//------------------------------// // Chapter 40 - Beneath Ground Zero // Story: Fallout Equestria: Operation Star Drop // by Meep the Changeling //------------------------------// ☢★★ Vinyl Scratch ★★☢ Blackness. Nothing more. Nothing less. So… this is death. An eternity of nothing, but you perceive it all. Well, buck. After an eternity of madness and boredom, I began to notice shapes in the nothing. Black on blackness. The faintest shades of jetstone on the purest shadows. They flowed like rivers, trailing behind invisible spheres, and lit with shadows projected from countless wells around which the rivers flowed, yet never touched. Oh. I’m not dead, I’m blind. Or blinded. Thank. Bucking. Celestia. This would be the worst afterlife. “Hello?” I gasped through a mouthful of blood. “Can somepony help me? I can’t see.” Perhaps a stupid thing to do, but any of the Tainted or Herd who survived the meteor would probably not let grudges be grudges until the situation was unbucked enough for them to leave. Something metallic clicked faintly. Like the hammer of a tiny revolver being cocked. Before I could do much as drop to my belly to dodge the shot, it clicked again. Orange sparks illuminated the nothing, casting deeper shadows over everything, rather than shedding light. A small orange flame colessed from the sparks, casting just enough shadow to darken an equine shape enough to be seen against the blackness behind her. Did… Did I somehow swallow my last tab of LSD during the blast? What in the— The flame vanished, and for the briefest of instances, I swore I saw a pale mare’s face, lit only by the red glow of a cigarette. “Regret is not meant to be wallowed in,” a young mare said from behind the red pinpoint. “You’re supposed to learn from it and move on.” “What?” I gasped, my lungs burning for some reason. “Next time you stop by, bring some beer.” “What?!” The shades of blackness faded into each other. The world suddenly became blackness, pain, and crushing force. Nopony else was with me. She was gone. The hallucinations of a dying mare. Nothing more. I frowned. I could feel pain. Sharp pain. Getting sharper. That meant I was alive. I squirmed, thrashed, to no avail. An enormous weight pressed down on my shoulders, crushing me into the earth like a slab of bricks on a pile of miserable wet noodles. An apt metaphor, since it was a slab of brick wall, and I definitely felt exactly like a pile of wet noodles. On the upside, that meant I was alive. On another upside, the world was black and I was differently buried so that meant I wasn’t a glowing one any— Then my eyes reformed and I was able to see my tiny micro-coffin beneath the rubble via a nice pleasant green glow. Damn… How much power did a Sonic Rainboom take to pull off?! A little more squirming and I managed to catch a glimpse of my suit’s repair talisman pulling rock and metal out of the debris covering me to reform itself. At least I’d be contained and not a danger to others in a bit. I managed to squirm my neck until Discord’s fang pressed against my skin. I thought at it aggressively so it would be sure to hear in spite of my lack of spirit-talking-powers. It rippled, to my astonishment. Two centuries I’d carried it, and it had spoken to me maybe a dozen times. Of all the times, and of all the things, it replies now and to this? I shook what I could manage to shake of my head. Silence… Of course. Wait a moment. Discord said he hadn’t ensured I lived through the meteor strike. I was completely buried, and if my sense of balance wasn’t out of wack, I was laying head-down in a hole under rubble. How durable am I?! When Steelhooves died, was it because that random Hellhound had soul-drinking claws or something? I spent a few moments pondering. Just trying to sort out the pieces and wait for my concussion to go away. No way I didn’t have one of those. Pip had killed a few Canterlot Ghouls, right? And Steelhooves died… and the ghouls in Stable City had lost a few ponies over the years. We’re not indestructible. So how, by Celestia’s Grace, did I just get hit by a rock from space and only wind up trapped under rubble? No way my skull hadn’t been crushed like putty in all that! Is it really truly honestly for real only decapitation that can kill ghouls like me? Did my parents find me in some pod in the woods one night and it turns out I’m actually from the planet Zeist? Have I been immortal since before the War? It’s not like I was ever shot, or stabbed, or even cut before— I wasn’t the only DJ-Pon3. There were others! There can be only one, Homage! Realising just how insane I was thinking, I decided to just lay there and take a few blinks and breaths to get the rest of the concussion out of my system. An indeterminable amount of time later, I evaluated the idea. It felt pretty stupidly insane. Like the kind of thing a homeless pony would have said to you while you wanted for a bus on the bad side of Manehattan. Ah, yes. Normalcy restored. Except for the whole trapped under debris thing. Let's fix that. I squirmed and wriggled, managing to turn slightly. My suit’s talisman had dug a nice bit out now and I could maybe start shifting the rubble under me brick by brick to burrow