27: Less walking, more explosions.
Honor the Dead
by BinaryTroll
Pre-read/Edited by Honored Service
Chapter 27: “Less walking, more explosions.”
--------------
“I just realized, we are out of food.” I said, pulling my hands out of my pockets. “We also have very little water.”
“Don't worry, we're almost at the next hive.” Vi said tiredly.
I looked up at the sky and sighed. A week of walking, over. Just gotta do this twice more and I can finally have a shower. And eat something that doesn't come from a can. My feet hurt, my legs hurt, my arms hurt. Basically my everything hurt. It would be good to have a rest, albeit a small one, once we reached the next hive. For some reason, I felt far more sane than when I was driving. Maybe I just had new things to think over, other people to talk to. I knew Joel so well that we didn't really have anything to discuss, because we almost always had the same opinion and the same amount of knowledge (Although I generally had a bit deeper understanding of sciences). With Shyvanna and Vi, I hardly knew them, so we spent ages discussing science, philosophy, tactics, weapons, magic and other obscure topics that we found interesting.
A question wormed it's way into my mind. “Hey Vi, if this hive is closer to Canterlot, how come the changelings didn't take up residence here instead?”
“A variety of reasons, chief among them being the dragons that moved in.”
I sighed. “Fuck me, more dragons? I wonder how many of these I'm going to have to violently disassemble?”
“You've killed dragons before?”
“Yep.” I swept my hand around the group. “Between us, we've killed about three young adults.”
“Shit.” Vi muttered.
I raised my eyebrows. “Apparently that's still a thing across dimensions. Good to know. Anyway, care to elaborate?”
“Dragons can tell when you've killed one of their kin, so there’s no way you can just grab some food and go.”
I smiled. “Thank god.” I cracked my knuckles. “Yo Joel.”
“Yeah?”
“You bored?”
Joel yawned. “Do you even need to ask?”
“Feel like killing some stuff?”
He shrugged. “I'm game.”
“Right then.” I raised my hand and pointed it to the sky before bringing it down in a great sweep to point directly forwards. “To the vault!”
Vi tapped my shoulder and pointed to my left. “The vault's that way.”
“Oh.”
The walk to the vault was relatively short, and ended with us staring into a huge crater. The vault door sat at the base of it in the dirt. The number as well as any other forms of paint was gone. Not to mention a large amount of the door itself.
“Jesus, I wonder how long this has been here?”
Joel slid down the edge of the crater and jumped to his feet at the bottom. After a few seconds of studying the door from a distance, I joined him.
“Kinda skimped out on security didn't they?” Joel commented, kicking a bit of dust off the huge gear.
“Can you blame them? It's been a few thousand years.”
There was a huge hole in the center of the door, eroded away by the dust and wind. Or something else.
Shyvanna and Vi landed nearby with a resounding clang. “Well, you hungry?”
Joel grinned back. “Starving.”
He jumped through the hole, landing softly. I looked over my shoulder. “You two want in?”
Vi shook her head. “I've seen enough killing lately, I'm not in a hurry to see more.”
Shyvanna grinned. “Well, I have a bit of a grudge against most of the guys who live here, so fuck it, why not?”
“Learning how to swear like a human are we?” I said with a laugh.
She lightly punched me on the shoulder. “You're a bad influence.”
I smiled. “I know.”
She slid down the hole, lithe like a cat.
“So what are you going to do Vi?”
She shrugged. “I know a back entrance that leads to the changeling food store. Hopefully those bumbling fools haven't wrecked it.”
“I really hope you're referring to the dragons there.”
She smiled evilly. “You'll never know.”
I shrugged. “Whatever, see you in a hour or so.”
She waved. “Ta ta.”
I turned my back on her and jumped down the hole.
I landed with a soft thump at the familiar control room of the vault, rolling to break my fall. Joel and Shyv stood by a dragon-sized hole where the door was supposed to be. “So, we doing this stealthily or explosively?”
Joel screwed on silencers to his Glocks, sheathed them, and pulled out his knife. “Lets start stealth, but we always screw these up anyway.”
