//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10 - Light My Fire 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny 
// by MagnetBolt 
//------------------------------//

I think I spent more time at the hospital than I did at my own home. I was always getting kicked out for being too loud, interrupting Dad when he was working on something important, or just generally being an energetic filly. And since I was clumsy and dumb, running around without adult supervision usually meant I ended up needing a visit to see a doctor. 

Sometimes if it was bad enough Dad would even come with me.

I’d never seen it like this. It was dark and quiet. The lights should have been on, even if it was midnight on Remembrance Day. The doors were smashed in, the panels of solid rainbow broken out of their frames and lying on the cloud floor and letting in the mist from outside.

“Is it just me, or is this place creepy as Tartarus?” Quattro asked as we walked into the emergency room. It was like coming home to find somepony had robbed the place. Seats were overturned, the ancient magazines were ripped apart and littering the floor, and there was more blood than I’d ever seen in one place. It was oddly quiet and dark, the only light coming from a Sparkle-Cola machine that had been empty for longer than I’d been alive.

“The injured must have swarmed this place,” Emerald whispered. “Then the infected followed the rush. Even if they barricaded the doors, how many ponies were already inside before they knew they’d turn and start attacking the rest?”

“Why are you two whispering?” I asked. “Nopony’s here.”

Naturally, the second I said that, a nurse slammed into the window separating the staff area from the waiting room. I jumped, and Emerald and Quattro brought their guns to bear. We watched her for a moment as she slumped against the window, smearing blackened blood over it as she weakly beat at it.

“Nopony’s here, huh?” Quattro asked, once it was clear she wasn’t going to punch through the wall.

“Okay, nopony else is here,” I said, tempting fate. I looked around, but nothing lunged out of the shadows to attack.

“That just makes me wonder where they went,” Emerald said, lowering her rifle.

“Hold on, do you hear that?” Quattro asked, holding up a hoof. We could just distantly hear a voice coming from deeper inside.

“The hospital is currently on emergency lockdown. The Ministry of Peace apologizes for this inconvenience. This lockdown is for your safety. Thank you for your patience.” There was a short interlude of smooth, calming jazz, and then the message started to repeat.

“Somepony must have activated the security systems after the attack started,” Quattro said. “Probably some kind of protocol in place from the war in case of a zebra attack.”

“On a hospital in a cloud city?” Emerald asked.

“Everything was standardized back then, remember?” Quattro said. “This is good, though. If things are locked down, it means there won’t be infected ponies swarming us. They’ll all be stuck where they were when the lockdown started, like she is.”

She motioned to the nurse.

“We need to find the pharmacy,” Destiny said.

“There’s one near the main entrance,” I said.

“That’s the patient pharmacy. We need the main stores. What we’re looking for won’t be distributed over the counter.”

“Of course you need the good drugs,” Quattro said. “Any idea where to look?”

“It’s a hospital. We just need to get into the staff areas and look for signs.”

“The staff areas are the best places to search for survivors, too,” Emerald said. “Anypony who wasn’t working with patients might be holed up in an office or lab somewhere.”

“This way,” I said, motioning for them to follow me. “Destiny, anything you can do to improve the view?” The hallway was dark. There should have been emergency lights, but everything was broken or flickering uselessly.

“Sure,” she said. I felt a tiny spark of magic well up, and my horn or, I guess, my helmet’s horn lit up like a flare.

"Any chance you can point out anything that wants to kill me?"

"Sorry. There's an augury effect I can activate that would function like an EFS system, but it's too power intensive to use until we can find a new fusion core," Destiny apologized.

"It wouldn't help much," Emerald said. "I've got red everywhere. Anypony alive is so panicked right now that they're going to read as hostile on Eyes-Forward, and with multiple floors it's already almost useless to begin with."

“Great. Well, we can get to the staff areas through the ICU,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I know the right door.” I shoved at the locked door, then stepped back and kicked it open, shattering the lock. I wasn’t sure what to expect on the other side. Maybe a pack of moaning ponies with nanometal claws and SIVA regenerating their wounds?

“Stop. Quiet. Do you smell that?” Emerald asked.

I sniffed at the air.

“Ozone?” I said, at the sharp stink.