up through. Before there had been no room for my telekinesis to move anything around neay my head. It was bad enough being pinned by the back. Being pinned by my skull would suck more. I wasn’t Pip. I couldn’t just explode the whole pile of rubble off of me in one massive burst of magic like the Alicorn Princess of Telekinesis. I giggled at my own joke for a second. The things being inbred will do to a pony… No knack for anything but Telekinesis, but the strength of will and mana to use a train car as a club. Too bad she was locked in the SPP pod. Pip would definitely help me out of this hole without issue. I sighed, lit my horn, and gently tugged on a brick to test its stability. The rubble shifted a bit too much, making tons of concrete groan and creak above me. “Okay…” I said to myself sadly before trying the next brick in the slab. That one moved without protest. I slid it under my barrel, using my ribs and spine like a jack… and ignoring the pain as best I could. It would be long, lonely, tartarus-punishment-like torture, but it had ot be done. I couldn’t be trapped here forever. Gears needed me. My friend’s spirits needed me to go to Lyra’s old office for some reason. I had to get out. I moved a second brick, then a third, then a fourth. Each one caused a fresh jolt of pain. After the first dozen bricks I knew I needed something to distract me from the digging. Twelve bricks, probably five years of time had passed. Obviously not, but without something, anything, to track time, I was going to go feral long before I dug my way out. I managed to squirm just enough to get a look at my pipbuck. Never had I ever been more grateful to have it stuck on my leg. I gave the radio’s switch a quick flip with my horn and hoped to hope itself that its matrix hadn’t been crushed to dust. The screen lit up immediately, flashing the Stable-Tech logo for an instant before the radio crackled to life. Cracked to horrible, terrible, no-good, rotten, Ministry of Image approved “classical” “Equestrian” “musical” life. “Celestia watch you and keep you safe, As you travel down the path you choose. May Luna be with you and keep you strong, So your courage you will never lose. Remain loyal, honest and brave, Forget not the ones that you save And in our hearts you will do no wrong...” After three seconds of debating if I should turn off Velvet Remedy's inane caterwauling, I resumed digging. I dug, and dug, and dug, through at least eight songs. Each layer of brick I slid under myself forced me to wonder how deep I was beneath the surface, and just how many songs Velvet had covered. Both tasks were excruciating. Just as I managed to squirm around so my head pointed upwards, the music stopped, replaced by Homage’s DJ-Pon3 voice. I idly wondered if she was better at the Voiceshifter spell than me as I continued to dig. ”Goooooooood Morning, Equestrian Wasteland! It is O-530. What’s the O stand for? It stands for oh-my-Celestia-it’s-early. I’ve got some great news for everyone, Wasters, NRC Citizens, hey, even raiders. It’s no secret Pip’s been in poor health recently. There’s a lot of ponies out there gossiping about just how bad shape she’s in. Some of you may have gotten to talk to her through a Spritebot and heard a bloody cough or seven. “Well, that’s all about to end. For the longest time, nopony knew what was wrong with her or what to do about it. Thanks to our new techy trader friends up north we know exactly what’s wrong with her. See, turns out that pod does more than let a pony control the weather. It’s got a whole medical monitoring system built right in. All we needed is sompony who knew that, and how to read the data. “And what’s the SPP have to say about Pip? Somepony put at least one more bullet into her than a certain angelic voiced nurse took out of her. It also turns out you shouldn't lay down for extended periods. That’s not a problem I imagine anypony else has in the modern wasteland, but take this as a heads up. If you lay down for days, weeks, or months, your blood can clot up inside your veins and start to fill your lungs up. It’s a horrible nasty way to die. “‘Wait,’ I hear you saying towards your radios. ‘That sounds like it's horrible news? Did you two break up?’ Not in this lifetime, children! Not in this lifetime. Maybe the next lifetime though. The good news is the Doc who worked out this puzzle is Queen Katydid’s personal surgeon and just got into town to work their magic. If you bump into a tall, gray and brown stallion with a limp and a resting-bastard-face to go with their resting-bastard-attitude, give Doctor Horse my thanks.” Well that was good. Somepony could make sure we never found out what happens when you had a mare hooked into a continent scale weather machine up and die on you. It was nice to have something to pass the time with while digging. Especially since I’d just uncovered a large pipe, or maybe power conduit, which I’d need to move or dig a tunnel around. Great… ”What’s more, if you happen to be a raider, especially one of the Tainted, do us all a favor and stay away from the SPP for a few days. And don’t take potshots or rob any Los Pegans headed up there. We all benefit from not being consumed