Fallout Equestria: Rangers North

Fallout Equestria: Rangers North

Chapter 005: Brittle Cold

AE0090.03.24.1456

“And when these minds finally snap, best watch carefully, for they are worst of all.”

Red Rain

The light in front of us glowed a warm orange under the darkening greenish-white overcast, and with enough intensity that I could feel its heat even with the blizzard raging and flurrying about around us. In the back of my mind the little, better pony in my head was jumping for joy. We had been found, or we had found our way. One or the other. But my fore-self, the other more logical pony that thought for me most often, was skeptical.

“Rightfully so,” I thought.

Sure, it was warm. Sure, there was little chance of an attack in this kind of weather, but after all of the things that we had been through that day, I WAS going to look in the gift-wagon’s bed-cover.

“I do not trust it.” said Shear, echoing my concerns, “Isn’t it at least little convenient that something such as this would appear out of nowhere?”

Without much warning, I began to feel sick. The blizzard wasn’t getting any calmer, and we certainly couldn’t stay here forever, no matter how warm it might be. Thunder, muffled by the wind, rolled past my ears and across the now invisible peaks the surrounded what we hoped was the path to Geothermal Station #7.

“We should keep moving.” Jack agreed, moving past the beacon.

“It’s warm.” I murmered, wishing we could stay just a little longer.

“It’s also the only thing that we’ve seen that wasn’t just a wall of eerie greenish-white snow.” the “better” pony in the back of my head told me, “Can’t we stay a while?”

I glared at myself, “Aren’t you supposed to be the better one here? The one more concerned for our survival and moral standing?”

The other pony in my head did not answer.

“Fantastic.” I muttered , “I’m having conversations with the... whatever it is I’m having conversations with. Myself?”

I snorted, but I guess the pony in my head had more important plans, like taking control of my feet, and sending them into the ONE rock on the entire mountain that was not covered completely in snow. I grunted, stumbling and landing face first with a very heavy Broken Shield on my head. Shear rushed to my aid, surprising me a little.

“Are you injured?” he asked kneeling next to me, “Any more than you were before, that is?”

“I’m... fine.” I muttered, “... What about you?”

The better pony in my head started to try to guilt trip me about previous events with him, but I reminded it that now really wasn’t the time, and that it could do that when we weren’t about to freeze to death. Shear helped brush me off and help settle Shield on my back again.

“I am quite a bit little better now, actually.” he said slowly, stooping low on his front hooves, “I think we are all going to be doing a little better after this.”

“What in TARTARUS are you plot-lickers DOING?” Jack roared in sudden anger, stomping through the snow towards us, “Do you two WANT to freeze to death on this mountain or WHAT?”

I had almost forgotten we had a very emotionally-frayed squad-leader at that moment. Thankfully, Shear had randomly pulled either a miracle, or was just the luckiest pony in all of what was left of Equestria, if only for that moment.

“Jack wait!” he began, pulling out what looked to be emergency supplies, “We’ve found something! Here, inside the beacons!”

“What do you mean, inside?” he asked, a lot calmer now that there was an actual reason for the sudden stop. “Is it useful?”

At least he hadn’t seen me fall.

“Rain tripped over it, he must have opened it somehow. It looks like basic supplies. Rad-X, mostly. There is a Stimpack as well.”

Well, now he knew. Jack did not seem concerned however, as the sudden acquisition of supplies probably overshadowed my poor choice of footing. As Midnight Shear finished his sentence, the howling wind died down a little, and oddly it made me feel a little colder than before, like maybe the rushing wind had been distracting me from the other “miserabelia” that I had managed to collect. I began to shiver, my teeth chattering against themselves.

“If you’re wondering what miserabelia is...” I began thinking to myself, but cut such thoughts out of my little pony brain as quickly as I came. Certainly there wasn’t anyone listening in. Probably.

Ticktickticktick. Ticktick. Ticktick. Tick. Tickticktick.

“What’s that?” I looked around for the source, “Is that our back-up Geiger counters? Tell me it’s not the back-up geiger counters.”

