Fallout Equestria: Duty

Fallout Equestria: Duty

Chapter 7

Deception

“Pinkie Pie, you're a genius! No silly, I'm a chicken!”

~O~Firestorm~O~

Several hours after talking to Zekras brother, I had already left little horn canyon, pulling a cart behind me. The sacks on it were stuffed with unimportant stuff, mostly garbage from the schools kitchens. I didn't want to risk loosing any of our belongings if I had to make a quick exit. Zekra hadn't been happy with my plan, but there really wasn't anything she could have done to stop me.

Among the garbage filled sacks, lay a passable imitation of Frostmanes armor. I had positioned it so it looked like she was resting. The blacksmith had done a fairly good job, but the imitation wouldn't have fooled anypony who knew her, or came close enough to inspect it carefully, but it would have to do for now.

“Just hope this works.”, I thought, as I noticed the blips on my EFS. The Steel Rangers I had spotted during my flight earlier in the day had changed direction, and were now coming after me. I suspected that they had recorded my Pipbuck tag when I had flown by, and were now using it to track me. So far, everything was working according to plan. The fake Frostmane on my new cart was wearing a normal Pipbuck, so the Rangers wouldn't only see my own tag move.

I planned to lead them out of the canyon and into the jungle that lay south west from little horn. It would take me several more hours to get there, since I was taking a detour. Going through Horseshoe would have been faster, but I didn't want to involve the Ponies of that town any further.

If all went according to plan, I would deactivate my own Pipbuck tag once we reached the jungle, and throw the cart together with it's fake passenger into a pit of quicksand or a swamp. The Rangers would assume that we had both been killed and would, hopefully, leave us alone from there on out. We could then leave this place for good, and make our way north, towards Canterlot.

The barren landscape of the canyon passed on both sides of me, dried vegetation telling tales of better days, as I slowed down a bit. I wasn't as strong as Frostmane, and pulling this cart since this afternoon was slowly tiring me out. A quick glance at my EFS assured me that there were no hostiles in my immediate vicinity, so I sat down for a moment, not bothering to take of the harness of the cart, and took a swing from my canteen. Pegasi weren't unaccustomed to physical labor, but I myself had never bothered to build up my strength. The major problem with my plan was the weight of the fake I was pulling around.

It was almost three times as heavy as Frostmane herself, and in addition with all the garbage the kitchens had provided me with, this cart was quite heavy. Could I afford to rest just a little bit? My body told me that it would greatly appreciate a little nap, but my mind reminded me that it could quite possibly mean that I never woke up again. Differently from Frostys Power-Armor, mine didn't increase my physical strength, so it's weight was a further nuisance. But I couldn't leave it behind now. Not if there was a good chance that I might run into Steel Rangers some time in the near future. Of course I knew that their heavy weapons would cut through it pretty easily, but it would at least provide me with some protection against small arms fire.

I opted for a possible third option. Bringing up my inventory sorter, I selected a dose of Med-X and Buck to be injected into my bloodstream. My body reacted immediately, all my little aches being washed away as if they had never been there. The Buck on the other hoof gave my body some extra strength and endurance. It wasn't perfect, but it would work until I had carried out my plan and found a safe place to rest a bit. Maybe I could fly up and take a nap on a cloud? The thought of the possibility alone made me a little giddy...

OooOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Night had already fallen when I finally reached the exit of this part of the canyon. My helmet lamp cut through the darkness, making the scenery around me look pretty scary indeed, but I pressed on nonetheless. This jungle had once been a battlefield, which had been why the Zebras from a nearby village had fled the area, causing the disaster of little horn... If I looked back at the war now, it all seemed so pointless. Only a few weeks before we had went into the freezers, the Ministry of Arcane Sciences had invented generators that worked without coal, and the Zebras had long learned how to get by without equestrian gemstones. So why had we even continued fighting? All those lives lost for nothing...

In my younger days, I had thought that our side had been in the right, and that we fought to defend our homeland. All the propaganda posters said that a Zebra victory would have been bad for us... Now, that I actually saw what that war had led to, I wasn't so sure anymore.

