Spellscribe

Chapters

Chapter 1: The Gilded Mirror
Chapter 2: Stable 107
Chapter 3: The Wastes
Chapter 4: Moving On
Chapter 5: Arcane Science
Chapter 6: Here and There
Chapter 7: The Fog of Las Pegasus
Chapter 8: Reapers, Maurauders, and Talons
Chapter 9: Change on the Horizon
Chapter 10: Emergency Code "Whitewing"
Chapter 12: Ghostlike Counterstrike
Chapter 13: The Republic Rises
Chapter 14: Project Elysium
Chapter 15: A Letter from Hogwarts
Chapter 11: Under the Iron Sky

Chapter 1: The Gilded Mirror

In a house, there stood a mirror… The Potter family had come across the mirror lying abandoned in a shop, where the owner simply gave it away, as he had no use for it… The mirror had ended up in the shop after the previous owner had gotten severely ill after keeping it in his home, the man was starting to lose hair and said that he felt dizzy when he stood near it for too long, so figuring some dark curse was upon it, he sold it… That mirror had previously been in the possession of another wizarding family, who were inspecting the magic enchantments placed upon it, but they were unable to understand how the alien magic woven into it functioned, so they had given up and gave it away to their friend… Before that, the mirror was found in a room in an old castle, where it had mysteriously appeared almost two hundred years ago.

There it stood, with a frame of gold, and a reflective panel made from silver-backed glass, a rather strange design, even by Wizard standards... Regardless, it, by some miracle, survived the blast that ruined their home… And, as the giant of a man rescued a baby from the rubble, there the mirror remained, unharmed, minutes later the police arrived and took that mirror away as possible evidence linked to the crime scene, suspicious that it alone had remained intact when almost everything else had been torn to the ground… Later, when no connection between the mirror and explosion was found, it was given over to the deceased family’s closest relatives, normally they abhorred anything having to do with the family, but this item, coated in gold and silver as it was, caught the greedy husband’s attention, who proudly kept it in his room and used it every day, at first wary of it, but he grew more and more comfortable with the item as days, months, and years drew on… Unknown to him was that this item, in particular, was not native to this world, or even this universe…

A person, or rather, pony, on the other side of that mirror would have noticed the insignia upon it, a six-pointed star, and the words, written in a language that the human occupants of the house couldn’t understand, “MAS Experimental Gateway Model A-12”, not that such words would make any sense to them, even if they could understand them. On the other side, an exactly identical mirror lay inside an ancient ruin, not some old, crumbling castle, but a massive underground complex, made from concrete and steel, littered with the bones of ponies who fled into the facility’s depths to avoid a quick but painful death… While no sapient creature had been in this place for centuries, a hive of ravenous and horrifying creatures now lived down here, coming out at night to prey on small animals, and lost travelers, but whispers spread of an ancient ruin, with steel doors as thick as a cart and filled with ancient technology, and that attracted those who sought such things, for profit and for preservation…

On the night of January seventh, nineteen-eighty-nine, the gilded mirror, sitting in a bedroom on the second floor of a home on Privet Drive, a small gemstone on a corner of the mirror, that the current owner of the mirror had tried to pry out several times to no avail, had suddenly begun to glow with a soft light…

Chapter 1: The Gilded Mirror

Harry Potter, sleeping under the stairs, woke suddenly to his aunt’s shrill screaming… He couldn’t tell what time it was, but it was certainly very early. He then heard his cousin’s door click open, and his uncle yelling in surprise… Harry, scared of getting in trouble, which always meant a beating from his beast of an uncle, but driven by a slight worry and some curiosity, picked open the lock on his cupboard as quickly as possible, and threw it open, marching upstairs… Dudley was staring through a crack in the door, he didn’t notice Harry coming up behind him, he just stared in surprise… Now closer, Harry could hear a loud buzzing, and someone, presumably Vernon, hastily pulling himself out of bed, still shouting incoherently at the top of his lungs.

Harry tried to get a look without attracting Dudley’s attention, which proved rather easy as he was completely engrossed in whatever was happening, inside, Harry pressed his face against the crack in the door, his rather rotund cousin failing to notice him, even when Harry nearly stepped on his foot, and pressed his legs against Dudley’s head… Or perhaps he didn’t even care… Inside was a… Thing… A grotesque abomination on mismatched and spindly insectoid wings, like a sphere, bloated and covered in spines, with glowing eyes and sharp teeth inside a round alien jaw… Vernon drew a shotgun from under the bed and frantically shoved a shell into the barrel… Harry didn’t even know Vernon had a shotgun… The thing was gnawing on the bed and bobbed around to face the overweight man when it heard the shotgun being snapped shut, the monster opened its maw, dripping with slime, and Harry screwed his eyes shut as Vernon pulled the trigger, and a horribly loud bang, followed by a gross plopping noise, and an onrush of horrible smells, strong enough to make even Dudley gag… At last, Harry opened his eyes, and saw the torn open body of the monster, bleeding a thick greenish ooze that bubbled and hissed, tinted with a rainbowish shine, like motor oil… Harry pulled himself away from the horrible scene, wishing he hadn’t gotten out of his cupboard.

Suddenly, he found himself underneath the stairs again, as if he suddenly transported himself downward… Thinking he must have fallen down the stairs getting away from that horrible scene, or been knocked out by Dudley when he realized Harry was practically on top of him… He quickly closed the door and tried to go back to sleep, pretend that nothing happened… Rather, he heard Vernon shouting some more, “Horrid thing, we should have never accepted this bloody mirror, damn them Potters, putting this cursed thing in here!”

He heard his relatives storm out of the room, Petunia marched downstairs, nearly tripping over Dudley, and Vernon was storming off, Harry heard crashing noises from Dudley’s second room as something was loudly thrown into the room, “Damned mirror, should have known better to accept rubbish from them!”

Half an hour later, sirens could be heard and police cars could be heard driving into the road… Vernon argued with Scotland Yard about the shooting, before taking the officers upstairs to investigate the slimy husk… The officers dragged the thing off, and Petunia marched upstairs saying “Here’s the bleach, should I grab more, or do you think one jug will be enough,”

“Certainly not enough to get rid of that bloody stench!” Vernon huffed angrily. “Won’t be able to sleep in there for a week!”

Harry sat there, wishing now that he had stayed rather than return to his cupboard, he may have gotten yelled at, or even gotten a beating, but curiosity was gnawing at the back of his head, how the hell had whatever that thing was gotten inside, and what was that Vernon shouted about a mirror… It took hours, but everything eventually grew quiet, save for Vernon’s uneasy snoring, and Harry slowly slid open his cupboard door once again… It wasn’t as dark as it was before, morning was coming, but he carefully worked his way up the stairs… One step creaked, and he heard his uncle shake himself awake in his room. Harry froze, standing perfectly still, unwilling to make another move… Minutes passed, but everything returned to silence, and so he continued forward, finding the door to Dudley’s second room locked, but Vernon had left the key in the hole…

Being as silent as possible, Harry pulled the door open, and closed it behind him, holding the knob open so it didn’t click on being closed… There, in the dark, was his Uncle’s rather gaudy mirror, gold and silver, with a few gemstones on the side, one of which was now glowing brightly… Harry always thought that thing was kinda dumb, who needed a mirror that shiny. He stumbled forward, approaching the gem, now that he was up close, he could see the scrape marks where his uncle had tried to pry the stone out of the socket, but, there were also other markings on there, they almost looked like letters, but certainly not English ones. Behind the gem, Harry saw little silvery wires that poked into the crystals… Odd, he didn’t think mirrors normally had electronics in them, it looked a little like the inside of Dudley’s old busted television.

The mirror, otherwise, looked like any normal mirror, save for a horrible smell coming from the glass. Not a single drop of slime from that… Thing… Could be seen anywhere on the glass, so he moved his head forward to see if he could figure out where the scent was coming from… To his surprise, his head moved through the glass as if it wasn’t there, quickly followed by his body as he lost balance and tumbled forward… Feeling strange, as if his bones hand broken and reformed in several places, and as if his head was twice his normal size, he tried to get back to his feet, but with little success, instead, he just tumbled forward, caught in his own oversized clothing… Then he heard the buzzing…

Loud, painfully loud, buzzing… Harry pulled his head out of his clothing, cutting it up a bit as he felt something sharp sticking out of his head, and worried for a moment that he had a shard of glass in his face after the mirror broke, but he swore the mirror simply fell out of his way. After ripping his way out of the collar of his shirt, he looked up…

Bugs, hundreds of bugs, hundred of large and bloated spheres that drooled slime with sharp teeth and sickly wings and- Harry screamed as a few of them started spitting at him, a slimy substance that stung when it touched him, luckily his pile of clothing protected his body from the sudden assault, but also kept him from moving anywhere fast, he tried to get out of the mess his clothing became, not caring if he was naked, just worried about survival, ripping apart what remained of his shirt, although the pants where tougher, they didn’t fit right, it felt like his feet were half way up his pant leg and horribly elongated, but that didn’t matter at that moment, he stumbled up, feeling slightly dizzy, but got on his hands and feet and crawled to safety, or at least tried to…

He had no idea where he had suddenly found himself, this was just like the time he ended up on the roof of his primary school… Except, he felt like he was well and truly in a place he really shouldn’t be. He could think about that later, now he just wanted to get away, far, far away… He was starting to feel sick… He splashed his face down into a puddle of some slimy stuff, he dared not open his mouth, he twisted his head to get out of it, but it made his face burn… Away, just need to get away!

There was a flash of light, bright enough to be seen even through his closed eyes, and suddenly the buzzing sounded distant and quiet… He slowly opened his eyes, and panicked as he thought he had been suddenly thrown into a metal box, he scurried around, trying to get his bearings, hearing hollow thumps as his arms and legs and head slammed into the sides of the box, then he looked upward, or was it forward, downward? He couldn’t tell anymore, and saw that it wasn’t a box, but a square-shaped tunnel… It was nearly pitch black, save for a pale bluish light, coming from somewhere just above his head, but when he moved to get a look at it, it seemed to move with him, was it that thing stuck in his head? He tried to move an arm, but his joints felt all wrong, and the space was too small to move… Something, multiple somethings, was brushing up against his chest quite painfully, and he tried to scramble backward, to little effect. Finally, he saw a series of metal bars, or plates, where his chest was, then it came together…

He was in a vent… Somehow he must have gotten sucked up into a vent shaft! But… No, he couldn’t feel any rushing air, in fact the air was rather dusty and stale, it made his mouth dry and his nose sting, but that pain was nothing to the growing itching across his face, or the burning marks across his back… Everything, in fact, was in very mild pain, and he was dizzy, very dizzy, and tried all of a sudden… Very, very tired… Adrenaline was wearing off, and-

He was shocked awake by a roaring sound, like a billion small bangs one after another, and then a million small pings. He realized everything that just happened was just some weird dream, that sound must be a broken car outside, or Dudley playing with some weird toy… But when he opened his eyes, all he saw was pitch black, and he still felt metal pushing against him from all sides… He was breathing hard, scared, warm and wet between his legs… He wanted to get free, this wasn’t his cupboard, this was some metal hell! But he was still so tired and weak, he couldn’t move, not even if he had any space to move. Suddenly, there was a creaking noise, and then the sound of metal tearing apart, some shouting in a deep voice he didn’t recognize, then-

He was sliding backward, and then falling… Everything hurt as he splashed to the ground, he was suddenly a lot more wet and cold than he had been before, there were bangs and crashing sounds of metal on stone, splashing noises and the feeling of water slapping against his body, he felt very furry for some reason and he felt a sharp stabbing pain in his arm, his head still hurt, and the tickling feeling was worse, and now all across his chest, there was more, louder, buzzing, then some more shouting followed by a few metal pings and loud bangs!

Everything was getting blurry, but he could hear someone, a deep voice, “We got a foal over here!”

“What’s a foal doing down here?”

“Don’t know, but they look hurt…”

“Check to see if they’re still alive…”

He felt something big, heavy, and hard grab a hold of him, and lift him onto a rough metal surface that seemed to move slightly, he was tired of the feeling of hard metal... Then, blackness…

Harry’s eyes slowly opened, but everything was still dark and hazy, he was alive, he thought… Someone must have found him, saved him from those bugs, he must have fallen down a hole in Dudley’s room into the sewer or something, he must be in the hospital, but it was too quiet and dark, no, he was somewhere else, but he still couldn’t see anything. “Hey, the mystery foal’s still alive, look at that…”

“Wha- Ah- Coffff!” Harry tried to ask what was going on, but coughed heavily, feeling sick, he turned over and hacked up something nasty, he was glad his vision wasn’t back yet.

Another voice, far more feminine, said “Hold on, I’ll go grab a vomit bucket…”

“No use, just grab some Med-X and a dose of tranquilizer, we can talk back at the Stable,” A third voice said, but Harry was too tired and confused to begin to understand what they were talking about, all he knew was that they were talking about him, and he didn’t like people talking about him like he wasn’t there, it always meant he was about to get in trouble…

“Fine, but the Star Paladin won’t be happy”

“How many foals just appear in a pre-war sealed ruin?”

“Couldn’t have been that well sealed with the amount of cooked bloatsprite we’ve got on our hooves…”

Harry soon felt something cold stab into him, then the pain faded, and he was back into inky blackness.

Beep… Beep… Beep… “Subject 004, neural activity registered,” A mechanical voice drawled.

Harry woke to strange sounds, was all that a dream? No, still in pain, he hissed as he rolled over and hit his arm against some metal thing, even moving hurt.

“Well, the mystery filly is awake, finally… Thought you had died there for a sec…”

A voice, female, the same one from back in metal-hell, “Who-” He tried to say, his voice a hoarse whisper, he opened his eyes, then shut them again at the bright light shining down into his face, there was someone standing over him, someone with a massive head, and a stubby neck, leading to a round body, with their arms on the bed… No, not arms. He opened his eyes to get a better look, and then screamed. “What! What are you!”

The vaguely horse-like creature looked dumbfounded upon being asked that, “Well, certainly not a ghoul, or some mutant monster, if that’s what you’re asking, I’m a Steel Ranger, and provided you behave yourself, an ally.”

That didn’t answer Harry’s question, “You’re blue!” He continued.

“So are you?” She asked, confused, “Never seen a blue pony before, because I’m looking at one right now…”

“I’m not a-” Harry began, then looked down, and saw a small puddle of dark and pale bluish fur over his chest with patches of tender red skin, with a plume brass-colored hair extending out from his rear. With dawning horror, Harry realized why his arms and legs felt so weird.

Harry tried to pull himself up and bolt toward a door, if there even was one, the room seemed to be made entirely from metal with patches of rust and chipped pale bluish paint, he turned over, seeing a huge bulkhead door, like the kind he had seen on battleships from documentaries he caught bits of when Vernon fell asleep with the telly on. He tried to make his alien legs work, but something cold and hard grabbed his left arm, and both his legs, “Good work autodoc, keep her restrained, don’t want her breaking that foreleg again, not after it healed so quickly…”

The horse… Thing… Marched over to a table filled with bandaged, needles, bottles and flasks filled with brightly colored and glowing fluids, and retrieved a small assortment of what Harry assumed to be medicines, or possibly alien mutation goo that turned him into the horse-monster he was now. “What did you do to me!”

“Saved your life, duh, you have no idea how close to death you were, it took something like ten packs of RadAway just to keep you from dying of radiation poisoning, also all the acid burns, you were lucky you didn’t swallow any of that sludge back there, plus you-” The she-horse paused, as if she was inches away from saying something she shouldn’t, “Well, never mind that now, you’re fine… I think… I mean, you survived, and you’re here now!” Something about her tone did not fill Harry with confidence, not that he really had any left over at this moment, all his confidence vanished the moment he saw he had been changed into a horse. “Umm… I need you to swallow some of this, or I can have the autodoc inject it into your stomach, whichever you want.”

Harry looked at the thick red goo and paused, “Autodoc it is!” The horse said after a minute of Harry making a slight whine in the back of his throat.

“No! No, I’ll swallow,” Harry said timidly, the needle sticking from one of the machine’s many arms looked even less inviting. He put the bottle to his equine lips, getting used to the feeling of having a muzzle, and drank the surprisingly tasty goo, even if it had that bitter medicinal aftertaste. “What did that do?” He asked, trying to steady his nerves.

“Mixture of a class-1 healing potion, some Med-X, some mild sedatives, some anti-mutagenic compounds, I was working on it while you slept, should help keep you steady as we purge the last of the contaminants from your blood, as well as fight the-” She paused again, looking worried, “Oh, yeah, you also got a few of those cuts and gashes in that pool of chemicals back there, nearly died of septic shock too.” Harry’s stomach suddenly felt upside-down, and he felt like he was about to gag when the horse put a hard hoof against his throat, “None of that now, don’t want to throw back up all that potion mix…”

Harry’s head was forced back to the bed as the horse pulled up some blocky computer screen attached to the bed as she pressed some keys with her hoof-tips, he felt a sudden cold sting as something jabbed itself into his thighs, “Alright, autodoc, hold her still, we don’t want her moving while running her blood through the filtration loop,” Harry, in the back of his mind, amidst all the other questions he had, wondered if the machine was actually taking voice commands or if the horse was just talking to herself… If it was the latter… Sheesh, she needed some friends. Another needle stuck into his neck, and a mechanical arm quickly grabbed his head to keep him from moving. “Alright,” The horse stepped up next to him, “This process should take about half an hour, so we have plenty of time to talk!” She announced excitedly, “So, my name is Silver Heartstrings, what’s yours.”

“That’s a silly name,” Harry muttered.

“Silver is a bit stereotypical I guess, but I don’t mind…”

“Hmm..” Harry huffed, “Name’s Harry Potter.”

“Funny name for a filly, but if that’s your name, that’s your name!”

“Any idea how to get back to Privet Drive?”

“Hmm… Never heard of it, certainly doesn’t appear on pre-war maps, nor on any lists of modern settlements, and trust me, I’ve memorized them all, nothing better to do when your only job is caring after the wounded, the half-dead and dying don’t make for good conversation.”

Every moment Harry spent with this horse made him more and more uncomfortable, “Well, it’s in Little Whinging…” More blank looks, “Surrey?” More blank looks, “England?”

“Nope, still doesn’t ring a bell… We found you in the Las Pegasus MAS Hub, in sub-level eight… No idea how a ten-year-old filly like yourself found your way into the vents of some pre-war ruin…”

Harry’s mind raced, then suddenly a door slid open, and Harry tried to tilt his head, with no success as the machine’s arms just grabbed him tighter. There was a great stomping noise, and some mechanical whirring, then a voice, hard, masculine, and semi-mechanical, spoke, “How is the filly doing?”

“Says her name is Harry Potter, she’s doing amazingly well, in fact, her broken leg mended itself in record time, and her body seems to be purging most of the toxins itself… Some of the arcane scanners picked up a low-level arcane-neutralizer field around her body, which I’m guessing is the reason why she survived the high levels of magical radiation recorded inside the ruin.”

Harry was getting more and more annoyed that they kept calling him a “her”, but magic wasn’t real… This horse was even crazier than he gave credit.

“Fascinating, I’ll take over the interrogation from here.”

“Umm, excuse me, Paladin Seighelm, but the blood filtration process isn’t done yet, and this particular subject seems rather… Perturbed… I’d rather not have a dead filly on my hooves, thank you, so please wait for the filtration process to finish, she is a unicorn after all, and if she rips that needle from her neck before I seal the wound, well, they’ll be blood everywhere…”

“Fine…” The voice moaned, “But once it’s done contact me immediately.”

“Yes, yes, go and play with the other paladins and let the medical scribe do her job…” The door slid open and shut again, and the horse muttered, “Soldiers…” She then trotted back over to Harry, “Sorry about that.

“Why do you keep calling me ‘she’, I’m a boy!” Harry scoffed.

“Umm… Not according to my examinations, or even the autodoc, and trust me, little doc over here is much better at the whole examination thing than any living pony~” Harry blushed as he realized he didn’t have any clothes on, and the machine was holding his legs apart, meanwhile, the horse gave the computer screen a hug with her front hooves, which looked rather awkward to him, and further reinforced his belief… This horse was crazy.

He sighed and closed his eyes, “Where in the bloody hell am I,” He whispered to himself, too quiet for the other horse to hear.

Author's Note

And it is back! a completely re-written first chapter... Now this time with better writing, and a better knowledge of Harry Potter, as I just finished the first book myself. I really should reread FO:E too, it's been a few years, but it's so damn long... Hope I don't screw up any FO:E lore regarding the Steel Rangers.

Chapter 2: Stable 107

Harry was relieved when the needles pulled themselves out of his body and felt something cold attach itself to his neck and thigh, it quickly grew warm, and when he looked, it was glowing a pale red. Finally, the machine let go of his body and he tried to stand, then fell on his face… Right, he had been turned into a horse, how could he forget… He tried awkwardly to stand on all-fours, but his knees, elbows? Buckled, and he face-planted again, he bumped a large protrusion sticking out of his head against the floor. Why didn’t the crazy horse-doctor remove that? He thought briefly to himself as he braced his limbs a bit better and managed to shakily stand, crawling his way to a table with an old dusty mirror, he stared at himself, transfixed by what he saw… He was a colorful horse alright, pale blue fur with a brass-colored mane and tail, which was very patchy with areas of tender red skin where he had laid in the acid. His eyes were blue, but the white parts of his eyes were stained a pale yellow… That wasn’t what caught his attention though, the long boney and grooved spike coming from his forehead… The doctor said something about a unicorn, he just thought she was crazy, now…

“I have a horn!” He exclaimed, surprised, but that was really just a drop in the bucket compared to the mounting whirlwind of questions in his mind. Had the doctor been in the room, Harry would have rushed to ask some of these questions, but she had left. Harry’s ears swiveled on his head, and he realized he could suddenly hear a lot better than he used to… He could hear water rushing in pipes, he could hear distant popping and snapping noises, he could hear the clip-clop of hooves, the hissing of steam, a distant radio playing music, it was amazing… And quickly overwhelming. That was when he learned how to tune out the sounds he didn’t want to hear by twisting his ears… The things he could do with these ears! He would be able to hear Dudley coming from a kilometer away!

“Did you tell her?” Harry heard a voice just outside, “About the taint in her system.”

“No,” The doctor, Silver’s, voice responded, “How would you react if you found out you had an unstable mutagen in your system?” There was a pause, “And keep in mind that this filly is not a Steel Ranger, she doesn’t have the military discipline of the other foals…”

“What about that other mutation?”

“The one in her eyes? Don’t worry, while it is rare, it’s certainly a documented one, I’ve come across a dozen ponies in my life that had the same condition, if anything it’s helpful, it will give her better vision in low-light environments.”

“So, what are we going to do with her?”

“That’s up to the Star Paladin, but knowing her, she’ll keep her.”

“Guess I’ll make some room in the foal’s quarters…”

“Wait there’s also a scar below her horn, it seems-” Harry pulled his ear away.

Putting everything else to the side, he wasn’t sure what to think of that last part, he certainly didn’t want to go back, especially not as a horse… If either his aunt or uncle found out that he was now a horse… Yeah, he wasn’t going to be going back… The futility of the situation started to sink in, somehow, that mirror sent him here, it was the only logical explanation, and while sending him here it turned him into a horse, and a girl on top of that, he felt between his hind legs, yep very much a girl, he didn’t know what to think about that either, but that was the least important thing in his mind, right now, it was simply a matter of fitting in and trying to learn everything he could about this weird, weird place… At least then he might have a chance to survive.

Soon enough horses wearing massive bulky suits of armor came marching in and said they were taking him… Her… Harry would need to get used to that, to the Star Paladin, not seeing much of a choice, she nodded and followed, but kept an eye out, trying to figure out exactly where she was… It was big, he passed through a room called the Atrium, large, filled with horses, ponies as she realized they were called, marching to and fro, many wearing thick red or blue robes, others in heavy suits of armor. A few machines, some looking like ponies but with weird glass-domed heads, and others that resembled a floating headless spider, followed the red-robed ponies. There was a big symbol, a winged sword and several apples, painted over a symbol that looked something like a cog-wheel, with faded numbers below it, reading “107”

Eventually, after going through several corridors, without any windows she noticed, Harry arrived at a room labeled “Overmare’s office”... Inside was a room right out of one of Dudley’s comic books, a circular desk covered in computer monitors, walls with blinking lights and symbols, and a chair that seated a horse in armor, this one not wearing a helmet, with a long black cape and goggles on her, he assumed it was a her based on what some of the ponies had said, forehead, between a pointed horn just like Harry’s, if a little shorter, at least in comparison to her head… She stood up and walked over to Harry, as she did, one of the ponies in armor whispered into Harry’s ear, “She’s a bit, eccentric, just roll with it, I personally find it annoying”

The woman-pony looked down at Harry, in what felt like a dramatic pause before a speech, “The filly of mystery, appearing half-dead in ruin lost in time, I have many-a-question for you, and you shall answer them…”

Harry paused for a moment, thinking of what to say, the truth seemed really like the only solution, and from the expression on the Paladin’s face, he somehow got the impression this horse liked the unintentional dramatic pause his thinking provided, “Well, this is going to sound really weird, and I don’t think you’ll believe me, but it is the truth… I don’t think I’m from this world… I was living in a house, on Privet Drive, with my aunt and uncle, when something came out of a mirror my uncle Vernon was keeping in his room, he killed it, then threw away the mirror, then I found the mirror, fell through it, and ended up inside that dark place you found me… Also, I’m not a horse… Pony… I’m a human, the mirror turned me into a pony.”

The other armored ponies stared at one-another in confusion, and the Paladin paused, “How am I to believe such claims, and what exactly is a ‘human’”

“Umm…” Harry began, “Well, humans stand on two legs, and we have a pair of arms which come out of our chests and we can use them to grab stuff, we have heads, kinda like yours but less round, and without snouts, and we don’t have horns, or tails, but we do have manes, in fact, they’re the only hair on our bodies, well, except for some men, who have hair on their faces…”

“Sounds horrifying,” The paladin said, “You said you came through after you fell into a mirror, explain…”

After what felt like hours of interrogation, Harry was sent outside the room, but put her ears against the door, trying to hear what the ponies inside were saying.

“Do you seriously believe her story, sounds like just the ramblings of some insane filly to me?” One of the armored ponies said.

“I placed a truth spell on her when she walked into the room, I could tell if she was lying or not… She believed every word… And it certainly wouldn’t be the craziest story to come out of the wasteland.”

“I still think it’s insane…”

“We know the Las Pegasus MAS hub was experimenting with portal spells, trying to augment teleportation to allow for the creation of intra-dimensional gateways, it is possible that this filly is from another planet, her transformation from a ‘human’ to a pony could be attributed to the way teleportation spells are calibrated, I don’t know any myself, but I’ve read through plenty of pre-war documents on them”

Harry pulled her ears away, all the talk of magic was confusing, magic didn’t exist! That’s what everyone said… Perhaps here it did… Or perhaps their ‘magic’ meant something else, Harry remembered her history teacher saying something about how the ancient humans thought chemistry was magic… It took a few minutes that seemed to drag on for hours, but some decision was made, because one of the armored ponies stepped out, from his voice, the same pony that told him about the Paladin’s supposed eccentricity. “Harry Potter, that’s your name?”

“Y-Yes, sir?”

