What do you want?

The second Key Question

Situation? A huge raider was approaching fast. Or, at least, as fast as a raider improbably wearing power armour could. Also, my anti-armour specialist was MIA.

Options? Sniper support? There was the harsh buzz of a magical energy weapon discharging, a red beam lancing out and striking one of the smiling heads that were bolted onto the stripped down frame. While it melted a hole in the metal face, it didn’t do much to stop its advance. What else? I had an Operator with one round left, and a spare magazine, but I knew it wouldn’t punch through, similarly, while I had used Resolve against the Steel Rangers, it had very much been an encounter swung by luck. That and while that gun seemed unreasonably accurate, there was not even a small glazed visor to aim for, the eyes of the raider were hidden amongst animatronic faces.
I had my spell but, again, my experience with the Steel Rangers wouldn’t match up accurately to this bout as the key components I had targeted then were either obscured or missing here.
What else?

I glanced down at my pipbuck, the display showing a medical warning about my broken ribs and damaged lung. Did I have anything else to draw upon?

Yes. Actually, I did. I thought back to my exploration of Station 2 and brought up the inventory management screen on the pipbuck, sorting a recently acquired weapon to the top of my saddlebags. Swinging a hoof back I fished it out and transferred it to my mouth, biting down on the unfamiliar grip.
It smelled of gun oil and the darkened steel felt a little different to that of the Operator, as did the trigger, sitting heavy on my tongue.
I brought up S.A.T.S. and focused around the armoured form, seeking a weakpoint. No, no, no-there! Stripping away parts had left areas usually covered by flexible seal exposed, and one point was also unguarded by fun-farm animatronics. I keyed in and executed the spell, the heavy pull required by the double action being assisted by the aiming magic.
The Nag had a kick but, as the cylinder pressed forward, the loud bark of the big round was dampened down to something a little quieter than Resolve. The bullet crashed into the exposed gearing at the raider’s ankle, knocking the whole foreleg back, though the support provided by the rest of the power armour kept them on their hooves.

The howl of anger that issued from the head of the armour was proof of some sort of effect. A click from the raider preceded two smgs swinging out from a resting state and, as the raider forced their leg back down, the guns barked out a swarm of bullets.
The ache in my chest grew as I threw myself sideways, out of the stream of lead, hoping the raider would follow my path. They did indeed seem more interested in chasing me down, rather than just spraying and praying like their fellow had been. Which was good. But the trail of bullets chased after me like a swarm of angry wasps. Which was bad.
I rolled to my hooves and tried to circle around the armoured raider, noticing the rusted spikes mixed in amongst the animatronic parts, and noting that it was entirely faces that had been used as armour, metal pony faces in a variety of colours staring at me from every angle. Some even had those spikes jutting out of their empty eye sockets.

Talk about glaring daggers.

Combat time! Quiet!

The bulk of the armour meant that the raider couldn’t turn quite as fast as I could circle them, and there was only a little bit of pivot in the gun mounts. But I could only circle for so long, the crushing pain in my chest slowing me down and my breath coming in ever more ragged gasps as I exerted myself. I needed a way to bring this beast down. I tried to think, tried to remember any briefings about power armour. With Zebra robots the standard solution for us had been to take down the remote operator, or Shaman as they called them, given we would be behind the front. Behind. A memory surfaced, if you had to take down something like this, without anti-armour support, you had to shoot the core.

I put on a burst of speed to bring myself directly behind the raider and swept my gaze across the armour’s back, looking for where the magical spark core would be housed. Unfortunately it seemed like the extra armour was still serving its purpose as welded over the generator pack was a glowering metal pony face. I fired the Nag at it, punching a hole clean through, but with no idea whether I’d done any damage whatsoever.
My eyes narrowed in both frustration and pain and, pushing through it, I summoned up a brace of silent blades, hammering them into the weld lines where the animatronic face met the armour frame. The grumpy metal pony face went flying off and revealed the glow of the exposed spark core, humming with power. As I tried to draw a bead on it there was a whine of actuators and the armour went rigid, tensing like the muscles of a live pony.

