Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 9 - Everyday People

I hadn’t seen my hometown from the outside for a long time. Buck, the last time had been just before Dad and Mom split up. I was a little too young to really understand why they’d break up, just old enough that all I really remembered was the way they talked to each other. And now my mom was some kind of monster, or had been eaten by a monster, or something. Growing up was confusing.

It had taken way too long to get here -- we’d ended up camping out in the wild blue yonder overnight so Emerald could rest. She’d already been tired after a long day of being locked in a prison cell with monsters pounding on the doors and she hadn’t been able to make it the whole way on her own. It was a good thing we hadn’t gone after the Noctilucent. Even if it had been damaged, we’d never have caught up with it.

By the time we got to Cirrus Valley, we were all ready for a break.

“Just set us down over there,” I said. “It’s a recharging station.”

I pointed to the neon sign blaring through the fog. It showed a swirling aqua-colored vortex. The charging ports were monoliths just in front of the building, set in a line picked out by the few working lights.

“What’s with all the haze?” one of the prisoners asked. I couldn’t remember his name. Spanky? Misty? I knew it ended in a ‘y’.

“We’re below the standard cloud level here,” I said, pointing up at the massive cloud walls starting to loom above us as we descended.

“There are large pumps used to keep the clouds from leaking in, but they must be down for maintenance,” Dad said. “They take them offline for a few days every month to keep them working. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah, you get used to it,” I said, trying to reassure the others. I felt like I had to defend my town. It had been my idea to come here, more or less, and it was half-flooded with leaking clouds like some abandoned ghost town. “It’s not usually this bad. Most of the time the sun comes out and cleans everything out.”

“They probably ran into problems and were lacking my expertise,” Dad said. “I’ve had to step in a few times myself to sort things out when they had problems with the computer systems or pump controllers. I bet when we get home there’ll be a message waiting for us begging for my help.”

“Seems quiet,” Quattro said. “Too quiet.”

“Ponies usually stay home on days like this,” I said.

“After all the excitement, we could use some quiet,” Emerald said. “My wings are starting to ache. I haven’t done this much exercise since I was in basic training.”

“I should report you for not keeping up with your cardio,” Quattro teased.

“I should have made you walk the whole way here,” Emerald countered. “If I had fewer ponies to carry I’d be feeling much better. Seven other ponies was really pushing it.”

“You should have kicked Chamomile off, then. She counts as two ponies.”

I shoved Quattro, and the whole transport shook.

“No horsing around,” Emerald said. “I’m going to set us down.”

Emerald brought us in low, slowing and carefully entering the fog, hitting the landing pad gently and rolling to a stop.

“Everypony out,” she said, unbuckling herself from the straps.

When I stepped off the transport, I could feel it. Walking through the fog was like being underwater. It slowed everything down. It wasn’t thick enough to stand on, but it was close. It made things feel floaty and deliberate. The easiest thing for me was just turning the way I wanted to go and barging ahead in a straight line just to avoid losing momentum.

“Need help hooking it up?” I asked.

Emerald popped open a panel on the side. “It shouldn’t be hard. It’s a standard connection.” She picked up the probe hanging on the side of the dark cloudbanks, the miniature stormclouds sparking with inner light from the electricity within them. Emerald snapped it into place with the loud click of magnets coming together.

“Can we use this to recharge the armor?” I asked. The low-battery indicator had been blinking for a while. We were already dipping into the single-digit percentages.

“No,” Destiny said. “I wish we could. What we really need is a new fusion core.”

“A fusion core?” Emerald asked in surprise. “Those were only used in heavy industrial generators. Not in powered armor.”

“Not in normal powered armor,” Destiny agreed. “This is a prototype unit. Less than a dozen suits were made.”

“That doesn’t explain why it needs that much power,” Emerald noted.

“The thaumoframe draws a lot of power,” Destiny explained. “It runs the strength enhancement, weight reduction, sensors… and since it has to be able to shift from one spell matrix to another at a moment’s notice, it’s not super efficient. That was something we were looking at improving, but we never got around to it.”

Emerald frowned. “It doesn’t have dedicated mechanical systems?”