“Well, we have some good news and some bad news for you… The bad news is that we cannot get you back to your home, the Las Pegasus MAS hub went into lockdown shortly after we found you, the place is now crawling with sentry bots, turrets, and all sorts of automated security, cleaned out the last of the bloatspries, but makes any further attempts at exploring the hub nearly suicidal…” Harry didn’t know how to feel about that, but he had already resolved that going back to her aunt and uncle was out of the question, at least in her current state. “The good news is that Star Paladin Crescent Bolt has given you permission to stay in Stable 107 for as long as you wish, you are now a member of the Steel Rangers…”

Harry didn’t know what to think about that either, at least he wasn’t forced to stay, but it sounded like he still didn’t have much of a choice, he… She, would just need to stay, for now, perhaps there was some place a bit better out there, but she would need to learn a bit more about this world… As she was being shown around the building, taking mental notes on the names and places of everything… The hydroponics bay, the reactor bay, the scribe dorms, the knight dorms, the paladin dorms, the engineering bay. He… She… Still getting used to that, Harry contemplated the implications of some of the stuff that she had overheard… They kept calling this place the ‘wasteland’, and there were plenty of places, like the place she had come to this world in, which were ‘pre-war’... Some war happened, that was for sure, and there were places built before the war, that these people… Ponies... don't like to go because they’re dangerous… Why wouldn’t the police or military just go in and clear out these places then? Especially if they’re filled with monsters like the kind Vernon killed, and the kind that attacked her?

Eventually, she found herself in the Filly Dorms, the room was, like everything else, concrete and metal, with drawers made from plastic made to look like wood, and plenty of bunk-beds, there were young ponies, ‘fillies’ Harry soon realized was the correct word for them, of all ages, most wearing patchy red robes that looked like they were far older than the ponies wearing them, some were naked, although, Harry realized that nudity wasn’t as big of a deal to these creatures as it was to humans.

The armored pony, a Knight, Harry surmised, quickly got the attention of the fillies, “Excuse me, the Star Paladin has rescued this filly from the Las Pegasus ruins, she’s going to be a new member of the Rangers, and will be staying in the stable for the foreseeable future…”

“A new filly!”

“A unicorn too!”

“I wonder if she knows any magic?”

“Probably just another dumb wastelander…”

“I wonder if she brought any food?”

Harry tried to back away, all the attention made the hair on his back stand on end, attention was bad, it meant he was in trouble. One filly, one of the older ones, with a turquoise mane and a two-tone black and blue coat, “Hey, hey, back away, she’s scared.” Harry was relieved when the fillies seemed to understand and pretended to ignore her, they were still looking, but Harry was finally able to breathe again, “S-Sorry, it’s been a while since we’ve got a newcomer, I was just as scared my first time here…”

“T-Thanks, I… I don’t like attention…” Harry admitted.

“I understand, we’re all scared of something… So, what happened?”

“What?”

“How did you end up here, with the Rangers?”

“I don’t really know… I was, in a ruin, I think, then I almost died, the doctor-pony, Silver Heart-something, I don’t remember her name, said I had bad radiation poisoning and some acid burns… I don’t remember much, I just remember being scared, then someone found me and brought me here…”

“Why would you go into a radioactive ruin? Don’t you know how dangerous pre-war ruins are!”

“I umm-” Harry paused, looking for the right words, “I’m not from this place, the Star Paladin thinks I got teleported here, or something…”

“Ah, yeah, there is all sorts of broken magical junk out there, all kinds of weird spells just waiting to be unleashed…”

“Well, I was with my aunt and uncle, and I fell through a mirror, into that ruined place…”

“I bet they’re worried about you, your aunt and uncle.”

“I… Don’t think so… They didn’t like me.”

“O-Oh, they were those kinds of ponies…”

“Those kinds?”

“My parents were raiders, I don’t remember much, I just remember I got beaten and touched a lot, then the Rangers came in, they were scary, I remember gunshots, and blood, lots of blood, and this metal monster looking down at me, I thought he was going to kill me, until he took his helmet off… That was the first time I ever saw another pony take pity on me…”

Harry didn’t respond, letting the filly’s story sink in, “I-” Harry paused, “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be, it was years ago, I barely remember it, and I’m here now! With the Rangers, they’re the future, my family were barbarians, they deserved to die.”

Harry was shocked by what the girl-pony said, “But, no one deserves to die!”

“I guess you haven’t seen too much of the wasteland then, don’t worry, you’ll see eventually, it’s hell out there… Anyway, my name’s Victory, Victory Flame.”

“Harry Potter…”

“Funny, you’re missing half your hair!”

“I guess… Heh…” Harry paused, “It… Umm… Grows back, right?”

“Yeah, unless it’s a scar, don’t think that’ll scar though, it looks like nice red meat.”

“Well, I, umm, have one scar,” Harry pulled up her mane, and sure enough, right below her horn was a lightning-bolt shaped scar.

“How did you get it?”

“I… Don’t know, my aunt and uncle said it was in a car crash.”

“You had a working car!” The filly’s eyes lit up.

“Y-Yeah, well… Umm… I don’t think it was a crash though, I remember, a green light, and laughing.”

“Weird, I would say you were shot with a magical energy weapon, but, well, those leave very different scars… I’d know,” The filly pulled away part of her robe to show a horrible burn-mark on her neck.

“H-How did you get that?”

“I… Don’t remember, to be honest… Silver says it was from an untreated magical plasma burn…”

“What’s all this about magic?”

“You… Don’t know about magic?”

“No! Vernon always said that magic wasn’t real!”

“Wow… Umm… Well, you’re a unicorn, how do you not know about magic!”

“I… Umm… But, magic isn’t real?”

Victory looked confused, then sighed, “Lily!” She called, and quickly a purple and white filly trotted over, she was one of the others in the room that had a horn.

“Victie?” She asked, “What do you need?” Her voice was a little softer than Victory’s.

“I was wondering, can you show our new unicorn here, Harry, some magic?”

“Ooh! Yes!” Lily clapped her hooves together, somehow balancing on her hind-legs while she did so. Then, Lily’s horn started to glow a deep violet and sparks flew from the tip, forming an orb that just sat there. Harry was transfixed, he touched the orb with a leg and it evaporated.

“W-Woah… That was…”

“Magic!” Victory said.

“A simple light spell, I love them, they’re super easy and really pretty!” Lily said, “Can you do one?”

“I… I can’t use magic…”

Lily gasped, “Y-You’re a unicorn! And you don’t know any spells!”

“Not, really… I’m not even really a unicorn.”

“Umm, girl, you have a horn…” Victory said.

“But, I-”

“Let me help!” Lily put her horn to Harry’s, a little awkward as they were millimeters from each-other’s face, but Harry suddenly felt an onrush of power, like an invisible wind, he felt energized, and not like adrenaline or a taste of caffeine, no, this was something deeper. Lily pulled away.

Harry suddenly realized that there was a yellowish light in the room, coming from just above his head, he looked up, and it moved, he felt his horn, it was warm, he pushed that heat outward and- A ball of golden light floated in the sky, somehow, he knew that there was a certain pattern to it, a way to direct the energy in his mind, if you made the pattern in your head, the energy would flow in the correct way, and- Another ball of light.

He looked up, unable to take his eyes off the light… So… That was magic...

A few more minutes Passed, Lily introduced herself as Lilith Lapis, a unicorn who was born to the Steel Rangers in Stable 107, then... The song playing in the background, from the old-fashioned radio in the back of the room, ended, a long and slow song that Harry didn't care much for, but then a voice, masculine and silky, came over the radio "Fillies and Gentlecolts, it's your host! DJ Pon3!"

Author's Note

You're a unicorn, Harry... Well, this chapter was a bit tricky, I didn't want Harry to be freaked out about his/her (yes, the constant switching between pronouns is intentional) situation for too long, he was fairly adaptive in the books after all, and as for the Steel Rangers, it wouldn't take them too long to come to terms with the fact that Harry is from another world, there are, as the Star Paladin said, weirder things in the wasteland. But at the same time, I didn't want it to feel too rushed, I hope I did a good job with the pacing, the most awkward part to write was Harry's introduction to the fillies, but again, I hope I did fairly well trying to introduce them.
(As if being transformed into a pony wasn't weird enough, I also gave Harry Blackjack-eyes, because, why not! Night-vision is useful)

Chapter 3: The Wastes

“Reporting to you live from Tenpony tower, this is the voice of the Equestrian Wasteland!” The radio announcer began… Finally, a way to get some understanding of what to expect from this world, but Harry’s excitement quickly died as the radio continued, “For those close by in Manehattan, the newest report is that slaver patrols coming from the south have been seen around the villages of Whitestock and New Bluebell, that’s good news for us in Tenpony, as well as the folks up in Friendship City and Arbu, but I’d steer clear of south unless you want to become a new cog in Red-Eye’s machine, we haven’t had any contact with Whitestock in over a week, so to any merchants heading that way, you may want to turn back… As for the folks up by the Crystal Mountains, it’s the normal, radioactive snow and an even heavier case of toxic rainbows, I will continue to advise ponies to steer clear of Rainbow Falls unless you want to die a very radioactive death. Same goes for those ponies further south in Hoofington, although one of my contacts insists he saw a group of flying ponies heading to the city’s outskirts just last night, and to those brave Enclave goons, good luck, not that it’s going to help…”

Harry was making mental notes, there were regions called Manehattan, Hoofington, Crystal Mountains, with many towns or cities in them, and slavers, who didn’t sound all too friendly, who were ‘cogs in a machine’ to someone, or rather, some pony called Red-Eye, and an Enclave, of some kind, who can apparently fly… And radiation, lots of radiation… Harry was starting to realize why no one seemed to be doing anything about these Slavers, or the monsters that attacked Harry in the MAS place… He had heard about nuclear weapons and the theories about what could happen if too many of them were used at once...

The radio continued, “To the west, in central Equestria, Canterlot is just as toxic as ever, but south, by Ponyville, I’ve heard news that the raider-hub has been completely slaughtered, three survivors were seen leaving the town this very night, all in different directions, let us hope none of those survivors were raider scumbags… And finally, off in West Equestria, there was a massive fight between a raider gang up in Vanhoover and the north-western Steel Rangers, the Rangers won and pushed the raiders out of the city, I don’t much care for the Rangers, but at least the ponies in Vanhoover are safe from those maniacs, for now… Now, it’s time for some music, this is-” The radio kept playing, but Harry didn’t much care for it now that it wasn’t giving her anything useful.

Trotting up, Harry approached Victory, “Victory? Where exactly are we?”

“Hmm? Oh, you mean where Stable 107 is?” Harry nodded in reply, “Oh, we’re just north of the San Palomino Desert, and just south of Las Pegasus…” Harry nodded, that was something, but without a map he has no clue where any of that stuff was, he knew deserts were generally around the tropics though, so, he must be somewhere south, since the radio said something about snow in the north…

“You wouldn’t happen to have a map?”

“Talk to one of the scribes for stuff like that… They know just about everything… Anyway, why do you ask?”

“Well, both Silver, and the Star Paladin, said something about finding me in the Las Pegasus MAS hub…”

“Ah, that place, I think it was called… Somnam, Sabnula, Subnabsusa, something like that long before the war, then the whole town was turned into one big MAS hub, called it Big-S, the Rangers have been trying to get into that place for as long as I can remember.”

“Well, what’s this ‘MAS’?” Harry asked.

Victory sighed, Harry got the feeling he was annoying her, “Ministry of Arcane Science, some big group of magical research ponies from before the war, you should ask one of the scribes for more… Don’t care much about the MAS, they weren't our Ministry.”

Harry could hear the emphasis on that ‘our’, every question she asked just made five more pop up in her mind, but Harry could also hear Victory’s slowly growing annoyance with answering some ‘dumb wastelander’ questions…

Harry quickly started exploring the Stable, the scribes, as she discovered, were the ponies wearing those bulky red robes, she approached one “Excuse me, but do you have any maps of the wasteland, as well as some books or notes about the wasteland’s history?”

The scribe pony responded, “You can find some documents on the terminals on the east wing…”

“Which is?”

“You’ve never been to the east wing?” The scribe looked a little confused, “Oh, you must be that new filly, I’ll show you around the place, tell you which areas are allowed or not…”

Harry was relieved as the scribe guided her throughout the building. The Stable was much bigger than she expected, and apparently, far underground, it was originally some kind of shelter for ponies during the war, but two years ago, the Steel Rangers found it, abandoned, and moved in. Soon Harry arrived at the room the scribe had been talking about… She must have spent hours pouring over the notes, maps, and few books that they had… A war had happened, a bad one, involving lots of magic that turned cities to ash and left radiation in its wake, the nation of Equestria had been at war with a nation called Zebrica, neither survived the war, in fact, there was no evidence that any nation survived the war, in the end, everything was blasted away… Plenty of ponies, a few zebra, and quite a few griffons, and even the occasional dragon, survived the conflict… Now, they were just fighting over the remains… Harry felt horrible after reading even just a vague overview of the conflict.

“So, what exactly are the Steel Rangers?” Harry asked the scribe, one Rosemary.

“We were founded by the survivors of the Ministry of Technology, we follow our founder’s ideology, that technology should be guarded, researched, and used to better the lives of ponykind, of course, we’re rather… Divided… The Manehattan and Fillydelphia chapters just like to horde their tech for themselves, the Fillydelphia chapter in particular, but I can’t blame them, being right in the middle of the biggest army of raiders and slavers the wasteland has ever seen…”

“Raiders, slavers… Who are they?”

“Wow… Umm… Raiders, most are simply bandits, they’ll attack you, try to steal stuff off your body, or simply capture you alive and do… Well… Very bad things to you… They’re a crazy and sadistic lot, but at the very least, they’re reasonable and have some degree of intelligence, they’ll back off if you outnumber or out-gun them, others though are just downright animalistic and bestial… They’ll see you and try to kill you, and won’t stop until you’re a bloody mush… Slavers aren’t much better, but at least they’re much smarter and more logical… They try to capture you alive, many towns and tribes in the wastes will gladly buy ponies for a variety of reasons, mostly just as forced labor though… Slavers are all about survival and profit though, they can be bought or bribed, threatened or reasoned with, at the very least…”

“Why haven’t they all been killed or captured by now if they’re so bad!”

“Because most ponies would rather surrender, or even join them, instead of getting killed, or worse… At least the west is a little safer than the east, to the east is Red Eye, a pony who has built himself a small empire on the back of slavery, with one of the biggest armies in the wasteland, all mercenaries, or pacified raiders.”

Harry paused for a second, as much as he hated to admit it, it made sense… He had put together a picture of this land in his mind, as a bunch of small neighborhoods, like Little Whinging, except every little neighborhood hated each-other and were all armed to the teeth… Thousands of little settlements trying to survive, a scattering of raiders between them, groups of Steel Rangers in what used to be major cities, and then big empires like Red Eye in the east, or the mysterious Enclave in the sky above them, and then there were little pockets which were too dangerous for even the most insane of pony to live in, like Everfree Forest, Hoofington, Canterlot, Rainbow Falls, White Tail Woods, Old Olneigh, or Maripony.

Harry spent some time alone, going back over all the information about this world… He… She didn’t like this place, in many ways, it was worse than her old life, but at least here she might be able to do something about it, magic was real, that was for sure, and here she could do it… She had been told several times that she was rather smart for her age, even if she constantly had to fake stupidity to avoid being beaten for getting better grades than her pig of a cousin… These Steel Rangers, they weren’t perfect, but they were the best hope the wasteland had of restoring order to this radioactive hell. For a second she began to think, perhaps I fell through that portal for a reason, perhaps, this place needed me.

Author's Note

Sorry for the short chapter, but I wanted to get this one over with, as it's mostly just Harry figuring out the workings of the Wasteland.

Chapter 4: Moving On

“So… Harry Potter… Care to inform us about this ‘other world’ you came from.”

Harry, as she started to grow tired from researching this strange place, was quickly found by a pony in a metal suit and dragged into what looked suspiciously like an interrogation room, not that she had even been in one on Earth, simply seen them from those crime shows Petunia liked. The pony, a unicorn, had his horn light up and, unknown to the boy-turned-filly, had cast a spell on her that would inform the unicorn, one “Shockweld”, if there was any deceit or misinformation behind the pony’s claims.

Harry sighed, “Well, sir, for one, we aren’t ponies… I’ve already told this to you Star Paladin, instead, we are humans… We stand on two legs, we have a pair of arms with five fingers on each hand… Hold on, do you have paper and a pencil, I think I can draw one.”

The knight nodded, floating over a clipboard and pencil, the foal’s eyes tracked the tools with interest, “Well, I, umm, am not the best drawer, but we looked kinda like this…” The foal awkwardly tried to hold the writing utensil between her hooves, it took several tries, but eventually, a messy image of a… Thing… Was made. Like a pony, but standing on its hind hooves, which seemed to grow out slightly from the bottom of their legs, and forelegs that reached out and ended with claws, and a head that was apparently devoid of a snout, almost sounded like a hellhound or dragon. Shockweld’s spells hadn’t found the slightest trace of dishonesty, deception, or exaggeration in the foal’s description… He wouldn’t have believed it if he were a few years younger, but coming face-to-face with a cyber-hellhound that had grown a fifth head and wielded a talking book that shot exploding radioactive gumballs out of magically enchanted eyeballs scribbled on it had taught him to be a bit more open to seemingly unbelievable things… His fellow knights and paladins certainly didn’t believe him… Even if he still had the scar on his left side.

Harry continued, “We have busses, not the kind that fly in the sky, nor were they pulled by ponies,” Harry shook his head, thinking of some of the pre-war records he had browsed through, “No, they drove on the ground, using engines that run on petrol…” She continued, talking about airplanes, and trains, and everything she could remember, “I think the planet has around six or seven billion people, probably closer to eight, based on what some people said on the telly…”

After continuing for a few hours, the knight’s horn checking for any inconsistencies, finding none, he sighed, “It sounds quite a bit like pre-war Equestria… I will need to talk to the Star Paladin, return to your dorm, we’ll come up with something… So it was that Harry walked away, and the moment he stepped through the door, Crescent Bolt came from another one, “The foal was completely honest, I didn’t even detect any exaggeration to her claims, either that or she’s a damn good actor, enough to fool the spell, but I doubt it…”

“Yes…” There was a pause, “Her world is very much like Equestria before the war… We need to find that portal mirror again, and scout out this new world, if there’s a link between their world and ours we must be extremely careful…”

After processing the implications, the Knight agreed, “Yes, the creatures, these humans, are highly militaristic, and imperialistic, by the sounds of it, and we would never be able to take them on in an open fight, they simply have more numbers… And I certainly wouldn’t trust them as trade partners, even the friendliest of ponies has a hidden agenda or two… But imagine all the resources that world has…”

“Clean, contamination-free water, and industrial-scale power generation and production…” The Paladin continued, nodding.

Harry had just returned to the fillys dorm when Victory trotted up, “Hey Harry, I have a question?”

“Ask away, it’s not like I’ve done much more other than asking questions today…”

“How old are you?”

Harry looked at the filly, slightly confused, “Nine, I’ll be turning ten real soon, why?”

Victory looked a little concerned for a second, then shook her head, she trotted over to a drawer and retrieved… A box? A box with a handle, and some kind of brace, and what looked like a battery in the side, made of plastic and metal. “Take that, and be very careful where you point it, you’ll be needing one.”

“Why?”

At that moment, the door opened and a few familiar faces trotted in, the Knight from two days ago, Lightning Striker, his helmet was off to show a yellow mane and blue coat, the scribe Rosemary, and a face she didn’t want to see, Scribe Silver Heartstrings. “Yep, that would be why,” Victory Flame said.

“Hi Harry!” Silver said, “You ready for some field work!” Harry took notice of the huge gun on the Lightning’s side, the pair of plastic boxes much like a bigger version of what Harry had been handed, and the weird device made from glass, plastic, metal, and lots of coils and rings and spikes that Rosemary had with him.

Harry stared, dumbfounded and confused, “What?”

“Harry Potter, you are old enough to start your training as a field scribe, you will be accompanying us on a simple sweep-and-retrieve mission, we have a location, not far from here, that we’ll be scouting out… The location is expected to be of minimal danger, but Knight Lightning Striker will be our guard for this mission, you can never be too careful.”

The meaning of the words sank in… It was, kinda scary, but also very enticing, plus, she didn’t expect she had much of a choice in the matter, actually going outside into the wasteland that had already nearly killed her once, at least now though she would be fully conscious, used to walking on four legs, and protected.

Soon Harry found herself standing before a huge gear-shaped door that rolled out of the way to reveal a weird and alien sight… A barren land of rock and dust and ash and a cloudy grey sky as far as the eye can see, dotted with dead trees, distant mountains, one mountain shrouded in a pink haze, a tower on the very edge of the horizon that punched right into the layer of clouds above, a similar tower to the east but with an eerie green glow to it.. So, that was the wasteland, it was… Unique, exciting, a little depressing, but equally enticing, she felt herself wanting to go over toward the mountain in pink, or the towers, explore them, find out everything she could about them… She had never been allowed to learn much back home, school was interesting but dull… This place was completely new.

“Sad, isn’t it…” Silver muttered.

“It’s…” Harry paused, “Different… Unique…”

As they trotted through the dusty plains, Harry found herself with millions of questions, which Silver was happy to answer. “That’s Canterlot, very dangerous place, the pink stuff is real toxic, and it does some horrible things to those who somehow survive being submerged in it for too long… Oh, and those towers are called the SPP, we don’t know what they do, but they have an absolute shit-ton of automated security, so trying to get in from the surface-level is nigh impossible. And that tower over there is part of Hoofington, just to the east, don’t go there either, it’s just as dangerous as Canterlot but in a very different way.”

Silver continued, describing some of the dangers found in the wasteland, it was horrible, but a small part of Harry’s mind felt it intriguing, wondering how such things came to exist, what can be done about them, and if some of the dangers can be made to help the wasteland instead of hurt it.

They were soon approaching the burned-out husk of a factory, “Why are we here?” Harry asked.

“To find anything of value, we would have explored this place sooner but there were other locations of higher priority, it took a full year to plan that incursion into the Las Pegasus MAS hub where we found you.”

A small weight formed in Harry’s chest, realizing how lucky she was that the Steel Rangers had even found her.

“Halt,” Knight Lighting said. Everyone did at once, even Harry, hearing that tone of command that Vernon used on her when she needed something from Harry and there would be dire consequences if she didn’t comply. “Raiders, see them?”

Sure enough, if Harry squinted, she could see figures walking along the factory’s catwalks. Then she flinched at the sound of weapons being drawn… The strange tube-device on Scribe Rosemary’s side started glowing and making an eerie humming noise, and the boxes on Silver’s side slid forward on rails attached to her saddle, and a series of loud clicks could be heard from Lightning’s armor. Harry looked down at the device she had tried to stuff in a pocket on her new robes, the boxy thing which he had no idea how to hold properly, except with magic, which she had no idea how to use yet, and gulped nervously, “We- We don’t know if they’re bad ponies?”

Silver just shook her head, “Better safe than dead, Harry…”

Lightning Striker spoke up again, “Spread out, stick to trees, bushes, ditches, ruins, anywhere with cover and concealment, if you hear shooting, you are free to fire at will.”

Harry found herself practically glued to the side of Rosemary as they ducked into an ancient drainage ditch, filled with puddles of slime that Harry carefully avoided, memories of her face burning and itching coming back to her. Rosemary peeked around a corner, “Yep, definitely raiders, see their armor?” Harry craned her head and saw ponies wearing cobbled together leather and metal armor over old and torn clothing, manes falling apart much like her’s, although at least her’s was growing back rather fast, and looking generally disgusting.

“Y-Yeah…”

“Alright, Harry, I understand you don’t know how to use telekinesis yet, so-” Rosemary pulled the boxy device from Harry’s robes and stuffed its handle into her mouth, “Bite down to fire, pull the lever with your tongue to disable the safety, only point it at something you want dead, understand?” Harry tried to say something through the metal and plastic in her mouth but Rosemary turned away, pulling up his weapon. “Three… Two… One…”

There was an alien sound and a bluish-green bolt of energy lept from the end of Rosemary’s weapon faster than the eye could track leaving turquoise after-images floating in her vision, up on a catwalk, a raider pony seemed to dissolve into blue-green energy that stained the walls turquoise, there was a distant “pzeu-” sound and twin beams of pink light struck another raider in the neck, and her head fell away from her body. And then there came a loud series of “BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!” and three raiders simply vanished into red mist.

Harry fumbled with the device in her mouth and found the lever Rosemary was talking about, she had just gotten the safety disabled when she felt something hit her hard in the side, but it didn’t hurt too badly, Rosemary turned quickly and with another blast, ended whatever had just tried to hurt Harry. “Outside is clear, move in!” Rosemary shouted, he leapt up from the drainage ditch, pausing only to load some kind of battery into his weapon, and galloped forward. Harry followed as quickly as she could, not wanting to be left alone.

Soon she was inside the building, but Rosemary had clearly gone on without her, she was in a corridor with several bluish-green stains on the wall, and a pony which Harry could almost imagine was sleeping if not for the huge chunk missing from her side that was glowing and twisted with turquoise energy.

She came to an intersection in the corridor, and turned one way, when there came a beeping noise from beneath her hooves, a fear born from years of Vernon’s beatings and yellings whenever something was broken came screaming into the filly’s mind and she leapt backwards away from the beeping sound, which most likely saved her life, or at least her legs, as a moment later there was a bang! And the floor exploded sending splinters of concrete through the hall, she shook herself to clear her vision, her nose was dripping and her head hurt, she had been thrown against the wall and felt her side buckle in a way that send horrible pain up her side… There were footstep- Hoofsteps, Harry reminded herself, coming closer… Probably Silver, she must have something to help get rid of the pain… Instead, she turned her head and saw to unfamiliar ponies in spiked armor coming toward her, one carrying a baseball bat covered in barbed wire and another with a shovel.

“Help-” Harry began, but the baseball bat pony simply slammed the end of his bat into Harry’s side making burning pain lance up her ribs.

“Looks like we got some dumbass filly… Should we have some fun with her, or just beat her into slime?” The shovel pony said.

The box-weapon lay on the other side of the corridor from her, she needed it, she hoped it hadn’t been broken… She grunted and stumbled forward, and grabbed it in her teeth. “Look, the little bitch is trying to escape!” One of the raiders laughed, “What’s that little box thing?”

Harry pointed the end at the raider with the bat, who, realizing it must be some kind of weapon, moved forward and swung the bat to strike Harry in the side of the head, but he was too slow… Harry bit down, a beam of golden-yellow light lanced out from the box to the raider’s chest in a fraction of an instant, and his entire body burst into golden light… First his fur turned to ash, then a split-second later his skin turned to ash, then a split-second later his flesh turned to ash, and then his bone, and in a single second there was nothing but golden ashes coating the ground and Harry’s face, the pony’s bat and armor clattering to the ground.

Harry sat there, shaking, the second raider moved forward, shovel ready to impale the foal, but two beams of pink light lanced right through his body leaving glowing and smoking holes and he fell over dead. Silver Heartstrings ran through the far door, “I heard them shouting about a filly, I hope I wasn’t- Oh fuck!” Silver exclaimed, seeing the wounds on Harry, “Hold on, I got something for that,” She said, pulling out a needle and a vial of glowing red liquid.

Harry just sat there in the corner, shaking.

Author's Note

Sorry that I've been away, I've been working on my own original story, instead of being stuck to fanfics, but I'm back, for now... May still be a while until the next chapter, but hope you enjoy!

Chapter 5: Arcane Science

The building was clear, and Harry’s nerves had calmed… She still hurt, but that Med-X stuff worked wonders, and the healing potion was mending her broken ribs nicely. She killed someone… The pony was crazy, trying to kill her... But she was still a living creature, she should have shot her in the leg, or destroyed her weapon... But that wouldn’t have stopped that pony’s friend, and the others would have killed them anyway… I did what I had to do… Did you, was it entirely necessary… These thoughts swam in Harry’s head making her dizzy.

