Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 105: Zero-Sum

I shoved the door out of the way. The metal was as thin as a razor blade but stronger than it had any right to be, the SIVA having grown it as a single metamaterial crystal in the shape of a sliding portal. Ponies had come along later and used a stencil and some cheap spray paint to put a red cross on it.

“I need a doctor!” I yelled. Klein Bottle helped me pull Four Damascus into the infirmary. Her seizure had passed, but she wasn’t really responsive yet, deeply confused and incoherent.

A pony in a white uniform with red trim ran over, the pegasus mare taking some of Four’s weight and guiding us to a bed, helping her up onto it. Four tried to get up, and the doctor’s hoof kept her down.

“What happened?” the mare asked.

“She had some kind of seizure,” I explained. “I know she needs drugs to keep her stable, but I didn’t know where to find them.”

“Not again,” the doctor grumbled. “I told them not to run that monster in remote mode! Between this and those two ponies that died before they killed the intruder…”

“They killed the intruder?” I asked

“Apparently,” the doctor shrugged. “Whoever it was, they fell into the water and never came back out.” She pointed at a cart. “Bring that over.”

Klein Bottle pushed it over to Four. I would have helped but I was holding Four’s hoof. She squeezed my metal hoof hard enough that the carbon creaked. If she went much harder she’d break her own hoof with the pressure.

“Ten ccs of this should set her right,” the doctor mumbled, drawing a dose of medication into a needle. I couldn’t read the bottle from the other side of the table but it was covered in hoof-written yellow labels and warnings.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s a class-C amnestic along with some muscle relaxant and mild thaumatic suppressant.”

“Uh…” I hesitated. I knew what some of those words were.

“It’ll keep her from seizing by dampening her nerve reactions,” the doctor explained. She injected Four, and the unicorn immediately started to relax, her grip going slack. Her eyes closed, and she fell into an uneasy sleep. “It also weakens her connection to the Grandus. I don’t care what you military goons think, using it in remote mode is going to kill her at some point!”

“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “I just want her safe.”

“So do I,” the doctor sighed. “Sorry. We might need to put her in that damn machine and let it take over.”

“What do you mean?” Klein asked.

“I swear it’s like half of you weren’t briefed…” The doctor brushed aside some of Four’s coat, showing a long scar on her chest. “She was terribly wounded in action. Essentially dead for a while, but a pony’s magic can keep them alive even without a working heart or lungs. Briefly. There are some theories that once a pony is as strong as an alicorn they’re not even really biologically active as we know it but-- anyway, the point is, the Grandus and its thaumobooster were enough to keep her going just burning her own magic to maintain her life force. We repaired most of the damage but now she can’t really survive for long without it.”

“That’s… horrible,” I mumbled.

“Yes, a bit like a giant iron lung. As long as she’s close enough to keep the thaumobooster resonating, it keeps her alive. If she strays too far her heart might stop. No real reason for it. There’s no physical damage anymore. It’s like part of her soul got stuck.”

“Creepy,” Klein mumbled.

“Barely in the realm of medicine at all,” the doctor said. “They might as well have me treating ghosts and tending to breezies. Spend all those years in medical school and get frozen to avoid the war and what happens? I end up in the middle of a completely different war and entirely out of my field of expertise.”

“Can I have a moment to talk to my colleague?” Klein asked. “Thanks.” She grabbed me and pulled me over to the side.

“Yes, fine. I have a scheduled appointment soon anyway,” the doctor waved us off and slowly pushed the cart over to another bed, preparing something.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“We need to leave her here and do what we came here to do,” Klein hissed. “Our plan was already really bad and the longer we mess around the worse it’s going to get!”

“It’s not messing around,” I said. “Klein you know Four! She’s a good pony!”

“She’s a good pony getting the medical attention that she obviously needs,” Klein countered. “You heard the doctor. Four might die if we try to make her leave again!”

“There has to be some way. Maybe if we take the Grandus…” I started putting together a sketch of a plan. Steal the giant assault armor, take it back, and… and then something. “I have to save her! I’m the one that got her hurt like this!”

“Hey, Doc! You in here?” The door slid open, and somepony familiar trotted inside. I looked across the room at Rain Shadow. Or Tetra, I guess, but he was limping and had his mask off so it was hard to think of him as Tetra. He looked at me and I saw every single variety of emotion cross his face.