“Not always.”
“About sixty percent of the time,” Joel amended. “but for once, I don't care.”
“Right then, I got front, if I fuck up, you two can bring in the big guns. As always Joel, cover me.”
“In what?”
I ignored him.
We moved quickly, not really bothered with stealth. The clang of my boots on the floor was too loud to mask anyway. After a minute of quickly sneaking through the rusty corridors, we heard a voice.
“Yo, didja hear about what happened to Zippo and his gang?”
“Course I did, they got decimated. Fucking half breeds. Think they're so good.”
Shyvanna scowled, sparks forming in her mane.
“Dude, if I ever met her, she'd be pulp in ten seconds flat.”
“Bullshit, you couldn't hurt a fly.”
“Oh, you so sure about that?”
“Yeah! I am!”
“Come at me!”
“I'll buck you up!”
I dropped into a crouch and pulled out Luna. “They're right through here.” I whispered to Joel.
He nodded. “I got the one closest to the door. Lets go.”
I pulled the handle and jumped through the opening. Two youngish dragons stood in the room, one red, the other a bright neon yellow. I jumped forward and tackled the yellow one to the ground. Joel grabbed the red one and plunged the knife into his throat. I stabbed up into yellow's head, feeling Luna pierce through the scales and crush the bone of his skull. I pulled her out again, along with a small deluge of blood and gray matter.
“Goodnight bigot.” I muttered, wiping Luna on his underbelly. I let him fall to the ground.
Shyv stepped into the room. “That was fast.”
Joel shrugged. “We do this a lot.”
“Anything useful in here?”
I looked around. “Nothing we can use, but there's some gems over there if you want.” I said, pointing at the dresser.
There were an assortment of rubies sitting on the shelf.
“I'm not really hungry right now, but you might want to grab those for later.”
I grabbed them and put them next the dragon scales. “Man, I can't believe you ate all that scrap.”
“I was hungry.”
“Fair enough. Actually, that reminds me, shouldn't we be searching all these rooms?”
“I thought we were going to kill everything and then loot.”
“Nah, lets go steal everything first. It's half the fun.”
Joel laughed. “That it is Wards. That it is.”
Over the next half hour we grabbed everything we could find that could be slightly useful, which turned out to be very little. A few more gems for Shyv, a pair of motorcycle handbrakes that we welded onto the blades that we'd pulled from the bikes a few weeks ago, a broken .44 magnum that I took for no particular reason and a single mini-nuke.
I slammed shut the door of the cupboard and stretched. “That was a decent haul.”
“All we found was a bunch of junk and a bit of food.” Shyv said, nibbling on a ruby.
“Well yeah, but that's the fun. If you find a bunch of useful stuff then you don't have to do anything with it. It's making gear out of junk that's the fun part.”
Shyv raised an eyebrow. “I thought you said stealing stuff was the fun part.”
I shrugged. “I like them both. Stealing stuff gives you time to think about what you're going to do with it.” I grinned maliciously. “And you usually end up killing a few people while you're at it.”
“I guess...” Shyv's hears twitched. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“I think they found the bodies.”
“Ah, we should probably get the drop on them then. You ready Joel?”
He spun the new blades in a circle and smiled. “I'm always ready.”
“Then lets have some fun.”
“Leave some for me.” Shyv said, her mane shifting into something closer to flame than hair.
I drew the sisters and used my foot to pull the handle of the door. Joel and I grinned at each other and raced down the corridor. We took the turns at breakneck speed, constantly trying to get ahead of each other. Together we skidded to a halt in front a crowd of dragons.
I spun Luna once. “What up fuckers?”
“Pardon?”
I rushed forward, slicing open the closest dragon's throat, spilling blood across the floor and the other dragons. The nearest one swung a claw at me. I ducked the clumsy blow and cut open the dragon's stomach, spilling his guts onto the ground. He crumpled like a leaf, but I was already moving onto my next strike, stabbing Celestia through a green dragon's eye into his brain. Joel completely decapitated a dragon next to me, so I kicked the severed head into another dragon's stomach, trailing blood and a few bits of skin, following it up with three quick slashes to her chest and a final stab through the heart. Joel was a whirlwind of death beside me, cutting through limbs, heads and bodies like they weren't even there.
