“This is fucking ridiculous.”
“Julip…”
“I’m serious. It’s going to take us…”
“...more than a week to reach Stable 10 on hoof, I know. You’ve been saying that since we left Fillydelphia.”
Julip narrowed her emerald eyes at the behemoth machine stomping along beside her and blew out an irritated sigh. “At least the Rangers gave you power armor. If we get ambushed like this, I’m going to be the first one to take a bullet.”
The armor’s exterior speaker amplified Roach’s quiet chuckle. “Gave, at the price of nearly all our caps and our word that we'd deliver it to the first quartermaster we see once we arrive. We’re not going to get that money back, and this overpriced rental is the only thing keeping the Enclave from identifying me and, by association, you.”
She scowled, not because what he was saying wasn’t true, but because it was. Ever since she’d sworn off her allegiance with the Enclave she’d felt a bright red bullseye on the back of her head. With Aurora and Ginger on their way back to Stable 10, Julip felt even more exposed than usual.
Her first days with this group of ponies had been tense, but the dynamic between her and the absurdly clad changeling ghoul thumping across the cracked pavement had been especially unfriendly. Since as far back as her foalhood she’d been taught that ghouls were unliving sins against nature. Their mere existence was an affront to those who struggled daily to secure the most basic necessities of life. Every drop of water, every ounce of food they selfishly consumed to prolong their so-called immortality was a mouthful taken from the living. From the pureblooded future of…
She closed her eyes and shuddered her wings. It was going to take some time to purge the worst of that horseshit from her mind. Even now, it jumped out of her brain like a reflex. Roach was a decent stallion. Better than most, if she was being honest with herself. He had faced his own share of challenges long before the bombs fell and many, many more after. The fact that he was willing to tolerate the sharper corners of her personality after centuries of abuse was a testament to his patience as well as their fledgling friendship.
Julip lifted a curtain of feathers out from under her duster and gave the power armor, and the changeling piloting it, a gentle slap across the foreleg. Even though she couldn’t see it, she could tell he was wearing the same knowing smirk beneath his helmet that she was. He deserved a break from her complaining, at least for a little while.
They were making good time considering the breadth of this painfully long detour. With the Enclave patrolling the highways connecting central Equestria and the city ruins of the eastern coast, Roach had devised a safer route along a narrow stretch of road that bent hard north. He insisted that before the end of the war, he and his late husband had taken the same route on a sightseeing trip along Equestria’s border with the Crystal Empire. Even back then the old two-lane highway had been mostly forgotten except by the locals that lived on it.
Two centuries later, it was little more than a broken stretch of hard packed dirt bending through the charred stumps of a once lush alpine forest. Following it would easily add another two to three days to their journey but it would be worth it if it didn’t mean having to dodge run-ins with Julip’s former wingmates who were very keen to track her down.
What she wasn’t prepared for was how brisk it was getting as they neared the northern edge of Equestria. Her leather duster, which was fantastic for hiding her wings from prying eyes, wasn’t designed with insulation in mind. Sliding her wings down and around her belly, she tried her best to chase off the worst of the chill.
“Cold?”
She shook her head, wrapping herself a little more tightly. “Nope, just doing this because it’s so fun.”
The power armor distorted Roach’s chuckle. “Temperature sensors say it’s fifty-three degrees out. Practically balmy this close to the Empire. The last time Saffron and I were up in this area there was three feet of…”
He stopped mid sentence once he noticed the impatient glare she was leveling at him. For a tin can the size of a full grown gryphon, Roach’s borrowed power armor was surprisingly capable of mimicking its pilot’s subtle, self-conscious nod. “Sorry. I know the expression is outdated by a couple hundred years, but I didn’t expect to be taking a literal trip down Memory Lane.”
Julip shrugged to let him know there was no harm done. He was normally a quiet spoken stallion, but this detour was turning him into a rambler. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what it had been like to see this barren stretch of nothing filled to the horizons with living pines, spruces and firs. She wondered to herself what kind of creatures lived in the old forests in the prewar north. Some type of furry molerat, she assumed.
“See anything you recognize?” she offered.
The suit’s massive head panned left, then right. Its visor lingered on the hazy blue stretch of mountains further north and nodded. “The Crystal Mountains are hard to forget.”
She followed Roach’s gaze, wondering about that. “I heard that before the bombs fell, the ponies that lived up there were made out of living crystal.”
Roach turned to look at her. If the armor’s helmet was capable of lifting a brow, it would have. “Please tell me you don’t believe that.”
She frowned up at her own reflection in his visor. “Forgive me for having to rely on outdated reading material, O wise one.”
The speaker crackled with his ragged chuckle, evidently not designed to accommodate a ghoul’s throatier voice. Julip winced as the feedback dissipated.
“The crystal ponies were made of as much crystal as the Crystal Empire was made up of an actual empire,” he murmured. Then, realizing she was waiting for an answer, he added, “Meaning they weren’t. Don’t get me wrong, the natural quartz formations up there were worth the trip, but the rest was all exaggerations to keep the tourists coming.”
She stepped around a deep fissure in the dusty road and rubbed her wings together to warm her underbelly. “Gee, and here I thought it was the balefire that sucked all the magic out of the world.”