“One moment,” the doctor said. “I’m getting your anti-rejection drugs ready. Just sit on the table and--”

“You!” Rain Shadow yelled. He spread his wings and jumped at me, clearing the tables and coming down like a swooping hawk, his hooves seeking my neck. “I’ll kill you, you--”

I held him back, his hooves shaking. He was still in rough shape after our last fight. There were bandages wrapped around his legs, and poorly healed cuts across his face and neck. They were pink around the edges, puffy with infection.

“You’re not as strong as I remember,” I said. “You sure you want to do this today? You look like you should be in one of those hospital beds!”

“Because you keep putting me in them!” he yelled. “Just let me end this! The world will be a better place with you gone!”

“Too much noise…” Four groaned from her bed. She raised hooves to her head. “Too noisy!”

“Don’t fight in the infirmary!” the Doctor yelled. “I’ll get security, I swear!”

“Noisy!” Four shouted. Her horn blazed with magic, shooting from blue to ultraviolet. The room shook.

“What was that?” Klein asked.

The metal wall glowed red and white for a single second before blasting apart, beams of magic spraying into the room from the space beyond, followed immediately by smoke and the growing sounds of alarm and screaming.

Rain Shadow’s grip loosened, and I kicked him aside. Four stood up, her whole body glowing with her magic. I could sense it -- she was using her weight-reduction spell to allow her weak legs to carry her toward the hole. The room shook again, making me stumble on the way over. I tripped, catching myself on the edge of a hospital bed.

The Grandus’ head pushed through the hole, opening up and revealing the harness and controls inside. Four almost literally floated towards it.

“Don’t!” I shouted. “Four!”

She looked back at me, her eyes blank, glazed over like she was sleepwalking. She looked terrified but unable to stop herself, walking into the maw of that beast. The Assault Armor closed up around her when she boarded, the massive machine’s eyes glowing with baleful light.

“This is way above my pay grade,” the Doctor said, fleeing through the open door. Klein grabbed my hoof and tugged at me to follow.

“Move, Chamomile!” Four yelled. “We can’t do anything here!”

“That’s not true, I can talk to her. I can get through to her!”

“You can die!” Rain Shadow tackled me from behind, pulling me away from Klein Bottle. We rolled on the floor, and I briefly considered stabbing him. Then I wondered why I was only considering it. I flipped the knife out of my right hoof and stabbed down into his shoulder. He screamed and rolled away, something like blood but entirely the wrong color splattering on the floor.

The Grandus moaned like a whale’s song and pulled back, vanishing into the smoke.

I wanted to go after her. I knew it was a bad idea. I swore and followed my brain instead of my heart and went with Klein Bottle, bolting out into the hallway. Sirens were going off across the base.

“Should we go back for the Steel Ranger armor?” I asked.

“It’s better than nothing,” Klein said. “I hope the repair talismans have had enough time to patch the holes. I don’t know how you’re going to stop the Grandus.”

“You helped fix it the first time around,” I said. “What are its weaknesses?”

“It’s a giant block of magical metal with a fusion reactor and a beam cannon. The weak point is the pilot.” Klein shook her head. “And your weak point is the pilot, too.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I couldn’t deny that. “I was hoping for something more useful.”

“I know,” Klein said. “Okay look, beam weapons just won’t work. The armor is too thick and it projects a powerful magical diffusion field on top of that. You could hit it with plasma shots from a battleship and still not get through!”

“So?”

“That sword Tetra had might get through. It can cut through almost anything, and the disruption field might help with the aura.”

“If I can get close enough,” I mumbled. And if I was that close… maybe I could get through to her.

---

When we got outside, it was starting to snow. Big, heavy grey flakes, half ash and half ice. It wasn’t coming down fast, but the weight made it feel like a blizzard anyway. I could see pegasus ponies organizing themselves into weather teams and trying to kick the clouds away, but the volcano wasn’t cooperating.

“This is a terrible place for a rocket base,” Klein said. “Look at this weather! The thermals have to be insane!”

“But on the other hoof it probably didn’t cost them anything,” I reminded her. “They grew this base. The best rocket base is one that costs nothing.”