“Hold up, got more mines here, Rosemary!” The Knight said. Rosemary, without a word, stepped up, his horn glowing pale red… Harry needed to learn how to do that, and with that strange ‘magic; they used, unlatched a pair of yellow discs from the floor, pressing a switch underneath them before placing them carefully into pockets on his robes.

Harry realized what had nearly exploded under her hooves, she should have seen that bomb, if she did, she would have been able to run away from those ponies, she wouldn’t have needed to kill them. They would have chased her, but she could have hid!

Harry was finding it weird how naturally thinking of herself as a ‘her’ was…

Eventually the group came to a stop outside a door, Rosemary went up to a blocky metal thing coming out of the wall, a computer terminal Harry quickly learned, “Harry, this could be useful for you, come up here and I’ll show you something!”

Harry complied, and trotted over to where Rosemary was using his magic to type something into the keyboard. “Alright, this door is locked behind a password, but there’s almost no way to know what someone two-hundred years ago used as a password, not unless there’s a old book, memory orb, or some form of note to give us that information… So, we need to be a bit clever.”

“Yeah?” Harry said, questioningly.

“All ministry, Stabletec, and government terminals use the same code, and they have a built-in back door to operate them!” Harry took that information in, why would you intentionally make it so your computers could be opened without a password! Sensing what she was thinking, Rosemary continued, “We think the government did this so they could spy on their own networks… Watch closely.”

Harry watched as Rosemary typed into the terminal, first, as he powered it up it said “Ministry of Arcane Science Property, password required.”

“MOM access requested, show password logs.”

“Ministry of Morale override command accepted, showing previously used passwords,” At that, a jumbled list of words and phrases filled the screen, Rosemary selected one, but the screen flashed “Incorrect Password, MOM notified of potential hacking,” Rosemary ignored this, returned to the start screen, and tried the process over again, he failed two more times until he found the right password.

“Aren’t you worried of this, mom, being told that you’re trying to get into this computer?”

“The Ministry of Morale is two-hundred years dead, anyone monitoring our activity is a pile of warped bones, or a shambling corpse, up in Canterlot… We just need to make sure we type everything correctly,” He typed a few more commands and the door opened, “You just need to be careful if the computer you’re trying to hack is connected to any automated security, some ponies took security so seriously that there are entire buildings rigged to explode if you get the password wrong…” Harry flinched, suddenly scared, “Don’t worry, as paranoid as the ponies of the past were, it works to our advantage, Pinkie Pie’s ministry had bugs on every terminal, and with the right commands, you can disable any security system from any terminal across the wasteland.”

With that, they walked deeper into the building, pocketing smaller bits of tech they found useful or valuable. Harry quickly found herself a pack-mule as she was instructed to help carry any trinkets they found. “Looks like the raiders never got this deep into the facility, we should be careful for automated security,” Knight Lightning Striker said.

“What exactly are we here for?” Harry asked.

Silver Heartstrings perked up “Oh, we’re here because of-” Rosemary and Lightning both sent her glares, “Never mind… That’s classified…” She finished dejectedly.

“We’re simply here to recover something this facility was constructing, it shouldn’t be bigger than a pony’s head,” The Knight said… A few moments passed before he shouted “Turret!”

Everyone reacted instantly, Harry found herself swallowed by a pale red-pink light as Rosemary threw her to the side, and everyone took cover behind walls and factory machinery as there came a bleep and then a horribly loud series of bangs from somewhere up ahead. Lighting Striker leapt out from behind cover and replied with his own “BOOM!-BOOM!-BOOM!”

After what felt like hours, the team finally found what they were looking for and returned back to the Stable, Harry never saw exactly what it was they were looking for, just a large metal box that it apparently had been inside, and soon they were back outside of the building, trekking back.

The sun was setting… Sorta… It was hard to tell where the sun was behind all those clouds, but it was certainly getting dark by the time they got back to Stable 107, and Harry’s legs were sore from all the walking, the Med-X had worn off long ago and her side hurt. Rosemary spent the trip showing her how to levitate stuff with her horn, it was… Weird, she found herself with all sorts of complex patterns floating in her mind, Rosemary had said these were the spell patterns, the unicorn’s brain automatically forming them from information regarding the spell they wished to cast, like a compiler turning readable lines of code into something a computer can understand… Whatever that meant… Was that why his Aunt and Uncle always said magic didn’t exist, was that why Humans couldn’t use magic, because their brains weren’t able to make these patterns? It hurt her head to think about, but as she visualized these patterns, and applied them to objects, they were enveloped in blue halos of energy, and floated around, the heavier the object the harder Harry found it to keep the pattern still in her mind, and the patterns quickly shattered, dropping what she was trying to hold… It took a much more physical toll on her as well, as she felt some strange energy deep within her chest being drained away by each spellcasting, at one point she nearly fell over from the exhaustion, and Rosemary caught her, saying “I think that’s enough spellcasting for today, don’t worry, you’ll get better and more efficient with your casting, and as you grow older your biological reserves of magical energy will grow bigger.”

As they returned, another group of Steel Rangers were leaving, with them were the bright blue colors of Victory Flame… Slightly disturbing Harry, she was carrying a pair of assault rifles strapped to her side, “Hey! Harry! I see you’re still alive!” Victory waved at her… Harry half-heartedly waved back.

They passed back into the Stable, and Harry settled herself on one of the bunks in the filly’s room as she listened to the radio… The comforting soft jazz ended as the voice of the DJ came on… Harry kept an ear out but mostly just wanted to sleep… The image of that raider with the bat still fresh in her mind… The DJ was going on about how a stable-pony had apparently died in a train crash near a place called Appleloosa… Harry drifted off to sleep, dreams of raider-ponies chasing her as she ran atop a train car about to crash… As the train went over the hill, and a raider took aim at her head, she woke up, sweaty and curled into a ball.

She quickly got dressed in her patchy scribe robes and trotted around… It was still night, at least she thought it was still night. There weren’t that many other ponies trotting around right now… She sat on one of the catwalks overlooking the Stable’s atrium, she had grabbed a few sheets of paper and a pencil as she did, drawing always calmed her down after one of Vernon’s beatings… She lifted the pencil in her magic… It was weird, seeing it float around at her command… She made it zoom one way, then another, it took some of her power to make it move, but barely any at all to make it stay floating in one place. She twirled it around, that took much more power, but she still had plenty, this wasn’t going to deplete her magic any time soon… Weird how that worked, she could feel the magic inside her, slowly growing, like a bucket slowly being filled by a tap, except that tap was only a tiny bit open, she felt like she could twist it open a bit more, if only she knew how…

She lowered the pencil to the paper and started to sketch, the only images in her mind the gruesome raider, the train she heard about on the radio, and the strange symbols in her mind feeding the power that kept her pencil afloat… She didn’t want to see that raider anymore, so she began sketching out a train, chugging along a mountain, with vague pony-shapes all over it… But then as she tried drawing it, she lost focus of the pattern in her mind, and her pencil clattered to the floor as the magic holding it failed.

“Hmm…” She huffed, annoyed. She picked up the pencil again and started another sketch, she wasn’t paying much attention to what she was drawing, but, after a few moments of mindlessly sketching, the paper started to glow… She had drawn the symbol in her mind, a complex series of circles, lines, cross-shapes, rings, curves, spirals… As she touched the pencil to the paper, the paper glowed slightly… Weird. Was the paper magic now? She placed her horn against it, and the paper started to float, even after she released her horn the paper stayed still in the air for a few moments before the glow died and it fell back down… Huh...

“I see you grasp the concept behind talisman production.”

A scribe-mare walked up, one Harry didn’t recognize. “Huh?”

“Talismans, small chunks of metal or crystal inscribed with spell-patterns, they basically work as an artificial horn, only, without being connected to a brain, they can only cast a single spell… Whichever pattern is physically built into them, all sorts of arcane tech uses them.”

“Cool… I guess…”

“Yep…” The scribe paused, in thought, “You should talk to Shockweld if you want to learn more, he’s a bit of a genius when it comes to making talismans, he’s mostly down in the engineering bays, fixing the magical components in the reactors, water purifiers, and air purifiers… Sometimes he’s also fixing stuff like broken energy weapons, he could certainly use the extra help.”

“I’ll think about it…” Harry certainly thought the idea was unique, and it would help him learn a bit more about what this magic really was.

“Oh, and, quick warning, in two more days the foals are being taken out on some more field-work.”

Harry’s heart sank at that, the scribe trotted away, but Harry couldn’t help feeling nervous at the thought of going back out there again… She needed to learn magic, and fast, it seemed like the only thing that could really help her out in the wasteland… The thought of that stallion raider with the bat, ready to bash Harry’s head in came back… And she quickly collected the paper and pencil, putting them back where she found them, and soon she marched off toward the stairs, following the signs that said “Engineering”

Shockweld had placed a gun on the table, centimeters from Harry’s nose, Harry gulped, “Well, you wanted to learn more about magic, first you need to learn telekinesis, and I find there is no better practice exercise than this.”

“W-What do you want me to do…” Harry carefully said, looking at the revolver.

“Disassemble it, and reassemble it.”

“R-Really?”

“Yes… Here are the tools you will be needing,” He continued, dropping several screwdrivers of various sizes on the table, “Later we will be practicing with disassembly without conventional earth-pony tools, but for now, these will make it slightly easier.”

Harry was nervous, but he took the screwdriver in his magic and tried removing one of the screws connecting the handle to the revolving chamber, Shockweld watched in slight disappointment as Harry had difficulty trying to hold the screwdriver… Soon he got it into the slots in the screws and twisted, but all that did was make the entire gun twist.

“Hold the revolver steady as you unscrew.”

“Sir-” Harry began, “How exactly do I hold two things at once, I don’t think I can hold all of this while making only the screwdriver spin.”

“It’s simple, just try…”

“Sir-”

“Try…”

Harry did so, holding the revolver and the screwdriver in the same magic field, and tried to twist, but again, everything moved, not just the screwdriver. “Don’t hold everything in the same field, even a newborn unicorn foal knows that,” Sparkweld scolded.

Harry “Perhaps if you could actually show me how!”

“You do not need my help in this, it is simple… Just keep on trying until you get it.”

Harry looked at the gun and the screwdriver, and tried to pull his magic apart without pulling the gun apart with it, but all that happened was his telekinesis failed completely.

“Try again.” And so… Harry kept on trying. Eventually, after what felt like hours of failure, he succeeded in splitting the magic between two targets… He formed two separate telekinesis spells in his mind, one on the screwdriver, the other on the handle of the revolver, he ended up making the gun spin instead of the screwdriver, but it had the same effect, the screw came out. “Poor performance, but at least you succeeded, just remember to actually make the screwdriver spin next time… That is all the time I have for you today, keep the screwdriver and gun, I want all the pieces disassembled by next morning, and if you lose a single piece you’ll be sorry… Got that.”

Harry only nodded as the stallion trotted off.

Chapter 6: Here and There

Harry slept calmly, and barely noticed the needle piercing her neck, the tranquilizer took hold instantly, and Silver carefully carried the foal into the infirmary, held her down with the autodoc, and, talking to herself again, she muttered “Now, time to find out exactly what you are…” A magical scanner arm reaching out and scanning the strange scar on the filly’s forehead, right below the horn. Her body was coated in some kind of arcane shield, on her first scans Silver believed it to be a neutralizer field, but, no, spells worked just the same on her as any other filly her age… She also had much faster natural healing, something that only skilled medical unicorns should have, the field was making the scanner’s readings of the scar tissue blurry.

Silver looked at the magical suppressor-ring the autodoc had placed on the filly’s horn, it was standard, you didn’t want a panicking patient destroying the equipment as it worked to save a life… Where the ring touched, the magic field around the foal dissipated, but didn’t go away completely… The rings were adjustable to fit most horn sizes, but not a fully pony’s body… There were rumors of devices during the war that could negate magic on a mass-scale, magic interdictors preventing zebra potions from working, but she didn’t have one on hand, plus, who knows how much magical equipment in the Stable would be damaged from the use of such a device…

Silver, knowing how important this project of hers was, it had been ordered by the Star Paladin, apologized to her poor Autodoc as she ordered the magic suppressor ring removed from the patient’s horn, and she carefully took out a screwdriver pried the ring off of the mechanical arm holding it, and split the ring in half, carefully extracting and placing on a tray the grains of black dust that came out of the simple iron band… It was this dust that was the actual important part of the suppressor, tiny black crystals, mined from some rock farm from before the war, the reason Equestria annexed the Changeling Hives as the Great War broke out, according to what history on the subject remained, Changelings thrones were made from this black rock, and in the hands of ponies they had helped save many lives from Megaspells during the end, but there wasn’t enough of it to save everyone, not even after all the southern hives had been plundered… Ironic, how a rock that absorbed magic had saved pony lives in the end.

Silver mixed the black rocks in with a basic healing potion, she would need to check the waste recycler for the next few days to get the crystals back after this, they were too valuable to go to waste in… Well… Waste…

The potion was injected directly into the foal, and as it did Harry’s magic weakened, the field slowly fading out, but the scar was resisting the crystal’s effects… Worse… Harry’s vital signs were becoming erratic, the magic around the scar was growing stronger as the shield faded… Silver swore as she realized her mistake, she quickly took a scan of the scar, but didn’t wait for the results, she immediately stuck a magically conductive rod into the foal’s side, had she not been so thoroughly anesthetized Harry would have been writhing in pain, at least that meant Silver didn’t have to worry about the pony having a seizure on top of whatever that scar was doing to her.

She connected a wire to the conductive rod, and wired that into a thaumimeter, she didn’t want to overload the poor foal… Oh shit she was bad at this, she should have called for a unicorn, or at least a magical engineer, but there wasn’t time, she set the dial on the thaumimeter, plugged in a magical spark battery, and there was a soft flash of light from the foal as magic energy quickly flowed back into her, overwhelming the small amount of crystal that she had injected and restoring the pony to magical equilibrium… This method of treating magical burnout wasn’t recommended, but in the situation…

Silver breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the field push back against the magic in the foal’s scar, she had barely saved Harry’s life, for the second time that week. Although this time she had also been the one to almost kill the poor pony.

She pulled out a clipboard and began writing, “Subject’s scar tissue imbued with magical properties consistent with necromancy, subject’s arcane field suppressing scar… Further research required.” At that, Silver finally looked at the results of the scan she had taken in the brief moment where Harry’s magical field had failed. “Scar tissue similar in composition to recent magical energy weapon damage, however approximate age is indeterminable, will inquire the subject when conscious. Two magical patterns impressed upon scar, primary pattern consistent with samples recovered from Hoofington and Canterlot, see previous research on ‘Enervation’ and ‘Pink Cloud’ for further details. Second pattern appears to be-” At that Silver paused.

She was familiar enough with the samples recovered from Canterlot and Hoofington to recognize a death spell… Treating some of the Steel Rangers from those contingents who had been exposed had been… Gruesome… But not the other spell pattern impressed upon the scar, it was… A neural network? She vaguely remembered seeing something like this… Memories slowly came together, of finding a strange little trinket in one expedition into the ruins of Las Pegasus, and putting it into the arcane scanner after a late night of boredom with nothing else to do… She set off for her quarters, and returned with a small figure, a ceramic statue of one of the Ministry Mares, just some collector’s trinket, but remarkably resilient, practically indestructible, and unmarred by centuries of decay. The words “Be Smart” imprinted in gold letters…

Sure enough, when she placed the statuette under the arcane scanner, the reading was the exact same as the foal’s scar tissue.

The bobbies had brought the thing in a few days ago, and placed it in cold storage… The thing was some kind of insect, but horribly oversized… The doctor, Robert Homes, pulled the thing out and began an autopsy, after continuously inspecting it, disappointed that the sample he had was so torn by the shotgun blast that killed it, he was left with one conclusion, this was a new species, one not discovered on earth so far! He was ecstatic, and told his assistant with glee, he would need to do a bit of research, but perhaps he might go down in history, giving his name to this new species of insect! He had picked up the phone, about to address his colleagues in London, not noticing as a man walked up behind him and whispered something “Obliviate-”… Everything he had experienced in the past week had vanished from his mind… The flayed and dissected corpse of the insect was taken off the tray, and without being noticed at all, the man had left, disappearing around the corner, vanishing into thin air with another whisper, the flick of a small twig of wood.

Harry awoke from the same dream, but stronger, and more horrible than ever before… His mother crying, the laughing, the flash of green, and pain, horrible, horrible, horrible pain! That flash of green, it was so similar to that weapon Rosemary used, a different shade, but Harry could almost imagine a raider-man, holding a series of tubes and coils and glass and spikes, firing a blast of magical energy into Harry’s skull, leaving him nothing more than a puddle of green gel.

Harry turned, feeling something on his… Her… She would still need to get used to that. On her bed, she felt around, feeling a strange rush as she pulled a small ceramic statuette of a purple mare. There were golden letters carved into the base of the statuette, “Be Smart”, she rolled the words over in her mouth, then shrugged, or at least tried to, she was still getting used to this whole, being turned into a pony, thing… On the bottom of the statuette was a small sliver of paper “Wanted you to have this, don’t lose it - Silver Heartstrings”

Harry put the trinket into her scribe robes, collected the parts of the revolver she had spent all night disassembling, and went to train some more in magic with Sparkweld. The stallion, upon seeing Harry’s work, nodded, “Now,” He began, “Reassemble it, back exactly the way you took it apart.”

“What?”

“You heard me, put it back together.”

Harry, suddenly nervous, looked down at the parts of the gun scattered on the table, “Be smart…” She muttered to herself, and started pulling out the most obvious pieces first and trying to fit them together… She could already feel herself a little smarter as she quickly learned where everything was supposed to go.

The Headmaster sat, smiling gleefully at watching the new first-year students file into his hall, the sorting began, the hat was pulled out, singing his latest song, Hogwarts’ ghosts were floating around at their tables, the new children coming in with a mixture of fear and wonder. Minerva began calling out names, and one-by-one they were sorted, Dumbledore chuckled as Frederick Weasely was placed into Gryffindor even as the hat was almost a meter off his head, his sibling George followed. It was expected, the entire family had only ever been in that house, but it was still amusing to see their siblings all cheer at another two Weaselys being sorted. Filius and Quirinus weren’t looking over the sorting, but quietly discussing some of the finer details of Gilderoy Lockhart’s new book… Albus was somewhat proud of what the grandnephew of his old friend T.E. Lawrence had become. Perhaps when Quirinus decided to retire, if he ever did, he would ask that man to come join as a professor. Snape on the other hand was observing the sorting intently, for once, and seemed particularly interested in the Hufflepuffs for some reason, and even his Divinations professor had come to observe the sorting this year.

Minerva finished the sorting, and Albus stood to address the students. While he was doing this, his only real thought was “Two more years, only two more years… And at last Harry would be joining!”

Harry sighed internally as she raised her magical energy pistol, she didn’t like the thought of killing another creature, but at least these were just animals, it was much easier to fry an overgrown and mutated alligator than kill a pony, Harry somehow was glad that she was in this horse-world, she didn’t think she would ever have it in her to take the life of a human… Not yet… She thought grimmly to herself as she bit the trigger, and the radigator slumped over with a glowing, burning hole in its head. A colder and more logical part of her mind had slowly been taking over ever since she got here… It seems that cold logic was all this group of Steel Rangers she had been assigned to had. It was her second time out in the field, and this time, instead of being with Sparkweld, or Rosemary, or Silver, or Lighting… This time the two ponies accompanying her were both knights, who didn’t even bother giving their names, or even calling Harry by hers, they just addressed her as “Foal”.

Still, she pressed on, going through this gator-infested ruin, some old water treatment plant. She doubted if there really was anything left in this place that was really worth it, everything just seemed like rust.

Eventually, the knights retrieved what they had set out to gain, some kind of magical device, to Harry, it just looked like a jeweled box… An ugly one, although perhaps that was just all the algae and slime the damned thing had been coated in.

The moment they were back in the Stable, Harry sat in bed and listened to the radio, the DJ was on again, telling a quite frankly amazing tale about a stable mare who had killed a dragon! And freeded over a hundred slaves too by the sound of it. Harry shivered a little, realizing that, if there were dragons out there, she may need to fight one someday… Then, she got up, realizing she was late for her magic training with Sparkweld!

She arrived in the maintenance bay, the stallion waiting for her with another gun sitting on the table, she had done this before at least a dozen times now, this was going to be easy, she wanted to learn something new… Sparkweld said, “Stand, you will not be sitting tonight.” Harry did so, and Sparkweld pointed the revolver squarely at Harry’s chest, “We are moving on from telekinesis to shield spells… Do not worry, these are just rubber bullets…” Harry suddenly realized some ironic lesson about getting what you wished for. The next few days were going to be painful.

Chapter 7: The Fog of Las Pegasus

Harry trotted through the doorway into the maintenance section of the Stable… She reacted before she even heard the click, covering herself in a shield, magical energy warped into a physical barrier that could absorb any type of energy, as long as it didn’t overwhelm her own magical power put into the barrier. An ear-splitting bang, deafened by the magical field around her, echoed through the room… Harry was slightly perturbed to see a pellet of solid lead, not rubber, fall to the ground this time. “Good job, Harry Potter. Seems you’ve mastered the shield spell,” Sparkweld’s tone was approving for once, even impressed.

“I’ve gotten a bit of experience in the field,” Harry replied, “Saved my life twice now.”

“Make that a third time, not that I was aiming for anything vital, but you never know, my aim could have been off…”

“Compared to a burst of rifle rounds, that pistol is nothing…” Harry remembered how only yesterday that raider aiming for her head, and just how close she came to dying, again, that day, her shield broke right on the final bullet that the raider had fired… Harry was slightly disturbed by the memory, not because of how close she had come to death, near-death experiences were almost becoming routine now, no… It was how she didn’t feel any sympathy, or regret, as she put a magical energy beam through that mare’s head a second later.

“I hear you have a big mission coming up tomorrow, going into Las Pegasus… Be careful.”

“Yeah, I heard from the Star Paladin… At least I’ll be in good company.”

“Yes, but Las Pegasus is a bit more dangerous than other parts of the wasteland, granted it’s not like we’re sending you out east to the Hoof, or up north to Canterlot, but Las Pegasus has more than just bugs, and beasts, and raiders… It was a cloud city, but a low-flying one, and one with many concrete and brick buildings built into the clouds, it wasn’t like Cloudsdale, which vanished into mist when it was hit by the bombs, or Thunderhead, which survived intact and in the hooves of the Enclave… No, Las Pegasus fell to the ground… It is a maze of broken and collapsing ruins, thick mists that are what remain of the clouds that once held the city up, and many, many buried structures beneath the city, what remains of lower Las-Pegasus, before it was flattened by the upper city falling on to it. There are many dangerous things still lurking in there…”

“I’ll be careful, sir.”

“Of course you will, and I will be making damn sure of it, I have set aside all of today to teach you two spells, two very dangerous, but two very valuable spells… Understood.”

“Scribe Silver Heartstrings was going to teach me potion brewing today though?”

“I’ve already spoken to her, she agrees this is more important.”

“Alright then, what are they?”

“You’ve already mastered basic telekinesis, and the shield spell, these are prerequisites for these two spells, and with your level of understanding, you will have an easier time than most mastering these two… Now, follow my instructions closely, for I am not the most proficient with these abilities either, but I understand the theory behind them in great detail.”

“Understood.”

“Create a magical shield, and layer a telekinetic spell over it with opposite magical charge to the standard Telekinesis spell.”

“So, I apologize in advance for my intrusion, ma’am, but-”

“Make it quick, Sir Penwood, I am in the middle of some rather important business…” The woman at the desk, short, pudgy, middle-aged, was briskly writing away with a quill, scratching the paper… The moment she heard a knock on the door she whispered “Fidelia Lacuna” She couldn’t risk the scroll she had been scribbling being read by anyone, not just yet anyway… There was a time and place, and this was not it… Not yet…

“Well, there had been a magical disturbance in a muggle neighborhood Surrey, naturally the proper departments were notified, however the muggle aurors had gotten there before our own, they followed-”

“Hem-hem, get to the point, Penwood…”

“Yes Ma’am, five obliviations were necessary, and the corpse of the magical creature was brought in, normally the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures would have dealt with this, however this creature does not appear to be any kind of creature we currently have on record anywhere in England, or anywhere in the world for that matter, nor does it appear to have been made by accident or on purpose, I was going to inform the Minister of Magic however I was redirected to you…”

“Bring it in then…”

The man seemed slightly relieved and with a quick Accio a tray holding some horribly bloated and misshapen mass came in, the woman, disguised, pulled out her wand and muttered “Incendio”, the mass burst into flames, “There we are! No need to worry now, is there Penwood?” She said in her sickeningly-sweet tones.

Penwood, with a rare moment of foresight, took this as it was, an order to leave, and promptly did so, not risking angering the toad-like woman. As he left, the woman returned to her previous, and far more important, task… She had already gotten this far, she wasn’t going to be stopped, just a few more years and it would all come together, first though, she needed a few certain people on her side, she already had the Minister of Magic, but there were others of equal importance, and with another hour of carefully planned scribbling, the scroll was complete… She undid the fidelius, now just a matter of putting it into the right hands and waiting for the pieces to fall into place…

Harry was ready, she was half-listening to the radio, talking about a group of griffons, Blackwing’s Talons, were trapped in some building in Manehattan by creatures called Alicorns, Harry was unsure what an alicorn even was, it sounded worrying, but she had her own problems to worry about, she had her magical energy pistol, she had a sizeable amount of spark-cells for it, she had just finished reviewing the spells Sparkweld had taught her all yesterday… She was ready… At that moment, the rangers came in, two unknown Knights, Harry was sure she had seen them wandering around but didn’t know their names, Lighting Striker, a more familiar face among the power-armored ponies, and two scribes, of the two she was only familiar with Rosemary, the other was completely new to her. With the group was a paladin, in a slightly more advanced model of power armor, and, to Harry’s surprise, another very familiar face, Victory Flame, her assault rifles loaded and strapped firmly to a foal-sized battle saddle.

“We ready,” The paladin said, it was not a question but a statement, the time was now. Every pony nodded, Harry included, and they began their march out of the Stable. A few hours of hard trekking through the wasteland later and they were approaching the outskirts of Las Pegasus. She had seen it on the horizon, but never in that great detail, here, she could get a far better look at the city… Or rather, two cities… It was like some giant monster had ripped up one city and tossed it into another, creating a pile of broken buildings stacked one atop another with a layer of mist and fog around the base, so thick it almost looked like you could walk on it.

They climbed over piles of rubble that used to be buildings, sometimes checking the ruins for anything of use, usually finding little more than a few bottlecaps and some ammo, sometimes finding crappy weapons of no use to anyone but raiders, most of the time finding nothing. The rubble and broken buildings got more and more dense as they moved on from the suburbs to the collapsed city itself… The fog was overwhelming, completely opaque, they stayed glued side-by-side.

“You know…” Victory began, slightly scared, “I’ve heard stories, about ponies trying to explore Las Pegasus, they say the place is filled with ghouls, and if you’re not careful, you can stumble into huge nests of them without realizing…”

“I don’t want to know what a ghoul is…” Harry said to herself, feeling far more scared than she acted. The ground was rough, covered in rubble, and with the fog, just trying to walk forward was a hazard, she very nearly fell into a pit that had been hidden in the clouds.

