Fallout: Equestria - Common Ground

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Mage

I was in pain when I awoke, but this was far from a new experience for me. One might even say my life, as it is now, had begun when I’d awoken in a hospital bed in Stable 85. It happened again and again, and often I’d wake to find I’d lost something. In Stable 85, I’d arisen without the memories of my life as Lord Lamplight. In Pleasure Coast, I was short one foreleg. What had I lost this time?

No clinic lights greeted me this time, for I’d been far from fortunate in where I’d fallen. The rafters of a warehouse, slanting off to one side where the roof’s supporting wall had collapsed, instead filled my vision when I opened my eyes. Well, not my eyes, my eye. I was only able to will my left eye open; as for the right, I felt nothing. Nothing but pain, but even the extent of it told me that the eye was no longer there. I didn’t feel pain in the eye so much as around it. Gingerly, I felt with my hoof and prosthetic griffin claw at the bandages covering the socket.

I felt around the rest of my body next. There were bandages all over my form, marking the points where I’d been injured. I was starting to remember what had happened. The fight with the Steel Rangers. The orb that had undone my healing potions’ work and robbed me of my magic. How I’d lost my eye, and …

My horn.

Slowly, I reached up to my forehead and nearly lost my nerve as my hoof passed through where the tip of my horn should have been. I was able to touch it and feel the bone. A stump was all that remained of my horn, with a jagged end where it had snapped off. I looked around for something, anything to use my magic on, and spied my saddlebags sitting near me. I reached out to try to levitate them and felt a mere trickle of power. No glow surrounded them, they didn’t shift at all, but I had felt something. Maybe I could still use my magic if I tried. I pushed and pushed, but the saddlebags stubbornly refused to move. As I strained, sparks shot from my horn-stump, but they weren’t like the usual sparks that sedately drifted from the horn’s glow; they were like live embers, and I could feel their heat as they arced past my face.

“Doc! You’re awake!” Rael exclaimed.

I hadn’t even noticed him sleeping upright next to where I’d been laying. My attempts to use my magic must have awoken him. All that was still beyond me at the moment, in my distress. His voice was distant and indistinct as I lay back and started up at the ceiling, tears flowing freely from my remaining eye. I’d lost my magic.

What was a unicorn without magic?

What was I?

***

As I slowly came to terms with my condition over the following days, I was also caught up on what had happened since my fateful encounter with the Steel Ranger crusader. Rael had brought Daff and her supporters, and they’d come with heavy weapons of their own. They had missile launchers that could bust open Steel Ranger armor or peel back the skin of their airskiff. One of the first hits had taken out the crusader who’d broken me, saving me from death, but not early enough to save me from nearly as bad a fate. The fighting had been rough and Daff had lost a lot of ponies, but the attack succeeded in doing what I’d hoped it would: it convinced the Steel Rangers to limp away.

Summer Sunrise had saved me, having used purely mundane methods to patch me up. The anti-magic orb the Steel Ranger had thrown at me was still in effect, and no healing potions or enchanted bandages had any effect on me. I was assured that the effect had been temporary and such things would work now. It had nothing to do with the loss of my magic, at least not directly; that all came down to the loss of my horn. Perhaps it and my eye could have been saved with a powerful restorative potion had I not been immune to magic, but by the time the effect wore off, it was too late. I was going to have to learn to live with it.

That was far easier said than done. Like most unicorns, I’d taken my magic for granted. Until Lurk had shared the existence of the Library of Arcana with me, I’d never done any of the more complicated spells, but whenever I wanted to touch or carry anything, I’d used my levitation magic. Now, I was only able to lift the smallest things through great effort, and even then it seemed like a fluke. I tried to practice stacking bottlecaps, but even moving one was a strain. Nine times out of ten, I’d grunt and groan until my face turned red, and not a single spark of magic would manifest. Even when I did somehow manage to get the magic flowing, I found it could be dangerous. I moved my bottlecap stacking practice outside after uncontrollable multicolored bolts of lightning shot from my stump one time, causing explosions wherever they met something else. That light show was far from a one-time event, and eventually I gave up trying to get my magic to work at all. Only in desperation would I even consider depending on it, though I did instinctively reach for it plenty of times only to be faced with dreadful reality.

