Fallout Equestria: The Ranger of Seamane

“Sometimes it is like punching a brick wall, except with my brain, and the wall is covered with nails.”

        I woke up to the taste of blood in my mouth as well as I felt positively glowing. I realized I was in the miniature reactor in the back of the tank that we had found. I lifted my head only to hit my horn the top of the tiny compartment. I gently rubbed my horn as the soreness quickly went away, a benefit of being irradiated. I opened the compartment’s door to see a pile of my equipment laying on the floor with Anabel sorting the pile out. Seems that they had taken the time to properly loot the battlefield after the fight with the griffons.

        “Hey, are you feeling alright?” Rose asked as she climbed out of the turret and walked across the top of the tank towards me, her hoof steps clanked on the armor of the tank.

        “Well... to be honest, I feel amazing, practically glowing, and probably able to melt a hole through the floor.” I answered beaming at Rose.

        “I,” Rose tilted her head at me. “Seriously?”

        “Seriously.” I replied as I hopped up to her and managed to plant a kiss on her cheek.

        “Well okay then, we need to get the rest of your gear stored then we are heading out. We managed to get enough power to operate an elevator to carry the tank surface side. Foresight also replaced the hull mounted heavy machine gun with a really big flamethrower.” Rose said before nuzzling my neck.

        “Oh fun, so the tank is ready for more than shooting at things?” I asked as I moved to where the two one hundred twenty millimeter cannons sat.

        “Yes, the two hours you were off adventuring they managed to get the treads on and figure out the ammunition situation. She eats scrap metal, bullets, and everything else to make more ammo. As it is, well, she is fully stock.” Rose explained as I sat down at where the barrel of the right cannon met the turret.

        “Well then, what is our schedule for getting out of here?” I asked as the turret started to face forward again.

        Rose swayed a little as the turret moved then spread her legs slightly to stabilize herself. “Well, we just need to load up what you brought back and then we are going to head out. Anabel is going to be flying and scouting for us. Apparently the gunner's sight on the turret allows you to see the beam that is on Anabel's crossbow.”

        “Hmm. that’ll be useful. So who's going to drive, who's going to gun?” I asked as the turret stopped rotating.

        “Well, Foresight was either going to drive or gun, you would take the opposite, I would either be on the flamethrower or the heavy machine gun.” Rose explained. “Might want to hug that barrel.”

        I raised an eyebrow at Rose. “Why is that?”

        To answer my question the tank began to turn around to put its back against where the elevators to the surface sat. My guess was it was so we wouldn't have to back out of the elevator when we hit surface side. I held onto the barrel as we were shaken as the tank turned in place, the sound of the links on metal making me wish I had hearing protection.

        After a few moments the tank stopped turning and began to rumble backwards. Rose moved to the hatch of the turret and stuck a hoof inside. My guess she was making gestures to guide Foresight.

        We came to a stop and I let myself slide off of the cannon I was on and down the front of the tank, then hopped to the ground with a slight bit of magical assistance. I proceeded to trot over to where Anabel was working on packing things up my things in some additional bags. I saw the enclave power armor I had been wearing. There was a crack on the surface of the helmet coming down from where there a bump was for my horn. I levitated the helmet into my hooves as I sat down and examined it. The crack was more of a scratch that was etched into the metal of the face plate.

        “I hope the damage was just a spell matrix crash.” I said before giving a sigh and stuffing the helmet in the same bag as the rest of my armor. I spotted my Kevlar reinforced labcoat and levitated it to me and slid my fore hooves through the fore sleeves on it. I then realized my collar had come off and dug through the pile of my equipment for it. Thankfully it was just fine, the armor had protected it. I slide it back on and tightened it just right so I could just feel it on my neck. Lastly I looked for my pipbuck.

        “Did you teleport out of your gear?” Anabel asked as she sorted my usual equipment into a separate bag.

        “Yes. Also I'll sort the stuff I don't want to have quick access to, you handle the rest, alright?” I answered as I began putting away a good number of the bags of equipment that I didn't care to have on me at the moment. I was really not expecting to need my swords or pistols. So I strapped onto my back my Designated Markspony rifle and shotgun. I also noticed that the explosive rounds from the power armor had been unloaded some how and decided to fill up my ammo pouches with them.

        Within five minutes I was rearmed and dressed in only in some pouch belts, my labcoat, my two trusty long arms, and had strapped my trusty combat knife to my chest again. My pipbuck I had in a small bag on my flank with some tools that Anabel had found for dealing with pipbucks and spell matrices, our luck was holding out today.

        “Anabel, there is another way to get the elevator to go up, right?” I asked as I stood holding the bags of equipment in my magic.

        “Yes, there is a button on the elevator itself that you can press that will send us up. I was going to do it, but, if you want to do the honors, feel free.” Anabel explained as she hopped atop the turret of the tank.

        “Alright, double checking we are all good to go? I don't think we are coming back here anytime soon.” I said as I spotted the stand that held the button that Anabel had told me about, I waited until I was given an affirmative nod from Anabel.

        The elevator slowly started to grind upwards to the surface. As we rose I climbed back onto the tank and passed Anabel before climbing down the second hatch on the turret, the one without a heavy machine gun on it, and into the turret of the tank. Surprisingly the inside of the tank was rather spacious, allowing for three or even four ponies to crew the tank. I sat down in the gunners seat for the turret's main cannons and got used to the location of controls as well as the view port.

        It took a whole two minutes for the elevator to rise to the surface, but, when it did the ceiling opened above us and I saw out into the winter wasteland that I was used to seeing. A low rumble ran through me as we moved forward and the tracks of the tank sank into the snow, the forward blades plowing away at the drifts ahead of us. I popped the hatch as we drove away from the base and headed to our next destination, the Seamane Steel Rangers Citadel.

