DISCLAIMER: For those interested, there is an unofficial chapter 22.5 of Blackjack and Glory (akin to the unofficial chapter 20.5 of Fallout Equestria, "A Mare Worth Fighting For"). It is titled "Warmth (FoE-PH 22.5)", if you want to look for it (I can't link due to site rules).

That being said, there it is: the peak fucked-up-ness for Stable 99 revealed, and then ended. I forgot just how visceral this whole thing was until now. Yet another choice to mess with Blackjack's head for quite a while.

BTW, Somber, it looks like you have a bit of a formatting error towards the end.

Thanks. I got it.

Goddamn... this chapter was, fucking messed up! And I'm still getting antsy about that one chapter called Black... good lord, Sombra you are a dark dark boy... and I love it.

This was... a sad, depressing, but overall awesome chapter. Full of crazy ass shit, damn. Lots of tough decisions to make here, and I am disappointed in Rivets' actions involving the bodies... that is nasty as fuck, but eh... gotta do what you gotta do to survive... nasty. Good work on this again dude, legit...

NEXT CHAPTER HO!

6464603 And I am there... hehehe eue thanks for pointing that out.

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pretty much my thoughts.

“Please… Trixie…”

Twilight or Psalm?

The only thing better was getting to return the favor…

Blackjack, you dog you.

It made sense. Like likes like. None of my friends or I fit in.

Oh fuck, none of her former stable mates had a choice in driving her off in a way. Shit, that is kinda fucked up. I was hoping BJ and Midnight could have been friends.

At least the ponies of Stable 99 didn't know what was happening to them, but then again, they didn't know what was happening to them and didn't want to die. Which makes life harder for Blackjack.

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Ooooo, thank you. More reading.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! Something told me that Chlorine Gas would be used but still NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

All I can say after reading this chapter is...
Fuck me in the feels.

InB4 Blackjack declares herself Führer of the Hoof.

This chapter is FUCKED. UP.

Yes. That’s your blood, sweetie. And then her eyes half closed as she curled up for an endless nap.

I tried to chew through the strong cardiac muscle. A third bite. Fourth. Fifth. By the sixth, the heart was half gone

Well damn.

Most fucked up chapter i have ever read in my life

I wonder if this is the chapter everyone warned me about. "Things get really dark in book 2", they said. If so, eh, it's not as bad as I'd imagined, but fuck is this shit grim. If not, I hate to think what lurks in the heart of this story. D:

I just can't help but think how pointless this all is, just a real tragedy. She spends all that time finding out the truth behind Stable 99, and it amounts to nothing. She kills the 'raiders' and frees the Stable, but it amounts to nothing. She wears a dead mare, eats her friend's heart, and watches another friend get sodomized by a mare, all for nothing. Well, other than a new party member. And I'm sure Scotch Tape isn't going to take the news terribly well, either.

Still, I like the distinction between your standard, crunchy raider and one newly hatched from a healthy, well-equipped pony. P-21's Slave Leia kill was super-satisfying and brings a great sense of closure to the Stable 99 arc. The fight between Blackjack and Daisy was some awesome gun kata shit, and the big fight with everyone was equally good. And of course, I'm really into GloryJack, so you can guess my reaction to a large part of the middle. :V

But yeah, one line in the middle of my notes reads "I’m so happy right now, so what’s gonna go wrong?" What's gonna go wrong, indeed. :(

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Ah shit, that's not something I needed to know. D: Dammit.

6774716 I think it's probably peak gruesome/gore—or pretty close to it—when you look at it from a sustained perspective. There may be individual scenes up there, but I don't think there's anything else that really matches when you consider something like the chapter level. But there's a certain ongoing, grinding bleakness for much of the rest of the book, sometimes at the forefront, sometimes in the background, which is another aspect people might have been warning of.

Are you familiar with Tom Waits's "Children's Story"?