It wasn’t just in routine matters that my loss of magic was going to affect me, either. For years, I’d defended myself using firearm skills that I’d perfected until there was hardly anything I felt I couldn’t deal with. For years, I’d levitated my weapons, but that wasn’t possible anymore. It showed immediately when I attempted target practice. Following the Steel Ranger attack, some of the refugees who’d survived had decided it would be a good idea to be more familiar with combat, in case the Steel Rangers came back or if beasts of the wastes thought they could get a quick snack. Bottles and cans had been set up at a distance for them to practice on, and I joined them once I’d recovered enough from my non-permanent wounds to be out and about. Without magic, I had to physically hold my weapons now. For my revolver, that meant holding it in my mouth or my griffin claw, and given how much Big Iron kicked, I opted for the latter. I tried holding my battle rifle and starscatter gun in my claw, but without a second corresponding claw to steady them, it was a tricky prospect and not something I could do on the move. I would need a battle saddle if I wanted to keep using anything that couldn’t be operated with one limb. In addition to my unfamiliarity with how to hold my weapons, I was also now missing an eye, which narrowed my field of vision and made distances … difficult. Between my two new impediments, my performance on the firing range was truly abysmal. I missed far more targets than I hit, and when I was successful, it felt more like luck than actually figuring out how to do what I’d been doing instinctively for years now. My PipBeak confirmed it; my skills with weapons were now little better than when I’d first left Stable 85—practically nonexistent.

I’d been on my hooves for a couple of weeks and was at the firing range when I heard raised voices coming from the other side of the warehouse. It wasn’t uncommon for tempers to flare up in the camp, as everybody was under a great deal of stress and fatigue. The Steel Rangers hadn’t come back and no beasts had wandered in, but searches for food and other supplies had turned up zilch, anything in the area having been picked over by scavengers or the ponies of Castoway in the past. We had too little of everything, and I holstered my revolver before trotting around the warehouse to keep things from boiling over into a serious problem.

Two small groups were facing off on the tarmac while others watched with varying degrees of interest from the surroundings. On one side of the confrontation were several ghouls in various states of decay, but still intact enough to make out the furrowed brows and furious expressions on their faces. At the forefront of the group, head extended aggressively forward, was Crystal Dawn, a unicorn who in Pleasure Coast had managed to carve out a little corner for herself independent of the Three Families. Consequently, some of the ghouls who had fled south listened to her and looked to her for guidance.

Across from the ghouls was a group of griffins, all of them armed and wearing the makeshift yellow armbands that marked them as members of the “shoreguard,” a militia formed by former residents of Charity’s Reach. The other members of the camp didn’t recognize them as anything more than a gang, and they had no real authority (though they liked to pretend that they did). Their leader, Giacomo, a griffin with deep purple feathers and fur and pale-yellow marks around his eyes, was the one facing Crystal Dawn down. Both had advanced from their respective groups until their foreheads were nearly touching (something Crystal would surely like, for it would mean her horn was embedded in Giac’s skull).

“You zombies are just taking up space you don’t need!” Giacomo was accusing. “Why should you remain dry when you won’t catch your death of cold in the rain like we griffins would?”

The stormclouds forming overhead must have been the source for the current argument. Even with the Steel Rangers’ invasion (or perhaps in defiance of it), the Weather Corps continued their job of corralling clouds according to a fixed schedule. Our little camp or even Castoway were not the targets of the rain to come, but we would receive it nonetheless as the clouds made their way inland toward the griffins it was intended for. It had rained several times in the past few weeks, and the warehouse’s roof was far from watertight. With the destruction of the outbuildings in the fight with the Steel Rangers and the damage to the warehouse, there wasn’t enough space for everyone to have sturdy shelter all night or through a storm, and individuals had been rotating in and out, but the griffins seemed (quite naturally) not to be content with this system, since they were more onerously affected by the elements than the radioactively preserved.

“You think we like getting wet any more than you do?” Crystal Dawn rasped back. “You griffins can fly, at least, so why not build your nests in the rafters?”

“There’s not enough space,” Giacomo scoffed. “You want griffins falling on you in the middle of the night and breaking their necks, do you?”

“There’d be less pointless arguing then,” Crystal said under her breath, but clearly with the intention it be overheard. “Why don’t you nest in the mooring tower, then?”

“Exposed to the elements? You must be mad!” Giac shouted back, and the ghouls grumbled.

“It’s still a structure, isn’t it? All you need to do is find some cover for it.”

“Maybe we could if we didn’t have to spend so much time searching for food, something I notice you ghouls never do!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Crystal said sarcastically as she placed a hoof aside a withered ear. “I must have misheard you. After all, I thought your stance was that we ghouls shouldn’t bother with things we don’t need, like food and shelter.”

“I tried to do this civilly, but if you ghouls don’t move out willingly, we’ll drag you out if we have to!” Giacomo threatened.

“I’d like to see you try!” Crystal hissed back.

“Enough!” I shouted as I strode up to the groups before things came to blows between them.

Giacomo looked shocked but instantly backed down, as I’d expected. He was from Charity’s Reach, after all, and though most of my doctor’s coat had been destroyed, the armbands the shoreguard wore weren’t yellow for no reason. Crystal Dawn, however, remained defiant, as I also expected from a pony old enough to be my grandmother with several greats tacked on the front end. Why should she listen to a three-legged, one-eyed unicorn with no magic?

