Chapter 18:

“Now she's not usually fussy but if she does act up she really loves magic bubbles...”

“Cane...”

“And there's lots of diapers and food...”

“Cane.”

“And you can...”

“CANE!”

“WHAT?!” I looked up at the grey unicorn in annoyance.

“You're gonna be gone for TWO HOURS.” Homage said, rocking Candy side to side in her magic. “I can deal with a baby for two hours. Go save Ruby for bucks sake.”

“Yeah, yeah I know. I'm sorry, I've just...I've never left her alone with somepony else when I wasn't only a few rooms away.”

“I promise, she's in good hooves here. Doctors downstairs that can be up here in moments if the need arises, safe and secure in the tower, nothing will happen, now GO.”

“Alright, alright I'm going.”

I leaned in and kissed Candy's horn. “You be a good girl for Homage.” I said, nuzzling her gently before heading out into the hall. I headed towards the landing pad that our ship sat at while Homage headed back upstairs to the broadcast tower.

“She'll be fine.” Brutus said, seeing the look on my face when I emerged from the hall.

“I know, I just...I worry...” I shrugged, looking back down the hallway.

“And rightly so, but for now, we need to worry about Ruby and the trade and you can't be mopey about your foal.”

“Yeah,” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, “you're right. Lets do this.” I got onto the wagon, taking ammo clips from Lily and loading them into Ebony and Ivory and sat down, breathing deeply to get my racing heart under control.

“Dude if you throw up I'm gonna be pissed.” Venture said, sitting across from me.

“I'll be fine.”

“Here, proper armoured barding just in case there's unexpected close range combat.” Brutus said, giving each of us black body armour and taking a third for himself. “Courtesy of the Tenpony Defence Force.”

“Nice of them.”

“Well I rented them.” Brutus said, starting to pull his armour on. I got up and started to do the same, as did Venture.

CB and Xem showed up as we finished redressing. They were both wearing armour much like ours and Xem had a Zebra hunting rifle on his back.

“Wow, how did you score that?” Brutus asked, looking at the black and white stripped gun on his back.

“Traded quite a few things for it.” He said. “Lotta caps, weapons, some gems I had tucked away...It just feels right to have a gun like this you know?”

“What's it shoot?”

“Electricity infused .51 mm.” He said, tossing Brutus a clip. “It was modified from a sniper rifle into something more variable range friendly.”

“Impressive.” Brutus gave him back the clip and he pocketed it again as CB closed the wagon door.

“Hopefully we won't need it on this run.”

“Hopefully.” I nodded.

CB walked over and sat beside me, leaning against me. “Don't worry Dad, it'll be fine, we'll get Ruby back, we'll give them the PCDM and hopefully blow up a shit ton of them in the process.”

“Hopefully.” I nodded, wrapping a leg around her back and hugging her close as the wagon took off into the sky.

“Hey Cane!” Lily called from the cockpit.

“Yeah?”

The radio in the cabin came to life, a song was just ending and then DJ Pon3's voice came on.

“Welcome back my little ponies.” She said. “I know this might sound strange, but I have a co-DJ helping me out for the next few hours. Say hello DJ Candy.”

There was a moment of silence and then Candy made a happy giggling noise in the mic then babbled a bit, following by the DJ chuckling.

“That's right friends, DJ Pon3 somehow got saddled with foal sitting duty, so my friend Candy here is going to hang out for a while, maybe we'll get her insight on the socioeconomic status of the Wasteland? Perhaps some thoughts on Wasteland agricultural techniques. Or maybe I'll make faces at her and she'll giggle. Make sure to stay tuned to find out.” As she finished speaking another song started up.

“See? She's in great hooves, and you'll be able to keep track of her all the way.”

“Yeah, I guess it's not so bad, knowing that I'll still be able to hear her while we're travelling.”

“So get your mind in the game and be ready.”

“I'm about as ready as I can hope to be pulling off a con like this.”

Venture sat down beside me, pulling out a set of instructions from his pack and starting to go over them. They were specific instructions for exactly how to power up and demonstrate the fake PCDM without it exploding in our faces. He had gone over it a hundred times but continued to fret over it constantly to make sure he was totally sure of what he was doing.

//////////

9 months 1 week ago:

In a pleasant turn of events...Nothing was happening...We weren't fighting with anyone, we weren't rushing off to deal with some crisis...We hadn't had down time like this in ages. Venture and I had spent ages pouring over the data Crystalline had meant to steal, but couldn't find anything concrete to really identify WHY they wanted all these seemingly pointless files.

So now we all sat together on a hill a short distance away from the hospital, still within the boundaries of the guard patrol, having a picnic of all things. It was a nice quiet peaceful day, not raining, no gun fire in the distance that we could hear. Brutus lay stretched out, his head propped against Lily's side, sleeping quietly while she read a book, CB and Xem were studying the cloud patterns, pointing out clouds that looked like things, though to me it always looked like a solid mass of impenetrable grey misery, but ponies had been seeing shapes in clouds going back probably to the beginning of time, so I could hardly fault them.

