Chaos Rules in the Wasteland

Twilight and John had decided that the best plan now for locating The Master was to ask the people if they had seen any mutants nearby, especially town leaders and law enforcement. Unfortunately, there was little information to be had from The Hub. However, the caravan companies did inform them that mutant attacks on caravans were becoming commonplace. As far as they could tell, the mutants generally seemed to be heading south.

The nearest town to the south was actually an enormous city known as the Boneyard. According to John, the city was so enormous that it was deemed unlikely to be attacked by mutants, and thus he had never actually been there.

Currently, Twilight and John were in the middle of a quiet, forgotten pre-war neighborhood, deciding which house they would pass the night in.

"John!" cried Twilight from the top of the stairwell. "Let's say here tonight!"

"What has you so interested in this particular house?" asked John. "The lack of roaches?"

"Well, yes, that is a nice touch, but come and see this!"

She disappeared through the doorway.

John shrugged to himself and followed after her, being careful as he climbed the staircase with steps that were too small for his mechanized feet.

John quickly located Twilight in the old master bedroom.

"Whoever used to live here must have been quite the tinkerer!" she exclaimed, pointing toward a small closet room. John peeked inside and saw that there was a workbench inside, as well as all sorts of crazy tools and gadgets.

"What are you going to do with that?"

"Well, you know how you took my laser rifle with you when you left the Brotherhood's base?"

"Hey, I kinda needed it!" protested John. "Without you at my side, there was nobody give me cover if ever I needed it, so it would have been very foolish of me to go off like that without a ranged weapon of some kind! I did leave you the laser pistol in case you ever woke up."

"Which the Brotherhood presumably is still in possession of," remarked Twilight. "I already told you, I'm not mad at you for taking the rifle. You had did have good reason for it. My point now is that I am so glad that you brought it with you. Look at this thing."

Twilight stepped into the closet and indicated some strange machine with a pair of cables sticking out of both ends.

"I have no idea what that is," admitted John.

"It's basically just a homemade set of jumper cables and an electrometer."

John looked at Twilight with a blank expression. "Nope, still no clue what it is."

Twilight huffed in frustration.

"Well, now look here. You know what these things are right?"

"Fusion batteries?"

"Correct. Now, you're still carrying those exhausted micro-fusion cells from the laser rifle, right?"

"Yeah. You said that you might be able to rejuvenate them one day. Is that what you're getting at?"

"Exactly!" answered Twilight. "You see, each micro-fusion cell has a certain capacity. Typically, a laser rifle like the one we have can fire twelve shots from a single micro-fusion cell. But what you may not realize is the fact that the cell is not completely depleted of all of its power after twelve shots. It has to have a certain minimum amount of power to be able to discharge a shot, and an 'empty' cell still has about a third of it's power leftover.

"So, you see, with this thingy here-" Twilight motioned towards the homemade device, "we can transfer all of the energy from one cell into another."

"And what do the fusion batteries have to do with all of this?" asked John in confusion.

"That's just the thing!" cried Twilight happily. "These batteries have an enormous amount of power. Instead of just filling up one third of our depleted cells, we can siphon off the power in these batteries and fill each and every single cell to the fullest!"

"Are you kidding?" cried John. "Do you have any idea how many of those batteries we've found laying around?"

"Of course I do. We've probably seen over a hundred in our days of scavenging."

"Exactly! If you can just refill these cells all the time, we basically have infinite ammunition!"

"Well, almost," answered Twilight. "Just because we see batteries all the time doesn't mean that there are going to be any available at any given moment. And we can't just carry them with us. Have you tried picking them up? They are a lot heavier than they look."

John picked one up.

"Whoa. Even through the power armor, I can feel it."

"It's all of that lead and nuclear material inside," explained Twilight. "But you were basically correct. Assuming that I can get this to work, we can refill our ammunition for the laser rifle for free."

"Say," said John thoughtfully. "When you finish filling the cells up again, will you still have some batteries left-over?"

"In theory, yes," said Twilight. "It depends on whether these batteries all still carry a full charge. Why?"

"Well, couldn't you, I don't know... super-charge some of the cells or something?"

"You mean overcharge them?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Couldn't you?"

Twilight stood thoughtfully for a moment.