“The wisdom of age, huh?”, I mused as I set hoof into the dark and eerily quiet jungle. My EFS showed me that there were several hostiles in the area, as well as some neutral lifeforms. Since it couldn't tell me what exactly they were, I trotted forward cautiously. If any of the Steel Rangers had taken the shortcut through Horseshoe, they could have reached this place before I did after all.

My lamp cut through the darkness like a knife, but my visibility was still only about three feet, due to a heavy fog that rose up from the ground. Each step I took was careful, and so my progress through the thicket was pretty slow. It came to no surprise to me that I started to hear hooves from behind me. A multitude of helmet mounted lamps illuminated the jungle behind me, and they were already a little too close for comfort.

I began running to put a little more distance between myself and the Steel Rangers, but the heavy cart made that very difficult. Especially since it's wheels kept bumping over stones or roots, making it ,and the harness I was in, jump momentarily. It rocked me upwards every time it happened.

Stopping, I put out my own lamp and looked back for a second. The Steel Rangers were fanning out, and they were also getting closer by the second.

“Damn it!”, I muttered, fearing that my plan was going up in flames here. It was true that age brought wisdom, or experience at least, but it was times like these that I wished I was at least ten years younger once again. My muscles ached again, and my joints burned from all this physical exercise I was getting that day. Each step became hard work the farther I went into the jungle.

Then, when I hit a clearing, my luck finally ran out... or did it? The lights from behind me illuminated a giant body with eight heads. It's sides were moving slowly, indicating that it was sleeping. The red reptile skin of the hydra seemed a little off to me, but I was in a pinch there and didn't have much time to come up with something.

A low output shot from one of my rifles woke the monster up, after I had unlatched myself from the cart. It roared, it's heads looking around for the source of the rude wake up call. Then it spotted me. I was tired, worn out, and I had used most of my super-charged spark batteries to help the Ponies in Horseshoe, but if this didn't work I didn't have many other options.

One of the heads came crashing towards me, it's maw wide open. In the last second, I jumped aside, flaring out my wings and dodging the other heads. It had worked! The monster had bitten into the cart, swallowing the Frostmane fake and most of the kitchens garbage whole. Steel Rangers started to come into the clearing as well.

“Time to give you guys a show.”, I thought as I banked and flew directly at the open mouth of one of the heads. My timing had to be perfect, or I would have become a midnight snack for the overgrown lizard. For once, something worked as planned. I flew through the open jaws of the thing, activating my last Stealth Buck, which I had saved for a dire situation, and dropped a little something for the thing to swallow. Frosty wouldn't be happy with me, but sacrificing a few of her fancy cakes seemed like a low price to pay to make these Order nuts think that we were both dead. Originally I had only brought them as provisions, but now they had an even better use.

With about an hour of charge left in my Stealth-Buck, I decided to watch the fight below unfold. I had, by that point, already deactivated my own Pipbuck tag, so there was no way they could have found me while I was hovering about twenty meters above them.

The Rangers put up a formidable fight, I had to give them that, but the Hydra eventually got the better of them, and they had to retreat into the underbrush again. It surprised me quite a bit, since I had seen Steel Rangers deal with monsters like this before, but then I spotted it. One of the now dead Rangers had hit the large reptile in the side with one of his missiles before he was crushed. The wound had made me think that the fight was over for sure now, but when I looked for it now, I couldn't find a trace of it.

“A regenerating hydra? Huh... That's new...”, I thought, checking my Stealth-Bucks charge on my EFS. I had twenty minutes left to go as I finally decided that there was nothing more to see here, and that I should make my way back to the old school. The Rangers had seen me fly into the things mouth, and then it swallowing something. They had also seen it destroy and swallow the cart and the Frostmane dummy. What more could I ask for? If they didn't report back that we were dead now, then I didn't know anymore. The only problem was, that I doubted I could make the flight back tonight. Pulling that cart around for most of the day, and that maneuver back there, had taken a lot out of me.