There was a hiss of air, and possibly some kind of ‘sproing’ sound as the heavy armoured form leapt straight up in the air, rotating to face me and dropping the angle on the attached guns. I very nearly dropped my jaw, and my gun, to the floor before throwing myself up onto my rear hooves then backwards to escape the falling hunk of pony and steel. It felt like there was a shockwave in the air as the raider crashed back into the ground, and definitely a rumble in the dirt that threw me back to the floor. The dust kicked up by the impact obscured my vision as I dragged myself back to my hooves.

As the dust cleared I could see the raider standing in a small crater, tossing their head back and forth, trying to spot me. I took the opportunity to launch more silent blades at the gun mounts, trying to sever them from the rest of the frame, but ended up taking chunks out of all the surrounding clutter. The mass of armour and spikes and faces clomped its way up to me, guns aimed but not firing, and then reared back on its hind hooves, letting out a strangled howl from inside its casing as it prepared to bring those heavy hooves down on me.

There was a buzzing through my ears, and a lance of red lit up the still clearing dust, burning into the spark core on the back of the armour. Magic can have a distinct smell, depending on who uses it, and industrial magic, that of spark power and household convenience, had a tendency to smell like the passing of rain, the smell of the ground after a storm.

Petrichor.

But only when it leaked out of containment.

I wrenched the Nag from my mouth with telekinesis as I bellowed at the top of my lung,

“GET DOWN!”

Scrambling towards the barricade I could feel the heat of escaping spark power as, out of the corner of my eye, I could see the raider turning to look in the direction the lance of magical energy came from.
It hadn’t been that long since I’d felt that wave of magical energy from the Silverpone’s face gun broil the air above me, but I felt like I was reliving it as the spark core of the armour detonated, bursting a bright flare of energy from the raider’s back, and towards me.
I didn’t reach the barricade, I couldn’t. I snapped my head around to try and find any cover to put between myself and the magical inferno rolling towards me.

Ground!

What? How?

Grab it, lift it, move it!

Grab? I focused on a patch of hard, dry ground between myself and the fire, trying to dig telekinetic grips into and around it, to pull a dirt barricade from the very earth beneath me. A flare of orange magic coated the ground, the overglow from my horn lighting up my hat as I heaved with magic, pulling a wide triangle of dirt up between me and the fire. I threw myself against the solid earth and curled up into a ball as the fire struck my barricade, breaking on the point of the shape and sweeping past me on either side. Once again, the sky was ablaze and the heat stole the air from my working lung as I endured the fire for another of the longest minutes I could remember.

Silence filled the air and my heart sank, had my warning been too late? But then there came the cry of a child, the break in the tension and the end of the life-or-death situation finally opening the floodgates of emotions. Extracting myself from behind the baked solid column of earth I stepped up towards the form of the power armoured raider, still standing, but eerily still.
They had turned to face Neon’s perch, and had frozen in place, the back of the armour burst and melted, rivulets of steel having flowed away from the spark core and then re-solidified, freezing the explosion in time. I had fished the Nag up from the ground on my way over and, holding it in my mouth and tasting the residual magical energy, I approached the armour cautiously. As I pressed in close, I cocked an ear towards the raider and could hear a rattling breath from inside the armour.

The occupant breathed. Once. Twice. A third intake, a rattling exhale and then, silence.

I wanted to be sure, and used the silent blades to cut away at the armour seams, the ejection systems having been one of the things ripped out of the frame. I used my telekinesis to pull ruined machinery off of the raider, green magic grasping and peeling the scrap apart until the body inside flopped out of the ruined armour.

It was a stallion, though only just. They looked young, though their flesh was marred with scars and sores and as their head lolled sideways, their mouth opened and showed that their tongue had been removed. They had a cutie mark, still visible on their flank, of a screwdriver, albeit a screwdriver with a bone as the handle.

I shook my head and stepped away, looking first up to the hill to give a nod to direct my companions down, and then to the cluster of travellers as they too stumbled out from cover. The stallion was bleeding from two bullet holes, one in his flank and one through his left ear, and one of the mares still had that knife stuck in her. The two fillies, thankfully, seemed unhurt, at least, physically. A shadow passed overhead announcing Neon Dream joining us, with a scrabble of dirt heralding Dee’s arrival. I turned to look at my fellow operative, glaring as she at least had the good grace to look a little sheepish. Glancing back at the civilians I swallowed my anger for the time being.