"I guess I could. Doing that in addition to modifying the internal capacitor to force it to release more energy per burst would result in much more deadly laser shots. General Atomics International provides very specific specifications in order to comply with safety regulations, but it is possible to charge the cells beyond those specifications. However, according to what I have read, overcharged cells will damage your gun and, worse, have a possibility of exploding, especially if the cell is charged by someone who doesn't know what they are doing."

"Oh," said John in disappointment. "I guess we're not going to try that then. I didn't even know that those fusion cells could explode."

"Look on the casing. It says 'Warning: may explode if disposed of in fire'."

"Should I be nervous about my micro-fusion cells spontaneously exploding?"

"That's what the safety regulations are for," explained Twilight. "In their current state, there is virtually no chance of explosions occurring if handled properly. Honestly, the specifications are probably overcompensating in the safety department. I think you could safely charge the cells much higher than the specifications and still have no real risk."

"Yeah, I'd prefer we not risk it," agreed John. "Say..."

"Yeah? You look like you've just had an idea."

"So, these things explode when treated improperly, right?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Have you ever considered treating them improperly on purpose?"

"What? Why? Do you want me to blow myself up?"

"No, I mean, under controlled circumstances. For instance, could you make a micro-fusion cell into a grenade?"

"You want to make jury-rigged grenades?" asked Twilight incredulously.

"Is there a danger of them exploding at random?"

"Well- No. I don't think so."

John looked surprised. "Really?"

"I've considered it, and... Well, I can leave the micro-fusion cell completely unaltered and to safety specification and merely open up the casing. You could trigger an explosion by just crushing the regulator, which I think you could do easily enough. It wouldn't detonate right away, you would have a few seconds before the insides heat up enough to cause an explosion. But- No. The whole idea is completely untested and very dangerous. I might accidently blow myself up because of unforeseen complications!"

"Wait," said John. "What if you told me what I have to do and I build it instead of you? An explosion isn't going to hurt me that badly when I'm in this thing."

"I think you're putting too much confidence into that suit," said Twilight wearily. "A fully charged micro-fusion cell would explode with even more force than a grenade and coat the surrounding area with mildly radioactive acid."

"Sweet. Now I really want to try it!"

"Ugh, fine. But let me charge up all of the cells first, just in case you destroy the equipment. It will take a couple of hours to finish, so in the meantime, why don't you see what you can scrounge up from the surrounding houses.

"Alright, deal.

"Alright, I did it."

"The casing is removed?"

"Yep."

"Oh, thank goodness that's over with," huffed Twilight. "I wouldn't put that thing on top of all of your other stuff. Who knows whether it might accidently bump something in the wrong way and blow up."

"This backpack has small pockets on the front that are the perfect size for it."

"I guess that will do. Can we let that be the only one, please?"

"Yeah, it wouldn't do to destroy all of the cells," agreed John. "We can't recharge them if we blow them up, plus we gotta save a few for the rifle anyway."

"We should get some sleep. We stayed up a little later than usual already as it is."

"Alright. You'll be taking the bed, I assume?"

"Well, I know that you won't be, so I may as well," said Twilight, approaching the mattress (she had cleaned it as best she could while John was making the micro-fusion grenade).

"Fair enough," answered John. He walked over to the other side of the room and turned toward the door.

"I'll be here, I guess. Good night."

Twilight rolled her eyes at John as he slumped forward slightly, and then stood motionless.

"Good night."

Ever since she had been reunited with her companion, he would do this every night, whether they spent their nights in an old building or in the open wasteland. He would lock his suit's servos in place and literally fall asleep standing up. John had assured her that it was actually surprisingly comfortable. In fact, he almost never took that suit off, ever. With the ever-present threats that the wasteland had in store that could attack at any moment (even in a building during the night), Twilight could hardly blame him. At least he would take off the helmet from time to time.

Anybody else that saw him standing there like that wouldn't know whether he was awake or not. Admittedly, this was a good thing, since it might keep trouble at bay. And if trouble did show up, John would already be in a position for action.

Eventually, Twilight drifted off to sleep.

CRASH

Twilight bolted awake in an instant and held her sniper rifle at the ready, prepared to use deadly force if necessary. She looked around in bewilderment, looking for the source of the trouble.

Are we under attack? she thought.

Suddenly, she realize that John was nowhere to be seen.

"Urrrughhhhh..."

Twilight recognized the moaning voice as John's.