This is one of the times this story reminds me a bit of it. Except for the end, because staying there crying forever isn't how anything goes here. Adding to the tragedy, of course, is how her one mistake, seemingly so small and so easy to understand how she and the rest, exhausted and many of them bloodied and traumatized, would fail to follow up on the order given. Also, it's kind of like the Scoodle incident happening again, but with Blackjack the one giving the advice.

Slave Leia was a great moment for P-21, especially since he doesn't get the action spotlight all that much.

And of course, I'm really into GloryJack, so you can guess my reaction to a large part of the middle. :V

Heh. You liar, you. :D

As for what's gonna go wrong, it all depends. For many, it ranged from "nothing" to "not too much." Maybe you'll be one of them. Maybe not.

So, avoiding it like the plague? Never mind.

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Ahh, progressive bleakness? Yeah, I can see that being a thing. Though, given how bleak this chapter was, I can't imagine it getting worse, just... continuing. Which could be bad, could be not-so-bad, I'll have to see. :B

The only death I couldn’t give was to the only pony who deserved it. Myself.
oooooooooohhhhhhhhhh the worm felz of death, the one theg an undying dragon can hope for

See which one fit better.

She drew a second magazine with her hooves, and I jammed the first magazine back into gun. She dropped the second magazine to rack the slide, and I ejected it and hit her with two floating magazines. Her yellow eyes blazed with familiar fury as she drew a third magazine to load into the gun, but I jammed one back in. Then she screamed in rage and threw the weapon aside. My smile grew as I floated the gun to me and racked a round into the chamber with my magic. S.A.T.S. ran out.

Blackjack you troll!

This chapter was... beyond fucked. It was intense and emotional and depressing as hell. Blackjack... she's got the worst damn luck and the best damn luck I can possibly imagine. She tries to help so damn bad, but when ponies don't listen, just like she didn't listen to Scoodle, ponies end up dying when they shouldn't. Now the whole damn stable is gassed and they're all dead because of the recycled raider bodies. But since Lacunae saved her from that heroic suicide at the end... she's gonna be broken down for quite some time.

She needs to stop blaming herself for so much, especially with what she had to do. There was no choice at all to be made. She did what had to be done. I can relate all too much to that one, really. (Pointless story, skip if you want) I'd stay on my grandparents' farm every summer since I was 5, and they got a bunch of dogs a couple years later (you can already tell where this is going). Fast forward to when I'm 17 and a rabid something-or-other gets into their barn and starts a chain reaction of infections. Fifteen rabid dogs, and we couldn't spend 200 dollars each for euthanasia. You can guess what I had to do.

So yeah, Blackjack, quit with the guilt. It sucks, is unfair, and hurts, but it's the only thing you could have done. Back to other things... I really wish there was something that shows just how Blackjack's mom died and ended up how she was. I'll always prefer an onscreen death to off-screen, because I can see so much more potential in it for the main character to grow and feel. Just a personal preference. Anyway, enough rambling, great and evil and depressing chapter! Next up, more Blackjack hating herself!

~SolidFire

Achievement Unlocked

"The Tyger"

kill the Overmare of Stable 99 (bonus: quote the poem "The Tyger")

I feel bad for Midnight. Do not know why. Nothing makes her stand out beyond she was Blackjacks crush for the first chapter or so.
Other than I just shrugged at this whole chapter.

I think i need help.

Hell yeah they finally fucked. But everyone in the stable all died :'(

Twist. Ending.

Why does every chapter have to be more grief inducing then the last?! God...I actually dread reading chapters, cuz I know my feels are going to be thrown into the grinder, just like poor ol' Stonewing! Arg!!! Why can't we get some cliff hangers that are awesome, and uplifting?

Ugh...

Also, who is Blackjack the decedent of, and is she compatible with the program? She's obviously gotta be somepony that'll be able to take over! Oh... What if her great grand mare was that baby that was suppose to be aborted...but got shifted to Maripony, thanks to Fluttershy!? She might belong to a ministry pony! I had a tiny feeling that the mom was really(maybe) Rainbow Dash!