“This has to stop,” I said. “We can’t be fighting amongst ourselves if we want to survive. This isn’t Pleasure Coast, or even Charity’s Reach. This is a new settlement—no, not even that yet. We’re a survivor camp, but we can’t survive all on our own. I don’t see anyone leaving, so if this is to be a permanent place to live, we all need to work on it. We need food and we need shelter, not to mention medicine, protection, and a means to support ourselves long-term. Even if you don’t need food, help search for it. Even if you think your sole job is protection, help with building. We need to help each other.”

“And what have you done?” Crystal accused icily.

“Other than call for aid when the Steel Rangers came, not much,” I admitted.

Since my injury, my attention had been indrawn, focusing on what had become of me, what I was to do without my magic and critical skills. I’d tried to teach some of the griffins and ghouls at the firing range, since I still understood principles even if I couldn’t put them into practice myself anymore; and I’d helped out Summer Sunrise a bit with the ailments of the camp, but these were pitiful contributions. If I wanted everyone to step up, maybe they needed an example.

“I’ve been as guilty as anyone of failing those around me with my inaction,” I said. “But that ends now. I’m going to Castoway to talk to Daff. When I return, hopefully it’ll be with the means to gain food and shelter, the first two things we need to make this camp a settlement. In the meantime, why don’t you work together to organize scavenging forays, guard duties, and accommodations?”

***

I had to wait for Daff to see me, something I should’ve expected. She was busy running half a city—a real city from the War—and had duties. Could I do what she did? Could I, and did I want to, lead the community of exiles on the coast? Maybe not lead them, but at least I could get things started to make sure they survived. That, at least, was something I could do without my magic and ability to fight. Sure, I’d led things in the past, but that had never really ended well for me. I didn’t want a repeat of the Northern Lights Coalition or the North Equestrian Alliance (though I understood the latter was doing all right in my absence from the broadcasts of Radio Free Wasteland), but I was no longer Lord Lamplight, or the Doc who’d brought together settlements against him. I was something else and, after my crippling injuries, had to become something even more distant—by necessity, if nothing else. I thought back to the crazy griffin hermit in the far north and his fortune-telling machine. Parts of what he’d said that I’d dismissed as being in the past were coming true, and I wondered what that bode for my future.

Daff had established the Castoway Port Authority Hospital as her headquarters, and so it was in this clinical setting that I awaited her. The hospital had surely been looted for medicine many times in the past, yet it didn’t look in too bad of a shape. I wondered how many drugs, bandages, and healing potions remained here, not to mention medical equipment. Would Daff part with some of it to help Summer Sunrise rebuild his clinic on the coast now that he’d abandoned the Hope Drive Clinic in Pleasure Coast?

While I was waiting, I itched at my missing eye with my forehoof. Once it had healed enough for the bandages to come off, Summer Sunrise had provided me with an eyepatch to cover it. It was about as healed now as it was going to get, but the scar tissue still itched. I hoped that wouldn’t be permanent. I was getting better at judging distances even without my second eye, but it was still tricky. The real problem I’d run into after coming to Castoway was forgetting to open doors before walking into them, instinctively assuming my magic could open them. That would probably pass in time, once I spent more time in environs with actual doors.

I was seated in a cheap plastic chair in a lineup of several others leading to a door, and I turned my head as that door opened. Two ponies in matching beige coveralls trotted out and away, while an armed guard followed them and stopped in the doorway.

“Daff will see you now,” he announced to me, and I rose from my seat.

Daff had taken up residence in what had once been the hospital administrator’s office. It was a wide room with couches to one side and a broad desk in the center. The interior walls were covered in bookshelves that were severely scuffed and scratched up by looters frantically searching through their contents. There were gaps, but most of the shelves were filled with the books that I assumed were original, spines broken or upside-down in many cases as somepony had retrieved them from the floor and shoved them back into the shelves in order to make the room look more presentable. The back wall should have been all glass and would once have provided a commanding view of the port, but it had been paneled up for Daff’s protection lest one of the city’s warlords tried to snipe her. Daff herself was seated behind the desk, her duster billowing around her and her sunglasses folded neatly in front of her.

“So … you’re still alive, after all,” she said as I took a seat across from her.

“Yes, I am. No longer whole,” I said as I gestured to my eye and horn, “but … alive.”

“Why are you here?” Daff asked shortly.

“Well, I was hoping you could help me,” I said, and Daff’s eyes narrowed. “The camp up north needs supplies and shelter—”

“Don’t you think you owe me enough favors?” Daff said testily. “You seem dedicated to piling them up, but not repaying them.”

“About that—” I said, but Daff rose from her chair, embers burning in her eyes.

“Everything was going so well. We were taking Castoway from the warlords block by block,” Daff said as she paced. “I thought we might really have the chance to change Castoway, but then things turned on their head. The warlords wised up to the threat I pose, and with the loss of ponies and weapons fighting off the Steel Rangers for you, I don’t have the force needed to combat them. Castoway is slipping away, my coalition is fracturing now that they’re under threat, and I don’t know how I can turn this around. I’m starting to wonder whether I ever should have stepped in at all.”

