Damn dude, what a chapter, this prison is one giant clusterfuck of insanity, hahaha.

Nicely done man, nicely done
Shadowbolt Tower eh?
*grins*

And then I felt something familiar...
Dying.
Again...
Damn it.

Its not that bad

Well, this was a conga line of insanity... I'm not so sure on how to feel about of what's happened right now and now another road ahead paved for Blackjack to undergo... well, this journey is still not over yet...

Rampage said a she pointed with her hoof.

as she

Welcome to the Blackjack and Co. Travelling Freak Show. Remember to shoot Blackjack. It’s good luck.”
“Do not shoot Blackjack!” I contradicted at once as we started out.

LOL That's so perfectly morbid and dark!

And so a balefire bomb goes off, destroying the prison. Oh and Blackjack probably dying again.

I love she was just so nonchalant about death. Like it's an inconvenience for her

Mneh. They got out ahead of the blast (I'm sure that will do wonders for the Wasteland), but BJ died anyway. Not that it matters, since she's already survived that once. I mean, the stakes are pretty much no higher than they've ever been, so I'm not too concerned here. :B

Also, that boss fight couldn't have been more "directly out of a video game" if he'd had a health bar.

Still, for all that Hightower did in fact drag on for three chapters, I was never really bored by any of it. Cerberus shouting "For Equestria!" while dropping out of sight was the funniest shit (major props to VisualPony for pulling that off). Rampage is best pony. The amount of pity I have for Doof is indescribable. :( Snips' sacrifice was great. The explanation for why Blackjack can play bass so well is some good ass-covering. :V And now Psychoshy has a boyfriend. Hooray?

But I swear, by the time I get around to writing my FoE parody, it's gonna look like a PH parody too because you pre-stole all my ideas. :C

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>>Stakes
It's kind of true. Every now and again, you have something like chapter 43 where there's a real sense that something could happen with Blackjack herself, but ever since 33 and then the cyberization and automatic healing became factors (or even well before then as in your case), I'd found tension to come less from the worry that Blackjack herself would die, and more about what she would lose or what she would become along the way.

>>Doof
Somber has his pattern of doing tragedy and sympathy for his antagonists in the story, and I think he was most successful with Doof. The logic/cause and effect holds tighter than, for example, Gorgon, where what he ended up doing seems fine, but not a fully natural outgrowth of his path like with Doof. And in Doof's case, it's like the flip side of the expression about never meeting your heroes: you knew what he became, and where he was before, but even with the original assault memory it felt to me like there was a separation between Doof the Marauder (for all his obvious problems especially where women were concerned), and Deus the Reaper. But the transition, and the way it was on the one hand unnecessary and on the other it's hard to identify anyone in particular who was entirely wrong in how they handled his key conflict . . . it's depressing.

>>Boss fight
I think there are strong similarities to the fight with Horrigan at the end of Fallout 2. Granted, that might just be one of the more franchise relevant cases of generic boss fight that share things with the scene.

Snips was great, and I thought that Blackjack's reaction, for all that it's basically characteristic of her, was too.

>>Bass
To be fair, if the bass thing was ass-covering, it started a long time ago.

>>Hooray?
Aww, after the "GODDAMMIT BLACKJACK, DON'T FUCK THE BATPONY" response, this just feels so . . . disappointing. Sigh. Different situations, I guess.

“Oh yeah. Asked if I could go find Snips or Mistress Rarity, but he said no. Cast a bunch of spells on him too... ‘cause he needed to be able to ‘control the prison’. Said he’d have order and that none of the scum were gonna get out.” Snips looked away. “He... um... he’s sorta big and scary now, so I just stayed in here with all my friends,” he said as he looked over at the figurines. “Clay’s nice and easy and doesn’t mind if you’re slow. In fact, Rarity said that that made me better than anypony for working it. Just gotta be careful.”

Should that be Snails? I don't think Snips was there at the time.

7214170
I think I can characterize my reaction to Psychoshy at this point as "cool". I sort of don't care about her. <.< But not in a bad way? She can fuck the batpony and I won't mind, is what I'm saying.