“The gas lines are ruptured,” she said. “I think there’s an oxygen leak.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“It means we can’t shoot anything, and we have to be very careful not to make a spark,” Quattro said grimly. “Otherwise, boom.”

“Well I’m glad we’re keeping things simple,” I whispered.

We crept into the ICU. I was glad it was mostly dark. I could only see a little of what was in the side rooms, strapped to the beds and beeping machines, half of the medical devices blaring red light and very worrying sounds. I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I was pretty sure it meant there wasn’t anypony in the room that we could save. My hoof came down in a puddle, and I looked down to see red, slowly trickling towards a drain on the floor.

“I used to like this hospital,” I whispered to myself. I looked back to Quattro and Emerald. They were quietly following along behind me, so silent that I felt like every step I took was a thunderclap by comparison.

“I’m diverting as much power as I can to reducing weight,” Destiny’s voice hissed in my ears. “I’m sorry it’s not more. We really need that new fusion core.”

“One thing at a time,” I muttered, leading the way to the staff door. It was much better secured than the door to the ER. I readied myself to kick it open and felt Emerald grab my hoof.

“Don’t,” she whispered, glancing at something slowly moving on one of the hospital beds, waiting for it to go still before continuing. “You’ll cause a spark. This whole room will go up.”

“What are we supposed to do?” I asked quietly.

The intercom squealed and the smooth jazz stopped, replaced with a stallion’s voice. “Hello? Is this working? Are you sane?”

“I guess there were some survivors after all,” Quattro said. “At least there’s a little good news.”

“Do you have any way to open this door?” I asked.

“Can you help me?” the voice said. “I’m stuck in one of the radiology rooms. There are those things waiting outside, but I don’t think they’ve noticed me.”

“I know the way,” I said. “Wouldn’t be my first trip to get an X-ray.”

The lock buzzed, and I pulled the door open, motioning for Quattro and Emerald to go through while I held it. The noise had already gotten some attention. The shapes on the beds were starting to struggle and moan and try to get up. Something lurched to its hooves at the nurse’s station and turned towards the sound.

“Down the ramp!” I pointed, slamming the door shut and backing away. The door shuddered, something hitting it hard enough to dent it. It wasn’t going to hold. Worse, with the gas leak in the room, and the metal the SIVA infection was creating…

We ran for the ramp, ducking around the corner. I heard a second slam against the door, and then a rush of heat and pressure. The security door was blasted open, and fire shot across the hallway like a dragon’s breath. Alarms immediately blared into action with warbling, distorted tones, and the ceiling turned dark as a layer of cloud was converted into a torrent of water, splashing down over everything and putting out what few flames had found fuel to catch on.

I peeked around the corner and saw a crumpled, blackened form. I waited a moment, but it didn’t get back up.

“Looks like fire doesn’t agree with them,” I whispered.

“I’ll keep my eyes open for a flamethrower,” Destiny said.

“Can’t you… cast a fire spell, or something?”

“I used to know more spells…” she said quietly. “It’s all foggy. Your life is supposed to flash in front of your eyes when you die, but I feel like I can barely hold onto a few important memories.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s probably just an undead thing I’ll have to get used to. But hey, if you find me a spellbook maybe I can figure something out? A fire spell would be useful.”

I nodded and turned back to the ramp, running to catch up to Quattro and Emerald.

“We’re clear behind us for now,” I said. “But that security door is broken. If there are more of them, they might wander in.”

“The central pharmacy might be in the other direction anyway,” Emerald said. “Radiology is that way?” she asked, pointing.
I nodded. “They put it in the basement.”

“Makes sense, clouds aren’t very good radiological shielding, so you want as much as you can get,” Emerald said. She stopped at the next turn and held up a wing, making a few quick motions like she was doing a fancy hoofshake.

“...What’s she doing?” I whispered.

“Overestimating your knowledge of Enclave military signals,” Quattro whispered back. “Two enemies around the corner. You pop out and provide light, then she and I will take them out.”

Emerald scowled back at us. I shook my head and hopped around the corner, the light from my armor shining down the hallway and catching two infected stumbling in the dark. They froze up and turned to look, and in that instant, she and Quattro gunned them down, beams raking down the hospital corridor and downing them.