She sneezed. “Any sign of the Grandus?”

“Not yet,” I said. I had a better view than she did. Not only was I more than twice her height, but the Steel Ranger armor also had built-in image enhancement. I didn’t need it. I knew I’d be able to sense that thing when it got close. I could feel it out there, but until we ran into each other it was an invisible threat lurking in the dark. A boogeymare. A giant one.

“We might want to wait for them to finish,” Klein said. She shielded her eyes and looked up. “A launch through this would be suicidal and neither of us could clear out a winter storm on our own.”

“They’re still doing it even with an alert on base,” I mumbled. “Why is that?”

“They must have an important payload, a small launch window, or both,” Klein suggested. “If we hadn’t gotten sidetracked maybe we’d know by now.”

I winced. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.” She sighed. “It looks like they’ve got an enclosed launch building. They’ll have to open it up before the launch. That’ll mean the rocket is fueled, programmed, and ready to go. Probably. So once we see that building open up, we need to get there as soon as possible.”

I nodded. “And if we went too early they might not get the rocket ready at all.”

“Exactly. Same for raising too many alarms. In fact, I bet…” she motioned for me to follow her, and we crept along the ridge behind the base. It was blasted and uneven, ripped apart in the last big eruption and not eroded down yet.

From here we could see the damage the Grandus had done.

“She put a hole right through the roof,” I said. Soldiers, the ones not on weather duty, were trying to get tarps across the hole.

“We might have lucked out,” Klein said. “The only pony that really recognized you was Rain Shadow. Everypony else might think the attack’s over and they just need to repair the damage Four did when she freaked out in the infirmary.”

“The doctor seemed to think the intruder was dead,” I remembered.

“Exactly! Let’s find somewhere we can wait out the storm.”

---

It wasn’t the most comfortable place to wait. It was a shipping container, half-buried by a lava flow. It must have been part of the first base when it had been a prison camp.

“Look at this,” Klein said. “It’s some kind of metal flower…”

“Don’t touch it,” I warned. I saw what she was looking at. A curl of steel coming out of the rock like a slightly blue-tinged combination of a rose and a mushroom and steel filings held together by a magnet. “That’s nanometal.”

“Nanometal…” Klein mumbled.

“SIVA growing and replicating in the wild,” I said. “It must have survived the eruption. If you touch it… well, it didn’t go well for me.” I flexed my right hoof.

“That’s how you got infected?”

“Yeah. Within a day or two it’s like ants eating you alive from the inside. I’m pretty sure we could cure you if we had to, but I wouldn’t risk it. It'd be a heck of a trip trying to get back to Stalliongrad.”

“Right,” she agreed, backing away from it to the other side of the container. “While we’re here, we should talk about what we’re really planning.”

“Steal a rocket,” I said. “How hard can it be?”

“Assuming they don’t have it rigged with some kind of self-destruct, and assuming it’s going where we need to go, we still need to figure out how to get onboard and how to actually launch it,” Klein Bottle said. “I’ll stay behind and make sure it gets into the air.”

I blinked. “In the middle of an enemy base?”

“Unlike you, I might be able to talk my way out of it,” she joked. “Besides, once it’s gone I can just… fly away. If it’s really bad I can head down to the surface.”

“So we need to get you to the control room,” I mumbled. “This would be a lot easier with a few more ponies.”

“We’ve lost too many friends to have a few more ponies,” Klein sighed. “Do you even have any friends left in the military?”

“I… maybe,” I said. “Not close friends. Acquaintances who I haven’t run off yet.”

“Exactly. You might save the Enclave but you don’t have a place in it. I know you’re too big and dumb to realize it now but…” she sighed and patted my chest. “I have zero romantic interest in you but I wouldn’t mind having a bodyguard and a friend on the ground.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said quietly.

“Anyway, we can’t do anything until the rocket is ready to go.” She shrugged. “How’s the snow look?”

I pushed open the door and peered outside. There was still a lot of haze in the air from volcanic dust and ash. It probably wasn’t a good idea to breathe out there without protection, especially as close to the crater as we were. I looked up at the storm.