Victory’s words ended up being rather prophetic, they were following some kind of map the Paladin had, and were apparently close, when, suddenly, they heard a strange shriek up ahead… “Ferals, EFS says… Three meters ahead,” The paladin whispered, “Back up slowly, do not make any loud noises or sudden moves.” It was too late for that, as the pony… Or at least Harry thought it was a pony, it was more a mess of rotten flesh in the shape of a pony, leapt out and tried to bite off the head of their paladin, teeth gnawing on hard metal… The ranger didn’t panic, like Harry almost did, instead, the paladin reacted swiftly and calmly, slamming a hoof to dislodge the creature before putting a quick burst of minigun fire into the nasty thing’s head, causing it to splatter blood against the ground, making Harry feel a little sick.

More twisted screams echoed around them, “Hostiles east and south, twenty or thirty!” The unnamed knight replied. Rosemary had unlatched his magical plasma rifle and the other scribe-mare had pulled out a magical pistol, an exact duplicate of Harry’s, down to the golden-yellow beam color, and began firing blindly into the fog.

“Cannot take this many in open terrain, move to cover, now!” The paladin responded, Harry and Victory found themselves being hauled on to Lighting’s back as the power-armored ponies could run far quicker than the foals could.

“Foals, act as rear guard, shoot anything coming out of that fog!” Lighting said, and Harry and Victory complied, Harry telekinetically raising her energy pistol and firing at any shadows she saw moving in the mist, Lighting did the same, her bullets tore small holes in the fog that briefly showed many pony-like shapes running toward them, Victory’s assault rifle bangs causing Harry’s ears to ring.

“Target location coming up,” The paladin continued. The mist was a little lighter here, and turning her head back only for a moment to see where they were heading toward, Harry could make out the looming shape of some large building, and a sign that they passed under that she couldn’t get the chance to read, so, she turned back and kept shooting… She must have hit one at least, because there was a bright golden-orange flare of light from in the fog, probably a ghoul being disintegrated by the spells in the pistol’s beam.

They were marching up a staircase, and the next thing Harry knew they skid to a halt inside the confines of some kind of lobby, they didn’t bother opening the door, instead the paladin ploughed right through it in his power armor, sending splinters of wood in all directions, after that, he turned, and his minigun started to rip through the horde outside, or at least that’s probably what was happening, all Harry heard were horrible warped screams and the roar of the Paladin’s rotary cannon as he stood resolutely. One of the other unnamed knights, a mare judging from her armor’s build and voice, joined the paladin in laying down fire, letting her magical energy rifle lose with blasts of blue light and “pzzeu-” sounds.

Eventually the ghouls must have run away or all been cut down, because the shrieks stopped and so did the gunfire. Harry’s ears felt numb in the sudden silence. Harry took the opportunity to look around the building, it was a lobby, with a desk, several broken computers, a sofa, and many, many display cabinets with… Guns… Magical energy weapons, inside them, the displays had plaques that read “Trottz-200 Pistol - Display model only” Up behind the desk was a sign advertising “Trottz Arcane Electronics - Finest craftsmares of robotics, magical energy weapons, specialist talismans, and arcane electronics in Equestria”

“Remember,” The paladin began “We’re here for a negative-energy induction talisman, nothing more, nothing less, it is critical to the Star Paladin’s project… If you find anything of value you may retrieve it if, and only if, it does not impede our primary objective.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Everyone including Harry announced at once.

The paladin, one of the scribes and Lighting Striker searched the bottom floors, which they said would be the most dangerous due to the damage sustained when the city collapsed, thus they would be the largest team. Victory, Rosemary, and one of the Knights were going to search the central floors. Harry was left with the female Knight and sent to search the top floors. They marched up the stairwell and reached the designated areas, fanning out to search the rooms.

It was mostly empty, lots of office space, lots of filing cabinets, computer terminals, ancient research and finance papers now coated so thoroughly in mold they were indecipherable. Harry figured it was unlikely they would find anything useful up here.. He had trotted carefully around the bones of a dead pony in a labcoat, and found a computer terminal that still worked, she opened it up… Damn, password protected… She searched her mind for what Rosemary had taught her, about the Ministry of Morale having back-doors into every terminal. She typed out “MOM access requested, show password logs,” and went to work trying to guess the terminal’s password, by sheer luck she chose the right password on the first try, typing in “Candles.”

The only non-corrupted file on there was a corporate memo, “Trials for the new Trottz-4501 Rifle will be done this saturday, all but one of the test models have been shipped out to the testing grounds in the MAS hub in Somnambula, one model still remains in the building, this one is to have the firing talisman removed and placed with the other display models, even if the military deny our latest production run, we can sell them to the public as collectors models - Trottz Chief Secretary Crystal Catalyst.”

Harry was about to head back to the stairs and report the lack of anything useful on this floor, when she heard a crack from below her hooves, she stared down, the floor here had suffered years of water damage, cracks were spidering out from where her hoof had punched a small hole in the floor, she realized she should run a moment too late, and the floor gave out beneath her.

She dusted herself off, her leg hurt a bit, but she had somehow survived that fall with nothing more than a few bruises. She was about to head off and find the stairs again when another noise caught her ears, panicked whispering, “Yes, yes, I heard it, something else is here, there was a crash, please talk to me my Goddess, tell me what I must do… I must find these intruders in my sanctuary, yes, I must find these intruders…”

Harry made herself as quiet as possible, sneaking around, trying to find where this other pony was. She turned a corner and found a strange sight… A huge mare, towering over him, trotting around in circles, she was midnight blue, almost black in the light… She had a huge pair of swan-like wings extending from her sides, and a horn… Or, rather, the stump of a horn, it had been broken off, and worse still, half this mare’s face was horribly scarred and deformed, furless and a livid pink. “Goddess… Oh Goddess… Where has your voice gone! Why can I not hear you anymore!” The mare muttered to herself. “The intruder, she is near, I can feel her!” The winged-unicorn suddenly said… The creature raised the stump of her horn and it sparked wildly, a strange semi-transparent shine erupted across the creature, she became transparent for a second, then visible again, then transparent, then fully invisible, then visible… She was flickering in and out of visibility, invisibility, and semi-visibility, the changes in her state seeming to happen in time with the sparks from her shattered horn.

In the room there was some kind of nest, like a pillow-fort Harry had seen Dudley had sometimes made when he was a little boy, somehow Harry had always gotten in trouble for messing up the pillows, even if he had seen Dudley was the one doing it… But this fort wasn’t made of pillows, it was made of desks, computers, filing cabinets, gemstones, everything it seems the creature could get her hooves and damaged horn on. Past this nest was the stairwell, barricaded up with an old workbench of some kind. If harry could get past it, she could warn the Knight about this creature… Should he? The mare was clearly insane from her mumbling and ranting, but she wasn’t a raider, she didn’t even seem all that dangerous, and Harry knew the Rangers would try to kill her.

Harry carefully made her way out of cover and ducked under a table, he whispered, “I’m sorry,” to the creature, hoping that it didn’t hear her, but still she couldn’t help feel a pang of sympathy for it.

“The intruder!” The mare shouted, it clearly heard Harry’s whisper, and her horn started sparking wildly as the mare flared her wings. Harry thought fast and cast her reflecting-shield, a moment later the mare let lose a wild burst of lighting… Had the mare’s horn been intact, Harry most certainly would have died, the magical lighting more than powerful enough to overcome her simple spell, but as it was, the lighting fractured out from the horn like light through a prism, spreading out in a shotgun-blast in all three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, making scorch-marks on the walls, one of these blasts hit Harry’s reflector shield, even after being divided like that, the magical power behind the winged-unicorn’s strike was more than enough to shatter her shield, but not before the inverse-telekinesis had done its job, and sent that blast of magical lighting back at the caster, the mare shouted in pain, but otherwise she didn’t even flinch from the magical burst.

Harry couldn’t make it to the stairwell, not with the barricade, so she ducked through a side door… She sat there in that room, panting, as the winged-unicorn slammed again and again against the door, trying to break it down with brute force, had the door been wood it would have broken, but this door was metal… Harry then heard the mare charing another spell, and quickly backed away from the door as another shotgun-blast of magical bolts had punctured a dozen holes in the metal, luckily none of these blasts hit Harry, but it would only be a matter of time before she broke through.

Harry searched the room for some way out, or something useful… There were desks, power tools, wrenches and screwdrivers, in an emergency she could use them as weapons, but her magical energy pistol was better, and as crazy as this creature was, she didn’t want to kill it, this mare wasn’t like the raiders, this mare wasn’t malevolent, she was just scared and confused by the sound of it, and wanted to be with her ‘Goddess’, whatever that was.

Harry did find some kind of gun lying on a table, a long, sleek, and advanced looking magical energy rifle, the words “Trottz-4501 Magical Plasma Rifle” painted on the side… It looked like the one Rosemary had, but larger, sleeker, and generally more refined, less like a random assortment of pipes and tubes and spikes and cables, more like a proper gun, rather than a piece of scientific equipment made into a weapon. Harry couldn’t leave it here, this was something the Rangers would want, and, worst case scenario, she could use it against the Mare trying to break down the door.

“The Goddess is not angry with you, the Goddess is pleased with you, and asks you to allow me safe passage, I wish you no harm!” Harry said, pointing the magical energy rifle at the door, just in case…

Somehow, Harry was getting through to the mare, “But, how do you know this, do you hear the Goddess’ voice?”

“Yes, yes I hear the Goddess’ voice.”

“You hear the Goddess’ voice, what are her commands, please, I am desperate, I have not heard her voice in so long, I had thought she had abandoned me, I thought she had given up on me… Please, Goddess!”

“She asks that you let me go, as I am not your foe, I am a friend of the Goddess, and she has not forgotten you, she simply cannot speak with you yet, but will, soon.”

“She, she truly has not forgotten me!” There was hope in that voice, hope and immense relief.

“I can help you hear her again, allow me to help.” Harry said, not knowing how to help, but hoping the bluff could at least by her time. Harry opened the door, and saw the huge winged unicorn mare bowing to Her.

“Please, help me… Give me her voice back!”

Harry paused, not knowing what, but seeing the horrible burns on the mare’s face, and the crack on her horn, Harry got an idea, and pulled a healing potion from her robes, “Take this, you are hurt, this will help.”

“Are- Are you sure?”

“Please do it, it may help you hear the Goddess again.”

“Thank you, oh thank you, small mare, I will not forget this!”

“Uhh… You’re welcome?”

“You may leave, I thought you an intruder, had I know how close you are to my Goddess, I would never have dreamed of harming you.”

“Umm… Thank you.”

With that, Harry quickly climbed up the stairs, and rejoined the mare-Knight, “Harry! You’re alright, thank Celestia, I heard the crash and went looking for you! What’s that on your back?” She said, looking at the magical energy weapon Harry had grabbed.

“Oh, I can explain later, for now, just avoid that floor, it’s all boarded up for a reason.”

Two hours later, the Paladin came to find them, evidently Victory was the one to find the talisman they were looking for in the end, Harry was able to convince the others not to go looking on the floor with the winged-unicorn, and they left the building, back out into the fogs… Harry kept his new plasma rifle loaded, afraid of a ghoul jumping out at them any moment, but aside from a brief scare as he nearly tripped over the corpse of one of the ghouls that had attacked them earlier, they made it back to the stable unmolested.

Author's Note

Harry gained some karma this chapter... And you can bet it's going to come back to help her in the future :raritywink:

Chapter 8: Reapers, Maurauders, and Talons

A huge series of towers, one in particular, rose from the earth, surrounded by a glowing sea of magical waste, walls covered in magical energy turrets, filled with ancient arcano-archeotech and magical devices, any one of these more valuable than all the caps in Equestria, tools of destruction, creation, healing, cloning, robotics, industry, warfare, and much more… This place however was, for the most part, dead… No ponies ever entered that place and came back alive, not now, and probably not for a very long time yet… And this was not a place of great importance, not yet, as all the jewels of technology in that place were off-limits due simply to how hazardous that place was, no, of far more interest was a small town just a few kilometers to the west of this grand vault of ancient magical technology.

The town was a simple place, a place of freedom, where one could take wary souls and free them from the burden of the wasteland, not today however, two armies had gathered outside, two hordes of angry and armed ponies, both after the same goal… A mare, with a white coat, red and black mane, and a horribly large bounty on her head. The two armies stormed into the town at once, on one side, a whole bunch of Pecos gangsters, armed with everything from simple revolvers and lever-action rifles to dynamite and makeshift rocket launchers.

The other army was led by a cyber-biomechanical monster who could run his way through brick walls and flatten bunkers with side-mounted howitzers. Battle erupted… Guns fired, rockets and grenades and explosives flew in all directions, the FPOOOM-FPOOOM-FPOOOM! Of the monster’s cannons rendered huge holes in buildings, obliterating any pony unlucky enough to be directly hit… And among it all, four ponies were running for their lives. One took to the skies in a flash of violet and silver, another left beeping gifts of explosive death to anyone foolish enough to follow them through dark alleys, another simply didn’t care about getting shot or exploded, and just revealed in the destruction, like a chainsaw strapped to a ceiling fan put at max speed and let loose into the battlefield… The forth was the pony who started all this.

That mare leapt across burning wreckage and through corridors of open warfare, she ran, hoping to escape in the confusion, she had nearly gotten out of the town, her friends surrounding her on all sides… Then a sniper bullet pierced her flank right through her cutie mark… Then a spray of buckshot hit her side, not enough to even break through her security barding, but those bullets were made of burning phosphorus and eventually she had to throw her armor away to prevent herself going up in a fireball… Shrapnel from a grenade flayed parts of her side, but she kept running, but for how long… She was losing blood fast, and made faster when a pistol shot went wild and cut a bleeding line across her neck, she would have bled to death right then and there had she not swallowed down a healing potion, but that potion was milky white and barely functional, the wounds scabbed over but bled again the moment she started running, tearing them open again. Then, from the other side of the city, on the top of a building, the machine-stallion saw the slightest glimpse of his target, and fired… One shell missed, the second only barely hit, but with shells of such size and devastation, and having abandoned her armor, the shell tore her hind leg clean off, and she was sent flying, out of sight of the monster. The monster was coming, but got slowed down as he ended up getting attacked atop his building firing-post by a trio of siblings… They didn’t live long, but they gave the mare time to escape out of sight.

“Blackjack! Your leg!” The stallion yelled, picking up his enemy-turned-friend-turned-enemy-turned-friend, and kept trudging forward… Still, there was a chance the mare would make it out of this alive, they had gotten quite far, the streak of silver and violet came to the ground as they took cover behind the remains of an ancient home. But taking cover there had sealed the mare’s fate. Already, Blackjack’s wounds were melting away from the poisoned magic, her neck was starting to rot, her flanks and leg had made her backside useless, she was choking on her own blood.

“Damn it, I knew they would get me one of these days… Damn it, why here…”

“Blackjack! Celestia damn it, we need to get her out of here, the enervation!”

“Fuck, Glory, P-21, It’s too late for me, fuck… I can’t let them get me… Fuck,” She used what power she had left in her horn, raising a shotgun, the others moved quickly to take it away, but they weren’t fast enough, she pulled the barrel up right into her foreleg, right into the screen of her pipbuck… She wouldn’t give her enemies the satisfaction of victory, she would deny them the file on her foreleg, the cursed program that had led to so much death, she fired… Her pipbuck exploded in a shower of sparks, her foreleg was a bloodied mass that quickly started to rot and melt from the dark magic that had already made her backside useless and was quickly working her way through her neck. “They won’t ever get me or EC-1101…” She paused to choke up blood, “Bury me, don’t even leave a mark on my grave, I won’t let them find me, bury Folly too, it’s too dangerous… And don’t ever come back to Hoofington.”

“Blackjack-”

“Do it!” She used all the strength she still had, her voice was failing her as the rot had spread deeper into her neck, “Do it, and run! Go north, go north and do not stop until you reach Manehattan, find her, the Stable Dweller, she can use your help more than me now, s-she’s... the one who... is going to save... Equestria…”

Her friends dutifully followed their beloved leader’s final command, a deep pit was dug, several secrets were lost that day, never in all of history to ever be found again, but it was for the better. With a final goodbye to the nameless grave, they went north… North, to the Lightbringer

Harry, Rosemary, and Silver had been called up to the Stable’s overmare’s office, a meeting directly with the Star Paladin, Harry hadn’t seen Crescent Bolt since her first day here in this world, and she felt just a little nervous as she went up those stairs… Sparkweld had been teaching Harry a bit about Stable maintenance ever since she got back from her big mission into Las Pegasus, three or four days ago now, a bit of a breather after the intense spell training, she had learned quite a bit about arcane machinery and thaumielectronics over the past few days, in between listening to the radio for more news from around the wasteland, now apparently this legendary stable-pony now had two pegasi on her side, and had escaped from Fillydelphia, from everything Harry had heard about that place, that was damn impressive, with a legion of raiders and slavers under the control of some stallion warlord called Red-Eye, what’s more, that stable mare’s team now had a blue stallion and a pair of zebras, one with red-stripes, too, who had apparently done quite the number on Red Eye’s slave-army while escaping.

Crescent Bolt addressed them, “I have another mission for you, a very important one, however this will be much different from your previous retrieval missions,” Harry glanced around, the flamboyant and overly dramatic Crescent Bolt had turned off all the lights in her office so only a single red emergency light was shining from above her, making her look like some shadowy comic-book villain, she had taken a damaged scribe robe and turned it into a cape. Crescent’s behaviour was to be expected, as all the knights and paladins had exasperatedly told Harry in passing. What actually caught Harry’s attention was the fact that their squad, which normally at least had a single knight with them, was composed of nothing but scribes.

“This is a retrieval mission, but not a combat one like the previous missions have been… We need you to recover a translocator beacon, a pre-war device used as an anchor for mass-teleport spells. The nearest known location of one is in the old Archon-Five Development Plant, what most modern wastelanders know of as ‘Krawah’” At this, the other scribes stood up a little straighter, seeming to realize something Harry didn’t, “This is a diplomatic mission, you are not, under any circumstances, to force your way in… Barter, bluff, bribe, do anything you can to convince Corvo to let you in and give you the translocator, but you are not to take it by force, if you try, I’ll have no choice but to sentence you to a summary execution, we cannot risk a diplomatic incident… Do I make myself clear.”

The tone in the Paladin’s voice was serious, everyone nodded, “Yes ma’am”

“This is why I am not sending knights of paladins, military ponies might make them think we’re attacking, and this is also why I’m requesting you carry the bare minimum of weapons, I wouldn’t let you go outside the stable unarmed, the wasteland is too dangerous, but leave anything heavier than a beam-pistol in here, no magical plasmas, no rifles, no explosives…”

“Yes ma’am” everyone responded again in unison. Harry was disappointed she would need to leave her magical plasma rifle behind… After she had come back from Las Pegasus with a brand new experimental weapon, it was immediately taken away from her for study, after the scribes took it apart, made detailed drawings of how it functioned, it had been reassembled and given back as a reward for finding something new… Harry didn’t much care about the rifle, she was more worried about that winged-unicorn, alicorn she guessed, trapped in Trottz, talking to herself… Had the healing potion actually worked, or was she still insane, and hurt… Regardless, once she had gotten the Trottz-4501 back, a part of her wanted to test it on something, a radroach or a ghoul or a wasteland monster, she still didn’t really want to shoot a pony though…

As her scribes left, Crescent Bolt opened a file on her terminal… The Steel Rangers were never fully united, the wasteland was simply too large for that, but they always held some semblance of unity… That unity was fading, every contingent was starting to develop different beliefs, different methods, there were many arguments about orthodoxy… On this terminal she had several projects… Project Whitewing, that project was finished a few weeks ago, and she had no doubts some day that it would need to be used. Project Elysium, a brand new project, one of extreme importance to the Steel Rangers and the wasteland as a whole, a project conceived when that filly had apparently fallen through a portal in the Big-S… Her hooves hovered over the third project on the list... Project Steelshield… After the most recent status updates she had heard coming out of Manehattan, Fillydelphia, and Hoofington… No… Not yet, it was looking bad, but hopefully the Steel Rangers wouldn’t start a schism, if they started fighting among themselves their chance at restoring order and rebuilding Equestria would wither away… Still, it was better to be safe than sorry… She paused for a moment longer. The Las Pegasus contingent was never its own semi-independent group, Crescent Bolt was a star-paladin, not an elder though, her superior was still technically Crunchy Carrots, but he was ancient and the next one in line for elder… But being so far to the west of Hoofington… Still, if it came to it...

Then, a status update flicked across her screen from elder Cottage Cheese… A warrant for the execution of Star Paladin Steelhooves and all who chose to ally themselves with him, along with several status updates from all across the wasteland, as the elders and star paladins chose to side with one or the other, word traveled fast it seemed… With that, she clicked the button. Unlike her other projects Operation Steelshield wasn’t some physical scientific or engineering project, just a simple virus she had installed on Stable 107’s Overmare’s terminal, and with the click of that button it did its job… All those bigots and madmares in the other contingents would be regretting their choices to abandon the ponies of the wasteland in favor of their own selfish gain, a second later her terminal updated, the communication lines between every Steel Ranger bunker across all of Equestria was now being monitored, and she could filter or redirect signals as she wished.

Now, any status signals about Steelhooves’ “crimes” against the Rangers were being mysteriously re-written before they could pass to any other ranger groups. Down below, it seemed the rangers of her stable had gotten the news, there were one or two who sided with the elders, but when Cresent Bolt had left from Hoofington she had hoof-picked her followers carefully, and all the ex-raiders, wasteland foals, and competent wasteland doctors and engineers her mini contingent, who knew little of the rangers beyond this place, could tell injustice when they saw it. Cottage Cheese and his elitist dicks would not find Las Pegasus on their side.

Sparks flew from down the hall… That old squib probably had all sorts of fun things in his office, Fred and George sprinted as fast as their legs could carry them, their distraction had worked, one of the tapestries was already on fire, and with the enchantments they placed on that firework it would last for a while. Good thing mum never caught them practicing magic, they had already mastered the first year spellbooks before they were nine!

The office was full of old chains and spikes and cranks and whips and other various ancient devices of torture, a desk covered in papers, several drawers marked “evidence”, these where what drew the attention of the children, “Any idea what could be in there?” Fred began.

“Nope, but whatever is…”

“It’s gonna be fun!”

“Right you are, dear brother of mine!”

They pulled the drawers open and emptied their contents, or tried too, they couldn’t take everything, not only would it be suspicious but they couldn’t carry it, nor would they dare risk a feather-weight charm, that took valuable seconds, and while Filch would be gone for a while dealing with George’s little firework trick, they hadn’t seen his damned cat.

Once done with their raiding, they bolted out of the office carrying everything that they could, several strange potions, a few objects that had obviously been cursed or hexed, a whole host of prank supplies, and an old piece of paper that probably had some juicy secret written inside. They rushed up one of the many secret passages they found, one that took them right into Gryffindor tower. The sun was setting, and the two quickly rushed into studying the trinkets they found.

They took turns, George would study an item, try and figure out how it worked, Fred would write down their findings and try and figure out what spells went into making it, then they would swap when one got tired of writing. Fred had just sat down in the chair the sorting hat not even on his head when it blurted out Gryffindor, George was just as quick, but they both remember how the hat had made an off-hand comment about “Ravenclaw would have loved you if you’re minds weren’t so chaotic.”

They had worked their way through all the stuff they had stole rather quickly, some of the more outright evil or harmful things they set carefully aside, just learning what spells they could safely learn, and decided they would make for great blackmail material if that was ever needed. But there was one little thing they just couldn’t figure out, a little thing of paper…

“Sticking charm… And an Unbreakable charm…” George had muttered, writing their findings down, it was his turn at scribing. Fred had tried to unwrap it carefully, but that didn’t work, so they moved to trying to cut the thing open with some scissors, which didn't work either, the folded up scrap of paper seemed unopenable and indestructible…

“There’s a ton of magic in this, I can feel it, just can’t figure out how to get the darned thing open!” In annoyance, Fred pointed his wand at it and huffed “Incendio!” The spell did nothing of course… “I swear, what’s your secret, I just want to get into a little trouble!” And with that… Ink seemed to spread across the parchment.

“Parchment seemed to use some password,” George scribbled into his notes, “Needs you to have mischievous intent.”

Fred quickly began reading out the names, “Mooney, Wormtail, Padfoot, Prongs”, which George continued to note down… He stopped though when they opened the paper and saw just how wonderful and useful this little paper would be to their little hobby, even now they saw their caretaker still trying to repair their damage dealt to the hallways. They turned and smiled at one another, and finished their research for the night, knowing they were going to have lots and lots of fun tomorrow…

Harry froze for a second, it was one thing to hear you were on a diplomatic mission, and you weren’t allowed to bring any weapons bigger than a pistol, it was one thing to hear that you were going to meet with dangerous ponies who you needed to please, and that you were not allowed to even point your weapons at them… It was another thing, however, to see at least twenty or thirty heavily armed feathered monsters aiming at you with everything from SMGs to what looked like old world-war-2 flak cannons.

“Steel rangers, what is your business with Corvo’s Talons…” The creature was pointing a massively oversized pistol directly at Silver’s head, seriously, the thing looked like it shot grenades instead of bullets, probably did. The creature’s voice was equally odd, slightly screechy, like a bird, unsurprising seeing as it had a long and sharp beak, but the voice also had a very thick accent that Harry would have swore was polish or russian had she been on Earth, she had never really known why it seemed everyone here spoke english despite being an alien world, probably had something to do with magic… Despite being terrifying, the creature, the Griffon she had been informed, was somewhat majestic. Balancing perfectly on three mismatched legs, one a feline paw, one a crude metal prosthetic, and the third a falcon’s claw, while holding that huge pistol in a second clawed forehoof, or foreclaw in this case, and a huge pair of falcon wings.

The griffons on the barricade were a mix of all kinds of feline and avian species, some lion-eagle, some tiger-falcon, some housecat-bluejay, some serval-owl, some panther-hawk, some raven-leopard. The one who had come out to greet them, greet them with a pistol, was a falcon-ocelot mix.

“We have come to negotiate with Corvo Valiskov. Inside your base at Krawah you have something of great value to the Steel Rangers, we have come to propose a deal for this item. We are willing to pay caps, weapons, ammunition, technology… As you can see we have not come with the intent to attack, as we have no power armor or heavy weapons with us, merely the bare minimum to protect ourselves from the dangers of travel,” Rosemary spoke fast and careful, Harry had guessed there was some bad history between the Steel Rangers and these Talons. “Allow us to leave safely with what we have come for, and the Las Pegasus Steel Rangers will be in your debt,” That last point seemed to have changed the Griffon’s mood a little bit, she, at least Harry assumed it was a ‘she’, had lowered her pistol slightly, but was still wary.

“Come in, but remember that we will not tolerate any hostilities against our kind, you will be searched, your weapons will be taken into our custody, and returned to you only once you have left Krawah.”

They surrendered their weapons and moved in, as they did, Harry glanced backward, and saw… No, it was gone, but for a moment she thought she saw a transparent blue figure on the hills, watching her, like a ghost. Then they were inside, Krawah was once some kind of industrial park, a series of refineries and factory buildings and courtyards, now though, it was a fortress… The old refinery columns were now lookout towers, the factory buildings were now griffon nests, the walls had a good coating of machine gun nests and heavy weapons emplacements, it was downright impressive, a sign was sprayed over with black pain, a white claw across the banner, the Talons.