“Good work,” Emerald said. We trotted closer and she put a few more beams into them until the cascade effect hit and they turned to ash.

“This should be the right room,” I said. I knocked on the door. “Hello?”

“Ah, one moment!” I heard from the other side. There was the sound of furniture being moved, and then the door cracked open. The old stallion on the other side looked at us. “Good, you made it. I’ve been having problems getting in touch with anypony else.”

“This might be a good chance to get her checked out,” Quattro suggested, tilting her head towards me.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You got shot in the head and promised your dad you’d have somepony look at it,” Quattro reminded me. “This is the only doctor we’re likely to find.”

“Shot in the head?” the stallion asked.

“It’s been a long week,” I said.

He opened the door and motioned for us to come in. “Put the table back in front of the door once you’re inside,” he said. “I don’t trust the locks. They’re just for keeping kids from wandering around, not stopping monsters.”

The x-ray room was in better condition than the rest of the hospital. For one thing, the lights were working. He pulled on sterile hoof-covers and motioned to the exam table.

“You’ll need to take the helmet off,” he said.

“I haven’t taken it off since I got shot,” I admitted. “It’s not the only thing keeping my skull together, is it?”

“It’s safe,” Destiny promised. “Let me unlock the seal for you.”

I heard a hiss around my neck, and I gingerly lifted the helmet off. I halfway expected a rush of blood or sudden pain, or to have my head come off with it or something. It was one of those things you just get scared about when you don’t know how bad an injury really is.

“My initial diagnosis is that you need a bath,” the doctor said. “You there, in the gold armor? Can you give me the bottle next to the sink, and that rag? Thank you.”

He tipped the bottle onto the rag and used the wetted cloth to clean my face.

“You’ve got old, dried blood all over you,” he said. “This will only take a moment…”

The cloth was stained brown by the time he was done. He looked carefully at my forehead, brushing part of my mane aside.

“The wound is completely closed, I’m guessing you’ve had a healing potion since you were injured?”

I started to nod.

“Don’t move your head while I’m examining you,” he chided.

“I pumped a few healing potions into her,” Destiny said. The voice came from the helmet lying off to the side. I looked at it in dull surprise. I didn't know she'd still end up talking out of it. “I might have also done a little emergency surgery.”

“Surgery?” the doctor sighed. “Wonderful. And with the healing potions it’s impossible to tell how it took. Alright, lay back. I’m going to take a few images. This’ll only take a moment.”

“Do I need a lead apron or--?”

“You’re wearing armor. If it can’t hold up to a medical x-ray, you should ask for a refund,” the doctor said, pulling a boxy camera on a mechanical arm down to point at me. “Hold still.”

“I’m going to have to shut down the near-field broadcaster while you get imaged,” Destiny said. “It could cause interference otherwise.”

“Isn’t that going to hurt?” I asked.

“You’re a big girl, Chamomile. You’ll be okay.”





It took longer than I expected for the x-ray to develop, so I got to sit there waiting for the bad news. Also, for the record, despite anything Quattro or Emerald might tell you, I didn’t cry at all when Destiny flipped the switch. I barely felt anything at all.

I couldn’t stop imagining the SIVA coming back to life and crawling around inside me, though.

“Obviously we didn’t know anything about it until we started getting patients,” the doctor explained. “I don’t know what it was like out there, but I can tell you in here we were totally unprepared.”

“I doubt anypony is ever ready for a mechanical dragon-horror,” Quattro said.

“I’d swear the infection was designed just to kill doctors,” the stallion sighed. “When we started getting injured ponies in, the first thing we did was triage. The worst-injured get treatment first, hopeless cases are made comfortable, and anypony who can wait gets to sit on their flanks until we can get to them. The problem is, the worse a pony is injured, the faster they changed.”

“So they revived while you were working on them?” Emerald asked.

The doctor nodded. “And by the time we knew what we were dealing with, all the lower-priority patients started to change. They’d already been moved to other wards to make room! The whole hospital was overrun.”

The helmet lit up. “Did you get a chance to study the infection at all?” Destiny asked.