“I think they’ve got it under control,” I reported. “You know I read somewhere that volcanoes have a lot of bad weather because the dust and ash makes it easier for droplets to form--”

I stopped. A feeling rolled down my spine. I’d been spotted. No, not exactly spotted, but close enough. Sensed. It was the sensation of eyes meeting across a crowded room.

“Shoot,” I swore. I saw blue magic flare up through the haze between us. “Incoming!”

“Incoming from where?” Klein ran outside, looking around. The Grandus swept overhead, the pressure changing around it.

“Four…” I whispered.

“Chamomile,” Four said, her voice echoing loud and deep, shaking the rocks under my hooves.

“I’m sorry.” I said. “I heard about… about you and the Grandus.”

“It’s not your fault,” Four said. “This was always going to happen to me. I wasn’t even the first pony it happened to.” The Grandus settled down onto the rocks, the aura around it fading. I expected the head to crack open and reveal her, but she kept the cockpit shut.

“I’ll find a way to save you,” I told her, coming closer.

Somepony yelled from behind her. “You’ll have to save yourself first!”

Rain Shadow flew right over the Grandus, slamming down into me. I was wearing a suit of Steel Rangers armor so it didn’t work as well as he probably wanted. He sort of bounced off, and I was too slow to react.

“I followed her here,” he snarled, skidding to a halt on the slippery snow and ice. “I knew she’d find you!”

“Congratulations,” I said. I don’t think he could even hear me. The plastic intravenous lines running across his broken body pulsed with motion, force-feeding something into his veins. It had to be some kind of combat drug, psycho or dash or some combination of the two.

“Stop it!” Four boomed. Her voice was accompanied by a wave of crushing force. A moment later, it was also accompanied by a spray of high-powered anti-armor beams. The combination of the two pinned me in place and left me unable to dodge what was coming.

Rain Shadow jumped into the air, whatever combination of cybernetics and drugs fueling him letting him move more like a machine than a pony even if it threatened to tear him apart at the joints. He wove between the beams. It was like seeing somepony avoid getting wet in a storm by just avoiding the raindrops.

I had to activate my own wired reflexes just to follow his motion, and it was a good thing I did because he produced a blade seemingly out of nowhere, a sword coated in a roaring power field. The outer edges of Four’s blast scraped against my armor but I was thankful she’d taken that shot because avoiding it slowed Rain Shadow down just enough that I was able to force my left hoof up, activating the salvaged power sword Klein had repaired for me.

Our blades crossed, or nearly did, the energy fields forcing the edges apart. The field of force and destruction was the only thing that could block the same kind of weapon.

He looked surprised when he didn’t cut me in half. Our blades slipped and stuck together over and over again, like gears coming into mesh and then being forced apart again, some subtle variation in their energy fields not quite coming into synch.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, when the world surged back to life, that moment of cold eternity from wired reflexes ending. My body burned inside the armor, but the feeling of combat, the hate radiating off of Rain Shadow, fueled me more than the drop in blood sugar drained me.

“You stole my sword?!” he accused.

“That’s not the only thing I’m stealing!” I yelled back. I had to think of a really cool quip. Something that would make me seem cool in front of Four, because I still wanted her to like me. “I’m gonna steal all your birthdays!”

“What does that even mean?” Rain Shadow demanded.

I declined to give him an explanation of my super-cool line. It totally made sense if you thought about it. Right?

Instead, the moment the pressure of Four’s telekinesis was off us, I put my back into it and pushed him away. He skidded back across melting ice and volcanic, black mud, growling like a wild animal.

He held the sword high and back behind him, breathing heavily. White blood ran down his snout, coming from a growing nosebleed and the corner of his eye. I couldn’t imagine how much had been done to him. His veins pulsed in his face, throbbing visibly even at a distance. His heart had to be close to exploding in his chest.

I knew he was faster than I was by a huge margin. But for once, I was fighting somepony dumber and more careless than me. That meant I had to be smart. I’d been in a hell of a lot of fights, and this wasn’t even the most lopsided.

I opened up my senses and felt for his intent. It was pure and clear like a knife. His focus was incredible. I could feel how closed off he was. Not just tunnel vision but more like a pinpoint, a laser of killing intent.

I started moving before he did because I had to. The armor delayed my response. I pushed, it moved a fraction of a second later. I had to predict exactly where he was going to be, because once I’d committed, that single heartbeat would be the entire time it took him to cross the space over to me.

