The Adams Air Force base was an impressive sight. Standing on the roof of a tall concrete administration building, Luna looked out over the sprawling complex below. Trucks and jeeps rumbled along heavily salted roads, splashing melted snow everywhere, while civilians and power-armored soldiers travelled along smaller paths between deep drifts and Vertibirds followed set routes overhead.

“This is actually kinda cool,” Sonata said cheerfully. “I’ve never been on a real military base before.”

Luna raised an eyebrow and looked back at her. Sonata was eagerly leaning over the parapet, watching everything going on with an intensely interested expression. Even Trixie was looking around curiously. The trio had been ushered off the Vertibird the moment they had landed, then told they could either stay inside in a waiting room, or wait outside in the fresh air. All three of them had preferred the idea of being outside, especially given that the Enclave had provided them with thick coats to ward off the chill. The fact that the rooftop they were lurking on was covered by a gazebo to keep the snow away was also an added bonus.

“This is so weird,” Trixie muttered.

Luna nodded. “You can say that again.” Only a short while ago, the three had been standing in a classroom on a warm summer’s day. Now, only a few hours later, they were huddled together at a military HQ in a winter snowstorm. Calling it jarring would be a gross understatement.

Trixie looked at the floor and kicked at a loose stone. “Do you think the Rainbooms are going to be alright?” She asked quietly. “I mean, you heard what the President said about an army marching towards them.”

As much as Luna wanted to reply that they would, of course, be fine, she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it. Trixie needed reassuring, but she neither needed nor deserved to be lied to. “I hope so. They’ve managed this long, so I think they should be able to stay out of trouble.”

“Besides, that army hasn’t got anything to do with them,” Sonata added. The others looked at her curiously, prompting her to explain, “The army is going to some place called the Cita-whatsit, but the President said the Rainbooms are in some place called Megaton. If they know that the President wants to speak to them, like, really bad, won’t they just come and find her straight away?”

Luna let out a soft snort, impressed despite herself. “That’s actually a pretty good point. We don’t have any reason to believe that the Rainbooms are anywhere near that army, so if all goes well, they should be perfectly fine.”

---

Becky had never wished that she was having a nightmare so desperately as she did right now. She was currently sitting in one of the Air Force Base’s meeting rooms, staring at two horrifying reports from the Springvale outpost, and one from a spy in the Citadel that was, if anything, even worse. Lieutenant Colonel Strong, Senator Prince, and Senator Devall were all sitting around the table as well, all waiting on the arrival of one last Senator; one who had a hell of a lot of explaining to do.

As if summoned by angry thoughts, there was a knock on the door, and Senator Lily strode in. “I apologize for being late,” she said as she closed the door and sat down with a huff. “Some idiot knocked over a glass jar full of an unknown substance, then freaked out and activated the emergency quarantine procedures in the labs next to mine.”

“Is everything clear over there?” Colonel Strong asked immediately.

Lily snorted. “The beaker turned out to contain a sample of real oak-aged bourbon one of the researchers had imported from a settlement near our Frankfurt food-production facility. So aside from one devastated scientist, everything is fine.” Colonel Strong and Senator Prince both winced in sympathy. “So, what’s the emergency?”

Resisting the urge to snap at her, Becky glanced once more at the reports, though there was no way she could forget what they said. “The Citadel has fallen.”

The others all gasped and reeled in shock.

“I saw the report about the army from Raven Rock, but the Citadel is a fortress with almost the entirety of the Brotherhood of Steel currently garrisoning it!” Colonel Strong exclaimed. “They should have held out for a few days at the very least!”

“Unfortunately, they didn’t even get a chance to put up a fight.” Becky finally allowed herself to glare at Lily. “And the reason for that is almost entirely down to you.”

“What?!” Lily stared at her in blank surprise. “What are you talking about? I haven’t done a damned thing to the Brotherhood of Steel!”

Becky leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Tell me, when were you planning to inform the rest of us that you were keeping the child of the Master, the psychic nightmare of the West Coast, locked up in a lab in Raven Rock?”

