Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 116: You've Got a Friend In Me

I pushed a branch aside so Bird could get through the line of trees. She looked annoyed, but I could feel the worry coming off her in waves. The Fastpass at the base of Acadia’s mushroom home wasn’t working as a destination, so we’d had to use something else close by. Bird of Paradise had a few more locations registered than I did, so I’d let her take the lead.

“Why do we need to register the spots first?” I asked, trying to make small talk. Ash fell around us, coating everything in a thin layer of grey and making distances turn to haze. It wasn’t thick yet, just flurries, but it wasn’t like it was going to melt.

“It’s a theme park thing,” Bird of Paradise said. “They wanted ponies to walk through the park and see everything instead of just skipping to the popular spots. It’s also why there were gift shots everywhere.”

She looked back at me and smirked.

“I think there was a special program for disabled ponies like you to let them use all the stations. You know, for ponies who are too crippled to make long walks.”

“That seems like a good idea,” I agreed. I didn’t rise to her probing. What was I gonna do, tell her she was wrong? I was literally a broken pony, and I wasn’t in a good enough mental place to start thinking of myself as capable in other ways.

I did like the prosthetic, though. My SIVA-remodeled hoof had been creepy looking, more like a changeling’s leg than a pony’s. This just looked like I was wearing metal armor over a normal leg.

“Any idea why the FastPass point at the tower might be blocked?” I asked.

That made Bird of Paradise actually look as worried as her emotions felt. “There’s a safety system that keeps them from working if there’s something in the way. When I left, things were starting to get bad.”

“Bad how?” I asked.

The trees in front of us hadn’t been a mangrove swamp a few moments ago, but they sure were now. The edge of the treeline parted as we approached, the trees sliding like an optical illusion to show the path to Acadia’s.

Bird shook her head. “You’ll see in a minute. Hurry up, limpy.”

She picked up the pace. I could hear moaning from up ahead, carried by the slow wind. Shapes stumbled through the haze. For a moment I thought it was raiders and Bird of Paradise had done something stupid. A step closer and I saw the blank eyes and sunken cheeks and torn flesh.

“Ghouls,” I said. “I guess it is zombie weather…”

“Yeah, but they started showing up before the ashfall,” Bird said. She flicked her hoof, throwing a knife that embedded itself into the undead raider’s forehead. “And these are fresh. The ones at the farm were all from the war.”

I frowned and nodded. She was right. More of them were milling around the tower, slowly making their way toward the front door of the huge mushroom house.

“The annoying thing is, poison doesn’t work on them,” Bird of Paradise groused.

“Brute force does,” I offered. They were slow enough that I felt confident pulling a borrowed wrench out of my saddlebag and swinging it into the next ghoul’s chin. The undead pony’s neck snapped, and it dropped, the unnatural light fading from its eyes.

Bird of Paradise kicked another ghoul out of the way, hard enough to send it splashing into the water around the small island in the middle of the grove. She pulled the door open, and a ghoul fell out, tumbling down the stairs.

“There you are,” her mother, Gleamblossom, said. The older pony was splattered with dark, dead blood. A half-dozen corpses were littering the entryway to the tower, blocking the FastPass pad with their sheer bulk. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming back.”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Bird of Paradise sighed. She tilted her head. “Besides, I’d never leave you, Mom.”

“The witch is waiting for you upstairs,” Gleamblossom told me. “Hopefully she’ll put you to work stopping this. We came here so we wouldn’t have to fight off ghoul attacks, remember?”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I tossed a few bodies outside to clear the pad.

“Tell her I expect a bonus for all this!” Bird of Paradise added, just before I vanished.

---

The teleport left a tingle in my whole body. It wasn’t that it was any rougher than other teleports I’d been through - Cube hadn’t exactly been gentle when she’d cast it for long-range travel. I was just more sensitive to it.

“Dere you are,” Acadia said, sounding exasperated. “What took you so long, girl?” She walked up to me and looked me over. I was suddenly very aware of all the recently-glued cuts and lacerations covering me. She prodded a bruise with her hoof.

“Do you have to do that?” I asked.

“You sound awfully sour when speaking to de only pony dat can offer you a healing potion,” Acadia said. She tossed a vial at me with her magic, levitating it from a desk behind her back and making me fumble to catch it. “Drink dat.”

I didn’t have much to lose. Unless she was actually giving me a laxative, in which case I’d lose whatever was left of my pride. I drank it anyway. It didn’t taste like ones I’d had before. Enclave potions all had a watery vitamin-infused flavor like they were made from crunched-up pills. Zebra ones were like strong tea. This one was sickly sweet, some kind of sap covering up bitter herbs and something half-rotten.

It worked well enough either way. I felt the wound on my left side actually heal, the torn muscle knitting.

“Only about half as effective,” Acadia noted. “Dat’s interesting.”

“Thanks,” I told her, offering her the vial. She took it back and nodded.

“Before I tell you what I want, I need to give you someting,” Acadia said. “De hoodoo you need.”

“Speaking of that, I already found a way to break the spell on the crystals,” I told her.

She shrugged. “I know. Don’t give me dat look! I said de hoodoo you need. I owed you an’ I pay back my debts.” Acadia picked up a black wooden box, opening it. Light flooded out. Inside, a crystal vial surrounded something that had to be thicker than water. It was glowing as bright as white-hot metal, but without the heat.

“What is that?” I asked, confused.

“Liquid sunlight,” Acadia said. She closed the box. “A de sun’s power, in de frog of you hoof. De ting you’re fighting, it hates sunlight. Dis will be de best weapon against it.”

