Fallout: Lavender Wastelander

“I reeeeally 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.”

Twilight shuddered and shifted from hoof to hoof. Over an hour had passed since the fight, but how it ended was still fresh on her mind and bothering her. Like an open wound on her soul.

Had she really been the one to spit those vile, venomous words while holding a man at gunpoint? It wasn’t the act of threatening someone that bothered Twilight. She’d challenged villains before—simple “Let them go or else” type threats. This was different.

Twilight squirmed as if there were maggots burrowing through her guts.

She hadn’t left it at just threatening to shoot him, no, she had to say that she would fucking shoot him. Then not regret it. Like she was a cold blooded killer.

What was I thinking? What was I doing? I’m a foal hiding behind curse words and empty bravado. And I’m getting worse. More violent. How many kills am I up to now?

She thought about it for a moment and hugged herself. Her fingertips dug into her arms as she drew a blank. The fact that she couldn’t instantly put a number to her body count ate at her like she’d swallowed acid.

Daniel had told her shortly after her first two kills that scratching tally marks to remember wasn’t healthy. But was forgetting any healthier? To let everything bleed into a continuous smear of destruction? Some Princess of Friendship she was.

“Hey, Twilight, you okay?” Daniel whispered beside her. She nearly jumped out her skin. “You spaced out. The meeting is about to start.”

“I’m fine,” Twilight whispered back. The two simple words fought their way past the heart which had leapt into her throat. Twilight forced out a smile that so desperately wanted to be a frown.

Daniel raised a brow, nodded, then turned his attention back to the map on the chapel floor. Twilight knew it wasn't the end of the conversation, but she also knew it wasn't the right time to have it. Or the right time to get distracted by her own dark thoughts.

She slowly shook her head like the motion would physically reel her mind back to the here-and-now, then checked around the chapel.

Electrum had arrived with twenty Enclave soldiers. All of them wore black combat armor with blue armbands to differentiate them from the similarly-dressed Talon Company mercs. The Enclave soldiers not on guard duty—or the few escorting the Talon Company prisoners to Big Town—sat or stood around the detritus map. Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash flew overhead as she used the handle of her telescoping mirror-stick as a pointer.

Twilight didn't know the full details of Rainbow Dash’s plan. She knew she needed to pay attention, despite the roiling doubt swirling in the back of her mind.

Rainbow Dash loudly cleared her throat, pulling Twilight back before she could sink into her thoughts again.

“Listen up, everyone,” Rainbow Dash said with a bassy bark of command. She hovered in place and hummed loudly, before she pointed at a group of Enclave soldiers on a pew. The noncommissioned officers. “We have nearly half a platoon for this operation. I want four groups of five—I think the human military word for it is fireteams.”

She paused just long enough for Sergeant Dornan to nod, before swiping her stick in an arc over the improvised map, stopping occasionally to point out one detail or another.

“I won't sugarcoat it, this mission will be difficult, and we need everyone on their A-game working together to pull this off. Germantown is uphill, and the ruins marked out by the piles of broken bricks are large enough for opponents to use as cover or additional elevation.”

Sergeant Dornan raised her hand and waited until Rainbow Dash acknowledged her with a nod and point of the stick.

“So we’re assaulting uphill, into an urbanized area, without power armor or air support against fortified positions?” Sergeant Dornan asked, speaking calmly and clearly for a clarification of facts, not out of derision.

From what Twilight could tell, Rainbow's rank of Special Agent of the Secret Service granted her a lot of respect. Twilight watched Rainbow thump the telescoping metal pole into the palm of one hand.

“Not exactly,” Rainbow Dash explained before circling the stick around the exterior of the improvised map. “The fireteams will keep their distance and harass Germantown. Keep the defenders distracted.” She then swept the stick up towards Fluttershy, who was barely visible from her perch in the steeple of the chapel. “This will open them up for Fluttershy to hit what she can from above, or flush out those hiding into the open for the fireteams.”

Another sergeant—a male this time—raised a hand and spoke only after he was called on.

