Fallout Equestria: A New Hope (On Hiatus)

Chapter Fifteen

The lights click on revealing row after row of tanks and other vehicles. Lead leads the way into another part of the huge compound, revealing enough ammo to keep the NCR going for another century. "Barely anything left," he sighs. I look at him in disbelief. Then a mare rounds the corner. Lead raises his guns, only to lower them, "Pallet." She smiles, "Lead." The mare makes her way over to me. I stand there shocked. "No.. No. You can't be real..." I said aloud. "But I am." She said opening her hooves. I flew into them and sobbed into her chest. "I- I saw you die!" I cried. She then began running her hoof through my mane. "Shh... It's OK. I'm here now.." She said softly. "H- how did you survive?" I sniffled. "I guess I better start explaining..." She said as she let silence fill the rather large 'bunker' for a few moments. "You see, that was a clone. There are more of them in each Stable that was made. I am the original. And yes, I retain their memories." Lead smiles. I look to her in disbelief. "That's impossible! I've never had a clone of me made!" I admit. "That's because the original is cloned from me," Lead confesses. I then look to Lead. "So you're a clone?!" I shout. "In a sense. She's a full-fledged clone. Meaning she has SOME of my traits, but not all of them. And that makes ME your father-in-law, Sketch." Lead smirks, a chill running down my spine. "So treat her well or I castrate you. Nothing personal." His fangs gleam in the light. I don't say a word as I sit on my haunches placing my head in my hooves. "I have a headache..." I say as I pass out. My brain being too overloaded with information.

Two hours later, I awaken in a cramped compartment. "Buck! Get this thing rolling, Pallet!" I look around and see I am in a tank. Wait... A bucking tank?! "What the buck?!" I say as I look around at all the dials and switches. Pallet just below me, and a wheel with two buttons akin to that of a plane's wheel sitting in front of me. A gunner's seat? My horn lights up and the aura takes hold of the wheel. The button to the left is pressed. A machine gun fires away. Lead smirks, "Guess he's awake." He says to himself. I then press the button on the right and, KAPOOF! The massive gun in the front fires off. A shell screams toward the middle of nowhere, exploding on impact. "Hold your fucking fire! We only have so much ammo!" Lead yells over the sound of the tank as it roars forward at a rather fast 55mph. "Where are we going?!" I too yell over the roar of the treads against the Earth. Lead, in human form, lets out a puff of smoke, "NCR's fallen apart. Got the news while you were out. We're meeting the rest of the Legion outside of Ponyville." He raises his binoculars, "Stop the tank!" He then climbs out and moves toward a Spritebot, weapon raised. The music cuts out and Lead sighs, "Piece of fucking shit. Thank the gods the music died." A laugh emits from the Spritebot, "That'd be because of me. You can call me Watcher." The Spritebot is riddled with bullets, reducing it to junk. Another floats nearby, "WHAT WAS THAT FOR?! I DIDN'T-" Lead glares into the sensor on the Spritebot, "You didn't finish your fucking monologue. Cry me a bucking river, Watcher. You know who I am. I know who you are." All the while, Lead had been tracing the origin of the signal. "I'm on my way, Watcher." The Spritebot music resumes, before being turned into a giant speaker on the side of the tank. Its fellow Spritebot soon suffered the same fate. Lead began blasting an unsettling recording that was essentially a mix of eerie noises, funeral voices, wailing, and funeral singing. It chilled me to the bone. I took a look at the tank we were in after getting out to relieve myself.

Lead smirks, "Feast your eyes on the one and only Equestrian Legion model tank. This beauty, while the only one of its type to exist because of how fucking expensive and labor intensive it is to produce, is the greatest tank the Equestrian Republic had in its arsenal. The body used is similar in looks to that of a Tiger, as it allows for the classic and protective Porsche turret to be mounted. It's main gun is the 120mm L55 smooth bore gun of the Leopard 2A7+, being able to fire both regular rounds and the programmable high explosive rounds. As for the hull armor, both the Soviet T80's 500mm thick Kontakt-5 2nd Generation ERA, as well as the M1A2 Abrams depleted uranium mesh-reinforced composite with TUSK package are used. For firing systems, the T80 KORZINA firing system, with its separate-loading autoloader and manual systems was used, as it added to the tank's capabilities. Additional armaments include two independant TROPHY systems, 2 crew manned U.S .30 caliber machine guns, 2 top Browning .50 caliber machine guns, a coaxial .50 caliber machinegun, and a commander-operated 12.7mm AA gun. The power is gifted by the Abrams Honeywell AGT 1500 engine and Allison DDA X-1100-3B transmission. Though its description alone makes it unique, its service record adds to the rarity, having fought in the Battle of the Everfree, behind enemy lines for 7 months during the Changeling Uprisings, and her last mission during the final stages of the Great War." I blink owlishly, as do the others. "You lost me after Iron Phantom," deadpanned Pallet, "And I have all of your mental capacity." Lead sighs, "It's a fucking armored behemoth that goes faster than you'd think and is mechanically reliable," he smirks, "She has the nickname 'Their Majesties' Hoof' because of the fact she has over 500 confirmed kills in just tanks alone. With infantry, you're looking at close to a million confirmed kills. Let's get out of here." We continue on our way to Ponyville, speakers silent and turned off. Lead keeps watch on our surroundings with the binoculars. He orders Pallet to stop the tank in a patch of bushes and talks into our helmet radio, "Sketch, rotate left about 30 degrees and look about a thousand and fifty meters out." I do so and narrow my eyes, "Looks like one of the tanks I've seen in Pre-War books and ads. It looks like it's been destroyed though." "Shit, that's a Tiger. Newly destroyed by looks of-" A screaming noise goes right by the front of the tank, "SHIT! RIGHT STICK! RIGHT STICK!" We roll out of the bushes and Lead growls, "IT'S A TRAP!" Surrounded now on both sides and the front, we find ourselves faced with what look like Talon mercenaries...but with obvious Zebra motorized anti-tank batteries. "BACK UP! BACK UP! SKETCH, SEND A HIGH EXPLOSIVE ROUND INTO THE BATTERY ON THE LEFT! SWEETIE, KEEP UP THE MG FIRE!" He creates clones to man the other machine guns, the tank now spitting lead and shells like the legends told of it.