I had two ten millimeter submachineguns, each holding thirty rounds of twelve gram ammunition per magazine with a firing speed of ten rounds per second.

two ten millimeter submachine guns,

Here's the song for this beginning part of the chapter: The Pony (song) by warbalist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZQzUziy1jY

The one who’d who tried to teach a little filly about a war, ministries, and the mares who ran them.

The one who'd tried to teach

Like likes like, so anypony who doesn’t eat becomes part of the menu.

Glory's oddest line yet, and at the end of the chapter. I get it now.

so we’d have to close of all lower return venting feeds while the talisman is active.

so we'd have to close off all

(Yuck, this scene, exactly why I'm doing this first thing today before lunch)

There was a rip and a wheezing scream as Daisy’s head jerked back and forth till Rampages tongue flopped free.

till Rampage's tongue flopped free.

She looked though the open door at the pile of regurgitated heart.

She looked through the open door at the pile

But then that made it clear... where she’d gotten a ‘toy’ like the one she now wore?

If this is certainty of realization, how is this even a sentence ending in a question mark?

Given her black-faced corpse lay at my hooves, it might have proven a silly question, except that the two raiders behind her started to giggle in glee and ran back into the stable crying out the news.

Given that her black-faced corpse lay

And I bet other villages will be glad to pay us in meat to not to eat them.”

will be glad to pay us in meat to not eat them.”

She drew a second magazine with her hooves, and I jammed the first magazine back into gun.

and I jammed the first magazine back into the gun.

“It’s as simple at that, Blackjack.” She kicked me clear across the atrium floor, and my journey was stopped only by hitting the stake in the center of the room.

"It's as simple as that, Blackjack."

Ah, the shower scene
(Chapter 22.5 :"Report to the ship as soon as possible..")

That made my brow arch, and she starting going from pink to red. “Well, she did!”

and she started going from pink to red.

The black unicorn signed and rubbed her temples.

The black unicorn sighed and rubbed her temples.

Midnight mentioned Sparkler and she is probably dead. Not listed anywhere on the PH excel sheet.

She looked back and me and faked a smile.

She looked back at me and faked a smile.

The ponies here don’t want to things to change, and neither do I.

The ponies here don't want things to change, and neither do I.

I smiled as I pulled out Vigilance. Card Trick. Tarot. Little Poker. Full House. 52 Pick-up. Straight Flush. Aces. Royal Flush. Bridge. Hearts. Gin Rummy. Go Fish.

If the pistol is passed down the generations.. wow this is a bit clearer on re-read.

Listing named circumstances of deaths with Stable 99's purge (some not accounted for on excel)
RIP Dewdrop, Primer, Shuffle, Textbook, Angles, Angelheart, Pastels, Overmare, Daisy, Rivets & Midnight & all the rest

Also, Rivets put Marmalade down at some early chapter point as mentioned.

S.A.T.S. SMGs, SMGs remainder of magazines, one bullet to the eye, Glory's beam pistols attack, dragon claw in the eye, dragon claw to throat, dragon claw to throat, choked by P-21 with chain; Star Wars Ep. VI style, 99 raiders' last charge, Rivets & Midnight & all the rest gassed by Blackjack

One heck of a long comment for today.
YOU HAD A CHOICE RIVETS, YOU FAILED TO ACCEPT CHANGE WITH ALLOWING INFECTED BODIES IN THE RECYCLERS, THINKING THE DISEASE IS IMAGINARY, YOU'D ONLY CONTINUE THE OVERMARE'S POWER GRAB AND LOSE SANITY. SHOULD OF LISTENED TO BLACKJACK, BUT YOU DIDN'T LISTEN TO HER. OH WELL.

[Almost forgot this scene interpretation art]
derpicdn.net/img/2014/2/1/540576/large.jpeg

I had two ten millimeter submachineguns, each holding thirty rounds of twelve gram ammunition per magazine with a firing speed of ten rounds per second.

two ten millimeter submachine guns,

"Machinegun" is another case where I'll just do a run through the whole story.