The doctor stared at the empty helmet for a moment, then nodded. “The progression of the disease is similar to some cancers. It most resembles a transmissible form of cancer that was known in Tasmanian devils. Quite a fascinating disease, really, the cells are transmitted by bite and then continue to grow in the infected animal. Obviously there are differences, since this infection almost seems engineered. It repairs the body with metal, but causes traumatic brain injury, resulting in confusion, aggression, and further infections.”

Quattro leaned against the wall, looking at the door. “Where is it even getting the metal from? There isn’t enough iron in the blood to make more than a few nails, right?”

“SIVA can transmute elements,” Destiny said. “It’s turning the damaged cells it cannibalizes into whatever it needs. Up to iron, anyway. Past that is pretty energy-intensive, or we would have used it to turn lead into gold to get funding.”

There was a beep from the timer, and the doctor got up, sliding film out of the developer and holding it up to the light.

“Alright, let’s see what we’ve got,” he muttered, putting them up against a backlight. On the one hoof, it was good to have proof that my skull wasn’t empty. On the other hoof, there was a lot of dark, angular stuff that didn’t look natural.

“Whaaaat is that?” I asked, touching my scalp.

“Okay look, I said I wasn’t a brain surgeon, right?” Destiny said. “I’m a rocket scientist. I just… I improvised. The suit’s database had some information and firmware for cybernetic interfaces, the implants themselves were in good condition, and I worked backwards from there. It’s a logic co-processor combined with some memory modules, and I’d like to pat myself on the back here and say I did an excellent job with what I had to work with, okay?”

Something hot flashed past my snout. I froze.

“Down!” Destiny yelled.

I dropped down, and a second laser bolt missed my newly-imaged skull.

“She’s infected!” the doctor said around the laser pistol he’d pulled out of his white coat. “You see all the angular venous traces on the x-ray? I saw the same thing in all the infected! You have to put her down before she changes! If you destroy the head, they stay down!”

“No, no, she’s okay!” Destiny said. “I’m controlling--”

I held up the helmet like a shield, and the third shot bounced off the metal.

“Ow!” Destiny yelped.

Quattro kicked the doctor in the gut, making him spit out the gun. Emerald got her hooves on it before he could grab it again.

“As I was saying,” Destiny huffed. “I’m controlling her infection. More importantly, it’s not the same thing. Chamomile is infected with SIVA that isn’t running any particular program. It’s a blank slate. The rest of the infected are stuck with whatever monster my brother created.”

I got up and looked at the burn mark on the helmet, buffing it off before putting it back on. I didn’t want to have my head exposed with the doctor around.

“I can’t believe you put all that junk in my brain!”

“Would you rather be dead? You knew I made some emergency fixes!”

“I didn’t think it was half my brain!”

“It’s a quarter of your brain at most, and you didn’t even notice! If anything, it’s made you better at math.”

“No, I’m terrible at math.”

“What’s two plus two?”

“Four. That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Seventy-three times forty-seven?”

“Three thousand four-hundred thirty-one-- son of a mule! I’m a bucking calculator?!”

“You can thank me later.”

Quattro coughed and clapped her hooves. “So, who wants to take a trip to the pharmacy?” Quattro asked.





“Why won’t you let me have the pistol?” I asked.

“You’ll break it,” Emerald said.

“I won’t break it.”

“You broke my rifle.”

She had a point. I did break her rifle. I leaned around the next corner and waved them forward when I didn’t see anything ready to kill us. The doctor swiped an access card and opened up the pharmacy door.

“I hope you’re not just here for drugs,” he muttered.

“This is business, not pleasure,” Quattro promised. “First, we need something to regrow feathers. The healing potions we used didn’t work.”

“Mm. Was there a significant delay between when the feathers were damaged and when you had the potion? More than an hour or two and the potion won’t work.” The doctor motioned for Quattro to lift her wing and checked the feathers. “Yes, that’s what I thought. They scarred over instead of regenerating. There’s only one good way to fix this.”

“A more powerful healing potion?” I suggested.

“A recovery talisman would do it, but we’re in the pharmacy and not a surgical theatre. We can fix this right now, but it’s… unpleasant.” He looked at Quattro. “I’d recommend plucking the damaged feathers and immediately applying a low-grade healing potion. It’s easier to regrow them entirely than try to clip them again below the scarring and hope they regenerate.”

“That sounds painful,” Quattro sighed.