in a lightning-hurricane if that thing interprets a dying mare’s last thoughts as instructions. I’ll say it once more, just so we’re clear, please, it’s in everypony’s best interest to let the Doc and the Engineer sent with him to get in place, do their thing, and leave. “In other news, much less pleasant news, the Herd’s suffering a bit of a crisis at the moment. Now don’t panic just yet, but Oak Valley’s been a tiny bit wiped off the face of the earth. It wasn’t an old balefire bomb, or a horrible fire, or a rad-storm blowing in from across the sea. Nah, nothing cataclysmic yet normal like that. The city was hit by what everypony who survived agrees was a meteorite. A freak, cosmic accident. Now that’s just plain old bad luck.” “Ha!” I snorted. “Accident. Yeah… Guess this is about where your cameras stop being useful, huh, Pip?” ”I’ve got a letter here from the NCR to everypony in the Herd. It’s a long formal thing, but it sums up to: “Sorry about the past. If you need a home after that shit, come on back. No questions asked.” Now I think we all know nopony’s coming back, but it’s a nice gesture. “I’ve also been asked by a member of the Followers of the Apocalypse to inform everypony over there they will do their best to bring food, water, and blankets as soon as the roads are safe enough to head out west. I think I speak for everypony when I say, good luck. You’re going to need it. “After all, the Tainted have been extremely active of late. First they wiped out Pinto Creek, and the Herd almost blamed us for that one. Then they took out Smaller Town and the West Bridge the next day. Something’s up here. You can bet your last cap you’ll hear about it from me the moment anypony figures out what they are up to. For now, better keep away from— What in the buck…” My ears peaked at Homage’s expletive. She rarely swore when using her DJ-Pon3 persona (a betrayal of the bucking legacy, if you asked me), and when she did it always meant something was up. I stopped digging to pay attention. ”Uhhhhhh… Well, if it weren't for a certain forcefield I’d be extremely worried about that… Yeah, I know I’m still on the air… Oh. Right. Duh,” DJ-Pon3 cleared their throat loudly. “Well then, Children. It looks like the reports of the Tainted having access to some form of teleportation are completely true. I’ve got a whole platoon of them on screen in front of me right now. They appeared out of the end of a rainbow, right next to the SPP Hub in the middle of the Neighvarro junkyard. I guess they decided to take my earlier request as a challenge. “Don’t worry about them. If the Enclave couldn’t get into the control room over two hundred years, a bunch of high-tech goons won't have a chance of cracking it before the Pegans show up with a platoon of their own, as well as a tank or two… Then again, one of the Tainted seems to be wearing a tank. Alright then. I guess that part of the equation is balanced. The things Wastelanders do for fashion… Hey, hon? I know you don’t do killing anymore but it might be a good idea to whip up a rainstorm around the tower or something to try and get them to back off a bit. Cameras show the Pegans are twenty minutes out…” DJ-Pon3 turned away from their mic slightly. “Okay, Children, looks like you’re in for a treat. A bit of live reporting. We don’t do this very much, do we? Who do you think will win? An impenetrable shield powered by Celestia and her soul-jar or… a good thirty of the Tainted grunts, what looks like an Outcast Ranger, a walking tank fresh from my Neighponese comic books, some Enclave Sniper, and… Oh. Now this might change the odds. Everypony’s favorite miniature gunship is here too.” I winced, and shivered, sending a few loose bricks sliding down my left flank. Gale was already on the move. How long had I been down here regenerating? Did Gears remember where to meet up if we were separated? Had she even survived? I doubled my efforts to dig myself out, listening to the radio only tangentially as I pulled myself upwards as fast as the bricks would move. ”Alright, that’s bad news. I seem to recall hearing he facetanked several grenades. With his helmet open. That skull might be thick enough to bash Celestia’s shield open with…. Okay, the fancy pants Tainted are walking up to the tower’s main entrance. They can probably get in there. Some of you who haven't chem-bombed your brains too much might remember yours truly got into a different tower once, and even blew it to hell afterwards. I’m pretty sure they can get inside… but I’m also equally sure this particular tower will prove a little more sturdy… “Pip, dear? Can you ask Celestia if she’ll be able to keep the upper part of the tower floating with that shield. You know, if they blow the base up… She thinks so? Good. Hold on… Everypony, it looks like their black armored Outcast Ranger is some sort of hacker. He’s jacking his armor into the tower’s terminal. Looks like they plan on getting in without blowing the door. That’s a bit odd. Normally they shoot first and ask questions never. You’d think they’d just blow the door and be done with it. “Annnd there’s the rain. Good job Pip, looks like a real downpour. Maybe throw some lighting in there to spook