“You asked,” he countered.
Despite herself, she smirked a little. “Yeah, well… I guess I did.”
He watched her for a moment. “Careful. Someone might accuse us of getting along.”
“Celestia forbid.” She snorted and looked to the sky. Huge, grey clouds boiled above them, rolling north and pillowing over the jagged peaks beyond. The thought occurred to her that the Enclave would never willingly turn off the great machinery that belched out Equestria’s permanent overcast, and she wondered how she could have looked up at that grey sky for so long without considering the possibility that her fellow pegasi were fighting for the wrong reasons. That blotting out the sun for generations was an act of vindictive malice rather than strategy.
“Huh.”
Julip’s ear twitched toward the armor. “If it’s a big red button, don’t push it.”
He laughed. “Not quite. I’m picking up elevated background radiation.”
She slowed her stride, suddenly apprehensive. “How much?”
“Three rads. Four when the wind comes in from the west. Looks like we’re headed toward something.” A pause. “Ah. That would be why.”
“Roach, if you dropped ass in that armor…”
He didn’t respond to the jab, but the dismissive shake of his helmet let her know he’d heard it.
“I’ve got the map up.” Servos whirred as he hoisted a foreleg forward, leveling it toward the crest of the shallow hill that the road had them climbing. “Looks like there’s something called a Glass Flow on the other side. Looks big. Let me zoom out.”
He stopped walking and whistled. The suit’s speaker immediately peaked, causing her to flinch away from it.
“The Steel Rangers have this entire region marked as a high radiation zone.”
Julip blinked, realizing she’d heard of this place before. She closed her eyes, asking, “It’s shaped like a sickle, isn’t it?”
Roach glanced at her. “Sort of. It starts over that hill and curves to the southeast behind us. You know it?”
She groaned and nodded. “The Enclave calls it Crystal Alley. I read about it when I apprenticed in the archives. When the bombs fell on the Crystal Empire it supposedly went molten. That radiation zone is where most of that debris splashed down.”
“It’s huge,” Roach murmured. “We’ve been walking north of it for more than two days. How are you only just not remembering this?”
She shot a look at the visor. “You're the one with the high tech map under your nose. My job was artifact recovery, not map…” She gave her hoof an irritated twirl. “...memorizing.”
“Navigation,” Roach droned, earning an even sterner glare. He sighed, tapping the edge of his hoof into the roadway, forming dents. “Alright, well, I’m guessing you don’t want to backtrack around this mess. That means we need to go through.”
Julip pursed her lips and squinted toward the distant crest of the old road. If she concentrated just enough, she could make out the faint yellow hues reflecting off the bottom of the cloud layer. If the radiation out there was still strong enough to luminesce, it would kill her before she had a chance to feel her organs hemorrhage. Not the worst way to go, but she wasn’t making this trip just to find an interesting place to get her ticket punched early.
“Let’s at least see what we’re dealing with,” she muttered, and set out toward the top of the hill.
“Go slow,” he warned.
Much to his annoyance, she loped into a comfortable trot. Hearing the armor keeping pace behind her startled a nervous laugh from her chest, and she glanced back at him with her lip quirked into an impressed smile. It sounded like she was being chased by a landslide. She supposed that was why it was called power armor.
She approached the last few yards of the slope with something bordering on caution. Roach moved ahead of her to allow his sensors to sample the air first, and when the armor came to an abrupt stop she crept up beside him.
“Let’s back up,” he advised, but not before she caught a glimpse of the alien landscape below. Her eyes went wide at the glittering vista barely a mile downhill from where they stood. The craggy, ever-brown terrain gradually took on a powdery yellow glow that grew more dazzling the further away it stretched. Millions - easily millions of crystals reflected the pale daylight across their uneven facets, shimmering like diamonds. She stole one last look before turning to take shelter behind the ridge.
“I never knew it could be that beautiful,” she whispered.
Beside her, Roach’s power armor emitted a sharp hiss of condensing mist that pulled her from her reverie. As the internal locks clunked open, she took a step back and watched the plates part along the seam of his spine, blooming like the battered and dented petals of a mechanical flower. For all the grief she gave the Steel Rangers for relying so heavily on their mobile suits, there was always a part of her that was impressed to see such complicated pieces of prewar machinery still functioning as intended. There was something to be said about the designers who once toiled within the Ministry of Technology. They knew how to make these dented old things last.
Once it was open, Roach pulled his forelegs free and carefully walked himself backwards along the padded shell that formed the suit’s belly. It was almost comical to see such a thin creature emerging from such a large cavity, but what the changeling lacked in mass he made up for in height. He was tall, even for a pony stallion, and his neck emitted a bone-chipping series of cracks as he bent it from one side to the other. The dull black pieces of broken chitin covering his body drifted like little versions of tectonic plates over a mantle of gently glowing emerald flesh. It was always strange seeing his biology up close, but day by day Julip found herself adjusting.
“It’ll take a few hours to get through the zone,” he grunted, rolling a kink out of his right shoulder. “Take the suit and I’ll follow you. There’s enough shielding to stop most of the radiation from getting in.”