He moved. It was a blur.

That laser focus drove him forward along a single bloody path, and I was there to meet him. My sword hit a glancing blow on his. It caught, then bounced to the side. He kept going forward. The blade went into his chest.

Rain Shadow stopped only because his chest touched my hoof. He snarled and glared at me, not even feeling the pain of his insides being ripped and torn. He didn’t even flinch. The energy along my sword kicked and bucked like an animal and failed, the jury-rigged lines finally giving out.

He lost his grip on his sword, his face a rictus grin. He tried to grab at me, his hooves going for my neck. I flinched, and the armor twisted me aside, tossing him down the ridge of lava and ash. He slid on the ice, totally limp, all the way over to the side of the volcano.

Rain Shadow’s eyes locked on mine. I looked down at his chest. It was half hollowed out. He was missing more organs than he had left.

He tried to stand. His weak hooves slid on the ice. He fell off the side, vanishing.

“Buck, that guy did not know when to quit,” I whispered.

“Is he dead?” Klein asked.

“I sure hope so, for his sake,” I said. “The only thing left in him was some kind of… angry suffering. What’s the point of living like that? At least he might be with his sister now, if you believe in that kind of thing.”

“I didn’t use to,” Klein said. “But after knowing Grey Gloom…”

I nodded and knelt down, pulling Klein into a hug. I had to be really careful about it. I remembered Grey Gloom. I’d liked the mare. She’d been haunted, literally and figuratively. I missed her. She didn’t deserve what had happened to her.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Sorry,” Four said. The booming voice of the Grandus was low. It hovered closer overhead. I stood up to try and meet it at least a little closer to eye level. “I think I hit you a few times. I was just trying to scare him off.”

“It’s okay,” I told her. “That was… always going to happen. We need to figure out how to get you out of here.”

“I can’t leave,” Four said.

“I know you need some drugs to stay stable,” I said. “It’s okay! We can take everything they’ve got here, then get more somewhere else once we know what you need. I know lots of good doctors!”

“Chamomile… It’s too late. This thing is eating me up. Every second, I feel it eating at my soul. It’s terrible. You can’t even imagine it…”

“Then we’ll blow the stupid thing up! Klein fixed it! She can un-fix it! If we break the link--”

“I’ll die,” Four said. “I think… I want to die, Chamomile. But I want to die helping ponies. I want to… if I have to be a weapon, I want to be a weapon used for the right reason.”

“I’m so sorry,” I told her.

She smiled. “I know. That’s what I love about you. There are a lot of ponies that wanted to use me or treated me like a thing. An experiment. You just wanted me to be me. You’re one of the only ponies that ever really felt sorry for me.”

The Grandus’ glow brightened, and I felt myself being hoisted into the air. Four’s magic deposited me on the back of the huge machine, and a moment later Klein plopped down next to me.

“I’ll get you where you need to go,” Four said. “Hang on!”

The Grandus leapt into the air. It’s important to know that the assault armor didn’t fly like a pegasus. A pegasus has to bank and turn and swoop. It takes a few moments to get up to speed. Instead, imagine a foal playing with a toy rocket. They can swoosh it around while making engine sounds, but they can also just jerk it in every direction and let aerodynamics be damned.

We jerked sideways, the Grandus moving at angles instead of curves through the air, instantly changing direction at the will of the pony inside. If she wasn’t using her magic to help hold us in place, the motion would have thrown us off at the first sharp turn.

The launch building was right ahead of us. Overhead, the sky was mostly clear. Four didn’t stop. She slammed into the side of it, the armored behemoth smashing into the large space beyond. I really hoped she knew what she was doing because she was essentially flying us directly at a pile of rocket fuel.

“Get out!” Four boomed.

At least two dozen ponies, most of them wearing hard hats and armed with nothing more dangerous than checklists, looked up at the floating death machine and wisely decided that they didn’t want to be in the blast radius of what was about to happen. Technicians and engineers fled.

Somewhat more gently than she’d moved into the launch bay, Four put us down on a gantry. She hovered closer, opening the face plate of the Grandus and climbing out on unsteady legs. I caught her when she started to fall, and she smiled up at me.

