws and loaded up fully for armor piercing.

I heard the robot whirring as its legs/wheelstalks rotated and it crabbed sideways to get a good shot at me. Instead it got an Applebuck to the face. The robot spun and flipped onto its side, the legs twitching as it tried to right itself. I blasted a TS Sabot into the wrinkled midsection, correctly guessing that the wrinkles were radiators and that radiators would be wrapped around something vital. The thing sparked and smoked.

“That’s how we do it in the Broncs!” I shouted, popping my weapon open and telekinetically replacing the spent shell.

“Target acquired. Added to local b-net target roster.”

“Ah fuck.” There were four of them at the far end of the hallway, two hunkered low and two standing high so that all could engage me.

“Engaging. Have a pleasant death.”

“I am sick of this crap!” I shouted as I leapt over the stairway railing back towards the second floor. “Everywhere I go…” A blob of magic wizzed by, and I spun around, triggered SATS, and put two TS sabots into the Sergeant Hoofshake. “I’m shot at!”

I oriented my weapon upwards, and fired thrice into the belly of one of the flat-back robots that was just coming around to the top of the stairs. Another robot came around the stairs as I reloaded, flopped out a pair of skis (yes, skis) and slid down the staircase. I spun around on my hooves and gave the robot a shove, sending it beyond the stairs until it embedded itself in the wall beyond. The robot’s motors whined and the carpet smoked as it tried to pull itself out. A quick buck ensured it never would. I decided to try my luck, and galloped down the hallway towards the staircase on the opposite side of the building. I reached the far side just in time for tracers to begin streaming down the hallway. The two remaining flat-backs were now on the second floor, and I was heading for the fourth. They may have had skis, but I doubted skis would let them climb stairs. I leapt up onto the fourth floor landing, only to find that the roof and most of the walls had caved in.

And that there were about a dozen jack-in-the-box automated turrets with clear fields of fire on the street and the fourth floor.

I could not come up with a curse for how much my situation sucked.

Instead of running, I dove for the nearest turret, using SATS to target it and its neighbor to my right. The sabots tore the robotics to pieces, but thankfully left the HMG on the nearest turret intact. I curled into a ball, using the ruined turret as a meatshield. My position meant that only one turret had a clear line of fire on me. I focused my telekinesis and tore robotic components away, quickly leaving only the MG and its universal joint mount. I telekinetically depressed the butterfly triggers, and the weapon erupted into a thundering fountain of anti-machine rounds. I started to peek around the edge of the turret’s base mounted power pack, but a sniper round cracked down next to my head. I quickly abandoned that idea, then started searching my surroundings for something I could use.

Ah ha, a wall mirror! I levitated the large pane of glass of the wall and angled it so that I could spot targets on the other side of the street. From this angle, I could see another dozen turrets on the other building. I used tracers to walk the HMG’s fire into each of them until the weapons sparked and smoked in destruction. I used the mirror to spot the streets, noting Sparrow and SteelHooves, both eerily immobile, but nopony—or robot—else. I sighed, then I levitated the auto turret, using its height to dispatch the rest of the turrets on my floor.

Right, now for the sniper. If only I didn’t have weapons meant for CQB.

Krang! A high velocity slug burrowed into the wall just a few feet in front of me, as I was still huddled up against the turret.

Krang! Krang! Krang! Each shot inched closer and closer to me. The sniper knew exactly where I was and was adjusting fire.

That meant… The mirror! I studied the large pane of glass, seeing a slight flash before the next Krang!

Gotchya, you son of a mule. Let’s see how good you are with aerial targets.

I grabbed the control bit of my PDW in my teeth, angled the mirror to reflect as much light at the sniper as I could, and I leapt into the air, wings pumping hard as I fought for altitude in a near vertical climb. The sniper rounds kept passing me by, all concerningly close, but I kept up my plan of attack. I pulled a half loop, and started to dive bomb my target. I used my wings to jink left and right, up and down, dodging shots as I gained speed. And while you think that I would have been a better target the closer I got, realize that a five or six foot jerk to one side covers a much greater angle at one hundred feet than a thousand. And at three hundred yards, I opened up with my PDW, laying down a hail of suppressing fire. The incoming fire ceased as my horn and the roof of the building lit up in a golden light.