        Looking behind us I saw a red light in the air and some wires leading to it. An antenna that I hadn't seen when we had come in hours ago or when I had fought Astra and her minions. Either my actions had raised it, or perhaps the opening of the doors had. I wasn't certain, and I felt as if something somewhere was getting a message I didn't much care for having been sent. I ducked back down into the tank and closed the hatch. Time would tell what broadcast might have been sent, but, for now we had a lot of armor and firepower on our side. Which was a leg up in a lot of ways.

        Within a few minutes Foresight had pushed the tank to full throttle, which led to impressive displays of us crashing through drifts of snow and even catching air off of the gentle hills around here.

        I motioned to have Rose switch seats with me and then moved deeper into the tank where the mechanic would be seated normally. After I had moved I saw Anabel come in and close the hatch for the heavy machine gun armed hatch and watch out of the view ports that sat just below the hatch. I guessed the weather had worsened outside.

        I turned my attention to my crashed pipbuck and worked on it in my magic with the tools we had acquired. My teleportation had caused a small issue of the pipbuck still being closed while off of my foreleg as well as the fact I had gotten a bit bigger since I first put the pipbuck on so I had to reopen it. I also once I managed to open the pipbuck needed to replace the padding that went against my leg inside of it. The padding that was in there was stained with blood, among other things, that I had encountered in my travels. It took a full hour of work to open the pipbuck up, replace the padding and then secure it comfortably and correctly on my left foreleg.

Then I realized that according to the manual for the pipbuck tools we had acquired that typically pipbucks were for the right forehoof, not the left. Apparently I was wrong and all pipbucks are meant for the right forehoof. I just paused, then shrugged as I figured that was why the ones I had picked up were in storage due to an error in their production. So I carried on with it on my left forehoof. That and I didn’t have space anymore to wear it on my right forehoof thanks to the fused powerhoof I had on it. I grimaced as I thought about having had a pipbuck permanently fused to me, at least a powerhoof was just on the end of my hoof.

        The next task I had to deal with would take me longer, rebooting my pipbuck. Rebooting it proved problematic to say the least. After a few hours of wrestling with my not standard issue Stable-Tec pipbuck technician tools I did manage to get it online again and wading through the copious amounts of information I had stored on the damn thing.

        We came to a stop as my EFS stated that we had hit eight o'clock at night. Foresight came back to me and sat down, eating a snack cake.

        “So, how long do you think it will take to reach the Citadel in this beast?” I asked, preempting any questions he was going to ask.

        “Well, according to my pipbuck at most we have half a days drive with the speed this monster of a tank can muster. Since she doesn't get tired, or really get slowed by terrain the what would be three day long walk is now much shorter. Though, I am taking a gamble in that we will be able to get across Wilmanemette Dam, last I saw a rather nasty bunch of raiders had taken control of it. Though,” Foresight paused before tapping the wall of the tank next to him. “I think we have enough firepower, armor, and speed to get through. However, I think we should do a little target practice first so you can get used to how to operate the turret.”

        “Alright, I guess we'll just hope that we spot some raider outposts along the river or some wild life out in the open for target practice.” I chuckled as I opened a can of canned peaches. “Though we will have an interesting time laying siege to the raiders set up atop of the Citadel.”

        “Yeah, but, I think we will manage. I think I will have Anabel on the turret while you sneak in. You do seem pretty capable at solo sneaking missions.” Foresight chuckled before finishing off his last snack cake.

        “I'll just keep my head down when I hear the shells coming in. I also think that flamethrower is going to be very effective, there isn't much that can handle getting bathed in fire for long.” I added.

        Foresight just smiled.

        “Well then, we best get some rest, tomorrow is bound to be another long day.” I said, stretching and then yawning.

        “Yeah, finish your food, maybe do some reading, and then call it a night. You and Rose got more rest than Anabel and I, so the two of you will be keeping an eye on things for a while.” Foresight instructed. “Now move, you’re where I want to sleep tonight.”

        “Yes, sir.” I sarcastically replied with a roll of my eyes as I got up and walked past Foresight to the drivers area of the tank.

        I sat down in the seat for the driver of the tank and locked the controls before I finished my can of peaches. Then I did as Foresight had suggested, I read through more of the information I had gathered. Though I kicked myself for having not the foresight to just go to the mainframe of the facility and transfer everything to my pipbuck from there. As it was I had a fair bit of information on the Portable Miniaturized Mobile Megaspell Casting Platform as the file dubbed the experimental power armor. Majority of what I read I had read in my haste to figure out what I could possibly do, but, in my haste I had merely skimmed since I didn't have the time to read the full theoretical thesis on the damn haywire suit of magical power armor. As it was, I didn't learn much new other than how megaspells worked in finer detail as well as that repairing the power armor would be tricky at best if it was drained by the time we got back to it. While for the most part I could replace components with Steel Ranger power armor, if the capacitors for the megaspell matrix got damaged I was more or less shit out of luck on ever repairing or replacing them for at least the next decade. The components were rare prewar and custom made, something about unique crystals from beyond the Unicorn Range. Basically I would have to go back to the heartland of Equestria and then drive north for several days even in this tank, and just hope there were some train tracks that lead into the frozen north.

        I sighed and instead pulled up some maps of the various regions of Equestria. It gave me a new respect for just how big Equestria was, from Vanhoover to Las Pegasus, from Dodge Junction to Hoofington. There was a lot of space, and yet there was even more down here past the Badlands. I did note one thing of interest. There were towns I wasn't familiar with to the east of Seamane before the mountain range that marked the edge of Equestria back in the day. I also noticed what was marked on the other side of the border, the Griffon Empire.