“The idea was, it would have almost no moving parts. It’s like a clean, modern electric motor compared to a coal-fired steam engine. If it’s solid-state, not as much can go wrong.”

“It feels as heavy as a steam engine,” I mumbled.

“Don’t complain. If it wasn’t for the near-field broadcast from the armor, you’d be in agony from that SIVA infection.”

“Where is everypony?” one of the four prisoners asked. “Shouldn’t somepony have come out to see what’s going on?”

“In this town, good chance he’s inside and trying to sleep through the fog,” I said. “Or he might think Emma is here to arrest him for something.”

Quattro laughed at that and pushed open the doors to the small service station. The lights were off, but that wasn’t surprising. Like I said, most places just sort of shut down and waited for days like this to end. If there wasn’t anypony inside, we could just toss some bits on the counter to square up with whatever we took. I’d done it before. Only without the bits. And then I’d gotten in trouble.

I might not be a great role model.

“Anypony here?” Quattro asked. I followed the small mare inside. The shelves were mostly bare. The place had been built back when ponies had so much surplus stuff they could just fill a store with things they might want.

The good thing was, empty shelves meant I wasn’t likely to knock anything over and break it.

“I’ll check the back room,” one of the chefs said, stepping past us to walk into the back.

“Looks like we’ll have to go somewhere else to get a snack,” Quattro said. “Unless he keeps the good stuff back here?”

She hopped over the counter, and I saw her expression change before she landed, flapping wildly with her clipped wings to avoid stepping in something.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, rushing over to look. Quattro pointed.

Behind the counter, hidden unless you were leaning over it to look, was the torn and crumpled form of the old pony who’d run the little shop. His throat had been torn out, and I could see black veins stretching from the wound. His skin was already blistered and bubbling in places.

“Oh buck,” I whispered. I knelt down next to him. "Mister Yorkshire... You used to let me do little chores for you for candy. I was so bad at it you probably spent more time fixing my mistakes than you would have doing it yourself..." I shook my head. "What in Tartarus happened? Who did this?"

“Hold on,” Destiny said. Flashing text and windows came up. I imagined a unicorn frantically tapping at a keyboard in the back of my head. A symbol flashed across my helmet’s display. “SIVA reaction confirmed.”

“How is that possible?” Quattro hopped up onto the counter, leaning over the fallen body. She tilted her head, thinking. “It looks like something was trying to eat him.”

The scream from the back room ended our discussion. I got up, determined to avenge the old stallion.

“We might have just found the something,” I said, bolting for the door to the back room and shoving through it. The chef that had come with us was screaming, backing up, trying to fight off the pony that had his teeth latched around the chef’s fetlock.

“Get him off me!” the chef yelled.

I charged without thinking, lowering my head and just tackling the biter. The pale stallion’s teeth tore free with a sickening ripping sensation, blood splattering everywhere as he slammed back into the shelves full of Abraxo cleaner and soap.

“What the buck is wrong with him?!” the chef demanded.

“He’s infected with something!” I said. Now that I got a look at him, he was just another pony from around town. But something had gone terribly wrong. He looked just like the miners had back at the camp - like he was in the middle of a metamorphosis from pony to insect, growing tumorous plates of steel under his skin and going mad from the feeling of needles tearing him apart from inside. Those same black veins surrounded his eyes and mouth, like his blood was turning into old crude oil. He started to get back up. I looked away and stomped, feeling bones break. The infected stallion went still.

“Infected?” the chef asked, suddenly worried. He looked at the bite on his hoof.

“Here,” I said, spotting a half-empty bottle of bathtub vodka. The clerk must have gotten bored on his breaks. He took the bottle, biting the cork and spitting it to the side, taking a long swig before pouring the rest on his bite wound and hissing in pain. He looked up and behind me in alarm at a sound I hadn’t heard.

I kicked without looking, putting my hoof right through the snout of the biting zombie that had gotten back up already. I felt bone snap, and it fell to the ground in a heap. I wasn’t sure how long it’d stay there.

“Let’s get outside,” I said. “Quattro! We’ve got trouble!”

I helped the chef out of the back room and closed the door behind us. Hopefully they weren’t smart enough to figure out how to work a doorknob.