“They need medical attention,” I told her, “get extra supplies from Neon and see to them, I’ll get our pegasus to keep watch from the skies”.

She cocked her head a little, “you, uhh, you also need some medical attention”.

I waved her off before walking over to the travellers, I could wait. The dark red blood had merged with the magenta of the stallion’s coat as he lay on the ground, trying to calm his breathing, still covered in the nicks and scrapes where the raiders had toyed with him. One of the mares approached me, the one that hadn’t been stabbed and signalled me with a hoof, tossing her scarlet mane and trying to guide me back to her fellow traveller. The one with the knife stuck in her.

“Thanks Scarlett,” she said, before looking up at me. “who are you and what do you want?” she asked, looking stern. I noticed she had unholstered her firearm and had it near her hoof, “we don’t want to go from one encounter to another, but if you so much as breathe on those fillies...”

I held up a hoof, “I am Operative Neun, Equestrian Military, 900th division. We mean you no harm.” There was a pause, and both our eyes drifted to the knife sticking out of her flank, close to a cutie mark of a hammer. I winced slightly, absolutely because of my lung. No other reason.

“Equestrian Military? All of you?” she cast her eye over the other pair as Neon Dream took to the sky, “was there some sort of military stable we didn’t know about?”

I gave a small shrug, “Something like that,” I said, “what are you doing out here?”

“we were trying to get through the tunnel, out to Shattered Hoof. It sounded like Gawdyna Grimfeathers is putting together a settlement out there and Stone Rhyme over there though it might be a chance for us to set up.” She indicated the stallion that was in the process of being tended to by Dee, “we’ve been at a bit of a loose end since we left the Stable.”

“Stable?”

“Doesn’t matter now, it’s...” she paused, “well, it’s gone now. Dead. Nothing left. I got us out before everything went wrong.” She looked over at the stallion, Stone Rhyme, again, “is he going to be OK? Stoney’s brave, but he’s not a fighter.”

“He should be.” I looked down at my pipbuck, pulling up the map and looking for this ‘Shattered Hoof’. Turned out it was near the rail junction settlement I had spotted Roulette spying on. I showed the mare the map,

“look here miss...” I trailed off, “Marble,” came the response, “Marble, there’s an alternate route around that should lead you to this Shattered Hoof. I came down that route recently and it was clear of any raiders. That might be a better path for your group.”

Marble thanked me as Dee wandered over, followed by Stone Rhyme. A smile spread across her face as she looked over at the other pony, with a cry of ‘Daddy!’ coming from the two fillies that had been sheltering with Scarlett, who proceeded to run over to the stallion. I quirked an eyebrow, one of the fillies looked like Marble, but the other had a dark red mane, like Scarlett sported. I looked over at Marble, who rolled her eyes,

“look, the thing between Stoney, and me, and my sister, it’s, its a long story, Stable thing, ok?” she said in a tone that she’d had to explain this situation a few times before.

I shrugged, and winced, it wasn’t really relevant to the mission at hand. I asked her a little about the stable, and what they had been doing since they left, giving a small nod. Marble started explaining the basics of their stable then, suddenly, let out a screech of pain.

“Drink.” Dee pushed a healing potion into her mouth, holding the bloody knife with her telekinesis, having grabbed it out while I distracted the mare. Marble glared her own daggers at the both of us as she drank the potion, waving away her concerned looking companions.

“And you,” Dee waved half a potion at me, but I shook my head, “not now,” I rasped.

With the wounded healed, I gathered up the travellers and outlined their route through the pass and on to the junction settlement, and Shattered Hoof beyond it. They thanked us, well, all except Scarlett who just nodded and waved with a smile on her face. As they gathered up their packs, Neon Dream landed beside us.

“All clear out there,” he said, giving the fillies a little wave, “what’s going on?”

“This group are trying to get to Shattered Hoof, near where we met up with Roulette,” a small smile tickled the corners of his mouth, “we’re sending them the way we came down.”

“Makes sense,” he nodded, “everyone fine?” he asked

“Except for RZ,” Dee chipped in, but I waved her off again.

The travellers turned away and began their march out to the pass, the fillies waving and calling and giggling as they went. I watched them pass out of sight before rounding on Dee.