Daff was successfully keeping her voice level, but her eyes and movement told a different story. She was worried, and if what she was saying was true, she had every right to be.

“If there was something I could do to help…” I said, leaning forward, but then shrank back. “With one eye and no magic, I can’t fight anymore, but I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you, but really, I can’t blame you,” Daff sighed as she trotted back around the desk and sat down, “It’s who I am, or rather who I wish I was. I’ve lived my life keeping my head down, trying to outsmart the warlords of this city and play them off against each other for my own sake. But after you tore through Castoway assassinating them, I saw the opportunity to do something good, and not just for myself. It was the same desire that had me answer your call for help against the Steel Rangers. It’s my own fault.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Daff,” I said.

“I know. But a righteous weakness is still a weakness, Doc, and the ponies of Castoway know how to treat weakness.”

“I came here seeking help, but also hoping to help you,” I said as I reached into my saddlebags with my griffin claw.

Daff’s eyes widened as I produced a bar of von Plume’s gold and set it on the desk.

“Maybe you can hire a griffin mercenary company, or pay off some of the warlords, I don’t know. Do whatever you want with it,” I said as Daff continued to stare at the gold in disbelief. “I was hoping this would repay you for all you’ve already given, as well as obtain whatever food, medicine, and supplies for the refugee camp that you think is a fair trade.”

“If I gave you everything this is worth at once…” Daff said airily as she picked up the bar in her magic and examined it. “It could clear a whole storehouse.”

“Well, the ghouls and griffins also need shelter. I remember when I was here before, there was a warlord called the Labyrinther. If he’s no longer around…” I suggested.

“Ahhhhhh,” Daff said, a spark in her eyes as she realized what I was suggesting.

***

Every warlord in Castoway had a schtick, and the Labyrinther’s had been creating mazes. It seemed a bit pointless when a pegasus could just fly over them, but none of the warlords seemed entirely sane. The reason I’d brought him up to Daff had been the principal material he used to build his labyrinths. The Labyrinther’s base had been a factory where kit homes had been produced. They were probably supposed to have been shipped into the Iron Valley to build homes for the pony workers, but that had never happened due to either companies refusing to pay or because the world had ended in balefire. Premade walls, floors, and roofs awaited only assembly (in a more reasonable manner than the Labyrinther had done) to create more than enough shelter for those back in the camp. In addition to food and medical supplies, as well as a purifier that would desalinate the ocean water to make it potable, Daff sold me skads of kit homes that had been seized. I couldn’t haul everything back myself, of course, and I had to return to the refugee camp only with what I could carry.

Things had settled down some in my short absence; apparently my speech had had an effect, as Giacomo and Crystal Dawn were now working together, albeit not without some continued grumbling and untrustworthy glances. The announcement of what I’d secured from Daff wasn’t met with much enthusiasm, since I had little to show, but I managed to rope enough griffins and ghouls into returning to Castoway with me to help haul the first shipment of housing and supplies by rail. Things cheered up after that, with more volunteering to help pull the boxcar back and forth until everything had been transported out to the airport on the coast. Doing everything in one day was far too ambitious, and plenty were uncomfortably wet that night. Thankfully, everyone had shelter over their heads by the time the next rainstorm blew through, even if they had to temporarily share their new homes with six or seven others.

Scavenging trips were sent farther afield to gather supplies, up into the mountains or out into the ocean. As near to Castoway as we were, there were plenty of ships who had never made it into port before the city descended into madness, or had departed for Equestria only to learn it had been destroyed before they got very far and had met their fate sinking off the coast. Ghouls, needing no air, descended into the wrecks and hauled out anything valuable that hadn’t become too waterlogged or corroded by the seawater. It was remarkable how well much canned food had survived, even if the labels had disintegrated long ago. Any weapons found in the sunken wrecks were useless, but a salvage team led by a mountainous ghoul named Ironheart did manage to find piles of combat barding whose enchantments had preserved them long after the crates containing them had rotted away.

Everyone practiced fighting, for if the Steel Rangers or any other threat came, it would be a fight for our survival. Once we’d built a defensive wall and the camp began to feel more like a settlement, a distinct guard emerged. At its core was Giacomo’s shoreguard, and the name stuck even after its ranks increased, acquiring a more “official” tone as became accepted by the community. In addition to the original cohort, the Shoreguard now included ghouls from Pleasure Coast who had experience either as soldiers during the War or as guards in the vacation city, as well as other griffins from Charity’s Reach or the mountains who’d been drawn by the news of a growing settlement.

