Same Shit, Different Wasteland

Tin Soldiers

“Okay, that was a bust.”

“I wouldn’t say that. After all, we found your new toy,” the man said, nodding at the enchanted shotgun that Moonbeam had sticking out of her saddlebags. They had located a number of documents on the prototype weapon, which alternately called it ‘Dragon’s Fury’ and ‘Assistant’, like the designer couldn’t decide. “Hopefully, we won’t run into any more of those alicorns. Super Mutants, I can deal with,” Thomas commented. “But those things?”

“Didn’t you say something about alicorns being this world’s equivalent of your world’s Super Mutants?” Moonbeam asked. “Are they that different?”

“Super Mutants can’t make bubble shields, fly, use magic or go invisible. Well, Nightkin can, but they need a Stealth-Boy and it drives them insane,” he explained. “But Nightkin sort of shimmer, so you can make them out if you try. I didn’t notice that blue one before.”

“Yeah… Good thing that griffon showed up when he did.”

“Hmm. Good thing,” Thomas muttered. “A bit too good, if you think about it.”

“What do you mean?” the mare asked, not taking her eyes off of the MWT warehouse they were walking towards.

“Someone who has a weapon that can kill an alicorn in a heartbeat just happens to be in the area? And they just happen to see them trying to attack us? And him being willing to help?” he asked back. “One is luck, two is a happy coincidence, but all three? We might wanna start watching our backs,” he said ominously.

“You think somepony’s after us?” Moonbeam asked. “That doesn’t make any sense! Why wouldn’t they just let those alicorns kill you and take me if they want us dead?”

“Still, we shouldn’t let our guard down. Who knows what might happen.” Thomas pushed the door to the MWT warehouse, which creaked open. “Get ready.”

The pair stepped into the building, guns at the ready. They weren’t needed. “Fuck,” Moonbeam exclaimed, looking around as she lowered her SMG.

“Yeah,” Thomas agreed, pointing his Medicine Stick to the side. The interior looked like it had been hit by a herd of looters. Crates had been ripped open, their contents scattered. The Sentinels that had guarded the facility had been obliterated, reduced to nothing but scrap and wires, the floor near the wreckage riddled with small craters. “Who do you think did this?”

“This is an MWT building, so I’d guess the Rangers,” Moonbeam hazarded. “A place like this would have had power armour or something.”

“So why did they clear out this building but not the other one?” Thomas asked, prodding one of the destroyed robots with his boot.

“Maybe they didn’t have time? Or it wasn’t important?” The mare shrugged. “I have no idea. So, we gonna leave?”

“I doubt that they’d have taken everything. Let’s take a look, five minutes.”

The two split up, taking different routes. Everywhere they looked, there was nothing left worth taking. Every ammo box had been emptied, every rack of missiles stripped. He had to admit, whoever had been through here had been methodical. Thomas was about to give up when he found a sniper rifle. It was dented, and needed a good cleaning, but otherwise seemed fine. After going over the weapon, he quietly dismantled it and stashed it into his duster.

They met back up where they had started. “Nothing. They cleared this place out,” Moonbeam said bitterly, kicking a fragment of turret. “No corpses, either.”

“So it would have been Rangers, can’t imagine they’d like leaving power armour around for anyone to grab,” Thomas mused.

“What about those bodies in the other warehouse, then?”

Thomas thought about it for a moment. “Well, there were all those robots. Probably decided it wasn’t worth the risk.”

“I… guess that makes sense,” the mare conceded. “We’re not gonna walk back to Tenpony, are we?”

“No, not now. Bloodwings and raiders and alicorns. I was really hoping to find some bullets in this building,” Thomas sighed. “At least I found a sniper rifle, but I really need something for a normal firefight.”

“Next time we kill some raiders, just take one of theirs,” Moonbeam suggested. “Saves you buying one.”

“Yeah, but I’ll probably spend just as many caps getting the stupid thing fixed,” Thomas pointed out. “How about you give me the shotgun, at least for now?”

“Fine, I guess.” The shotgun hovered towards the man. “Just be careful, okay?”

“Don’t worry about it. We should find somewhere to sleep.”

Moonbeam frowned. “Where? Feels kinda unfair that we sleep on the ground after spending the night at Tenpony.”

“That’s life, Moonbeam, full of unfairness. At the very least, we have a roof over our heads. We can lock the doors and barricade them. We’ll be safe,” the man said optimistically.

