Fallout: Lavender Wastelander

As sunlight beamed down through the hole in the chapel’s ruined roof, Twilight took a step back, cupped her chin, and scowled at the milk crate sitting on the floor.

Why does it seem out of place? Twilight thought to herself, analyzing the small, overturned box with a scrupulous glare.

If the milk crate is supposed to be the Germantown police HQ, and the nuka~cola bottle right next to it represents the hill…

Her hoofsteps echoed off the crumbling walls as she took a few more steps back to get a wider view of the organized detritus on the floor. Milk crates, bottles, chunks of rubble, and other miscellaneous junk were arranged into the crude facsimile of a map.

Twilight scanned everything once more, and the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. It wasn't the crate, but the bottle. They were too close to each other for the map to be in scale. A slight nudge from her magic pushed the offending bottle back by a few centimeters.

There. Perfection.

Reevaluating the junk map on the floor, a niggling itch formed on the back of Twilight’s neck and wouldn’t go away, even after she scratched it. Something was wrong, and she quickly realized what it was. Everything was out of scale. That wouldn’t do.

Her horn flared to rearrange things, but every adjustment only rewarded her with a grunt of displeasure as another piece of junk revealed itself to be out of place. Rows of pencils laid end-to-end showing where the chain-link fences were located had to all be moved, then the tin-can water tower, then the broken bricks standing in for ruins.

There? No. There? No. There? Still no, no, no!

The sizes were all wrong. The model was out of scale. If the model was wrong, then then map was inaccurate, and if the map was inaccurate then that meant bad information, which could get her friends—

“Twilight.” Daniel’s firm tone and gentle hand on her back cut through the spiraling haze threatening to drag her into its gaping maw. “The map is fine.”

“But it isn’t,” Twilight gasped, flailing her hands at the map, as if they could convey what was wrong. She wanted to keep her friends safe. That meant giving them accurate information. “Maybe if I had some playing cards instead of—”

“Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said flatly from her seat on a church pew nearby. She stared out of one of the holes in the chapel walls. It faced Germantown. Rainbow didn’t turn away from staring outwards as she shrugged. “It's not the end of the world. The map’s supposed to give ideas of where things are in relation to one another. Think of it like a bubble chart instead of a scale model.”

Twilight spared a glance back at the map of junk and her jaw dropped. How had she not seen it? It was so obvious. A 3D bubble chart, not a real scale model.

“Right,” Twilight said, sheepishly scratching the back of her head. She placed an old rag back where it had been—one of many canvas tents inside the police station compound. “Thank you, Daniel, Rainbow.”

“Don't mention it,” Rainbow said playfully, still not facing away from staring out into the brown horizon. With her on guard duty, and Fluttershy flying a patrol, no one was sneaking up on them.

“So, what does our chart tell us?” Daniel asked, guiding the conversation back on track as he scooped up both a pistol and rifle bullet with his telekinesis. Similar bullets stood scattered straight-up like misplaced chess pieces around the map. A population of humans and super mutants. “What I can see is that it’s three or four to one odds against us, and that's before going inside. Anyone else care to comment?”

There was a momentary pause.

“We're understaffed?” Rainbow Dash offered up the obvious. “The odds would be better if we had more people.” She let out a dismissive grunt and sat up in her seat, finally turning away from the hole in the wall. “Applejack just had to mix honesty and politics.”

“What do you mean by that, Rainbow?” Twilight asked, planting her hands on her hips. It was Applejack they were talking about. If any politician was going to play fair, it would be her.

“What I mean is that there was less than one squad of Enclave soldiers guarding Big Town,” Rainbow said, crossing her arms in an impatient huff. “AJ decided that towns will get enough troops to defend themselves, but not enough to make it feel like we're taking over. If we had more soldiers at Big Town, we wouldn’t have to sit here and wait.”

“Maybe,” Daniel said with a lead-heavy sigh while shaking his head. He set the bullets down and stared at the map a few seconds before he continued. “What I do know is that Big Town is nearly defenseless, and I'm not going to leave until Germantown is dealt with.”

“I agree. No matter how long it takes,” Twilight said. With the Enclave’s reliance on power armor, Twilight wasn't sure how long it would take to pull combat armor out of storage to allow for teleporting troops. “Electrum will get here with reinforcements eventu—”

Twilight's words died on her lips as Fluttershy descended from the hole in the roof like a meteor. Her flailing wings beat a gale that scattered pieces of the map away as they were blasted by the downdraft. She touched down with a loud snap as her thick combat boots plunged through the milk crate, sending bits of rotting wood flying in all directions like the shrapnel of a grenade.