As things developed, more and more ghouls and griffins looked to me for leadership. I suppose it was only natural since I had seized that position by intervening in Crystal and Giacomo’s confrontation and then brought the shelters we now lived in. If I saw something that needed doing, I did it, or increasingly organized others to do it, since no job in the new settlement was small enough for one pony to do alone. In addition to being a leader (or because they were one in the same), I became an organizer, though I tried to offload that duty as much as possible. I was interested in the details, but once I accepted my role as leader and realized I couldn’t oversee every detail, I decided to focus on the big picture: seeing to it that the settlement was running smoothly and had what it needed to survive, first in the short term and then in the long. Rael saw to organizing the details, a task he seemed to relish more than providing the spiritual advice that the settlement’s residents repeatedly solicited from him despite his continued protestations that he was merely an acolyte, not yet a priest, and was not qualified to fill the role they desired to see him in.

Things tended that way for a while, and nothing seemed fit to disturb it. No news came from the north; the Steel Rangers occupied Pleasure Coast, but seemed content to do little else than probe the surrounding area infrequently. We certainly never saw another of their airskiffs. In Castoway, von Plume’s gold seemed to have done the trick in getting Daff her mercenaries from the southern mountains, and the warlords were once again on the retreat. Months passed in that way, and what had once been a forlorn camp became a settlement that traded salvage from the ocean with Castoway and settlements in the mountains, supplemented when needed with gold from my remaining bar from von Plume’s treasure that rapidly dwindled in size.

The day finally came when enough of the refugees no longer considered themselves refugees, but residents of a new settlement, and decided that settlement needed formal structure. The leading ghouls and griffins worked together to decide on what they wanted for a home, and then they came to me to make it official. It was with some amusement that I received their decision to appoint me as marshal, a title that was sure to put Grand Marshal Gideon’s beak out of joint, me not being a griffin and all, and probably calculated to appeal to me for that reason. While I suggested Rael, since he was the one who actually ran things for the most part, and I still had unfinished business elsewhere, the experience of Charity’s Reach had left the griffins with a bad taste in their mouth for theocracy, even if they still held to their faith. Duskshore was the name the settlers had chosen for our new town, and it was a name that for me evoked memories of standing atop the mooring tower staring out across the sea as Celestia’s sun set over the distant cloud cover that blanketed Equestria. Several times since I’d crossed that sea, I thought I’d found a new home, but that feeling was stronger than ever now.

Though I was now Marshal of Duskshore, and I felt as settled as I ever had since coming to the Commonwealth, I could not rest easy yet, not while the Steel Rangers still occupied Pleasure Coast. During the time I didn’t spend settling disputes, walking the streets of my town, or speaking with Rael, I considered what I could do about that thorny issue. Though my skills with firearms were improving, I doubted I’d ever be as good with them as I had been, and going in guns blazing was no longer even the remotest of options. With von Plume’s treasure at my disposal, I could still go to Grand Marshal Gideon and secure his help, but I’d need to be careful about crossing the Commonwealth, with the Steel Ranger occupation between me and Shearpoint. Maybe the best thing to do would be to head east through the Iron Valley and then loop back north. Nothing was sure in my mind—not until the scavengers came.

They staggered out of the wastes in groups, many of them wounded and carried on other griffins’ backs. Those that weren’t carrying others held weapons and scanned their surroundings warily, though some began to sag as they realized they’d made it out of that beast-filled landscape. It wasn’t until I climbed the mooring tower at the center of Duskshore that I realized the full extent. There were nearly as many scavengers limping toward the town as I’d ever seen camped outside of Pleasure Coast at once, all of them without their distinctive vehicles. Outside of Duskshore, they halted and dropped to the ground, sitting in their clans, unwilling just yet to enter the town.

“What happened?” I asked one of the scavengers after trotting out.

“Ponies in metal shells, they came from their ship with no connection to the ground,” a griffin with an incredibly long rifle answered. “They took our road-beasts, though we fought for them.”

“How did they get all of you?” I asked incredulously as I looked out at the vast sea of swathed griffins.

“We knew the ponies in metal shells had taken the road-beasts of Unsullied who ventured too near to Pleasure Coast, so we met together to speak of what we should do to reclaim them. They fell upon us then,” the griffin replied, lowering his eyes in shame at their failure to keep their road-beasts, their most sacred possessions.

“How many skiffs did they send?” I asked, having trouble believing that a squad of Steel Rangers, even as formidable as they were, could take the vehicles from so many scavengers.

“It was one, but it was a great beast, a wicked metal beast far from the sacred road. It blotted out the sun, and its guns tore unholy furrows in the earth.”

It wasn’t an airskiff like the one that had attacked Duskshore that the scavengers had faced, but the Indefatigable itself. Only, what was the Indefatigable doing in the wastes far enough from Pleasure Coast that the scavengers had been able to make it here from where they’d been attacked?

“Where did it go?” I asked.

“East,” the scavenger replied. “To the roost of Underpeak.”

***

“Absolutely out of the question,” Crystal Dawn said when I announced my intention to leave Duskshore.