She approached the spot where John had been standing. There was a gaping hold in the floor. She looked down through it.

John was in the room below, slowly getting to his feet and moaning.

"Are you alright?" asked Twilight in concern.

"Yeah, shaken, but I'm fine. Suit took the impact. Ugh..."

John stood up, revealing a smashed table underneath him. He looked up at the hole.

"That's the last time I'm sleeping on the second floor of an old, rickety, wooden pre-war building while in this thing," he muttered. He let out a sigh.

"I guess I'll just sleep down here instead," he continued. "You can just stay up there, I guess."

"Sparkle, why do you keep trying? It's never worked before, it's not going to work now. I am quite certain that they're quite simply vestigial."

Sparkle ceased her mad wing flapping and gave Patterson a look. "They can't be vestigial!" she protested. "Look at how big they've gotten! If they were vestigial, they wouldn't be so prominent!"

"Never the less," answered Patterson, "we've done the math hundreds of times. Even considering how much they've grown, you're simply not a bird. You're a unicorn. A winged unicorn, true, but not a bird. There is just no way that those wings of yours can generate enough lift to get you off the ground."

Sparkle let out an annoyed sigh. "I know. It's just... I don't understand why I was born this way. They must have some kind of function, or they would have disappeared from my species long ago. If bet if my parents were still alive, they could tell me why I am like this."

Patterson didn't say a word, but felt pity for the pony. There was only one explanation for the wings. They had come from exactly the same place as her 'magic' powers: A combination of mutations and genetic engineering, in uncertain portions. It was almost certainly unintentional, as the wings clearly had no working function. They were merely a curious side product of giving Sparkle the genetics that produced her powers.

It simply wouldn't do to tell any of this to Sparkle, however. She believed that she was the last surviving member of Earth's natural-born horses, and furthermore believed that the legends of pegasi and unicorns were true. It wasn't hard to convince her of that. Of course, while she almost certainly had horse DNA, Patterson knew that the truth had been greatly twisted. Knowing without uncertainty that her wings would forever remain useless might break her heart. And, more importantly, her mutant heritage was a carefully guarded secret. Ever since Sparkle had learned that she was to become a soldier for the enclave, she had embraced their ideals admirably, particularly the idea of restoring the world to it's former glory and the removal of the mutant filth. All of that would come crashing down on top of her if ever she learned that she was one of the very mutants that the enclave had vowed to ultimately destroy.

Thankfully, the Enclave was probably still many decades from actually achieving this goal. Sparkle would likely pass away naturally before then. Or die in honorable combat.

Patterson needed to change the subject.

"I have some very special news for you today."

"You do? Are we going on the vertibird again?"

"No. But I think you will be even more excited about this. The science boys delivered this prototype to me earlier today."

Patterson pulled out a strange device and set it on his desk.

"Is this what I think it is?" asked Sparkle, approaching the desk (she was now generally free to go where she pleased).

"Depends on what you think it is," said Commander Patterson. "It's the prototype neural interface gear that will one day be in your power helmet."

Sparkle considered the device.

"Is this going to make the headaches worse?" she asked, worried.

"Actually, they tell me that you can expect the headaches to disappear completely."

Sparkle's mouth fell agape.

"Are you serious? Can we try it right now? How does it work?"

"That's just the thing," answered Patterson, a bit uneasy. "We've been developing this technology for a long time now, and there is just no getting around one simple fact: In order to give you maximum control, and in order for you to reach your full potential, you must have a neural interface surgically implanted. It will allow you to dynamically control the flow of power from your armor in real time. Obviously, you will carry the implant with you for your entire life."

He fell silent and awaited Sparkle's reaction.

"Will I be able to see it?"

"It will be on the back of your head," explained Patterson. "We'll have to shave that part of your mane before we can install the implant, but afterward, it will grow back and you can hide it."

"And what happens to me afterward?"

"You'll be allowed to recover for as long as you need. But, when you are ready, you'll truly begin your training. In a very hands on fashion. Weapons testing, mainly, if you can even call it that."

"And when will you finally let me out in the field?"

"It won't be long. As soon as we have a fully working power suit for you to protect you from the radiation and other dangers of the wastes, you'll probably be accompanying me on a few missions."

"Very well," said Sparkle. "If this is how I can best serve, then I am ready. The sooner we get it over with, the better."

"Good," answered Patterson. "We'll have it done later today."