“What about you and the winged unicorn mutant?”

“Princess Twilight and I have an important job,” Rainbow Dash corrected as she collapsed the telescoping mirror-stick down into its travel configuration. She shoved it somewhere beneath her Secret Service jacket, fished around, then came back out with a pair of disk-shaped electronic devices covered in buttons and wires. “Twilight and I will infiltrate the base using stealth boys. Once we're inside, we’ll neutralize Agent Gray of SOCOM and Captain Kaylee of Talon Company. After the enemy commanders are dealt with, Twilight and I will join Fluttershy in hitting defenders from behind. Lastly, accept the surrender of anyone who asks for it, even super mutants. The President isn't sending us out here to turn the wasteland into a graveyard. Do I make myself clear?”

There was a chorus of ‘hooahs’ interspersed with silent, professional nods from the attending crowd. Twilight simply clenched her jaw. While there was room for taking prisoners, it sounded like Agent Gray and Captain Kaylee weren't going to be offered the same clemency.

Infiltrate and neutralize. Not confront and capture. And to do it all while invisible was as dishonorable as inviting your allies over for a party, only to give them cupfuls of poison. Twilight wasn’t attending another bloodbath, let alone perpetrating it.

“Excuse me, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said with more force than she had intended. Rainbow Dash spun in the air to face her, and Twilight softened her tone. “Can we speak in private, please?”

While the late-afternoon sun shone brightly through the hole in the roof, Twilight could have sworn that the temperature in the room dropped. The crowd beyond Rainbow Dash adopted a few displeased frowns. The mare in question snapped her wings closed and landed with thud.

“Yes. Outside is good,” Rainbow Dash said calmly, but there was a subtle bite to her tone. She shoved the stealth-boys back under her uniform and narrowed her eyes as she briskly marched towards the door.

She passed Twilight without another word. Twilight turned to Daniel, scrunching her face.

“Did I do something wrong?” She asked. “I just wanted to talk.”

Daniel merely sighed and shook his head.

Not a good sign.

Twilight raced to catch up with her friend, passing by Electrum who leaned against the wall next to the door. She had one of Daniel’s medical cold compresses pressed to her horn. She'd overtaxed herself teleporting so many soldiers.

Twilight only had time to nod in passing acknowledgement before she was through the door. She made it down the chapel steps, approaching Rainbow Dash’s backside. The other mare tapped one foot impatiently like a rabbit.

Twilight closed the distance and could almost reach out and touch the black ridges of Rainbow’s robotic spine. Rainbow Dash spun on her heels and glared hard enough for Twilight to freeze in place.

“Okay, what the hay, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash asked with the fury and suddenness of a lightning bolt. She crossed her arms. “We’re both still muties in a lot of their eyes. You better have a good reason for undercutting what little authority I have over the soldiers.”

Rainbow Dash’s rebuke was like a physical blow, and Twilight found herself knocked back a step. It didn’t stop Twilight from sending her own proverbial blow back. She pointed a single accusatory finger at Rainbow, so close to Rainbow’s chest that Twilight could easily jab her friend with it as if it were a knife.

“Unless I missed the part where we take Agent Gray and Captain Kaylee prisoner and lead them through their own fortress,” Twilight said, clenching her fists hard enough that she could’ve compressed coal into diamonds. “Then the ‘hay’ is that you plan to turn the two of us into assassins.”

Twilight knew she was growing more violent. Taking a step down this path would be going too far. Assassination? What would be next, throwing nukes at raider camps? Just thinking about indulging in human tactics—Enclave tactics—boiled Twilight’s blood. The corruption of this world had seeped deep into Rainbow Dash, twisting her friend into a cold, calculating killer.

Rainbow shook her head and took one step towards Twilight, practically in her face.

“Then give me another plan on short notice,” Rainbow snapped back in restrained exasperation. She shoved her hand towards Twilight’s face. “Your horn is broken, Electrum burned her horn out getting reinforcements here, we don’t have the supplies or manpower for a siege, the vertibird fleet is down for maintenance because the relics are allergic to staying airborne.” Rainbow Dash stomped her foot hard enough to kick up a small cloud of dust. She blew it away with a snarl of annoyance and a flap of her wings.