Lily’s face, already pale, turned white as a sheet as the others gawped at her in stunned disbelief. “What does that have to do with the Brotherhood of Steel?” She asked quietly.

“You mean it’s true?!” Colonel Strong slammed his fist on the table. “Damn it, do you have any idea how dangerous such a creature is?!”

“I think you’ll find that I know better than anyone else in the Enclave,” Lily replied coolly before turning back to Becky, a tense expression on her face. “I assume from the fact that you know of her existence that she didn’t die in the destruction of Raven Rock. Unfortunately, I have exactly no ideas as to what she could possibly be doing now, or what she has to do with the Brotherhood of Steel. What happened, Madam President?”

Becky noted the Senator’s use of the word ‘she’ rather than ‘it’, so, despite the impertinence of the question, she explained everything that Rainbow Dash, and then Sunset Shimmer shortly afterwards, had reported to the personnel at the Springvale outpost. When she was finished, the others just sat in horrified silence, each struggling to process what they had just heard.

“So… Eden survived the destruction of Raven Rock?” Prince asked weakly.

“That’s hardly our main concern at the moment!” Devall snapped.

“I know, I know, I’m just beginning with the least awful part of all of this,” Prince replied.

Becky sighed and nodded. “Eden survived, somehow, and has apparently been acting as a combination of a prisoner and an advisor of the Brotherhood of Steel this whole time” She turned a cold glare on Senator Lily. “So, care to start explaining yourself?”

Lily just shook her head, staring blankly at the table. “It’s… it’s not possible.”

“You’re going to have to do better than that!” Strong demanded. “For all we know, you’ve been planning this for decades!”

“If I had been planning this, do you really think I would still be sitting here talking to a half-wit like you instead of trying to take advantage?” Lily hissed. “You want answers? Fine. Yes, I discovered the Master’s gametes stored in the Mariposa Military Base all those years ago. You know full well that I’ve been trying to unlock the secrets of immortality through FEV, and the Master was an utterly unique specimen. I couldn’t pass up such a golden opportunity.”

Devall stroked his chin thoughtfully. “If I can just pause you there for a moment, why exactly did you keep the existence of such specimens hidden from the rest of the Enclave?”

Lily snorted and gave him an unamused look. “Do you really have to ask? What do you think Acheson would have done if he knew that we had a viable sample of the Master’s DNA in our possession?” The others collectively grimaced at the thought of that power-crazed monster getting hold of such potential power. “Exactly,” Lily said simply. “As for how dangerous the creature was, it took me fifteen years before I was able to create a viable embryo, using one of my own eggs, I might add; we didn’t have Assigned Procreation back then, so messing around with my own ovaries was a lot easier to do. Even when I finally managed to create an embryo, she wasn’t even remotely close to human.”

“Y-you gave birth to it?!” Prince spluttered.

“Of course I didn’t, I grew her in an amniotic vat followed by an incubator,” Lily replied.

Becky frowned at her. “When you say not even close to human…”

“She was a blob,” Lily said bluntly. “A pink shapeless blob with a handful of tentacles and one eye. And before any of you start whining about the ethics of experimenting on a child, I didn’t. I measured her brainwaves regularly, and tried everything I could to help her develop as normally as was physically possible in such a situation. I had no intention of using her in my experiments until she was old enough and, frankly, intelligent enough to consent to it properly.”

“That’s an awful lot of dedication for such a long-term plan,” Prince noted.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Some of us think further ahead than our next wank, Senator. Besides, she is technically my daughter, so I tried to take care of her as well as I could. I taught her to understand English even if she couldn’t speak, I told her stories, I gave her a basic education, and I even just… played with her. Of course, leaving her locked up in a dark cell for days on end when I couldn’t sneak away would have been cruel, so I put her in stasis whenever I wasn’t around. Despite what everyone seems to think, I’m not a monster.” Lily sighed heavily. “Unfortunately, she also inherited some small measure of her predecessor’s psychic abilities. The little shit kept trying to mind control me. Thankfully, I had this prototype.” She tapped her tiara. “It’s actually a psychic inhibitor, the only working prototype I managed to find from the Master’s old experiments. It protects me from her powers.”