A gray and red blur sped past me, tackling a dragon who had been about to grab me to the ground. Shyvanna punched him in the nose twice before tearing his throat out with her teeth.
“Whoa, nice kill.”
Shyvanna grinned at me, a chunk of flesh hanging from her canine. “Why thank you.”
“That's creepy. Please don't go cannibal on me.”
“Wasn't planning on it.”
“Good.”
I spun and cut at the nearest dragon, spilling a small amount of blood but not enough to kill. He slashed back, catching my left arm and tearing a large chunk of flesh from it. I hardly noticed. He went down with two massive knives in his face.
There were three dragons left in the room, all clustered together. I grabbed the mini-nuke and threw it at them.
BOOM
The room shook with the force of the explosion, the heart of which was concealed within a mini mushroom cloud. Fire spewed from the center, giving the cloud a deadly glow. After a second the smoke cleared, and all that remained were a trio of blackened skeletons. The bones fell to the floor in a heap.
I burst out laughing. “That. Was. AWESOME! I need to get myself more of those.”
“That was a bit overkill wasn't it?” Shyvanna said, her mouth bloody.
I snorted. “Probably. But it was awesome. It's been a while since I saw an explosion that good.”
“As in?”
“About three weeks.”
Shyv stared at me for a second. “You must have an exciting job.”
I pinched the air. “Little bit.”
“I kinda wish I was a badass assassin now.” Shyvanna said, magically picking small chunks of skin and scales from her teeth.
“Well, Joel and I can probably teach you, but first, food.”
“Indeed.”
I turned and walked down the hall, boots clanking loudly in the sudden silence. I wiped Luna and Celestia on my coat and sheathed them within their pockets. I blew a strand of blue hair off my forehead and sighed contentedly. My inner psychopath was satisfied, for now at least.
“Do you usually just leave rooms of corpses behind?” Shyv asked, catching up to me.
I shrugged. “Pretty much, I'm usually gone by the time they get discovered.”
“What about all the looting you love so much?”
“I generally don't have time to do it, so I enjoy it much more when I do.”
“You had time to do it now.”
“Dragons are unlikely to try to hunt me down afterwards.” I said, smiling. “Although props to the NYPD, they certainly didn't give up.”
“NYPD?”
“New York Police Department. Kinda like the crime division of the Canterlot guards, except human. But they aren't exactly the military.”
“You commit crimes?”
“Well yeah, I'm not a government hired assassin. Not until recently at least. That's why I'm here instead of behind bars. Unfortunately SWAT and the military haven't informed of my...” I paused. “'Arrangement' with the government. I think they're secretly hoping I'll screw up and get myself killed by either of the divisions. But that's not really important anymore.”
“Um, I'll pretend I understood that.”
“Okay.”
I was silent for a full minute.
“Um, this is a kinda long corridor.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” Joel said, popping up me.
“Where the fuck did you come from?”
“Too damn stealth.”
“Apparently.”
We came to a halt in front of a huge door.
“This looks important.” I muttered, pulling the handle.
It didn't budge.
“Oh for fuck's sake.” Shyvanna shouldered past me and melted the handle with a burst of white hot flame. The door sprung open.
“That works.”
The corridor ahead had taken on a noticeable change. Or should I say changeling?
“How was your slaughterfest?” Vi asked, levitating a ball of tiny post apocalyptic food to me.
I grabbed the food. “Looks like you're the only one who is able to do anything useful.” I said with a smile. “We found jack all.”
“I thought you might.” She said, handing Joel a hoofull of green crystals full of pink energy. “Be careful with these, if they break you may end up completely intoxicated with the next pony you see.”
“And why am I getting these?” Joel asked.
“Because I don't really mind if you break them, you're a less likely candidate for cross species relationships.”
“Sorry, what?” I asked indignantly. “I am perfectly happy with a human woman thank you very much.”