The dust cloud provided enough of a distraction for Rainbow Dash to end her tirade and take a step back. She sighed and turned away while running her hand through her black-dyed hair. The dye hadn’t penetrated deeply. The roots of her rainbow-colored mane were already showing signs of their old colors.

“Sergeant Dornan was right,” Rainbow continued, her tone losing its heated sting. Her hand came down to rest on the bridge of her nose, just in front of her mirrored black shades. “We both got a view of what’s in Germantown together. You’ve seen that most of it is uphill against fortifications. For anyone who doesn’t have wings, that’s a free ticket to the six-feet-below express.” She dropped her hand, bringing her shades with it as she found her second-wind of anger and glared twin magenta daggers through Twilight. “So, tell me, Twi, what options do we have? My job is to keep my people alive. Not the other team.”

Twilight opened her mouth, but bit back a response. What was there to say? Twilight wasn’t a tactician. Rainbow Dash was a trained Wonderbolt reservist, one of Equestria’s elite and prestigious units. Twilight was just… Twilight. A bookworm turned princess.

“I’m not a soldier,” Twilight admitted, turning her head away in shame. Tears pricked in the corner of her eyes as the ugly truth spilled out. “I don’t think like you do, so I can’t drop the fact that I’ve killed dozens of people by this point. Many of them were messy and far from quick.”

Twilight flinched, remembering taking a stroll through a crater-filled forest strewn with dead gryphons. She couldn’t bring herself to meet her friend’s eyes. Her throat felt as if it were dry as gravel, and filled with it, too, as she stumbled over her words.

“How do you cope with it?”

Twilight felt a hand on her shoulder. Her puffy lavender eyes were greeted by Rainbow’s magenta. They were softer now, and welling with their own tears.

“By knowing that what’s behind me is worth relentlessly fighting for,” Rainbow Dash said solemnly. She pointed towards the nearby hill, still keeping one hand on Twilight’s shoulder. Over the ridge was Big Town, less than a mile away. “Over that hill are good people. Kids kicked out of Little Lamplight. If Agent Gray escapes, he could pull something again. He’s SOCOM. The people who sent nukes to Equestria.” Rainbow Dash’s fingers tightened. It felt like knives were clamping down on Twilight’s shoulder, but just as quickly as the pain came, Rainbow composed herself and eased off. “I can’t let him escape to do another Canterlot or Cloudsdale. Or whatever he plans to do on this side of the portal. I can only pray that right now he hasn’t fled Germantown after Fluttershy got spotted.”

Twilight stared into her friend’s eyes. There was so much pain there for a young mare to have. How many friends had Rainbow Dash lost to the nuke? A dozen? More? Rainbow Dash’s family was there as well. She’d grown up in Cloudsdale before moving to Ponyville. Twilight was starting to understand.

Rainbow Dash was loyal to Equestria, and loyal to America. And at the moment both nations were threatened. The realization clarified how much stress Rainbow Dash was under, and how important this mission really was.

Sighing heavily, Twilight nodded.

<>~<>~<>

From high in the sky over the water tower, Twilight thought that Germantown looked like a skeleton.

Individual walls and scattered ruins jutted from the earth like a shattered rib cage. They surrounded the beating heart, the Police HQ, which beat to the rhythm of automatic weapons fire.

The fighting was just as fierce and uphill as Sergeant Dornan and Rainbow Dash had feared. Twilight could pick out several Enclave soldiers lying dead in the dirt alongside super mutants and Talon Company mercs. So much waste and despair.

Focus on your friends, Twilight. They’re what you’re fighting for, she thought as she forced herself to look away from a super mutant trying to hold his guts in. Some of the Enclave soldiers had brought out their chainsaw-knives as the fighting closed into melee range. Rainbow Dash had said that Fireteams One and Three had pushed up too far.

