[FO:E] The Northern Wasteland of Equestria 1

[Benson]

Manehatten Ruins-Horseshoe Tower-Ministry of Morale-Basement Floor- 12:24 PM

Fox Trot


"Alright...cool...I didn't say anything that made me look concerned..." I had an aside glance and shook my head, I didn't enjoy being ignored, but, shrug. Guess she was fine. Shrug.

We move on anyway coming across the medical bay. All kinds of goodies, it was like a scavengers delight. I snag me a good hoofful of potions and rad aways, and some chems, including some Mint Als. It didn't really occur to me to not try to take them all, what were the chances of other ponies from the surface coming down here and stumbling down to the sub basements. Well, there's us, but we totally don't count. Two hundred years and this was the first time these goods felt the touch of pony hooves.

Anyways, I filled my saddle bags to where I wouldn't be completely weighed down.

[MCerberus]

Manehatten - Basement of Morale

Oops, Whadda seemed to have let the comment slip past her line of thought. "Sorry, just got a little rattled by that," she attempts to apologize to the slighted Fox Trot.

"Has anypony found any potions?"

[Rebonack]

[Manehatten - MoM Hub]

All sorts of wonderful goodies for everypony to enjoy! Y'know. Assuming you enjoy chems. But who doesn't enjoy chems, right?

No dog tags on the skeleton. But he does have an ID tag. Sugar Bomb. One of the civilian scientist/chefs employed by the Ministry to push the envelope of confectionery technology.

Famed for his anti-personnel doughnuts.

At least he hadn't killed himself with one of those things. That would have been WAY messier than a gun in the mouth.

"Probably a good idea to be quick in here," Surprise suggests. "The Protect-a-ponies seem to have realized that you know where the hidden rooms are round here. Four of them have taken up guard positions at the entrance to the second sub-level and more are on the way."

Wuh oh!

[Manehatten - Stable 29]

"Bigger than the whole Stable?" the foalbot asks. "Wow! That sounds really neat! I can't wait to see what it's like!"

She's moving with a bit more of a spring in her robotic step now.

"Are all the ponies out there like you? All fleshy with their own skin and stuff?"

...

That's a really disturbing question.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Manehatten - Stable 29]

"Much, much bigger than the Stable..."
Why, so big, it's almost like you could have a hundred or so different stables in it!

Down is slightly proud of the fact that she doesn't blanch too much at the subsequent question, isn't just twitching her right wing slightly and giving a little nod.
"Most of them are, yes."

Cyberponies (the unfortunate things) are technically exceptions, right?

[Benson]

Manehatten Ruins-Horseshoe Tower-Ministry of Morale-Basement Floor- 12:26 PM

Fox Trot

I raised up a hoof in response to Whadda's little apology and feigned a harumph. "I'll let it slide this one time, but only because you're a cute mare and that's it, no other reason. It has nothing to do that you're a companion who I trust right now to have my back, feh." I made a hammy show of rolling my eyes but then afterwards directed her to the cabinet with the healing potions.

And then Surprise Party spoke.

"Whelp, its a good thing we're stocking on meds here...we may just end up running through them...." I grimaced at the thought and then wound up snagging two more healing potions.

[MCerberus]

Manehatten - Basement of Morale

"Thanks," the mare semi-casually states while slowly walking over to the cabinet. Time to down one of these to make the flank-shots stop hurting. At least they were MEWs, lead would need... removed. Something then dawns on the mare.

"Surprise. Regular bots I don't think can make that realization. Could there be another system controlling them?" She keeps an eye on the enemy detectors so they don't get dropped on again.

[Rebonack]

[Manehatten - Stable 29]

That sure is a lot of Stables! "How MUCH bigger?" Vinyl presses. "Like... four or five times bigger? Or even bigger than that?"

Hoo... imagine how she's going to react to the sky. Even with the cloud curtain that's still pretty impressive. Many Stable ponies are simply paralyzed with terror the first time they see that absurdly wide expanse of nothing.

At the skin comment... "Wow... that must be really weird..."

Seriously?

Ponies who still have their own skin is weird? Suppose that's just the nature of normal.

It's the strangest thing.

Aside from the robot's absolutely horrific and macabre appearance she acts more or less like one would expect any filly to behave.

"So... there's this big blue thing with white lumpy things in it, right? I've seen drawings," Vinyle recalls. "That's where pegasus ponies live, right?"

[Luka]

( I forgot I should have kept going with this one too!

[Overpass Shelter]

She's in a position that would probably be a bit constraining for a pony. In fact, the way she's curled up actually kinda resembles a Zebra! That's crazy, though. In any case, she doesn't seem uncomfortable.

"...Yer welcome. G'night, Gleamy."