“What, under Luna’s stars, happened?” I glared at the white mare, “you are our anti-armour support, there-” I gestured at the remains of the armoured raider, “-is somepony in moondamned power armour, where was your support?!”

“R-Razor?” Neon started, but Dee cut him off, “lets get one thing straight here RZ, you are not my commander. I am done with the military nonsense.” She stomped towards me, “look around, there’s nothing left, war’s over, what are you doing?”

“I’m doing what I can,” I spat, “If you’re not going to fight, why did you even come with me? If you’re done, why not just walk away? There’s no coming back for us, but you were willing to just watch me die?!”

Her face was in my face, only our horns preventing her from pressing her muzzle flat against mine, “I wasn’t intending to watch you die! Any more than you intended to watch me die at that supply depot! I just... Just...” her eyes filled with tears, “I just can’t do it anymore Razor, I can’t. All I know is killing. Killing and dying. I.. I just... ”

She slumped down onto her haunches, “I just, don’t want to be a weapon, pointed at the next target, and the next, and the next. I want to live a life,” her eyes hardened again, “so why are you so determined to make me one? Why are you so determined to be one? What do you want?”

Neon tried to get in between us, “g-guys, please,” he said as I glared over his head,

“Because its what we do, its what we were made for,” I felt my own eyes watering, voice wavering as thoughts that had been living deep in my mind began to surface “and, its the only thing I can do. This... mission, these stations, the uniform, its all I have to stop myself from falling down this empty hole I have in my mind.” I tapped my head with a hoof, wincing from the pain in my lung, realising I was getting short on breath, “I don’t have family,” I gestured in the direction the travellers had taken, “I don’t have any other skills, and I don’t want to just lie down and die when I’ve just got the opportunity to live!”

Dee flung herself at me, forelegs wide and I began to rear up, preparing for impact, tensing muscles for a hoofstrike, only to find myself encircled in her forelegs and crushed into a hug. Dee’s messy mane filled my vision and her head pressing against mine threatened to spill my beret from its perch.

“Don’t be silly,” she sobbed, “you’ve got family. You’ve got Neon, and you’ve got me.”

I gasped, partly at her words, and partly from the pain of having my already injured lung crushed further, “Dee!” I rasped, “too tight!”

She dropped me like a sack of apples and I fell to the floor sucking on air and coughing as my lung failed to expand properly.

“Luna damn my hide,” Dee fished that half drunk healing potion back out, “Some big sister I’m being”.

I gulped down the healing draught and inhaled deeply, trying to push my lungs and ribs back out to encourage them heal in a somewhat normal position. The pain rippled through my barrel as I felt the bones knit back together, and the blood in my lung get condensed into a dense packet of phlegm, ejected from my body with a series of hacking coughs.

“I-” I coughed a little more, looking up at my fellow operative, the oldest of us, “I won’t make you fight, but... But I need you to watch our backs”.

A green coated foreleg swept towards me from the corner of my vision, “we could probably do with a medic,” came Neon Dream’s voice. I nodded in agreement,

“That could work. Would that work?”

Dee nodded, “yeah, I think so. I think I could do that”.

I raised my hoof, “though, one extra thing,” Dee tilted her head quizzically, “might still need you to punch through structures”.

She frowned a little, then closed her eyes. After a moment she let out a sigh, “Ok. Ok. I can still knock on doors for you.”

Our emotions vented, and our expectations realigned, we decided to scour the raider camp for anything useful. “OSP,” Dee said in a sing-song voice, “what is with you guys? ” Neon Dream called back, “it’s just looting.”

I chuckled at his exasperated tone and set about seeing what was of use to us. I decided that now was a good time to listen to another one of Dr Muse’s logs that had been unlocked and slipped the earbloom into my ear, playing the file. Dr Muse’s voice filled my ear as I worked,

“Framework Trooper briefing number 3: FT-901. Their Full designation is FT-901, Anti-Armour Soldier, Door Knocker. As the first successfully implanted Framework Trooper, 901 was a milestone for both the project and in the fields that made up our research: spell development, memory implantation, megaspell frameworks and so on.” The mare gave a sigh, “that fact that it was the 9th iteration should tell you how much trouble we had succeeding, and Luna will damn me to Tartarus for what happened to the first 8 implantees.”