“I can give you a shot of Med-X before the procedure,” the doctor said. “You won’t feel a thing.”

Quattro nodded, and the doctor started looking over the shelves, pulling down a few mostly-empty bins.

“We were saving some of this for a rainy day, but… this is the definition of an emergency if there ever was one,” he sighed and injected Quattro before unwrapping tweezers and yanking damaged feathers out. I had to look away. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but there was just something about seeing a pony get plucked like that. It could turn your stomach.

Quattro grunted a few times. The Med-X might have dulled the pain but it still had to feel deeply unpleasant.

“Now drink this,” the doctor said. Quattro chugged a healing potion, and I was able to watch the new feathers come in, gleaming and healed.

“At least I can get back into the air,” Quattro said. She sighed. “I never want to have to do that again.”

“My turn,” I said, presenting my wings. The doctor hesitated, then injected me and got to work. Trust me, you don’t want to know what it felt like. If you’re deeply, deeply curious and want to give it a shot for yourself but you don’t have wings, just have somepony yank a few hairs out of your mane without warning. Even with the drugs I felt it. There was a terrible emptiness when they were all out, like the feeling of a freshly empty tooth socket. The healing potion couldn’t come soon enough, and I took the helmet off to chug it down directly, putting Destiny down on a stack of forms.

“Uh, Chamomile?” Quattro said. I could feel my feathers regrowing. The rapid healing itched unpleasantly. I looked back at her, and she pointed to my wings. I decided I could risk a glance now that I could feel feathers coming in.

My new primaries were silver. They looked like knives, or tin foil, or…

I swallowed down panic and touched one with a hoof. It felt like part of me, but far away, calloused.

“Are you going to be able to fly like that?” Quattro asked.

“I have no idea,” I said, flexing my wing. Everything seemed to be working.

“Don’t try it in here!” the doctor said, pushing my wing down.

“Chamomile, why don’t you grab those bottles of sterile water and stow them away?” Emerald said, offering a distraction. “I don’t suppose there’s food in here?”

“Actually there are some dietary supplements,” the doctor said, pointing them out. “They’re something developed during the war for ponies who had trouble eating a normal diet. You see the pouches? Yes, those. They’re full of a protein powder that includes enough calories and vitamins to keep a pony going indefinitely. Very useful as a meal replacement for ponies who can’t manage solid food.”

I nodded and grabbed those too.

“We’re looking for something specific as well,” Destiny said from her perch on the sign-out forms. “I’m hoping you have some Enferon.”

The doctor blinked, adjusting his glasses. “We might. That’s a rather unusual request, though. It’s prescribed as an alternative to RadAway for ponies who are allergic, and in long-term radiological treatment. Why on Equestria would you need it?”

“It prevents some types of uncontrolled cellular division,” Destiny explained. “It should be able to prevent SIVA from replicating in the body as long as there isn’t already massive infection.”

“Too late for me to use it, huh?” I guessed.

“Sorry,” she said. “But if somepony else gets bitten or hurt, it could mean all the difference.”

“Let me see…” the doctor moved between shelves, looking. “Here we are.” He picked up an old vial and blew the dust off it. “Not a lot. A few doses, perhaps, depending on how much you need to give a pony. There’s not much call for it these days.”

Quattro took it, shaking the bottle and looking at it. “It’s something, at least.”

The floor shook, the whole building rumbling.

“I’d like to go a whole day without feeling like everything’s falling apart around me,” Quattro said, looking around. “I hope the fire in the ICU didn’t spread.”

“It shouldn’t have,” the doctor said. “We have an excellent fire suppression system.”

“With our luck it’s Chamomile’s mom.” Quattro looked around. “Only one door… doctor, I’d suggest taking cover over there while we check it out.” Quattro pointed to the far side of the room, near the portable oxygen tanks.

“Good idea. You take care of it and I promise I’ll patch you up again afterwards,” the doctor said, backing away.

Quattro nodded then turned to Emerald and me, grabbing Destiny and tossing the helmet over to me to put back on. “Well, Emma, you’re the military expert. What’s your plan?”

Emerald thought for a moment. “Secure an exit. This is a hospital, there are going to be a lot of clearly marked emergency exits, and the security lockdown won’t prevent egress. We secure an exit corridor, then use the hospital intercom to tell any other survivors where to go.”