And unless an earthquake happens or something tries to take a bite out of them, the night probably passes with little event.

[Next Day]

When the sun raises, Gleamy's.... Still asleep, poor thing could seems to have been pretty tired for the days she wandered.

Anyways, if Xithr wakes up, she may find the alicorn still curled asleep there, one of her wings would be slightly unfolded.

[Lycan 01]

Manehatten - MoM Basement

Sprinkles primes his weapons. "Right. Robots. When we make contact, Sven will hit 'em with the heavy weapon. The blast should stagger the ones that ain't taken out, and the electromagnetic feedback should throw 'em off a bit. Ranger, Stallion, you'll light 'em up with suppressive fire. I'll kamikaze charge 'em weapons hot, then once I've closed the distance, out comes the party cannon. It'll be quick and messy, but getting pinned down by the protect-a-ponies ain't much better of an idea..."

[Rebonack]

[Manehatten - MoM Hub]

"Hehe... the Ministries had some pretty advanced AI near the end of the war," PV replies. "They weren't standard issue or common by any means. I'm sure you've already noticed that Mister Sprinkles is far from a normal robot."

A pause. Then a weary sigh.

"Sadly... these ones are too corrupted to be saved..."

Even if they aren't ponies they're still dying because of her...

"You're getting really close now. My lab isn't that deep into the second sub-basement," PV says over the radio. "Thank you for being willing to help me despite the danger. And... Celestia be with you."

To battle!

Between EFS, PV's warnings, and the robots chattering at each other our heroes will know that they're getting close. Sven nods to the others, cranks the output on his plasma cannons to full, and pops out from around the corner.

"THIS IS FOR BLACKBEAK!"

kaTHOOOM!

One robot takes a direct hit and is blasted to slag. The rest seem staggered by the electrical shockwave from the weapon.

[MCerberus]

Manehatten-Basement of Morale

Whadda gets out the convenient 10mm looted earlier. Suppression is go! The mare empties all of the bullets in the clip, but not very accurately. She does succeed in making a lot of noise and lead. Sprinkles is up according to his plan.

[Benson]

Manehatten Ruins-Horseshoe Tower-Ministry of Morale-Basement Floor- 12:29 PM

Fox Trot

"Aack.." I fire away both assault rifles towards the enemy robots, providing the requested suppression fire.

[Lycan 01]

Manehatten - MoM Basement

Sergeant Sprinkles does his banzai charge, energy weapon blazing as he fires his thrusters at max capacity, zooming towards the enemy. The moment he's in point blank range, he reaches behind his back with his manipulator arms, and yanks out the Party Cannon.

Theoretically, this paradox of time and space may destroy one or two of the robots just by them being unable to process its existence. He trains the cannon on the nearest non-freaking-out robot, and yanks the firing cord.

"Boom-shaka-laka!"

[PurityIcekiller]

"I like things what don't fry, burn, zap, disintegrate, or do any sorta harm to a pony when they shoot off-target." Fleetwing nodded sagely. "I'm a pony of simple tastes like that."

Violetta chuckled. "Look, that one time was an accident. Besides, I need something to keep nasty types from messing with me, don't I?"

A little smile crept onto Fleetwing's features as he disarmed the last trap. "Guess there is a bit of satisfaction knowing you outsmarted whatever messed-up pony put these here in the first place."

With the traps cleared, the way was safe to the long-awaited loot. Fleetwing rubbed his forehooves in anticipation of cracking that safe open, making this whole trip worthwhile. "Alright, it might look safe now, but they might still be a few more tricks left for us. I'll head to the safe, you take those unopened boxes. If you find soda, bag it up carefully in these," he took off his saddlebags and laid them on the floor of the truck. "If you see anything that looks even the slightest bit suspicious, just book it. Don't touch it, don't mess with it, just run, and I'll be right behind you."

"Really, who would put three whole layers of traps on these things? Did they never want to see them again or something?" Violetta snorted. "There's got to be a limit to the number of traps. It's just common sense. You don't use more layers of protection than you can afford or safely bypass, do you?"

Carefully, she began sorting through the crates, watching for any lack of common sense on part of the pony behind this lot.

[Lycan 01]

Ravine

Violetta finds no traps. She does, however, find several crates full of soda bottles. Soda bottles full of soda! Several dozen bottles of Sparkle Cola, to be specific.

Fleetwing tries his luck with the safe, after making sure there are no traps.

~click-clack~

It opens!

As soon as he begins to open the safe, a glowing light begins to flicker out from the opening doorway. Opening the safe up entirely reveals about a dozen or so bottles, stacked horizontally, of two or three different types of special Sparkle Sodas. Vibrant red, neon blue, vibrant white...

One way or another, Soda Fizz is gonna be happyyyyy...