Therefor I decided to go with my original plan and treat myself to a comfy cloud. My wings flapped hard as I gained altitude, speeding up as I ascended. The cloud cover was... ugly. Not only that, but from my own past in weather patrol I immediately recognized a patch up job. These clouds had been put together hastily, and whoever had done it, didn't have much knowledge of clouds.

The lowest layer of clouds was so thin that, even as a Pegasus, I was unable to land on them. Instead of using thick storm clouds for the job, they had used several layers of normal ones, making the whole thing pretty unstable. I wouldn't have been surprised if a single sonic Rainboom could have blasted them away for several miles. I, of course, couldn't perform that feat, but I had known a Pony whom I guessed would have loved to give it a try.

OooOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Ten layers of clouds later, and I finally broke through the cloud cover, seeing a beautiful full moon in the sky. It's silvery light made the clouds all around me shimmer, making it one of the most stunning things I had ever seen. Some of the Ponies in Horseshoe had told me about the cloud cover, and how the Pegasi had abandoned Equestria after the first Mega-Spell had wiped out Cloudsdale. At the time I had resented my own race for that, but right now I could only marvel at the beauty of it.

It didn't make what they had done right, but it was nice to see that at least something could be gained from it. I decided then and there that, if I ever got the chance, I would go and seek out the other Pegasi and try to reason with them. Equestria needed every hoof it could get to be rebuild. There was no room for one group of Ponies who isolated themselves from the others. Still imagining what the Pegasus government must be like, I lay down and soon drifted off to sleep. It was the first time I had the opportunity to sleep on a cloud since I had joined the military, and also the first time since then that I slept peacefully...

~O~Frostmane~O~

A Zebra mare named Zekra had taken off the bandages around my head this morning. She said that I was looking much better but had to watch the stimulants for a while. I had chuckled dryly at that, thinking that I wouldn't touch another dose of Celestias tears unless it was a truly desperate situation.

The mare had then proceeded in giving me two health potions and a super-strength-restoration-potion to drink. The latter tasted awful, and I almost gagged when the first drops of the stuff ran over my tongue. I chocked it down regardless, since I knew I probably needed every bit of healing magic I could get. It certainly worked too, since after drinking it I was finally able to speak again.

“Say, you wouldn't happen to have seen my friend? She hasn't come to see me since yesterday, and I'm getting a little worried here.”, I asked. The mares expression immediately changed to one of uncertainty and worry. Something was wrong, and she didn't know if she should tell me.

“Your friend... the mare named Firestorm... She has left yesterday, with a plan to make the Order of Machina think that both of you have died. We have picked up several distress calls from the Rangers, and a transmission that suggests that she was successful. According to it, you were both eaten by a Hydra. But... she has not returned here yet.”, the mare informed me after a few moments of silence, refusing to meet my eyes. My mind began to buzz with questions as I tried to digest what I had just been told.

Storm had put herself in harms way to fake my death and hadn't returned yet? It made my blood run cold as I thought about the implications. She would have come back as soon as possible if she was still alive. The fact that she didn't only left two possible scenarios. Either something was stopping her from coming back, or she was...

With a quick mental command, my armor formed, making Zekra jump back a step. I didn't care. I was in full commander mode, and I had a missing soldier that I had to locate. Entering Firestorms Pipbuck tag into the tracking function, I hoped to find her. It came up with nothing, telling me that her Pipbuck tag was offline. That opened two more options for me. She had either deactivated it, or she had been killed for real.

“Well, only one way to make sure.”, I thought, triggering the broadcaster on my Pipbuck and choosing the Moon Skull frequency.

“Vice-General Frostmane calling Major Firestorm. Report in immediately!”, I ordered. Zekra was looking worried, talking to one of the doctors in Zebra while I made my little call. I was not disappointed. My ear-piece crackled for a second, before Firestorms voice rang out in my ear.

“Major Firestorm reporting in. Hey, since when are you pulling rank on me again?”, she asked teasingly.

“Ever since you made me worry my head off. Glad you're alright. So... where are you?”