“Fuck.” Shear sighed.

Jack looked up at the sky, which was a slowly darkening green hue.

“It’s called a RadBlizzard for a reason.” he rumbled, “I was hoping we’d gotten lucky, and our Geiger counters weren’t going off because we were ahead of the storm, or something.”

“Doesn’t that suit have readouts for that kind of thing?” I asked.

Jack sighed audibly, “Not after the fight we were in earlier, no. I don’t even have health monitors for you two, or ammo counters for my OWN weapons. We’re lucky that even ONE of us has a working secondary Geiger counter at all. I really wish you had kept your damn helmets on.”

“Well... we’ve got the Rad-X” Shear reminded abruptly.

“Wait, Shear, you’re still wearing your helme-”

He pointed a hoof at a massive crack that ran across the entire surface.

“Ah...”

Jack ignored my lack of awareness, addressing Shear instead, “Won’t do us any good without Rad-Away at this point.” Jack countered with an unhappy sigh and turning around, his heavy armor hissing and scraping between the dented plates, “We need to move. Now. If we are lucky, there’ll be Rad-Away in the next one.”

I nodded, and my stomach turned again, but Jack was right. We had to keep moving.

“Come on.” I motioned with my ears in Jack’s direction to Shear.

Shear trotted alongside me, watching me carefully through his sneak-suit mask. Or, I assumed as much. His visored gaze made me nervous, so I looked ahead, certain that the next beacon wasn’t that far. We continued trudging through the thickening, deepening snow. The wind had picked up again, obscuring our vision worse than before and forcing me to stick closer to our Paladin. Thunder cracked above our heads, a flash of lightning making it through the dense snowfall around is, casting gritty, harsh shadows upon us all.

The beacon was farther away than I thought. By the time we’d reached it, I could barely stand.

“Guys... I think I’m gonna...”

I hurled, or tried to at least, but because we hadn’t eaten there wasn’t really much to throw-up. Bile managed to rise in my throat though staining my tongue with its bitter taste as I collapsed into the snow with the weight of my partially armored friend. It suddenly felt like the heaviest thing in Equestria, crushing my lungs and neck into the snow, suffocating me. I heard Shear call to Jack, but couldn’t make anything out as they tried to bring me back up to my feet. The sound of rushing static filled my ears as the world started spinning and just refused to stop. I wasn’t about to give up though. My friends, my squadmates needed me. But as I struggled to right myself in the orange under-glow of the second beacon I could feel Shear pulling Broken Shield off my back, thankfully allowing my lungs to suck in air between wretches. I blinked hard, trying to stop the nauseating feeling that continued to grip the inside of my skull.

I let out a small whimper between the lurching of my internals. Everything burned. My lungs, my skin, my coat and eyes. Everything. I knew instinctively that it was probably over as my body slowly shut down, eyes welling up with tears and closing in pain, even as Broken Shield was hoisted up onto Jack’s back along with me.

“Dammit...” the little pony in my head whined and stumbled, “I just waxed this...” and then he fell over too, finally letting me black out.

Jack-Hammer

AE0090.03.24.1500

“Damn... Just damn...”

Thankfully, Knight Midnight Shear had enough mental strength left to telekinetically lift the both of them onto my back. The Sisters know that I could not have done it myself. Not in this tankish armor.

“Knight Shear.” I called to my last remaining conscious subordinate, “I’m going comms quiet for a bit.”

Knight Midnight Shear only nodded. I suspected he felt guilty. In any case, we continued our plodding through the snow, the scraping and scratching of my suit’s damaged components ringing in my ears and causing my teeth to chatter more than the cold outside warranted. My coat burned a little, accompanied by lightheadedness. Ignoring those distractions, and the slow onset of radiation poisoning, I flicked my ear a slightly left four times in rapid succession, turning my outgoing communications off so I could perform the final duties required of any Crusader:

Recording my final transmission so that, if in the event that we all died, there’d be something to recover. I flicked my left ear twice towards my front, and then left once.