I had a book of my own levitated in my magic while Ruby was playing Sugar Crush on my Pipbuck, my foreleg stretched out and held in her hooves. She had discovered that my and Venture's pipbucks supported custom applications beyond simply the radio and coding programs and she had fallen madly in love with Sugar Crush. I had originally just taken off my pipbuck but she kept getting carried away and she'd knock it and it would roll away and she'd freak out that she was going to lose the level, so I ended up keeping it on to keep it level.

“No no no...Celestia dammit!” Ruby growled, smacking the screen.

“You know I could reprogram it with the special items.” I offered.

“No that's cheating!”

“You could go back to playing Disgruntled Avians.”

“No that games stupid.”

“You've had Cane's hoof in a death grip for almost an hour.”

“Meh, it's fine, it went numb after the first 15 minutes.” I said, flipping the page of my book, trying to stay as nonchalant as possible.

“See? It's fine.” Ruby said, going back to the game. I was very grateful that she ran out of lives frequently and had to wait for them to recharge, otherwise I'd probably end up with a dislocated hoof.

“You're gonna get fat.” Lily giggled, sticking her tongue out at her cousin.

“I'm pregnant; that's happening either way.” She said without looking away from the game.

“You know you two are very calm about the whole thing. Most ponies are fretting about cribs and reorganizing their living space and what have you.” Xem said, looking over at us.

“Yeah, well I've already worked with quite a few babies and have a lot of it planned out in my head.” Ruby replied.

“And I am notorious for stalling until the last minute and then throwing it all together haphazardly, succeeding in the end but by the time it does we've spent way more resources and time on it than should have been required.”

“OH, well as long as you have a plan.” CB laughed.

“I always have some form of plan.”

“But do you really think you'll be ready to have a baby of your own to take care of and raise?”

“I'm about as ready as I can hope to be...”

“INCOMING!” One of the guards yelled from above, cutting me off.

We all turned towards the area the guards were rushing to. A black mark was soaring across the clouds, coming down towards the hospital way too quickly.

“What is it?”

“It looks like a pegasus?”

“No no, it's a batpony?”

“I think it's...”

“It's a Changeling!”

“Prepare to fire.”

“No don't!” I yelled, looking at the incoming target. “It's not showing as hostile in my HUD.”

The guards hesitated then threw a magic shield up, another a magic net, catching the target as it passed the barrier of the hospital walls.

They brought it down and set it on the ground. The Changeling looked like it had been beaten severely, cut, bleeding, one of it's wings all but shredded, some kind of thick metal collar around it's neck, whatever had happened to it, it was terrible.

“Crystalline?” Xem gasped, running over to the net.

“You can recognize her?”

“Of course I can!” He fell to the ground beside her. “Crystalline, Crystalline, speak to me! What happened?” He asked.

She groaned and just barely managed to open a swollen eye. “X-Xemnas?” She groaned. “The Enclave...” She gasped, coughing up blood. One of the guards had summoned medics and they were rushing out towards us quickly.

“What did they do to you?”

“C-Caught up with m-me, trying to sneak into town.” She wheezed, moaning in pain as the medics started to load her onto the stretcher they had brought. “Sold me into slavery.”

“This has to wait.” The medic said, starting back towards the hospital. “You shush and save your energy.” He ordered her as they headed inside. Xem stayed with them the whole way.

//////////

I walked down the hall, heading towards the medical wing. It was getting towards midnight and most everypony else had gone to bed already but the doctors had said Crystalline had stabilized and wanted to talk, so Brutus had gone down with Lily to talk to the other Changeling.

“How's she doing?” I asked Lily, seeing her sitting outside the med bay doors.

“She'll recover, but she's in bad shape. She says she was sold to slavers. She was one of dozens, maybe hundreds of ponies all being held there. We're not sure how she escaped yet, she fell asleep again.”

“So...”

“We're probably going to end up intervening...if Crystalline makes a formal request, the council won't say no. Slavers are pretty much top of the list on the things The Collective doesn't stand for after all.”

“True enough. Well I guess keep us posted?” I asked, turning to leave.

“We have a briefing scheduled for 0900 tomorrow so we'll fill you in then.”

“Alright, sounds good.”

“Have a good night.”

“You too.” I headed back towards my quarters, eager to crawl into bed and sleep for a while, though I wasn't thrilled at the prospect of what might be to come, and if I had known then what I know now, I might not have gone through with it at all...

Footnote: 50% to next level

Author's Notes:

I dunno if this is going to be a full on return, but I really want to finish this story so hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things proper