Trixie had met my efforts of acquiring a knife on a chain with a tube full of heavy duty explosives she tried to refer to as, and I quote, 'fireworks'. It was an absurdly large device, almost as big as she was, and it was mounted to her back by means of a turret. She had to duck her head in order for it to face forward, though she said that most of the time she was supposed to use it while circling around the enemy. Four large tubes each with its own five shot clip of magical ammunition. Which meant that this was a energy weapon. And it was terrifying. Something to be mounted on a tank, for sure, but despite Trixie's claims that it wasn't slowing her down at all, I could see the momentary lag in her usually fast movements as she carried it. The thing is, though, that besides from the clips that were already in it, she had no method of either reloading or resupplying the gun. Which gave her about twenty shots before it became nothing but dead weight on the robot mare.

"During the middle years of the war, Equestrian generals got obsessed on the idea that 'bigger' equaled better." she told me, "The idea of pony mounted heavy weapons thrived with the introduction of power armor into the war effort, and many weapon designers came up with things like the Gatling Laser, and pony mounted artillery units like these. Similarly, five mega-structures, or bunkers of incredible size and durability were also made as well as three experimental vehicles that amounted to being mobile fortresses that ended up abandoned due to their massive costs in Equestrias already dwindling supply of coal. It would be towards the ending years of the war when the shift went from bigger and explosive to lasers and gem based energy, thus creating this hybrid weapon. Deemed, by several, as 'Fireworks'."

"Oh." I said, I wasn't much of a technology nut, but that was impressive.

"Infact, one of the mega-structures is actually the Big Grin." Trixie told me, "Before the bombs fell, there used to be a massive dome over everything in three layers. However, an informant gave a detailed blueprint of the facility to the Zebras and they brought down upon it an Earthshaker megaspell followed by a balefire bomb, judging from this units last records before activation, probability matrix, and the details of carnage we've witnessed thus far."

I whistled, "Just what is an Earthshaker megaspell, anyway?"

"It's a type of suicidal megaspell that has had a recorded number of production in the single digits. It is an extremely expensive megaspell to produce that uses the activator, which can be any sentient race, as well as all nearby resources, to produce, what the Zebra and Equestrians refer to as a 'Earthshaker' after the megaspell it came from. An Earthshaker is in terms a golem that is massive in size and uses the being driving in it as its brain and method of movement. The physical and mental trauma, however, usually kills the pilot after a short period of operation and generally had less results when compared to a balefire bomb or standard megaspell. Ponies could retreat from an Earthshaker, but they couldn't retreat from a balefire explosion." Trixie gave that entire exposition dump without one intake of air, not that she needed one.

Needless to say though, it was impressive, "So they used an Earthshaker on the dome to destroy it, and the balefire bomb to kill everypony under it?" I summarized, and Trixie nodded.

Trixie gestured at our surroundings, the bleak wasteland that had scarce dozens of buildings with five to six times that in rubble,"That is my running theory with how the path of destruction has run around the facility is. The only alternative to the domes destruction would be that someone spent dozens of balefire bombs to break each layer of the dome instead, but the amount of radiation that would leave behind wouldn't of faded to its current levels judging from how long has passed since then."

"Right... whats the plan then?" I asked, the brutes were still there, six of them with double that in failed brain removed minions, and showed no signs of leaving.

"This unit judges the best possibility for success is a sneak attack. I will lock a set of trajectories to disable the brutes while your gatling laser focuses on the smaller hostiles. If we coordinate our attack I judge that we have a seventy two point six percent chance of ending the fight within the first ten seconds with a margin of error of five percent. If they aren't all demolished within twenty seconds, advised strategy is to retreat and try again approximately twenty minutes later from a new position. Though we will have lost the element of surprise by then."

We were already hinging on that Bull Frown would be waiting for us by the technology we were supposed to be going after, technology we didn't need after the Nightmare Nighter showed us the terminal. Trixie herself had been curious about it as well, so after I had downloaded it, she had connected herself to my pipbuck and downloaded the files within it, though I hadn't had the time to browse many of them myself. I was surprised it wasn't overflowing with all the logs and experiments that it was now containing myself. But that was because the pipbuck 2500 series, as Trixie explained, had a larger data storage capacity to make up for several missing functions of both the 2000 and 3000 series had.

Well that and the S.E.C. But that was besides the point. Though Trixie was particularly intrigued by the files Grey had left in the pipbuck when he had given it to me. When I explained their source she was particularly intrigued, but she left it at that as we had more pressing matters to deal with. Primarily the trap that was about to be sprang.

On her signal she fired, molten balls of sparking plasma being launched upwards out of a tube as Trixies firing solution caused a quadrio of magnificent balls of light to launch screaming and hissing out of her back mounted tubes and towards the brutes. The squad of enemy units didn't react at first, until they noticed them, then they were curious, but as the three second distance for the mortared energy weapon closed the distance that curiosity turned to shock, and they tried to get away, two seconds too late.

