Amber stepped out of the vault and squinted as the late morning light assaulted his eyes. Amber's outdoor excursion was driven by his desire to speak to Vault 69's resident armorer Lock n' Load about some repairs that were being done on his rifle. As such the hybrid pony/dragon felt rather naked just carrying his holster 9mm pistol.
However the stallion reminded himself that there was four of the vault's sharpshooters to keep an eye on the area surrounding for raiders and dangerous wildlife. One of those sharpshooters was Coco Pommel with her 14.5x114mm anti-tank rifle.
The stallion had been told by another vault armorer that had Lock n' Load needed to go outside to test fire a weapon. Thus his outdoor journey. Amber wondered why Lock n' Load had to go outside to test fire a weapon since vault's indoor firing range could handle everything up to 30mm autocannon ammunition?
There was suddenly a series of quick shots and the stallion followed the sound. He quickly found 4 mares standing in front of a hastily setup shooting range. One was the vault armorer; standing next to burly earth pony mare was 2 pegasus mares that Amber recognized as being from Stable 69.
However the other pony was new to Amber. A fuchsia colored earth pony mare wearing an eye patch and festooned in black leather garments was firing a rather short, brutal looking shotgun. It was a rather unorthodox device. 8 barrels of 20ga were arranged in a circular cluster. As Amber watched the earth pony quickly shouldered the shotgun and fired 4 more rounds. Then the mare unlocked the action and smartly snapped downward exposing the chambers. With her left hand she reached for a large stud inside at the center of the barrel cluster and then smartly yanked it back. As the stallion watched the spent shotshells were ejected from the barrels. Then with practiced efficiency the mare began extracting new shells from a belt around her waist and started reloading the chambers when that was accomplished Lock n' Load look at the 2 pegasus mares.
"Okay get us a brisk wind going away from us. Then we'll test gas discharger."
The mares took off and came to an hover about 8ft off the ground. Then they began vigorously flapping their wings. As they did a steady breeze started blowing away from themselves and the other ponies gathered there. The fuchsia looked at the armorer who nodded her head. The other mare shouldered the weapon and pulled the trigger from forward trigger group. Suddenly a large cloud of whitish vapors and a tight stream of liquid erupted from the weapon. All of this enveloped a rudimentary mannequin about 7yds away. Obviously it had been setup for this demonstration. After a second this began to disperse away from the ponies gathered.
Amber spoke as he walked up the small group. "Well that's a very distinctive demonstration." He looked at the newcomer. "And hello. My name is Amber….and you would be?"
The newcomer gave the stallion a quizzical look. "Name is Cheerilee. Are you a member of this Vault?"
The stallion grinned. "Yep! And who would you be and what do you do around here?"
Cheerilee frowned. "I'm a school teacher."
Lock n' Load spoke up answering the question that was rolling around in Amber's mind. "We're doing this test outside because the firing range's ventilation and filtration system is on the fritz and I didn't want to flood the vault's air circulation system with tear gas."
This is a Patreon reward for Skyline-Twilight. The weapon she's holding is a prototype Colt Hillberg Defender shotgun. It's a very obscure weapon. Not even Ian at Forgotten Weapon Link has done a video on it yet. So most of the reference images and information I had came from the 1978 book The World's Fighting Shotgun written by Thomas F. Swearengen. Link He had wrote an extensive article in the book on it. It was a developed to fire 20ga shotshells while having a nonlethal tear gas dispenser built into the weapon.
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