//------------------------------//
// What's Eating Blueberry Cream? 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Taking Life By The Horns 
// by Pokonic 
//------------------------------//

I knew what I was looking at, technically. It was a pony with a fish tail and a mouth of sharp teeth on the far side of the room, behind a wall of glass. However, the reality of the situation and the breach in general common sense it displayed made me stop for a moment.

I also saw it give us a little wave with a mottled-looking hoof and effortlessly dived backwards into the filthy water, possibly just to screw with us. The unholy sight of the actual aquarium was not helping my mental state, either.

Then again, since when have I been concerned with my own mental state?

I have a little pony to look after, apparently.

“Blueberry?”

The little mare did not move from her spot. Her left eye was twitching slightly, and I swore Self Defense was shifting slightly in its holster. 

Which was impossible, of course, because her horn was not glowing. Right? Unicorn horns glow when they use magic, right?

“Watchful, we can either say the locals were right and get out of here, or we can admit that we just saw a giant fish pony and go inside this place.” she said shakily.

I did not like either option, frankly. “If it is a haunting, it’s a weird one. And I don’t think that a fish pony could live outside its tank. And we are already here.”

To my genuine surprise, she accepted that. “So, I suggest you go inside first.”

I gave her my most disapproving glare, and dutifully followed.

At times like this, I wondered if my father was right about me needing to grow a spine. But what was I going to do, punt Blueberry into the glass wall that’s a small crack away from disaster?

Speaking of halls and walls, both were ominously clean and the latter actually squeaked as I walked on the pearly-white tile. However, it was the contents of the tanks that got my attention. While the bottoms portions were covered in a brown mat of unknowable filth, the actual fish were somewhat eye-catching, considering the glowing trails they made. I tried to get a good look at one, which I did, unfortunately.

When I glimpsed the first row of glazed dinner plate-sized eyes on one specimen, my legs gave out under me for whatever reason and I hit the floor on my back. It might have been because I was that terrified. Curse whatever part of me that could be considered part goat.

Blueberries squealed, and nearly slide on the ground to do her best to help me up. She gave a quick glance to the tank, saw the contents of it, and gave me the horrified look package, with shrunken irises and all.

“Hey Blueberry,” I said weakly, “It’s probably Taint.”

She said nothing; as she was too busy checking my head to make sure it was not cracked open. It didn’t feel like it, but the bases of my horns felt like they were splitting open.

“Oh Goddesses, are you okay?”

With help from my trusty block of rebar, I managed to get back up on my hooves. “Yes, I think I am. Pretty sure, anyway.”

She looked relived, in any case, which was a good sign. “Okay, that’s good.“

We stood for a few moments in the morbid hallway, desperately trying to avoid looking at the tanks and failing miserably.

Blueberry pointed a leg at my belt. “Watchful, is that a map?”

I patted it with a free hand. “Yeah, it is. Found it in the janitor’s closet, same place where the controls for the door are.”

She gave a little huff of annoyance. “Well, let’s see it! If we are going in here, we should know where we should go so we can get out of this dump!”

Well then.

“You could be nicer, Blueberry.”

She smirked at me at first, but then frowned. “Sorry. I must seem like a jerk.”

I said nothing, but set down my club and rolled the map on the floor. Considering she was closer to it, Blueberry took the liberty of examining it.

“Okay, we are here.” she said, pointing a hoof to on of the far edges of the map. “And the main water system is....huh.” She slid her hoof to one of the center squares. “It’s on the basement, but you have to go through the gift shop into the shark....oh, well the only entrance to the basement is near the shark tanks.”

Well, golly.

She saw my expression, and grinned. “Oh, what’s the matter? Afraid the sea pony will get you?”

“Blueberry, it’s big and probably is some sort of immortal mutant. And probably has some freaky mutant powers.”

Wait a moment, something doesn’t make sense.

“Blueberry, how are these fish still alive, and how did some get outside?”

She looked at the map a little closer, and grinned widely. “Oh, this is really cool! This whole aquarium is one big nest of tunnels and gate systems, and all the main displays are connected to it. That’s probably how some fish got outside. No idea how they are still alive, though it’s probably mutations or something. This whole place is a giant maze of pipes and redundant parts, like a stable for fish.”

I thought for a moment. “Does this mean that our sea pony friend can be anywhere at any time?”

She froze up, gave a quick look at the wall, and shuddered. “Possibly, yeah. Let’s not think about that right now, okay? Let’s get the water talisman and get out as quickly as we can.”

I gave her a big grin and rested my club on my shoulders. “Okay.”





To be fair, once we got past the whole “surrounded by horrible taint mutants and kept from ending up as one of them by an inch of magically enhanced glass” thing, we had to admit the Seahorse was rather interesting.