I find myself reminded of the Scarlet Pumpernickel, a Looney Toons classic from... probably the 50s. Daffy is trying so hard to sell a story to this producer that he just keeps piling on increasingly dark and dramatic plot twists until he gives up and kills himself (cartoonishly, but still). This whole Hightower mess read a lot like that, to both good and bad effect, frankly. Between that and the increasingly demonizing nature of the flashbacks (remember when they were poignant and reminded us that this was a world we cared about? Pepperidge Farm remembers...) I've started skimming in between wandering off. Ah well. It's become a chore to read this for at least the last several chapters, but given the length it was bound to have lulls. Trouble is, this particular lull brought me to the 8 deadly words, at least long enough to consider them rather seriously. 'Why does it all end in tears?' Regrettably, Blackjack, you had the misfortune of existing in a fic written by a fellow that calls himself 'Somber'. So... I'm betting you're pretty well fucked, all in all. Sorry.
I've mentioned in commenting on some other fic that it's no story if the author doesn't owe an apology to at least one character (not my thought, Donaldson, the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant)... but what about the other extreme? When every character gets shit on... heh, if we didn't have Fo:E reminding us that the world doesn't actually suck quite this much, that it's even worth saving... eh.

Remember to shoot Blackjack. It’s good luck.

Uh... not so much, Rampage. Admittedly, you're so unacquainted with good luck that you wouldn't know it if it exploded into caps right in front of you, but seriously...

I'm sure that little Deus ex Machina at the end of this chapter is deep, meaningful, and probably just a sign of something worse... but it was good for a chuckle and an eyeroll in the here and now.

Ah, a timeline question (assuming anyone reads this far into a relatively bitchy comment). From the dream there, it looks like Mac and company are recruited after Littlehorn, and after Celestia has stepped down. That struck me as odd. Mac died protecting Celestia from an assassin at a peace summit after Shattered Hoof... when she still had the authority to arrange or even speak at one. I remember it said that after Littlehorn, peace was no longer an option. As such, didn't Mac die before Littlehorn even happened? There's a lot to dig back through to confirm that between this and Fo:E... but it feels off to me; I'm almost positive I remember reading that Celestia was still in charge at that point, that's what made it an assassination attempt and why it made no sense to me at the time (you're scared of Luna taking control so you shoot at the one whose death would put her there? Wat?)

And so, onward... not too sure about upward... but you can't have everything.

Shadowbolt tower? I wonder how long the lesson she learned here will last....

Achievements Unlocked

Prison Duty: Break into, then escape, from Hightower Prison more or less intact and alive.

not so happily everafter: die, again.

on a more serious note, great chapter man. tho does this mean Blackjack goes back to level one again?

goddamnit BJ feels sloppy after getting that healing talisman melting left and right. pls stap dying

funny how they call him A useless fuckup, as if his name wasn't Doof.
As if he never fought in that war.

Then there was a resounding thud as the door was knocked clear off its hinges and flew into the apartment. Rarity gasped as she turned to stare at the empty doorframe. A second later, a little white bunny hopped in and fixed Rarity with a stern glare. Fluttershy flew in after him, “Now Angel, you really should give people a chance to answer their doors and not just kick them down.”She swallowed, then nodded to the little white rabbit. He grinned, his ears twitching this way and that. Like a fuzzy missile, he launched himself at her terminal, dove under the desk, emerged with a black plastic box trailing wires, and snapped it over his knee. Another swivel of his ear and he leapt into a potted plant. A tiny spritebot came buzzing out, but the rabbit flew through the air and exploded it in a single furious kick. Then he looked right at me and leapt up at me in two bounds.

doom bunny now makes sense

I could have kissed that hunk of metal; saved by the killer robot!

Now that's irony right there.

"Oh thank Celestia! It feels like we’ve been fighting forever,”

The irony has been doubled!

“My name is Blossomforth. I don’t know what’s going on.

Clean up on isle 4, Cloud Kicker.
Looks like your girlfriend got in a twist.

Special Weapons and Arcane Tactics

=
Special Weapons and Tactics.
Funny, Somber made use of that A.
It should be S.W.A.A.T

A god of pain and misery… funny

Did you know "Deus" means "God"?
I also find it somewhat humorous since he did, indeed, become a "God of pain and misery".
Its so sad, though, because Vanity was judging him as scum.
Its really that mares fault for telling Doof that Twist would like it. He was too stupid to think otherwise.

I stared at the inscription on the base. ‘Be a brainiac!’

Huh?

Then Twilight Sparkle’s head fell clean off!

Psyche!

He peered at the yellowed material. “Mostly involving torture... but it’s got some other things here too!”