“What about ponies too injured to move on their own?” I asked. “I mean, this is a hospital, right? There could be patients stuck in bed.”

“There’s only so much we can do,” Emerald said quietly. “If we try to go room-by-room and clear every floor ourselves, we’ll exhaust ourselves. We don’t have enough ponies or enough ammunition. We can’t help anypony if we end up dead.”

Quattro snorted. “That is always the military party line, isn’t it?”

“Do you have a better plan?”

“Patient rooms have windows. We can fly, the infected have problems getting off the ground. You just have to think outside the box. Or outside the hospital, in this case.”

“That… could work,” Emerald admitted.

Quattro smirked and patted her shoulder. “Nopony else has to die today.”

The floor shook again. We all turned to the single door. I grabbed the wrench out of my vector trap, the heavy steel tool a welcome weight in my hooves. There was a feeling in the air, an itch in the back of my mind that I couldn’t explain. I could just tell something was coming closer. Any moment now it was going to--

The doctor screamed behind us. We spun around to see a massive metal claw practically as big as the stallion’s whole body grab him and pull him through a hole in the wall. There was a crunch and the doctor stopped screaming.

“CHAMOMILE!” shouted a distorted voice from outside.

“No. Bucking. Way.” I hissed. “How?!”

“It must be tracking you somehow,” Destiny said. “But this armor is environmentally sealed-- of course. The near-field transmission! I turned it off for a second at the hotel to disable the nano-disassemblers, and again here to get a clean x-ray. It must be able to sense your SIVA infection! When the NFT is turned off, your SIVA must have broadcast your location data!”

Steel claws sliced through the wall, tearing up the solidified cloud and cutting through the plumbing and electrical lines inside, sending a shower of sparks and water into the air. The lavender stallion ripped his way into the room, in even worse shape than before. His jaw was twisted and broken, his teeth were metal fangs, and his hooves were halfway mutated into grasping talons. There couldn’t have been much flesh left in him at all. The baleful, tumorous eye glared from his shoulder, the slitted pupil focusing on me.

“Is this a bad time to tell you I only have one rocket left?” Quattro asked.

“It’s a bad time to only have one rocket,” Emerald retorted. She opened up with her rifle, the beams burning away flesh that was just as quickly replaced with metal. Pistons moved under the stallion’s remaining coat like he’d been skinned and wrapped around a metal monster, every motion looking like agony.

I ran to the side, the creature turning to follow me. I couldn’t even think of it as a pony anymore. Anything equine was being replaced bit by bit. Gears twisted in his chest when he moved, chewing into the remaining flesh like it was in the way of whatever it was becoming. I got my hooves on a heavy shelf and shouldered it over, trying to pin the creature under the heavy shelving and boxes full of paper and glass.

The thing probably spent less time tearing its way out of the shelves than I did pushing them over. The claw ripped right through the boxes and almost took my head off.

“Oh come on!” I yelled, slapping it ineffectively with the wrench and flying back, the room small enough that even one wingbeat slammed me into the far wall. “If this is really about Mom trying to find me, she wouldn’t want me dead!”

“I don’t think he likes you!” Quattro shouted, peppering the monster with more bolts. She and Emerald kept their distance as much as the room allowed, which wasn’t much.

“Careful, there are oxygen tanks on that side of the room,” Emerald warned. “Don’t hit them! It’ll kill all of us!”

I ducked under a wild swipe, claws as long as my entire legs whizzing through the air above my head. I looked back and kicked the door open. “He’s going to take us apart if we stay in here!”

“Everypony out!” Quattro yelled. She backed up, holding her fire, until we were all outside, then fired her last rocket and dove for cover. After a moment, she looked up from where she was taking cover and peeked into the room.

The rocket was floating in a glittering field of force.

“Oh right, the shielding talisman,” Quattro muttered.

“It’s no problem, I can just shoot--” Emerald started, before the rocket twisted around and came back at us. She yelped and dropped down, leaving me right in its path. I felt a surge of magic, and red light surrounded the rocket for a moment, just long enough to send it straight up into the ceiling.

There was a burst of heat and force, and we were thrown down the hall in a heap.