“Really?”
“I think I would notice.”
“What about the crush you had on the humanized version of Luna?”
“Fuck off. I never had a crush on Luna.”
Vi laughed. “No, you didn't. You just really liked her character.”
I thought for a second. “You're either implying something, or you are acknowledging that I'm a completely normal, slightly insane human being.”
“I guess you just have to figure it out yourself.”
“I hate you.”
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God I can't wait for them to reach canterlot. If they team up with pinkie.....*shudder* oh lord that would be crazy.
“Can you blame them? It's been a few thousand years.”
Now how exactly would the characters know how old the vaults were? Have they figured out that
they are displaced in time?that the vaults are really old?3333426
Well, the vaults have had to have been made long before Luna or Celestia came to power and indeed, before they were born. Remember that these vaults are made for humans and (in fallout law) they were used to shelter people from the nuclear apocalypse. A few thousand years into the sisters reign they had fully established cities with power (and jug!). That would have taken a while. Also, the vaults were to be abandoned once the radiation died. That takes a rather long time. Now, Honored states in Honor above all else that Luna and Celestia are at least 5000 years old. Please note that Edward has read through the majority of Honor above all else.
3332442
It might happen, but I currently have different plans for pinkie. Not to mention that would likely kill an insane amount of ponies. I guess you'll just have to...
Wait.
3334131 OH NO! I HAVE TO WAIT! MY ONLY WEAKNESS!
Well...... That and olives....... Fucking olives......
3346894
Never had an olive. Don't plan to either. What are they like?
3350268 they're salty but in a bad way. You could almos say they're too salty. Also I just think they taste bad. Ugh. It's kind of a unique taste. The closest thing to it would either be straight salt, or anchovies.
I see you listened to my request
3351005
Oh god, anchovies? Those are amongst the worst things I've eaten, and I've eaten dog food. Seriously. Fun fact, dog food doesn't actually taste that bad with burrito seasoning.
3351649
It was my pleasure.
3355279
So, should I put away the 12 giga-tons of TNT?
3354969 yeah, I'm ok with anchovies, not that I'll ever purposely get them. Just imagine that but not meaty, and you have an olive.
Aaaaanyway. How bought that weather!........................ Yeah that was a shitty topic change.
Your telling me.
Shut the fuck up Discord......
Make me.
Do I need to steal Celly's banana bag and say you did it again?
Human. If you get that bag I will personally make sure you never have children.
OK! Geez. Take a joke oh lord of cotton candy and chocolate milk.
By the way. It's not good chocolate milk anymore. Celly forced him to change it to low fat. *pfft* like that would help.
And what do you mean by that?
OH SHIT! Celestia! I didn't see you there, and, umm, I didn't mean anything. Promise *sqee*
good
3356445
Only 12 giga-tons? Meh, might be enough for a little light show though. Keep it around, we could have some fun with it later.
3357417
Why does low fat milk exist? It hardly helps. If you want to lose weight, get abducted by a terrorist organisation. The constant starvation combined with running from guys with ak-47s for a full day works wonders. If you aren't riddled with bullet holes by the end of it at least.
3359229 I honestly think skim tastes a bit better than 2%. It seems a bit thinner and is smoother to drink.
still don't get why I had to change my milk to low fat.....
Because its healthier discord. Your normal chocolate milk is packed with sugars and. Is very unhealthy.
thats the point! It's supposed to be that way! It's not chaotic if its.... Ugh..... Healthy. I still don't know how you made my cotton candy clouds sugar free....
thats my little secret~
3367032
...
Cotton candy is made entirely of sugar. Completely. It is literally pure sugar. What the fuck did you do Celestia?
3370284 I'm not tell~ing!
Dude. I'm not kidding you. I ate 30 of those fuckers and it didn't give me a sugar high. Before just half of ONE made me act like pinkie.
It's pretty scary some of the things she does.
Your telling me dude.
Oh hush you two.
3376001
*You're.
...
Dammit Neon, you've turned me into a grammar Nazi.