The machine kept hovering on its own, even with the cockpit empty.

“Some kind of remote control?” I asked.

“I told you, most of me is already inside,” Four said weakly. “I’ll use the Grandus to keep them distracted. The control room is right in here.”

She led us into a room full of consoles and screens. It reminded me of the room back in the number zero weather control tower, banks of terminals and countless buttons and lights. Abandoned coffee cups and papers littered the floor.

“There are space suits in the next room,” Four told us, pointing. “I’ll move the gantry to the capsule hatch.”

“Launching a rocket isn’t easy,” Klein said. “We need to--”

“It’s all automatic,’ Four told her. She gave Klein a hug. “I can do this. Trust me.” She let go of the little pegasus. “I know you feel guilty about… all this. You shouldn’t. None of it was your fault.”

“An engineer needs to take responsibility for what they built,” Klein said. “I fixed the Grandus. That’s on my hooves.”

“Then you can repay me by making sure Chamomile gets back safely,” Four told her. “She’s going to do something stupid and clumsy and I don’t think you’re going somewhere that stupid and clumsy is a good idea.”

“I’ll get her home. You’d better be waiting for her,” Klein warned.

Four laughed.

I stood there, paralyzed. I didn’t know what to say. “I, uh…”

“I know,” Four said. She smiled warmly. “I know.”

---

The spacesuit had to be one of the least comfortable things I’d ever worn. The innermost layer was skin-tight like a wetsuit. The thermal underwear over that was too hot. The layer over that was too bulky and stiff.

“And they go to space in this?” I asked, tugging at the collar. “Isn’t Steel Ranger armor airtight? I could wear that instead!”

“You want to trust that a salvaged set of ancient, cursed armor is going to do a better job keeping you alive than a spacesuit literally designed to work where we’re going?” Klein asked. She flew up and bopped me on the head. “Did you get even more brain damage when I wasn’t looking?”

I shrugged. “Yes, but that’s besides the point.”

She rolled her eyes. I could feel fear rolling off her in waves. She was terrified and trying to pretend she wasn’t.

We walked out onto the gantry, making our way over to the rocket. Klein opened the hatch and looked inside. There were three chairs.

“We could still take Four,” I said quietly.

“She can’t get that far from the Grandus,” Klein Bottle reminded me. “She’ll seize and it won’t stop until she’s dead.”

I swore under my breath, but I knew she was right.

“I think it’s fueled,” Four said over the intercom. “There should be a gauge inside.”

Klein hopped inside and got into one of the seats. The control panel was on what was the roof of the capsule. “I see it,” she said. Then she found the switch for the radio and repeated herself so Four could actually hear her. “It reads full.”

“I’m opening the launch doors,” Four reported. Yellow lights flashed in alarm, blaring in time with a siren. Cold air surged down from the storm above. The roof cracked open, letting in a scattering of ash and snow. I looked up. There was a hole punched through the clouds, rough around the edges. Stars were just visible at the roof of the world.

“You need to get strapped in,” Klein Bottle said. She was already in her seat, pulling the harness over her shoulders and flipping switches.

“I know,” I said.

I looked back at Four. She stood at the very front of the control room. Her hoof was on the armored glass. I reached out towards her. She smiled. Her horn glowed. I felt a gentle tug. She whispered something. I couldn’t hear her, but I could see her mouth moving.

I wasn’t good at reading lips, but I knew what she was saying.

“I love you too,” I whispered back.

The glow from her horn picked up, and I let her lead me inside by the hoof like a lost foal. The hatch closed behind me. It was the last time I ever saw Four.

Comments

[Thought Prism]

Godspeed, Four

o7

[Reese]

"The Grandus’ head pushed through the hole"
"The Grandus’s head pushed through the hole"?

"Chamomile!” Four yelled. “We can’t do anything here!”"
"Chamomile!” she yelled. “We can’t do anything here!”"?
This is Klein speaking, isn't it?

"whatever combination of cybernetics and drugs fueling him letting him move"
"whatever combination of cybernetics and drugs that was fueling him letting him move"?

"The Grandus’ glow brightened"
"The Grandus’s glow brightened"?

Well, that was a rather emotionally intense end to the chapter.
Thank you for writing.

[Ahsoka Tano]

Rip 4 again :P