Twilight knew she wouldn’t spot Rainbow Dash in the carnage. The two of them had already activated their stealth boys. Instead, Twilight laid eyes on Daniel caring for a wounded soldier. She smiled. Good on him for staying true to his character. Unlike her, about to betray any hope of offering redemption and friendship to her enemies.

She searched for her holster strap. The invisibility created by the stealth boy made her equipment just as invisible to her as it made her to everyone else. She found the small leather tail and the snap-fitting. The strap kept her pistol from falling out of its holster. With a tug, she popped the snap, then drew her pistol.

The rasp of metal on leather summoned the specter of doubt once more. Its icy, skeletal fingers burrowed into her brain to freeze all thoughts. Was what she was doing right? She had offered a chance at surrender—or even forgiveness—for almost every villain she had come across. Twilight was sure that she was clinically incapable of holding a grudge. But this was war.

“And war never changes,” Twilight muttered to herself as she found the slide of her pistol and summoned the will to pull it backwards. The weighty brick of metal vibrated in her hand as the released slide forced a cartridge out of the magazine and into the chamber.

Twilight held a weapon ready to kill.

“Did you say something?” Rainbow Dash asked from somewhere nearby.

Twilight spun around with a gasp. Unable to see her friend, and with all the gunfire, it was impossible to detect that her friend had returned.

“Nothing,” Twilight replied, brushing off the looming darkness over her with a firm, self-reassuring nod. She had people behind her worth fighting for. “Did you get the Fireteams straightened out?”

Somewhere in town, a grenade went off. Shrapnel pinged off the water tower.

“No,” Rainbow Dash shouted, now above Twilight as they both flew upwards to avoid any more strays. “To borrow your colorful vocabulary for a second… shit’s fucked. The troops are fighting like they’re still in power armor. I saw one soldier from Fireteam Two stand right out in the open thinking he had the armor to absorb incoming fire. He lasted a second before he dropped. Last I saw, Daniel dragged him into cover and is trying to save him.”

“And what about Fluttershy? I haven’t—”

Twilight choked on her words as Fluttershy fell past her so close they almost collided. Fluttershy tangled with a winged Talon Company soldier. The pair pirouetted in their tumbling dive, using their wings to alternate who was on top of who.

Twilight watched, the world slowing almost like she was using VATS. Fluttershy elbowed the chin of the mercenary hard enough to knock out a tooth. The stallion tried kneeing her between the legs, but Fluttershy was skilled enough in close quarters to dodge the strikes of grizzly bears. She punished her opponent by slamming her forehead into the bridge of his nose. Then they crashed.

Fluttershy’s opponent slammed onto the roof of the water tower and sprawled like a starfish as Fluttershy used him as a living airbag. With her opponent stunned, Fluttershy reached into her sleeve and came out gripping the handle of some kind of dagger. Fluttershy wasted no time before she punched the blade deep into the mercenary’s throat.

With her opponent dead, and Fluttershy none the wiser that she had an audience, she flew away before Twilight could close her jaw.

“That mare scares me with how good she is in a fight,” Rainbow Dash said, half-amused, but undercut with a genuine hint of fear.

Twilight had to agree. Rainbow continued before Twilight could think of anything to say.

“Come on. We’re wasting stealth boy charge. I think I spotted a way in when we were scouting earlier. The collapsed section of the roof has a door that might lead to a stairwell. I’ll lead. Are you right behind me?”

“Just about,” Twilight said. “Lead me to you with your voice.”

“Sure thing,” Rainbow Dash replied, before repeating the word “Wonderbolt” over and over again, every second or two.

Twilight used Rainbow Dash’s voice to get approximately behind her friend. Once she felt the air coming off Rainbow Dash’s wings, she used that to direct her hand to grab Rainbow’s belt. The awkward, time-consuming dance made it clear how hard it was to coordinate with an invisible partner. Twilight didn’t know what they would do about trying to communicate if they got split up on their stealth mission.