What the hay? I worked hard on that map! Twilight bemoaned, but the complaint never made it past her lips before she noticed Fluttershy's grimace in the split-second of her chaotic arrival. Then Twilight's eyes drifted to where Fluttershy held a hand, staunching the flow of wet crimson staining her olive drab uniform. The wound was on her lower abdomen, just below where her modified combat armor covered the rest of her chest.

Gut-shot.

“They spotted me,” Fluttershy whimpered softly, the equine ears on her otherwise-human head drooping like a shamed dog. “I did my best to shake them, but they're following.”

Twilight spun on her hooves to Daniel, however he needed no call. He sped towards the pair, his medical duffel bag open and supplies floating around him like the belt of a gas giant. A bottle of medicinal alcohol, forceps, gauze, and a stimpack were all Twilight glimpsed before she refocused on helping Fluttershy lay down on the time-rotted cushion of a church pew.

“You did your best, Shy,” Twilight said, swallowing the panic and forcing a strained smile. Fluttershy was here, and alive, with Daniel nearby to treat her wounds. Twilight could focus on details and lead. “How many are there?”

“I’m sorry, Twilight,” Fluttershy wheezed demurely. “They didn't give me time to count. Maybe ten. An even mix of muties and Talon Company.”

“Darn it.” Rainbow Dash launched up into the air, nearly touching the rafters with a single wing beat. “If we abandon this place, Electrum’s gonna arrive right on top of our uninvited guests.” She scowled and drew her plasma defender. “Not that I wanted to turn tail and run, anyways… they'll pay for shooting Shy.”

Twilight grimaced. Killing for revenge wasn't right, but they did hurt Fluttershy. That changed the equation.

“Alright, everyone,” Twilight said, drawing her own pistol. She saw Daniel take Fluttershy's hand in his own as he used his telekinesis to pour medical alcohol over the forceps. A quick and rushed disinfection of his tools. Twilight grit her teeth and forced her eyes away. “I know we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. We can't leave, so we're going to have to fight. Rainbow, I want you up in the air scout—”

CRACK

Something whizzed past Twilight’s head an eyeblink before there was a second CRACK. The impact to her pauldron was like getting kicked in the shoulder by Applejack, knocking Twilight off balance as she half-jumped, half-fell into cover behind a crumbling church pew.

“They’re already here!” Rainbow Dash shouted, diving to the ground. She landed beside Daniel as more and more cracks and bangs split the air. Rotting wood splintered and popped as direct impacts and ricochets alike pelted the ancient chapel.

Even with bullets whizzing past making the sound of a dozen bull-whips cracking at once, Daniel remained a bastion of calm as he plunged the forceps into Fluttershy’s wound. He probed around for a few seconds—Fluttershy screaming and needing to be held down by Rainbow Dash—before he stopped and nodded, a small satisfied smile forming as he flexed his fingers to close the forceps around something. A moment later, he pulled the malformed hunk of lead out of Fluttershy’s guts.

“Got it,” he grunted, flinging the bloody chunk of metal away.

Daniel jammed the area next to the wound with a stimpack. Only then did he dive behind cover, landing near Twilight with a soft thud.

“I heard you yelp. Are you okay?” he asked, telekinesis dragging out more medical supplies from his duffel bag. He nodded to Twilight’s pauldron.

He was calmly diagnosing his next patient, as if they weren't being shot at.

“Just a dent,” Twilight said, drawing on her husband’s calm to pump her words with more bravado than she felt. She ran a finger over the gouge in the metal, just to make sure. The dent was still warm from the violent transfer of energy, but there was no penetration. It was still too close a call. While death and danger weren’t anything new to Twilight, bullets were a new horror she wished she could be rid of.

Stop panicking, you can do this, Twilight thought. You’ve faced hydras and worse and made it out alive. Stuff just as eager to kill you as bullets. Pull it together.

Taking a deep breath, she dragged herself out of her shock, then checked on her friends.

Fluttershy—her gut wound closed by the stimpack—had rolled off the pew. She used it as both cover and a brace for her sniper rifle as she fired out the church.

Rainbow Dash lay flat on her back, shoulder pressed against the partial wall facing Germantown. Twilight didn’t know where Rainbow Dash had gotten the tiny disk mirror on a telescoping stick, but her friend used it to peek over the crumbling wall without exposing herself.

“Talon Co and muties closing in!” Rainbow Dash warned, twisting the stick to angle her mirror. Her lips moved as she wordlessly counted to herself, then she added aloud. “Shy was right, I count at least five muties.”