The whole place was deathly quiet, for one, and if you tried to ignore the actual things inside the tank they were rather neat to look at. Blueberry said that the fish in there might be making some bio-luminescence, or whatever that means, but she had no idea why they would create it in the first place. 

We also passed what seemed to be the penguin exhibit, and to Blueberries mild mortification the entire area was trashed, with the glass walls smashed in and no signs of the actual flightless birds in sight. Until, of course, we got into the next walk in aquarium section, where we stumbled upon the torn-up remains of giant white-colored dissected corpses that strangly resembled the penguin body structure modals we passed by a few minutes earlier. Considering the rest of the displays in this part of the building was also destroyed and filled with dead fish and pesudopenguins alike, I could only wonder how long the giant birds lasted after the end of the world. 

Blueberry, however, did not, and after realizing what she was looking at moved began trotting at a faster pace than usual. Actually, her single comment was on how the water flow probably shut down when the tank was compromised, and that she was impressed at how smart the systems in this place was. I had to agree. 

The next rooms did not let us down in oddities. Luckily for our eyes, most of the tanks were not as disgusting as the first one was, but many of the things inside them were still odd. One incredibly colorful room, the “Foals Play and Pet”, had a large thin open-air tank that, while dry, had oddly shaped shells in its contours that probably once belonged to some mutant fish or another. In the same general area, there was also another similar tank that was still filled with water with a stylized manta ray on its side, but to our general horror it was mostly filled with the bones of some sort of horrible flat monstrosity that was covered with mouths.

After a pass down a greenish-gold hallway filled with glowing water labeled "Jellyfish Jungle", we found ourselves in a rather badly lit exhibit called “Terrors of the Deep”; with no little information booth in site or anything that could clue us in to what was in it. Naturally, this made me feel rather intimidated, and even more so when we were confronted with another underwater underpass that either had no lighting at all or was filled with completely black water.

Blueberry gulped slightly and sent a mage-light down it, which showed that it was likely the former than the latter, considering that it showed that every bit of the glass on the aquarium side was covered in a rather horrific organic mat of dead fish and pyramid-like grey pink things that were attached to the the side of the tank with suckers that looked horribly like round, toothy maws. After getting her to stop screaming and trying to run in the other direction, I covered her eyes with a hand as she walked closely next to me in the darkened hall.

However, I got a scare of my own, as apparently some joker two hundred years ago believed it to be a good idea to put a lifelike model of a sea-serpent situated right after the scary dark tunnel of deep-sea horror above unsuspecting ponies.

After I stopped screaming, Blueberry decided to alert me of the fact that we were on our second to last leg of the trip to the shark room: the Antlerlantic Ocean exhibit. Surprisingly, the displays seemed to have been taken over in ages past by a strange species of mutant worm, each with a little strand of worm-hair-stuff that constantly shifted colors as it swam around in the tanks. It was an oddly heartwarming sight, which became only slightly less so when Blueberry informed me that, according to one of the little plaques, colorful sea creatures tended to by highly toxic. I then pointed behind her and said “Seapony!”, so she stopped trying to ruin my enjoyment and started to hyperventilate and pulled out Self Defense.

I briefly wondered for a moment if teasing a sociopathic pony was a good idea, settled on that it wasn’t, and went on with my life.

The only other thing of note in the exhibit, besides the giant heart-attack causing serpent and the colorful fish, was the octopus tanks inhabitance. Or rather the lack of them.

There were two, actually. One that supposedly contained “Octi the Octopus” was actually empty of water, the reason for which quickly became apparently by the large missing chunk of glass in its side and the shattered glass on the floor, which suggested something broke out of the tank. But the hole was perfectly round to the point it looked like it was artificially made.

Yet another mystery for this place I hope I never have to delve into. The second was unlabeled, but was startlingly clear and had a single disturbingly large shifting black ball floating freely in the center of it, roiling like a tiny inky tempest in the middle of it’s own little world. I also could swear I spotted a goat eye on it for a split second. After alerting Blueberry about the minor horror in the center of the room, she took a quick look at it, paled, and followed me out into the last leg of the trip.

And so, we were confronted with two choices: an official looking room with the word “Management” on it and another, far more cheery looking, with the words “Shark Land” on it. I wanted to check the former while she was more interested in going straight into the latter.

Of course, we disagreed on which one to go into.

However, we both went inside Management first, mostly because we were not stupid enough to split up in this hell hole but also because I was at least three times her size.





The main office, I guess you could call it, was far less cheery than the rest of the building would suggest. It had five desks on each wall, but luckily for my interests there was a single large one in the very back with a large, blue-green terminal. 

The walk there was brief, but to my minor horror it seemed that the former owner had died curled under it. 