I pitched my hindlegs forward at the last moment, dividing the cataclysmic impact across all four of my hooves. The roof shattered under me, but my telekinesis strengthened the structure, causing a far larger piece of the roof to detach beneath me. About a fifty square foot section tore loose, and as a whole, we fell onto the floor below. A scream of pain erupted out from under the rubble, and I levitated out the source, a unicorn mare in black form fitting full body armor. A little extra telekinetic pressure around the neck communicated the need for her cooperation.

“Are there any other others with you?” I asked. The mare shook her head. “What about your robots, will they continue to attack us?” A nod. “Why did you attack us?”

“You are the enemy,” she whispered hoarsely. “Equestria launched megaspells against Ponyvois. You killed millions who were not involved in your war, alicorn.”

“I was nine days old when the megaspells fell,” I stated. "I don't bear much blame."

“You work with Steel Rangers, the greatest theft of Ponyvois technology ever created. Technology that originated with me, not Applejack. If you support their ideals, you will fall as they do. My pulse spells might be able to knock out their power armor, but my lightning will strike you dead.”

“If you could strike me dead, you’d have done it by now,” I stated.

“Alright, so I never got the lightning thing to work, but a strong enough series of precisely time EM pulses in your heart should theoretically stop cardiac function,” the mare said, a little more whimsical than she had a right to be.

“Any chance that you can actually do that?” I asked.

“Well, no, not with radiation poisoning as bad as I have.” She coughed wetly—for dramatic effect or not, I could not tell.

“Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” I asked.

“What do I have to say for myself? You’re the assholes that collapsed a sewer tunnel, pissed off a few companies of NEMG, and disturbed the peace in my corner of the Hoofington shithole.”

“We didn’t shoot first,” I stated.

“Touché,” the mare said, pointing a hoof at me as she conceded my point. Then she cocked her head to the side, and I felt my heirloom being tugged away from my neck. I grabbed it with a hoof and clamped it to my chest.

“Hey, no touching my stuff,” I said.

“Where did you get that?” the mare asked.

“Family heirloom,” I said.

“You’re Flag, child of Azienda, child of Cadenza,” the mare said in a reverie. “You were sequestered in Stable 68 in the Four Broncos Desert to survive the apocalypse. You are the first natural born male alicorn in over sixteen thousand years. You have battled aliens and encountered your true enemy, whether you realize it or not. You are our world’s only hope.”

“How do you know me?” I asked.

“I traveled with your mother,” the mare said. “And I took you to Stable 68 myself before riding out the apocalypse in Ponyville.”

I was silent. “What have you done to the Steel Rangers?”

“Pulse mines on most of them,” she said. “The non-power armored ones were hit with stun rounds. I had to use live ammunition or SteelHooves down there would have noticed.”

I sighed. “Look, I’m going to trust you, but if you cross me, I will kill you.”

“Sounds good,” she said. “Besides, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to reboot the Steel Rangers’ spell matrices without me.”

“Good point,” I said. “Alright, I’m letting you down, just as soon as you tell me who you are.”

The mare nodded, tilting her head to the side as she did. “I am Lyra Heartstrings.”

Note: Level Up!--Total Comprehension--Your advanced reading skills allow you to gain +1 permanent stat boosts from magazines and double the stat boost from books.

Author's Note:

A chapter of nothing but action. I feel like I'm writing Ted Bell's next book, and I don't like Ted Bell cause he writes nothing but action. Then again, Ted Bell's made a few million bucks, so maybe... nah. Anyhow, I cranked this out pretty fast. I'm hoping to get more out rapidly as the start of semester looms. I at least want to get the story out of Equestria and into the main plotline.
And I still need editors! PM me if interested!