She considered her Pip-Boy as Rainbow Dash flew them towards the headquarters building. While the Pip-Boy projected a compass into her vision that showed purple or red pips approximating where friendlies and hostiles were, stealth boys nullified a person to the sensor. Twilight couldn’t even use that feature to keep track of her friend.

“I’m having doubts about this plan,” Twilight said. An Enclave plasma grenade went off in the courtyard of the fenced-in area in front of the police headquarters. The plume of intense green fire set an old canvas tent ablaze.

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” Rainbow Dash said, her voice lowered in restrained pain. “The worst part about it is that this was my plan.”

The agony in Rainbow’s voice dragged Twilight's dark thoughts back to the forefront. Her gaze drifted back to where Daniel had been. He was gone, but the body of his patient remained. The wounded soldier hadn’t been savable.

Stopping would only mean that people like that soldier had died for nothing.

Twilight wanted to put a hand on Rainbow’s shoulder and comfort her friend, but the stealth field made it impossible to see. With the two of them flying, Twilight thought better than try to guess where to put her hand and end up accidentally grabbing a wing.

“We’ll make it count, Rainbow,” Twilight said, hoping that her words alone were enough to comfort her friend.

Rainbow grunted in reply shortly before they reached the collapsed roof. Chunks of concrete the size of wagons had sheared off and collapsed on what had once been an upper floor. They landed in the middle of the debris. To Twilight's left was an old wooden interior door. It had half-rotted off the frame from two centuries of elemental exposure. Past the threshold was a stairwell.

They had their way inside.

“You were right, there is a way down,” Twilight said quietly. “I’ll take the lead.”

“Why?” Rainbow Dash asked. Twilight couldn't see her friend's face, but she could hear the implication in Rainbow’s hurt and pleading tone.

This is my mission. Don't you trust me to fix the mess I made?

Twilight did trust Rainbow. She just had a logical reason for taking point.

“Because I'm wearing armor that's already survived a few bullets,” Twilight said. “Fabric isn't exactly bulletproof.”

“This fabric is,” Rainbow Dash said. Twilight heard Rainbow pat her suit. “But you have a point. That plate mail stopped a few assault rifle rounds. My suit’s ballistic lining is rated for pistols, and chemically treated to resist most energy weapons.”

Twilight wondered if magic counted as an energy weapon. It was a question for later. They were burning time. With the battle still raging, delays only meant that lives were being spent.

They swapped places, and Twilight pressed onwards towards the door. Once she had drawn close, she pivoted her ears to listen while looking for red bars. Twilight couldn’t see either red or purple. Whatever the building was made from to be able to resist two-centuries of neglect meant that her sensor couldn’t see inside the building.

With no sound coming up from the stairwell, Twilight passed the remains of the door and took the first step down. A pungent, repulsive reek of spoiled meat climbed up the stairs after her and assaulted her nose.

Twilight threw an arm across her face. She was thankful that the stealth boy allowed her to see through her arm. With the smell under control—or more like reduced to manageable levels—Twilight continued down the steps. Rainbow Dash made small gagging sounds behind her, but made no other audible complaints.

The source of the smell was on the landing at the bottom of the flight of stairs. It was a fishnet filled with chunks of bloody meat that formed a gory bag of awfulness. The ones around the chapel had been unpleasant, but to encounter one in an enclosed area was to brush with a whole new level of rancidity.

Past the gore bag was another flight of stairs. They headed down to another level. The landing held a blue, windowless metal door speckled with rust.

Twilight tested the door handle. It was unlocked.

The Talon Company prisoners that they had taken from the firefight at the chapel had said that the commanders occupied a meeting room on the upper floor. They had arrived at their destination. It was now or never.

Twilight twisted the handle slowly. She didn’t want to attract the attention of anyone on the other side. Once the handle was turned all the way, Twilight slowly cracked the door and peeked through the tiny sliver of a gap.

Beyond the door was a dirty concrete hallway with cracked tile flooring. Light filtered in through windows caked with so much grime that they were practically opaque. Pinprick-sized holes in the ceiling allowed narrow beams of light to shine through. A door down the hall opened, and Twilight stopped herself before she could slam the door closed in fright.