Huh, wigglejiggle is still around and more active than in years. May actually be able to find out if 22.5 can be included as a bonus like at least one printing of FoE did 20.5.

One heck of a long comment for today.

No kidding.

FUCK! just...just FUCK MAN! This was all messed up....just messed up man. Out of all the fallout equestria stories I've read, including the main one, this is one of the top 5 most fucked up things I've seen from the wasteland. Just.....fuck

It's a great chapter thou, awesome even!

I wished she could have heard me play…

Crap, I totally missed what happened to Octavia's instrument..

“You got a hell of a way to get help,” I said, spitting out a chunk. She gave me a friendly grin back. The first I’d received in days.

wait?

Dark lumps appeared on the floor. The sludge slowly receded and my mane began to itch. Badly. “What is that?” I asked as I lifted one lump with my hooves… and stared at a broken half of a skull.

FUCK! FUCK! X4 AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! DAMN! IT!

“The whole food supply. They’ve been exposed to it for days. Three square meals a day.” Anguish bloomed on his face as he pressed it to the floor as he grit his teeth in pain.

AHHHHH!!!!! was one good thing but. AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

And the barnacle was soo ugly that everyone died.

**laughs scared

This was one of the hardest chapters. Blackjack had to kill her past friends - pieces of herself. Then when things finally seem like they're going to be okay she's forced to kill them anyway.

Fuck Rivets.

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So many tears...

As I was reading this, I realized that Daisy could easily been blackjack if one course of life been changed. If blackjack’s virtue is perseverance, then Daisy had the corrupted version of that virtue.

I hope this was the hard chapter, I dont want to read any more of these. I had to stop reading a lot. It tookme a long time to get trough the P-21 rape scene.

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Mmmm... no? It is a dark chapter. 33 is a bad one.

Something that bothers me is their sudden relationship. I was under the impression that Glory was still very young... Like maybe just into teenage years. Did I miss something?

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So everyone in the story is the same age or older than Twilight was in season 1. You tell me how old that is, and that's how old everyone is. In my head it's around 18. 15-16 is the magical YA age preference. Whatever works for folks.

Sorry this comment is a lot shorter than usually. I’ve been rather busy the last few days. Still there’s a lot to say about it.

I already knew how this was going to end and I’ve the luxury of not needing to wait for the release of the next chapter. I can imagine it must’ve been a lot harder for the people reading each chapter straight after its release.

Poor Blackjack went through an emotional rollercoaster in this chapter. First the realization that her Stable has been infected with the Raider disease, forcing her to kill the ponies who were the closest thing to friends and family she had. Then a ray of hope when it turned out that over two-third of the Stable’s population are alive and uninfected. The feeling of victory when they managed to kill all the Infected and safe the Stable. Her resignation when the Stable Dwellers want to remain isolated and Blackjack is now an outsider who is no longer welcome. The horror when she finds out that they stubbornly ignored her advices, put the infected bodies in the recycler and doomed the whole Stable, making her victory hollow. And finally her breaking down when she makes the choice to mercy kill the whole Stable and herself with the Chlorine gas.

Blackjack’s journey can be compared to an attempt at climbing up a muddy slope during a thunder storm. No matter how far she comes, she always slips and slides down back to the bottom. Only for her to get up and try it again, hoping that with enough perseverance she’ll eventually managed to succeed.

In Kkat’s story the low point for Littlepip was the Arbu massacre, where she killed (admittedly very evil ponies) in a blind fury off rage. Including some who just got their Cutie Marks. Somber probably looked at that part and thought to himself: “That’s supposed to be bad? Let’s show them how you really break your main character!”