“This town is a lot more exciting than I remember,” Quattro said.

The door burst open, and Emerald was there, the tip of her single mounted rifle glowing. We froze.

“Get down!” she shouted.

Quattro dove down from the countertop, and just barely missed being grabbed by Mister Yorkshire as he got back up, blood still trickling from the wound in his throat. Emerald shot him, catching him in the chest and head, putting him back down on the ground with a short burst of bright laser light. I froze at the sight, watching him fall in a twitching mess.

“Thanks,” Quattro said, a little breathless.

“Come on,” Emerald said, holding the door so we could get out. I passed the wounded chef to Quattro so I didn’t have to try squeezing through the doorway while carrying him. “We need to get somewhere we can defend.”

There were dark shapes in the fog, getting closer. I could just pick out the glint of metal when they moved.

“Defend?” Dad demanded, from where he was cowering next to the transport. Taking cover, I mean. My dad wouldn’t cower. “What are you talking about? Get strapped in and let’s just get out of here!”

“The transport’s batteries will die before we get anywhere, and we don’t have supplies to last even that long,” Quattro said. “We might be able to condense water from the clouds, but we need food.”

“I think our best bet is to leave this here to charge,” Emerald said. “It’s going to take a few hours to get up to full. We use that time to gather supplies. Once we have enough for at least a few days, we leave.”

“I know just the place to start,” Quattro said.

---

I shoved, and the door popped open. A plasma round hit the cloud next to my head when I looked inside, melting the cloud wall and hot enough I felt the splash through the armor.

“Woah, woah!” I shouted. “We’re friendly!”

Sloe Gin looked at me incredulously. He had a plasma rifle in his hooves that looked like it was held together mostly with duct tape and hope, and more duct tape holding a bar cloth in place against his neck. I'd never seen the rifle before. He must have had it in the safe in the back office.

“What the buck?” he gasped, his voice raspy. “Chamomile?”

“I’m surprised you recognized me with, you know,” I said, motioning to the blue powered armor. “Come on, it’s safe!” I forced my way inside, shoving the table he’d put up against the door out of the way so the others could enter.

“So much for my barricade,” Sloe mumbled, lowering the rifle.

“If she could get through it that easily, it wasn’t worth much,” Quattro said. “Do you have bandages?” She motioned at the wounded chef. The three other former prisoners helped get him into a chair.

“If I had bandages I wouldn’t have a bucking towel around my neck,” Sloe growled. He raised the plasma rifle at me again and pulled the trigger, the weapon clicking empty. He looked at the busted weapon and swore before throwing it away and putting his head down on the bar. I looked at the gun, then at him, my jaw hanging open.

“What the buck?!” I demanded, storming over to grab him.

“That thing came here looking for you!” Sloe shouted, his voice getting raspier by the moment.

“Looking for… what are you talking about?”

“The giant metal thing!” Sloe yelled, pointing outside. “It attacked the town, screaming your name!”

“No way.” I dropped Sloe. “That has to be-- that dragon came here? Mom came here?”

“It must have some way to access her memories,” Destiny said. “She remembered you back at the Exodus Blue. She must have come looking for you, and decided to try knocking on your front door.”

“Why wouldn’t she be looking for me?” Dad asked.

Quattro rolled her eyes. “Maybe she did, and that’s why she’s trying to kill everypony.”

“It’s not a bucking joke,” Sloe growled. “Ponies are dead!” He started to shiver and shake, sweating profusely. He grabbed a bottle from under the bar and chugged half of it. It should have almost knocked him unconscious, but he looked like he wasn’t feeling anything.

“How long ago were you attacked?” Emerald asked.

“A few hours,” the bartender said, gasping for breath and lowering his head again, putting his chin against the bartop. “I feel like shit…”

“Just stay calm,” Emerald said. “There should be something we can do for him--”

The bartender mumbled something.

“What?” I asked, leaning closer to Sloe.

Sloe lunged at me, teeth first. He latched onto my armor and flailed at me, hooves pounding against my chest.