She set a sage green hoof onto one of the open panels and peered at the thick padding inside. Then she arched a brow up at the changeling. “What about you?”
He snorted. “It’s not like I can turn into a ghoul twice.”
That got a smile from her. She shook her head and stepped around to the rear of the open armor, trying to mentally plan out how she would get inside. Until now, she’d never been inside one of these tin cans. It surprised her how self-conscious that made her.
The layout wasn’t terribly complicated. Two sleeves at the rear and two more at the front made it pretty clear where her legs needed to go. A slightly concave platform, tapered on either end, bridged the four points and provided enough padding to rest her stomach against. The part she was worried about were the steel-clad plates that were poised to wrap around her neck and head. Not because she was afraid they would strangle her, but because she wasn’t even sure if her neck reached that high.
Julip was not a tall mare.
“Do you need a--”
She shot him a look of warning over her shoulder. “If you ask me if I need a boost, so help me Luna…”
Even with his irregularly jagged muzzle, she could tell that he was grinning. It took everything she could not to kick him in the collarbone.
Carefully, she propped her front hooves onto the soft platform and worked her way forward. With the open shell of the power armor looming over her on either side like a second set of spread wings, she peered down into the casing where her legs needed to go. The quantity of switches and toggles tucked along the padded sleeves caught her off guard, but not as much as the clearly marked red paddles built into the plates where the tips of her hooves were meant to go. The words PRESS TO EJECT were stenciled in white paint across each red crescent.
“What the hell are those?”
Roach stepped to the side of the armor and peered down where she indicated. “That’s how you open the suit. Hold them both down for three seconds and the armor pops open or shut.”
“Oh,” she murmured.
“You thought it had an ejection seat, didn’t you?”
She wrinkled her nose, trying hard not to smirk. “Shut up.”
He chuckled and backed away from the open panels, and after puffing out a frustrated breath she let her hooves drop into the sleeves. She let out a little oof! when her chest hit the padded armor and she shimmied her hind legs until they found the slots in the rear. For several seconds, she waited, her legs hanging over each side of the platform, the bottoms of each mechanical leg woefully distant from her dangling hooves.
Unsurprisingly, nothing happened.
She stared daggers through the base of the armor’s neck pads when she heard his muffled laughter coming from behind. Through grit teeth, she said, “Just tell me how to adjust the fit, Roach.”
He didn’t stop laughing, but he made a better effort to conceal it as he lifted a hoof and pressed on one of the open panels above its hinge point. The pneumatics issued a quiet hiss as the right half lowered toward her back, then issued a sturdy thunk as it fell into place. She felt nothing. Craning her neck back, the portion of armor wasn’t even touching her.
“Oh, I wish I had a camera,” he giggled. “Three of you could fit in there.”
“I’m about to fit my hoof up your asshole if you don’t help me work this thing.”
He shook his head, his lips pressed into a tight line to keep himself from smiling too broadly, and beckoned her out. “It’s power armor, Julip. There isn’t a shrink button you can hit to make it smaller. You’re too teensy.”
She scrambled halfway out of the sleeves with her ears pinned backward and a foreleg lifted for him to see. “My hoof,” she warned. “Your asshole.”
He tipped his head to the side, eyebrows raised. “You’re not my type. Now come on out. We’re going to have to put some major miles in if we’re going the long way around.”
“Around?” She practically tripped on her way out of the suit, slashing her green feathers back toward the glow. “Around that?! Roach, that’s going to add four more days! Aurora and Ginger are planning to be at the Stable in less than a week!”
“Then they’ll have to wait.” He shrugged, stepping into the vacated armor. “It’s not like you can carry me all the way there anyways. The Rangers are going to expect this suit back once we're back.”
“Fuck ‘em! Things get lost in the wasteland all the time! Besides, you’re a changeling.” He stopped halfway into the armor and frowned at her, but she was undeterred. “I’ve read about changelings. Can’t you, I don’t know, turn into a pegasus?”
He lifted a brow. “Why don’t I just turn into an alicorn princess instead and teleport us to the Stable instead?”
She hesitated. “...can you?
“No!” he balked, stepping back onto the road. “Julip, we agreed walking back was the safest option when we left Fillydelphia. A few extra days won’t kill us.”
The words landed with a finality that made it clear the debate was over. She flung her feathers above her head with exasperation as he returned to the armor, his hooves slipping comfortably into the padded sleeves that had just recently proven to be ten sizes too large for her. As he lined up his head with the open helmet, her eyes narrowed.
Tall as he was, lean as he was, there was an unmistakable gap between his belly and the padded armor below. The gears in her head started spinning with the dumbest, most plausible idea she remembered ever having.
“Roach, hold up.”
He muttered something under his breath and pulled his head away from the helmet. “What?”
She opened her mouth, stopped, and closed it. The moment went from opportune to awkward in the space of a breath. Looking away, she gestured vaguely toward him. “There’s still room.”
His opaque eyes narrowed with confusion. “Room for what?”
She pressed her tongue into her cheek and shook her head. He was going to make her say it. Fantastic. She tucked her wing against her side and gave him a look. “Me, dumbass.”
A pause. Then he snorted. “Oh. Sure, yeah. Hop on in. We can take bets on which bones we’ll break when this thing crushes us to death.”