“I don’t know how to start this, really...” I began, the tape-recording device installed in my helmet beginning a live recording, “But we tried, Elder...”

I sighed into the microphone, continuing the long walk. I turned my head around to face Shear. He was keeping up, but still looking worse for wear.

“I know that’s not an excuse... but to be honest, none of that even matters. We are dealing with a problem bigger than anything either of us imagined. Bigger than the War Council could have predicted.” my voice cracked, sounding foreign and strange as my normally deep rumble jumped in pitch, “Hundreds of unidentified ponies hit us shortly after we left the bunker. Opal, they had rockets, entrenchments, and coordination. These aren’t just ragtag raiders! When they hit us, the ordinance kept falling until our AutoSleds were disabled. Knight Shield put up an amazing fight for never having been in open combat. You’d know we trained him well, but even still, he went beyond the line of duty there, and much more after.”

I took a deep, sighing breath as the wind howled in unearthly groans. My spine tingled a little as it mixed with the creaking of my armor, sounding like the grim-reaper himself come to get me at last. I continued, gathering myself.

“After that, they just... swarmed. It’s nothing like we’d encountered earlier. Star Paladin Steel Spool was injured badly after we took to the valley in defense.” I swallowed, the fear rising in my chest, “You and I know his service record. That kind of thing doesn’t happen to him, even in the worst of situations. I really hope you had those scouts record more than just troop movement. We need to know where they came from, who’s in charge!”

A screeching sound followed by a hiss echoed in my ears. Two more alerts showed up in my EFS. Thankfully they were minor, and so I ignored them both.

“Shield’s... Opal, Broken Shield is in bad shape. I don’t know if he’ll ever be the same. Something happened... something bad. It’s my fault, I let him do it. He drugged himself to keep fighting. Not a bad thing normally, but it was without the use of the injection system. He got the whole dose of Med-X and Dash all at once.” I looked back to make sure Knight Shear was still behind me, “We had to stabilize him with a full dose of Rage...” I trailed off, remember the sight I had beheld, “He crushed a pony inside a shield of his own making. That’s not supposed to be possible, Opal... It’s just... unnatural. I don’t know he’ll ever be the same if we manage get out of this.”

I gathered myself again, taking a deep breath. I was breaking down. I could not let that happen.

I’m carrying him on my back now, along with Red Rain.” I sighed, wavering, “I failed him as a leader. I forced him to make a decision that he couldn’t have rightly made on his own. But if I hadn’t, Shield wouldn’t have pulled off the scare tactic that saved us all. It was... awful, but effective.” I looked behind me, at the two young soldier-ponies on my back, “I don’t even know if either of them are still alive. I don’t know how long Knight Midnight Shear will last. To be honest, I don’t know how long I’m going to last if we don’t get to Geo Number 7 soon.”

I took a deep breathe, doing my best to keep my cool.

“You can. Not. Break.” I reminded myself, hammering the words into the back of my head mentally. “Not now. Not after all this.”

I needed to stay professional. The shuddering in my voice calmed a little as I brought my mind to focus on the mission and recording the message.

“The RadBlizzard’s taking it’s toll on us, Elder. It’s freezing out here, and our suits are heavily damaged, unable to filter or climate-control properly. The spare Geiger counters have been going off. Worst of all, night’s setting in quickly. You know how it is, what with the winter sun, and being as far North as we are and how early it sets.”

I took another deep breath, preparing to finish the recording.

“It’s going to get dark fast, and colder even faster than that.” I reiterated, “I’m going to have Shear hide the recording with a transmitter hooked to it, maybe set it inside one of beacons that are leading us... somewhere. I don’t know if it’s a trap, or if it’s just dumb luck, but the orange beacons are lighting a path for us through the snow.”

I was about to cut off the transmission when I remembered that there was something I had been needing to say for years, and might never get to.

“And... Opal, I’m sorry. I wish I’d given you the time you deserved... I know it’s too late now, but if I ever got the chance again...” I trailed off, gathering myself again.