[TheAmishPirate]

[Bottle of Red, Bottle of White, for Whatever Mood You're In Tonight]

Fleetwing, with his ear pressed against the safe, rolled his eyes at Violetta's innocent remarks. "When you've scavved as many old ruins as I have, you'll soon learn most ponies ain't so much as heard of the notion of 'too many traps'. Now just simmer down for a sec, almost got it..."

*click*

A short turn of the handle, open it up, and...glowing lights?!

"GET BACK!"

[Several minutes of paranoid attempts to open the safe with a long stick later...]

Fleetwing's long stick clattered to the ground, and his mouth hung open. "Now that ain't no booby trap...that's....that's..." A grin, wider than any Violetta had ever seen before, grew and grew upon his features, until his face could no longer contain his joy. The pegasus actually started leaping for joy, as much as the cramped truck would allow. "That's the daggum mother lode!!! We did it!" With a girlish squeal, he dashed over to the safe and, with a care that belied his excitement, started packing the sodas into his bags. Nice thing about Sparkle Cola bottles? Despite them looking like fragile glass, they almost never broke.

[Rebonack]

[Manehatten - MoM Hub]

Oh goody suppression fire!

Of the half-dozen robots one was destroyed by the plasma blast. A second mangled by the fire from Scoops and Fox. And a third begins spazzing out as it attempts to process the existence of the Party Cannon.

The fourth robot gets blasted point-black by the cannon in question, hurling it into the reinforced wall behind and crushing it into oblivion. Also? It's covered in streamers and confetti now.

The corridor is pretty well obscured by streamers, confetti, and balloons now. And for some absolutely impossible reason the garish decorations are acting like chaff and totally messing with targeting spells.

The remaining two protect-a-ponies begin to fire wildly! Though the incinerator beams keep hitting balloons rather than any of our heroes.

Sven tries to line up a shot with his railgun and ends up putting a nice hole in the wall. Completely missed the robots.

[MCerberus]

Manehatten - Basement of Morale

The good thing about finally having a sidearm is that Whadda can reload quickly and keep going. That and sniper rifles were really awkward for close-range stuff. Anyhoof, Scoops puts in a new magazine and starts emptying it into the head of the remaining bot.

[Lycan 01]

Manehatten - MoM Basement

Sprinkles "holsters" the party cannon, levels both his MEW and his flamethrower with the bot Scoops isn't shooting, and unleashes a fiery magical hell upon it.

Hopefully, the balloons floating around the robot are filled with helium, and the resulting mini-blasts will help to hamper and disorient it if his attacks fail to damage or destroy it.

[Benson]

Manehatten Ruins-Horseshoe Tower-Ministry of Morale-Basement Floor- 12:30 PM

Fox Trot

Ratatata~

I help.

[Rebonack]

[Manehatten - MoM Hub]

Scoops reloads! Fox fires more rifle rounds! Sprinkles throws fire everywhere! Sven manages to hit something with his railgun!

Suffice to say the remaining two protectaponies get scrapped. Even the one that was fritzing out due to the party cannon got blown up from some stray rounds.

Hazzah!

"Okay, you got them. But there are more on the way," PV-4 warns. "These ones were guarding the way down to the next level."

The entrance?

A Sparkle Cola machine sitting up against the wall.

With a click it swings open, revealing another set of stairs descending into the depths. The radiation here spikes noticeably. Best chew on some RadX.

[Lycan 01]

Manehatten - MoM Basement of Party Doom

Sprinkles soldiers on ahead, taking point as usual.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Manehatten - Stable 29]

That sure is a lot of Stables! "How MUCH bigger?" Vinyl presses. "Like... four or five times bigger? Or even bigger than that?"

Hoo... imagine how she's going to react to the sky. Even with the cloud curtain that's still pretty impressive. Many Stable ponies are simply paralyzed with terror the first time they see that absurdly wide expanse of nothing.

At the skin comment... "Wow... that must be really weird..."

Seriously?

Ponies who still have their own skin is weird? Suppose that's just the nature of normal.

It's the strangest thing.

Aside from the robot's absolutely horrific and macabre appearance she acts more or less like one would expect any filly to behave.

"So... there's this big blue thing with white lumpy things in it, right? I've seen drawings," Vinyle recalls. "That's where pegasus ponies live, right?"

Eeeeh...she's one of those fillies...
Down isn't going to enjoy the next several moments very much, is she?

She's almost hoping something tries to kill them soon.
Before something along the lines of "Why's that?", "Just the way things are.", "But whyyyyy?", "I'm not sure.", "Why's that?" starts up.
Because then she might just have to get grumpy.

"Consider the tip of your...leg. Your stable is smaller than that, if your body was the whole world."
A simple, yet slightly blunt analogy! That should be sufficient. Hopefully.
Probably not.