        I let out a grunt of frustration half an hour later as my brain refused to uptake any further information and I had no desire to really do anything other than rest, but, I wasn't in need of sleep, I was just tired. I moved out of the driver seat and found Rose curled up and curled up with her. I might not be in need of sleep, but, being close to her and resting would be beneficial to my well being.

        I woke up to a gentle tug to my mane, I waited and felt the gentle brushing of my mane. I let out a sigh of content.

        “Hey, Moonlight?” Rose whispered into my left ear.

        “Yes?” I whispered back.

        “Your horn is back to normal.” Rose said.

        I opened my eyes and looked up to see the curls of my horn having returned to how it was before my adventuring, showing me it hadn’t been an illusion that I had healed back in the storage area of the research station.

        “I know the I.M.P, er, taint did that to me. Apparently taint, or Impelled Metamorphosis Potion, I.M.P. was meant to make ponies into alicorns, hence my horn going back to normal.” I said dumbfounded by the power of taint.

“Well, I will be honest, I am glad to see you are fine. Though, you said that taint is supposed to make alicorns out of ponies?” Rose asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, I.M.P. is taint, but, I guess taint would be better referred to as the anomalous mutative substance we both know and I.M.P. being a subset of taint and was explicitly being developed to make alicorns.. They were working on making it do exactly that at the research station in tandem with a facility in Maripony. They, as we have seen with the Goddess’ alicorns, succeeded in fine tuning I.M.P. However, the world ended the same day that they did from what I gather. So, everything outside of Maripony is taint and just gives you random mutations at best.”

“Ah,” is all Rose said ingesting the information.

“I should be fine. I had a very small amount of exposure to taint.” I consoled Rose with a pat of my hoof.

“It isn’t that, just a lot of things to take in.” Rose replied moving a bit back.

I just nodded and curled up to go to sleep.

        With that I fell silent for the next few hours before falling asleep.

        I woke up and felt sore as hell, it probably didn’t help that at some point I had moved to laying on my back on some cylinder. As it was I let out a groan as I my hearing kicked in and I noticed the fact we were moving. Opening my eyes I looked at the time to see it half past nine in the morning. Before I could move off of my impromptu bed Foresight caught some air in our behemoth of a tank causing me to bounce into the air and then slam spine first into the metal floor of the tank.

        I simply groaned again and just laid there. Today the world hated me, honestly that was fine, I had probably broken a ton of rules about magic, biology, sanity, and physics that the universe held very dearly. With any luck I would manage not to piss off the universe for the next day or two and heal up.

        I probably could also do with a good month off so I could fully heal instead of layering bandages one on top of another to keep myself going, or crawling in reactors. Saint Clover kept sounding more and more welcoming with every passing moment.

        First, I needed to cross a dam, figure out what brought low a chapter of Steel Rangers. Then, I needed to take care of things for Dad in Saint Clover. As much as I wanted to deal with Ministry Row, that should wait, we needed a base of operation in Seamane proper for our delving into the most dangerous part of the city, well in terms of ambient environmental hazards. Or maybe tackle it before anything worse could happen to us, and we needed to find a place to hide the tank when we aren’t going to be in it. Honestly, it was probably a better idea to have Foresight drop the tank back off where we got it before he headed north. I didn’t want our tank to get stolen, or totalled. Maybe a high security warehouse at the base in Seamane. I would have to talk to Foresight soon about what to do.

        I then remembered the door to get into the citadel of the Steel Rangers, we probably could just blast our way in. That would make things a lot easier than drilling in silently. Actually, yeah, long range bombardment the raiders, drive in, blow a hole into the citadel and then whatever.

        I rolled to my hooves finally and drank a Radaway to bring down my rad count. I fished out some food and ate it while laying on the floor as we rolled through the various fields. Once I managed to down my food I made my way to the seat for the hull mounted heavy flamer and took a seat as I watched Foresight drive.

        I pulled up my pipbuck and looked as to where we were to find we had managed to cover a fair bit of ground and now were at the reservoir that marked where the Wilamanemette Dam sat. We were close and in a couple of hours should be able to see the dam itself.

        “Good to see you awake and about. Rose has a knack for the cannons, so does Anabel, so no need for you to learn them. Also we already wiped out everything we have been able to scout out so far. So, get yourself ready for possibly a little swim and a climb so you can deal with whatever is on the dam.” Foresight explained, his tone reminding me of when he gave us a briefing on the research station as well as the citadel.

        “Alright, well, no time to train me with power armor then.” I replied as I dismissed the idea of using the damaged power armor for the infiltration mission.

        “Yeah, no, even with MoA power armor it would be a bad idea to try to infiltrate with power armor, the stuff is just not all that quiet. I would suggest something like leather armor on and your labcoat so you can blend in. The better job you can do to match the environment the better time you will have.” Foresight said before he took another hill at full speed.

        “Alright, I’ll see if we have anything other than my reinforced lab coat.” I said as I turned to climb out the turret to the back of the tank where we had tied down our cargo.

        “We’ll take a breather while you gather your supplies. Plus I rather not have you go flying off when I take a hill.” Foresight called back to me as he applied the breaks, something I could easily hear and feel. I had to brace myself as the tank came to a stop before I climbed the ladder out of the tank on to atop the turret.

        I shivered as a breeze picked up as I climbed to our tied down cargo. The weather had calmed while I had slept. I uncovered the bags we had on the back of the tank and started to dig through it. I then found the odd robe that Rose and I had found in the medical wing of the research station.

        “Well, it isn’t a sneaking suit, nor is it a stealthbuck or Zebra invisibility cloak, but, this should do.” I muttered to myself as I shrugged it on. The robe was cold from being outside, but, it was soft, yet felt very protective. I pulled my reinforced labcoat atop of the robe and clambered back into the tank.