It would have made noise, and the calm, rational part of Twilight warned her that there was no way the person stepping into the hall had seen her open the door. They were moving too slowly and casually.

The lumbering green-skinned brute trundled into the hall with the exaggerated footfalls of an over-muscled bully. Twilight could practically hear the floor tiles turn to powder under sandals made out of cut-up truck tires.

Keeping quiet and observing, Twilight noticed the three red bars that had appeared in her compass. Her Pip-Boy’s sensor must have had an opportunity to reach through the gap in the door and into the building proper. One of the bars belonged to the mutant in the hall, who turned away from the door and gorilla-stomped down the hall. The super mutant stopped somewhere out of Twilight’s vision, and his bar disappeared off the Pip-Boy compass.

Her Pip-Boy’s sensor wasn’t all powerful. She knew the super mutant was still there from his grunting bellows.

“Wah-wah,” The super mutant grumbled in a deep, resonant tone. “All puny humans do is cry.”

“Shut up, brother,” another super mutant chided, deeper into the building and close to where the first super mutant had stopped. “The Master and his friends will hear you. They hate complainers.”

“Bah!” The first super mutant snapped. The super mutant continued his tirade, his grammar just as horrible as his looks. “You are whipped, just like centaur. Why are we even working with humans? Soon we all be bad in the head. Like Fawkes.”

“Master says agent man will get us green stuff. Green stuff means more brothers.”

As much as Twilight wanted to sit and listen, their continued conversation would provide the perfect distraction to slip inside. Twilight pulled the door the rest of the way open and crouch-walked inside to keep her profile low and steps quiet. Rainbow Dash shut the door behind them with a soft ‘click’.

“But humans are so weak!” The first one continued the argument. “You new brothers are dumb like humans. Never should have put ponies in green stuff!”

Twilight stopped so fast that Rainbow collided into her backside. The second mutant had been a pony?

“I am your brother,” the second mutant said heatedly. There was a sound as if the second had stood up rapidly. They thumped their chest with each word. It was a sound as deep as a taiga drum. “Not. Pony. I. Am. Super. Mutant.”

That confirmed it, but there was nothing that Twilight could do. She was getting distracted again, and her mission wasn’t to rescue ponies turned super mutants. It was to stop people like Agent Gray who would help make more of them. She hoped Agent Gray’s promise of ‘green stuff’ was a lie to trick the super mutants. The alternative could be disastrous.

Twilight shook her head and pressed on. Since she was deeper in the building, past the blast-proof exterior walls, her Pip-Boy had an unobstructed scan of the floor she was on. There were the two super mutants down the hall, whose conversation had devolved into a shouting match, and three red bars in a side room across the hall.

The door was marked with a metal plaque on the wall beside it. Meeting Room #2.

With one hoof carefully placed in front of the other, Twilight crept across the hallway. The continued shouting match of the two ‘brothers’ reassured Twilight that the pair was distracted, and any noise she or Rainbow Dash made while creeping around would be drowned out by their belligerent bellows.

The door leading into her target room was made of wood, with a window separated into smaller rectangular panes. The frosted glass panes made it impossible to see inside.

“They’re having the argument again,” a feminine voice inside complained loud enough to hear through the door, and over the arguing mutants. “And you call yourself a super mutant master. You can’t even control your soldiers.”

“YOU TRY AND DISCIPLINE THEM!” A thunderous voice boomed from inside the room. “THEY ARE SUPER MUTANT!”

“And I am getting tired of you shouting in capslock,” A masculine voice replied. His voice was undercut with a petulant, almost snobbish tone. Like he was addressing something he found on the bottom of his hoof. “If you need to blow off some steam, by all means, take those jabbering idiots and twist the spines of the assholes attacking us.”

The super mutant inside let out a draconic snort. The titanic footfalls of the super mutant sounded as if there was an oncoming freight-train’s worth of pissed off super mutant headed right for the door she had positioned herself in front of.