The little name-plate on the desk read “Service Head Pearl String”. I looked at the slightly preserved corpse under the desk, tiny and shriveled and grey, and then, still slightly shocked, at Blueberry. To my own minor disgust, the rest of the desks seemed to have been occupied in there own special way, which Blueberry was solving in her own special way. The crunches and snapping sounds of dried limbs being pried off the floor in search of things to take reminded all to much of Emerald Seas, which while in a entirely different context made the currant situation I had managed to get myself in all the more darkly funny.

Apparently, according to the terminal’s notes, Pearl was there since day one, but most of the files and notices were deleted before the big end. I opened them in order with deft little finger clicks, and what I got was pretty surprising.

 Entry 24
Look Coin, I don’t make the rules. I did not fire Topaz because she was a Crystal Pony. No, the rumor that I called her a Crystalite was false and cruel. I fired her because I caught her complaining about the stuff the big Ministry-Tauronto alliance was giving us. You know, those fancy automated systems they cooked up and want to test out. Apparently, they are going to be used in Stables or whatever they call them down south. 

Anyway, Topaz was blabbering about it off to a bunch of collage ponies that were visiting. Besides, the little mule had it coming to her, she never came to work one time and the only reason I could not fire her before hoof was because of those protection laws they cooked up a few years ago.


Entry 25
Coin, I am sorry, I had no idea your fiancée was a donkey. No, really, I had no idea. Look, we have been friends for a long time, I meant nothing by it. It’s just a saying they have in Equestria, I thought you would have known it. Look, let’s go out to eat some time. It's been a while.

Anyway, business is booming since they installed the new system. We had to let go of the polar bears to get it installed over the last month, but old Bearnard said that he had enough saved up from work that he could get the rest of them a train ticket to Ursagrod. A lot of the older staff pinched in as well, and apparently some pony started to make little white teddy bears to sell in the gift shop. Of course, it was a hit, and his going-away party was actually management-approved to the point the big boss himself attended and shook each of there paws himself. We had not gotten so many ponies come in since, well, the grand opening.

I doubt the silly old bear will have to work again in his life, and neither will his family.

Besides that bittersweet news, our new full time staff member, Sea Salt, has put me in a really tough situation. First of all, she’s a brilliant worker to the point I am only half joking when I say I once suspected her of being in Moral’s payroll. I have gotten little crayon drawings from foals in the art classes of her playing with the fish and getting Octi to dance a jig. She even works overtime without pay. In fact, Sweeps, our janitor (he’s the one with the wife who looks like one of Hoity Toity's models, as you once said), said she was working in the middle of the night trying to get the penguins to sing.

And they were.

In the middle of the night.

I don’t even think she goes home sometimes. And she’s young and perky and possibly a zebra plant.

No, she’s not some sort of magical herb, a genuine zebra infiltrator. Some sort of zebra spy. I caught her reading some sort of strange book during lunch, and while she was as happy as ever, she said it was on the zebras and there culture. The thing is, it was not in Equestrian. Not at all. It was in some sort of weird swirly font, if it was really machine-produced. I don’t want to say anything, in case she is actually reading some sort of foreign-language translation book about zebras. She does have an odd accent and I don’t want to press in my employs lives.

Also, say hello to Jenny for me. Also, stop telling me that it's 'their', not 'there'. I mean, really.


Entry 32
Okay, I actually got Sea Salt to come to the traditional staff bi-monthly get together down in that little pub in Braymont (Sweeps assisted somewhat with his donation on the traditional lips-loosener, I need to buy him a drink one day). Thankfully, the mare cannot hold her salt despite her name, and when I asked where she was from she said she was one of those Saddle Arabian immigrants who came up from the southeast. She actually brought a little red translation booklet with her, and as it turns out it was a Sadryn-Roaman Zebrish text. I had no idea she was in college, either. She’s on that foreigner program that the College of Tauronto has, but she’s doing great at it and has time to spend here. 

Gosh, I feel old sometimes, Coin. 

However, as it turns out, one of our more blunt staff members, whose name I shall leave out but rhymes with “Hunches of Totes” decided to ask her why she moved so far north to live in Tauronto.

She started to cry and blubber about why her mother was a broodmare running for roses in Derby City and she deserved to be punished for not helping her father get a passport. Sweet Celestia, the things this war has done to us. All of us.

To make a sad story short, me and Sweeps managed to get her home, which was thankfully in one of the nicer parts of town.

Anyway, Coin, last night’s party was great, and I would love your advice on what to do about the little snitch in accounting who said that company bits kept going missing when I got control of them .


There was a great gap in the files: it seems that all but the last few were deleted over time.



Entry 369
It’s the end, Coin. I know you and Jenny bought a lot of tickets for that Stable, goddesses know how you could afford them being cousins with Rich, but I am stuck in the Seahorse. It’s an “off” day, so only management is here in order to get everything in order. I have not told any pony but Sweeps about the news about Cloudsdale. Figures they hit an Equestrian city first, but of course we are only targets because of those little fucking Crystalites.