Fluttershy shot her rifle.

“Four,” Rainbow amended.

With Fluttershy sending out rounds, Twilight thought it was safe enough to take a look for herself, pistol in hand.

The Talon Company mercenaries and mutants were around two hundred feet away by Twilight’s rough estimate, up a small hill, with the mercenaries taking cover behind several boulders. However the mutants were charging downhill and closing fast, firing their mismatched array of weapons as they ran.

“Rainbow, do you still have grenades!?” Twilight shouted over the ear-splitting symphony of firepower.

“Yeah!” Rainbow replied, using the mirror to aim her pistol over the broken wall without exposing herself. Green bolts erupted from the fancy plasma pistol, but only succeeded in splattering against the rocks the Talon Company mercs were using as cover.

“Fluttershy, keep the pressure on them,” Twilight ordered. “Rainbow, give me your grenades, I have an idea!”

“What are you—” Rainbow started, but Twilight silenced her as she levitated up every one of the grenades that she’d already taken from the super mutant cache, wrapping each one in a telekinetic glow. Despite focusing on so many objects at once, her broken horn, thankfully, didn't hurt at all. The medicine was working wonders.

“I like this plan,” Rainbow Dash said, grinning as she pulled grenades out of various pockets on her secret service uniform.

The tiny bombs hovered around Twilight as she spread her wings.

“Okay, when I say go, you and I are going through the roof,” Twilight said, passing her 10mm pistol to Rainbow Dash.

“Wait, what? Why are you handing me this?” Rainbow asked, grabbing the pistol regardless in her off hand.

“One less thing for me to focus on as I juggle these grenades,” Twilight said, nudging her head towards the dozen or so grenades. “Doubling your firepower means twice the reason for them to keep their heads down.”

“And what do I do?” Daniel asked.

Twilight smiled.

“Stay here with Shy and help her take down the mutants. Rainbow and I are going after the mercenaries.”

In Twilight’s opinion, they were the more dangerous attackers. They weren’t blindly charging the chapel right into Fluttershy’s scarily accurate shots.

Daniel backed away with an agreeing nod. Twilight interpreted the look on his face as him silently wishing her luck and to stay safe.

With no other distractions, Twilight counted down.

“Three, two, one, GO!”

Twilight launched into the air, followed by Rainbow Dash keeping pace. The rooftop was left in their wing-wake after a few moments. Twilight’s speed surprised herself as she had to slow down to get a good view of the battlefield.

Down below, the super mutant’s charge had failed. Three lay dead a hundred or more feet from the chapel, and the two remaining mutants had stalled about fifty or sixty feet from the large hole in the wall. The pair used a dry ditch like a trench. Twilight quickly passed them out of her mind as bullets zipped through the air at her.

The mercenaries had already spotted them.

“Rainbow, keep their heads—gahhhckh!” Twilight’s shouted order cut into a wheeze of pain as one round, then another, slammed into her enchanted platemail like twin hammer blows. One to her chest, the other her thigh. A panicked check revealed two dents but no penetration.

“That’s it!” Rainbow screamed in rage, flying past Twilight like a lit firework. “These guys are starting to peeve me off!”

She sailed for them as straight as an arrow, strafing the rocks with her two pistols. Lead and plasma were doled out in equal measure, and one mercenary caught a bolt of green to the face. They folded up on themselves like a dropped doll.

That’s good, Twilight thought begrudgingly. In the grim arithmetic of combat, they had subtracted one enemy from the equation. Twilight felt a burst of dark pride as her plan worked. The other mercenaries had taken cover.

Twilight had her opening.

She waited until Rainbow Dash had circled around to rejoin her, taking only seconds to do so. With Rainbow as her bodyguard to keep the mercenaries’ heads down, Twilight nodded, and the pair dove as one.

Wind howled in Twilight’s ears almost as loud as Fluttershy’s rifle as she rocketed towards her targets. No flight goggles blocked the wind and airborne grit. Her eyes stung, then watered from the strain as she kept her gaze locked on the black-armored men and women who had allied with the super mutants. Time seemed to slow and the world narrow as she poured all of her focus on getting the grenades to their destination.

Biting her lip to focus on some other pain than the stinging in her eyes, Twilight waited until the perfect moment to release the bundle of explosive death shepherded in her telekinesis.

The cluster of explosive cans scattered like dropped coins as soon as Twilight let go, their metallic bodies tumbling through the air. Once Twilight was sure she and Rainbow were far enough away, she turned around in the air, hovering to watch the rain of explosives.