Yeah. Because that's reassuring...

“It should be possible to take a fragment of soul and copy the unique magical properties of another.”

In other words, she can copy and paste soul B to soul A, but keep A as well. (B is another pony. A is her own, or a blank slate.)

Dying.

Again...

Damn it.

Dammit, Blackjack!
You're not a cat! You don't have 9 lives!
3 strikes, and you. Are. Out, girl!

I have a very clear mental picture of The Warden looking and sounding exactly like Cave Johnson

8318334
OMG THAT JUST MADE EVERYTHING DEALING WITH THE WARDEN 1000x BETTER!!!!

Rampage: Kick the Blackjack!
Blackjack: Don't kick the Blackjack!

* * *

Blackjack: (Shaking Snails) FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT!
Snails: Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-
Blackjack: FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT-

That prison reminded me of a huge temple! Loved the layout and story progression through it.
I was so sad to learn what happened to Octavia, but her instrument still sings for her

easy peasey faciley...

Lol.

8101889
Black jack has twenty one lives.

Okay, I had to chuckle when Blackjack and Rampage were yelling into the toilet, as this was word for word what Egon and Peter were yelling at the mood slime in Ghostbusters 2.

Wait... you moved to Vegas???

SONOFABITCH! I was just there last week for a major 8-ball tournament at the Westgate.

I was about to commment that it is not belivable that character as important as Lacunae was killed within 2 sentences. That it was too obvious that she is not dead, but then she says she faked it, so F! I don't get a single chance to comment about bad writing

10095072
I would never... ever... kill characters. Nope. >.>

...

Nooooooope.

Only Blackjack would die twice in as many chapters.

Damn... she lost both legs

“Okay. Xanthe, give me a timeta…”
BOOM!
They’re all death!
Except for Rampage.

The End!

And that was Project Horizons.
Unexpecting ending and there are a few lose ends left but overall, I'll give 10 points out of 10.
Can’t wait for the sequel where Glory and P-21 are forced to pretend to be a couple for tax benefits.

“Half an hour? An hour at most,” Xanthe whimpered.

They need to find Snails, more information about the EC-1101 and the stuff Ahuitzotl wants from the crime bosses’ prison cell. All within a very short timeframe. They may not have enough time to get everything and Blackjack wouldn’t be Blackjack if she didn’t prioritize saving Snails over everything else. I foresee a conflict of interests with Carrion who has a different set of priorities.

Of all our fliers, Cerberus was the only one we could really spare to warn Meatlocker.

I was sure Cerberus wouldn’t make it out alive. Looks like I was wrong.
Let’s hope there are no unfortunate scavengers near the prison. This is going to be a big explosion.

“Oh, if only you were a griffin,” he muttered as he looked skyward. “I would have given my left paw for a commander like you.”

Not sure if you can consider that as a compliment or not.

Our Contract is a reflection of who we are and what we will and won’t do. For a griffin to claim what they will and won’t do, and then do just that, justifies our existence. I won’t kill young, nor will I lie. No order, no threat, no bribe will make me do so. To do otherwise would violate my Contract. Once, whole rookeries were bound by common Contracts that defined them.

Which sounds nothing like the Griffons from show. But some inconsistencies are to be excepted, since Fallout Equestria was written during Season One when there was almost no lore about Griffons. Wasn’t until Season 5 that we got a closer look at Griffon culture. And while this chapter was written after said episode it makes sense to stick with the original lore established by Fallout: Equestria.

She butchers all who oppose her. I saw what you did in Yellow River.

Unfortunately, you’ve met her on a very bad day. Blackjack normally doesn’t want to butcher anyone and tries to avoid killing, sparing even the worst of the worst as long as they surrender or are no longer a threat.

Because all it would take is you changing your mind, and the rest of us are dead! Maybe you think the world would be better without Psychoshy. What are my chances of stopping you if you really wanted to kill me? She thinks you’re the devil. I’d say you’re two steps away.

Well, she has a point. We’ve seen Blackjack snapping multiple times and crazy Blackjack is frightening. Littlepip’s Arbu massacre is peanuts compared to Blackjack on a really bad day. But as I said before: Blackjack has proven multiple times that she’s not going to turn into another Deus no matter how bad things turn.