“I think I saw toilets in the back, too,” Moonbeam added.

“So we’ll stay here then.”

“Why this one?” Moonbeam asked. “Won’t the MAS one be better?”

“The Rangers already cleaned this place out. They have no reason to come back. The MAS building, though? They’re gonna go through there, if only to get those bodies,” Thomas pointed out.

“Come on, really? What are the odds of them walking in tomorrow?”

“My life has been nothing but a series of improbable occurrences,” Thomas said darkly. “After a while, you just accept that weird shit is gonna happen, no matter what.”

Moonbeam opened her mouth to argue when she remembered that she was about to argue with an alien. It didn’t get much weirder than that, and she’d heard a trader swear that they’d run into actual ghosts. She closed her mouth and kept silent.

“So, we’re gonna sleep in here tonight,” Thomas declared. “We should be safe, but I still think we should barricade the door. You can never be too careful,” he muttered.

“All right, Mister Paranoid, we’ll do things your way,” Moonbeam conceded. “We’ll sleep here so we don’t get attacked. Not that we will, but I don’t wanna argue when I know you’re not gonna be convinced,” she added in resignation.

“Just help me barricade the door, would you?” Thomas asked flatly, pointing at the mounds of robot pieces. “That way, we don’t need to worry about taking watch.”

Moonbeam awoke with a yelp, looking around the room in panic. After a few seconds, she calmed down. “Fucking…” Thomas’s paranoia had affected her worse than she had thought. Her dream had ended with the door being blown off its hinges and an alicorn-sized Steel Ranger walking in.

She looked at the man. His expression was a happy one. That made the mare angry. As she looked, he began to talk. “Yes… lower… oh Cass…”

Moonbeam wasn’t interested in who ‘Cass’ was or what Thomas was dreaming. “You fucking pervert,” she muttered. She knocked him on the back of the head with the edge of her hoof. “Wake up, you damn horndog!” she yelled.

“Ow!” Thomas rubbed his head and glared at Moonbeam. “What the fuck was that for?”

“Your paranoid crap gave me nightmares,” Moonbeam said angrily. “And then, when I wake up, you’re dreaming about sex!”

“What am I supposed to dream about, killing raiders?” Thomas asked back. “I’m a skilled killer, but I’m not a psychopath.”

“Yes, what you did to that slaver was perfectly normal,” she replied flatly. “Come on, let’s get out of here before your stupid prediction ends up right.”

Thomas ignored her and made his way towards the door. He pushed aside the mound of robot parts and opened the door. To his relief, there was nothing out there. No raiders, no Steel Rangers, no alicorns. “Looks safe.”

Moonbeam followed the man out. “Alright, back to Tenpony. Should be a few ponies I can talk to about trading.”

“You don’t want to stick with me?” Thomas asked.

“I only tagged along this time because I would have been bored waiting,” she pointed out. “I’m not leaving the city.”

“I guess that’s fair. I’d just rather not travel alone.”

“Then, I dunno, find a merc or something,” she suggested.

“Yeah, no thanks. I’m not trusting my life to someone who’s only there for the caps,” he explained. “Better to make them feel obligated.”

“Like you did with me?” Moonbeam asked flatly.

“I guess. Quid pro quo and all that.”

“Quid pro what?”

Thomas sighed. “It means ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine’. Or something like that, anyway.”

“So you indebt them and make the price your continued well-being?”

“I’m from New Vegas,” he said with a chuckle. “If there’s one thing that city is good at, it’s putting people in debt. And I managed to do that to entire settlements,” Thomas boasted as he fastened his mask.

“Riiiiiiiight,” Moonbeam replied skeptically. “Well, come on. We should tell your employers that this failed.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Thomas led the pair away from the warehouse. “Y’know, before we go, we really should at least see if the going on the ship really is a bad idea.”

Moonbeam grimaced. “I… I guess that makes sense. Just don’t take too long, okay?”

“We’ll just take a look, I promise.”

They made their way to the ship’s gangway. It was a rusted mess that didn’t look like it would support a god, let alone the man and his companion. The ship wasn’t in much better shape, looking like a rusted sieve. All the paint had flaked off, and it leaning over dangerously, half of the bridge submerged.

Moonbeam nudged the gangway with a hoof. “Yeah… I’m not walking on this thing.”