Many bounced off rocks or landed next to Talon Company mercenaries, however one falling grenade found its way to the face of a mercenary who chose to look up at the exact wrong moment, shattering teeth. The poor man crumpled to the ground, hand over his ruined mouth.

The Talon Company members all seemed to notice what had landed near them at the same time. Some kicked the grenades away, others dove for cover, and one selfless mercenary leapt atop one grenade.

Seconds passed. Nothing happened.

“Twilight!” Rainbow screamed. “You didn't pull the pony-feathering pins!”

“Oh…”

Rainbow reacted quickly, snapping off a shot with her plasma defender. The bolt of green energy sailed through the air before it struck one of the grenades, setting it off with a short, powerful krump that was more flash than fireball. Shrapnel ricocheted off the hard rocks, turning what had been the mercenaries cover into a blender.

Two of the mercenaries slouched over, clutching at wounds, while a third folded up on themselves in contortions that could only be comfortable to the dead. The sole remaining uninjured mercenary was, ironically, the one lying belly-first on top of a grenade.

Just one grenade had killed or incapacitated four people within twenty steps of one another.

Twilight hated bullets. She despised explosives.

“Do you think they'll surrender?” Rainbow asked, turning in the air to look back at the chapel. “Fluttershy and Daniel just finished off their mutant friends.”

Twilight watched the mercenaries for any sign of having a fight left in them as she slowly descended. She had her weapon trained on the one who's jaw she had broken with the falling grenade. He crawled towards one of the freshly wounded mercenaries, who was still contorting in agony.

“They left out all the screaming in the books I've read on war,” Twilight said, not answering Rainbow’s question. The second shrapnel-wounded merc had stopped moving.

This was my plan. I killed them. Rainbow may have set the grenade off, but I was the one who dropped them.

A cold chill ran down Twilight’s spine. What would have happened if all of the grenades had gone off? It would be like the gryphons all over again.

“It's not pretty, or fun,” Rainbow Dash consoled. She gestured towards the one with the broken jaw, who was in the middle of applying a tourniquet to the thigh of his screaming companion. Once he was done, he reached into a pouch of his own and pulled out a white handkerchief, looked up, and waved it around.

By that point Twilight and Rainbow were only around twenty feet or so above the group. Twilight flared her horn and grabbed all of the grenades and guns that she could, disarming the surrendering mercenaries.

“Do any of you still have weapons?” Twilight asked. She pointed to the man curled up over the grenade. “Can you get him to get off that grenade, please, the pin wasn’t pulled.”

The man with the broken teeth turned his head her way, silently scowling in rage, pain, and defeat. A veritable river of blood flowed down his bruised and swollen lips, down his chin, and fell as crimson rain to the rocky ground below.

“Fuck,” the one with the tourniquet on their leg babbled. A woman. “Fuck, it hurts so much. Ralph, give me some Med-X, p-please.”

Names to these faces. Twilight thought. They were no longer just nameless goons shooting at her. They had names.

Twilight lowered her pistol and landed.

“We have a medic,” Rainbow Dash said behind and above Twilight. Still airborne. “They’re on their way. But before they get here, you need to get that guy to get off that grenade.”

Ralph refused to speak, glaring in silent contempt. His female companion was in too much pain to converse or comply with orders.

“Rainbow, keep an eye on these two,” Twilight said, slowly turning to the last living mercenary. He lay curled over the grenade, quivering. From the stains on his pants, he'd wet himself, and wasn't as unscathed as Twilight first thought.

Blood gushed from his ruptured eardrums.

Sweet Celestia, I hope stimpacks can fix that, Twilight thought, pistol lowered but not stowed away as she stepped closer to the quivering heap on the ground. She prodded his shoulder with a telekinetic nudge.

He stopped quivering, turned his head her way, and Twilight saw his grin in the split second before he rolled to the side and threw the grenade at her. She watched with grim clarity as the metal lever flew away from the pinless grenade, a small jet of sparks erupting out the top from the lit fuse.

Twilight wrapped the grenade in her magic and threw it as far away as she could. It detonated somewhere far past the rocks.

That… that son of a mule! He could have killed Rainbow or the other mercenaries with that!

“Now,” Twilight snarled, spittle flying out her mouth as she over-enunciated her words to the deaf man as she took aim. “I reeeealy don’t want to kill anyone else today. But if you pull another stunt that endangers my friends, or anyone who has already surrendered peacefully, I will fucking shoot you and probably not regret it.”

The mercenary’s self-satisfied smile faded.