Since I now had official responsibilities to the town, I’d decided to have a meeting with its leading members before I set off. An old construction office had been found by one of the scavenging teams out in the wastes and dragged to Duskshore, becoming a “town hall” of sorts, and this was where I’d decided to hold my meeting. In the room with me were Crystal Dawn, Giacomo, Rael, Summer Sunrise, Sirenia (a non-ghoulified pony who’d been instrumental in organizing the town’s market once we were settled enough and had varied enough goods to trade), and Redleaf (a griffin from Charity’s Reach who’d taken on the responsibility of starting farm plots to grow our own food).

“It will be a temporary leave of absence. I will return,” I promised sincerely.

“You’re talking about going to the most dangerous place in the Commonwealth right now,” Crystal Dawn objected.

“Not true,” I said. “The Steel Rangers have moved their airship to Underpeak, which means the bulk of their forces will be away from Pleasure Coast.”

“You don’t know that,” Crystal replied, which was true. Based on the information from the scavengers, it certainly seemed likely, but the Steel Rangers could have simply taken the Indefatigable out on a mission and returned or left most of their forces behind to garrison the city.

“Why do you want to go?” Redleaf asked, changing the direction of the conversation.

“I don’t want to, but I need to,” I said. “I was on my way north when I arrived here and experienced my … accident. I’m glad I stayed—not that I had much of a choice at first—but there are some things I still need to take care of before I can lay up my coat for good and settle in here. I can’t go into details, but I believe I have a way to convince Grand Marshal Gideon to bring the Commonwealth’s forces to bear against the Steel Rangers. I need to get to Shearpoint. I need to see the Steel Rangers gone before I can rest.”

“You can’t mean to fight them yourself!” Giacomo blurted out. “No offense, but you’re not exactly a killing machine.”

“Not anymore; I’ve learned that,” I sighed. “But there are other things I can do, other things I should do to help now that I’ve started on that path. I can’t leave Pleasure Coast the way it is any more than I could stand by and let the Steel Rangers slaughter you all when they came here. I have to do what I can to end this, one way or another.”

“Well, you’re not going alone, unprotected,” Giacomo said, yielding. “No offense meant, preacher.”

“None taken,” Rael said, though he probably meant the implication that he would be unable to protect me, since it was rightly assumed he’d go where I went. He was still prickly about being referred to with any religious title other than acolyte.

“I’ll put together a squad of my best fighters to protect you until you return, an honor guard of sorts,” Giacomo said thoughtfully.

“Thank you, Giac, but I’ll need you here, to keep everyone safe and keep the peace as sheriff,” I said.

His eyes widened at the mention of him being appointed sheriff. It was something I’d been meaning to do for a few days now, and it was best to get that business out of the way before I left.

“Put together your honor guard, under a good subordinate. Blacktalon would do nicely,” I said, and Giac nodded. “Crystal Dawn, I’ll need you to run everything else while I’m gone.”

“I still don’t like this idea,” she said, before sighing exaggeratedly, “but I’ll do it. There will still be a Duskshore for you to return to, better than ever.”

Since the town’s establishment, both she and Giacomo had mellowed out and even become good friends, as hard as that would have been to believe at the start. I had no doubts that the two of them would be able to run the town together without any major issues cropping up.

“I’m sure it will be,” I said, nodding my appreciation to her. “You’ll have Sirenia to help with the details, to do what Rael does for me.”

“Of course,” Sirenia said with surprise.

“I will return,” I promised again as I rose to dismiss the assembled ponies and griffins. “Once the Steel Rangers are seen to, I’ll be back for good.”

***

Giacomo’s honor guard was ready to leave the next day, as were Rael and I. As I’d suggested, he’d selected Blacktalon to lead it, a griffin who’d come down from the mountains to join Duskshore while it was still starting out. Despite his name, his feathers and fur were what were black, his talons appearing perfectly normal. Along with him, Giacomo had selected four griffins, two ponies, and three ghouls. Among the last set was Ironheart, who’d decided that though he was skilled at underwater salvage, what he really wanted was to join the Shoreguard. The ghoul was a mountain of decaying meat, sure to put the fear of Celestia into most anyone who thought to challenge him, and I was glad to have him along. Perhaps if I’d been more prideful, I’d have resented having ten guards around to protect me. However, I’d come to terms with my limitations during the months in Duskshore, and I could live with this.

We traveled along the coast as we headed north, staying well clear of the wastes and the beasts that dwelt therein. We could have made better time flying, but half of our party was flightless without mechanical assistance, and the hopper I’d bought at Shearpoint could only fit one even if it wasn’t currently being used to run the town’s water purifier. Even if we could fly, that wouldn’t have been a good idea; something that stood out in the sky was sure to catch the attention of any Steel Rangers, patrolling on hoof or in an airskiff. We didn’t see any airskiffs on our way to Pleasure Coast, but I was still convinced of the possibility.