        “One, it is cold out there; two, forgot we had found this; three, I think I am good to go, unless we have something I can make a collapsible hang glider out of.” I informed my friends as I warmed myself up by the internal heater of the tank.

        “Well, lets get moving again. Make certain to get everything set up before we get there. Longer we wait the more chances your griffon ‘friends’ could show up.” Foresight announced before he hit the accelerator and caused the tank to jerk and begin again its crashing through the snow drifts.

I pondered as I stared at the robe trying to think of if I could some modify it. I shook my head as nothing came to mind other than tightening it up so I wouldn’t trip over it. I mean seriously tripping over your own outfit while trying to sneak around would just be embarrassing. So with magic, thread, and needle I worked on my robe as we drove on for the next two hours.

We slowed as Foresight took his hoof off the accelerator and let us coast having gotten within four miles of the dam. We could see small streaks from fires burning on it as well as we had gotten out to spot what we could from this distance.

“From the looks of it there are a number of barricades blocking travel over the top of the damn, it looks like there are also a good sized building atop the dam as well.” Foresight dryly informed us as he lay atop the tank with a rather large and menacing looking rifle that had the most powerful scope on it I had ever seen.

“Do they have anything on this side of the dam near the water? Docks, ladders, stairs, maybe a poorly patched hole?” I asked as I lay beside him with my DMR looking at the fuzzy objects in the distance. My DMR sadly didn’t have the same power as his rifle.

“Maybe, I can’t pick out individual ponies at this range, I see some ice and dark objects around the base of the damn so you won’t have to swim.” Foresight answered.

“Alright, looks like it shouldn’t be too tricky then. Suggestions for when to go in?” I asked as I shifted a little bit to get comfortable.

“Grow wings or get a grappling hook.” Foresight answered. “Or you could always just do your floating trick and run up the wall. I don’t think they will check the sides. Probably best to get going as soon as possible.”

“Very well. Drive closer, slowly, get in position to support with rifle and cannon fire if I pop smoke for needing it.” I said as I stood up and slung my rifle across my back. To go quietly and effectively I was sticking to just my knife, the pistol Rose gave me, since it was silenced, and my DMR. There was no point in taking more than the bare essentials.

“Got it, you just don’t get yourself into too much trouble. If things get dicey we can just head north and go about the reservoir.” Foresight answered as he opened up the hatch down, leaving the heavy rifle bolted to the top of the turret in place of where we could have mounted a second heavy machine gun.

I hopped off the turret and began trudging through the snow, I wasn’t about to use my magic to lighten myself to trot atop the snow. I felt I would need my magic pretty heavily in the next few hours.

I paused once I hit the banks of the Wilmanemette reservoir and examined the ice. Then I looked up at the looming wall of the dam that now lay a short two miles away, extreme range for any possible sniper. Thankfully the white labcoat would help keep me out of sight. Still the robe and my grey coat and faded blue mane would draw attention to any sharp eyed markspony. So it would be best to take a look at what was currently on the wall of the dam.

With my rifle unslung I examined the wall of the dam for anypony I could make out possibly looking my direction. Then I was once again reminded that my rifle didn’t have that powerful of a scope so all I could see was fuzzy figure of what might have been ponies.

I grumbled as I slung the rifle on my back again and began walking. Once I was within half a mile I would have to start actually worrying about potshots being taken at me. For now though, I was taking a long and fortunately quiet walk along the lakeside.

Even with how far away the dam was from me, it didn’t take long to get within half a mile. Once I did I managed to pick out what looked like boats pulled on the shore along with what I assumed to be the dock for said boats. At some point there had obviously been some sort of civilized group out here. As it was I had no idea of those were prewar items left by their previous owners, or if the current denizens of the dam were the owners.

There was a beep. I stood and blinked looking around for the source. Then there was another beep.

        “Where?” I muttered as I drew my silenced pistol in my magic scanning for the source of the beep. It couldn’t be mines, I didn’t trigger mines anymore. Then there was a faint whir, the sound of a turret panning. I checked my EFS and didn’t see a blue or red mark. I paused as I looked around for what could have been the source of the whirring noise. Then I saw it, a camera on top of a pool, looking at the boats.

        “Oh, that isn’t half bad. A camera to watch the boats, makes sense, this side would mostly be wildlife, unlike the south side which faces Seamane.” I whispered to myself, I then looked around to see if there was any sort of badly hidden entrance around in case the camera was to provide more than just an eye on the boats. I unfortunately did not see anything of the sort.

        “Well, I was planning on walking on the ice, so I guess it is time to get to that part of this trip.” I muttered as I pulled a scarf over my muzzle. While the robe went up my neck it did not in fact cover any part of my head, which was a bit frustrating. As it was I had run out here with just goggles and a scarf. I didn’t feel running around with anything more than that would safe, mostly for light glinting off of.

        Ice was annoying to walk on to say the least, however, it was also easy to travel on if you were clever and just pushed yourself along the surface of the ice on bare hooves with just your magic. While I didn’t have ice skates the method of travel was quite similar to the old sport.

        I reached the wall of the dam and stared up at the imperfect surface of it. I frowned and shook my head. There was no way for me to climb the dam itself. I looked around for possible other entrances besides the obvious top of the dam. I couldn’t scale the towers that stuck off of it, for the same reason I couldn’t climb the damn itself, stone walls weren’t my forte in climbing abilities. But, I did see something that I had missed coming in, which wasn’t surprising with how they sat. Big metal tubes on the shore that were partially below the waterline.

        “Okay, well that sorts that out.” I whispered to myself before looking back at the wall of the dam. “But, who knows where those go. I guess my only option is to use my magic.”

        Then I facehoofed remembering I could teleport. “Okay so I just need to teleport myself up and then catch myself with my magic and find a safe place to come in. Then infiltrate the structure and go invisible and sneak around.”