“I can… I can include a message. If there is one of Caesar’s Hooves hidden in Meatlocker, they’ll be somewhere near the Mortuary. A locked storeroom, perhaps.” She glanced at Carrion, then dropped her gaze a little. “I just… wanted to protect my people…”

That’s probably going to ruin any chance of her every being able to go back to her people. They’re going to mark her as a traitor and we saw what the Remnants do to Traitors.

I saw glowing ghouls among their feral brethren and begging to be let out. I just couldn’t think of a way we could open the fused steel doors and extract them safely. I wanted to give them a chance. I needed to…

Being forced to leave ponies in need of help behind sucks. Especially if you’re Blackjack who always wants to save everyone.

“Hey! Hey you! You worthless piece of slime! You ignorant, disgusting blob!” Rampage rushed up beside me, looking on in confusion. I glared down and banged the toilet, shouting.

My first thought was, that her plan was to trick the flaming Ghouls into melting the door with their fire. But using the Smooze’s corrosive body to melt the door is brilliant.

I screamed as I scooped up blue smooze with my magic and flung it at the three flaming ponies. The monsters made no effort to dodge; why should they? Bullets melted before they were struck.

And now she’s weaponizing the Smooze to kill the almost indestructible burning Ghouls. Clever girl!

Even the smooze seemed to find the three a little too spicy for its taste, the blue sludge disappearing back into the corroded toilet.

Or maybe it remembered what happened the last time it tried to eat Blackjack and simply was like: “You know what? I’m good. I’m just going back to the basement and let you do your stuff while I do mine.”

Wait… if it was strong enough to do that… “Smear it on the door!”

Oh okay, so the initial plan wasn’t to use the Smooze to melt the door. It was just to get rid of the Ghouls. Using it on the door was an Eureka moment of Blackjack.

“There isn’t. Now go. I’ll see you on the roof.” And then she turned away, spread her wings, and flew silently off into the smoke.

First Cerberus and now her. I guess this is the part where the group is slowly reduced one by one. Which probably means a few more death red shirts along the way.

Xanthe kept her eyes low as she trotted to the keys and started typing, every now and then looking over at me in worry.

Probably wondering what she did to deserve being stuck in a prison full of deadly ghouls and robots with two crazy ponies and a balefire bomb about to go off.

And it was full of ghouls in tattered guard uniforms who fought each other with batons. Bullet casings were scattered all over the place, along with discarded firearms. Every ghoul was screaming, glowing with radiation, beating each other to a pulp and then regenerating. Screams of “Traitors!” croaked from some throats, but who was a traitor to whom was never really clear.

Well that’s not something you see every day. Again, it’s a good thing that they’re so far gone that they don’t realize the state they are in.

Then I blew its brains out the back of its head with three rapid fire shots. As the ghoul dropped, I swapped my aim and planted four more rounds in the head of another.
“You with S.W.A.T.?” the remaining ghoul shouted over the din, pushing me back towards the wall and away from the fight.

I love how she completely unfazed by the fact that Blackjack just killed her co-worker. Even if they were on opposing sides and all that.
By the way: Raindrops isn’t going to be added to kill the count since she’s gone completely feral. Same for the other two she put down.

It seemed that ghouls had a tendency to get stuck on certain things from when they were alive. I’d better keep her in the fantasy, unless I wanted her to go feral. “What’s the situation here?”

Is that how Ghouls work? Well another thing one the list of things that make no sense about Ghouls.

Silver Spoon sighed and said in a low murmur, “Blackjack, have you been lying to delusional ghouls again?” I smiled awkwardly and shrugged, and the gray ghoul sighed and covered her face with her hoof.

Sure, being honest has worked surprisingly well for Silver Spoon and turned out to be an instant cure. Still we don’t know if that’s the normal reaction. Telling Blossomforth the truth may actually help her recover or it may drive her over the edge. Better bring her to Meatlocker first an see what they can do for her.

I said, and Psychoshy groaned. I fixed the yellow pegasus with an even look.

You just admitted being scared of Blackjack going crazy and killing you. So, her not wanting to kill is a good sign and you should encourage that behavior. Even if it’s just for the sake of self-preservation.

By the time we reached the other side, ten guards remained, watching as I put down the last one with the last three bullets in my gun.

That's ten ponies who would’ve died without you. I call that a success. Provided you manage to get them out of Hightower.

“Special Weapons and Arcane Tactics doesn’t mess around,”

Wouldn’t that make them S.W.A.A.T. instead?