Thinking back, Becky remembered that Lily had only started wearing the thing in public after they had come into contact with the Rainbooms.

“You didn’t want to take any chances around Miss Shimmer, I see,” Devall said, clearly coming to the same conclusion.

“Correct. In any case, I was here at the Air Force Base when Raven Rock was destroyed, and no-one else in the Enclave knew about her, not even Eden, so I assumed she had been killed in the blast.” Lily glanced at Becky. “For all I knew, she was dead. Horrigan’s description of a young woman with magical healing powers doesn’t match the little one I raised in the slightest, which is why I never bothered mentioning her before. If you don’t believe me, bring Sunset Shimmer here, and she can take a walk down memory lane with me herself.”

“I’ll take you up on that, she’s being brought here via Vertibird as we speak,” Becky assured her.

Strong hummed and crossed his arms. “Alright, so we know what was lurking beneath Raven Rock, and what it’s currently up to, but how can we be sure that the Citadel has fallen? I don’t doubt Sunset’s word, but she doesn’t have proof.”

Becky grimaced and shoved the spy report over to him. “No, but we do. As soon as we lost the connection to the Citadel, I authorized the deployment of a spy to find out what was going on.” The others perked up at the mention of a spy. “ED-E was equipped with one of our new enhanced Stealth Boys and instructed to head to the Citadel. Five minutes before this meeting began, he confirmed that the army from Raven Rock had reached the Citadel, and that the Brotherhood of Steel weren’t making any effort to expel them whatsoever. The base turrets have been destroyed, and a handful of Knights are dead, but footage indicates that the Brotherhood didn’t give any resistance beyond that.”

“Shit,” Prince muttered.

“That’s a polite way of putting it,” Strong said quietly. “Unity poses a clear and present threat not just to the Enclave, but the whole god-damn Wasteland, especially when she has the Rainbooms and the Brotherhood of Steel under her control. How are we going to proceed with this?”

Becky glanced back down at the reports. “We need to take her out as quickly as possible. I’d authorize an air strike against her as she travels across the wastes, but we would almost certainly end up killing several of the Rainbooms if such an attack was successful, and I’d rather not risk that unless as a last resort.”

“So, a precision strike, then.” Strong nodded slowly. “If Unity is heading to the Citadel, would ED-E be able to take her out?”

“His weapon systems aren’t anywhere near powerful enough. If they were strong enough to damage her head, we could take the chance that the Brotherhood might react quickly enough to subdue her, but we don’t think that they are,” Becky replied. “I considered Liberty Prime, given that he’s currently escorting water caravans and hasn’t been affected, but Unity will have reached the Citadel by then, and he won’t be able to fight effectively while she’s there.”

“A strike team, then.” Strong glanced at Lily. “How quickly can you make enough of those Inhibitors for a full strike team?”

Lily grimaced and shook her head. “The components aren’t easy to come by, or I’d have made a bunch of them already to boost my reputation. I might have enough parts to make one for Horrigan. It’ll take a few days, but he’ll stand a better chance than anyone against Unity. I’ll lend you my Praetor, as well.”

“Your Praetor?” Devall asked curiously.

“The power-armored Deathclaw that I inherited from Acheson, the one Horrigan defeated aboard the Base Crawler,” Lily explained. “I finally decided on a name for it.”

Strong shook his head. “I’d say I appreciate the offer, but the evidence indicates that Unity will be able to mind control a Deathclaw just as easily as anything else.”

“She won’t be able to mind control this one, you have my word,” Lily replied with absolute confidence. “I could explain the details, but I would rather discuss this with Sunset Shimmer present.”

Meaning that she had been messing around with magic in some way, Becky presumed. “Fair enough, that can wait for now. In the meantime, I want you to make one of those Inhibitors for Horrigan as quickly as physically possible. Having said that, there’s a chance that even Horrigan might not be able to destroy Unity himself. Getting shot in the face with Sunset’s Nova Pistol barely even slowed her down.”

Devall cocked his head to the side. “I get the feeling you have some thoughts on this?”