        I focused my magic and wrapped it around myself. I teleported, feeling that singed feeling that marked a sloppy teleport and felt myself hold in the air. Looking down I saw nopony around atop of the dam, that was a good forty feet below me. I relaxed my magic and glided down, making certain to land away from the single structure that sat on the west side of the bridge near the guard towers. Once down I began the process of looking for a doorway in to find the occupants of the dam.

        As I drew closer to the building I pulled upon my ad hoc invisibility spell to conceal me. Not a minute after doing so somepony garbed in heavy winter clothing walked out of what I had assumed to have been a riveted on panel that was actually a sliding door. They had a pistol holstered on their chest, the grip sticking out of their heavy furred coat.

        Seeing the fur I knew a few things, that the ponies here weren’t likely full blown nut job raiders, those seldom wore more than welded metal plates with nails on them. The pony before me who didn’t notice me in my white and grey garb against the snow and concrete of the dam. This was to my advantage as I could get some information out of him by just how he acted, what he had, and possibly even getting a bit physical with him.

        As it was I laid waiting doing my best to keep still as I observed him from a distance. What he did was not remarkable, he relieved himself, lit a cigarette and looked around for a bit on both sides of the dam. He didn’t venture very far from the building itself and went in after he finished off his cigarette from a few minutes of hurried puffing. Clearly even with his garb he wasn’t comfortable in the cold.

        Once the stallion had gone back in and nopony else came out for a good minute I picked myself up off of the ground and made my way to the river side of the dam to take a look at that side of the dam. What I saw was a bit surprising, there were a few buildings half suspended half built into the dam itself. It was as if somepony decided to expand from inside of the dam or patch holes in the dam with buildings.

        I looked back at the structure atop the dam in time to see the door opening again. I hurriedly jumped over the wall of the dam, punching my power hoof into the wall itself and holding myself up by one hoof. I hadn’t seen any spot I could have hidden in this time and the weather wasn’t that bad. While there was a small flurry of snow starting up, visibility was rather good. So even with my spell, snow floating in the air and not falling to the ground, or just an odd pocket of snow vanishing would give me away. So I hung there straining my ears while doing the best to ignore the growing soreness in my right foreleg from holding my weight. Finally I heard the metal door open and close again.

        I placed both of my rear hooves on the wall of the dam and readied myself to push myself up and back over the rim of the dam when I heard a foal cry out. I went wide eyed and turned to where I had seen the structures on the wall of the dam. There was a foal looking at me, I couldn’t see their eyes or much of an expression, but, I knew I had to move or someone would find the foal and then see me.

        I kicked myself back over the rim and onto the top of the dam, landing hard. I shook my head and looked around in time to see the door start opening again. They had heard the foal, or someone was looking for said foal, either way somepony was coming my way. I had only one trick that wouldn’t lead me to falling, active camouflage. I moved to the middle of the walkway and then laid down as I pushed forth my spell to hide myself in plain sight. I was making a gamble that being in the middle of the walkway. Which was big enough for two of our tanks to drive across without clipping one another.

        The minutes stretched on as four ponies emerged and began walking down the sides of the dam, as I had predicted, looking over the rim. Once they had passed me I was actively straining to hold up my spell, but, I took to my hooves and slowly crept to where they had left the building’s door open.

        Drawing close to the door I saw inside where there was an oil heater and a small magical energy power supply for it. I saw a light above me coming from a single bulb light with a sloped shade. I turned my head to look behind me and saw the ponies still headed down the length of the dam away from me. With the immediate threat of being spotted gone I moved to the side of the room out of line of sight from the doorway and dropped my spell as I nestled myself down behind a stack of crates. While the area around the heater had rugs, I only had cold concrete. But, it was a place not immediately in view and there had been an empty crate that I could fit in that I put over myself. Anything to slow the inevitable of being found was an aid to me at this point. Plus a firefight breaking out likely meant a few shells landing here which I didn’t want happening given what I had gleamed so far.

        A few minutes later I heard hooves steps, two sets of them coming up from what sounded like stairs I hadn’t spotted. They were hidden from me by the crates as well as if I was hearing right a section of wall that I had assumed to be the wall of the building, but, was in fact more of a partition. I guessed whoever had built this had designed it for the situation of defending the entrance into the dam.

        “How did that foal get outside, I thought we locked the doors out.” A stallion asked.

        “Well he is a unicorn, and a foals magic is random and can be very powerful. Who knows, maybe he teleported himself out there. I am just glad we found him so quickly, he has a wail like a Windigo.” A mare answered.

        “Yeah, but, now we have to go out there and get those four back to their post. We can have any of those Zebras sneaking in. Not after what happened last time.” The stallion said.

        “It has been two hundred years! We have more to worry about other ponies, like Slate said. I mean we were even told that the wildlife has made anything north of us dead. Why do you think any team that goes north to harvest the fields have to be armed to the teeth?” The mare replied.

        “Yeah, yeah, but, those striped bastards did it once, and we can’t let our guard down.” The stallion said.

        “Which is why we are getting the post back so nopony can sneak into the dam.” The mare replied. “And  look, they are already on their way back, so just sit tight.”

        I cursed to myself at hearing that. I needed to figure out a way to get past these ponies. Waiting wasn’t much of a solution and changing of the guard wouldn’t really help, that would double the ponies here. Doing anything now ran a high risk of six ponies spotting me. Waiting changed it to being hopefully just four instead of six. No matter what, my position wasn’t a good one.

        So I sat and waited. I had known going into this that I might get stuck hiding for an extended periods of time. After all waiting was a crucial part of sneaking missions. Haste meant noise one way or another. Haste led to hiding bodies of possibly innocent ponies. Haste led to bad choices. As frustrating as it was, I had to wait, but, there was a boon for my waiting. This boon was not just listening to the inhabitants of the dam, but, also it allowed my magic to recover.