There, I said it. It’s the end of the world, no reason to hide it.

Speaking of warnings, do you know who came and visited me earlier? Topaz. She visited me in the morning, waiting for me outside the Seahorse near the pool. She said bad things were going down, and that I should try and find a safe place.

Coin Counter, those sparkling shits were in on it the entire time. Six hours later, Cloudsdale was blown to bits. They fucking knew. That bitch is probably sipping wine right now with princess what’s her name and her umpteenth foal. But I don’t want my last words to be about some fucking little sparkleponies that shit gems and whine about the power of hugs and friendship while they wine and dine.

Entry 370
I should have kicked her into the shark tank when I had the chance. I wonder if they really do have crystal bones?

Entry 371
Anyway.

Entry 372
I ordered Sweeps to take a crow bar to the water generator thing we got installed when the place got the Stable-Tec treatment and to lock it up tight when he got outside. He knows that Glimmer and Gleam are with you, and there tickets are already in order. Don’t tell her that he has his gun with him. I told Sea Salt to stay downstairs with all the rad-away and the actual emergency supply rations. I led the horse to the water. Hah. I made a pun.

Entry 373
Sorry if this last part seems weird, I crushed some of those colorful sea worms, the ones that are supposed to be super deadly and stuff, and sprinkled the powder in the coffee filter. I have traditional office claims to the first cup. I don’t want any pony to go through this. 

Entry 374
Sea Salt is the only one who does not have a few cups in the morning, as funny as it is with her being from where we get coffee beans now, so there’s also that. She should live through the end, anyway.

Entry 375
You know, it’s funny. When we were in school together, I always thought you were cute. 

Entry 376
Really. I did. Even when we broke up. And then when we got back together, but you found math to be a better lover than me. And then, after school, you moved on to other couples.Tell me, how's Onyx? You got lucky there, with the whole "child support" thing with what's her name, Good for you, you would think he could have figured it out by now. You are the only stallion with pink fur that he knows, so he probably thinks you lick colts for giggles.

Entry 377
The staff is starting to feel weird now. I think I am the only one still on four hooves, so I am about to eat half the paste I made from those worms. I heard that the Zebras once used them to poison there weapons, but I think it would work to kill a mare. 

I feel sick.

I don’t think I regret anything at all, really. Is that so wrong?
.

Entry 378

Anyway, good luck with the foal, Jenny, if your reading this you picked a real winner there. Good thing your going to be locked up with him underground for the next rest of your lives.


Entry 379
I thought about it. 

Brain damage helps focus on what you have, apparently.

It's not wrong. 

Entry 380
Everyone else is really quiet. Sea Salt is swimming with the fish. She's bigger now. Shes singing too. Its really nice. She has a nice voice.

I feel really tired, but the carpet is really warm anyway.

Coin,you are a really good friend, and I hope I have not made you mad by anything I have said. I don't feel really good right now.

Goodnight Coin.

The last entry had another notice at the end.

//Message Sent//

//Message Retrieved//

After reading that monolithic piece of writing, I lean back to the wall. Whoa. I wasn’t sure what to think of it all, really. Really, Crystal Ponies? Traitors? Input on old-world life? What would I start?

Perhaps Blueberry would want to see this, this seems up a Steel Ranger's spe-

Wait, where was she?

I scanned the little office, and she was not there. She left without telling me.

No.

I stampeded my way down the hall, and found the door to the Shark Land wide open.

The room itself was large and open, with the watery tank itself filling the room with a hazy green glow. But for once, the water was not the centerpiece for my horror.

The sea pony was much bigger than I thought it was. The beast was fully out of the water and in the middle of the walkway, using it’s horrifically long claw-fins-hoof-things to grip on the white enamel floor. 

Actually, it was closer to a monster pony than anything else, as the "sea" part assumed that it looked as if it had a place in the natural order of things.

Its upper body, while being mostly akin of a pony besides the long webbed claws it sported, was dwarfed by the shear size of the rest of it. Its long grey-green coils made it look closer some sort of rubbery snake or eel than a fish, being shiny and smooth and seemingly devoid of fur.

Neverless, when I entered the room, it slowly swayed its huge pillar-like bulk into my general direction and smiled a blood-smeared, contented smile at me, it's long and narrow head bearing a mouth filled with at least one row of dagger-like teeth.

The source of it was obvious, of course, because pinned under a single huge claw, in a puddle of blood blooming like a flower thanks to the wetness of the tile, was the broken and still form of Blueberry Cream.



Level Up! 

New Perk: Friend of The Weird

You have have met a few odd folks in the wastes. Heck, you might count yourself as one. You now have new dialogue options when dealing with strange or hostile creatures..