She stared at the narrow gap between him and the lower half of the armor and shook her head, the stubborn confidence the Enclave drilled into her taking over. “Look, I know it sounds stupid but it’s definitely not suicidal. Just… let me try something. Alright?”
He licked his lips with discomfort, his eyes turning to scan what little terrain he could see between the open panels of heavy armor. The idiot was checking to see if anyone else was watching. Great, now they could be mortified together.
“Explain it first.”
“It's not rocket surgery,” she said, gesturing toward the space beneath him. “I can fit under there.”
For the first time he seemed to notice the gap. His ears, or what was left of them, bent backward. “Do you hear how much that sounds like a bad porno, or is it just me?”
Her expression went brittle. “I’m pretty sure you can suck it up like a big boy for a four hour hike through a radiation zone when the alternative is my organs melting.”
“Or we just take the long way around and skip the B-rate idea altogether.”
For several long seconds, Julip glared at him. Roach glared back. Finally, she shook her head and relented. “Look, I thought we were done with the whole bitching back and forth bit.”
His features softened by a degree and he heaved out a long sigh. After a moment he looked at her and said, “Yeah, me too.”
The corner of his lip bunched up a little, shifting the specks of chitin clinging to his luminescent skin. “Can’t say I’m looking forward to two days worth of retracing our steps. If you think you can fit, we can give it a try. Just… try not to hit any switches.”
She coughed a quiet laugh at the unintended euphemism, glad there was still some chance to avoid trudging halfway back to the coast. “I’ll try not to.”
There were no proud moments between the two of them as Julip half-climbed, half-crawled over the open panels on his left side. The heavy armor plating bobbed on its hinges beneath her hooves as she shimmied alongside him and for one precarious moment she worried the unpiloted suit would tip. Mercifully, the sheer weight of the exoskeleton prevented that from happening.
Barring any graceful method of maneuvering herself into the space beneath the changeling, she hooked her hoof around his right foreleg and dragged herself onto the padding.
With a grunt, she tucked her wings and flipped over onto her back, sidling herself the rest of the way up his abdomen until her shoulders bumped the backs of his front legs. It was as far as she could manage, but as the padding beneath her gently conformed to her shape, she offered a victorious little grin up the textured chitin of his chest.
“Told you I’d fit,” she announced.
He snorted, pointedly avoiding making eye contact. “Only because you’re tiny.”
She thumped her hind leg into the crux of his stifle and was rewarded by the sight of him trying to swallow a startled curse. Glancing to either side, she realized it was going to be a tight fit no matter how diminutive she was compared to his lanky frame. When the armor came down around them, it would be better for her legs to be against his sides rather than pinned beneath him. The last thing she needed was to hear him years later talking about how her stupid idea really did wind up breaking her legs, or his ribs. Or both.
Roach spooked as she hooked her legs around him. “What are you doing?”
“Making sure I can walk once I’m out of this thing,” she said. “I think this’ll work. Yeah, no, this’ll work.”
With a tight grimace, he lined himself up with the bulky helmet and advised her to say something if she felt anything getting pinched. His front legs shifted against her shoulders as he put weight onto the ejection switches beneath his hooves, and the power armor lurched to life around them.
“Holy shit,” she spat, her eyes wide as the forward portion of the armor bent toward the back of her head.
“Your ears might pop when the seals engage. Fair warning.”
She winced as the padding behind her shoulders lifted up, pressing her sternum up against Roach’s chest while at the same time she felt the rough texture of his belly sinking down on top of her. In a matter of seconds all four of her legs were pinned between the armor and either side of the changeling above. As the gaps shrinking between them were compressed and filled, she found herself forced to press her cheek against the base of his neck just to ensure she had room to breathe.
The armor emitted a clunk and a hiss. True to his word, Julip's eardrums crackled as the airtight gaskets squeezed together.
“You okay?”
The words rumbled up from his throat and straight into her right ear. Pulling a face that she realized he had no way of seeing, she did her best to nod. “Snug, but I’m fine. How about you?”
“I’ll manage. It should go without saying, but neither of us is telling Aurora or Ginger about this.”
She sputtered an embarrassed laugh. “I’ll deny it and you'll look like some horny old liar. This doesn’t leave the power armor, agreed?”
“Agreed.” He paused, then gradually lifted one leg at a time. “Looks like we can move. I’m going to try to walk.”
With only the dim glow of the skin beneath his chitin to see by, she wrinkled her nose at the strange sensation of the armor stepping forward. It rocked, not uncomfortably as she'd assumed, to one side and then the other. After a few steps the movement grew less and less pronounced as Roach found his stride.
“Quieter than I expected,” she observed.
He hummed his agreement. “I think the padding acts as soundproofing. If these things weren’t so expensive to maintain, I might think about buying one for myself.”
Subtly, the pitch of their movement tipped down slightly as Roach took them over the crest of the hill. A part of her wished she could see more of that glittering terrain ahead but she knew that wouldn’t happen without her bouncing alone inside of the suit like the last nut in the can. Somewhere above her head she could hear the gentle ticking of the suit’s geiger counter as it began to pick up more and more radiation.