“Not enough caps in the world…” Thomas muttered. He looked around, making sure there was no-one watching. Then he pushed the gangway over the pier into the water. “Well, time to go.”

“Did you just…?”

“There was no way in hell I was gonna go on that thing. Never mind the radigators, I don’t want to drown. This isn’t the easiest stuff to swim in,” he said, gesturing to his duster and body armour. “It would have almost definitely been underwater, too.”

Moonbeam sighed. “Yeah, I get that. So, you’re still stuck here in Equestria for a while longer.”

“Don’t remind me,” Thomas muttered. “I mean, this place is okay, as far as post-apocalyptic hellholes go, but the Mojave is actually sorta civilised. The worst you gotta be worried about is waking up naked in an alley after getting mugged.”

“Are you speaking from experience?” the mare asked cheekily.

“Heh, yeah right. It’ll be a cold day in - ED-E?” Thomas asked, cutting himself off suddenly.

“Huh?” Moonbeam looked at what the man was staring at. “Oh, a Sprite-bot.”

“A what?”

“Sprite-bot, apparently those things were everywhere before the war,” she explained, watching as it drifted lazily through the air. “They make good target practice.”

“Huh.” Thomas took a closer look at it. While it definitely resembled ED-E, the Sprite-bot seemed to have two pairs of wings bolted to its rear. That, and it was blaring out some of the most annoying music he had ever heard. “Want me to shoot it?”

“Nah, it’s harmless.” Moonbeam pressed ahead.

As the pair approached the Sprite-bot, though, it fell silent. They both noticed it, and stared at it. “That can’t be good…”

Thomas’s hand rested on his revolver, ready to blast the robot out of the air. It didn’t seem anywhere near as armoured as ED-E, and he reckoned that the 45.70-Govt. round would be overkill.

There was more than half a minute of silence, spent staring at the Sprite-bot. Just as suddenly as the music stopped, it started up again, and the robot just drifted away.

“That…”

“We were being watched,” Thomas growled. “I remember seeing something about Eye-bots, back in the Mojave. They never went past the prototype stage before the war, and there was something about cameras…”

Moonbeam’s eyes went wide. “You think that thing had a camera in it?”

“You said they were around before the war. Why else, but to make sure no-one was thinking of supporting the other side?” he asked.

“If that thing had a camera, though… who was watching us?” Moonbeam asked, unnerved by the idea.

After the disturbing encounter with the Sprite-bot, they decided to push onwards to Tenpony with all haste. If they were being watched, then they both wanted to get to somewhere with some measure of privacy as soon as they could. As they walked, they couldn’t help but look down every alley and side street cautiously, on the lookout for any unwanted eyes.

“Oh shit,” Thomas muttered. “It’s those assholes again.”

“Hmm?” Moonbeam grunted, too busy looking the other way.

“Those Steel Rangers.”

“What!?” Moonbeam whipped around and gaped at the sight of the power-armoured ponies. “Oh, fuck me sideways…”

“Calm down,” the man whispered. “I’ve got an idea.”

“We don’t have anything that can punch through their armour, though,” she moaned, watching as they approached over the rubble.

“I don’t plan on killing them,” he replied. “Let’s just keep on walking, make them think they’ve got the advantage.”

As Moonbeam followed cautiously, he noticed the man’s left hand reach casually into his duster. “Are you sure about this?”

“It’s me they want,” he explained calmly, putting his hands together. “If things looks bad, though, you can run.”

“Stop!”

“I thought I told you Brotherhood wannabes to leave me alone!” Thomas shouted back at the Steel Rangers.

“You think we’d just let a savage get away with a Pip-Buck!?”

Thomas tilted his head when he realised the voice was familiar. “Did you forget my promise?”

“There are eight of us, and one of you!” Crusader Strawberry Shortcake yelled back. “Just give us what we want!”

“What, something with a completely different coding language, incompatible with everything you own? Yeah, real fucking smart,” Thomas relied snidely.

“Listen to me you minotaur shit,” the Crusader growled, stepping closer, “we are going to get what we want. There is nothing you can say or do to stop us.”

The man glanced at Moonbeam, who took that as a sign to back away. “You really believe that?”

“Initiate Wrench, relieve him of his Pip-Buck,” Shortcake growled.

“Really? You’re sending the new guy instead? How has no-one shot her in the back yet?” he asked the other Rangers as one with a minigun approached.

“Trust me, half the base is waiting for somepony else to do that,” the initiate muttered. “Look, just give us your Pip-Buck, we’ll let you go.”

