It was funny how the sound of the explosion seemed to linger on long after the event was over. Some of that could be attributed to natural reverberation in an empty room. Some of it could be attributed to "ringing in the ears" or whatever it was that affected those who had just been hit by a massive pressure front. Most of it was probably due to the mental playback mode of the event being set to loop!
That was probably the case, as it was drowning out the other voices in my head, specifically those of Brainstorm. Eventually my brain realized the event was over, that I was alive, in part at least, and despite all of the smoke and the scattering of shrapnel in which I was lying, was currently free of pain.
"Aneki? Aneki? Are you alive? What was that? We can't see you. You blew up the cameras." These comments and questions, and others like them, streamed from Brainstorm.
"Yeah," I groaned from where I lay, pressed up against the door. "Despite my best efforts, I appear to have survived."
"Surely... you weren't trying to kill yourself were you?" Brainstorm sounded worried. Now, that was an idea... that had not crossed my mind.
"A figure of speech, my good ponies, a figure of speech," I assured them. "I had no intention of causing an explosion, although now that I think about it, I should have seen it coming."
"You blew up the gun?" Brainstorm asked. I couldn't tell if they were more worried about my wellbeing or that of their gun. Perhaps now that the gun and I were the same thing, it didn't matter. Not being able to see me, or anything else in here, must have been driving them nuts. I considered lying here for a while longer, just to annoy them.
The smoke was gradually dissipating, revealing the extent of the damage I had wrought on the room. Surprisingly, I wasn't coughing. This Hellite body must have a way to filter out smoke, or to supply alternative air when needed. I knew it wasn't the gun that had detonated. That was still attached to my legs. I wished it away, and it liquefied again, and was absorbed by my body. I shuddered: that was just too weird.
"No, the gun is just fine," I answered. "But I didn't realize carrots were high explosive ammunition."
"What? What are you talking about, Aneki? Carrots are a vegetable!" Brainstorm said. "Besides, where did you get any carrots?"
"There was some in the ammo drawer here. Admittedly it was rather shriveled," I stated.
"Impossible," Brainstorm stated. "There is no way that carrot could do that."
"Okay, you've caught me out. I wasn't using a carrot," I admitted. "Sorry guys, but I just blew the other end out of your shooting range."
"You what?"
"I just put a rather large hole through the far end of your shooting range," I repeated, standing, and walking towards the dark maw I had created.
"How?" Brainstorm asked. "The range was shielded against penetration. The spell should have also absorbed any energy from the projectile so it wouldn't ricochet, and hit the shooter."
"I used a disintegration beam," I answered. "I don't think your spell knew how to deal with that."
"And where did you get one of those?" Brainstorm sounded puzzled.
"You installed it in me, you idiots. I was testing your gun, wasn't I? So, clearly, that was the gun that fired the disintegration beam," I told them.
"How did you create that? And how did it cause the blast?" More questions? I thought they were meant to be geniuses.
"Think about it. It was relatively simple to achieve. I wrote a spell that temporarily broke the atomic bonds of the material it hit. Of course, it being a non-physical form of ammunition, it went straight through the protective barrier you have on the walls in here, and proceeded to atomize the materials the wall itself was made off," I explained.
"Oh," Brainstorm said. "It wasn't the beam itself that caused the explosion was it? It was all the free atoms reacting with each other and the oxygen in the air."
"Semantics," I responded. "Even if the explosion was a secondary effect, it was still the result of the beam. Whatever the case, I've proved your gun is adaptable, and bloody dangerous. Are you happy now?"
"Yes, yes, very happy," Brainstorm responded. They continued to babble on to each other about more tests, but I tuned them out.
I poked my head through the opening the blast had made in the wall, my eyes automatically adjusting for the lower light levels. There was quite a cavity beyond the wall, and it was full of pipes and heavy cabling running vertically. That made sense. The designer had grouped elevators, inter-level staircases and conduits for cables and pipes for ease of construction. There were also some seriously large vertical structural beams in there too. The shaft went both up and down as far as I could make out. Structures like this were what kept the floors apart, and supported the weight of the city above. Convenient ladders and landings were placed where needed, and offered me a lovely alternative to playing dodge with anypony who was still looking for me... unless Brainstorm decided to chase me. They were no longer trapped by doors that were welded shut. In fact, I didn't think that was what had held them captive for all these years. Initially it would have been fear of those who had condemned them. Now it would be the state of their pickled bodies. I wondered what it would take to get them out of there. Given a reason, they would probably be able to figure it out. Anyway, I had found my opening, and I was taking it.