The information I gleaned wasn’t very useful as it was just gossip around the town. Which they had taken the name of the river to be the town’s name, Wilmanemette. But, my magic had recovered and now it was a waiting game for the shift to change.

I was fighting off exhaustion from being tense for the past few hours, hiding in a crate, listening to the locals talk in what seemed like circular conversations about the same subjects. Was there seriously this little going on out here? Had they somehow managed to become inbred even with our natural genetic resilience to inbreeding? I don’t know, but, it was getting close to me wanting to do something drastic. Instead my patience paid off, night had fallen, a new shift of guards had taken up residence of this post, and something had made them all go out on patrol.

I lifted the crate and made straight for the stairs. There was no time to waste. There was also no reason not to be on high alert so I had my EFS up as well as my active camouflage spell. I wanted to see my foes before they could see me.

This of course was a wise plan as I was walking into a town who appeared to be hostile to outsiders. However, they were not the raiders Foresight had made them seem. Part of me wanted to just go back to the tank and drive around the lake and avoid these ponies. There was no need to drive up on them with a fucking tank and demand passage. But, it was bugging me that they mentioned Slate. What did that monster of a pony have to do with these innocuous ponies? It was a question that I needed answered.

Of course that meant I needed to either find some documents or someone willing to talk to a disembodied voice. That or I could go full fiery demon mare and try scaring information out of someone. Or just catch someone, put them in a choke hold and ask oh so politely. But, to be honest I felt like being antisocial, to be like a ghost.

This was a wise choice I felt. There were numerous rooms without occupants allowing for me to take breaks and recover my magic. It was like having to hold my breath to sneak past all of the ponies down here. While it wasn’t as crowded as Saint Clover, I was having to dive into open side rooms, lockers, and any place big enough for me to fit in every few minutes.

I dove into a restroom, thankfully for mares so there were plenty of stalls to hide in. I quickly moved into a vacant stall and closed the door. The lights hadn’t kicked on, thankfully, I guessed whatever system was in charge of that wasn’t automatic or didn’t pick me up. Which I was doubly thankful for because automatic doors and lights would give me away while invisible.

I took in a deep breath and focused on calming down my screaming heart. I had managed to make it down a few more levels within the structure, and, before I had dove into the restroom I had spotted a sign pointing to old offices. Why were they buried this far inside of the dam? Probably the offices were tied to proximity to the turbines, if not, maybe some weird design choice as this dam predated the war by a decade.

I shook my head and moved out of the stall and back into the hallway. Peaking my invisible head out of the bathroom and saw the hallway was clear. Silent, slow, and deliberate was the pace with a slow turn of my head every once and a while to make certain there was nopony behind me with my eyes and EFS.

With only a few near run ins with the locals nearly walking into me I made it to a door that sealed off the offices. The door itself was a double heavy door with no visible mechanism on it to open it. I checked the sides of the door to find a button to open it and again found nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, I found where the button should have been, but, it had been removed, forcefully. What remained were scars of something powerful having ripped the button off of the wall. Something told me it had been Slate himself who had done this, and, that the reason for why he was out in the wasteland laid behind this door.

I checked my EFS again for any signs of somepony being nearby and saw nothing. So I dropped my invisibility and began working on the exposed wires of the removed button. It took a few minutes, a couple of shocks from trying to figure out what wires were live and dead. There were also a few heated moments of panicking thinking someone was coming only to have it be that EFS doesn’t give you information on the elevation of what it is picking up.

The door slide open as I mated the right wires for the door to open. Inside I saw what looked to be an office of little importance. There was a cot, a lot of filing cabinets, and a desk complete with a functional terminal. I moved into the room and then pressed the still working button on the inside of the room to seal myself in. Best to not leave open doors that should be closed after all. Because ghosts don’t leave hoofprints.

I moved to the terminal and powered it on, it didn’t have a password on it. Which either spoke to Slate being a lot less technologically savvy than this environment would speak to. That or the removal of the door button to him was enough of a preventative measure for snooping. Or he simply forgot about the terminal’s existence. Once it was powered on I saw logs, some prewar some much later on. Doing a quick skimming through them I put together how Wilmanemette was founded. When the north went quiet from balefire blasts destroying communication lines, Seamane went into panic mode and started sending ponies everywhere away from the population centers, out of fear of an impending attack. The dam ended up becoming home to a great deal of ponies with technical expertise. As well as a lot of the ponies from the farmland in what was now the unbound.

From this mix of backgrounds a community formed that managed to not die out in the radioactive snows that followed as well as the black rains that came. Many died, or even ghoulified from this, but, somehow they managed to continue on with the massive losses that they had every year. The last few messages were indeed from Slate and they were worrying. He was going to use the dam as a keystone for his power. He was going to use it as a hidden cache while building his fortress further south. He intended, at least a few years ago, to bring Seamane under his hoof.

Slate’s method though was not what I had expected, it wasn’t through brute force, but, through being brutally cunning. He was going to stir up the gangs in Seamane, siding with in particular with the Magi. Though I wondered why the Magi instead of Sea Serpents who lived on the rivers, or the Sand Trappers as they were closer to where he was. Maybe he was of the same school of thought as I was. Knowledge would be the key to recovering our withered world.

A memory came to the forefront of my mind. The cyborg I encountered outside of Cold was likely something Slate and the Magi had found and were testing. It made sense, Slate had plenty of bodies to give up for experimentation as well as for placating forces such as Red Eye. He just needed a way into Seamane that would prevent galvanizing the entire city against him. For now the city was loosely working together. If Slate could make people have to choose sides he would cut down the number of enemies he had. Or if Slate could get them killing each other through covert operations making each gang think the others were breaking into all out war with one another.