So Blackjack starts off with something Littlepip never did: Getting a foal killed because she got overconfident. I think Littlepip even saved some foals very early one. Then she’s forced to mercy kill 40 foals. Then she fails to save her Stable (which Littlepip did) and is forced to kill them all, including more foals. Then she got raped. Then she had more and more parts of her body replaced with cybernetics turning her into Adam Jensen Pony. Then her oldest friends/lover died. Then it’s revealed that she immortal and unable to die, meaning that she’ll never reunite with her friends in the afterlife with the possibly of her eventually going insane in way that makes every villain in this story look like a cute puppy.

So this is the point where I should throw up my hands and give up. I mean this sounds grimdark as fuck, Yet, I’m still reading and I’m not sure why. And it’s not even some morbid fascination of wanting to see them suffer or a hate filled obsession to finish this. I still like the characters and want to watch their journey, even if it’s very likely that it’s going to end in tragedy. I’m not even sure if I wanted the story to be more lighthearted.

However, it really makes me appreciate the fact that in 23 Chapters of Homelands Scotch didn’t have to kill a single filly and that none of her group members got raped. Unless Scotch’s “relationship” with Vicious was even more-fucked up than I thought.

Blackjack’s On-screen Body Count: 142*

*The number is pretty low, but we only “saw” five ponies dying when Blackjack flooded the Stable with gas: Rivets, Midnight, an unnamed Filly and two unnamed Foals. Off-screen deaths included the number would probably be a lot higher (around 500).

As rough as this chapter was to read, I couldn't help be feel that this song best sums up the sequence of events from where Blackjack & friends first arrive at the tunnel entrance to 99, at the end of the previous chapter, through the point where Blackjack is incapacitated and P-21 abducted during the group's first encounter with the infected raider ponies that call the stable their home.

This was... a sad, depressing, but overall awesome chapter. Full of crazy ass shit, damn. Lots of tough decisions to make here, and I am disappointed in Rivets' actions involving the bodies... that is nasty as fuck, but eh... gotta do what you gotta do to survive... nasty.

I totally agree with this assessment as, given how events within the chapter unfold, the decision Blackjack is forced to make at the end is understandably tough and something I'm sure no one in there right mind would want to think about.

Anyway, on a brighter note, I'm looking forward to more of our plucky heroine's continuing adventure through the roughest post-apocalyptic city outside of "Racoon City".

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Bodycount is now over 400 with the killing of the Stable. Likely 450 - 500.
Rivet said there were roughly 350 down below not raider'd, even with a number of deaths with them fighting the vault raiders, that's still roughly 300 or so added onto her score of 142.

10230476
They stated the main six were early 20s

I.. I dont know what to type... this was just horrible and saddening beyond anything I could think of happening... 😭😭😭😭

Rampage lay on her back, chains holding her to a table as Mince and Chopper cut away regenerating hunks of flesh almost as fast as they reappeared. The chains holding her to the table were being grown around, trapping her in this nightmare. Suddenly, as terrible as it was, P-21’s worst fate was nothing compared to Rampage’s. They could eat her forever… hauled around wherever the raiders roamed as an eternal source of meat.

I have not forgotten this scene. This scene has been etched so deep in my memory that I still remember this 6 years after. This and something in chapter 30 ish something and Blacksjacks birthday (also one part of the ending). But this scene was so messed up. This would have been the death of Rampage because unless she's killed she would be stuck there forever. Jesus.

She drew a second magazine with her hooves, and I jammed the first magazine back into gun. She dropped the second magazine to rack the slide, and I ejected it and hit her with two floating magazines. Her yellow eyes blazed with familiar fury as she drew a third magazine to load into the gun, but I jammed one back in. Then she screamed in rage and threw the weapon aside. My smile grew as I floated the gun to me and racked a round into the chamber with my magic. S.A.T.S. ran out.

“I fucking hate unicorns…” she spat,

This makes me sympathize with Daisy more than her entire tragic backstory. Seriously, fuck unicorn horseshit!

Your unicorn horseshit is ok though, Blackjack. What can I say, you make it look good!