“I'm above the clouds, walking back. It's such a nice day that I thought I might as well get a little sunshine.” I became instantly jealous of her. Being a Unicorn, I couldn't walk on clouds unless somepony cast a cloud-walking spell on me, or I cast it myself. Since I had no idea how it was supposed to work, I couldn't do it.

“Tease...”, I replied, letting my friend know that I envied her for the opportunity to get a little bit of sunshine. Ever since we had left the wreck of the Luna Dream, this had been one of the things I had missed the most. Firestorm chuckled a bit, before becoming deadly serious.

“Frosty, I want to go see the other Pegasi one day. Would you be alright with that?”, she told me. I knew that, if she had put her mind to something, there was little I could do to stop her, unless I tried to pull rank on her again. And since I didn't really want to do that, I sighed.

“You do what you think is right Storm. But you heard the Ponies in Horseshoe. They aren't too friendly towards ground Ponies, and I'm pretty sure living down here for most of your life isn't something they could understand either.”

“I understand, but I feel I have to do this Frosty. They are my kin, no matter what they have done. Even if they have abandoned Equestria and isolated themselves, I think all they need is somepony to set their heads straight.”, my friend pleaded with me. I could tell that she didn't want to do this alone.

“Alright. If we ever get our hooves on a skyworthy vehicle, or you find somepony that can get a cloud-walking spell into this thick skull of mine, we will go and talk to them. Would you be OK with that?”, I asked, completely ignoring the Zebras who had gathered around me by now. All of my attention was on my friend.

“I think I would like that...”, she said, before breaking the connection.

OooOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

It was a small miracle in itself, but that evening found Firestorm and me sitting on a balcony that belonged to the highest tower of the former school. I still couldn't move very well, so she had to support me while we had climbed the steps of the tower, but the view had been certainly worth it. I could see all sections of the canyons from here, and even a little beyond that. The balcony had once belonged to Princess Lunas personal chambers, now it was a kind of guest-room.

It felt odd sitting here, with nothing to do and nopony shooting at me for a change, but it finally gave me the time to think about the events that had transpired. According to my friends letter, it hadn't been Princess Luna who had iced us, and she had refused to believe that I had deserted until the very end. It made sad to think about it. Luna had always depended on me to carry out her will, no matter the cost, and I had abandoned her due to a few lines on a Terminal screen...

But if she hadn't invoked the Moon Shadow protocol, then who had? It must have been a Pony that knew about us, and who had access to her Terminal... My expression grew quite grim as I put the pieces and the timing of it together...

“Princess Celestia...”, I muttered, startling the black mare next to me.

“Excuse me?”, she asked, cocking her head at me in obvious confusion.

“She iced us. She came to see me the night I received the order, asking me to explain the purpose of the Moon Skulls to her. Only a few hours later, we were iced.”, I replied, looking up at the cloud-cutrain.

“What? Why didn't you tell me earlier? Celestia shouldn't even have known about us!”

“I know... Believe me, it was … an unpleasant surprise when she suddenly walked into my room in the middle of the night. But it's the only conclusion that makes any sense. I mean... she had obviously found out about our existence somehow, and she wasn't very pleased with my explanation. Furthermore, she was the only Pony I can think of that had access to Princess Lunas Terminal to send the order.”, I elaborated. Firestorm put a hoof to her chin, thinking for a moment, then nodded.

“It would make sense you know... She went to those peace talks as well. It's clear to me that she wanted to end the war. And there we were, a Unit dedicated to do anything it took to win it. I guess she didn't like that very much when you told her.”, my friend said thoughtfully. I grinned nervously.

“You know... that wasn't even our actual purpose...”, I said, explaining everything to her. From our superior funding to how Princess Luna expected us to be on trial for our crimes during the war when everything was said and done. Firestorms eye widened with every word I spoke.

“You are kidding me, aren't you?”, she uttered under her breath.

“I'm afraid I'm not. The Moon Skulls were all meant to be scapegoats. That is why you have never officially participated in any of our missions. I knew I couldn't save all of us, but I at least wanted to take as much of the blame from you as possible.”, I tried to defend myself. I knew the expression she was giving me now very well. Firestorm was hurt that I had lied to her, and at the same time she saw the necessity of it all. Her anger ,however, won out eventually.