I gulped and realized I now needed to figure out who was in bed with who. I knew the Magi, who I had most wanted to get in bed with myself for their technology and information, were likely now in bed with my enemy. Or maybe there was someway to still subvert them.

I fumed at my newly acquired information on my enemies and did not like what I had learned. What I had was obviously mostly outdated as it was timestamped a few years ago so who knows if the Magi and Slate had teamed up, but, Slate had this place to fall back to. Then it hit me, that caravan that was coming in from the north was said to be headed to this river downstream of here, and they were tooled for construction. Slate’s fortress was being built now which meant soon, probably before the year was out, he was going to make his move. This meant the stones had fallen into place for Slate’s plan to work out and I had a short amount of time to make a mess of them.

It hit me then that Saint Clover was another chip on the board. While my former home wasn’t as powerful or influential as any of the gangs and had nowhere near the population it was still a valuable trade location. The ship was practically a fortress after years of occupation and fortification of it’s ancient hull. So either Saint Clover would either get targeted by a gang wanting another secure location or made irrelevant by Slate making a new neutral ground that was more central and easy to get to once he took over. No matter what it was bad news for Saint Clover. Barring Saint Clover just bending over for Slate.

Then I paused again, the thought of that my father’s want to get back into Saint Clover and take over was because he was in fact in bed with Slate. “I am fucked either way aren’t I? Well so long as my dad isn’t as two faced as my mind is thinking he might be at least I won’t get sold off in my sleep.”

I frowned as another thought snaked through my mind. “Or he could know what Slate is planning in better detail than I and thus wants to get in power to derail those plans.”

“It’s hard to see the full picture when the pieces are scattered  all around the board. But, it looks like we might have finally gotten the frame of this puzzle put all together.” Doubt’s voice echoed in my mind. “But, how can we be certain where anything else goes at this point? It seems we will have to be on the tips of our hooves to avoid drowning in this quagmire we have just found ourself in.”

“I hate it when you’re right.” I muttered. “Maybe things haven’t gone as planned and I can still subvert the Magi to our side.”

“We don’t want to get that chin up too high or somepony might cut it off.” Doubt chuckled.

I shook my head to banish her and my continuingly more paranoid and circular thoughts from my mind. I needed to exfiltrate this dam and return to my allies. An attack here was unwise and we would have to run down a building to get across. A few days travel around the lake that fed the Wilmanemette river was worth the trouble of not giving away assets and killing essentially civilians.

I moved to the door and looked at EFS to see where any bars were. Seeing none I hit the release for the door and slide out as soon as the large door was big enough for me to get through. Upon exiting the door I quickly pressed the button on the inside again and closed the door with my magic. As the door loudly closed I heard hoof steps and somepony talking as they approached. Whirling on the spot I caught sight of four red bars closing in on me and immediately concealed myself with my magic. The strain of doing it so quickly wasn’t pleasant, but, not moving from the spot I was at helped reduce the strain of keeping the spell going.

Four ponies carefully entered the corridor setting up overlapping fields of fire and slowly advancing. These ponies were drilled in combat and it unnerved me to see this. They were supposed to be just random survivors from the area. Then my stupidity dawned on me as I realized the army ponies had to go somewhere.

“Are you certain something is down here? It is the same as ever.” One of the ponies said, I couldn’t tell who due to their full helmets.

“All the more reason for a through check.” Another responded as the group advanced in turn down the hall.

I gulped, I had little to no options confined in here. Even a teleport wouldn’t be safe due to the flash would alert them to someone having been in here. Not to mention using any magic would cause my spell to drop and I would be fully visible for a moment, long enough to get shot. I cursed as I prepared to dance my way through their formation. I held my breath as the first of the four brushed past me, barely not bumping into my DMR. Before the second was beside me the third spoke.

“I don’t smell anything other than sweaty pony.” The third pony grunted.

“Do you even know what a sweating Zebra smells like.” Asked the first pony who had passed me. I gulped as I strained to breathe and move as little as possible while focusing on keeping the spell going.

“Good point.” The third pony replied.

“Quit yapping, get up there and stack up on the door. We might have just caught our little infiltrator as they went into Slate’s room.” The fourth commanded.

The third pony finally passed me allowing me to take a shallow breath without worry of being heard or felt. I opened my eyes to see the fourth pony standing in front of me, staring right through me with two heavy shotguns in his battle saddle aimed at the door. I could easily swing and knock him out so he wouldn’t walk into me.

Then there was a thud somewhere that made him dive to the side. I looked back to see the rest of the team who were hunting me also ducking for cover with the door now open. I took this time to begin slowly moving to the opposite wall with regard to where the fourth had ducked for cover. Once against the wall I turned my attention back to the team hunting me. They had picked themselves up and were beginning to clear the room. Apparently we all got spooked by the heavy door opening loudly, bravo us. However, this gave me a lucky break which now with four moving down the hall I had my chance to slowly keep moving forward for the stairwell out. I just needed to get somewhere out of sight and I could teleport a hundred feet to the north and then swim away. Well minus the cold water, but, that was more manageable than catching myself after a teleport with my magic. The strain of all the magic would make my magic implode and make me go splat, or at least bounce. I wasn’t fond of bouncing again, I would take swimming in icy water over it. I could always just heat myself up later, or just luck out and land above the ice.

I waited for the fourth to begin down the hall before I moved for the stairwell. The four didn’t notice and I managed to slip out, even with the door being locked, it was recessed so I easily picked the lock and slipped away. Of course I locked the door behind me, ghosts don’t leave hoofprints.