They soon arrived in the office of one Corvo Valiskov, the leader of this band of griffon mercenaries, she gathered that they were mercs from the massive wall of bounties and jobs just inside the walls. She had expected this Corvo to be a man, she was not, Corvo was a woman, hen? No, hen probably sounded insulting… Yet, despite being female, Crovo was the single most manly woman Harry had ever seen, and probably will ever see… Now, all the griffons looked strong, hell even their babies looked like they could have out-wrestled one of Aunt Marge’s dogs… But this griffon, she was a full meter-and-half of pure muscle, and seeing as most ponies stood only two-and-a-half feet tall, she was a fucking giant. Part of Harry flinched at her own proclivity to swearing, even if it was only in her head, but if Petunia had heard her… Well, now she had a gun, or would have had one had the Talons not taken it away. Corvo looked as if she could lift Vernon and Marge and the entire kitchen table with a single finger.

Corvo was part crow, part lioness, and what disturbed Harry was the fact that, proudly displayed next to this giant griffoness, was a set of power armor with the single biggest gun Harry had ever seen, it looked like a sawed-off battleship cannon.

“So, the Steel Rangers want something of my Talons, and you’re actually willing to bargain rather than take it at the barrel of a gun…”

“You are getting our Star Paladin Crescent Bolt confused with our Elders, they would have taken it at the barrel of a gun, Crescent Bolt is a much smarter and calmer pony… This location has a device of great importance to us, and we are willing to trade or offer favors in exchange for it,” Silver spoke slowly and calmly.

The idea of a favor from the Rangers seemed to please Corvo, “And what precisely is this device, what does it do…”

It was Rosemary’s turn to speak, “A translocator beacon, a device used for machine-cast teleportation spells over distances greater than a normal unicorn wizard could manage.” Corvo was disappointed, she was strong and she was smart too… Had this been for some kind of weapon, or healing device, or something the Talons could use just as much as the Rangers, Harry had no doubts Corvo would try and keep it, or raise the price to the point the Rangers would owe her for the next century, but this was just some piece of tech that the Talons couldn’t use, Harry suspected they would still owe the Talons something fierce once this was over though.

Corvo continued, “Alright, I think a fair price for that device would be about twenty units of magical energy rifles, beam or plasma, I do not care which, along with at least ten freshly charged spark-cells for each, three units of power armor, we griffons cannot use your models but we can take them apart and try and adjust the parts to fit our armor frames, you must also reconnect the power lines between Stable 107 and Krawah, a formal apology for the murder of twelve Talon agents during the battle of Mark Ridge, two thousand caps, and a formal contact that you will aid the Talons when we request it, the contract will be valid for three years.”

Harry found that deal ungodly unfair, but from the looks on the other two scribe’s faces, they were prepared for this, and began haggling… Harry soon got bored, the contact part they were perfectly fine with, even a little happy, it would certainly help foster some better relations between the two factions, the two thousand caps was a cheap enough price to pay, apparently, and the formal apology was equally fine in their eyes, even if Rosemary had pointed out that it had been Hoofington Steel Rangers, not Las Pegasus Steel Rangers, who had been responsible for those killings. The real sticking point however was the trade of energy weapons and the power-line connection, but a deal was soon put forth, they would exchange some information about the project they needed the teleportation thing for, in exchange for halving the numbers of weapons to be sent… They still weren’t happy about the power-line thing, but they swallowed their pride and took the deal, it was the best they could get.

Silver and Harry were ordered to leave the office as part of the deal was fulfilled, Rosemary spoke in private to the colossal griffoness, giving her details about the project they needed the translocator for, apparently being one of those super-secret highly classified projects, when the griffoness walked out and ordered her talons to let the Rangers go free, Rosemary stayed behind, as a show of goodwill and more or less as a willing hostage to ensure that the contract was actually fulfilled in full. Corvo gave Harry a strange look, staring at the filly as if she were something extremely valuable and dangerous, like a pile of gold tied to a nuclear bomb. Harry got some slight suspicion that whatever Rosemary and Corvo had discussed had something to do with herself.

Silver, with the aid of a few other griffons, found the magical translocator beacon, the thing was rather large, about the size of a pony, made of metal and coated in wires and gemstones and tubes and spikes and coils, but the griffons were able to carry it easily, damn were they strong creatures.

Author's Note

A rather big and long chapter, sorry this took a bit longer than normal to get out, but I needed to reread parts of Project Horizons for the first part. But the aid of three more ponies is certainly going to shake up Littlepip's adventure.

Chapter 9: Change on the Horizon

Sparkweld finished wiring the translocator beacon from Krawah into the thaumimetric scanner recovered from Trottz, a sample of Harry Potter’s blood was used to set the scanner’s matrix, anyone related to the foal within three generations would create a ping on the scanner, which would be used to set up coordinates for the translocator, the power levels needed would be immense, the news that they would be sharing power with the Talons had made Sparkweld furious, but there was nothing that could be done about that without angering the griffons, they would need to recover several more arcane spark-generators to keep Project Elysium powered, however the opportunities in Harry’s homeworld were worth it.

The box recovered from Hippocampus Energy Unit Epsilon would go a long way in helping to deal with the predicted power problems, it drew magical energy from the environment and converted it into a form that was actually useful. Placing it into a barrel of magical radioactive waste would give them a sizable boost in power production. There was only one thing left to do before the system was ready to begin scanning the universe for Harry Potter’s homeworld, and that was wiring the translocator into a megaspell matrix, normal teleportation spells had a very limited range for what they were trying to do, but a teleportation megaspell had a range estimated to be near infinite, certainly larger than the observable universe. Only, they didn’t have a megaspell chamber on-hoof, and making one from scratch would take months, that was assuming they even had the blueprints for such a thing…

Sparkweld sighed, the Star Paladin would find a solution, they just needed a bit more time… Project Elysium could very well be the future of the wasteland, they just needed a bit more time...

Harry loved this gun… Harry had never known or cared much about weapons, but that changed when she found herself in the Equestrian Wasteland, now, she may not know the first thing about pistols or rifles or assault rifles or anything that used normal bullets, but she had spent a lot of time with Sparkweld, and she had used her beam pistol plenty, she had a very good understanding of magical energy weapons now, but that wasn’t anything like the Trottz Magical Plasma Rifle. This rifle was long, and while it still looked a little like the mess of coils and spikes and tubes that Rosemary’s magical plasma rifle was, it was far sleeker and more refined. It fired deep bluish-purple blasts of energy that turned anything it hit into glowing liquid, breaking apart a target at a molecular level. Rosemary had described atoms and molecules and all that to her, leagues above what her science teacher had tried to teach back on Earth. Harry would really need to give her new gun a name, she couldn’t keep calling it the Trottz Magical Plasma Rifle.

She had gotten separated from her teammates, she wasn’t quite sure how, but she had no idea where she was in this place… It was some kind of factory, and many robotic ponies were rolling around on the floor, brains encased in jars and placed into metal hulls with mechanical unicorn horns that fired blasts of lighting, they were annoying, but kinda weak, she had gotten hit by a blast from that alicorn, and while her shield broke, she still stopped the blast, these things were just pathetic compared to that. She had killed three of these damn things without firing a shot, that reflection spell was working wonders, they would fire their blasts of lighting, and then it would bounce right off her shield and right into their ugly brain-jars.

“I’ve killed five fucking brain-bots, not a single one of these dumbass thing has a scrap of bullets on it, I’m running out of bullets here Spiker”, a trio of ponies came into the factory floor from the door below, Harry was up on a catwalk, picking off robots with focused plasma blasts, the trio came in, and were at first confused by the sight before them… At first, Harry thought they were raiders, they seemed profane and ugly enough, but no, they were cleaner, and a little more sane than your average raider… Slavers most likely. “What the fuck… Something killed all these brain-bots.”

“Surrender to the Steel Rangers!” Harry shouted from her position above the catwalk.

“Fuck!” The trio ducked for cover, “Those fucking metal monsters are here!” The same dirty slaver pony began.

“Shut up,” Their leader, a pony with the cutie mark of a spike going through a skull, Spiker Harry guessed, peeked up from cover, but ducked back down, “Just one of those robed ponies, a filly, bring her to me alive, I want her ass!” Harry rolled her eyes, as if they would get the chance, Spiker thought he was safe behind that conveyor belt, but Harry knew something they didn’t, her magical plasma rifle could punch clean though all two-meters of a brain-bot’s hull before it lost its destructive power, it took a lot more than a thin conveyor belt to block a shot.

Spiker turned to glowing goo, and the two others fled, Harry shot one in the leg as they ran, she didn’t have much sympathy for ponies who threatened her, the Rangers, or any innocent stallion or mare. When she climbed down to move on and sweep the next room, she found the two slavers who had ran were both dead, their chests blasted open by a powerful blast of electricity, stronger than a brain-bot could manage, there was a faint shimmer in the air, then it was gone… Harry was on edge now, she wanted to rejoin the rest of her squad.

Soon, she did by luck, as she was carefully trotting through rooms, collecting ammo and medical supplies while keeping an eye out for blasts of lighting coming from invisible enemies, she ran into the two knights who had accompanied her on this mission, they had just cleared out a room, Harry watched them killing a huge robot-pony with a minigun and rocket launcher, moving on wheeled-hooves with a fierce red glow behind its faceplate. “Scribe Harry, reporting for duty…” She joked as she walked in.

“There you are, where were you?” One of the two knight-mares began.

“Down a few floors I think, no idea how I managed to get lost… Listen, I ran into some raiders, or slavers, they were also searching the building.”

“Understood, which direction?” Harry pointed with a hoof. “Alright, Drillbit,” She turned to her companion, “Keep watch… And as for you Harry,” Harry felt her ears perk up, “Found this in one of the safes, look for any mention of megaspells in it,” The knight handed Harry a strange glassy purplish-black orb, like a perfect sphere of deep opaque amethyst, or off-color obsidian.

“What… Is it?” Harry reached out with her magic… Then everything went dark, then there was a flash of light, she was scared and confused for a moment but then it started to make sense as time progressed.

She was standing in a hallway, somewhere in this very factory, she saw the room she had been in, where she killed Spiker, except it was working, the machines were pressing metal plates into cogs and rods and other simple components. Light was shining through the windows, not the dusy and dim light of the wasteland, but bright golden sunlight… It had been such a long time since Harry had seen the sun. She wanted to go outside and see it, but she didn’t have control over her own actions… Make that he… He was back in a male body now, that was for sure, and it was jarring, after a month of being female he didn’t like it.

Down below, it was chaos, the workers in the factory were clearly outraged, they were waving signs, smashing bottles against machinery, pointing guns, it was some kind of protest or workers strike. The stallion who Harry’s mind was in had huffed angrily, “Somepony! Round up those mules, don’t they know we have a war to win!” Another voice called out from somewhere in the office he was in, overseeing the riot.

The stallion Harry was in pulled up to the window and shouted down, “Cease immediately or we will activate the security system! Failure to comply will be viewed as treason against the Kingdom of Equestria!” The stallion didn’t wait for a reply but just clopped his hooves against a button and watched as brain-bots swarmed in, turrets activated, and turned the factory floor into a shooting range. “Inform the MOM that we had zebra sympathizers sabotaging the work effort and we had to purge the staff, we’ll replace the workers with zebra prisoners, fit them with explosive collars, just in case.”

“Yes sir!” A mare responded promptly

Harry woke back up in her real body. She had just seen the memory of another pony… It was short and simple, why someone would record that memory was beyond her, most likely as evidence in a trial against that stallion… But it was valuable to her in one way, it gave her an explanation as to how raiders and slavers could exist… If ponies were that cruel back in the past, why should they be any different now…

She got back to her hooves, “Status on the slavers?” She asked the knight who had been guarding her while she was observing the memory. Outside the window she could see them taking cover behind concrete barriers and overturned wagons.

“They tried to rush the back door after their missing trio failed to return, I fired a few bursts to keep them at bay while Pattern Weld went to search the last floor.”

Harry drew her energy rifle and started blasting the slavers out of cover, after that memory she was angry, she wouldn’t let a single one of those scum go free now. Something else seemed to have the same idea… There must have been eight or nine slavers out there, but for every one she shot, another two dropped dead… Some were suddenly sliced open by nothing, others simply exploded as if they had swallowed a grenade but there were no explosives in sight, and others still were hit with blasts of electricity from floating points around them…

“What’s gotten into you?” He said, too distracted by Harry’s sudden execution of the slavers to pay attention to what was going on below. The slavers tried to run, or return fire, those that tried to shoot back were hit by purple magical blasts, and those that ran were exploded or sliced apart by some invisible force.

The waggon flew through the sky lazily, Glory wasn’t as strong as Calamity, but the pegasus needed to rest his wings, It was a long flight to Canterlot. Littlepip watched her new companions closely… They had first met just outside Fillydelphia, she had first thought them raiders, the one in the lead certainly looked the part covered in barbed wire and spiked armor, but the other two didn’t… Thinking them to be the raider’s captives, she drew her zebra rifle, Velvet objected, of course, and so did Calamity to the mare’s surprise, she thought briefly back to how she was shot while wearing raider armor, and held her fire until they came a little too close… The mare had begun to say “You the Stable Dweller?” When Littlepip fired on reflex, putting a burning hole through the mare’s head… The raider-zebra’s companions looked shocked, Velvet scolded Littlepip something fierce, and then they were all, minus the zebra’s companions, when pink energy sparked around the holes in the raider’s flesh, and it reformed as if she had never been hit at all, “Fuck! Was gonna ask if you needed help… By Celestia’s tits…”

Littlepip was suspicious of the trio as they made their way into Fillydelphia and toward the Steel Rangers bunker, they said they were from Hoofington, they were here to help her do whatever she needed to do to help the wasteland… Littlepip didn’t buy it quite frankly. They wouldn’t say why they were here to help, other than that they wanted to help the wasteland too… Somehow Littlepip was the only one who seemed to think they shouldn’t be trusted, even Steelhooves seemed to buy their story… She was just waiting for them to try and shoot her in the back… But, they didn’t, they were just… Odd, the Stallion didn’t say a word the entire time, except to offer short comments or say a word to two to his companions, the Pegasus was downright terrified by Calamity, the brand on her flanks looked relatively new, both Velvet and Calamity just stared at the mare with a mixture of horror, sympathy, and rage. Steelhooves and the one who introduced herself as Rampage, who clarified that she wasn’t a zebra, were carrying on a whispered conversation, they didn’t seem to know one-another, but there was just something between the two, a form of mutual understanding that Littlepip couldn’t understand.

It had been almost a little under a week since then, Rampage lived up to her name when she cut her way through Red Eye’s army, getting Littlepip, and their new Zebra companion, Xenith, out of that horrible city. Glory avoided Calamity like the plague but warmed up to Velvet quickly, who got her to open up a bit… The stallion stayed as quiet and mysterious as ever, not even mentioning his name, nor why his cutie mark was so… Weird… They didn’t reveal much, but their friend had died, and her last wish to help the wasteland… When the Steel Rangers attacked Stable 2, the stallion had adamantly refused to go in and help, he stayed outside, and made sure that no one tried to attack them from behind, but he adamantly refused to go past the stable door.

Now, it seemed like Littlepip was the only one who still didn’t trust them… Calamity sighed as he flew into the cabin, they had figured out a clever system for switching pullers while in-flight. “I don’t get her, she’s so… Uhhh, naive… How can she still think the Enclave are trustworthy after all she’s been through.”

“Give her time,” Velvet replied, “She’s hurt, not just physically, she’s deeply mentally hurting…”

Over in a corner the stallion, still yet to give his name, took a quick dose of med-x while discussing the plan with Steelhooves and Rampage, “It’s fine,” Rampage began, “Even if the cloud gets my armor stuck to me it’s not like I take it off all that often anyway, if I really want it gone you can just cut me out of it…”

“Wouldn’t that, you know… Hurt…” The stallion muttered.

“Wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve dealt with.”

Steelhooves suddenly looked thoughtful… No doubt he was wondering if he could survive being cut free from his armor, it would certainly be a worthwhile experiment, ghouls could survive just about anything.

Littlepip sighed and looked out the window… Canterlot was coming up, but first, she spotted a small settlement on the side of the hill… What the hell was a town doing this close to one of the deadliest places in the wasteland, “Glory!” She shouted, “Bring us down, now.”

It had been a month and a week since Harry had come to this world, it was weird to think. How long she had been here, it was weird to think she was a she… As brutal and terrifying as this world was sometimes, she liked it, in a weird way… It was different, exciting, she was never allowed to do anything back on Earth, here though, now she was getting experience as an engineer, a scribe for the Steel Rangers, and a soldier, she had already taken plenty of lives, something she wouldn’t have thought possible just over a month ago.

Harry needed some fresh air, even if the air outside was a little more radioactive than normal, it was cooler and smelled better than the recycled air of the Stable. She thought she saw a quick glimpse of the moon from between the clouds, but it was only for the tiniest of seconds. The clouds… The one thing she did miss was the sun and moon, they were always so pretty…

A noise from behind her made the filly jump, and she drew her beam pistol, “Little mare…” She recognized that voice.

“H-Hello?”

The air shimmered and a deep blue pony with wings and a horn materialized before her eyes… Her face was still scared, but the flesh looked healthier, and bits of new blue fur were starting to crop up around her eye, her horn was still a stump, but it wasn’t as broken as before, it looked like someone had moulded a horn from clay and then flattened the end with a hammer, it would probably never grow back fully. “Little mare, I wanted to thank you… I still cannot hear the Goddess’ voice but I can hear distant whispers of my sisters. I do not know what they are saying, but even this much I am grateful for…”

“Umm… You’re welcome…” Harry didn’t know what to say.

“Some of the voices, they sound a little worried, I do not know the meaning but I still hear fear, something is wrong… I-” And then she stopped. Harry looked confused for a second, then the alicorn shouted, “Something is wrong, something is wrong, my Goddess, she is telling us to flee, where is she, what is wrong!”

A speck of light caught the edge of Harry’s vision, a tiny pearl of pale lavender light at the edge of the horizon, a little to the west of Canterlot, the ghastly mountain still visible as a slight pink glow on the edge of the world. Then there was a flash of green light from that dome, bigger, horribly bright even from this distance, like someone had lit a copper flare at the edge of the world… Harry could only wonder what it looked like up close, the alicorn stared in horror, moments passed, then he felt a slight shake and a breeze of warm air, even at this distance. “My… My Goddess… She’s gone…”

Author's Note

I wanted to include a quick little paragraph about Vernon and Petunia celebrating Harry's absence for a year but it was a bit too short it didn't feel worth it and it disrupted the flow of the chapter, so... Eeh. Sorry if the passage of time felt a bit off since we go from Littlepip approaching Canterlot right to the death of the Goddess, but I'm excited to get to the six-day war with the Enclave. PS. Don't know if I want Steelhooves to survive or not, because with Rampage joining the main fic's team, she could easily take the hit instead of Steel and survive.

Chapter 10: Emergency Code "Whitewing"

Steelhooves had barely survived, the slash across his chestplate was bad, but healing, the metal wouldn’t, but the flesh beneath was, Littlepip breathed a sigh of relief, and it also confirmed that he could be cut out of that suit should he want to… At the last moment, as the Hellhound slashed, Rampage leapt forward, she was now lying on the floor with her head cut off, but glowing pink, sparking with magical energy, and rapidly regenerating… How the fuck did she survive that!

Calamity and Glory were both pulling, with two pegasi at the helm the Sky Bandit was twice as fast. Rampage muttered something “Ach, fuck… Hurts getting your head regrown! Still, rate it a four out of ten on the scale of things that fucking hurt,” Ever since Canterlot her spiked armor and barbed-wire lace was fused to her body, she simply hadn’t cared about the cloud, now though, her head looked fresh, unscared, and naked, red made lank and flat, unlike the curly and puffy mess it used to be. One of her legs had been sliced off but was now regrown fresh and unarmored, Littlepip had to wonder if she was going to keep the armor she had until it had all been cut free, or just plaster on new armor over the plates welded to her flesh…

“You… Saved me?” Steelhooves sounded shocked.

“Of course I did, I want to die, but can’t, you can, and you need to keep the rest of these idiots alive, you could probably do a hell of a lot better job at that then me!”

Littlepip stared at her pipbuck, fused to her leg… She could remove it… But she would rather keep it a part of herself, it wasn’t like she ever really took it off, and as Rampage suggested, it would seriously hurt.

“Uhh, guys!” The blue buck, Glory had said his name was P-21, weird name, had pointed a hoof out the window, “We got trouble.”

Littlepip flinched at the sight of a huge metal-plated airship flying on artificial clouds as it punched its way through the cloud-layer above, showing the early morning sky just beyond for a moment before it covered up, the ship was approaching Canterlot… And a swarm of power-armored pegasi were dismounting from it. “Glory! Calamity!” She shouted.

The Megaspell detonation had come as a shock, Crescent Bolt poured over seismographic data from Stable 107 and many other Steel Rangers bases from across Equestria with a working seismograph, the Star Paladin had accurately triangulated the origin point of the detonation with almost ninety-nine percent certainty, she compared it to both post-war and pre-war maps… Maripony… Luckily that meant that the radiation from the blast would be of little concern to Las Pegasus, Manehattan, Fillydelphia, and Hoofington, it was just to the north-west of Canterlot, Ponyville may be at risk of contamination, but there wasn’t anything over there that Crescent particularly cared about.

She then opened the Steel Rangers’ data on which factions in the wasteland had access to megaspells and reasons why Maripony would be targeted… There was very little data on the subject but if anyone in the wasteland knew numbers, it was Star Paladin Crescent Bolt, the probability of such an event however was small, and in the particular location, even less so… Little was known about Maripony, there had only ever been two expeditions into the region from the Manehattan Steel Rangers, one toward the abandoned research facility itself who went MIA, and another toward the local town of Old Olneigh, that one was confirmed KIA… The first team simply vanished, their comms just went silent, the second team got attacked by Hellhound, there are also much higher reports of Alicorns in the region, higher than any other location in the wasteland… That was a potential motive for using such a weapon… Other data had been recovered from wastelanders in the region, not as reliable as official Steel Ranger surveys, but useful in some circumstances, that had confirmed that Alicorns had previously only been sighted in that region, and were only recently spreading outward.

That confirmed the motive, it was likely that was their origin point, she would have passed this data on to the Manehattan contingent, but they had suffered 89% casualties in the past five days concerning events related to the Steelhooves incident. And it seemed that someone else had come to the same conclusion about it being the likely alicon origin point and had used a megaspell on it… Either that or it was sheer random luck that a megaspell had been detonated there, that was also a possibility, perhaps a wastelander or alicorn pressed a two-hundred year old button, or kicked a rock down a hole, and just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time… Ha, unlikely, too unlikely, Crescent Bolt did not believe in random chance, she believed in probability.

There then came an emergency video broadcast from… Stable 2, that wasn’t on the records of existing Steel Ranger outposts… A new acquisition? Or an outside connection? Were their systems hacked? Impossible... Regardless, it showed Canterlot, in the distance, when several blasts of energy struck the mountain from somewhere up above, the view was too shadowy to see much… The city of Canterlot collapsed, turning to dust and a shower of pink-stained rubble in seconds...

She was going over this new data when a far more worrying bit of information had been relayed to her. “This is Star Paladin Igneous Flare of the Rainbow Falls contingent! To all Star-Paladins and Elders,” The radio message played over her terminal, sound-only, evidently he didn’t have a camera with him, he sounded scared, terrified even, that was very unlike the stallion, and why wasn’t elder- “Elder Ion Beam is dead, vaporized!” That explained that. “I’m the highest remaining in the command structure, we don’t have much time, they’ve breached the outer walls of the SPP tower and have been working their way systematically,” There was a sudden series of BOOMS! And then the sounds of gunfire, energy weapons, ponies in power armor, there was a crackling sound, silence for a few seconds.

Crescent Bolt had thought for a moment that the feed had died, but no, it was still active and relaying, then a voice, one she was not familiar with came over the feed, “All targets neutralized, sweeping next floor!”

Then another unfamiliar voice, “They had an active audio relay, try and get a hold of where the data was being sent, mark compromised locations for Operation Cauterize.” The feed died with the sounds of the terminal on the other side being torn apart with power-tools. Crescent Bolt swore sulfuriously, whatever that was, it didn’t sound good.

Then, it got worse, one-by-one more data feeds from various Steel Rangers bases cropped up “This is Elder MacMare of Trottenfield, hostile air-targets closing in!”

“This is Star Paladin Wood Cinder, reporting from Outpost eighty-eight, hostile targets have breached the outpost, requesting assistance!”

“This is Elder Copper Spanner, Vanhoover Contingent, enemy airship is bombarding the Trottz HQ, please-”

“Star Paladin, Isosphere, Elder Copper Spanner is KIA, we’re retreating to Outpost Eighteen!”

“Star Paladin Calliope, the Hollow Shades outpost is compromised-”

Crescent Bolt shut all incoming and outgoing connections, it would be like that everywhere soon, someone was systematically targeting Steel Rangers bases and outposts across the wasteland, and she had a good idea who… She frantically typed at her terminal and loaded the folder marked “Project Whitewing”

Harry and the alicorn must have sat there for only a few seconds, but it seemed to stretch on to hours. “What should I do… The Goddess is gone…” The alicorn said.

Harry didn’t know what to say, she didn’t even know what this ‘Goddess’ was, but she needed to try something… “Umm, well, you can come with me, to the Steel Rangers, not sure they’ll like you though.”

“No, Little Mare, I do not want to do that, I want to be with the Goddess, but I can’t… I can hear my sisters, they are alive, I need to meet with them, goodbye...” With that, she vanished, like a ghost. Harry suddenly felt very lonely… She sat there for a few hours, when the sun started to rise, she did too, and marched back to the Stable, she hadn’t gone far… Then, she heard something she had never heard before… A klakson, loud and clear, rang out from the direction of the Stable… Then, a gem mounted to her scribe robes started to glow, and the voice of the Star Paladin came from it.

“All Steel Ranger personale, Emergency Code ‘Whitewing’ is now in effect, I repeat Emergency Code ‘Whitewing’ is now in effect, all Steel Ranger personale are ordered to report to Stable 107 immediately.”

Harry started running, something was happening, something bad, or at least it sounded like it… She needed to get back, and fast. When she did, she found the Stable in a state of organized chaos. Ponies were hauling out heavy weapons from stores deep within the Stable, Harry had never seen guns quite like these, three massive rectangles mounted to wheels and featuring an impressive series of cables and wires that snaked into the base, a terminal was mounted on the side, experienced scribes typing frantically at the keys, one-by-one the crystal lenses on the guns started to glow “Beam howitzers Alpha, Beta, and Gamma online!” One cried out.

“Good, get secondary heavy weapons, get these ready, we should be under attack any moment now!”

Those words made Harry run faster, when she got into the barricade she asked, “What the hell is going on?”

“Emergency Code Whitewing, expecting airborne hostels any second now, go, grab any weapons you can, run and get ready!”

What on earth… Well… What on Equus, Harry could vaguely remember a few things from earth, but what on Equus would require this much firepower in the wasteland, why did Stable 107 even have such massive beam-cannons! She grabbed another few spark cells for her beam pistol and grabbed her trottz magical plasma rifle, finding a good sniping nest from atop one of the barricades… Soon, she saw something loom out from above the clouds.

Victory Flare firing a burst from her assault rifles, gutting the raider in an instant, “For the Steel Rangers!” Victory believed in victory, for the rangers, for herself, for all ponykind, she wouldn’t rest until the whole world was united once again, she would see, in her lifetime, Equestria reborn, she would do it herself if she had to, alone, but she had the Rangers at her back!

She deftly reloaded, she was only ten years old, but she was better with a rifle than most scribes, she had no doubt once she was old enough she would be immediately promoted to Knight, and then Paladin, and then Star Paladin, and then Elder, and she would be the one to rebuild Equestria!