“I'm off.”, she said, spreading her wings and jumping off the balcony. With her dark armor and coat, I soon lost sight of her as she flew towards the horizon. The worst thing was, that she had also deactivated her Pipbuck tag, so I couldn't even locate her that way once I had healed up enough to travel. Sighing, I pulled myself up and dragged my burning body back into the room. I knew I had screwed up big time, but Firestorm had a right to know all of this. I should have told her much sooner...

Plopping down on the fourposter bed, I began to cry. I cried for all my subordinates that had died under my command, and all the ones that hadn't survived the Luna Dreams crash. My tears flowed freely for all the Zebras I had killed, and for Princess Luna who must have thought that I had abandoned her... that my loyalty had suddenly become questionable...

I had cried a lot in the past, but it had been a long time since I had bawled like this. Not since that first night after my mother had left, and my father had come to me...

~O~Firestorm~O~

I was flying over the canyon, passing over Horseshoe, the old school, a few smaller settlements and two larger ones. I didn't pay much attention to any of them. Frostmane had lied to me. For years! I was so angry with her at that moment in time, that I just wanted to get away from her as far as I could, to not do or say something we would both regret later.

But right then I was just flying circles around the canyon, increasing my speed with each lap. Why did she do it? Wasn't I her friend? Hadn't I always been there for her? I began to slow down as I remembered what she had said to me aboard the Luna Dream that day...

“I am lonely Storm. That is my problem.”

No. I had been there, but I had acted just like any other of the soldiers under her command.

“ If I point my hoof at somepony and demand their arrest, then it will happen. No questions asked. That power makes other Ponies fear me. Even you do... Don't deny it...”

Of course she had been right. I had been afraid of her, even though I knew that she would never have done anything to hurt me. Hell I had tussled with the new recruits more than once when they had insulted her behind her back, going so far as to giving one mare wingless flying lessons once... But I had always been careful not to let her notice it.

Some of the others had noticed it however, and I knew that they had called me her “honor guard” behind my own back. At the time I hadn't cared for it, since it was basically true, but now I had to wonder.

Landing on a small outcropping of rock I shook my head. Droplets of sweat from my mane flew everywhere, and I could feel my rage recede as I stood there, panting so hard that I thought my lungs would come out at any moment. Looking around, I tried to orient myself. To my dismay, I had no idea in what part of the canyon I had ended up, and my mapping spell seemed to be confused about my position as well. All it showed when I bought it up on my Pipbuck was static.

I looked around once more, looking for the highest tower of Princess Lunas school, but in this darkness I couldn't find it anywhere.  Something was wrong here. My Pipbuck was affected by some very strong magical influence, and only my own status screen and inventory sorter seemed to work. I couldn't track Frostmane and my Broadcaster didn't receive a single signal... what could be so strong as to affect a Pipbuck in such a way? It effectively jammed all of my outgoing or incoming signals.

Trotting to the edge of the outcropping I saw the source of the disturbance...

~O~Frostmane~O~

My legs hurt like hell, but I decided that I didn't want to stay here any longer. Zekra insisted that I at least waited for Firestorm to return, but I had made up my mind. My friend had chosen her way, and I had chosen mine. She had said that she wanted to go and see the other Pegasi... I just hoped that they would welcome her into their ranks. And who knew? Perhaps she would even succeed in bucking some sense into them.

Taking one last look back at the building that had once been Princess Lunas school for young Unicorns, I set out north towards Manehatten. If there was anything of the city left still standing, I wanted to see it with my own eyes. The ruins of the city I had grown up in...

Footnotes

Frostmane:

Level Up!

Trait update:

Zebra Trained (Rank 2): In your fight with the giant Super-Stallion Gigantua you have learned that different forms of martial arts can be combined. You can now combine Doom Bunny and Fallen Caesar style to increase your efficiency in battle.

Firestorm:

Status unknown