Emerald’s stinger-tipped tail stabbed into him. Dark, brown blood leaked out of Sloe, as thick as mud. I shoved him back, and Emerald finished it with a flurry of laser shots, the first two not doing much, but the third burning into him and cascading into a disintegration, ashes falling to the floor.

“Damnit…” I turned and grabbed Emerald by her armored collar, lifting her off the ground so I could look her in the eyes. I wanted to throw her across the room, or punch her, or… something! “That was my friend!”

“He was trying to kill you,” Emerald hissed. “You could try thanking me.”

“Are you going to shoot me too?!” I demanded. “I’m infected! He might be infected!”

“No! I’m trying to save you,” Emerald said. “All of you!”

“I have an idea,” Destiny interrupted. I could feel the armor forcing my hoof, making my grip go slack and putting Emerald down. Destiny was trying to calm things down. I took a deep breath and let Emerald go. “It might be possible to create something to prevent the infection from spreading.”

“What do we need?” Quattro asked.

“Medical supplies,” Destiny said. “SIVA cells are self-organizing micromachines, and because they’re so small they’re vulnerable to some medications.”

“So we can treat it like a disease?” Dad asked.

“Yes,” Emerald said. “Actually, pouring alcohol on the wound was a really good idea. Washing promptly will keep SIVA cells from getting a foothold.”

I saw the chef relax a little. One of the other survivors patted him on the back.

“There’s a hospital at the north end of town,” Dad said. “Celestia knows I had to visit a lot thanks to Chamomile. We must have ended up visiting the doctors at least once a month until she got old enough to take herself.”

“I’m not that accident-prone.”

He gave me a look. “You once needed to get stitches because you tried to pierce your ear with a nailgun.”

Thankfully they couldn’t see me blush through the helmet. I still had a small scar from that.

“That’s good,” Destiny said. “Then you’re familiar with the hospital and its layout. We can go there, get what we need, and come back. You can barricade the door behind us to keep yourselves safe until then.”

“It’s going to be a long walk there,” Emerald put in. “We need more than just one laser rifle and Chamomile’s bare hooves. Can that plasma rifle be repaired?”

Dad walked over and took a look at it, putting it on the counter and checking a few connections. He shook his head. “No. Too many parts are worn out. Even if we had spare parts we’d need so many we might as well be building a new rifle from scratch.”

“We can make a stop along the way,” Quattro said. “I stashed my personal gear somewhere safe before I got myself arrested. It’s in that little motel two blocks away.”

“Little motel?” I frowned. “Wait, the Ruby Smoke? Isn’t that where all the prostitutes--”

“It’s where you can rent rooms with no questions asked,” Quattro said. “But yes, they do need to put more soundproofing in the walls, in case you were wondering.”

Emerald thought for a moment. “So that’s me, since I’m armed, Chamomile, since the ghost haunting her knows what we’re looking for, you so you can grab your things…”

“Let me guess, you want me to come along too?” Dad asked. “Forget it. I’ll be happy staying here and playing substitute bartender until you get back. I even have a few house specialties I can mix up while you’re away.”

“Stay safe,” I said quietly.

Dad hesitated, looking away with his jaw set, tense. “You too,” he said finally. “And… try to see a real doctor while you’re at the hospital.”

“Huh?” I asked, confused.

He tapped his forehead and looked at me like someone with brain damage who’d forgotten she’d been shot in the head.

“Oh. Right.”

---

The Ruby Smoke was two blocks away… as the pegasus flies. But we weren’t flying. If Quattro and I didn’t have clipped wings, we would have been there in a minute or two, tops, and that’s even with me flying like a brick. We were stuck at cloud-level, and the streets weren’t really built for that.

Cirrus Valley, like I’ve mentioned, is an old city. Pre-war, practically a relic on its own. Most cities in the Enclave aren’t like it. When I was in school, I learned that smaller pegasus towns and cities ended up being carved up and moved closer together around the Sustainable Pegasus Project towers where things were the most stable and cloud farming was easiest.

Those cities were all built at the new cloud-top layer, and you can tell a city is post-war because they’re all flat and built like spokes around the tower at their center. A pony can walk down the street, and because everything is planned and simple, it’s easy to get around.