The tape clicked. I cursed the device for being so small, but was glad it had been built from older tech. The newer stuff invented just before the balefire bombs fell probably wouldn’t have survived our battle. I flicked my ears again, repeating the initialization sequence for both the comms and the tape-recording device, turning them both back to their default states before addressing Knight Midnight Shear.

“Shear!” I commanded, afterwards realizing how harsh I sounded, and softened my voice. “Shear, come here for a second.”

Broken Shield

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A Pegasus. With sweeping wings and a flowing mane. Recognizable simply from the way she flowed through the clouds above like water, spinning and dipping, rolling and diving. For a while she soared through the sky as if looking for something. I stood up and gazed at my surroundings. I noted sadly that there was little to be seen except the snow and the grey-green clouds above.

But I knew what she was looking for.

When she spotted me, she dove like a meteor only to pull up at the last minute, the great span of her wings casting gusts into my mane. She stared at me for a moment, as if she did not recognize me, and then became solemn.

“What has happened to you?” she asked, her normally lilting voice low and sad, “What have you done?”

I sat in the snow which, despite my sudden apparent lack of armor or cold-weather gear of any kind, did not feel cold.

“We got into a fight. My squad was the last out.” I began to explain, “I got hurt pretty bad, but I survived... I think.”

The Pegasus in front of me shook her head, staring at me in the same sad manner that she had been since she’d found me this time around.

“Your eyes.” she began, “You’ve done something horrible.”

In that moment I understood. My heart sunk, but also took off at the same time, catching in my throat. It felt awful. I collapsed in the snow, and covered my eyes and snout in shame.

“Oh, what have I done...?” I asked the grey pegasus in front of me, “... I crushed them inside a shield spell! That’s... it’s all wrong! Shields are for protecting ponies, not killing!”

A hoof fell on my shoulder. It was unusually warm where I had felt neither cold nor warmth at all before. I removed my hooves from my snout to see her smiling sadly down at me, tears in her eyes.

“It was not your fault.”

Her absolvement only made me tear up. I practically jumped into her lap, crying on her shoulder.

“You don’t understand!” I sobbed, “It is my fault!”

She cuddled me softly, holding me close.

“How could it be your fault?” she asked, “You weren’t you... I know that much.”

I pulled away a little, looking into her sad, blue eyes.

“But I made the decision... I took the drugs... everything that happened falls squarely on my shoulders.” I sniffed.

She let go. At first I was afraid she had finally seen the truth, maybe that she had finally seen what an awful pony I had become. I glanced up at her where she stood only a few hoofsteps away. She was smiling. Still sad, but smiling.

“Come.” she commanded in a soft voice, “Let me show you something.”

I stood, shaking a little. Them the world around me crumbled, then shattered as it fell into an infinite void. Screaming, I dug my hooves into the snow beneath me, pedalling backwards as a fracture nearly allowed me to slip into the abyss below. I looked up at her. She too stood upon a single block of what seemed to be ice or snow.

“I will not let you fall.” she said softly, her voice echoing somehow against the stars of the space we then occupied. “Take a step, dear.” she gestured with one of her hooves.

Once more, I stood, carefully stepping forward on my precarious platform. Some of the snow that remained on it fell off into the space below. I watched it until it fell out of sight.

“Take a step.” she offered again, “I will not let you fall.”

Swallowing hard, I took a step forward looking straight ahead on purpose, leaning my hoof down until I was beyond certain that I would fall. My hoof hit a hard surface. I glanced down for a second, and saw that a platform similarly made as my Pegasus guide’s had appeared beneath it.

Her ears perked, and her smile turned into a smirk. Not an unkind one, but more of a “Gotcha.” kind of smirk.

...And then she took off, trotting towards... nothing as far as I could have seen.

“W-wait!” I called, to receive no answer, “Don’t go!”

Later I would realize that she had done it on purpose. I took a few steps forward and began unsteadily walking across what seemed to me the most impossible walkway in all of Celestia’s heavens.

“Wait!” I cried again to no avail.