them a little? … Just a minute everypony. The cameras near the tower have audio and if I remember correctly I should be able to patch that audio into our little broadcast here.” A few sharp electronic pops and clicks split the air, followed by a loud static hiss, then, the sound of pouring rain. “There! Smile, raider scum. You’re on candid radio,” DJ-Pon3 chuckled. “Status on that door, Black Hat?” Gale’s unmistakable voice boomed, peaking the mic. “Standard MoA Encryption, Cypher form 3. I can get in as soon as my dictionary finds the passphrase… I will need to make sure the security system doesn't notice me while the script runs. This is going to take a little focus… Shouldn’t the Doc have the password for this thing? Why didn’t you get it from him?” a gruff stallion with an Oatbuck accent asked. “This operation isn’t official, remember?” Gale mentioned. “Yeah, about that,” A mare asked from almost out of audio range. “We could have easily gotten authorization to try and get the Princess. Why are we winging this?” “The Doc’s pretty pissed off we couldn’t stop that damn zebra from delivering her packages,” Gale grunted. “We pull this off, and our outfit won't wind up on a firing line.” “Hold up,” A new voice said curiously. “Did he say something about having us shot for incompetence?” “No. But that’s the kind of guy the Doc is. I don’t know how he wound up heading the MoA, but he’s no Rainbow Dash,” Gale grumbled to himself. The mic clicked as DJ muted the audio with the press of a button. “Now isn’t that interesting. Looks like we have a little bit of makeup homework going on here. Let’s continue to drop a few eves…” The mic clicked again. The rain and soldier’s voices returned. “— sition there, and your squad, hold there. There’s no way somepony didn’t see us beam in. I’m willing to bet they’ve got troops stationed—” Gale stopped speaking as an electric guitar’s wine drifted faintly through the air. “What the buck is that?” “Uhhh… Sounds like something Pre-Ministries? Somepony playing a record from a hidden old stash…. Swear I heard this in the ring once,” the mare said, sounding a little confused. I winced. I knew exactly what this was. I’d recorded the original with Rainbow in her parents basement during highschool instead of studying for my Arcane History final. This was the remix she went and recorded herself after somepony somehow convinced Rarity to approve the song for use in some cartoon or another. She’d actually asked me to help with the recording. I don’t think she knew how embarrassed our old music made me after college. Regardless of that, who the buck even had a copy of that anymore? Aside from Speed. Speed had a copy. But there’s no way she’d been blown all the way to the Canterlot region. ”Mmm, that’s an interesting little tune there,” DJ-Pon3 said quietly while muting the camera audio. “Not really my thing, bit loud and harsh.” I took a moment to glare at my pipbuck. “You have no taste… Stupid genera-deprived wasteland…” The mic clicked as the radio’s signal routed back to the cameras around the SPP. “Sir, all squads in position,” announced a stallion with a reedy voice. “Excellent. Once the door is opened, Squads Alpha and Beta will accompany us. Squad Gamma will hold the rear, and—” Gales’ booming voice stopped for just the slightest moment. “Can anypony tell where that spotlight is coming from?” “What spotlight?” the mare from before asked. “Look at our shadows. Somepony has a light on us. Troopers! Aim for the door and—” “Sir!” the Oatbuck accented stallion shouted. “Target acquired, up near the spire’s peak. Looks like the storm isn’t from the tower.” “Well, well… Suppose I’ll go say hello.” A series of rockets ignited. Turbines spun, and the mic’s feed turned to static as a hundred and twenty decibels of thrust blasted past its pickups. “You could just have shot them,” the mare said quietly. “Eh, Gale’s got that murder-boner going full time these days. Best let him indulge, mate.” “Am I the only pony here worried about him?” the mare asked with an aggravated sigh. “You would be the one to worry about somepony going insane. Takes one to know one,” Black Hat grunted. “I’m a medic. I suspect our commanding officer is being heavily drugged. You should take my medical opinion seriously, at least. Or have you forgotten who put your leg back on after you decided to hug a landmine?” she snapped with an oddly masculine twinge in her last few syllables. KA-THOOOOM! Something either exploded, or hit the ground like a ton of bricks moving at the speed of pain. I jumped at the sound and looked around frantically. The noise was so loud I thought my shaky tunnel had caved in. I teetered back and forth on the small pile of increasingly unstable bricks, looking for anything at all for far too long before realizing that the sound had come from my pipbuck. I sighed, squinted up to try and get a glimpse of light that wasn’t my own. Anything to indicate how deep I was underground. Nothing. Might as well pay attention to the radio. It sounded like two ponies were arguing. The mic clicked and hissed as DJ-Pon3 overwrote the audio feed again. “I can hardly believe it myself, but it sounds like the newcomer has got Gale stuck in some kind of pre-war pony geek off. If anypony knows what a cartoon is, give me a call.” The static came and went once more, clearing into Gale’s rage-filled words. “—o paste, you pathetic bucket of bolts!” “Don’t be deceived by appearances,” an odd, metallic mare’s voice chastised. “My true form is far more powerful!” DJ Pon3 snickered without muting the mic. “Did she take that from a Swormare comic or—” “Ancient spirits of progress,” The metallic mare intoned, her voice crackling with an odd resonance. “Woah, wait, what?” DJ-Pone3 sputtered. The mare continued, her intonation crackling, swelling, and becoming something akin to a dragon’s bellowing.