These thoughts rang through her head each and every time she took a life, this wasn’t for herself, this was for the Rangers, and for ponykind! Then, she paused, “Raiders dead, sweep next floor!”

The two scribes accompanying her had never been on a mission with this filly before, that was clear with how dumbstruck they were at how quickly she had cleared the room, this mare was already on the level of an experienced knight. Then, everypony in the room paused, “All Steel Ranger personale, Emergency Code ‘Whitewing’ is now in effect, I repeat Emergency Code ‘Whitewing’ is now in effect, all Steel Ranger personale are ordered to report to Stable 107 immediately.”

The gems implanted into their robes bleeped this message, “Wait-” One scribe began.

“That’s-”

Victory’s glare turned icy cold, “Don’t stand there! Get moving! Back to the Stable now!”

The lights flickered, and Corvo was pissed… That shouldn’t be happening! The Rangers had given the Talons access to their power. Her unofficial hostage had set up a two-way connection with their Stable… She needed to know why the Rangers suddenly went back on their deal.

“Crescent Bol-” She didn’t have time to say anything before the pony replied, catching Crovo off guard, she was used to ponies being scared of her, not happy to see her…

“Emergency Code Whitewing! I repeat, Emergency Code Whitewing!” Then the terminal cut off.

Corvo was angry that the Rangers had suddenly cut her off, and she was about to go out and order her Talons to go have a face-to-face talk with the ponies, when her pony hostage, Rose-something, ponies had such weird names, for a stallion too, came running in, chest heaving like bellows and looking panicked, “Emergency Code Whitewing!”

“Yes, Pony, your Paladin just told us, what is-”

“Emergency protocol, Enclave attack,” That made Corvo’s wings shoot out with surprise and concern.

“You mean?”

“Yes, something is going on, Enclave are going to attack soon, Emergency Code Whitewing… Corvo, if you want the Rangers to live, and probably your Talons too, grab all your soldiers and head to the Stable immediately!”

To say the biomechanical abomination you could arguably call a “stallion” was angry would be a colossal understatement, that cunt had gotten away from him! Now, there was no fucking sign of her! He hurt… He hurt so badly, he was ordered not to come back until the cunt and her pipbuck were captured, alive or dead… He had spent two weeks searching aimlessly, she wasn’t anywhere in Hoofington anymore, that was for sure, no signs of that damn mare! Where was she hiding! He had walked, on-hoof from Hoofington to cunt-fucking Salt Cube City!

Then, the stallion looked up, up at the airship that had just breached the clouds and was heading south… Well, there’s something he hadn’t thought were still around anymore! He just had an idea.

The alicorn was flying fast toward where she had heard the Goddess’ scream, she needed to find her, what remained of her, or any of her sisters! She needed to know what was happening… Then, something flew over her, casting dark shadows on the landscape below, it broke through the clouds, a ship, metal and plastic and cloud mashed together, flying toward where she had come from, the ship’s guns turning to aim at- “Little mare!”

The alicorn knew the Goddess was dead, there was no question about that, what whispers she could still hear of her sisters’ voices was clear enough, but the little mare, the one who had saved her, she known the Goddess’ voice for a few days more thanks to that mare, that mare had saved her in more ways than she realized, she couldn’t let the mare die! She was her friend!

Author's Note

Operation Cauterize is in full effect, even though I don't think they were directly mentioned, I find it hard to believe the Enclave didn't target the Steel Rangers as part of their operation... Also, Deus is still alive, and doesn't know that Blackjack is dead, that will lead to some interesting events in future! And Steelhooves is alive too, having been saved by Rampage. Also gave a hint as to Victory Flare's future Hogwarts House when she joins Harry.

Chapter 12: Ghostlike Counterstrike

Everyone worked throughout the night… The communications officer was made the new captain of the Nephilim, first thing she did was march over to the newly repaired radio, “This is Staff Leftenant Aria Night, Captain Winter Snows is KIA, hostiles had attempted to board but were unsuccessful, target is neutralized. Aft-starboard engines are down, attempting field repairs, requesting permission to return to Cloud Forest for repairs.”

The voice on the other side sounded annoyed, sightly angry, “Very well, Aria Night you are now receiving a field-promotion to Captain, return to Cloud Forest asap, Raptor Iodine will be dispatched to take over for continued operations once Raptor Nephilim’s damage is assessed…”

The pegasus smirked, “Yes sir!” And with that, closed the connection, “He bought every word,” The bridge was being rapidly repaired by the Steel Rangers scribes, unicorns were carefully pulling apart machinery to replace or fix the broken gemstones that kept everything functional, and every arcane fuse system was being double-checked, the flaw that helped cripple the Nephilim in Enclave hooves wouldn’t again be a problem for it’s new masters.

Aria and Crescent had settled on a plan late last night, “I have no doubt that most of the pegasi up in Cloud Forest, oh, that’s our home by the way, used to be a small military cloud-outpost, would join up with us if they knew what the GPE was trying to do down here…”

“Can’t you just fly up there and tell them? Raise a revolt?”

“No, you can’t fly up without permission from Enclave High Command… Around our bases and cloud-outputs we got all sorts of automated security, and even in places far from Enclave bases we got patrols going out night and day, no doubt more now that this operation is underway.”

“Once we get the radio working you could try and convince your superiors that you were damaged and require a return to base for repairs?”

“That… Could work, but what do we do once we’re up there, if we come in for a landing they’ll search the ship, we’ll be interrogated about the events, someone will crack and they’ll just kill us all. And before you ask, they got all sorts of cannon emplacements, if we try to attack more directly they’ll just blow the ship out of the air… More likely they would immobilize the ship and send in boarding parties, Raptors are few in number and impossible to make from scratch.”

“It sounds like we just need to tear a big enough hole in the clouds that enough pegasi would see the surface, they would see all your cloud-ships bombarding settlements and slaughtering wastelanders.”

“That is possible, but it comes with many other complications, if we were to fire our weapons randomly to try and blow away the clouds, Enclave Security would quickly catch on to what was going on-”

“How do you keep the cloud cover stable, I imagine you use some form of automated magical machine?”

“The SPP towers, yes.”

“So, that’s what they do?”

“Correct, but any attempts to break into the tower and disable the cloud generators would be stopped- Wait… I think I have an idea.” With that, Aria quickly filled in the rest of the pegasi and rangers in on the plan.

The unicorns and pegasi had been liberally repainting the ship, it now featured plenty of Steel Ranger and Dashite imagery, it seemed that the pegasi had a sudden change of heart about being called dashite after seeing what they had seen in the ship’s files. Of course, part of their new mission relied on stealth, so Sparkweld had crafted a simple illusion talisman and wired it up to a switch on the bridge, “Unfortunately I am not skilled enough to make the entire ship invisible, but I can put a basic color-changing spell over the hull, flicking this switch will turn it from what it actually looks like, to simply a dull dark grey like it had been. It will draw some power from the reactors, but your ship’s power systems are more than powerful enough.”

The hardest repair was the starboard tri-beam cannon, but the ship had detailed blueprints in it’s files, with every single pony present, it took most of the night and early morning, as the sun was rising the beam cannon was finished… Unicorns had been taking metal from anywhere they could find it and had magically morphed the plates into shape, less important electronics were scrapped for wires and cables and gemstones to be recycled into components for the beam cannon, it was constant and extremely difficult work, but soon the beam cannon was back in a state to function.

The ship wasn’t their most powerful weapon however, Ghost had been made an honorary member of the Steel Rangers, it was clear that no one quite trusted her, but she would follow Harry’s orders, and so she was given a pair of silenced pistols, a pair of combat knives sharpened to near monomolecular levels, and some armor. “We’re going to be flying directly toward the Cloud Forest Drydocks, but we’ll try and get as close as possible to the Unicorn Range SPP tower, you get in there and start cutting it up as best you can… Do not be detected, whatever you do, they cannot know what we’re trying to do until it’s too late.”

Below, the engines were already closed to fixed, new propellers were being constructed as unicorns bent, cut, and cast metal into shape with their horns, and fitted the propellers into spare engines the ship had, it didn’t have many, but every ship had some spare parts. In just a few more hours Nephilim Victorium would be ready for flight.

“Well, what do you think about the Enclave now?” Calamity shouted as the Sky Bandit made another hard swerve to avoid a near-hit from a beam cannon.

“Can we please not talk about this now!” Glory spat back as she was nearly clipped by a magical plasma pulse from an Enclave soldier on their tail.

The sudden swerve jerked around the passengers inside, they were flying with all their might toward New Appleloosa, but they were still only half-way there. P-21 Tried to catch one of his grenades that had flown from his pack, but only managed to grab the pin in his teeth as gravity pulled it away “Whoops” He muttered as the now live grenade rolled around the cabin, Littlepip turned around to grab it with her magic but another sudden swerve and rammed her into the side of the hull… Luckily, that also took care of the grenade problem as it flew out a window and detonated behind them, with any luck it hit one of the enclave soldiers.

Rampage and Steelhooves were at the back, returning fire, Rampage having borrowed one of Littlepip’s backup guns, and Steelhooves spraying grenades from his auto-launcher, the pegasi were fast though and amazingly good at dodging. Another near-miss from one of the airship’s beam cannons made Calamity and Glory continue their evasive maneuvers… And then, with the sound of ripping metal, Steelhooves and Rampage were thrown to the side, their combined weight ripping a hole through the back of the Sky Bandit…

“By Celestia’s holy shits!” Littlepip shouted. Down below the two were falling right down toward the airship that was chasing them…

Rampage went splat against the hull, and then promptly started to reform with a cry of “Fuuuuuck!” that could even be heard up in the Sky Bandit despite the rising wind and gunfire. Steelhooves on the other hoof was a little more lucky, in that he got tossed through a window, and judging from the crashing sound, probably through one of the interior floors.

“Should we go back and get them?” Said Velvet, mane tangled from the sudden motions swaying the cart back and forth.

“They’ll be fine on their own P-21 muttered.”

“Yeah, and with any luck they’ll get that damn ship off our tails!” Calamity shouted from the front of the Bandit.

Raptor Tempest had been dispatched to New Appleloosa, and was on its way when the captain spotted priority target one, and started chasing them… Then there came a crashing sound, a tremor that rocked the ship, and the sound of gunfire from somewhere on the lower decks “Boarders! All Enclave Security to sub-deck eight!” The sounds of gunfire didn’t stop though, the entire ship shook with constant blasts from somewhere below them, still, the captain tracked his target. Suddenly two figures from the flying wagon were tossed out the back, two ponies, one splattered against the hull dead, and the other one fell through a window, also dead. At least two of the priority targets were terminated… Then, with horror, the captain watched as one of the external camera feeds caught the splattered pony reforming, and there suddenly came reports of a power-armored stallion in upper deck five. The captain swore as he redirected some of his troops… He checked another video feed- Dead… All his security teams on sub-deck eight were dead, and trotting among them was a horrifying monster, a mass of metal and guns in the shape of a pony.

Below, Deus had been sweeping through floor after floor, he had no clue how to control this thing or where the controls were but he was going to find them! He shouted obscenely as he blew apart pegasi mares and stallions, had he the time he would have fucked a few first but he was angry. He stomped up stairs and through doors, they tried to lock them but his guns were the perfect key, one pony got caught behind the door before it closed, Deus didn’t waste ammo and simply stomped over the mare before kicking down the door and moving onward, he didn’t want to run out of shells until he found that cunt.

Above, Steelhooves shook himself free of debris, a few pegasi with pistols and utility barding shouted “Don’t move, or we’ll shoot!” then Rampage came falling down the same hole Steelhooves had punched into the ship with his body, and came down on top of the two pegasi, killing them.

“So,” She breathed, “What do we do now?”

“Find the bridge, take control of the ship, crash it into enemy ships, escape before everything blows up.”

“Nice and simple, I like it… Now let’s get going…” Rampage, for the first time Steelhooves had known her, was out of breath.

The two made their way through corridors and hallways encountering very little resistance, most just surrendered or ran, some tried to fight but got torn apart. Then they heard the sounds of cannons and a horribly loud stomping coming forward, Steelhooves at first thought that they were about to run into a security bot but then why would it already be shooting, it sounded more like it was also attacking the crew. Finally they opened up a door and stood face-to-face with a mass of metal in the shape of a pony. “Oh fuck it’s this asshol-” Rampage started to say when suddenly a burst of cannon fire lit up the corridor, the two ponies took cover behind heavier bulkheads.

“You know him?” Steelhooves said.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

The captain frantically typed keys up in the bridge, showing damage reports, the entire midsection of the ship was flashing red, “We need to abandon ship, all pegasi, abandon ship!” He finally shouted realizing the extent of the damage to both the ship’s structure and magical support systems.

In the middle of the ship the battle raging was quite a spectacle to behold, assuming you lived to see it, all the pegasi caught in the crossfire were atomized by the rain of explosive death from both sides. Rampage charged forward and kicked Deus over, who fired wildly and sent shells into the ceiling and walls, ripping open large holes and gashes in the internal structure, some shells went as far as two or three floors. Steelhooves fired burts from his grenade launcher, not worried about Rampage getting hit, his grenades tore smaller holes and the fragments perforated weaker structural steel. Deus fired another series of concussive blasts but Rampage leapt on to his head, making his guns fire downward into the ship. The barrage of explosives and shockwaves made electronics and magical gems break and shatter across the ship, cables caught on fire and gems started cracking and snapping as magical energy started to swirl around uncontrolled, radiation was going wild, and it gave Steelhooves an edge up in the radioactive storm created by some broken magical machinery.

He charged forward and fired point-blank into Deus, which knocked him downward through the floor, unable to support the weight of the two ponies fighting on top of one another. Rampage followed, and Steelhooves rolled out of the way to avoid getting crushed as Rampage stomped on Deus’ back, sending him through another floor. The ship groaned around them from the damage it had received as it was torn apart from the inside. The two backed away from one another and Deus fired another burst of shells that blew up some important-looking device in the corner of the room…

They realized with horror that they had landed in an armory, and Deus’ blasts had started to set off all kinds of mines, grenades, and ammo inside the room, Rampage rammed into the metal stallion and knocked him into a stack of spark batteries that exploded violently and filled the room with gem dust that sparked with energy and made radiation meters click wildly. Deus launched himself forward, the metal plates on his back partially slagged, and knocked over Rampage, breaking every bone in her body, which quickly started to reform.

Steelhooves leapt down and the two ponies stared at one-another for a moment, then a storm of clicking followed as they both tried to shoot at each other, but their ammo had just run dry. Then Rampage knocked Deus over again, the two started a bloody hoof-fight, one where Rampage was a softer but more resilient target, and Deus couldn’t regenerate. Finally Deus got on top but was knocked over by Steelhooves delivering a harsh buck to the stallion’s side.

“Rampage! Where is the security cunt!” He shouted.

“Ha!” Rampage laughed, “You’re still after her, guess what asshole, she’s fucking dead! Back in Flank you killed her and you didn’t even know it, and before she went she blew up her own Celestia damned pipbuck, so guess what Doofus, you lose!” She shouted before ramming into him and smashing the stallion into a reinforced door that buckled under the impact. The entire ship started shaking… Freakishly, that was the last straw as the sounds of snapping wires and exploding machinery and tearing metal echoed throughout the vessel. They felt the ship start to break apart under their hooves, cracks formed in the metal, everything was suddenly ripped to shreds, and the ship split in two, Deus on the aft-section, Rampage and Steelhooves on the fore-section, and the two watched each-other fall further away as rushing wind became the only sound they could hear, then they braced for impact as the two halves of the ship started to fall down to the ground. “What was that all about?” Steelhooves shouted.

“Tell you later!” Rampage replied right before they smashed into the earth with a deafening BOOM!

The hangar doors opened but only just enough for Ghost to fly out, she held her invisibility tight around herself and flew silently through the sky, it was kinda beautiful, this high up, above the clouds. She saw the tower she was supposed to infiltrate… With the kind of single-mindedness that only an alicorn on a mission can muster, she flew around behind the tower and identified a section of wall without any electronics or magical equipment inside, jammed her knives into the metal and started cutting a way in… She needed to be careful, one wrong move and they would be alerted to her. She sharpened her knives again with a small press of telekinetic magic, and started perforating the walls and cutting apart support pillars, she had to avoid damaging any magical or electronic equipment.

Ghost moved her way downward. Once she nearly ran into a pegasus guard, but fired into his neck with the silenced pistol before moving on and continuing her work of destroying the tower’s supports, most of the security here was automated anyway and as long as she didn’t do any serious damage to the machinery they wouldn’t activate. As she moved she planted explosive charges from a sack the Rangers had given her, she didn’t need to plant them on every floor, but still just frequently enough that they would do their jobs.

Outside, the Nephilim had breached the cloud cover and was rapidly approaching the Cloud Forest outpost, a sprawling series of bunkers and warehouses and quarters for the pegasi, around Cloud Forest were huge fields of clouds where farmers worked to grow fresh produce for the Enclave, those were restricted airspaces as a clumsy Raptor pilot could do untold defistation to those farms. It was that reason why they weren’t able to get closer to the SPP tower to drop off their secret weapon. Captain Aria Night watched carefully as, from one of the drydocks, another Raptor, the Iodine, departed to go and continue their horrible mission no doubt. She just hoped they didn’t notice the new, and very illegal, modifications the Rangers had made… The surviving air-tank had been mounted to the top of the ship to act as a turret, the Rangers’ beam howitzers were mounted into what remained of the old Observation Deck before one of those beam howitzers had removed it. Several holes were cut in non-important sections of hull to make way for smaller plasma and beam turrets, just gatlings or anti-machine rifle posts to help give supporting fire for when this turned into a fight. Everyone was ready for it.

On both the lower and upper decks the Steel Rangers had set up cameras and were recording everything that was transpiring, the key to victory would be to turn the hearts of the Enclave’s civilians against the tem.

“This is Raptor Iodine, Raptor Nephilim, continue to Drydock Five, any deviation from projected course will have the vessel immobilized.”

Aria swore under her breath, they were on to them, she just hoped they weren’t completely on to them, she raised the short-range radio to her lips and whispered, “A to G, situation green?”

From the other side she heard Ghost quietly whisper back “G to A, situation red.”

“A to G, go now.”

“G to A, understood.”

Ghost hadn’t worked fast enough, Aria just hoped that what the alicorn had done was enough. She shut off the comms channels, flicked a switch that sent the alarms blaring across the ship, now was time to go, and then finally ticked off their camouflage device… There was a slight ripple and suddenly the Nephilim was displayed in all it’s traitorous might, and Aria prayed to Celestia that she had caught the Enclave by surprise with this sudden demonstration.

“All crew open fire! Target only confirmed hostile targets, avoid non-hostiles at all cost!”

With that, the tri-barreled beam cannons on the sides of the ship let loose hell on the Iodine, targeting its own guns before they could get a shot off, the anti-machine beamguns and plasma guns on the hall started firing at Enclave weapon emplacements built into Cloud Forest, while the beam and plasma gatlings let loose on the enclave soldiers swarming toward the ship.

As the battle begun she clicked a button and pressed the comms speaker to her mouth, a loudspeaker mounted to the vessel’s hull echoed across the sky, “ This is Aria Night,” She passed the speaker to her other pegasi crewmates, all of whom had friends and family in Cloud Forest.

“This is Cyan Strike-”

“This is Strange Choir-”

“This is Red Wind-”

“This is Ironwing-”

“What we have to tell the pegasi of Cloud Forest is very important, you have been deceived, the surface below is not a lost wasteland inhabited by monsters and savages, there are still very real and very sane ponies beneath our hooves who need our help, they are starving, they are dying, because of us… And our own leadership is trying to exterminate them like pests! Look below you, and see!” With that, she shut down the speaker.

In the SPP tower, Ghost had just tossed her remaining explosives into the frame of an important looking machine, she descended down a floor, not bothering with the invisibility.. There were two pegasi, who raised their rifles “What-” They were both shot down by blasts of electricity from Ghost’s horn, the automated security activated, and turrets turned to track her, but she let loose all restraints on her magic, and just let it flow randomly from her horn. Arcs of deadly energy melted the turrets, they blew out magical gems and caused electronics to overload, they melted chunks off the walls, she pointed her horn toward the wall the moment she started detonating her explosives, and blew a hole in the wall to escape through as the rapid chains of booms got closer and closer.

As she flew off and made herself invisible once again, she flew toward the Nephilim, to join the fight. Around her, the destroyed supports failed, the perforated walls tore. Under the explosions everything shifted, structural beams split apart and collapsed, the remaining power cables and computers and weather-managing machines were unable to support the weight, it all started to come crashing down.

Aria watched with a sense of justice as she saw the SPP tower come crashing down, as it fell the shockwave took the clouds immediately around the tower with it, every pony would catch a glimpse of the surface, and they had some luck too, below, one of the Raptors was laying waste to a surface village clearly visible through a hole in the cloud cover. A blast from the mounted beam howitzers blew out the Iodine’s engines and it quickly fell through the clouds, ripping another hole in the cover through which the pegasi could see the truth, and without the SPP it wouldn’t fill back up any time soon.

From the bridge, she could already see riots growing in Cloud Forest, time to add fuel to that fire… The Nephilim closed in, coming in for a landing in the drydock, it landed with a thump, and pegasi were flocking around the edges of the city to get a look at the fight, and what was below the clouds, Security tried to stop them, in some places they were successful, in some places they failed, and pegasi were escaping below the clouds, in some places Security tried a bit too hard and ended up shooting the unarmed and unarmored pegasi… Riots were breaking out. Several Enclave Soldiers marched up toward the docked ship, ready to shoot whatever came out, but got gunned down by the newly mounted gatling turrets, so they took cover, meanwhile civilian pegasi approached the ship cautiously, but were not fired upon. It was clear Security was losing control of the situation, and Aria could only imagine the look on Cloud Forrest’s Colonel at this moment.

Steel Rangers and Enclave Pegasi came marching out of the hangars, one of the pegasi waved at one of the civilians on the drydock, who waved back. “Hey Dad, just in time to see the show!”

An older pegasus flew forward, “Didn’t think my son would go dashite on me, what are you doing!” He sounded angry.

“How about you take a look down there for yourself and you tell me… Anyway, come-one come-all, and grab yourself a gun from Nephilim Victoriam’s own armory!” He said, pulling off the top of the crate of supplies the rangers were wheeling out on to the drydock.

Up on the ship, Harry was just handed a modified memory orb, coated in electronic probes and switches “Got all of them?”

“Yep,” Said Victory Flame, “uploaded and spliced together all the footage we’ve gathered from the battle so far.”

“Alright…” Harry put the modified memory orb into the hatch on the radio equipment that had been hauled down to her bay, she pressed the ‘transmit’ button and the screen flared to life, showing the recordings of the battle, and of the events below the clouds, she put her lips to the microphone and spoke “This is Junior Scribe Harry Potter of the Las Pegasus Steel Rangers, what you are seeing are scenes from a battle that I am a part in this very moment, near the Enclave outpost Cloud Forest… The Enclave has been attacking pony settlements, both friend and enemy, on the surface as part of their Operation Cauterize, let these words sink in as I show you the events of the battle-” With that, Harry began reading the Enclave’s file on their operation as the device transmitted on all frequencies, electronic and magical, the scenes of the battle, and of much more importance, the camera feed focused on the holes in the clouds.

“Celestia fucking damn it!” Colonel Sunglider swore as she looked at the tactical map, they were losing control of Cloud Forest… “Shutterflight protocol, now!”

“We can’t” A stallion’s voice echoed from the terminal, “We don’t have enough pegasi to deal with the riots and close the clouds.”

“Bullshit! Close the cloud cover up right this instant, ignore the rioters, we will deal with them later!” She closed one window of the terminal and then opened another. At that moment however, a new signal appeared on every device, broadcast on all frequencies.

“This is Junior Scribe Harry Potter of the Las Pegasus Steel Rangers, what you are seeing are scenes from a battle that I am a part in this very moment, near the Enclave outpost Cloud Forest…”

“Someone! Shut down that signal!” Sunglider shouted, angrily, this was a huge breach of security!

“We can’t, it’s coming from Raptor Nephilim!”

“Then destroy it! We cannot risk anyone listening to this signal, it’s sharing classified data!” She paused, seeing the tactical map again, and then sent a signal to one of her soldiers, “Swamp Fly! Go to Warehouse 181 and find the box labeled ‘Flux Bomb’”

“You can’t!” One of the ponies in the command center shouted, “My daughter is down there!”

“In all likelihood your daughter is now a traitor to the Enclave, Breezy Fresh, I will not risk the safety of the Enclave, now sit back down, or I will have you shot!”

From the Colonel’s terminal came a voice, one that was distinctly not Swamp Fly’s “Thanks for telling us where you were holding your megaspells… They will soon be property of the Dashite Army, PS. Fuck you, from Staff Sergeant Minty Fresh.”

Somepony else on the comms was muttering “Wait, since when were we called the Dashite Army?”

“Since just now!”

The Colonel put her hoof through the screen of her terminal. Meanwhile, in the distance, not too far, another big green explosion tore a hole in the clouds, a sonic rainboom, and with the state Cloud Forest was in, there was nothing they could do to close it.

Author's Note

A rather action-packed chapter. I wanted to include a Red vs Blue reference in the battle between Steelhooves, Rampage, and Deus... With Deus taking control of a sky-tank and saving Steelhooves and Rampage, but I couldn't think of a reason why he would do this.
Also, thanks to Harry's steel rangers thoroughly disrupting the Enclave, there isn't anything they can do about the Sonic Radboom.

Chapter 13: The Republic Rises

“All pegasi, evacuate the area, Megapell Detonation in T- sixty seconds!” The loudspeaker atop the ship announced.

“Neighvarro is in range!” Cried a stallion from the deck.

Aria Night replied, “Alright, do you have everything you need?” She asked Sparkweld over the radio, who was curled up in the engineering bay looking over dozens of research papers.

“Yes, I think so, I think I can reverse-engineer the spell matrix from here, it’s near fractal in complexity, but it makes some sense…”

“Alright, bring the flux-missile up!”

A hatch opened on the roof of the Nephilim, the flux-bomb, captured from Cloud Forest, was mounted to the end of an old pre-war missile. Neighvarro was in chaos, Harry’s transmission had been picked up by almost everyone in Equestria, and news spread like wildfire, the Enclave were trying to exterminate ponykind! Their hope of victory was null. That wasn’t their true target, however… One-by-one the SPP towers were being torn down. In the north-east one had simply detonated in a magical blast, a message from DJ Pon3 clarifying that he had leveled it… To the east, one had been mysteriously filled with pink cloud, warping the arcane-machinery to non-functionality… To the west one had been bombarded by a group of Steel Rangers using pre-war artillery… To the south, Thunderhead had gone into full revolt and the pegasi had torn down their own tower, a few would have to remain, simply for food production… This was the final target, with this, there was nowhere the Enclave could hide behind the clouds.

From the cloud-fortress rose an impressive white spire, with the press of a button the Flux Missile fired, hitting the base of the tower… The ponies on the bridge hoped that the pegasi in Neighvarro had taken their warning seriously, and that none had stayed too close to the tower. There was a flash of brilliant white magic… From what they knew on the subject, flux bombs were the pony version of a balefire bomb, but the blast was nothing like it, it didn’t burn, it didn’t fill the sky with smoke, it didn’t even have a shockwave, everything within the radius of the bomb was simply turned to dust. Without anything below it, save for the ground a full five kilometers below, the upper segments of the SPP tower simply fell free, you could see it as it fell below the clouds, the clouds having thinned significantly with each tower brought down. When the tower hit the ground, there was one hell of a shockwave from that, and they could see smaller villages around the Neighagra Falls being flattened by the wave of dirt and water kicked up as the tower landed into the Neighagra Lakes. The ponies within the Nephilim hoped those were just raider camps.