I returned to the showroom, walking around to the display cabinet that held the pistol I had been using before. I retrieved as many of the colored gas cartridges from the drawer below it as I felt I could carry, taking them with me into the lab. I soon located where my saddlebags were, and stuffed the cartridges into them.
"Aneki..." Brainstorm interjected.
"I'm taking these," I stated. "They are pretty. If you have the formula for making them, I'd like that too."
"Aneki..." Brainstorm repeated.
"I told you I am taking these. I have half a mind to take that boot-pistol too," I replied.
"Oh, fine. Go ahead. At least it will be getting used... Aneki... your head is black."
"What? Black? As in Hellite black?" I ran my fingers across my face, finding the same smooth material with which the rest of my body was covered. So now I really was one of those all-black, glowing eyed creatures. "How? When?" I managed.
"I expect it occurred as a result of the blast," Brainstorm stated. "Hellite skin is a form of armor after all."
I ran my fingers down the side of my face, and neck finding the ring around my neck where the armor had previously terminated had vanished.
"Oh, the collar has vanished. That must have been where the material that is covering my head was stored. You guys did say my conversion was complete, so I guess I shouldn't be that surprised," I admitted. Disappointed was a different matter. I would have preferred to keep my pony face. I wondered if my horn was black now too. Somehow my mane still protruded from it. Thank Luna for that small mercy.
"Quite so, quite so," they agreed. "It wasn't just a solid mass, but rather a bundle of thin petals, if I can use that analogy, all tightly wrapped, awaiting activation. I imagine it was done that way as some sort of emergency measure, allowing a pony to keep a natural looking head for as long as possible before becoming fully armored, should the need arise.
"Hmm," I said, pondering the change. "It can't be permanent."
"She wasn't listening to us," Brainstorm said.
"Or she doesn't believe is," Brainstorm, part two replied.
"Maybe I just know better?" I suggested.
"How so? All Hellites we have seen have black heads," Brainstorm countered.
"Really? So how did you conclude that my conversion was complete if my head wasn't covered?"
"She really wasn't listening, was she?"
"We scanned you. What we saw at that level suggested you were completely converted. As we already said, we saw that your collar was undeployed armor for your head. Also, we have never seen a Hellite without a black head, suggesting that it is permanent." Brainstorm insisted.
"You have probably seen only one or two of them. That is hardly a representative sample," I said.
"But we have heard of many, from before the extermination," Brainstorm said. "Besides, now that it is deployed, we can detect no seams in your new skin."
"Again, irrelevant," I said. "Now it is your turn to watch and learn."
"Mighty confident, isn't she," Brainstorm said to his other self.
And I had every reason to be. I had reformed my hoofs as required on more than one occasion. Even Brainstorm had said I should be able to form blades and tools. This had to be just as simple. In fact, all I needed to do was imagine myself as I had been, and wish it so. And thus I bloomed. Well, the armor around my head peeled back as if I were a flower, before neatly furling itself back into its collar form. That counted as blossoming, didn't it? Can't be done? Ha.
"Well, would you look at that?" Brainstorm commented. "She did it."
Of course it had stopped when the collar had reformed and my head was free. No amount of wishing would peel it back any further than that, and I really did try. Some 'wishes' simply could not be granted. It appeared the designer of the Hellite modifiers had allowed a pony to keep their face for cosmetic reasons. Perhaps other Hellites simply preferred to be totally black. I'd ask them if I ever found them.
"Well, boys, now that the theatrics are over, I'm off. Maybe we will meet again some time in the future. I don't intend to come back this way, but who knows? Maybe you'll even get yourself out of the tank by then," I said.
"We are still unsure if it is possible," Brainstorm stated.
"So, make a new concoction to unpickle yourselves," I suggested. "By the way, to encourage you to act sooner rather than later, I'll let you in on a little secret."
"Go on..."
"That blast crimped your nutrient feed pipe in the main shaft. I figure you have maybe two or three days at tops before what's left in the pipe runs out, and you starve," I said. Giving them a wave, I turned and trotted out of the lab, pausing only to scoop up the boot-pistol and stuff it into my saddle bags with my other loot.
"Aneki! Stop!" Brainstorm cried out.
"No way," I responded.
"Please, fix the pipe, we beseech you," they begged.
"No way," I repeated, without pausing or looking back.