“Transform your decaying forms, and slay my enemies!” “WARLOCK!” Gale screeched. A cacophony of steel scraping, bending, and tearing overwhelmed the mic. The gut churning sound mixed with DJ-Pon3’s confused and terrified squeaking. “She’s not even a unicorn, she’s a pegasus how the buck is she—” Rage, summarized in perfect crystalline clarity by an unnatural roar, peaked the mic until nothing but static could be heard. “... okay she summoned a robot-dragon-thing,” DJ-Pon3 whispered. “Hey, uh… Am I high?” A meek sounding stallion cleared his throat. “N— No. I see it too, Hom— Uh, DJ.” A loud song, recorded in a classical early Equestrian chorus style, and backed with what sounded like an ancient war song played on modern brass instruments pierced the air, muffling the sound of gunfire and screaming. Something evil's watching over you! Comin' from the sky above, And there's nothing you can do. Prepare to strike! There'll be no place to run... When you're caught within the grip, Of the evil unicorn! The sound of metal smashing against stone and a second roar, this one the very personification of vengeance, tortured the microphone with its mere presence. “Okay, so uh… Ladies, Gentlecolts, and Plotholes, I have to go save my wife from what appears to be an alien robot mare that can transmute junk into death-dragons. Um… Music track to loop!” DJ-Pon3 shouted in a half panic. The radio hissed, crackled, popped, and music came through. "Oh well, I'm the type of stallion who will never settle down. Where pretty mares are, well you know that I'm around. I kiss 'em and I love 'em cause to me they're all the same, I hug 'em and I squeeze 'em they don't even know my name..." I stared at my pipbuck, hoping my confusion would manifest answers on the screen. Homage didn’t lie. She’d withhold the truth, but she didn’t lie. That had been pretty important to the Elements of Harmony working again. This meant some apparently alien robot mare had, in fact, summoned what sounded to me like that giant monster lizard thing from that one movie Lyra made us all watch when she got really, really, really into Neighponese cinema. This made no sense. I frowned slightly as ancient knowledge bubbled up from the back of my brain. Gale had yelled warlock. I think I heard a disabled vet’s PTSD trip where he mentioned being attacked by a warlock. I pursed my lips and tried to remember if he had been babbling in terror about the ground turning into a giant zebra to crush him, or if he’d said the trees themselves had reformed into monsters before his eyes. Or both. Warlocks were a zebra thing… Maybe somezeeb had decided “buck it, nothing to loose” and taken a shot at— No, that couldn’t work, what about the warlock having come from the air, and had wings? Could non-zebras be warlocks? “Where the buck is Gears when I need to ask her a question?” I moaned out loud. Something carried faintly down from above through the rubble. A sound! Somepony speaking! Too muffled by the rubble to be audible. Thank Celestia! “Help!” I called as loudly as I could. “Down here! Under… All of the crap!” “Everywhere is the crap, blyat!” somepony yelled back faintly. I frowned. The voice was familiar… Right! Nika! “Overhere, dammit!” I yelled again. “Follow the sound of my voice!” “Oh, you mean the intermittent quiet sound while my ears are ringing?!” he yelled back. I hissed. “Buck…” Wait a minute. I’m being dumb. I squirmed until my saddlebags were not blocked by the rubble, and opened their clasps. A lot of ponies these days had pre-war saddlebags like mine. They were preserved, carefully maintained and repaired. After all, bags that are bigger on the inside are not only handy, they keep your belongings safe in their little pocket dimensions. I managed to wriggle my keytar out with my telekinesis, but there wasn't enough room in the hole for me to turn it, or see the settings, nor what I played. Not that it mattered. I just had to make some noise. I pressed the keys with my magic, and a single middle C erupted from the speaker, carrying with it a synthetic, stylized, nostalgic sound. The ringing note took me back hundreds of years to when I was a little filly. I was standing on my mother’s back to watch a parade thrown by Canterlot High. Everything had been boring. Then, a float shaped like a flaming castle resting atop a slain dragon rolled into view. A band road atop it, a banner on the keyboard proclaiming them to be Mystic Knights of the Electric Stable. They played their hearts out, and in that one moment, I understood just