“Alright, we're all ready?” Asked Littlepip, overseeing the spellcasting. Spike was also in the corner, watching eagerly. Around the array of machinery were six ponies. Velvet Remedy, Calamity, Homage, Ditzy Doo, Morning Glory, Life Bloom…

“As ready as we’ll ever be…” Said Homage.

“Yup!” Calamity just said.

“Oh I hope my modifications work,” Muttered Morning Glory, placing the Element of Generosity around her neck.

“Alright, I’m activating it now, just focus on your own magic and virtues!” Shouted Spike, throwing a switch. There was a crackle, the six started to glow, energy flowed up the machine and through the thousands of talismans implanted into the metal. There came a flash of power, rolling outward.

The dragon, coated in cybernetics and breathing streams of plasma, hovered over the battlefield, “Get me closer!” Shouted Rampage, as she stood atop the edge of the skytank, the pegasi inside were hesitant, but they passed a bit closer, the dragon turned to try and snach the tank out of the sky, but the pony leapt first, driving herself right into the monster’s mouth, the skytank flew away, while Rampage was swallowed by the beast, a horrible idea on the dragon’s part, even if it didn’t know that at the time… Around the Cathedral a war was raging.

The pegasi crews had overthrown their leadership, and were now fighting with the aid of Steel Rangers and Talons who swarmed over the surface. Steelhooves yelled “Forward, don’t let the enemy gain the momentum!”

Pre-war artillery was brought up, and bombed the outer walls of the Cathedral, several breaches had been made, raiders and slavers, carrying crimson banners with golden eyes, and dressed in their cultist robes, rushed to reinforce the breaches, but they were gunned down by pegasi and rangers, Red Eye had perfected the bypass spell, the Red Legion’s guns could penetrate Enclave armor as if it were paper, but they had not counted on the Rangers or Talons being present, their armor was of different composition, less advanced, but in this situation, far superior. Cultists on the walls were felled by bursts of beam and plasma MEWs, while on the ground Rangers with autocannons and gatling guns mowed down the cultists swarming from within.

The dragon fell down to the ground, after trying to rip itself open from the pain, the cultists stared in shock and awe as Rampage cut herself free, soaked in the dragon’s blood, boiled flesh and melting eyes and burned fur growing back fresh and pristine, her armor had been melted to slag, but she pulled herself free from the white-hot magma and shouted in triumph. She marched forward and ran right into the cultists blocking the door, ripping them apart in hoof-to-hoof combat.

Up in the tallest tower, shielded by powerful spells and talismans, Red Eye watched, things had progressed far faster than intended, but, in a roundabout way, he had still achieved his goals. He watched with some pride at the way the united army of earth ponies, unicorns, pegasi, and griffons had deftly crippled his forces. Beside him, Stern and Protege stood on either side, both looking worried, he had pulled as many of his soldiers as he could from Fillydelphia, it would have been enough to stop the Enclave forces, but not to stop this combined assault. “Damn it! We’ll lose the main gate at this rate!” Stern shouted angrily.

“It appears this battle is lost,” Said Protege, “Should we retreat?”

“No, if we are to lose here we will hold our ground and not flee in cowardice,” Red Eye continued.

Eventually, the gateway was overrun, cultists panicked and fled in droves, between Steelhooves and Rampage they were crushed, between the former Enclave pegasi and the Steel Rangers they were hammered into oblivion. The door to Red Eye’s room burst open and in walked a griffon, one he vaguely recognized, supported by pegasi and Ranger guards. Gawdyna Grimfeathers spoke, “Red Eye, your army has been defeated, and luckily for you I have orders to take you alive, surrender, or I’ll be forced to restrain you.”

Stern and Protege looked like they were about to attack, but Red Eye held them back… Not quite the way he had intended, but he had unified the wasteland, the Pegasi, Rangers, Talons, they had come together to oppose him, unity through a common enemy. He hoped it would last. “Very well, I will come peacefully… So will my advisors here,” he gestured to the griffon and unicorn standing beside him.

“Alright, I’ll be taking you into custody, follow me, and don’t think about trying to escape!”

Gawd lead the three away, taking them aboard a vertibuck and flying into the hangar of an Enclave Thunderhead Airship, they were greeted with a salute by the former Enclave guards, and Red Eye was placed into a cell along with his advisors, they were greeted in the cell by a brown and copper colored pegasus, Colonel Autumn Leaf, stripped of his armor and weapons, who simply gave them an angry glare.

In just a few months, Junction R-7 had grown from a small mercenary camp into a large and prosperous settlement, liberated slaves from Red Eye’s army, Pegasi who had flown down to the surface after Harry Potter’s proclamation aboard the Nephilim, Applejack’s Rangers, Gawd’s Talons, the ponies of Stable 2, several alicorns free from the Goddess and Red Eye, and even a few Hellhounds comprised the population. Most of that population was gathered around a large central stage, built right into the middle of Junction Town. It had been five months since the destruction of Red Eye’s Army at the Battle of Cathedral.

“Oh, I wish I had more time to help you prepare, I’d do it myself but you’re better at this whole public speaking thing than me,” The middle-aged Fluttershy finished preening the Pegasus mare’s feathers and was now combing her tail.

“You didn’t have to do all this for me, you know, Fluttershy…” It was still so weird seeing a two-hundred year old pony standing in the flesh right before her, Glory’s wings certainly felt better than they had in weeks.

“You’re going to go down in history, Glory, I know a bit of what that’s like, it’s my fault that the world is the way that it is, I can at least take the time to help the pony who is going to fix it.”

“I’m not the one who saved us, Blackjack and Littlepip deserve that title.”

“They laid the foundations, but you’re bringing us into the future, Glory,” Velvet had entered the small trailer where Glory was getting prepared, Velvet had brought in a pretty dress with the emblems representing Earth Ponies, Pegasi, Unicorns, Alicorns, Griffons, and Hellhounds embroidered into a sash across the chest, “I hope you enjoy this, I didn’t have much time.”

“It’s wonderful Velvet,” Glory replied, pulling the dress over her and putting her wings through, “Do I look ok?”

“Amazing, darling… Everyone is waiting for you, do Littlepip and Blackjack proud!”

Velvet and Fluttershy waved “bye” to the pegasus mare as she trotted out onto the stage.

She looked a little shy at first, but then found her voice and began speaking, “Ponies, Griffons, Hellhounds, all creatures who we share this world with… I thank you for this chance to address you,” A microphone was brought up to the stage, wired into a radio transmitter, Homage was messing around with the relay’s controls, trying to get the signal to go as far as possible, with luck the far more powerful relays in Tenpony Tower, Thunderhead, and Cloud Forest would pick up the broadcast and relay it even further. “Equestria has suffered, for two centuries it has been a blighted wasteland, filled with horrors, we have been beaten and starved, we have withered and died, but not anymore… Thanks to the help of the Steel Rangers and Dashite Army, we have a second chance, we must not squander this potential, we must rise and rebuild, we must stop our fighting, we must put an end to the raiders and slavers, we must put an end to barbarism and brutality! That is why I thank you for giving me this chance to help, I pray we do not make the mistakes of our ancestors, I, Morning Glory, chosen by the creatures of Junction Town, under democratic election, hereby declare the formation of the New Canterlot Republic, as our first president I hope you will help me to bright about a new dawn for us all…”

“Stern-” The trial was less an actual trial and more just a formal reading of the convict’s crimes and punishment, they had all the evidence they needed, but even this simple trial would go a long way in showing the ponies of the wasteland the ideals of the new republic, “You are guilty of slaving, raider activity, at least two hundred counts mass-murder, and acting against the Republic’s forces in the Battle of Cathedral, as testified by witnesses ‘Murky Seven’, ‘Gawdyna Grimfeathers’, and ‘Glimmerlight’... What do you say in your defence?” Velvet Remedy, wearing the Element of Kindness around her neck as a symbol of her authority, had read Stern’s file and had seen her personally abusing slaves in Fillydelphia, but she tried to be as impartial as possible in her new job as judge.

The courtroom, well, not so much room, more courtyard, as it was the same open space in the middle of Junction Town that President Glory had given her speech in just a few weeks ago. The prisoners, mostly former Enclave personale who refused to join the Dashite Army, and Red Eye’s soldiers captured during the Battle of Cathedral, were lined up, they were not chained, or tied, or even collared, but trying to escape was a bad idea, Talon mercenaries, now the town’s official police force, were lined up on either side, they weren’t going to kill the captives, they had gloves and muzzles on their beaks and talons to prevent such a thing, the guards didn’t like them but they knew it was for the best, at least for now, killing a prisoner would hurt the NCR’s reputation, even if it was on accident. The Steel Rangers, with the help of former Enclave technicians, had set up a live radio and video broadcast of the event, and no doubt the esteemed DJ Pon3 would be putting this in the news.

Stern didn’t bother responding. Velvet continued, “The suspect is found guilty on all charges and sentenced to five years hard labor.” Hard labor was the punishment for slaver activity, it was fitting, the former slave-master being turned into the slave, at least temporarily, unlike a slave they weren’t going to be worked to death, as much as Velvet wished them to be, but their criminal record would follow them wherever they went, most of Junction Town’s population were former slaves, they would find it hard to make friends.

The next prisoner was brought up, “Former Colonel Autumn Leaf,” Velvet continued, “You are found guilty for the murder of five pegasi, resisting arrest by the forces of the Dashite Army, and propagating mass-murder by acting as head of the forces of Enclave Operation Cauterize, as witnessed by Captian Arclight of the NCAFS Raptor Guardian, what do you say in your defence?”

“I say to all the pegasi traitors in the crowd tonight, are you happy! You destroyed the greatest civilisation to ever exist, and turn it into a bastardization of civility! I hope you all burn in hell!”

Velvet sighed, it was clear that were the griffons not keeping the jury at bay, many of the pegasi among them would try to lynch Autumn, “Very well, you are found guilty of all charges and sentenced to ten years imprisonment, primarily for your actions in Operation Cauterize.”

Autumn Leaf glared not at Velvet, but at Calamity, in the jury, who scared back with an equally harsh glare, the pegasus was about to be taken away by the guards when he suddenly flapped his wings and tried to escape, a griffon caught him by the leg and dragged him back down, putting a muzzle on the pegasus’ mouth to keep him from biting as they bound his wings.

Protege was next, and after reading out his crimes, to the mare’s surprise, Murky, and many of the other former slaves in the jury, vouched for him, he wasn’t innocent, but Velvet had to conclude that he was far better than many of the Fillydelphia Slavers she had dragged in, “Due to support from the jury, Protege, your sentence will be reduced to only six months hard labor, I hope when you return to society you will continue to try and be a better pony.”

“Deus Ex Machina, you are guilty of mass-murder, uncounted counts of rape, and several counts of raider activity, what say you in your defense? Nothing? Very well, your punishment will be life imprisonment.” Finally, one-by-one, as the day drew onward, all the prisoners were sent off with their punishments, many in the crowd thought that only five or ten years of labor wasn’t a good enough punishment for the slavers, but Velvet wanted to be kind to them, with luck they would see the error of their ways and become good citizens, the only ones she didn’t tolerate were the raiders, there were a few of them, and she sighed as she had them sent away to life imprisonment. Then, finally, the last prisoner of the day, Red Eye stood before the judge and jury. Every pony there radiated nothing but hatred for him, Velvet sighed, and read out his list of charges. “What do you say in your defence?”

“I wanted to rebuild Equestria, same as you are doing, my methods were different, a little harsh, I will admit, but future generations would applaud the ones who gave themselves to the future of ponykind, at the time it seemed it was the only way to bring about peace and order, I now see I was wrong, for you are doing what I should have done, that is all I have to say.”

“Very well, I can understand your motives, but your crimes are still unforgivable, even if they have motive… You are hereby sentenced to twenty years hard labor.”

Red Eye smiled as he was taken away

Harry sat in the infirmary, she took out a vial of powdered coal, “Carbon, five miligrams, enchanted with… Spell pattern eighty eight,” She read through the Big Book of Arcane Sciences, an old pre-war tome that held some rather fascinating knowledge. “Mix with glycol and reinforce chemical bonds with… Spell pattern fifty six,” She pointed her horn at the mixture and it turned a deep red in color, although not quite done yet, “That creates Arcanocarboglycol, mix with Arcanotyamine,” She continued, mixing together the potions, “And you get a class-I healing potion,” She placed the glowing pink vial on the rack with the other potions she helped synthesize today. It had been a little over a year and a half since the war with the Enclave… Harry’s life since then had been rather boring, mostly just staying at Stable 107 and helping to fix up electronics and repair magical systems. She had taken up a bit of a side-job helping mix up potions…

Ponies and Zebras, long long ago, used to mix up plants and water and oils and enchant them with spells, but slowly the science of alchemy became more and more refined, after the discovery of the atom and the molecule, the ponies looked into which chemicals in the herbs and oils they mixed actually had the effects they wanted, and which chemicals were responsible for the side-effects, and then they analyzed how the magic imbued into the potion actually effected the chemicals… It was fascinating to read about.

Then, there came a voice on the radio systems all throughout the Stable, from Elder Crescent Bolt, “All ponies report to the Stable Door immediately.”

Curious about what was going on, Harry trotted up the stairs and moved to her assigned post. It still caught her a bit by surprise to see a pegasus flying past her through the Stable Atrium, the pegasi that had opted to stay with the Rangers after the war had fit in quick and now made up a third of the Las Pegasus Steel Rangers. Star Paladin Aria Night flew past the foal and got to the elevator before her, Harry swore as Aria closed the door before she could reach it… Damn, now she had to wait for the elevator to come back down.

After Harry got to the Stable’s door she began to work her way through the crowd, Sparkweld was nowhere to be seen, of course, ever since the war he had locked himself up in engineering and was working with a massive stack of papers and design documents. She saw something rather strange beyond the door, five ponies were approaching the Stable in broad daylight… It was interesting how the wasteland was changing since the war, the sky was only sometimes cloudy, sometimes rainy, but none of the oppressive cloud layer, and grass had started to grow in small tufts around fresher, less depleted plots of soil.

Crescent Bolt went to address the newcomers, “President Morning Glory of the New Canterlot Republic,” She began, pointing out the young pegasus with violet mane, silver fur. “Elder Steelhooves of Applejack’s Rangers,” She continued, seeing the older ghoul stallion with bright pink eyes and a small trail of pink mist cascading from his mouth, he looked substantially healthier than any ghoul Harry had ever seen, how he did it she had no idea, but the stallion still had most of his dark green fur. “Army chief of staff Littlepip,” She continued to the small grey mare wearing a blue army uniform and a blue-painted tin helmet that reminded Harry of British soldiers during the world wars. “Chief of internal affairs Gawdyna Grimfeathers,” She said to the large creature Harry realized was a griffon and not a pony. “And finally, former Colonel of the Dashite Army and current Major General of the New Canterlot Air Force, Minty Fresh… I assume you are here to discuss the integration of the Las Pegasus Steel Rangers into the New Canterlot Republic?”

“Yes, we are, you are the largest, strongest, and most well armed of any Steel Rangers contingents, the Manehattan and Hoofington contingents have already been formally inducted into the Applejack’s Rangers and are thus part of the New Canterlot Republic under command of Elder Steelhooves, with you on-” Glory began, but was quickly cut off.

“Yes I am aware of this, I have been paying very close attention to the NCR’s actions ever since the end of the Second Great War… I’m sure you already know what my answer will be.”

“Please, be reasonable Crescent Bolt, I’m sure you don’t want a war with us-” Began Steelhooves but he was cut off again.

“I would be honored to join, my forces and I are at your command, President Morning Glory,” She bowed to the pegasus.

Author's Note

You thought it was going to be the Steel Rangers that were going to go to earth, but no, it was the NCR all along! Sort of... I'm also keeping Deus and Red Eye alive for future stuff... Lots of time-skips here, but building a new civilisation takes time, and Sparkweld still needs to figure out how to make a megaspell if we're going to be going to earth, don't worry, only one more chapter left before we get to Earth stuff.

Chapter 14: Project Elysium

Sparkweld was finished, he put the final dot on the talisman… “It’s done… It’s done!” He shouted, even with the notes he gathered on the flux bomb it had taken him over a year to put together the solution, but now, he had it, he had figured out megaspells! At least one type of megaspell, there were many, but this version would suit their purposes. He wired the array of talismans together, creating a five-meter by five-meter circle where objects could pass through to the other side once the system was powered up, it would be simple to make a return trip, all he had to do was create another set of talismans magically linked into the system, after making one set another set would be much easier and much faster, just a few days, those days would have to be spent preparing for the crossover.

Sparkweld went to his terminal and sent a status update to the new Elder Crescent Bolt, ironic being named Elder when she was still younger than he was. A reply was almost immediate “Going to discuss Elysium with NCR leaders,” Sparkweld didn’t like that, this was the Steel Rangers’ work, not theirs, but since they were part of the republic there wasn’t much that could be done about it, plus getting the NCR’s assistance would be invaluable.

Crescent Bolt sat at the desk, it was her first time in Junction Town, which was rapidly expanding as the capital of the New Canterlot Republic, going from old metal shacks and train cars to brick cottages and concrete buildings, purpose-built structures and not just recycled materials, it was damn impressive… With a population of a little over five hundred it was also certainly one of the largest settlements in the Wasteland.

She was inside one of these new brick buildings, and sitting with her was the Elder of the Applejack’s Rangers, and the President herself. They had just finished rereading the file on Project Elysium “So, this Harry Potter,” Steelhooves began, “Is from another world?”

“That we have confirmed, not just from her own words, but also through genetic tests… The transfiguration spells used to turn her into a pony only alter physiology, they do not adjust genetics, genetically she is unlike any pony, or mutant, I have ever encountered… As you’ve seen in the file we’ve put together gene projections as to what she looks like in her original form.

“I’ve seen, this is amazing news, another world very similar to our own, with a pre-war civilization! If they knew what we were going through they could provide us food and supplies to rebuild!” Glory clopped her hooves together, smiling.

“Or, they could be another Enclave,” Steelhooves said, pessimistically .

“True…” Glory replied, “Still, we need to do something with this information.”

“I have plans to infiltrate this world,” Crescent Bolt began, “Harry Potter can guide us, we can use transfiguration spells to adjust our physiology to match that of Humans, we can set up a hidden outpost, somewhere far from Human eyes.”

“That is an idea,” Steelhooves continued, “If I may, I would like to send a few of my own personale to help in this project.”

“Ooh! Can I come!” A pony had entered the room unannounced, she was almost like a much younger clone of President Morning Glory, “I want to do something cool and important for everyone too!”

“Lambent-” Glory began.

“I wanna come!” The foal said, giving a puppy-dog look to her older sister.

“Is it safe on this, Earth?”

“If Harry Potter is to be believed, yes,” Replied Crescent.

“Ok, fine, Lambent you can go, hopefully you’ll learn a thing or two from the Rangers. Listen to what they say and do what they tell you to do, they’re good ponies.”

“Oh, yes! Yes! Yes!,” The foal was dancing around happy and excited.

Harry Potter walked calmly into the maintenance section of the stable, Sparkweld was waiting for her. “Harry, good morning, I have some good news.”

“What is it, sir?”

“Project Elysium is ready to advance to stage two, we have successfully opened a portal to your homeworld.”

That was news to Harry, so that was what the stallion had been doing this whole time, “Why?”

“Your homeworld presents an amazing opportunity to the ponies of the wasteland, we intend to contact humanity and exchange our technology for food and supplies in rebuilding Equestria… However, we understand that this is also a danger, the humans may not like our intrusion, so for stage two we’re going to be sending through several undercover recon teams to assess the situation. Once we have a clear picture of human government and their likely responses we can work on contacting them.”

“I understand, sir,” Harry continued, yes, it made sense, but there was no way they could pull this off, “But sir, how precisely are you going to stay undercover, a pony would be too obvious if they simply appeared in the street.”

“First we’re going to open a portal in a remote and relatively safe area, then we will use transfiguration spells to make ourselves human. Your genetic data will be of great aid, but we will need more samples if we’re too copy humans, that is why I would ask you if you can gather Ghost and inform her of the situation, with her invisibility she can move among humans without detection, gather a few small blood samples from various male and female humans, and bring them back here in stasis.”

“Alright, is there more I need to know?”

“Yes, you will be acting as our guide and helping us move through the human world without being too obvious, give us instructions on how to blend in, however that will only be after we have successfully made a pony-to-human and human-to-pony transformation spell and have clothing and weapons suitable for the human world.

Ghost woke up from a strange dream. She had been having these dreams ever since the Goddess had died, but she couldn’t understand them… She was a pink and purple unicorn, she was in a laboratory… There was an explosion, a pony fell into a vat of liquid, she hid, she starved, she tried to teleport away but the magic in the walls didn’t allow it, she heard them all scream and get dragged away, one by one, then she was grabbed, she screamed, she tried to fight but her magic wasn’t strong enough, “Starlight!” One of them yelled, but then she went under-

Ghost started to wander around, she didn’t like the stable, she liked the surface, she walked around among the bushes and grass chutes that had started to sprinkle the wasteland, eventually trees would come back too, it would be a while though, she remembered trees, they always caught her kites- She tried to remember more but the memory vanished.

Then, she heard Little Mare approaching, Little Mare told her to follow, so she did, she went back into the stable, she met with the one Little Mare called Sparkweld, who told her that Little Mare was from another world, it was interesting. She was taken into a room filled with magical machines, the stallion put a circle of talismans inside another circle of talismans, hit a switch, and the inner set of talismans vanished, “There we go, that should act as your return gate, just walk into the circle and you will be brought back, you remember your mission?”

“Yes,” She replied, “Gather blood from ten humans, do not cause any permanent harm, do not be detected.” She raised the stack of enchanted needles she had been given, the spells dulled the pain when being stuck into someone’s veins, once blood was gathered it was placed into stasis, and once the needle was removed the wound would heal immediately.

“Correct, now, step into the circle, I have chosen what I believe to be a good insertion point.”

She obeyed, stepped into the circle, there was a flash, and then she was suddenly standing in a forest… Not a twisted and dark forest like the Everfree, not a dead and burnt forest like much of the wasteland, it was filled with thick trees and lots of fresh plants, it smelled so strange. She trotted out of the woods, not far away, but certainly in sight, was a small village that would be a good place for blood gathering. She turned invisible and flew low over the town, she flew into a large black tower and gathered samples from the two inside, they were strange-looking, tall and with claws on their forehooves and weird flat paws on their hindhooves, much like a griffon, but built as if to walk on just their rear legs. She moved on to the next building, with a large family, she gathered three more vials there, but didn’t risk staying for too long, it was evidently early in the morning and they would be waking up soon, judging from the sliver of light on the horizon, she arrived in another home and gathered two more, just one more vial was empty, and she took a sample from one last human before flying back into the forest and delivering them.

“Is it ok, Silver, if I were to stay a girl, eeh, filly, during this process?” Harry began, “Being turned back into a human is going to be weird enough I’ve gotten used to living as a filly.”

“Sure!” Silver said happily, “Just let me transfer some genes from subject five and you’ll be set!” Gene analysis was complete, there was one weird genetic trait they all seemed to share, an active thaumic membrane in their cranium, almost like the patches of magically-active brain tissue in a pony, but Silver put that thought away for later, there was some minor inbreeding but nothing major, she spliced and mixed the genes, giving them a semi-random appearance, it would be too obvious if they looked too much like other humans, then she added the genetic material taken from herself and the other ponies and one griffon who would be going through to the other side, it would help if they looked at least something like their regular forms. “Alright,” she said, “I’ll go first.”

She walked into the autodoc, it’s automatic spellcasting matrix fired, she felt herself change, growing larger, taller, skinnier in some places and fatter in others, she walked out, it was weird walking on just her hindhooves, Harry seemed to flush for some reason, but the others were just in awe, Silver was now a tall, human, female. She had kept her mane bright silver, but turned it from having a bluish tone to a yellowish tone, blonde was apparently an acceptable mane color for humans.

Next went Victory Flame, she came out smaller with a brown mane, and very skinny. Next went Lambent, then Rosemary, Lighting Striker, Aria Night, and finally Harry. Harry spoke up, regaining her professionalism after the shock of being in a room full of naked male and female humans…

“Alright, we’ll need acceptable aliases and backgrounds if we’re to fit in on Earth, I will still be Harry Potter, my relatives kicked me out of their house and I ended up taking shelter with the rest of you, got that?” Everyone nodded, clearly a little uneasy in their new bodies and at having to take orders from a filly. “It would be a little weird if all the foal- err, children were orphans, so Victory Flame your new parents are Silver Heartstrings and Rosemary, and Lambent, your new parents are Lightning Striker and Aria, understood?” Everyone nodded again.

“Ooh, this will be fun, pretending you’re my parents!” Lambent said.

“Finally, names, as I said, we will need acceptable aliases, Harry Potter works fine for me, it’s a human name… Here’s a list of human names I’ve put together, feel free to mix them up or change them slightly, but don’t change them too much, we still want to sound vaguely human.”

Victory settled on “Vicky Themorre,” with Silver being “Celeste Themorre,” and Rosemary taking “Lance Themorre.” Lambent was now “Lucius Kriegsworth,” Lightning was “Mac Kriegsworth,” and Aria stayed as “Aria Kriegsworth.” They weren’t perfect human names, it was likely that Petunia and Vernon would think them to be some weirdos, at the very least, but they were suitable.

Everyone practiced their new names as Harry, feeling weird walking around as a human girl, went to talk to some of the unicorn scribes about putting together some acceptable clothing for everyone. She was given odd looks by the rest of the ponies, but they had been warned in advance, so they didn’t attack or restrain her thinking she was some mutant.

In a few hours, everyone was used to their new human names, a few small 10mm pistols had been modified with handles better suited for human use, and they had been outfitted with some rudimentary clothes, they were mostly patched together from raider gear and pre-war outfits, after being washed thoroughly, they were messy, patchty, and didn’t fight quite right, but they would do, at least until they could buy some proper clothes. “Money will be a problem, we can exchange gold or gems, but caps won’t do, gather up some pre-war coins, they’re gold, we can sell them. We don’t have merchants where we come from, you might be able to sell some stuff at pawn shops, at least I remember Petunia saying something about pawning off some of Dudley’s old stuff, but most places only sell, they don’t buy.”

With that final point made and understood, they were given one last piece of utility, Sparkweld walked in, carrying seven small padded devices, “These are pipbucks,” He said, “I’m sure most of you have at least heard of them, they’re rare, but the stable as a nice large supply, you wear them around your forelegs, in your case, your arms… They are extremely useful and I wouldn’t allow you to leave without them, they are able to identify hostiles and map your surroundings using a range of scrying and divination spells. As well as vitals monitoring, poison detection, radiation meters, all sorts of useful spells.” Everyone fitted one to their wrist, they were a bit less bulky on a human than they were on a pony, but they did stand out, Harry didn’t like it, but she had to admit that they sounded useful, the adults had managed to hide theirs under their clothing, one or two of them wouldn’t stand out, the humans would probably think them just some weird wrist-watches, even if they were a little large.

With that, they stepped through the portal… It was weird, for a second Harry was in a stream of magical energy, and then suddenly she was standing in a forest, an earth forest… Everyone checked their pipbucks, there was one non-hostile nearby who wasn’t with their team, but they didn’t see anyone, or did they hear running or shouting, so they doubted the human had seen them yet. “Alright, check the perimeter and make sure it’s safe to begin transforming this location into a proper Steel Ranger outpost,” Mac Kreigsworth began. Everyone fanned out, while Mac went back through the portal to inform the ponies on the other side to begin moving material through and set up some illusion spells and magical barriers to keep the area safe and concealed.