“Breathing okay? The filters should be running.”
She nodded, relaxing a bit now that they were on their way. “Yeah. It’s warm, though.”
The muscles in his neck moved against her cheek. He was tilting his head, or shrugging. She couldn’t tell which. “Sorry, that’s probably me. Changelings run a little hotter than ponies. Beats freezing though.”
Touche, she thought.
Their conversation drifted into an amiable silence. Julip couldn’t help but be surprised at how comfortable the ride actually was. The suit compensated for so much errant movement that it practically felt like she was gliding, the illusion spoiled only by the rhythmic bumping of Roach’s forelegs against her shoulders and the rough yet strangely soothing pattern of inhale-exhale running up and down his neck. She wondered if this was close to what it felt like to be carried through the skies on the back of a pegasi, something Aurora treated Ginger to with little hesitation.
The corner of her lip quirked upward and dismissed the comparison. Too intimate, especially when Roach was very much a stallion’s stallion. Yet another reason to keep this excursion across the zone to themselves.
He adjusted his gait to a steady canter and she felt a quiet thrill at the feeling of blind acceleration. She could distantly hear what sounded like stones popping beneath his hooves and realized it was the sound of the strange crystals she’d seen strewn across the valley floor shattering under the armor’s impacts. How that must look, she wondered. A lone suit of old power armor crashing its way through a vast expanse of glowing crystals, maybe even chased by a thin mist of luminous dust. The image she conjured in her mind made for some arguably lucrative Steel Ranger propaganda. She chuckled at the idea and let it fade.
“Share with the class?” Roach murmured.
If she could wave him off, she would have tried. Unceremoniously trapped against him as she was, she opted to use her words instead. “Just wondering what it looks like out there.”
His throat vibrated as he emitted a thoughtful hum. “Doesn’t look like much to me. A couple ridges to the north. Lots of crystals. Everything’s more or less yellow except the tree stumps. It’s like Celestia filled up a huge pail of radioactive glass and splashed it across the entire landscape.”
She wrinkled her nose, wanting to see it even more now. “All that crystal, I’m surprised the ghouls from Kiln aren’t up here picking them up for jewelry.”
His chest shook with gentle laughter and she found herself smiling a little more broadly. She hadn't intended it to be a joke, but she wasn't going to spoil it by saying so. As the silence settled within the suit for a second time, a thought occurred to her.
“You mentioned earlier that you took your husband up here once. What was that like?”
A pause. He dropped to a smooth trot. “Are you asking because you want to know or because it’s getting too quiet?”
“Little bit of both. Mostly the first bit.” She flicked her tail and was surprised to find it had room to move within the confines of the suit. Like a nervous leg, she began to idly tap it against the cushion. “You always make him sound like a decent stallion.”
She felt him nod, the chitin along his neck shifting against her cheek. “He was. It was actually his idea to make the trip. Kind of a last hurrah since we knew we were going to adopt soon.”
When she didn’t interrupt, he slowed to a casual walk and continued. “This whole region of Equestria used to be covered with evergreens. We went during the winter because it was cheaper and…” He chuckled, shaking his head. “All I could ever keep saying was wow. It drove him nuts, but I couldn’t help it. I’d never seen snow that deep before, and the silence once we got out to the cabin…”
Julip smirked. “Wow?”
“Wow.” He cleared his throat. “One of the locals told us we’d come at the best time of year, in her opinion at least. There had been some fog a few days before we flew in that crystallized on every possible surface. The trees, the stop signs, even the kitschy windchimes out on the porch. If you touched it, it would flake off like snow.”
She sobered slightly. “I can’t say I know what you mean, but you paint a pretty picture.”
“Oh,” he said, gesturing somewhere she couldn’t see with a hoof as he reminisced. “The smell. I forgot about how good it smelled. Have you ever smelled pine?”
She shrugged, careful not to throw off his step. “I found an air freshener in an abandoned carriage once.”
He shook his head, the smile in his voice unmistakable. “I know it’s just salt in the wound to say it, but you’re missing out. Saffron practically had to drag me out of the cabin after we arrived there, it was so cold out, but once we were out on the trail it was like being out of the hive for the first time all over again.”
“Describe it for me.”
Roach hesitated for a moment before trying. “It’s sharp, but not in a bad way. Like a fresh breeze but crisp around the edges and full of this… this spice, almost. But sweet, too. I don’t know, I feel like I’m not doing it justice.”
She tried to imagine it, but it was akin to describing a color she’d never seen before. It sounded nice and, given the opportunity, she’d like to experience it for herself. Though by the looks of what remained of the ancient conifers she’d been able to see, that ship had long since sailed.
Unsure what to say, she opted for humor. “Sweet and spicy air. Sounds like the mess hall on Tuesdays.”
He chuckled, clinging to the nostalgia of his comparably domestic existence before the war came to its well-known conclusion. Before the bombs fell and warped him into the lonely creature he was today.
“That was one of the best weekends of my life. Good food, fantastic scenery, plenty of privacy. Saffron was like a hungry animal…”
Something warm grazed the underside of Julip’s tail and her eyes shot wide. “Woah! There it is!”