how much music could move a pony. I couldn’t remember when it happened in their song, but at some point during the keytar/synth duet, I’d gotten my cutiemark. I may have said I could be my old self to Gears back in Los Pegasus. I wasn’t lying. That had put things into perspective… But I hadn’t been the old me. Not really. Not yet. The old me loved music. Not the watered down, propaganda infused, Rarity approved, horseapples the wasteland knew today. Real music. Actual music. Songs with some soul. Songs that made a pony dance even if they hadn’t wanted to before you started to play. I was almost ready to press another key and start one of my old club’s hit singles, when an idea popped into my head. Nika was a griffon-at-heart. I knew a Griffonese song. The MoI had made me do a cover of it for some political reason or another. Why not un-shit it with a nice remix? The only downside would be Nika would know I spoke Griffonese… I cleared my throat, began to play the intro melody, composing the remix as I went, doing my best to hit the record and loop buttons as I played in spite of not being able to see my instrument. Then, the time came. First time singing for myself in centuries… “Nash Griffoniy Souz pokaraet Ves’ mir ot Zebriki k moryam na vostoke.  Nad zemley vezde budut pet’: Stolitsa, vodka, kamenniy medved’ nash!” “NYET!” Nika shouted over my own singing, somehow. I stopped playing. “Sorry! Did I sing it wrong?” I yelled back. “Nyet! Knock off that propaganda and play some real music!” I felt my ears tip back in irritation. “Like what?” “Eh…” Nika yelled thoughtfully. “Okay, loop these chords with some real good bass. A, C major, C, C, F sharp, F, C, F sharp. I’ll sing, da?” I played the tune in my head, and nodded slowly. That was way better! “Yeah! Yeah that should be something good.” I began to play, this time boosting the volume on my keytar so Nika could hear me over his own voice. Which seemingly wasn’t going to happen any time soon. I played for a good minute before a set of steel talons sheathed in plasma punched through the layer of brick wall above my head, and ripped it away revealing Nika, in a clean tracksuit, his gasmask slightly beaten up, framed by the night sky as he threw the wall to one side and proclaimed, “Izzzzz, Nika!” I reached up with one hoof. Nika shut off his talons’ plasma fields and grabbed my hood, gently pulled me out of the hole… and into a glassy, debris strewn, crater the likes of which I hadn’t seen since the night I slept in a balefire crater. “Glad to see you survived,” I said as I pulled the little sorta-griffon in for a friendly hug. “Da… Only barely. I flew off to get our weapons,” Nika explained as he returned my hug. “I just found the bag when I saw their targeting laser. Nothing with laser that big can be good, so… I flew high up as I could. Still got thrown. I hit a tower in the city. Lucky for me, neck, she no break. But I was unconscious for, em… Medically-concerning amount of time.” I let go and turned around slowly, drinking in the devastated military base, the even more collapsed skyscrapers across the bay, and the twisted remains of the few battleships that were not at ground zero. It was like the Last Day had come again… But on a Monday just after work got out. “Did… Did anypony else make it?” I asked after a few moments. Nika nodded. “Da! I saw Gears, she was out of the blast on hoof. She should be alive. But erm…” Nika looked down for a moment, then rested a talon on my shoulder while pushing his sunglasses up to reveal a pair of genuinely adorable blue eyes. “Speed… She didn’t make it. I found her helmet. Crushed. Covered in brain, bone, meat. Inside and out.” I took the helmet with my Telekenesis and turned it over to examine it. It had been crushed in on the left side more than enough to pop a skull… While it was possible the gore belonged to somepony else, it was good enough evidence for me to believe she was dead. However, so long as no other parts of her turned up there was a small chance she was alive… A very very small chance, given how much she loved her new armor. A small part of me remembered when I was young. I’d have freaked out so bad just from seeing this thing, let alone holding it. Death is a funny thing. It seems like such a big deal the first two or three times you experience someone dying. Even before the world died, old ponies would react with solemn acceptance when their friends passed, or even if young ponies died tragically. It’s not that we didn’t feel for those left behind, or didn’t care for those who died. We’d just seen enough death to understand it was a normal part of life. It’s only a matter of time ‘til even immortals die. Nothing is truly indestructible. Of course, unlike those old ponies, I’d seen so much death I could genuinely not care about it if I wanted too. This wasn’t one of those times. “I didn’t know her for long. She had her problems. But she was my friend,” I said quietly. I looked over my shoulder to Nika, who seemed to understand what I was about to ask before I even said it. “I found nothing else… It’s possible she ditched her helmet mid battle,” he sighed and looked up into the sky for a moment. “I doubt it. She loved