Becky had to admire his keen intuition, even in such stressful situations. “I was thinking that we could station Liberty Prime outside the Citadel’s gate, along with every single Vertibird gunship and bomber we can spare. That way, all Horrigan has to do is get Unity outside the Citadel, and we can hit her with everything we’ve got. Reduce her to ashes.”

“That could work,” Strong muttered, nodding slowly to himself. “Given that we’re dealing with magic, though, what do we do if it doesn’t work? She’s already survived the blast that destroyed Raven Rock.”

“There was a lot more magic involved there,” Becky replied. “Don’t forget, Horrigan was able to defeat one of the crystal Deathclaws from under there with a single punch. If Unity somehow does manage to survive, however, there is one backup plan I can think of.” She took a deep breath, steeling herself to say what was on her mind. “The Exodus team has managed to make one of the old Delta IX rockets flightworthy again, and they have several thermonuclear warheads in storage, notably, a B83.”

Strong’s eyes almost popped out of his head. “A B83?! That thing makes the one sitting in Megaton look like a fucking firecracker! You can’t be suggesting…”

“In the event of a worst-case scenario, we’ll remove the G.E.C.K from Project Purity and evacuate all personnel out of the blast zone, recommend the same thing to Rivet City’s Council, then strap the B83 to the Delta IX and point it at the Citadel,” Becky said grimly. “We’ll nuke the bitch.”

---

The plan had only been in motion for a matter of hours, and it was already starting to fall apart at the seams. Unity scowled as she waded through drifts of snow that reached her thighs. Her magically crystallized body wasn’t anywhere near as weak as the ordinary flesh it appeared to be, so neither the cold nor the effort bothered her in the slightest, but the indignity of it was wearing on her nerves. Worst of all, she couldn’t even risk using her powers to blast the offending white mess out of her way.

Unity had never imagined that keeping so many people under control would be this difficult. The Citadel had been brought to heel easily enough, thanks to Eden’s unwitting support, but it was taking all of Unity’s concentration just to keep the crystal monsters and the Brotherhood personnel from killing each other, and that was before she factored in the difficulty of controlling the Rainbooms.

That thought made Unity’s scowl deepen. Sunset Shimmer’s unexpected resistance to her powers was a considerable wrinkle in her plans. She suspected that it was something to do with the nature of Sunset’s own abilities, but there was no way to probe the Rainbooms’ minds for clues without risking a bloodbath at the Citadel.

The Revenants in particular were horrendously difficult to keep on a leash. The undead monstrosities had proven effective against Horrigan, but they would take advantage of even the slightest lapse in focus to vent their bloodlust on whatever was closest to them. Simply pausing and admiring her first real view of the outside world had weakened Unity’s control enough for the vicious little beasts to kill several of the miners harvesting crystals from Raven Rock’s surface. Getting shot in the face twice, once by Sunset, and once by that annoying Megaton guard, had resulted in a brief but furious brawl at the Citadel, one that Unity was having immense trouble keeping from breaking out again.

Unity allowed herself a small sigh. Things would get easier once she got to the Citadel herself. Now that she realized just how much she had been relying on the power boost provided by Raven Rock’s inherent magic, she could work on constructing some sort of crystalline beacon or amplifier to project said magic over a wider range, just like a radio tower. Being closer to her erstwhile army would also make controlling it that much easier.

Now that she thought about it, Unity realized that constructing such beacons all over the wasteland would be a fantastic idea. That would free up enough of her concentration that she would be able to fight at full power while still being able to control her subjects.

Such power would undoubtedly be essential for dealing with the Enclave. Sunset Shimmer had almost certainly gone running to them as soon as she had had the chance, giving Unity’s hated mother a chance to create more wretched psychic inhibitors to use against her own daughter. On the bright side, Sunset’s decision to send Rainbow Dash to the Citadel had been an unexpected bonus, allowing Unity to snatch her up once again.

Glancing back at the Rainbooms trudging through the snow behind her, Unity grinned. With them brought to heel, and a beacon allowing her to use her powers to the fullest, and her own last resort weapon in the form of her Geode, not even the vaunted Liberty Prime would be able to stand against her.

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