For several distressing seconds Roach continued walking, either unsure or unaware of what she was yelping about. Trapped and unable to move out of the way, she resorted to using the dock of her tail to shove the encroaching invader aside like an unwanted fly. The sudden contact caused his hind end to jump in shock and the power armor ground to an abrupt stop.
Another several seconds passed with the two of them in abject silence, save for their respective hearts pounding in their throats. Neither of them dared move.
“Are you good?” she asked, hoping she would need to elaborate.
His throat flexed against her ear as he swallowed. “Working on it.”
The armor was as quiet as a tomb. Unable to see, let alone move to close her legs, Julip grimaced. “I told you this was going to turn into a bad porno.”
“I said that,” he growled defensively. “You’re the one who insisted on doing this in the first place.”
She moved her tail. It promptly thumped against something firm.
“Stop.”
“Sorry,” she murmured. “Wasn’t sure.”
He inhaled and blew out a slow, even breath. And again. She waited as patiently as she could as he tried to reverse the tide of his biology, but with nothing to look at except the dim glow that emerged from beneath his chitin and the dull beige pads pinning her foreleg around his shoulder, the seconds went by agonizingly slow.
“...any better?”
She could feel his jaw tense. “Kind of in a stalemate.”
Another pause.
“Don’t suppose you could think about your grandmother?”
He stifled a chuckle with a discomfited cough. “Julip.”
“This is so fucking stupid.” His brief laughter was contagious and despite their predicament, she found herself trying to bury a case of the giggles. “Just turn around and head back, okay? I’ll jump out once it’s safe.”
“...can’t believe this,” he muttered, and carefully began turning the armor around. Halfway through the turn he jerked to a stop. “Nope. Bad idea.”
She had just enough time to frown before she felt an unwelcome pressure against her tailhole. A bolt of electricity shot up her belly as a jangle of nerves fired in chaotic asynchrony. She failed to stop herself from emitting a sharp bark of laughter, startling both of them.
“NOPE!” Her tail clamped down, sweeping the appendage off its trajectory and sending it thumping against her thigh. “That’s not where that ever goes!”
The sudden contact caused the rear half of the power armor to all but collapse as Roach’s knees briefly buckled. He caught himself before they both hit the ground and, to her dismay, locked down his balance by splaying his hind legs. The unintended result of which was hers being spread further in the process.
“This isn’t working,” he growled.
“Oh, that does not mean you get to throw in the towel,” she warned.
His silence did nothing to reassure her.
“Roach.” She spoke as firmly as she could, her eyes narrowing toward the black chitin pressed against her muzzle. “I swear on Luna’s mane I will bite you.”
He tensed at that. “Don’t. Bite me.”
Every nerve below her stomach was poised on high alert, sending errant twitches up and down her body as she anticipated what she wasn’t certain Roach was capable of preventing. His breathing was picking up and the servos in the armor containing them clicked and whirred as it moved to mimic his unsteady hips.
Inevitably, she felt it again. It grazed her vulva as if testing the waters. Despite her own efforts, there was plenty to test. She grimaced as she realized her tail had relaxed without her telling it to. A twitch ran down Roach’s flank and his unseen shaft bobbed up and away before thumping firmly onto her slickening cleft.
Warning be damned. She opened her mouth and bit his neck. His hind end lurched back and for one clear second, they both understood why.
“I SAID NOT TO--”
“DON’T YOU FUCKING--”
His hips bucked forward and he plunged past her teardrop lips, sinking several inches beyond. Like a misfiring circuit he was only able to abortively halt the slide after the point was moot. Julip felt her entire body go rigid at the electric sensation of the changeling’s unnaturally warm shaft holding position inside her, its master clearly torn between staying perfectly still or risking her ire again by moving at all.
Several moments passed and neither of them spoke a word.
Then, Roach coughed. “Sorry.”
Sensing his embarrassment, as well as the hammering of his heartbeat in a location she would have never expected to feel, she sighed. “Can you pull out?”
"I think so."
The rear of the suit emitted a quick whir and Roach gave his hips a sharp jerk backwards. They both gasped as the padded armor Julip was pinned against abruptly moved to compensate, momentarily slamming her against him with enough force for her to crack off a surprised curse.
Her cervix was less than thrilled.
Breathlessly, she muttered, “Fuck me that hurt.”
“Sorry,” he repeated.
She shut her eyes. “How long until that thing goes away on its own?”
“My dick feels like it’s in an oven, Julip.”
Opening them, she frowned at his tone. “Well shit, Roach, next time I feel like stuffing myself into power armor with another stallion I’ll be sure to stuff myself with some ice cubes, too.”
After a beat, he snorted and began to laugh.
Despite herself, she smirked. “Glad you think this is funny.”
“On some level…” A short gasp interrupted him. “We had to know we were tempting fate.”
She felt him twitching inside her and, just briefly, allowed her muscles to contract in response. “Fuckin’ biology.”
He murmured in response. “Fuckin’ biology.”
She shook her head and smiled. “Well, as tempting as it sounds to get knocked up by a changeling, I’m not exactly looking forward to seeing what kind of cross-eyed, six-legged foals come buzzing out of my crotch next year. We need to figure out how to get you out.”