that suit.” I nodded and turned back to look at Speed’s helmet. “Yeah. Well, she’s in Tartarus now.” Nika’s wings flared in shock. “I— Isn’t that your people’s hell?” “Yeah,” I smirked as a mental picture unfolded behind my eyes. “Thing is, the golden streets and loving fellowship of Elysium would be her hell. Her tedious, dreary, hell.” I set Speed’s helmet down next to the hole I’d crawled out of. She’d run into the battle for the hay of it with a smile and a song. There was no way she wasn’t in the middle of the blast. An empty grave for a vaporized mare. Nika finished processing what I said and shook his head. “I don’t understand ponies near as well as I thought I did.” “Mm?” I asked quizzically. “You… have personalized your mythological—” I snorted and looked towards Nika. “Tartarus is real. Trust me. I wound up helping Twilight take Cerberus back there… You know, before the Ministries.” Nika let out an extremely passable griffon squawk of surprise. “Shto blyat you say?!” I frowned for a moment, then facehooved. “Riiiight, post-war and foreign. Tartaus exists. It’s one of the planes of existence adjacent to our own. Wizards have been using it for stuff for… thousands of years. It’s a realm of eternal night, monsters we called demons, and torment. Elysium may be mythical, but a long time ago Clover the Clever proved that evil people who die on this world end up there… somehow. I don’t know. I slept through a lot of Arcane History.” Nika pushed his glasses up again. “And… you can just… go there?” I nodded and flicked some dust off of my suit’s shoulder. “Mhm. Princess Celestia banished a lot of evil-doers there. There’s also a few natural or just so old we think they’re natural portals leading to it. One of them was in the Everfree Forest. Red-Eye’s burning may have closed it, or blocked off the cave to get to it.” Nika stroked his chin with one talon. “And you want to believe Speed went to Tartaurs, so you can rescue her?” I rolled my eyes. “No. I want to believe she went there because as a little ball of murder she’d be right at home and probably be in charge of the place after killing her way to the top.” She loved Omen. With any luck she was waking up in the claws of some monster looking to torment an Equestrian soul and saying something like “Yay! Outside has a Tartarus level!” then converting that demon into chunky salsa with her bare hooves. That would suit her much more than tea and cake with the wisest scholars of all time. “Mmm, da,” Nika agreed as he pushed his glasses back into place. “Of course, it does mean you want to think she could walk out of one of those portals… You’d think a ghoul of your age would understand loss better. Or at least, have healthier coping mechanisms.” I shot him a look. “Oh yeah? What about your coping mechanisms?” “Mine are simple,” Nika said quietly. “I added her to the list of names.” “List?” I asked with a tilt of my head. “Da, the list of names of friends these monsters have slain. The friends I will reference when I find the six-gunned stallion and say, ‘Hello, my name is Nika Silaverhawk. You killed my friends. SUCK ON KALASHNIKOV, CYKA!” “We have the same coping mechanism,” I said with a dark grin. “Good,” Nika muttered. “Twice the chance they bleed into the sands.” “Anyways, Tartarus’s natural portals are one way,” I said honestly. “You can’t fix dead. But you can hope the dead are happy.” Nika reached up to slide his gas mask down just long enough to flash me a coy smile. “Is that a challenge?” “Is what a challenge?” “I think I could fix dead… given time and parts.” Nika said with a self assured tail swish. I laughed and shook my head. “Maybe you could. But sure as hell not without a body.” I used my magic to lower Speed’s helmet into the hole and then push some rubble on top to bury it. “Fight on, sister.” I said for a eulogy. Nika walked over to my side and together we stood a silent vigil for a few moments. “So…” Nika said quietly. “What now, podruga?” “You said Gears was far enough out to survive, right?” Nika nodded. “Then we hope she remembers I said I’d meet her in Whinnyapolis if we were separated,” I answered. “I have business there. For a while, I had the ability to see spirits and souls… It’s faded now, but while I was having that vision, my dead friends told me to go to Lyra’s old office. That it was important.” Nika hummed. “I am here to avenge my friends, but as a Silverhawk… I cannot say no to a spirit’s requests. I’m not going to let a friend go into danger alone either.” I raised an eyebrow and gave him a sidelong glance. “We’re friends? So soon? In your opinion, I mean.” “Da. We fought together. That is good enough,” he said, offering a talon for my shoulder, then hesitating. “Erm… You’re not the type of mare-loving-mare who hates drakes touching them, are you?” I laughed and shook my head. He placed his talon comfortingly on my shoulder. “I just don’t want to sleep with the members of your sex. That’s all,” I snickered. “Hugs are fine.” I returned his hug before letting go. “Sooo… you got our guns?” Nika nodded and started to walk away towards a pair of ratty gray duffle bags resting atop a collapsed quonset hut. “I helped myself to a few other things