Cirrus Valley was built back before all that, and it’s full of different levels and hills and sheer cloud cliffs. The walls of cloud to either side have made things even worse over the years, slowly crushing the town like it’s in a vice. Long story short, instead of being nice and flat, the city is crumpled.

“We can go around that way,” I said, pointing to where a cross street formed a bridge over the wall of rough cloud-turf.

“I’ll fly ahead,” Emerald said, taking off and slowly cruising through the mist. She didn’t get very far, because I saw the red flashes of laser fire before we even got to the cross street. Quattro touched my shoulder and shook her head before I could start running.

“Hold on a minute,” Quattro said.

“Why?” I asked. “We need to help her!”

“No, we need to wait for the only armed member of our little group to finish and give us the all-clear,” Quattro corrected.

“But--”

Quattro looked up and nodded. “See? Here she is.”

Emerald set down next to us. “There’s a barricade across the road up ahead. I cleared out the infected I could see, but be careful. Visibility is terrible with all this fog.”

“The whole city feels like it’s falling apart,” Quattro said.

I shrugged and trotted forward, taking point. There was one good thing about letting Emerald go first -- I didn’t have to see the faces of the ponies she’d shot. It was one thing pulping a few miners I didn’t know, or a medic I’d talked to once, but some of these ponies I saw every day. Most of them were nicer to me than my own family.

“That’s the police skywagon!” I said, breaking into a sprint and running up to the barricade. They’d parked it on the street and wedged it in place with some loose clouds. I could see black marks and torn-up vapor where they’d used it as cover while they were shooting at something.

I knelt down to look at a pile of loose ashes. There were still some scraps of the local police department’s uniform. I brushed ashes away from the badge.

“Officer Dewey…” I muttered. I vaguely remembered him. He was a big pony, always pulling the skywagon around to ‘show they’re doing some policing’. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find him here. What was left of him, I mean.

I put the badge down and opened the door of the skywagon, looking around inside. The radio was turned on, and I could hear a static-filled voice.

“This is Officer Frost of the Cirrus Valley peace force, requesting support from any units who are receiving this message. An unknown creature has attacked the town, and some kind of contagion is spreading through the population. We’ve ordered civilians to remain indoors, but the infected are delirious and attacking others. They don’t-- they don’t die! Please, we need additional firepower and support! All we can do is slow them down! I am setting this message to repeat. Please, if you are receiving this, we need help! This is Officer Frost of the Cirrus Valley peace force…”

I listened to it for a few more seconds and then shut it off, fumbling around the seats trying to find anything useful. A first-aid kit would be good. A laser rifle would be better. “There’s got to be a weapon in here somewhere…”

I spotted a mouth-grip and pulled the weapon free to reveal… a tiny little stun-gun. It looked more like a toy than a real weapon.

Quattro chuckled when she saw me holding the tiny thing. “At least you’re not compensating for anything.”

“The military wouldn’t have let a local police department have real weapons, not this far in the frontier,” Emerald said. “Hang onto that. Maybe it’ll work on the infected.”

“Really?” I asked, looking at the tiny thing. I was afraid I might break it.

“If it doesn’t work you can always wrestle them,” Quattro said. I rolled my eyes. “Come on, I can see the hotel sign from here.”

It was easy to pick out, hanging high above the buckled street, the pink glow seeming to banish the fog around it and leaving the courtyard below it clear. The Ruby Smoke was shaped like a horseshoe, with a dingy-looking pool in the center and rooms facing inward. A long time ago it had been bright salmon pink, but now it was faded and patched until it was more blotchy and ugly than anything else in town.

“What a lovely place,” Emerald muttered.

“Not all of us can afford fancy hotels,” Quattro said.

“There are bodies in the water,” Destiny said. “Be careful.”

She outlined them in red. I tried to focus on just the shapes and not the faces. I was sure if I looked at them too hard I’d recognize the ponies floating face-down in the pool.

“We should look for survivors,” I said. Quattro and Emerald looked at me. “If there are other ponies that aren’t infected, we should be trying to help, right?”

Emerald sighed and nodded. “You’re right. You start at that end, I’ll start at this end.” She pointed. “Knock, say you’re here to help evacuate them, then move on. If there are survivors, we’ve already cleared the way back to the bar, so we can send them there.”