There was an airskiff when we reached Pleasure Coast, moored to the Shard Casino, but no sign of the Indefatigable. It seemed it truly had left, but it hadn’t taken everypony with it. Steel Rangers still stalked the streets, more than would fit in the skiff alone. Still, there were few enough that we were able to make our way about the city, so long as we were careful. I still held out hope that the platinum chip I’d taken from von Plume’s vault would provide us with aid, but I sadly wasn’t able to confirm or deny the fact. Following the map embossed on it had taken us to the Commonwealth Crooner’s radio station, which was garrisoned by a squad of Steel Rangers, probably to keep the Crooner in line and ensure he continued to broadcast their propaganda—propaganda that I realized said nothing about the Indefatigable leaving Pleasure Coast and moving to occupy Underpeak. Once it became clear that we weren’t going to be able to make it into the heart of Radio PC, we moved on, eager to put Pleasure Coast behind us.

As the Indefatigable moved in on Underpeak, it seemed the Steel Rangers had worked to subjugate the surrounding area, moving along the northern valley that curled through the Commonwealth. It was a familiar path for me to tread, and it hurt me to find Grand Imperial in ruins when we reached the first settlement I’d encountered outside of Pleasure Coast. Buildings had been smashed, either by airskiff-mounted guns or power armor-mounted armaments. The theater that had given the settlement its name had been torn apart and Grant’s rare Wartime film reels pilfered. I hoped that Grant, Gina, and all the rest had managed to escape the devastation wrought by the Steel Rangers, but the pile of scorched bones at one end of town did not bode well.

When we arrived at Rest ‘n’ Go, the Steel Rangers were still present. Some signs of fighting had marred the old hotel, but it seemed the griffins had surrendered before things had gotten too rough. They were all seated outside of their homes now, looking unhappy but nonthreatening, as Steel Rangers clomped up and down the street, several pairs going through and asking questions of the townsgriffins. Over the town hovered an airskiff, and Steel Rangers ascended and descended leisurely, unbothered by the thought of any threats.

“Doc, we should move on,” Blacktalon whispered from beside me after we’d spent a dangerous amount of time in the brush near the town scoping things out.

“I know,” I sighed just as softly. I wished that there was something I could do to help these griffins, but even with twelve of us, we were no match for the Steel Ranger force here.

I started to creep back until I saw the paladin overseeing the interrogation cock their head, as if doing so would allow them to hear their helmet radio better. I raised my PipBeak, careful not to disturb the brush, and pointed it at them.

“—ire, and Glowstone went with them. They’re checking out the buildings up the hill. The locals claim that’s where they got their food,” a stallion’s voice crackled through the earpiece I’d attached to the PipBeak.

During my brief moments of downtime in Duskshore, I’d created a new plugin for my PipBeak out of scavenged electronics. In theory, it was able to pick up and unscramble short-range radio transmissions, but I hadn’t been able to test it until Pleasure Coast. There, I’d figured out the kinks and gotten it working. So long as I was close enough to a Steel Ranger (though still outside of the range of their EFS), I could listen in on their communications.

“Report to me when they return, or if they’re gone more than twenty minutes,” a mare’s voice crackled back, not echoing like the stallion’s, so she probably wasn’t wearing a helm and was aboard the airskiff. “I don’t trust them. They’re troublemakers, if you ask me, and would have been better left behind in Trottingham or dropped into the ocean.”

“Yes, Senior Paladin,” the stallion, the paladin on the ground, replied.

“Anything good?” Blacktalon asked, half in rebuke and half in curiosity as I switched the plugin off and put my earpiece away.

“Something interesting,” I said as I pondered the snippet of conversation I’d intercepted. “Think you can find us a way up that hill without being seen?”

Blacktalon whinged at the request (once we were beyond earshot of Rest ‘n’ Go), but he eventually complied and managed to lead us up the slope behind the settlement. At the top was the Greenbush Agriculturium, looking just as I’d left it when I’d last been here almost a year ago. Well, maybe not just as I’d left it. The greenhouses were still filled with crops, but the robots who’d tended to them until I’d deactivated them had been cleared away. What had happened to them became apparent as we approached the main building, which was where we also found the Steel Rangers.

The eleven of them—one crusader and ten regular knights—were gathered around the rows of robots piled up where the residents of Rest ‘n’ Go had left them. Their voices were muffled, indicating they’d switched off the mics in their helmets and so couldn’t project their voices through the helmet speakers. It appeared they didn’t want anypony to have the chance to listen in on their conversation.

“There’s no convincing the Elders. It’s pointless,” a mare was saying as we got close enough to hear them. Based on what I remembered about Steel Ranger armor, if their suit mics were off, it was likely that EFS was as well.

“But it’s right,” a stallion, the crusader judging by the movements he made, said. “Just look at these robots! Fixed up, they could tend these gardens and help the griffins below. They have no knowledge on how to do such a thing, but we do.”

“Blaze is right, we should share our knowledge,” another mare said.

“What’s the point of having it if we don’t use it to help?” Blaze, the crusader added.