Ignoring the survival instinct in my brain screaming at me not to try to step into empty space and just HOPE that something would catch my hoofsteps, I broke into a straight run, galloping after the Pegasus.

“Wait! Where are we?” I asked, slowing to a trot, “What is all this?”

My Pegasus slowed to a stop, and I did the same as she began speaking again, “Nopony is truly sure.” she told me, “But the Sons tell me it was used by the Goddesses themselves to show ponies important things that they needed to see. It is said that one of the Ministry Mares was even brought here by Celestia herself at one point.”

I stared around at the open expanse before me. What could possibly be gained by walking through a blank, starry void?

“The Audaeus demands to be shown.” my black-maned, blue-eyed guide noted cryptically as an ethereal screen appeared before my eyes as if answering my question, “But though there be no holy song for this place in time, the Aethor shall reveal.”

Inside the screen, an image appeared. For a moment the outside of SR-15, my home, appeared. It seemed to be warmer then, as the snow on the ground was not as thick, and there were fresh tracks from AutoSleds on the ground. The view was obscured by a... cloth covering?

“The Audaeus may not see this part yet!” my guide stomped her hoof on the platform she stood upon, “The Aethor commands!”

“What is the Aethor?” I asked, looking incredulously at my Pegasus friend, “The Audaeus? What are you talking about? What are the Sons, or was it Suns?”

She shook her head, “You may not know it yet.” she answered, nuzzling my mane a little in a comforting manner, “In due time, however.”

The screen changed once more, now instead displaying Rain and I. We were playing. I smiled a little. Blocks. The classic toys of any unicorn foal in SR-15. Supposedly, they were used to tell if a foal had the mind of a scientist about them. I watched as ponies in the background took notes, my younger self completely oblivious as I built a small fortress using basic telekinesis.

“Betcha can’t knockit down!” I challenged my foalhood friend, “Betcha can’t hittit with one’a those!” my younger self pointed at a small set of spherical play-things.

Young Red Rain grinned. He wasn’t a unicorn, and he didn’t speak. We had been inseparable since birth, though. Before my guide and I, he set himself up to play a game that Rain and I had both become familiar with, getting into position silently and gathering the spheres in front of him.

He was quieter back then, and didn’t really begin saying anything until he was half way through primary school, which was about the time our sizes started to equal out.

I glanced over at my Pegasus companion. She had a faraway look in her eye. A small smile pulled at the corner of her mouth. I was unable to bring my mind around to come up with a reason why she would react that way, though. Mentally, I shrugged as we both watched Red Rain skillfully manipulate the toys with his hooves, chucking them and hitting the small fortress with capable skill, which to this day was something that I could not understand.

Some called it “Earth Pony Magic” but I wasn’t convinced. Earth Ponies didn’t have magical abilities.

Right?

My fortress finally fell. Huffing, my younger self smiled a little.

“Y’always win. Tookya longer this time, though...”

My pegasus companion turned and walked away. I turned my head just in time to see her start.

“Wait, there’s more... don’t you want to...?”

“We only have so much time, Shield.” she said flatly.

I could still see... something... sorrow maybe, in her eyes. Like she’d seen something that she’d missed before, but was glad that it’d happened. As we walked, the screen behind us faded, and another up ahead appeared.

“How much do you actually know about me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes and furrowing my brow a little, “About Rain?”

She ignored it like she hadn’t even heard it.

“This,” my Pegasus companion started again, “All of this, is a record of your life. We’re only going to see glimpses of it, however. The Audaeus needs to see it, but the Aethor deems it unworthy to show everything at this time.”

This time, I didn’t ask about either. There was no point. Obviously, she was following some kind of ambiguous, invisible set of rules and I was clearly only along for the ride. Though I felt a little bit bothered by the fact that this... Aethor person-thing had decided that entire sections of my life weren’t worth showing to something or someone... the idea of which struck me as just as strange as anything else that was happening at the time, so I stuffed those feelings and thoughts into the back of my head where they belonged.