“Sounds good,” I said, walking to the first room and knocking. “Anypony in there? I’m with the government and I’m here to help!” That was probably the best thing to say. Ponies trusted anypony who was working for the government, and they needed help. There wasn’t an answer after a few moments, so I knocked one more time, then moved on.

The second door was ajar, squeaking open on ancient hinges when I knocked on it.

“Hello?” I called out to the darkness. “Is anypony there? I’m here to help.”

And something jumped out of the darkness, growling and biting and clawing at me. I admit it, I screamed. I’m not even ashamed to admit it. Anypony would have screamed if a horrible monster was attacking them. It was a very small horrible monster, though.

“Oh buck,” I hissed, trying to push it away. “A foal?! It even infected foals?!”

The colt was a few years younger than me, just old enough to have his cutie mark. Maybe he’d come to the hotel because he was finally getting to the age where he wanted to learn about fillies or spend some time with a coltfriend away from his parents. Whatever the reason, it hadn’t gone as planned. One of his hooves, which he was currently trying to kill me with, had turned into something like a mutated dragon’s claw, asymmetrical and cancerous and extremely sharp.

“Be careful,” Destiny warned. “With power this low there’s only so much I can do to reinforce the armor--” A red warning notice popped up at the same time I felt the claw scratch my chest. The sudden pain shocked me into action, and I threw the colt like he was a sack of turnips. He landed with a splash in the pool.

“Ow,” I said. The cut hurt more than it should have. I tried to look at where he’d gotten me, but it was in an awkward spot. It was like a paper cut, nagging and annoying.

“That’s a nasty trick,” Destiny said. “The edge of that claw was active SIVA. It didn’t just cut through the armor, it was eating it away. Try not to get hit again.”

“That must be why it stings so much,” I said.

“Yeah, the nano-disassemblers are just the perfect salt in the wound,” Destiny agreed. "Let me adjust the near-field suppressor to shut them down. It'll just take a second."

It felt like a wave of static, pins and needles crawling across my body, but the pain from the cut faded in its wake. I heard the water splash again behind me, and I turned to the pool, expecting him to be climbing out for round two. Instead, he splashed wildly for a few moments before going still.

“Not coordinated enough to fly, or to swim,” I said.

“Any survivors?” Emerald asked.

I looked into the open room. There was a splash of crimson on the wall and the bed. I could make out a hoof, most of a face… and where the rest should have been.

“No,” I said, closing the door firmly.

“There have to be survivors somewhere,” Emerald said gently, as we converged on Quattro’s room. “We’ll find them.”

I nodded tersely, rubbing my chest.

Quattro unlocked the door and glanced inside. “Looks clear,” she said. “You two make sure nothing sneaks up on me while I get changed. Just wish I had time for a shower.”

“We need to get to the hospital as quickly as possible,” Emerald reminded her.

“I know,” Quattro said. I watched her pull a big hard-sided suitcase out from under the bed and pop it open, tossing clothing aside. She looked up at me. “Just because I rented a room here doesn’t mean I’m a working mare. No peeking.”

“Sorry,” I said, blushing and closing the door.

“I could go a hot shower too,” Emerald sighed. “I’ve been in this armor for almost three days.”

“Where are we even going after this?” I asked.

“Our options are somewhat limited,” Emerald said. She sat down. “Looking at the map… I think if we get supplies we can make it to the Side 4 SPP tower group. That’s three, maybe four days of travel.”

“Maybe we can find something to help Quattro and me regrow our primaries faster,” I suggested. “There’s gotta be something at the hospital, right?”

Emerald nodded. “Good thinking. It’ll be a lot faster with more of us able to rotate positions.”

“And I wouldn’t mind not being cooped up in the transport,” I said. “It’s really crowded in there.”

“Crowded for you, but you’re a big mare,” Emerald teased. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though. We need to see if there are other survivors. If there are too many to evacuate, as a solider it’s my duty to--”

There was a crash that cut off whatever she was going to say. The cloud surface buckled and broke under the impact, splashing out in a crater around the dark form at the center. I winced. I’d landed just like that back in the prison and my knees were still sore. The thing that got up didn’t seem all that bothered, though.