Twilight dodged to the side. She was just in time as the door exploded off its hinges, sailed freely through the air across the hall, then smashed like a wrecking ball into the wall opposite where the door had first been. A table set with nearly a dozen coffee mugs, a coffee pot, and a hot plate were the unfortunate test subjects of what happened when something got caught between an unstoppable force and an immovable object.

Bits of shattered ceramic scattered like shrapnel as the table and door came tumbling down together.

Twilight slowly turned her head to face where the door had been. What stood hunched in the threshold—armored boot still outstretched—could only be described as a baby behemoth.

“IDIOTS, FOLLOW!” The super mutant master bellowed, stomping the foot that had just decapitated a door. It felt as if the whole building shook. Twilight thought Deathclaw Joe was huge, but the super mutant master was even bigger and over-muscled. The super mutant had to twist his barren chest so he could fit his barn-door-sized shoulders through the empty door frame. As he entered the hall, Twilight got a good look at him.

The mutant wore a tattered set of dirty, hand-stitched leather pants and armored boots. He had some sort of laser rifle Twilight had never seen before slung across his back with a simple beige rope. He unslung it as he waited for the two mutants to approach.

“Bozz?” the Equestrian-turned-super mutant asked.

The super mutant master leveled his laser rifle at the questioning super mutant and fired. A shotgun blast of crimson beams lanced out, striking the super mutant across the face, arms, and chest. The super mutant glowed bright red for a split-second, then turned to ash.

“Fug!” The complainer who started the argument shouted. He turned to run.

That didn’t stop him from turning into another pile of smoking ash on the tiled floor.

“Heh, much better,” the super mutant master grunted, before plodding towards the exit.

Twilight gulped and waited until the super mutant was through the door she and Rainbow Dash had entered before she chose to breathe again.

It seemed the remaining two red bars inside the meeting room had decided the same thing.

“God damn,” the woman complained. Twilight assumed it was Captain Kaylee. “If you didn’t pay so well, I’d have abandoned this chicken-shit operation long ago. The muties terrify me.”

“Fascinating,” the man Twilight assumed was Agent Gray said, his voice still petulant and clipped. He would have fit right at home with the upper crust of Canterlot. He had a voice made for speaking with his nose in the air. “I hope I can continue to trust your loyalty to coin.”

Twilight stood pressed against the wall beside the door, listening in. There was the sound of scraping wood on dirty tiles, and two people sitting down almost at once. Their targets were distracted with conversation, and all the guards were dead or distracted with the fight outside. It was time to get close.

“You’re one queer duck, Gray,” Captain Kaylee grunted. The room they occupied was dominated by a single long, wide table with chairs running the length of each of the longest sides. Towards the middle of the table, a projector faced the back wall of the room, which was barren for the sake of a projector screen which had long ago rotted into tatters.

Captain Kaylee was an older caucasian woman, with bright, almost Big Macintosh red hair. She was dressed in standard Talon Company combat armor, and leaned her chair back with her boots on the table as she smoked. She faced a middle-aged caucasian man with an almost generic looking face. Twilight couldn’t find anything remarkable to note about him at first glance other than that he had the type of face that Twilight could lose in a crowd of humans.

“And what makes you say that?” Agent Gray asked, leaning forwards. He put one elbow on the table so he could prop his chin on his fist. The only thing of note about him, Twilight determined, was that the threads of his suit looked similar to Rainbow Dash’s.

“Well, you seem to despise Equestrians, but you’re just fine working with super mutants. You can’t be a total Enclave puritan.”

“That’s where you are mistaken,” Agent Gray replied. “Super mutants are bioweapons made with the Forced Evolutionary Virus. They are human—mostly—and are made with a development pioneered by the pre-war government. I’m merely utilizing wayward supersoldiers in my continued fight against the collapse of the Enclave’s values.”

Captain Kaylee burned her cigarette down to the filter with another drag, took the butt between two fingers, then flicked it absentmindedly across the table.