Displayed within the next screen was another one of my memories in third person. Two colts, running down the hall during what I remembered then as a rare occasion where we had free time. Rain ran ahead of me as I watched. My younger self made chase as best he could, but Rain had always been, even into our later years, faster than I was. He jumped, grappling onto a ledge as we entered one of the many hundreds of store-rooms scattered throughout SR-15.

And of course, he stuck his tongue out at me. As my Pegasus guide and I watched, she laughed a little.

“Are things still like this when it comes to you two?” she asked me, still staring into the screen.

I nodded, sitting on my hindquarters and shrugging a bit, “Yeah, except he can scale even higher things. I could swear he should have been born with wings.”

At that she fluttered her own a little and then turned back to watch the screen.

“Yes...” she responded quietly.

I did not ask.

We moved on shortly after that. The screen disappeared behind us just like the last, with another appearing some distance down the crystal pathway that appeared beneath our hooves as we walked. Each piece held a tune it seemed, and a slow, sad song chimed as our hooves brought us closer to our next destination.

Once more my guide and I began watching a screen in front of us, this one depicting the day Rain and I graduated from boot camp. I grinned a little, remembering back on that day and how Rain had been late, somehow ambiguously marking the beginning of a long-standing habit of sleeping well past muster and forcing me to have to return to the room to get him. This time, however we stood at attention, lined up next to each other amongst a hundred other faceless recruits, all of whom were awaiting a chance to receive their “certificate of completion” along with myself.

“All right, you fillies!” the drill master, whose name I had long since forgotten, barked in his gravelly, cigarette-eaten voice., “Today is the day that I can finally, finally, at last and foremost, finally, be OKAY with you existing.”

That was his way of saying he was proud, I was certain of that, even looking back.

“Of all the chalks I have trained, this one has thus far been the most interesting. Especially with THOSE two” he pointed a hoof at Red Rain and I, “little turds there in the back. Don’t think I don’t know you were late. I see everything. You know that.”

Rain smiled nervously, sinking a little where he stood.

“But that’s not why we are gathered here, TODAY. No! Today we are gathered in the training pit to commend you all on a job...” he looked up to the improbably-high ceiling of the four-mile wide by two-mile long SR-15 training facility as if searching for the words, “... well done.”

I smiled, proud of all we as a team had accomplished, and glad that the tortuous nights of running around the simulators would be over.

Yeah. Sure.

“The Elder will see to the hand-out of your certificates, and then each and every one of you, despite my insistence that you all are strong enough and mentally capable enough to go right-straight into duty, will go on R&R after orientation in your new quarters.”

My Guide turned away and began walking. I followed.

“Miss?” I asked.

She did not turn to look at me.

“Miss, who are you? Why are you only here, in my dreams? I saw you out there today. I know you’re watching.”

My Pegasus guide stopped. Her gaze slowly drifted over to look behind her, to look at me. Sadness. It was... familiar. Like something I had seen before. Something I had lost long ago. Echoes floated through my head. Voices and rhythms. Flashes of memory too fast to sort or recognize. Thankfully the slight accompanying vertigo passed, and though it wasn’t painful, I felt a little disoriented.

“Time is short.” she said simply, her eyes seeming far away and glazed-over, “Come.”

Again, we continued on our way. I stared about at the stars and swirling comets that lit the “sky” around my Pegasus and I. Quickly we arrived at the next screen, the image before us swirling and undulating within the pony-sized frame as it tuned in on another one of my memories.

“I’ve never seen a shield quite like his.” the Elder, much younger than she was now commented as three armored Steel Rangers attempted to breach it, “It’s quite impressive.”

My younger self’s horn glowed brightly as the three notedly PINK-painted rangers armed the laser rifles on their battle saddles, and prepared to fire. A massive, white pony with a yellow mane stepped up to try to stop them, clearly fearing for my life, but the Elder pulled him back.

“I want to see this. Stand back.” she warned.

“Elder, they’ll kill him. It’s not worth it. Sure, he dropped fifteen gallons of pink-paint on them... but this is too much.”