The power armoured raider had expended all the ammunition for their weapons, or it had cooked off in the firestorm of the spark core’s containment failure. That same fire had also melted the guns themselves to slag so there was no retrieving those either, in fact there was nothing of value to be found on that raider, no ammo, no caps, no personal effects of any kind.

Dr Muse continued her dictation about Dee, “901’s embedded spell is a high power, concentrated telekinetic burst, intended by Mana as a way to counteract Zebra tank and robot armour without relying on, in his words, ‘dirt pony bells and whistles’.” She seemed to spit the quote out, some distaste on her tongue for repeating it, “We had knowledge that Ironshod Firearms was working on an anti-material rifle for the MoWT, and Mana had us rush to ensure our option was completed first. Apparently, the initial idea had been to build an anti-armour pistol, that could be issued as a sidearm allowing any soldier a chance against tanks and robots, however it was concluded that to be effective, any such pistol would have to be fired practically knocking on the door of the tank. I think Mana named 901 ‘Door Knocker’ to antagonise them.”

The smg dropped by the fleeing mare was intact, and cycling what passed for a bolt un-jammed the feed. There was a hooffull of rounds left in what was masquerading as a magazine as well. Both went in the saddlebags to sell later.

“While successful, 901 proved to be a bit too wilful for Mana’s requirements. At the fifth re-application, they began to refuse to engage targets and while Mana insisted I reinforce the control measures in the framework, the matrix is self reinforcing. That wilful personality was ingrained into the runic sequencing and no amount of tweaking would change that.” There was a pause, and the subtle sound of a mouth moving, with the tine of the next few words I could envision a sly smile on Dr Muse’s muzzle, “at least, that’s what I told him. A Spellwright Mana may be, but he is much more embedded in theory and speculation, he couldn’t write more than a basic runic framework, and certainly couldn’t modify a megaspell. So long as I wrote the controls in, he would be content. At least, until he developed the Will of the Wisp.”

I left the other two to clear outside and delved into the dark behind the barricades, the inside of the tunnel lit only by some barrels filled with flammable material, looking for what the raiders might have kept in their personal quarters. I could probably have guessed as to the general theme, but finding the tumbledown shack that had housed one of them really reinforced to me that raiders were definitely on the ‘shoot on site list’. It was largely empty, consisting of a stained mattress that, between brown dirt, red blood and lighter fluids, had chosen to settle on ‘green-grey’ as a colour, a broken refrigerator full of empty tins and an organised collection of hooves, lots of them quite small.

Dr Muse’s voice in my ear was not exceptionally comforting whilst I was confronted by this, “I’m not sure how he developed it as it seems a mite outside his usual stable, but it used a code phrase to activate and put the target under a trance, to make them... Pliable. If 901 would not engage, then they could be forced to do so. While that was applied to 901, I made sure to write more stringent controls into the others. I will not have Mana interfering further in my troopers”.

The file ended with a click as I inspected a maintenance harness for the power armour, set up in a room that looked more like a jail cell than a workshop. There were hoofcuffs attached to the frame, and a bucket set behind it filled with foul smelling excrement. A funnel and tube were tied to the front of the frame as well, with a variety of tools and knifes scattered about the floor. I was beginning to see more and more that the raider in the armour may well not have been there by choice. Something rattled behind me and I had a sudden thought, the armoured raider would not have been able to get off of the harness by themselves.

I spun to face the noise, readying a silent blade, and saw a filthy matted mess of a pony spring from a pile of soiled newspapers with a wrench in their mouth. With a quick bit of mental gymnastics I adjusted the composition and angle of the silent blade and swept it up as a wall of force, blocking the raider’s swing and shearing off the head of the wrench. I sprung up into a zebra stance then came crashing down on the stunned raider like a ton of bricks...

Don’t kill him!