Each one collided where it was meant to be, momentarily a ball of plasma on the ground like a water balloon, next second the explosion engulfed the brutes, two of them hit two each, while the remaining two had covered the remaining two brutes who were wandering a distance from each other squarely on the head. All of it gone in a bright flash of light, and in exchange a field of molten red ground, and lumps of burning but what was shocking that there was masses still moving, mostly destroyed to be sure, but not dead. Out of six, three had survived, and it wasn't either of the ones Trixie had hit on the head. But of those three surviving brutes, only one could crawl out of the burning craters that had been made.

I acted, training pushing me forward to ignore shock and awe and open fire upon the remaining forces that the brute had, deadly laser fire tearing apart the remaining ranks of Lobotomites that was supposed to be the cannon fodder. Clothe fronts and leather helmets didn't stand a chance. Soon enough it was just us and the three brutally maimed brutes. Trixie started to march for the door, but paused as I halted near the three.

They weren't dead, nor would it seem that they would be able to recover from their injuries thanks to the instant cauterization of their missing limbs, if anything their existance at this point would be nothing but pain. Even if they were a monsterous creation of Doc Smile, I couldn't just leave them to suffer. It would only take a few shots each to finish each one off, a few shots to the brain to put them out of their misery... But did I have the right?

I paused once more, before I sighed, if I was like this, I'd want to die as well. Unlike the scientists who would let their creations suffer, I'd put them down if needed, and this was one of those times. The laser at my side warmed up, and shot into the heads of one of the remaining brutes, whose large eyes were haunting in the look of mixed pain and fear that was on it.

Pew pew pew... one down...

Pew pew pew.... second one dead, and the remaining, the one with but a single mostly melted leg rose its leg rose to cover its head.

I paused, before firing again, a steady rain of fire tearing through it and finishing the last one off, slowly I trotted to Trixie, who merely asked, "They were neutralized, why did you waste ammunition finishing them off when it was inevitable that they would die from their injuries?"

"I don't believe in letting enemies suffer for no good reason." I told her, "I'm a medical pony, Trixie. Even if I don't follow the Ministry of Peace creed of 'do no harm', I still don't want to leave somepony or something to suffer if I can."

One of the reasons I had preferred the sniper rifle to another weapon was that it allowed me to stay distant from the gore and blood that resulted when shooting someone. In all honesty I would of preferred to not use guns or weapons but the need was there. Raiders, crazy corrupt robots, brutes, feral ghouls, bloatsprites, rad scorpions, and even radbits waited for every opportunity to kill. That and more things like Aqualights or other forgotten experiments like Maul or Penance, the AI that Cait and the others had put down despite my objections. There was far too many hostile things in the wasteland to take a pacifist approach, but it didn't mean I couldn't have sympathies with any of them.

I had healed Maul and gained an acquaintance who wouldn't just kill me on sight, sure I had a few cracked ribs and a massive migraine after the song beat down, but in the end it had worked out. But I couldn't heal the brutes, I didn't have either the skill or power to heal such massive injuries, or the type of burns that they had gained from Trixie's hellfire. Nor did I think that they would just walk away considering that we were the aggressors. The smell of burnt rotten flesh was repulsive now, and I resolved myself to keeping an additional measure of diplomacy should I run into situations that could be solved with words rather than gunfire and explosives.

Not that the same oppertunity had been present here.

Thanks Roggar, really needed that. I thought with slight sarcasm.

The door itself proved easy enough to get through, Trixie's claw hand could slowly melt through the metal lock in the door, while I worked at maintaining a perimeter, curiously, the machine-pony asked, "Is mercy a common thing in this wasteland? This units estimations are a bit tedious at best, but the logical route would to be not wasting ammunition wherever possible due to the uncertainty of finding more of it."

"I have neither the ability to throw knives accurately, especially ones on a chain, nor the desire to enter a molten crater." I explained, "Besides, if I had asked you to finish them off, you would of either walked into the molten crater your mortar weapon had created, to crush their heads, or tried using another one of your extremely limited ammunition to finish them off."

"Fair enough." Trixie concluded, and for good reason too. The craters that the brutes had been left in were still covered in a thin slime of molten plasma that was burning and smoking against the already magically irradiated ground.

"I have to wonder, though." I said, as Trixie kept at prying at the metal door, "After Brutes and lobotomites, what else could Dr.Frown and Doc Smiles have beyond the front door?"

"One way to find out, this units records indicate that this place shouldn't exist." Trixie commented, "Maybe it was built after the bombs fell."

She pried open the door, and we walked inside, the door shutting omniously behind us, as the dome lit up from our intrusion, "Welcome to the party, clever girls." Dr.Brown taunted, "You really didn't think it'd be that easy, would you?"

I hardly paid attention to the voice, my eyes locked on what was in the center of the dome, "Is that a..."

"Fifty meter tall, mechanical spider?" Trixie finished for me, "That would be correct, Commander Web."

Xp Footnote: Level up!
Skills note: Guns: 100
New Perk: Center of Mass: In S.A.T.S., you do an additional 15% damage when targeting the torso.

Next Chapter: Summer Smile DLC 11: Spider and Bull Estimated time remaining: 6 Hours, 49 Minutes