"Please stop. Please fix the pipe."
"You wouldn't stop when I asked you to, so I'm not stopping now," I responded.
They continued to cry after me. As soon as I was in the shooting range, I closed the door, annoyed that doing so had no effect on the volume of their telepathic voices. I would probably have to descend a couple of levels before I was out of their range.
"Aneki, please have pity on us!" Brainstorm tried again. "Consider all we did for you." They really did sound pathetic.
"I am considering all you did to me," I muttered. I doubted they could hear me. It didn't matter what they tried. There was no way they could either engage my sympathy, or guilt me into going back to do anything about it for two simple reasons. First, their nutrient line supplied nothing more than filtered effluence, and that implied they had to have some sort of food generator in their tank system somewhere. It would be simple enough for them to link their waste line to their nutrient input. After all, that was more or less how I had to get my own food, wasn't it? And, yes, as soon as I was out of their range, I promised myself, I would relieve myself in a food generator bowl, then have a good feed. I was damn hungry!
Oh, the second reason? There was nothing wrong with their feed pipe. If they failed to come up with any alternative, they would be stressing out for the last few hours of the second day, pondering their luck by the third, while becoming even more desperate. By the fourth day, they would be questioning if I had got it wrong, while still hoping the feed stayed good. Maybe after a week they would realized there really was nothing wrong with the pipe, and that there never had been.
Or maybe they would be standing on newly formed foal-legs, staring through the hole left by the blast, cursing me for tricking them, and thanking me for giving them a stronger reason to act than to play it safe.
Ah, that felt so much better. There was a basic satisfaction in having a full stomach. In fact, it was slightly overfilled, as I had worked out how to cheat the food generators into giving me more. It really wasn't that hard, and I had done so without realizing it before. When the food generator presented me with a bowl full of food, all I had to do was take the food from the bowl with my fingers, and place it elsewhere. Then I could either get that machine to generate another bowl full of food from its reserves, or get the second food generator to create a bowl full of food for me as well. I wasn't greedy, but having gone without food for however long Brainstorm had held me captive had left me feeling rather ravenous. I managed to eat the full bowl of the usual leafy material and overstuff myself with some of the tasty stuff the pink generator produced. I still didn't know what sort of fruits or vegetables it was producing, but I was pretty sure none of it was carrot.
I repacked my saddle bags, strapped them on, and returned my attention to the great descent. I was already five levels below Advanced Weapons Development Laboratories and out of range of Brainstorm's telepathic pleas turned curses. In fact, I was out of range of pretty much everypony. There was that much metal here, any form of radio wave wasn't going to be able to make it to me. Any bug I was inadvertently carrying would also be unlikely to alert others to my position, though it wouldn't take a genius to work out where I had vanished. I wondered if modern ponies knew anything about the Brainstorm duo and were as afraid of them as those who had sealed them up had been. If so, that at least would stop them following my path directly. Thinking about the pair of reprobates, ponies really did have reason to be scared of them. They were quite capable of delivering modifier based mayhem. I hoped that if my actions did set them free, they would at least behave responsibly. If anything, their desire for the Hellite modifier would probably have them follow my path rather than return to the H'ven dome.
Onwards! With my hooves again modified to deal with ladder rungs, I began my climb down. A light below me illuminated, while one above me switched out. They had made their existence known as soon as I had actually climbed into the shaft, pleasing me no end. While my Hellite eyes were capable of seeing in the total dark, the pleasant warm glow of the lamps made an otherwise empty and lonely cavern feel at least slightly cosy. Not as many lamps were lit at one time as out in the corridors. There was no illusion of the whole place being lit. The pitch black formed a visual ceiling a couple levels above, and a floor a couple of levels below me. Cables, beams, brackets and supports all added to the darkness by forming complex shadows, the light passing through creating mosaics on the surfaces it illuminated. Just for fun, I paused to fire off a couple of those wonderful luminescent gas shots, watching the green and red trails intermingle as they plunged towards the darkness below, before air resistance turned them into swirling puffs of cloud. I reabsorbed the gun and started climbing again.
So far I had found no doors into or out of this shaft. I knew there would be hatches somewhere, but even if I didn't find one, I wasn't overly worried, as I could now make a door anywhere I bloody well wanted. If the idiotic duo had told me it was a universal door maker instead of a gun, I may well have shown more interest in it from the start. I had no problem with shooting at walls, well, assuming I didn't damage anything structural in the process; I was a structural engineer after all!