He tentatively resumed trying to lift his hips away, but courtesy of their mutual confinement, it only served to move her with him. He blew out a hopeless sigh.
“Well,” he said, “if it’s any consolation, I haven’t had any eggs to deposit since I became a ghoul.”
She frowned. “What do you mean, eggs.”
Something widened inside her. Three soft prongs blooming away from the tip of his cock. Her eyes widened.
“Ovipositor,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Sorry, maybe I--”
“Nope. That’s fine. Biologically incompatible. Got it.”
The silence between them grew strained. Roach’s heartbeat continued to thump against her walls, encouraging her own anatomy to twitch and clutch for what Roach was dutifully trying to withhold.
Then, mercifully, she felt it begin to recede.
“Oh thank Celestia,” she sighed.
Roach grunted, committing to nothing that might interrupt his concentration. The lizard part of her brain railed against the denial of release, demanding that she find a way to coax him back. To convince his strange, unseen cock to do what nature demanded and gorge itself to fullness and grind back into her where she could put it to proper use.
She shoved away the intrusive thoughts. Then, somewhere above her head, an alarm began to chirp.
“What is that?”
She felt Roach’s descending heart rate swing into hard reverse, picking up speed as he turned their armor toward something she couldn’t see.
“Fuck,” he spat. “We got radscorpions. Three of them.”
She stiffened.
To her alarm, so did he.
“Tell me this thing has weapons.”
He cursed again, taking a step back. “Plenty. But apparently we didn’t pay enough for ammo. Great, just… hold onto something.”
If she could kick him, she would.
He took several more steps back, forcing a shock of breath into her lungs as he began to reverse all of the progress they’d been frenetically working toward. For a brief moment the world pitched violently, spinning like an awful carnival ride atop a clattering of mechanical hooves. A muted orchestra of mechanics pushed themselves into a full blown symphony as Roach forced the armor around and shoved it into a full blown gallop.
“What - ah! - are you doing?!”
His shout buzzed against her ear. “Running! They burrowed!”
Blind to what was happening, her brain and body torn between priorities, she clamped her mouth shut and prayed that he knew what he was doing. Because as she listened to the muffled thunder of his hooves and ragged heaving of his lungs within the confines of their armor, Julip found herself unable to think about anything beyond what was beginning to happen within the confines of her own body.
He was burrowing, too.
On one hoof, Roach was grateful for the distraction. Even if it meant running for his life in a cumbersome suit of woefully inadequate power armor, it was arguably better than spending the next hour trying to clear his mind long enough for his dick to go soft again. That said, even the simple act of running was being hampered by the reflexive ministrations from Enclave mare being taken along for the ride.
The ground erupted ahead of him into a dark plume of airborne soil and radioactive crystal. A massive pair of red pincers swiped blindly through the curtain of debris and crashed together with heavy clacks that came within mere inches of his helmet. He kicked his hind leg into the ground and bolted hard to the right, dodging around the irradiated monstrosity and simultaneously sending a shock of unwanted pleasure up his groin and into his hips. His hooves locked into place as his idiot instincts caused him to buck, startling a muffled gasp from Julip while the armor toppled forward into the glowing soil.
Steel and shattering crystals shrieked together under the tumbling armor, throwing the world beyond his visor into brief chaos.
“Sorry!” he shouted as he rolled onto his back, throwing his foreleg up and between the pincers of the pursuing creature. He was quickly burning out his reserve of apologies today, but it couldn’t be helped. The last thing he wanted was for some scavenger to pry open their armor years later only to find the inspiration for a bawdy bar story that would last generations. “Just--”
Alarms began to light up along his HUD. The structure of the armor was beginning to suffer beneath the crushing force of the scorpion’s claw. Unable to tear himself away, he could only watch as the second pincer probed for a grip further up his foreleg, seeking to shear it off at the joint.
The hardpack beneath his shoulder shuddered, sank, and exploded, sending several tons of power armor flailing through the air. The second radscorpion, unaware of the simplest concept of pack hunting, had no qualms about trying to steal prey from the arachnid still clamped onto his cartwheeling frame. Time slowed as they reached the apex of their tumble, and Roach grappled his hooves around the creature's abdomen as they crumpled into the ground. Even through the armor he could feel the creature’s exoskeleton give way beneath his weight like a rotten egg.
Beneath him, Julip’s breathing was starting to become ragged and uneven. Her breath warmed and chilled the side of his neck, reminding him briefly of his first and only husband who had a delightful habit of leaving a trail of tender kisses down...
Focus, you idiot!
He shoved himself up onto unsteady hooves and inadvertently dodged the second radscorpion’s barbed tail in the process. The rigid hook punched a crater clear through the already ruined carapace of the first creature without an ounce of regard for its failure. As Roach staggered away it wrenched its appendage from its fallen competitor, trailing a slick slurry of translucent venom as it bolted toward him.
He jumped, which wasn’t saying much given the state of the armor, and dropped his hooves onto what he estimated to be the scorpion’s head. Its cluster of beady eyes vanished beneath the dented armor and the creature’s skittering legs went ramrod straight, then slowly curled.
Scanning the irradiated terrain, he couldn’t tell where the last one had gone. For a moment the ground was still. The dust settled. Maybe it had fled or had decided it was safer to hide. Wait for easier prey.