A crowd was gathering. Within it was the very mare I had been trying to garner attention from just moments before.

The Elder just smiled knowingly, “Have a little faith, Jack. A negative action of this magnitude, in such a short time right after the previous?” she questioned him, “He somewhat deserves this little test.”

“T-test?” Jack asked, “They’re-”

The discharge of three laser-rifles crackled through the air. Two were stopped dead in their tracks, absorbed by the shield. The third made it through, slicing a sizzling cut across my less-experienced self’s right shoulder. I buckled a little, but my stubborn nature had allowed me to stay my ground, bring the shield back up and slowly push it out against the angry, pink fellow Steel Rangers.

“Elder...” Jack stared at his leader with those cold, grey eyes, “This has to stop... another volley and-”

“STAND DOWN.” Elder Opal Tulip roared with a voice that a pony who did not know her well would expect, “All of you stand DOWN!”

Jack was the only pony there who hadn’t recoiled. Even I had. Still would, if the Elder had yelled like that near me again. Elder Opal Tulip, in all of her rainbow eyed, midnight-colored glory, was standing in front of my younger self, looking more cross than my mother after I’d eaten all the cookies one time.

It was more than once, actually. As was frequency of situations like the one I was viewing now. Rain and I could never stay out of trouble back then.

I remembered what came next. It still hurt my jaw to think about, and I could almost feel it when as I watched it in third person with my Pegasus. The Elder reared back, and twisted her body in such a way that her right FOREHOOF impacted my hard enough to send me flying off my hooves and onto the ground a foot or two away. She then turned to my assailants.

“I know why you’re covered in paint. I also know that you antagonized Shield, and have been doing so for some time for reasons more petty than his reaction to it all.”

One of the paint-covered soldier-ponies spoke up, “But, Elder-”

“SHUT your MOUTH. Go clean up your armor... all of you. NOW.”

My younger, more foalish self turned to go as well, but the Elder’s stopped me.

“Except you.” her eyes narrowed at me as my adrenaline-shaken body seized at her hoof on my shoulder.

Watching as my gaze rotated, shivering in fear , I could almost feel the Elder’s hoof even there, watching it happen.

“My office, ten minutes. And tell Rain to get down from the rafters and stop letting you modify his guard saddle. That paintball gun you crafted is not authorized to be used with that weapons system anyways.”

Without another word, the Elder headed towards the elevator. The very same one that no one except Jack and a few others were allowed to use. Jack began to walk away, but turned back to look at me. He smiled a little, winked, and walked away.

“The Elder is an interesting mare.” My Pegasus guide noted, “Strong, but kind.”

“She punched me in the face.” I reminded her, “But, yeah. I suppose you’re right.”

My guide smiled a little, “Let us find out why...”

The screen rippled like water in front of us, signalling a transition between where it was, and somewhere new and soon showing a new setting. The Elder’s office. Rain and I, on the cusp of stallionhood, stood shamefully in front of the desk, preparing ourselves mentally for what was certain to be a tongue-lashing to tell our children.

Elder Opal Tulip and Paladin JackHammer entered the room together, settling across from us all, and sorting through the papers on her desk. When she had finished, she addressed us all.

“I have called you all here, because I have need of you.” she began, “Each one of you has a special talent that I have seen fit to consider useful for Delta Detachment. Each of you has a choice. You may train with a unit that is more talented, powerful, and dangerous than any other unit here, equipped with the best gear, and ready to be the first-responders to any threat that may be outside these walls. Or you may walk away.”

She paused for a moment, then continued, “Good, you want to know more. That’s damn good, actually. I knew I’d chosen right. Follow Jack out to the training grounds. Get the buck out of my office, and don’t come back until you’re either dead, or Delta.”

I watched as we looked around at each other until she bellowed loud enough to make even JackHammer jump.

“I remember thinking we would be lucky to live to see the next day.” I laughed quietly.

My guide only grinned.

“You keep interesting company, Broken Shield.”

I shrugged, “Just wait until you see the ponies I ended up on a team with.”