"Some ponies are fairy weird, yes. And what you described is called a 'cloud'. Our kind lives on top of them, on the ceiling of the world."
Another simple analogy! Apparently the world has a ceiling now.

[Rebonack]

[Manehatten - Stable 29]

"Woooooow..." the foalbot swoons at all of this amazing new information she's gaining! Pegasus live on the ceiling of the world? That's really cool! Vinyl is about to ask why pegasus live on the ceiling when something decides to kill them.

What a relief!

Another foalbot, this one clad in a rotting skin that probably used to be pink at some point, leaps out of the shadows and aims to tackle Down!

The machine is doing little more than snarling gibberish as it tries to gouge at her with its legs and manipulator cables.

Rawr!

[PurityIcekiller]

[We'll Get A Table Near The Street In Our Old Familiar Place; You And I, Face To Face]

Violetta leapt back, hesitated for a moment, then fell on her back from the force of her laughter. "We... That's... You thought... The universe just loves messing with you, doesn't it?"

After a few deep breaths, she managed to get herself back under control. "Well, this is definitely something good if you're cheering." She set about gathering up the bottles inside, giving each of them a good look before putting them in the bags. Success was sweet.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Manehatten - Stable 29]

Oh sky, she was too distracted talking to the freakish robot to pay attention to the EFS, wasn't she?
Why didn't anyone else see anything? Are they being attacked too?
The entire group could be in peril! Was this a trap?


A series of questions quickly whip up in the pegasus' mind, as another freakish robot decides to invade her personal space.
Only this time, instead of making a peculiar noise, getting upset, or generally being weird about this, she kinda just gets tackled.

But hey, at least when she gets tackled, she makes an effort to fling the robot back off of her, or at least in front of one of her novasurge rifles.
It either needs to go against a wall, or be turned to ash.


She isn't picky.

[Rebonack]

[Manehatten - Stable 29]

The foalbot is hurled into a wall! It manages to flip around in mid-air, braces its limbs against the wall, and promptly launches itself at Down again!

And snarls.

Lots of snarling.

By this time the attention of TRSG! has been attracted, but given the nature of melee there isn't much they can do at the moment!

"Nooooo! Shortcake, stop it!" Vinyl pleads to the other robot rather fruitlessly. The thing doesn't seem too keen on listening to her. Or doing anything other than try to murder Down.

[TheAmishPirate]

[I'll meet you any time you want in our Haytalian Restaurant]

Fleetwing turned to glare sullenly at her, but the joy of discovery wouldn't let him keep a frown for long. "Is it something good? This here is a nice pile of caps for us, and a nice new...weapon..." Wait, turns out there was something that could get him down; the imminent decision they had to make. "That's right, we can't quite put off deciding much longer, can we? I mean, we got the fancy sodas and everything," he nudged the bag full of precious, sugary cargo. "We gotta give this to one of them two, but...but..." He bit his lip indecisively. Putting off the decision hadn't made it any easier.

[Benson]

Manehatten Ruins-Horseshoe Tower-Ministry of Morale-Basement Floor- 12:34 PM

Fox Trot


Well that was an interesting entrance, very...spy-y...uh. Anyways, I listened in as Whadda's new pipbuck began to click click click, so I immediately got me some RadX.

[Rebonack]

[Splendid Valley - Maripony]

ffzzzzzZORT!

Maripony.

A barren, blasted landscape scoured free of life. The radiation and taint had both seen to that. All life except for what is suggested by those hellhound holes...

The old mining station sits in the middle of the valley, collapsed into itself from the underground detonation of the balefire bomb.

And there are alicorns. Lots and lots of alicorns.

Every single one of them move peer at the recent arrivals, their heads turning in perfect synchronization. It's kind of unnerving...

"The Goddess' voice is overwhelming here," Anoma explains hastily. "As soon as she realizes it's safe to fully pull me into Unity again I'll be unable to speak with you, Ebon Flame."

She reaches out to gently place a wing on the unicorn's withers. "I'll see you soul to soul soon. Don't be afraid."

And then her reassuring smile melts away into a completely blank stare. Seems Anoma has left the building.

{{WELCOME, EBON FLAME, TO THE HOME OF THE GREAT AND POWERFUL GODDESS! WE ARE PLEASED THAT YOU REPENTED OF YOUR FOALISH BEHAVIOR AND HAVE COME TO SEEK FORGIVENESS IN UNITY!}}

Like Anoma said.

The voice is absolutely overwhelming.

Three more alicorns, each wearing an expression as blank as Anoma's, move to flank Ebon and march him toward the compound. Should the sorcerer happen to glance at Anoma's flank he'll probably notice that it has become blank as her gaze.