I slipped into another disused restroom and dropped my spell. I was sweating, to the point my coat was slick under my gear. I opened up the front of my robe to let myself begin to cool off as I sat in a stall and rested. My horn hurt from the strain, my body was complaining about the stress, and my nerves were frayed worse than a two hundred year old bridge support cable. I was glad I had packed a little bit of food to eat. So I ate, I drank, and I rested.

An hour later I crept out the front door of the deserted restroom and began my push upwards. I knew it wouldn’t be hard to find the waterline as having hit the reservoir side of the dam as the body of water with the aid of time had made it so there was a thin layer of condensation ever present on the interior of the dam.

I found the wall along the reservoir side. I began making my way upward when I saw four red bars in my vision. I cursed as I retreated and hid behind some long abandoned and broken machinery that had been left to rot. I didn’t hear hoof steps as I waited for a few long minutes before I unholstered my silenced pistol and carried it in my mouth. I either had red bars on the edge of my E.F.S.’ detection range or my hunters had caught up. Maybe they feared, accurately, I had slipped past them. Maybe they feared, inaccurately, I would do some damage to the dam. Whatever the case I needed to get moving and get back to Foresight and the others.

I climbed the stairs to the next level as quietly as I could, which meant slowly. The slowness killed me as I crept up each step of the stairwell, every noise making me pause and hold my breath as I flicked my eyes in every direction in search for motion. Another step, another pause, listening to my breath roaring through my ears, the sense of tension like a wire cutting into my barrel.

I made it to the top after five minutes to climb a grand total of twenty steps. I was sweating profusely and panting while the stress fade away as I sat at the top of the stairs, alone. Part of me cursed myself for my gross paranoia and caution, the other screamed back at how foolish it was to be recklessly running around enemy territory without a reliable way to escape.

“Shut up, Doubt, I knew what I was getting into, we have a plan.” I muttered to myself, preemptively banishing that lingering specter.

I got the distinct image of Doubt just shaking her mane in my mind. That was a good sign, she didn’t feel the need to pop out at this time and make things worse. Then again the universe seemed to like to snowball terribleness whenever it happened. Though sometimes the universe rather just throw three bad things at me and watch me have to deal with them.

I shook my head to get my mind out of itself and back to reality. The reality of more red bars milling about in my vision and no bodies to match. I gulped as my mind assumed there to be invisible and very hostile ponies right in front of me. Celestia damned E.F.S. How many more months or years would it have taken until Stable-Tec developed a minimap version of E.F.S. that gave you relative positional data on distance and altitude as well as integrating it with the automapper function. Oh well, maybe some crazy computer and spell matrix wizards would figure it out after a few prodes with my combat knife.

I blinked as I heard hoof steps, a lot of them in fact, which coincided with a large number of red bars in my vision. I could also hear clinking with the sound of slides being pulled back to rack ammo.

“Oh fuck.” I swore as I abandoned silence for breaking line of sight.

I barreled up the stairwell and as I did I heard shouting come from below and a lot of hooves giving chase. I was no longer a ghost and the entire dam had gone into a phase of alert and actively hunting me. I was very well known to be here and it was only a matter of time until someone found me with or without my invisibility spell. So I kept heading up, my gear clanking against itself announcing my location as I did. Losing these ponies on my tail was impossible until I could teleport away to the outside. Once I did teleport I had a rather long run over the ice and back to the tank. I knew I would be feeling it tomorrow, and likely the rest of the week.

I broke to the top level, I had to be above the water and iceline now. I had given up trying to figure out when I could just go straight out and instead aimed for instead getting to the top of the inside of the dam. Hitting the landing at the top level I saw a barricade, and a lot of heavy machine guns. I closed my eyes and cast the teleportation spell sending me directly north. I felt the cold air on my coat as I opened my eyes, the ringing of the guns and the teleportation still in my ears, I also could feel where I had taken a few rounds. Thankfully my robe had somehow prevented too much damage, but, I would be bleeding a bit until I could stop and patch myself up.

I felt gravity reassert itself as I opened my eyes, it was evening now and well on its way into the twilight hour. I spread my legs to increase my drag and wrapped myself in my magic negating what I could of my mass and giving myself a massive shove to get going. I popped the stitches in the rob so the spare material formed a webbing between my limbs. I soared like a griffon with her wings spread wide with not a care in the world. The ice below me sped by as I flew. This time I seemed to be going far faster than expected. Then, I noticed how quickly I was dropping and decided it was time to lose some speed and pulled up as the ice below me quickly was rising up to greet me. At the speed I was going I could roll, but, I would end up more beat up than when I had an emergency landing inside of a car back in Fillydelphia. I wasn’t looking forward to how much patching I would have to do.

With pulling up I saw the bank of the reservoir come up and fly past me, making me realize how fast I was screaming across the land. I was at least traveling forty miles per hour and had shaved off majority of my walk back.

A flare went up ahead of me and I figured it had to be my friends having seen my rapid retreat from the dam. We would have to get moving soon to keep from being assaulted by the dam’s occupants. I banked and began to reverse my magic to increase my drag to slow me down. Banking around another corner I saw the tank sitting half buried in a snow bank with Rose atop of it in full winter garb. I let my magic go and tumbled into the snow beside the tank, letting the fluffy drift cushion my fall.

I poked my head out of the snow and shouted at Rose who was mid jump down from the tank turret carrying a first aid kit on her. “Get the tank ready to go, now. We need to go around the lake, there is no way to cross that dam without it giving way!”

Rose blinked as I reached a hoof up. “Now get me out of this damn snow so I can patch my flank up while we get the buck out of dodge!”

Rose nodded and took my hoof pulling me out, the tank roared to life and startled me for a moment before I grinned. I loved the sound our tank made with the monstrous power it had. Though I didn’t understand how it did so with what I assumed to be an electric motor. Probably was left in for a psychological factor, and I approved of such.

Footnote: Ten percent to level twenty one.