“Whatever you say… just as long as I get paid,” Captain Kaylee said, blowing out smoke rings with each word. She finished her sentence by blowing a thin stream of smoke through the several rings. She was as artful with her smoke as a dragon.

Twilight smirked at Agent Gray’s twitching eye. She’d been that stressed before. Feeling as if she’d burst a blood vessel in frustration.

Her smirk faded.

Here she was, spying on a private conversation, about to kill both occupants of the room before fleeing.

No.

Twilight stood up, and at the same moment, used her magic to deactivate her stealth-boy. The single-use stealth generator burned out with a loud electronic crackle, even though Twilight had turned it off early before it burned itself out on its own.

Twilight leveled her pistol at Agent Gray. He remained seated, glaring at her while Captain Kaylee struggled to get her feet off the table so she could stand.

“I’ve caught you off guard!” Twilight shouted. “Give up now while you have the chance!”

Agent Gray lifted his arms in surrender, and Twilight noticed that his left arm was wrapped in the smooth gray casing of a pip-boy.

Next to Twilight, Rainbow Dash either turned her stealth-boy off or it burned out. Her friend reappeared in a shimmer of light with a scowl.

Twilight had gone off script. But couldn’t Rainbow Dash see? There had to be a better way. Rainbow Dash herself had said that they were to accept the surrender of anyone, even super mutants.

Preemptively ending an enemy’s chance to surrender with a bullet from the shadows wasn’t fair or honest play. Would Applejack have approved of the assassination mission?

“Well now,” Agent Gray said, his tone keeping its snide and impetuous air as he stood up, hands raised. “Looks like you caught me.”

Captain Kaylee mimicked the gesture.

“We caught Captain Kaylee,” Rainbow Dash growled. Twilight saw something in Rainbow’s eyes. An intense narrowing that Twilight didn’t like the look of.

“Your ride’s over, creep, courtesy of Special Agent Rachel Dash, United States Secret Service.” Rainbow thumbed the pistol’s safety. “Time to die.”

Twilight’s heart seized as she heard the weapon charge.

“Wait!” Twilight yelled, wrapping Rainbow’s plasma defender in a telekinetic grip. It was just enough to knock the shot off target. The green plasma bolt sailed right past Agent Gray’s head, close enough it likely singed some of his hair, but it saved his life.

He laughed as his right hand slipped into his jacket, then lashed out faster than Twilight thought was naturally possible. His arm swung out in a blur, and three plasma shots rang out.

Rainbow Dash screamed, falling backwards. Twilight saw a bright green glow as part of her friend turned into glowing liquid.

“YOU FUCKER!” Twilight screamed, lashing out with her magic.

Agent Gray howled in pain as his arm bent backwards on itself, a spur of bone erupting from flesh as Twilight levered his arm around so his own plasma defender pointed towards his face.

Twilight snapped Agent Gray’s finger pulling the trigger once. She ripped his finger off the second. Agent Gray’s head turned into liquid. But Twilight wasn’t done. Twilight telekinetically yanked the pistol out of the corpse's hands.

First the arm that had held the weapon turned to goo. Then the other arm. It was only until two successive shots landed center mass that the rest of the bastard turned into neon green paint across the floor.

“Twilight!” someone yelled as she aimed at the puddle.

Twilight ignored the speaker. She wasn’t done yet.

Two firm, familiar hands seized Twilight by the shoulders. They sput her around to face magenta eyes and a mane full of black hair turning rainbow at the roots.

“Calm down, Egghead, I’m alive,” Rainbow Dash said, flapping a wing.

A single wing. Rainbow’s other wing had turned into a glowing green smear across the tile.

Twilight let out a shaky gasp, hugged her friend, then realized there was someone still in the room.

Twilight let go of Rainbow Dash and glared at Captain Kaylee, who was still holding up her hands. The Talon Company woman calmly nodded towards the puddle that had been Agent Gray.

“He was dumb enough to pay in advance, so as far as I’m concerned, I’m open to a new contract… you hiring?”

After the rollercoaster of emotions Twilight had been on, hearing that tipped her over the edge.

She burst out laughing.