I worked it free and looked at the mouth-scrawled note. ‘They have my girl. Sorry.’

Merriweather has been blackmailed by someone to put the prison into lockdown and then she killed herself out of guilty. Ironically sparing her the fate of all the staff and the inmates.
Pretty sure the ones behind this were the O.I.A. although I’m not sure if this was an order from Goldenblood or Horse.

We still have two fliers. One goes up, finds the security station upstairs, turns the key there, we turn the key down here, everypony but the other flier goes through the door. Then the other flier pops up the shaft and we all get out of here. Easy peasy.

Sounds like a plan. Albeit it also sounds far to easy to work flawlessly.

“We already know I’m useless for that. Snails always made the connections in the end; it’ll take him a while, but he’ll figure this out.” He gave the smallest little smile. “I’m not planning on dying here, anyway. Once you get into the Warden’s office, you should be able to shut down the teleportation inhibitor talisman at the Warden’s security station. Not hard, just smash it. Then I’ll teleport up to you. Easy as pie.”

So, no heroic sacrifices for Snails? Still I’m having the sneaking suspicion that he’s either lying or that something is gone to prevent him from teleporting.
“You can do that? Blind?” I asked, frowning in concern. He simply nodded.
“Never found out who, but I guess that one of her friends told him she’d never ever ever ever ever speak to him again. Pushed him over the edge…” The ghoul shivered. “After that we weren’t locking him up to protect him, but to protect everypony else from him. Kept provoking us to put a bullet in him… send him to Hell where he belonged. Finally he got transferred out of here. Don’t know where… don’t want to know.”

Not sure what that says about his character. He’s obviously not right in the head, considering how he got tricked into raping someone. But he also seemed to have been a decent guy once who tried to make amends. When that failed he wanted to commit suicide by cops and instead got turned into a living weapon. Sounds awfully similar to Blackjack. Until he gave up and decided to be a monster.

In two minutes, almost everything that had been loose in the cell was in my bags, and I was near my carrying capacity. I made sure all the sheets were tucked inside the bulging pockets; I certainly didn’t want them to catch fire.

Video game logic at it’s finest. She’s going to get a lot of caps for all that vendor trash.

“Open the door and I’ll give you my evidence. Maybe you can catch them again,” I said, hearing the grind of the sentries’ wheels approaching.
The Warden stared at me for what felt like an eternity. “Oh, very well.”

Can’t believe he fell for that.

“Doesn’t matter, anyway. I was never smart enough to figure out how to teleport.”
“You lied…” I murmured.
“I lied,” he said with a little nod.

He lied. Turns out my suspicion was true and he was fully intending to do a heroic sacrifice to make amends for putting that Death Curse on Blackjack.

If I’d trusted you, we could have done this better.

Exactly! Then you probably wouldn’t had to rush through the prison before a balefire bomb goes off. But rest assured you’re not the first one who realized that things would’ve been far easier if you had just bee honest to Blackjack. And I doubt you’ll be the last one.

“You sanctimonious rich fuck!” Doof screamed at him, looking truly deranged in his anguish. “You have no fucking clue what she means to me!”

I’m getting the feeling this in no longer about Twist. Doof wants to prove to himself that he’s not a monster. That’s what matters the most to him. He should’ve accepted that Twist is done with him after what he did and try to move on. But no, he wanted to talk to Twist, like if this could magical fix everything he did. What would’ve happened if Twist didn’t accept his apologize? Would’ve have gotten angry at her, too? Probably yes.

There is shit you do not do. The ends do not justify the means!” she said as she gave me another shake. Then the world went white.

Worst possible timing Rampage.
Also, this chapter is now a competition between Blackjack and Rampage about who’s going to snap first. Right now, it looks like Rampage is winning.

Fluttershy bowed her head again. “Yes. It is horrible...” she nearly whispered, but then she looked at Rarity again and said, “But it’s not the worst, Rarity.”

As 48 Chapters of PH have shown, the death isn’t even in the Top Ten List of absolutely worst things.

Rarity then looked up at the broken mirror and wiped at her tears, smearing her cheeks in red before rising. Step by step she approached, looking at the broken reflection. She looked at the different shards of herself reflected back, counting softly. “Forty-two... Of course...” she murmured, then smiled faintly. “Silly Rarity... a present doesn’t count if you take it from somepony else. It only counts... if it comes from yourself...”