too.” I followed him, and as I arrived he unzipped one of the bags and rummaged through it, producing my blaster in a matter of seconds. I took it from his talon with my magic and slid it into place in my suit’s holster. “What else did you get?” “Snacc, raw vodka, and—” I held up a hoof. “Excuse me, Raw Vodka? Is that some kind of rare brand? I thought I tried all the vodkas out there.” I could really go for a shot of something good right about now. Nika turned around, his cheeks wrinkled as he grinned at me behind his mask. With a deft flick of his talons he opened the other bag and produced a single potato. “Raw vodka.” I gave him my best sick-of-your-horseapples stare. Nika rached into his jacket with his free hand, and produced a small collapsible cup. He opened with with a flick of his wrist, set it down, then cupped the potato in both hands and squeezed. A rivulet of clear liquid flowed through his talons into the bowl. The potato vanished. “Raw Vodka,” Nika repeated. My expression morphed into shock. “Wait, what?!” Nika laughed, rolled the potato out of his right sleeve, and then let a small falsk slide out of his left sleeve. “Aaahh! Got you!” I shook my head and sighed. “You did. You did. So… How long has it been?” “Since you were buried?” Nika asked while draining the bowl into his flask. “Yeah.” “Eh… Day? Almost two? I was out for a bit, then I helped some people in town who needed a doctor before coming here,” Nika admitted bashfully. “I… I thought everypony but Gears was dead. But, I knew I had to make sure.” “I’m glad you came back then,” I said as I lifted the food and extra supplies bag with my magic and strapped it onto my back. “Come on, I know a Ghoul Road that will take us where we’re going… In theory. I’ve never been to her office since… Since the end.” Nika shook his head. “Nyet,” he said as he strapped the other bag to me. Why me? I felt like I should get an explanation before taking it off. “You have a better idea?” I asked as I adjusted the second HEAVY bag’s strap. Nika nodded. “We fly.” “I hate to break it to you, but I don’t know any flight spells,” I said with a flat expression. “I also couldn’t cast one if I wanted too. Not enough juice.” Nika grinned behind his mask again. “Remember how I used to live here?” I nodded. “I left a few things behind. I thought other ponies could use them. I thought, since we’re running around, and I’d have to find a ground-bound friend, that I would pick one of them up,” Nika said as he walked over the ruined quonset hut. “Lucky for me, she wasn’t smashed to bits. Hop in!” I reared up to look over the rubble out of curiosity, and beheld the single sketchiest sky wagon of all time. It looked like somepony had chiseled down a brick to roughly approximate a skywagon’s shape, painted it black, dented every last body panel, then used some white electrical tape to add three pinstripes over the front across the roof and down the truck. The whole thing was rusted out, and several of the rusted panels and supports had random other bits of metal welded on to replace missing bits or patch over cracked bits. Most concerningly, someone had painted “Blyatmobile” on the front beneath the weird L shaped sailboat-looking manufacture’s logo on the grill. Or at least, the rusty hunk of scrap metal with bullet holes in it serving as a grill. I spoke Griffonese… I knew what that meant. The interior was not much better. The rear bench seat had an old griffonese style rug tossed over it, as well as mismatched accent pillows and a random teddy bear resting atop it. The navigator’s seat was covered in some kind of old beaded “massage” seat cover, while the passenger seat was covered by a disgustingly orange horse blanket. “Uuuuhhhh…” I looked the machine over several more times. “How does that thing fly?” “Like my sister,” Nika said as he slipped into the flight harnice. “The dead one or the live one?” I asked with a suspicious frown. Nika laughed and pointed to the cabin with a wing. “Strongest sky wagon in all Griffon Kingdoms! She’s ugly, but comfy. She’s got quad flux regs and full rack of redundant spark batteries. Hop in, push holotape into the deck, and kick back.” I took a deep breath, let it out as a muttered “Buck it, I regenerate”, then climbed into the genuinely extremely comfortable backseat. “Huh…” I murmured happily as I pushed the hotape in the deck next to the navigator’s seat into place. The wagon’s amazingly functional sound system immediately began to play a nice, bass heavy, bouncy, techno/club song similar to the melody Nika had made me play earlier. “What is this genera called?” I asked, growing a little to the exotic yet familiar beat. “Hardbass. You ready?” “Yeah, as much as I’m gonna be,” I admitted with a nervous chuckle. “Davai, let's go!” Nika called back as he took off, pulling the wagon into the air with a surprisingly minimal effort and a quiet enough wine of the flux regulators to be almost hidden by the music. Okay. It flew. Let’s hope it continued to fly. Also that it could land. After all, Whinnyapolis was a long flight away, and with any luck my mare was waiting there for me. If not… Well, I’d just have to kill Gale twice as hard for the both of us.