Harry was walking down a hill when she came across the non-hostile on her EFS, a young human girl, sitting on the hill, wearing a sparkly and kinda tacky dress, brilliant blonde hair, in a voice that reminded him somewhat of Fluttershy but with an english accent, she simply said “Hello, I’ve not seen you around before. I’m Luna Lovegood.”

Author's Note

Normally in this kinda story, Harry stays with the Weasleys, but for a change of pace instead of staying with the Weasleys and having Ginny come a year early, how about best girl Luna comes along instead!

Chapter 15: A Letter from Hogwarts

Was this, death? She sat, floating around, as nothing, but something… A paradox, a void, a soul without a host but not dead. She had closed her eyes, she had dreamt of a world where everything went perfect, but she knew the reality, and no matter how she tried to turn her eyes away she could still feel them, she could feel their pain, their wrath, their horror, their fear. And then, there was a flash of light… And now this, this half-life, this strange abyss… Were she a lesser being she would have simply floated around the nothingness, as a spectre in a world beyond the physical. Part of her wanted to join that grand nothingness, but something, some force beyond just simple magic, had pulled her back together, the strands of her being, the tethers of mind and magic, being wrapped back into a united whole. Her existence was tied to the stars, as long as a single light shone in the void, she too would shine bright, one form or another… A blessing and a curse. She had been so wrapped in sorrow she had not seen the obvious solution, it was horrible, but to end pain and suffering, something drastic must need to be done, she hardened her heart, and she burned.

She didn’t expect to run into a local so quickly, “Umm, well, my name is Harry Potter, nice to meet you, Luna.”

“Harry Potter, that's a good name, there was this one famous kid named Harry Potter, he was a boy though,” Harry was confused, she knew about her, well, the old him, back when he was living with the Dursleys, did she know them, was she going to try and bring him-her, whatever, bring Harry back to them? She couldn’t have that, she was dangerous, if she really did know about her- Harry’s mind was racing, and she nearly drew her pistol and shot the girl right there as mindless panic took hold, but she got control of her mind and body before she did something that would blow their cover. “What’s wrong Harry Potter, you look scared, I think I said something wrong…”

“N-No, it’s not that, I’m fine, seriously,” She was probably talking about another Harry Potter anyway, the chances were pretty high that there were at least a few people named Harry Potter in the world… The words of her Elder came back to her, “I don’t believe in random chance, I believe in probability.”

“Did you say something?” Luna asked.

“Oh, just, nothing,” Shit, she said that aloud, she cannot say things like that aloud, she doesn’t know who is listening in at this very moment.

“Well, you should come and visit me and my father, we live just over there-” She pointed to the stone tower on the side of top of the hill. Weird place to live, Harry thought to herself, this wasn’t a normal suburban neighborhood at any rate, she would need to be extra careful.

“Perhaps, we’ll see,” She didn’t want to go into potentially hostile territory without backup, she would need to bring the other fillies, perhaps one of the adults, not too many though, that would make them stand out too much, perhaps place two or three on perimeter guard while she was visiting, just in case anything tried to sneak up on them.

With that, she walked away, a new mission appeared on her pipbuck titled “A Dangerous Dinner” with the notes “Join Luna for dinner.” Weird how that worked, must be those divination spells Sparkweld had been talking about. She moved her hand to tap the screen and she realized she had her hand gripped tight around her pistol without realizing. She started to shake with the realization of how close she had come to killing a human.

She made it back up the hill, the ponies were busy plotting out where they were going to place the shielding spells to keep the area safe while building, whatever it was they were going to build here. As she arrived Lightning Striker, aka Mac Kriegsworth, announced “This location is unsuitable for a permanent outpost, not enough cover and too close to civilization, we’ll be moving the portal talismans!” As he said that, Sparkweld, in pony form, arrived though the portal, wearing a pipbuck with a strange boxy protrusion.

“Sparkweld, what are you doing, you’re going to break our cover!” Harry said.

“Stealthbuck,” he said, pointing to the boxy attachment, “One hour of an invisibility spell before it needs to be recharged,” With that, he loaded the talismans into a saddle bag and activated the stealthbuck, shimmering for a second before becoming mostly invisible, you could still see a very slight shimmer as he moved but you wouldn’t be able to notice unless you knew what to look for, and from a distance he would be completely undetectable, “Alright,” It was weird having his voice come from seemingly nowhere, “I’m moving it out east, I saw another forest on your maps, your pipbucks should automatically update locations of interest once I’m finished resetting the portal, only one of you should follow me, too many may seem suspicious.”

“Alright,” Lightning said, “I’ll go, I’m the highest ranking here.”

“Good idea,” Harry began, “I’ve made contact with one of the locals,” Her voice shook as she remembered nearly killing a human child, “She invited us for dinner, it’s in all likelihood not a trap, but I would still want some cover, just in case, facilitating good relations is an important step in our mission.”

“Yes, that would be advisable,” The invisible Sparkweld said, before he started marching off.

A few minutes later, when they thought the time was right, and they were done surveying the area and testing out their pipbucks, Harry, Lambent, and Victory, in their aliases of Harry, Lucius, and Vicky, moved toward the strange tower-house as the afternoon was slowly turning into evening, outside, hidden behind some shrubs, was Rosemary, alias of Lance, was waiting, ready to give covering fire should the dinner prove to be a trap. The house was surrounded by a lush garden, the radiation meters on their pipbucks, completely unmoving, ticked up ever so slightly as they approached the house “Magical radiation,” Whispered Victory, “Still much lower than radiation levels in Equestria, but higher than the surrounding area.” That made Harry cautious.

“Oh, these your friends?” Luna began as she opened the door.

“Yep, Lucius Kriegsworth,” Pointing to the human Lambent, and “Vicky Themorre,” Pointing to the human Victory.

“Nice to meet you Lucius Kriegsworth and Vicky Themorre, my daddy is cooking, I told him we have guests, I could see you walking up down the road, from the top of the tower… Be careful in the forest, the place is full of nargles.” This made Harry and the other fillies concerned, was she watching them? Good thing the portal location was being moved, but it would be prudent to figure out just how much she knew. They trotted inside, Luna had them sat at the table, the house was strange, every surface was coated in paper, odd trinkets, and strange little devices, the walls were coated in tacky wallpaper and bright colors that made Harry think of images of pre-war Equestria, before anyone could notice they pulled their sleeves over their pipbucks so they wouldn’t be noticed save for a small bulge.

A tall, middle-aged, slightly effeminate looking man marched up the stairs, “These your new friends Luna? I’m afraid I can’t talk, I need to finish cooking the firemelon.”

“What’s a firemelon?” Harry asked as casually as she could, something about this place wasn’t adding up.

“Oh, not heard of them? I guess that makes sense, they’re from Ireland, daddy imported a few of them from the wizards over there.”

Wizards? Harry was sure that magic didn’t exist on Earth, at least not in the way it did on Equus, there were a few other possibilities, Wizards being the name of a company or organization, but the way the magical radiation meter danced around, nowhere near enough to be dangerous, but enough to confirm that magic was present here, put doubt on those counterpoints… Never trust in random luck, trust in probability.

As Luna left to talk to her father, the three foals turned human silently agreed to tell the truth if magic came up in the discussion, as long as it didn’t give away any details of the rangers or their mission. It did, “I assume you’re muggleborn,” Luna’s father came down and sat with everyone, carrying trays of all sorts of weird looking food, there was some meat on the piles, Lambent was clearly hesitant, but Harry, being a former human, and Victory being a wastelander who was used to bloatsprite and radroach meat, started eating… It tasted good, better than most wasteland foods, it was fresh for once.

“Yeah…” Harry didn’t know what that term meant, but it was clearly the response they hoped to hear.

Glory stood over the patch of dirt, it was easy to find, with the skies clear and the radiation for the most part gone, not entirely, but mostly, it was far easier to spot the enervation fields, grass didn’t grow. And here, right in the middle of this circle of death, was a small pile of dirt, it was a grave, an unmarked grave, but Glory had been there when it had been dug… She cried, she cried, and she cried, she pleaded, she wanted Blackjack back, she couldn’t have been dead, even with her leg missing, her flanks rotted away, her throat torn out and blackened by the dark magic, she couldn’t have been dead… But she was, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it… That moment, when P-21 finished laying the last pile of dirt, Glory wanted to be in that grave too, it was lucky she was a pegasus, not a unicorn, else she could have floated her beam rifle and just ended it. She tried to, but Rampage’s hoof had taken care of that, a smack to the jaw, hard enough that she coughed up blood, snapped her out of it… Even now though, a little over a year later, she still hurt inside on seeing this grave, her eyes pricked with tears.

“I wish you could see me now, Blackjack… From a scared little filly just branded dashite, to, well… Hero… Hero of all the ponies of Equestria, I’m leading us away from the wasteland, I just wish you could be here to help me… I need to go now, I have important work, but I just wanted to come by and say… Thank you…”

Glory pulled herself together and marched up toward Flank... The town was in ruins, after Deus and the bounty hunters swarmed the place, they simply fought to the death, Deus was probably the only one who survived that battle, and in the end, everyone in the town either ran or got killed. Littlepip and Steelhooves were standing together, along with a few dozen Rangers and at least three scores of NCR volunteers, dressed in blue-painted uniforms, carrying makeshift pipe guns. "Are we ready to make our move on the Hoof," She said, the NCR had been rapidly expanding, most of Old Equestria was now under their command, but there were many factions who didn't want to join and many places too dangerous.

"We-" Littlepip began, but then she paused to pull out a napkin and started coughing, she continued for a few minutes, Glory caught bright red stains on the napkin as she pulled away, "I-I'm fine. Yes, the Collegiate, Pecos, Harbingers, Steel Rangers, and Crusaders have joined us already, but the Zebra Remnants, Reapers, and Society Ponies have been actively hostile, negotiations have broken down, they're currently in control of the Hoof, but not for long."

"I've sent my rangers to deal with the Reapers, with luck they'll be pacified soon enough, Rampage is leading the charge," Steelhooves said.

"If things get bad enough with the Reapers we can have the NCRAF bomb the Hoofington Stadium, and I am going to have last-minute negotiations with King Splendid, hopefully, we won't have to arrest or kill the Society, but with their beliefs that's unlikely, I'm bringing two companies of Regulars with me."

"Then," Glory continued, "With the NCRAF we'll be able to breach the core."

Harry had put together a picture in her mind of these… Wizards… From careful questioning she had deduced that magic was indeed real on Earth, these wizards had their own society, hidden from everyone else for fear of the non-magicals, the muggles, the name sounded like an insult. They were an enclave, much like the Grand Pegasus Enclave, but instead of hiding in the clouds, they hid in plain sight with careful spellcraft. A Grand Unicorn Enclave, if you would. Dealing with these wizards was going to be quite the political balancing act.

Then, something unexpected happened, an owl flew through the window, again, Harry kept her hand tight around her pistol just in case, but the owl didn’t attack, just dropped a letter on the table in front of Harry, from the envy in Luna’s eyes, she clearly hoped the letter was for her, she pulled it out and read.

Author's Note

I need to take a quick break after this one, kinda got burnt out a bit, and I feel my writing skills are degrading a bit, I'll rewrite this chapter a little better later on someday.

Chapter 11: Under the Iron Sky

“This is Raptor ‘Nephilim’, target in sight, firi-” The captain was saying, then she caught sight of the beam howitzers this base had, the other Steel Rangers bases they had passed hand all been either caught completely by surprised, or were in a state of panic and disorder, still put up a hell of a fight according to the other two raptors assigned to this task, they were the most heavily armed and armored faction in this goddess forsaken wasteland, some enclave security teams suffered over fifty percent casualties, but one-by-one the Rangers had broken under pegasi superiority. These ones though, they were prepared, well prepared… Trenches and dugouts, magical beam and magical plasma gatling emplacements, and those cannons… The captain, Winter Snows, had realized a second too late that she shouldn’t have hesitated to fire.

The Steel Rangers didn’t… Their shots were not random, they had three beam howitzers, and so they fired at the three most important targets on any vessel… The engine, the weapons, and the bridge… One shot took out one of the side-mounted triple-barreled beam turrets, causing the energy in those magically active gems to dissipate violently, there were a series of shocks as the safeties, that were supposed to prevent this sort of chain-reaction, failed… No pegasus ever believed the wastelanders had weapons that could destroy the magically-shielded and graphene-reinforced armor plating around the turrets, there was simply no reason to maintain the safeties… Thus, an entire quarter of the ship went dead as magically active gems overloaded from the sudden backlash of power and detonated.

The next shot blew out the aft-starboard engine cluster, propellers breaking free from their rotors and slicing into the hull, more magical gems blowing out, although not to the same degree as the first hit, but the clouds magically bonded to the airship’s keel had dissipated, they were going down hard… The third shot fired right into the bridge… Or, rather, observation tower, no pony would be stupid enough to make the bridge stick out from the top of the ship, such an obvious target! It still caused blackouts across the ship's systems from poor gem maintenance and poorer safety systems… “Prepare for impact!” The captain yelled, “Radio Enclave High Command at Neighvarro, tell them we’re downed!”

“Can’t, ma’am, radio gems got overloaded! They aren’t broken, but it will take us at least an hour to drain the power safely without blowing out our ears!”

“Damn it, fucking dirt-ponies!”

The airship smashed into the ground hard, rending a large gash into the earth, the bottom turret had managed to get a shot off before the crew climbed up to avoid getting crushed as the ship dipped down.

That shot from that beam cannon, which should have torn a hole clean through fifty meters of dirt and blown a hole in the defunct stable they were using as a base, missed… It struck the ground behind the stable, certainly from the smoke billowing out it hit something, but the defenders didn’t flinch…

After regaining her composure, the captain yelled, “All surviving security teams and fight crews, jump! Jump! Jump!”

The airship was coming in for a strafe, it wasn’t going head-on, more like a slightly angled broadside, that gave the howitzer teams plenty of space to target… The three fired in quick succession, with the Stable’s tiny power supply, beam cannons that were supposed to recharge over the course of three minutes, took sixty minutes… The barricade team certainly hoped the battle would be over before they had to take another shot, but if it wasn’t, then another trio of blasts would certainly end it…

Harry watched as the engines on the airship exploded and fell to pieces, the side-mounted gun, once aiming right at him, was shattered glass, melted metal, and warped plastic. The gun on the ship’s underside had gotten off a shot, but it flew over their heads and hit somewhere behind them. The Star Paladin’s voice, echoing through the communications equipment that they were all issued right before the ship breached the clouds, spoke up on all frequencies, “Damage report?”

“Cafeteria got slagged,” The familiar voice of Sparkweld continued, “Nothing else though, the beam missed anything vital completely.”

Hangar doors on the ship’s underside, unfortunately intact despite the crash, jerked open and power-armored ponies with wings swarmed out, along with large floating black rectangular things with rounded turrets… Flying tanks… Harry would have been surprised but she didn’t think she’d ever be surprised again after seeing the airship fly out from above supported by clouds.

“Steel Rangers! Hold the line!”

Harry did so, firing bolt after bolt into the attacking horde, but even from Trottz, her shots just bounced off the hulls of those sky-tanks… Magical plasma cannons fired, blasting away, but the rangers weren’t stupid, like raiders, who would charge at you with a knife even if you had power armor and a gatling gun, they took cover behind the freshly dug trenches, they took only ten minutes to lay out some impressive trench lines, amazing what magic could do. Harry could still hear a few ponies shouting as the tank strafed their trenches, Harry hoped no one he knew well were in there when they blew…

Seeing the tactics being employed, the pegasi took to the sky to fire over the walls of the trench, but those in the air weren’t behind cover, a pegasus was fast but, against a rotary autocannon, oversized miniguns mounted into prepared dugouts and belt-fed so they wouldn’t run out of ammo mid-battle, they were made short work... Any pegasus who didn’t try to dodge or spin was torn from the air, and it was hard to aim while spinning.

A ranger ducked out of cover, immediately getting pelted by beam and plasma shot, she vanished into ash, but not before getting off a shot with her rocket launcher, it was set to proximity, and it didn’t explode, it fired out a hemisphere of shrapnel that didn’t kill that many, but made the pegasi drop like flies, tearing holes in wings, or ripping the wing off completely. Any pegasus that made it close enough that accuracy didn’t matter got torched by flamers… But the tanks were still getting closer, there were three tanks now, and Harry’s section of trench was nearly hit by a plasma blast, across from her she saw the knight, the female one who had accompanied her in Trottz, was ripped in half by the swirling magical energy, Harry stared in horror… Never had she seen one of her allies fall in battle directly, occasionally one would crawl back wounded, sometimes she would hear an explosion or energy blast from upstairs or downstairs in a ruin, and arrive too late, but she had never seen the act directly… It wasn’t too different from what she saw when she shot her enemies, but something about it was different, it was different when it was someone you knew, even if you didn’t know them well…

“Assholes!” Harry lifted up a grenade dropped on the trench floor and flung it with all her magical might, the blast didn’t catch anything, but it was the thought that counted… Then the cavalry arrived… Cavalry? She didn't think it was entirely appropriate, since they weren’t mounted, nor were they horses.

There was a thunderous KUNPBOOM! And one of the tanks just detonated in a multicolored magical fireball… Zooming in from up above came the Talons, “You’re gonna owe us for this!” She heard Corvo yell as she loathed another hundred-milimeter round into her cannon, Harry couldn’t imagine she had all too many of those left, especially if she had to fly while carrying them. Smaller flak-cannons, miniguns, assault rifles, beam guns, plasma guns, and pistols of all shapes and sizes roared into life, the pegasi almost retreated, we outnumbered them now, but they still out-gunned us.

“Damn it! Why didn’t we pick up griffons on radar!”

“Don’t know, sir!” The pegasus was hiding behind a tree, it was pitiful cover, they never trained for this, all the dirt-ponies knew was how to fuck and murder, they didn’t have military tactics! He was nearly hit by a huge shell from one of the griffon’s guns, luckily it wasn’t explosive, or it was a dud… Yep, that was a red band, definitely a dud… The Pony’s heart raced as he ducked from pitiful cover to pitiful cover. “We need to get back into the ship! We can’t hold out in the lack of cover!”

The captain’s voice picked up on the comms, and shouted loud, clear, and angry “If any of you featherbrained bastards take one step back I’ll shoot you myself!”

The pegasus stood his ground for a second, then the pegasus next to him got sliced clean in half… It was a clean razor’s cut, not a bullet hole or magical blast, it was like he was simply sliced by an invisible sword, the pegasus felt something pass mere millimeters from him, like a ghost, and felt a cut start to pour blood down his backside, he didn’t even feel the blade! He had enough sense to chug a healing potion, then ran, damn the consequences, he wasn’t fighting this!

He wasn’t the only one, now pegasi were starting to abandon the fight in droves, if their superiors found out they would be branded dashites and either imprisoned or killed, but possible death later was preferable to certain death now. They fled, but as they did, the ship’s one still functional tipple-barreled beam cannon tracked them, and fired, he ducked out of the way in time, but several others were smoking ash in the wind… He flew, and didn’t stop until his wings gave out.

The rest of the pegasi that weren’t dead or bleeding or disabled were retreating into their airship, there appeared to be some fighting going on inside the ship itself, it appeared they had a mutiny on their hooves, the Steel Rangers had successfully broken the pegasi morale, but with the ship in the condition it was, all they were doing were making easy prey of themselves and backing up into a corner to be captured. Crescent Bolt stepped out into the battlefield herself, “Forward, all Rangers forward! Capture if possible! We need pegasi prisoners!” One of the beam-howitzers was hit by a tank blast, and completely slagged, the second had its power line cut and was in no shape to fire, the third however had fired a blast into one of the airtanks, slagging the front and back plates, immolating the crew, and overloading every magical gem and talisman that made it function... The third was abandoned by their crew, the Rangers didn't kill fleeing ponies unless they were raider and slavers.

They had made their way just inside the large dark airship, two rather brave pegasi guards raised their guns, but then their heads separated from their bodies without a sound, everyone paused for a moment, then appeared a winged unicorn, an alicorn, dark blue and with a pair of combat knives floating around her, “Oh, forgive me, I couldn’t focus on two blades and the invisibility spell at the same time.”

“Everyone, hold fire!” Harry shouted.

“What?” The Star Paladin, for the first time in a long time, was rather confused, she gestured the other rangers to continue forward, Victory Flame led the way, it was almost comical to see a foal leading an army, as they ran deeper into the airship wreck.

“Umm, I’ve seen her before, she’s a friend, not an enemy,” Harry began.

“Well, I’ll take your word for it, but I would still prefer if she were disarmed and had a magical suppressor placed on her horn.”

“I will do so willingly,” The alicorn began, “However I want your assurance that Little Mare will not be harmed.”

“We assure you, Harry will not be harmed by us, and will in fact be the one to guard you, so she will be on the rear lines.”

“Thank you,” With that, the alicon dropped her knives and sat down on the edge of the airship’s bay.

Harry watched over her, and listened for the sounds of fighting, there were what sounded like small skirmishes here and there, but for the most part, it seemed the enemy had routed. “So, uhh, I never got your name…”

“I do not have one, you ponies have names, I think I used to have a name, cannot remember…” She sounded wistful, but also sad.

“Well, how about, Ghost, since you can turn invisible.”

“Many of us can turn invisible, but I like that name, name, it’s weird to have a name…”

“I thought you had gone back to look for your Goddess.”

The Alicorn erupted into tears, Harry suddenly felt rather awkward, “She is dead, I know she is, so I searched for my sisters, to reconnect, to have the comforting presence in my mind again, but then I saw the ship, you are not like me, you are small, you are weak in magic, you are alone in mind, now that the Goddess is gone, you will not hear her again, Little Mare… I feared for you, I circled around you, I blocked beams and bullets when you did not see them coming, when I knew you were safe I moved forward to harm those who sought to harm you, with a blade I am undetectable, unlike my spellcraft, so I sliced and cut, it is crude, but it is one of the few magics left to me, as my horn will never return I feel.”

“What… Happened to it?”

“I do not remember, I do not remember much, most of what I remember is bad, you are one of the few things that I remember that is good…”

The capitan drew a magical beam pistol and shot the first pony who leapt into the door, burning her head clean off, she marched out into the foredeck, seeing the fifty or sixty so ponies who survived, “This is my ship! Under the jurisdiction of the Grand Pegasus Enclave, you are all hereby branded dashite unless you turn around and face these barbarians!”

“Get us out of here! It’s hopeless!” A pegasus stallion cried, he was shot dead too.

“The engines are dea-” One of the bridge technicians began, then silenced as the barrel of the beam pistol was pointed into her head too, the Captain at least shot her in the leg instead of the head, but her whimpers of pain only served to further horrify the remaining crew.

“There will be no cowards on my ship,” Captain Winter Snows finished, “You will fight or you are a traitor to the Enclave, you will fight or these mutant rapist murdering mud-ponies will kill you, you will fight or I will shoot you myself!” One of the soldiers drew their rifle and fired a warning blast at the Captain, she returned fire, but the beam glanced off her power armor, “Security, arrest the Traitor!” She shouted, realizing her beam pistol wouldn’t scratch the armor, but then she realized none of her crew, even the ones on the bridge, were following her command anymore… She wouldn’t realize anything else ever again as every loaded gun in the room turned on her, there was pretty much nothing left.

“Surrender to the Steel Rangers! We will not harm you! We have explicit orders not to harm you!” A ranger called from down the hall. The fifty five, now fifty four that their ex-captain had unofficially been relieved of duty, pegasi had barricaded themselves in the bridge, it was a tight fit. Eventually, one of the braver ponies inside stepped forward, head bowed, she was ready for whatever the savages were going to do to her, she just wanted to get the torture and fucking over with… To her surprise, there was nothing of the sort, instead, the Rangers simply relieved her of her weapon, the ex-captain’s beam pistol, and then had her join a group down in a deck, others were suspicious, thinking they would just mass-execute or burn them alive, but the ‘savages’ could have just done that already… So one-by-one, the pegasi surrendered and gathered on the ship’s deck.

“Enclave Pegasi, I am Star Paladin Crescent Bolt of the Steel Rangers, and I have a simple order for you, can you fix this vessel and make it operational again?”

“W-Why should we trust you! Why should we work for you! You’re just going to go flying up to our homes and burn, and torture, and enslave us!”

“You seem to be under the delusion that all ponies on the surface are the same, we are not like the raiders and slavers, we are the Steel Rangers, and we uphold many of the values your leaders claim to uphold as well, we seek to restore Equestria, we seek peace, we seek freedom, and we seek kindness… At least that is true of me and my Rangers… And I am sure there are many others in this wasteland who feel the same… But it seems your leadership are not one of them,” She paused for a second, waiting for any objections, but everypony here had seen the Captain, “We have spared you, we are willing to let you all go free, but I heard what your leader was shouting, your chances of a safe return to your homes are slim, you are branded traitors, but unlike your superiors, we are willing to give you a second chance… We spared you, while your beloved captain would have shot you in the back if you dared think to surrender.”

Many of the pegasi had actually begun to listen, some were accusing others of being dashites, they retorted by pointing out what the captain had done, and what the Steel Rangers were offering… A few fights nearly broke out, but they were broken up before anything real could get started. Crescent Bolt smirked, she had one more thing to point out to these ponies, it was clear they didn’t actually know their orders… Before she had them gathered she had her scribes search the ship’s databanks thoroughly, marked as a high-priority order for the captain only was a document marked “Operation: Cauterize”

Crescent Bolt got everyone’s attention again, “This document was for your captain’s eyes only, do you know what it reads?” She said, as a projector displayed the terminal’s text, every pegasus present was hesitant, knowing they could get in trouble for reading it, but they were already in trouble, and curiosity gnawed at them, she opened the document… “The Objective of Operation Cauterize is to terminate all current and potential enemies of the Enclave, this includes;
Subjects A: All former Enclave personale, those officially branded dashites and those not, who are on the surface, and all sapient creatures who have had contact with these personale.
Subjects B: All renegade forces who would act as disruptive agents to future stability, including all those declared raiders or slavers.
Subjects C: All sapient creatures who have knowledge of the Enclave’s mission, knowledge of the Enclave’s inner workings, knowledge of the Enclave’s technology, knowledge of the Enclave’s political structure, knowledge of the Enclave’s current economic status.
Subjects D: Anyone who directly or indirectly opposes the Enclave’s mission.”

Crescent Bolt smirked as the looks on the pegasi’s faces turned from confusion, to horror, to fear, and then to rage as they realized what this implied, after two centuries, that could very well be everyone on the surface. “So… Will you get this ship operational again, and we can guarantee you some degree of safety in Stable 107…” Every single pony’s hoof raised at once.

“From a rough estimate of the damage… Give us six hours to get it flying again, give us eighteen if you want the guns working, give us a month if you want the hull damage repaired.”

“Our scribes, unicorns and earth ponies, with years of experience will aid you in this goal, their numbers are almost double yours at one hundred and five.”

The pegasi’s jaw dropped, the wastelanders were more impressive than they gave them credit, “Give us two hours for flight, and four to repair the guns.” Already, some of the pegasi ponies from the crowd had broken off and started painting dashite brands on the hull. Soon, the Nephilim would fly again!

Author's Note

So, yeah, I was really excited to get to this chapter... Fun fact about the name, "Nephilim" are, in Christian mythology, the children of fallen angels, I figured it a fitting name for a first dashite-controlled airship. Also, our alicorn officially has a name, Ghost.