This whole conversation between Fluttershy and Rarity was one of the best moments in Project Horizons. Both mares were written really well and you can even sympathize[with Rarity despite everything she did and understand why she took such drastic actions.

And again, Goldenblood's rule in this was minimal. It was just about Rarity and her obsession with keeping her friends safe. As it should be.

No data for EC-1101 was worth the deaths of my friends. I lay there on the floor for a moment and sighed.

I wonder if this will lead to a situation where Blackjack decides not to go after another clue for the EC-1101 because it would unnecessarily endanger her friends. I know that ithe EC-1101 is the main plot hook for PH and that Blackjack somehow has to get the information but it would be nice to see something like that in the story.

The black book doesn’t say anything about cutting a soul in two. Rending and destroying one... okay. Cursing a pony to shatter their soul and scatter it, yeah. But slicing it neatly in two? I don’t think the book sees much point in just two pieces.”

I’m not an expert in souls, but cutting one in half sounds like a very unhealthy thing to do.

“But I want you to be okay with helping me. If you don’t want to help, you can leave. With the bits I offered.”

At first it looked like she was going to exploit Octavia’s desperate need for money and make her “volunteer” by withholding the money until she agreed. But she was perfectly willing to let her walk away with the cash. That’s very generous.

“Oh... will you look at that! Looks like the big black book’s got a few ideas on splitting souls all of a sudden.” He peered at the yellowed material. “Mostly involving torture... but it’s got some other things here too!”

Great, she just gave that Book of Unspeakable Evil more ideas.

“We’ll have to test it a few more times, now that we know that splitting a soul isn’t lethal.”

Wait a second, you didn’t tell Octavia that she could’ve died, did you? That’s cold.

“So we don’t need to beat the Warden. We just need to occupy him long enough for a certain zebra to get to that terminal and lift the lockdown. Then we blast the terminal, run for our lives, and let the balefire bomb finish him off!”

Sounds easy enough.

Who aim kidding. This is going to go horribly wrong.

You’ve got to excuse her. She gets distracted easily by the motivations of ponies who died two centuries ago. Makes her overlook the little things.

Spot on Rampage. Blackjack can spend hours thinking about the motivations of long death ponies like it’s all one big mystery.
Luckily for her, this is Project Horizons, so there’s really one big mystery than needs to be solving instead of everything just being a bunch of random events.

Then he silenced her with a hoof-curling kiss. Her blue eyes popped wide, and then her buttery wings fluffed at her sides. Slowly, she swayed and finally sat down hard, Stygius moving with her to keep contact, and closed her eyes as she smiled in bliss.

Still a worse love story than Twilight!

But hey, Stygius is actually contributing something to the story for once. Sure, it’s the only memorable thing he has done in the last three chapters, but beggars can't be choosers .

I was already writing a lengthy comment in my head about how Stygius hasn’t really done anything noteworthy in the last three chapters since the group entered Hightower. He was just kinda there in the background fighting ghouls and giving everyone a concerned/worried/confused look on his face. If this was movie or series he would be the uncredited extra with no lines that dies fifteen minutes into the story to establish how dangerous the place is. We now know more about Graves and Carrion than the guy who has been sticking around with Blackjack for five chapters.

I know he can’t easily communicate with the rest of the group, but there are plenty of fictional “mute” characters. Even Fallout had a temporary company who couldn’t talk in the Dead Money DLC. Stygius needs to interact more with the rest of the group, to give the readers more insight into his personality and how he ticks. Otherwise he's going to remain that guy who's glued to Blackjack and looks concerned.

“You know, this is going to be really anticlimactic if he just lets us go,” Rampage muttered.

Obviously, you’ve never played a character with max speech. Nothing is more satisfying than convincing Legate Lanius to abandon his conquest of New Vegas or pointing out all the flaws in the Master’s plan.

Or just playing Planescape: Tourment aka one of the greatest games ever made!

It slowly rose up, looming higher and higher as it twisted around to face us. There was a reason the screens had only shown Warden Hobble’s face: it was all that could fit. Two centuries of direct exposure to the warhead had caused the ghoul to swell to Goliathian proportions.

“Why do I suddenly hear boss music?”
Asked Warden Hobble when Blackjack entered his office.

Xanthe… still stood there gaping. I tackled her and dropped under the gatling barrage.