...Aiming hoofstrikes to further disorient and disable my assailant. The raider was just screaming obscenities as I pummelled him, ending as a strike to the head knocked them unconscious.
The noise brought the other two galloping into the tunnel, sliding to a stop on the loose gravel that peppered the ground. We dragged the raider outside, stripping him of weapons, which really only amounted to a small knife made from a shard of metal, and a number of inhalers. I decided to stand guard over him while the others continued to clear the camp. By the time he came round we had a decent pile of items that were either of immediate use, or trade goods. I had given Neon Resolve to wield, and had convinced Dee to just hold her Operator to intimidate the raider. She had insisted it had no rounds in it.

“ugghh, my head,” the raider groaned, “Sawtooth? Hoof Herd? Colt?” he opened his eyes to see the three of us standing over him, he bared his teeth, “hey stripe-dicks, where are the others?”

“Dead,” I said simply, gesturing with a hoof, “and yet, here you are.”

His head whipped back and forth, trying to spot any of his comrades, “No, no, th-the Colt, the Colt’ll getcha, he’ll plough you were Celestia don’t shine,” he was scrabbling about his rags, clearly looking for a weapon, “Luna’s ragged plot, I’ll-”

At that I stomped forwards, looking over the wretch as he cringed, I flicked an ear at the blasphemy, but decided to let anger show in my eyes, “They’re all dead, and I’m wondering whether you should join them,” he froze, eyes darting to the two guns aimed his way, “from what I’ve seen here, I don’t think Equestria would miss you,” I turned, and pulled up one of the bats the other raiders had wielded, stomping up to him and raising the bat high.

He cringed back again hooves over his head, trying to cover his already bruised face. I stood frozen for a second or two, bat held high, before I let it drop.

There was a clatter as the bat bounced from the ground before the raider. He cracked open one eye, looking up at me, then down at the bat, then back to me. “huh?”

“I’m a soldier, not an executioner.” I said, glaring at him, “You have 10 caps, a bandage and this bat,” I nudged it with a hoof, “it’ll see off bloatsprites, but your raider days are over, find a settlement and help.” I leaned in, muzzle nearly touching his, face scrunching in disgust from his rancid breath, but trying to mask it as rage, “If you don’t, we’ll know. And you will not get a second chance.”

I stepped back and straightened up, “now git.” I said, pulling Memento from my holster and pointing it in his direction. After a moment of scrabbling, hooking the bat and turning away, the ex-raider galloped off, ears pinned to his head. I waited until we could no longer see the dust of his flight before I holstered Memento and gestured to Neon Dream to toss Resolve back to me.

“Thank you.” I looked up, having expected that line from my rogue thoughts, rather than Dee.

“Like I said, I’m not an executioner,” I didn’t think this was an opportunity to discuss my rogue thoughts.

“uhh, honey, you do recall that we were assassins?”

I frowned, “we engaged military targets who were appropriately equipped and perfectly capable of killing us if we were noticed.” I scratched at the ground with a hoof, “I might still be a weapon, but I will choose when I will be wielded”.

Dee gave a nod of approval, a small smile on her muzzle, below her lazily lidded eyes. She kicked the Operator over to me. “I’m not going to keep this RZ,” she said, and I gave a little nod. She had kept the knife she had extracted from Marble for use as a scalpel, though had bemoaned the loss of ‘HT’ as a way to sterilise the raider weapon. She was also carrying the meagre medical supplies we had gathered from the encampment.

I picked up the Operator, reloaded it and passed it over to Neon Dream, “I want you to have this Neon, we’re heading into another station and you might need something a little more suited to close quarters.”

While he took it, and stowed it in his hoof-me-down trooper barding, he did have a look of trepidation on his face. Mouth firing a solid slug pistol was going to be different to a battle saddle rigged magical energy weapon, but we didn’t necessarily have the time to practice.

In our pile of trade goods was an interesting find, and, perhaps, one of the reasons I let the raider go. A bundle of stained and tattered mechanics periodicals and a technical manual for that power armour. The foulmouthed raider had had, rather than the gruesome marks often found on others of his kind, a wrench as a cutie mark. Not even bone handled like the one in the power armour. I hoped that he had some skills he could turn to use. As for us, we turned back to the tunnel mouth and proceeded along the tracks and into the dark.

Author's Note

Thanks to kkat for creating this crazy mashup and letting others play around in it.
Thanks to Somber too, I may refernce things from Project Horizons and Homelands here and there. There might be the odd reference to other FoE fics as well here and there.