“That was close,” Destiny said. A few indicators were blinking red in my heads-up display. “Good thing you were wearing armor.”

“Couldn’t you have pushed it some other direction?” I asked, gasping. It felt like I had at least one broken rib.

“Next time you deflect the rocket and see if you do better,” she grumbled.

The monster tore its way out of the pharmacy and into the corridor, roaring when it spotted us. Quattro and Emerald kept firing, but it didn’t even react to the magical beams playing across its armored hide.

“I’ve got an idea,” Destiny said. “The Enferon we picked up -- it can stop the SIVA from replicating.”

“Yeah, that’s why we need it to cure anypony who gets infected!”

“If you use it on him, it’ll stop his ability to regenerate for a while. With how much of his body is reliant on SIVA, it’ll be like poison!”

“We’ve only got one vial!” Quattro yelled.

“It’ll give us a fighting chance,” Emerald countered. “We might be able to find more, but if that thing--”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, we’re no good to anypony dead,” Quattro sighed.

“I can dispel the shield for a few seconds by disrupting the talisman,” Destiny said.

“Right. Give me the vial,” Quattro said. “I’m the fastest. Chamomile, you distract it and do whatever Destiny says. Emerald, you try and figure out a way to actually kill it!”

“I’ll go right, you go left,” I said, charging at the monster with my wrench. I figured there was only a tiny chance this would work, but the thing was focused on me, so as long as I kept its attention, I could lure it away from the others and they could escape. Not that I told them that. It felt sort of like quitting, and they’d probably try to talk me out of it.

My wrench bounced off the creature’s hide, and it turned to follow me, trying to get the big eye on its shoulder focused on where I was.

“Come on you big, dumb idiot! You don’t even know what a good mixed drink tastes like--” The claw was faster than I expected. 

I got the wrench up trying to block it, and there was a shower of sparks as the tool was sheared through effortlessly. The handle stopped just above my hoof, the edge glowing red from the heat.

“Okay, the drink wasn’t great,” I admitted.

I felt magic surge through me, and a bolt of light and force erupted from my helmet, hitting the creature between the eyes and dazing it.

“Now!” Destiny yelled.

Quattro was already on top of it, doing a backflip right in front of the blinded creature and throwing the vial into its fanged maw. It bit down on instinct, and the glass ruptured. The effect was almost instantaneous. He started staggering back, clutching at his face with his claws, ripping himself apart.

“I bet that tastes worse!” I yelled, as he fell back down the hallway, fluids leaking from his body. It was more like motor oil than blood, dark sludge oozing to the ground from gaps and tears in his patchwork body. Quattro took a few shots with her lasers, and this time the burns weren’t healing.

“I’ve got something else for it to snack on!” Emerald yelled. She flew out of the pharmacy with a green tank in her hooves, tossing it at the creature and letting it bounce and roll to a stop at its clawed feet. She backed off and took one last shot. 

The oxygen canister exploded when the beam weapon punched through it, shrapnel and flames enveloping the monster.
It fell in a heap, moaning.

“Is it over?” I asked.

The creature lifted up its claw, reaching for us. I held up the broken wrench like it was a weapon. There was a sigh, and the draconic eye went dark, the claw falling limp to the floor. We all stared at it for a few seconds, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“It’s over,” Quattro said, flipping open her helmet to wipe sweat from her brow. “As much fun as this has been, can we skip any more monster fights today?”

“I second that,” I sighed.

Emerald was standing stock still, and slowly put a hoof to her helmet.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Outside!” she snapped. “Now!” She bolted for the exit, and I gave Quattro a look before we followed, confused.





“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whispered, looking up at the sky.

A cloudship a little larger than a Raptor was hovering over Cirrus Valley, the dark hull painted a navy that made it hard to pick out details from this distance.

“That’s a Garuda-class heavy cruiser,” Quattro said, shielding her eyes and looking up at it. “That’s a rare sight.”

“Is this good or bad?” I asked.

“Bad,” Emerald said. “That’s not a standard military ship.”

The announcement boomed around us like thunder. It echoed from the cloud walls and reverberated, a smooth stallion’s voice to pronounce our fate. “Attention, citizens of Cirrus Valley! You are ordered to remain in place for the duration of this operation! We are here to help, do not resist!"