He shut his eyes and tried to ignore the strange yet incredible sensation of Julip clenching, twitching, leaking against him. Somewhere in the back of his brain he knew what she was doing. What he wasn’t going to do.
“Holy shit,” he felt her whispering. “Holy… fucking shit.”
Almost as if on cue, the earth beneath his hind legs began to give way. He leaned forward, lifted them from the collapsing ground and pistoned his hooves backward with enough force to elicit a mechanical whine from the armor’s hydraulics. He felt the satisfying impact of hardened steel meeting scorpion, followed by the startling pop of his cock springing unceremoniously free of Julip's grip.
“Fu-u-uhhhck!” she cried.
His front knees buckled and the armor tipped forward, sending him chin-first into the crystal strewn ground. Simple physics took over from there. Simple, merciless physics.
The rear half of the armor drove forward like a hammer and he speared her like a trout.
A tremor ran through her body that he felt ripple against his belly, culminating in a throaty cry of pleasure and pain. Before he could think to apologize her teeth once again found purchase against his neck and she clamped down, hard.
He bellowed. “QUEEN CHRYSALIS’S EGGHOLE LET GO!”
Rolling onto his side, he bent his neck around her head in a vain attempt to break her grip. She held on like a mare possessed, only releasing him once he was able to get his hooves beneath him and relieve the painful pressure from her furious cervix.
Out of breath and running out of patience, he looked in the direction of the last scorpion and swallowed with relief when he saw it clawing feebly at the cracked soil, failing to grasp the reality of its death. One less thing to worry about, at least for now. At this rate a herd of deathclaws were due to come charging out of some new hold in the ground. Or raiders. Definitely raiders.
Julip’s chest was heaving against his, complicating his thinking. “Is it over?”
He swallowed, trying to concentrate on the barren terrain in front of him. “For now. Just hold still and try not to move. Let me focus.”
She snorted with nervous laughter. “Yeah, let me just add that to my to do list right under cumming all over your freaky-deaky dick.”
He set his jaw and exhaled sharply. “You don’t even know what it is you’re talking about.”
“I felt that thing open up inside me, Roach. I’ve had my roll in the hay with enough stallions to know that qualifies as freaky-fucking-deaky.”
Scoffing, he shook his head as a warm shudder rolled up his spine. “Great,” he murmured, “I get the leftovers.”
“Excuse me?”
He opened his mouth to defend himself, realized that was about as great an idea as headbutting a landmine, and chose to shut it instead. Glaring out into the desolate vista of the aptly named Crystal Alley, he couldn’t decide if he should be pissed off, ashamed or both.
“Look,” he rumbled. “Let’s just call it even.”
A pause. “Fine.”
He sighed. Not too long ago they were laughing at themselves over the mess they’d willingly gone stomping into. He glowered, waiting for nature to run its course and his brain to recall the blood pulsing in his groin so he had a decent chance at thinking straight. As if in protest, he felt himself twitch inside of her, spurred on by some foreign stimulation of her own.
When it happened again, he frowned. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not doing anything,” she stated flatly. After a moment of mutually aggravated silence, she added, “Would it help you finish faster if I had a cock?”
He rolled his eyes. “Wouldn’t be able to do a whole lot with it if you did. Besides, I’m trying not to finish.”
The last word was barely out of his mouth when it happened again. He twitched violently and felt another half inch of his shaft slide between her hips.
“You’re doing that on purpose.”
Her voice took on a hint of anger. “I’m not doing…” Then she paused. “Are you talking about this?”
The back half of the armor practically jumped off the ground in response. “Yes! Whatever the fuck that was it’s not helping!”
“It’s called winking and it’s classy.”
He blinked, lowered his head and snorted a groaning chuckle.
“Yeah,” she laughed, and he could feel her trying to shake her head against his neck again. “Sorry, it does that on its own. Freaky-deaky pussy.”
He laughed a little more easily this time. It was about as close to a genuine apology they were going to exchange, but it would do. Gradually, he could feel the tension between them break.
“Keep talking,” he murmured. “It helps distract me.”
“Or,” she began, paused, then suggested, “you could always, you know. Finish.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not having intercourse with a mare.”
This time it was her turn to laugh. “Intercourse, wow. I feel so special now. Maybe after you retract from my vagina we can share dirty little stories about all the pretty stallions we knew in the Celestial sense.”
“Okay, yep, I got it the first time. Thanks.”
Julip giggled quietly to herself, sending a series of smooth, gentle squeezes along his buried shaft. “Roach, just fuck me and get it over with. I promise I’m not going to tell anyone. Enclave’s honor.”
“You’re not with the Enclave anymore.”
“And you’re deflecting. I’m serious. This is an offer from a friend who is not going to be happy knowing that you spent the better part of an hour haphazardly jerking yourself off inside of without doing whatever weird shit changelings do when they cross the finish line.”
He frowned, feeling the heat rising through his neck. “I don’t even know what--”
“Roach. You’ve seen feral mongrels before, right?”
Something in his throat went dry. “Sure.”
“Ever see them fuck?”
He blinked.
“Do. That.”