That’s a pretty understandable reaction considering she’s not a badass fighter like Blackjack, Rampage, Carrion or Stygius and that she’s in a room with a giant pony-shaped monstrosity.

The glass blocks crackled under her, and for a horrifying moment I thought he was going to smash her right through the floor and into the firestorm below.

It’s Rampage. So she’s going to survive. May take a while for her to regenerate from being burned alive and blown to dust in a balefire explosion but if anypony could walk off something like that it’s her.

Then a massive spar of metal sticking from the end of a blazing hoof lanced out of the smoke and impaled me right through the middle.

I feel bad but that actually made me chuckle. That’s the universe telling Blackjack “I hate you!”

Suddenly the left wall began to glow. A perfectly round, white patch spread rapidly, and then bulged outwards, and suddenly a blinding line of green as thick as my hoof blasted through, pierced the Warden, struck the far wall, and then vaporized it as well. And the wall behind that. And the wall behind that. The beam disappeared. I looked off to the left, out the hole... due west towards the Core.

Rescued by a Mysterious Stranger. Guess that one switched out his pistol for something bigger. Because sometimes overkill is the appropriate response.

> Next waypoint: Shadowbolt Command, Shadowbolt Tower, Hoofington.

Yep, this confirms that the EC-1101 is just an elaborate plot to kill whoever stumbled upon it.

“It seems the lockdown was lifted,” Lacunae said in my mind as she pulled Rampage and me up towards her. Lacunae was alive, and wonderful! If I didn’t have a great big hole in me, I’d have leapt up and kissed her! She was winging her way out the large hole melted clear through the prison.

Moments like this make me regret that I already know the key plot points of the story. I wasn’t worried about her because already knew that she wouldn't die.

That said even without that knowledge, I'm don't think I would've bought her death. It's a bit hard to explain why, but it didn't feel like a real death scene. Not dramatic enough.

Dying.
Again...
Damn it.

Okay I didn’t expect the curse to actually kill Blackjack. Ah well, she still has a few extra lives so it’s okay.

I write this at 1 AM for me, 4AM for Hinds, and 9AM for Bro and Snipehamster. That’s right, my editors stay up to see Celestia raise the sun working on this. They’re incredible, and deserve a round of applause.

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Huge respect for you guys. That's some serious commitment.

And don’t worry, you haven’t seen the end of Blackjack.

Even without this comment by Somber, I doubt anybody would’ve believed for a second that Blackjack anti-climatically died to a mere curse. That’s so un-Blackjack like.

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Hightower: Three really, really, really fucking long chapters. But it were three very enjoyable chapters. Never felt padding or boring. Sure, you could've cut the Smooze and the fight with the possessed items to streamline the story but I liked both these parts. The sapient scarf was my personal highlight of Hightower and I'm still disappointed that it only appeared in one scene.

Ironically the Ancient Zebra Death Curse felt like something that just kind of happened and didn’t really create any feel of urgency. At least not for me. In fact, the Balefire bomb was a far more effective ticking clock than Blackjack dying to the curse. Especially with the heat and the smoke getting worse by the minute. Of course, I understand why the curse had to be added to the story. We needed a reason why Blackjack couldn't just abort the mission and come back again with better preparation. The curse was a necessary plot device to prevent that.

And speaking of plot device: Are Stygius and Notshy in love? I think they’re supposed to be, but it’s hard to tell. Just a few hours before meeting Notshy, Stygius was casually fucking Blackjack. Then he bumps into her and now they are lovey-dovey? That's just... no... Like I said, if I had a reason to care about Stygius and actually liked him as a character I may be more willing to buy it. But right now it feels like they are in love because the plot demands it and not because it fits with their personalities.

You know what would be a great twist: Shy thinks they are in love - just like she thought Sanguine loved her. Because she's still a teenager who deep-down looks for someone that cares for her while hidding her emotions by acting like the toughest of the toughest. Meanwhile Stygius thinks it's just another causal fling. He doesn't even has any bad intentions. He geniunly believes it's obvious the he doesn't want anything serious and that Shy views their relationship the same way. Classic, tragic miscommunication.

Overall Hightower was a success story. Only two team members died and they not only saved Snails but a couple of other Ghouls as well. Future more they destroyed that wrecked place and put hundreds of Feral Ghouls out of their misery. As far as PH goes this count as victory for Team Blackjack.

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When I wrote it it was going to be one massive chapter. Cause yeah, writing short and sweet is totally my style...