“Even if I could, I don’t have any of the equipment to do that,” Thomas explained.

“Initiate, shoot him,” Shortcake ordered. “We’ll just take it from his corpse.”

As Initiate Wrench’s minigun spun up, Thomas’s right fist connected with his helmet. Crusader Shortcake and the rest of the Rangers could only watch in horror as the stallion’s head evaporated in a cloud of gore and shrapnel.

“One chance,” he said. “That’s all the warning you’ve got. Turn back, and you won’t have to explain why you have seven dead ponies to collect.”

“Y-you… his head!” Shortcake screeched, backing away from the body.

“Is my wrist computer really worth all this blood?” he asked. “Can you really justify that?”

“Y-y-you’re a monster,” Shortcake stammered.

“Really?” Thomas asked, stepping towards her. “I’m not the one threatening to murder strangers for any bit of tech I can get my hands on.”

Whoosh!

The man ducked to the left as a rocket sailed past him. “BIG MISTAKE!” he bellowed, turning to the other rangers.

As the miniguns the other rangers wore began to spin up, Thomas let loose the thing he had been holding in his left hand the entire time.

“Grenade!” one of the Rangers yelled as it soared towards them. Some of them ignored it, while the rest abandoned the idea of attacking to try and run.

“AAAAAAARGH!”

The Rangers were enveloped in a pulse of crackling energy, shutting down their armour’s spell matrix. “Hey, look. Tinned food,” Thomas commented, pointing at the immobile ponies.

Crusader Shortcake’s minigun began to spin up, but the retort of Moonbeam’s battle-saddle cut it short. “You bitch!” the Ranger screamed, glancing at the mangled ammo feed and power cords. She screamed as a bullet tore through her leg through a lightly-armoured area.

“I warned you. I told you to leave me alone, and you didn’t listen,” Thomas growled, holstering his revolver. “Do you have any idea who I am?” he asked.

“W-why the fuck should I care?” Shortcake managed to say through gritted teeth. “You’re just s-some Wasteland fuck.”

“I’m Courier Six. And I have a message for you. Leave. Me. Alone. Or I swear, I will hunt you bastards down, one by one, and wipe your organisation from the face of this world.”

“W-why should I be scared of you?”

Thomas growled. “Why? How about the fact that two holes in my head and being buried alive only made me angry?” Shortcake tried to take a step back.

“Y-you’re bluffing,” the mare said uneasily, trying to sound brave.

Realising that the mare needed something special, he decided to dig back to something he had used once. It had worked then, he was sure it would work now.

“I will cast down your Codex in flames and bathe in the boiling blood of all those who hold it dear,” he growled, putting his face right against her helmet. “And I will make sure you are there to watch every. Single. Moment.”

Thomas pulled back. “Or, you can leave me alone and never worry about me ever again. Your choice.”

He waited a few moments for an answer. When the mare instead toppled over, unconscious, he leaned back a little in shock. “Did not expect that to happen.”

“I’m amazed she didn’t shit herself,” Moonbeam said, stepping towards the unconscious ranger. She sniffed the air. “Oh, no, she did.”

“Well, that should do it, though. Shouldn’t have any more trouble from these idiots.”

“You fuckers!” one of the immobilised ponies scream. “You’ll regret this! No-one fucks with the Steel Rangers!”

“Oh really?” the Courier asked, walking towards the mare that had spoken. “Well, no-one messes with the Courier and lives.” He pulled out his revolver and put it at the base of her neck, where her armour was thin. “And you just did.”

As Thomas stepped away from the corpse, Moonbeam gaped at him. “You murdered that pony.”

“Proves I’m serious,” he said.

“It proves your fucking nuts,” she countered.

“I’m the Wild Card. Besides, who knows how many Wastelanders’ deaths she’s responsible for?” he asked, reloading his weapon.

“I…” Moonbeam struggled to find words, walking beside the man as they left the Rangers behind.

“I could’ve dismembered her,” Thomas pointed out. “Or hung her. This was merciful.”

“But what purpose did it serve?” the mare asked, struggling to understand his logic.

“A warning. A deterrent. Now they know what’ll happen if they cross me again,” he explained. “Only next time, I won’t leave any survivors.”

Author's Note

Thomas is nice. As long as you don't make him really angry.

Go check out my Pokémon crossover. It could use some loving.