“I’m sure whoever invented megaspells thought the same thing,” another stallion said. “Look how that turned out.”

“We don’t have to share everything, but neither should we hoard everything for only us,” Blaze said. “As it is now, we’re barely better than the Enclave.”

“Or worse. The Enclave at least stays above the clouds and doesn’t come down to genocide ghouls and annihilate any resistance,” the first mare said, and several of the Steel Rangers managed to shudder, even in their absurdly heavy armor.

“We all know what the Steel Rangers should be doing,” Blaze said. “Our mission is to safeguard Wartime technology, but that shouldn’t mean locking it away so no good can come from it in the time being.”

“Why don’t you do something, then?” I called out.

The Steel Rangers instantly became alert, and Blacktalon stared at me incredulously, but I’d decided to take a chance. I’d heard enough to believe that this small group of Steel Rangers might be more akin to those of Vanhoover under Elder Basilisk Fang than what I was used to seeing from this force. They might, with a little push, even be willing to defect to our side, which could use all the help it could get against Elder Teakettle’s Steel Ranger Airborne Crusade.

“Who goes there?” Blaze asked, his voice electronically augmented.

“You may want to turn your mics back off if you don’t want your senior paladin overhearing!” I called back as my honor guard readied themselves for a battle they couldn’t win.

“Who goes there?” Blaze called again, this time with his suit’s mic off. A good sign, I thought.

I stepped out from among the greenhouses toward the spreading semicircle of Steel Rangers. Of course, when they’d turned their mics back on, they’d also reactivated EFS and had known where I was, so all of them were pointed (along with their weapons) in my direction.

“I’m Doc, also known as Doc Silverarm, Marshal of Duskshore,” I introduced myself. “I’ve seen what an idealistic Steel Ranger contingent can do for others in the Equestrian Wasteland. Why don’t you do something to make that happen here?”

“There are too many convinced of the old ways,” the first mare I’d heard speak said. “In Trottingham and here. The crusade is composed of zealots and ‘troublemakers’ like us, diehard supporters of the Elders’ views and those of us they’d like to see dead for speaking out against them. We’d never be able to take over the crusade.”

“Who said anything about taking over the crusade?” I asked as I approached and the Steel Rangers’ guns tracked me. “If even a small number of you abandon Elder Teakettle and help fight against him, it could make a difference.”

“The griffins aren’t doing much fighting against the crusade,” Blaze noted.

“No, but that’s about to change,” I said. “Do you want to be part of it, to help stop this crusade rather than perpetuate it?”

The Steel Rangers had seen enough and were ready to be pushed over the edge. Though the silence stretched long after my challenge, once Blaze announced his willingness to defect, the others quickly followed suit. Blaze’s squad, along with Fleetfire and Glowstone from other squads, were incensed with the crusade’s behavior since it had arrived in the Commonwealth and were willing to fight it.

After I shared the conversation I’d overheard between the paladin and senior paladin, they began to make their way down the hill so as not to trigger any more suspicion by overstaying their absence from Rest ‘n’ Go. Their coup against the other Steel Rangers occupying the town was far from bloodless, but it was quick. They seized the airskiff first, so as to cut off communication with the Indefatigable and a source of escape, and then managed to bombard and assault the ground troops until none were left standing. When it was all over, the griffins of Rest ‘n’ Go stood shocked by what they had witnessed, Steel Rangers turning on each other.

“What will you do now?” I asked Blaze after the Steel Rangers had cleaned up the dead and apologized to the townsgriffins for the intrusion.

“We need to return to the Indefatigable,” Blaze said. “Rally the others who might join our cause to escape. How long, Doc, until the counterstroke falls against the crusade? As you yourself said, we cannot defeat them alone.”

“Soon, I hope,” I replied. “I’ll be leaving for Shearpoint to speak to Grand Marshal Gideon when you do. Until then, head to the Iron Valley, but be sure to announce your intentions and don’t get into any fights with the Dashite Enclave or the Consortium.”

“Be quick,” Blaze cautioned me. “Elder Teakettle is becoming impatient to complete his true mission in the Commonwealth, and I fear our defection will only cause him to accelerate his timetable further. He means to seize Griffonstone.”

So, the true purpose of the Steel Ranger Airborne Crusade was the capture of Griffonstone, or more likely the Griffonstone Missile Base. With control of the base, Elder Teakettle could threaten all of the Commonwealth and beyond with megaspells. It could allow the Steel Rangers control over continents, or a second Last Day if he was actually foolish enough to repeat the mistakes of the past. More than ever, this had to end.

[Max Level Reached]
Alchemistry +4 (68)
Athletics +4 (57)
Barter +8 (135)
Electronics +4 (65)
Energy Weapons +6 (20)
Medicine +4 (133)
Repair +5 (131)
Science +3 (124)
Small Guns +8 (27)
Sneak +7 (127)
Speech +12 (143)
Survival +5 (122)