It had been a pegasus, and it took me a moment to recognize him.

“Holy horseapples, that’s the asshole who didn’t like the drink I mixed,” I swore. The last time I’d seen the lavender stallion he’d been in the basement of the bar, and here he was, all grown up and horribly infected.

His whole right side was swollen, his shoulder almost the same size as his chest and silver plates tearing through his skin, muscles swollen like huge tumors and hoof twisted into something like a set of steak knives welded together into a mass halfway between claw and club. The infection crawled up his neck and onto his face, twisting his expression into a permanent grimace.

I wasn’t ready for it when the steel scales corrupting his shoulder opened up, and a mechanical eye looked out from inside, coppery iris contracting when it spotted me.

“Chamomile,” he hissed, his voice strained with agony.

I pulled out the stun gun and fired it at him. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? I was a little freaked out, Destiny was smart enough to put a weapon in my hooves, and I pulled the trigger purely out of fear.

There was a pop, and two wires hit him in the chest. There was a shower of sparks as the electricity cracked across his altered hide to absolutely no effect. He didn’t even bother tearing them free. He just roared and charged at me, raising that huge bladed hoof for a killing blow. Emerald was closer to him, but he totally ignored her, knocking her aside and tossing her into a wall with his weight alone.

The door behind me burst open, and something whizzed past me, hitting the lavender stallion in the chest and throwing him back with a dull explosive thump.

Quattro stepped out in gold-plated armor. Her battle saddle held a rocket launcher on one side. “Sorry about the wait,” she said. “Did I miss anything interesting?”

“No, I think you’re just in time,” I said, relaxing a little. “The stun gun was useless, by the way.”

Quattro shook her head and patted my shoulder. “Don’t be silly. It made you feel better because you weren’t unarmed. That’s not useless.”

“Chamomile!” roared the stallion. He got back up, his flesh burned and torn. The blast had half-flayed him, and I could see how far the metal had crawled under his skin. His right side pulsed like a grotesque pump, and his wounds slowly started to disappear under deposits of misshapen steel.

“He’s not dead after being hit with a rocket?” Emerald groaned, getting back up and shaking her head. There was a long crack on one of her helmet's eyepieces.

“They don’t die,” I said, repeating what the police broadcast had said. He took an unsteady step towards us, his bones being tugged back into place by something inside him. I didn’t want to think about it. I could only imagine metal cables yanking him upright like a puppet.

“We’ll see about that,” Quattro said, firing the rocket launcher again. The rocket streaked towards the creature and stopped in mid-air, quivering, surrounded by a magical field.

“It’s a shielding talisman,” Destiny said. “It must have grown it!”

Emerald fired a spray of beams at it from her single rifle. The first few burned its flesh and scorched the steel plating, but one shot hit the rocket the monster was holding back, and it exploded with another dull whomp. The creature stumbled back, disoriented.

“My turn!” I shouted, charging the lavender stallion. The giant, draconic eye in his shoulder twisted to focus on me, and the hoof moved on its own, throwing him off balance while his body tried to kill me. My shoulder hit his burned chest and he went flying back, right into the pool with the other infected, splashing into the deep end with a surge of slightly-green water.

He thrashed in the water for a full minute before sinking, the weight of the steel dragging him down.

“That’s one way to do it,” Quattro said.

“I need a real gun,” I sighed.

“Could you even use one?”

“No, she can’t,” Emerald said. “I don’t think that’s going to hold him for long. Which way is the hospital?”

“North,” I said, pointing. "You going to be okay? You took a big hit."

“I'll be fine, but I think my radio and half my HUD is busted. Let's just get this mission done. We go in, look for survivors, find the medicine we need, and get out,” Emerald said. “It’ll be quick and easy.”

Comments

[Reese]

Well, that rather escalated! :D

[FridayPie]

“Yes,” Emerald said. “Actually, pouring alcohol on the wound was a really good idea. Washing promptly will keep SIVA cells from getting a foothold.”

If that's the case, shouldn't Chamomile go full Blackjack at closest alcohol cache?