“That’s… perfect, actually,” I admitted. “I didn’t know how I was going to kill it. This is perfect.”

“De hoodoo you need,” Acadia repeated. “So, now dat we are even, dere is dis new ting.”

I put the box away carefully. “What kind of new thing?”

Acadia motioned for me to follow her and took me into one of the small, almost spherical rooms off of the main part of the mushroom room. There was a pedestal in the center of the room, covered in a cloth. She flicked it away.

“That’s one of those virtua-ride orbs,” I said, identifying the oversized memory orb instantly. “Why do you have it?”

“Oh, do I not deserve a vacation once in a while?” Acadia asked. “Sometimes its nice to see someting different an’ relax, non?”

I shrugged. I guess that was fair enough.

“De problem is, de last time I tried to use it, I wasn’t alone.” Acadia scowled at the orb, looking deep into it. “Dere is another presence. It’s possessed, or someting similar. An’ de little annoying demon in dere demanded to talk to you, of all ponies!”

“I’m not surprised,” I sighed. “There’s no way something could happen without me being dragged into it.”

“Hmph. Go an’ talk to dem and find out what dey want. An’ don’t break nothing!”

---

I was inside a greenhouse. Butterflies flapped around me, and birds called out. I looked up and saw every branch had a songbird perched on it. The walls around me were wood and stained glass, and I was sitting on a cushioned bench.

“Not exactly an exciting attraction,” Lady of Dark Waters said. She lounged on another bench like it was one of those fancy fainting couches. “I’d have invited you somewhere more exciting but this was the only active orb I could find on short notice.”

I stood up. The birds were slowly working their way up to singing in harmony. It wasn’t something real birds would do, at least not without a lot of training and bribes, but it was probably trivial here in the virtual ride where things only had to be as authentic as a dream.

“What do you want?” I asked the vampire queen. “You should know better than most ponies that I’m on a time limit.”

“Oh, I know.” Lady smirked. “And here I am trying to help! If you’d prefer to go it alone, I can leave…”

I sighed. “Yes, I do need help.”

“I’m proud of you for being able to admit that~” Lady yawned and floated up. “Most dumb thugs find it difficult.”

“Really? Thug?”

“Lemon Zinger is very frustrated with that firewall you installed. She didn’t think you could do that kind of thing,” Lady said, ignoring my annoyance. “She’s distracted by it. It’s leaving her open, which is how I was able to get in touch with you.”

“I’ve got a good guess what this is about. You want me to firewall all the crystal pillars.”

“I do,” Lady agreed. “It gives me a little extra freedom to run around. It might also buy you some time.”

“I already know about Kulaas,” I said.

“Good, I don’t have time to explain every little detail.” Lady nodded to herself, doing a quick barrel roll as she thought for a moment. “I want to make a deal with you. I don’t trust you but I don’t have a better option.”

“I thought we already had a deal?”

She laughed. “This one is more serious! I’ve explored every other opportunity and the only way you can free me from your mother is over my dead body. Literally. I need you to kill me.”

“I am absolutely fine with that.”

Lady scoffed and floated over to me in a flash of instant movement. We were nose to nose, looking into each other’s eyes. Her red eyes glowed with something, hunger and anger maybe. I couldn’t read her emotions in here. “I know you are. And I know you’re the kind of pony that’d find a way to kill a goddess if you had to.”

I gave her a big smile to match her fanged grin. “So where do I put the wooden stake?”

She laughed and floated back. “It’s not that simple. For one thing, I don’t intend to die.”

“That’s going to make it tough to kill you.”

“I know. So you’re going to need to put me in a new body.” Lady shrugged. She floated up to the birds and poked one. It didn’t react. “Between what you did to me and her meddling, my current body is ruined. Your mother turned me inside out and spun my flesh into gears and pistons for her little plot. I want out.”

“How the buck am I supposed to get you a new body?”

She floated back over to me. “That’s a problem for you to solve. Once you figure it out, I’ll be happy to tell you where I am so you can get your great big stake and drive it deep into my heart.”

Lady of Dark Waters put her hoof on my chest and pushed. I fell backwards.

---

I snapped awake in the mushroom tower.

“Well?” Acadia demanded, glaring at me.

“Do you want all the sordid details or just the important parts?” I asked.

The witch rolled her eyes. “Oh, dis is going to be one of those days…”

“She wants me to get her a new body,” I said. “Her old one is crippled. If I can put her soul somewhere safe, she’ll tell me where the old body is, and killing that will stop everything going on here.”

Acadia smiled grimly. “Is dat all? Jes stick a soul in a new body?” She scoffed. “Dat is no easy task, even for an experienced necromancer. De soul is tightly bound to de body. You know dis. Ghouls exist because de soul doesn’t want to leave de body even when it’s gone rotten. An’ a soul will reject a body that don’t match.”

“So it’s impossible?” I asked.

“Non, but de body has to be prepared. You can’t jes steal some foal from de cradle an’ cast hoodoo on it. It has to be remodeled, an’ most importantly it needs an anchor. A magical talisman dat will keep de soul bound.”

“I can probably find a dead raider. How long will it take to prepared a body?”

“Dead?” Acadia shook her head. “No, no no. De process has to start wit dem alive. Are you willing to give me a pony knowing you is damning dere soul forever?”

“I, uh…” I swallowed.

She cackled. “I’m kidding, girl! We don’ have time to start from fresh. It takes a full lunar cycle, new moon to new moon, to prepare de tings from scratch. Non, you won’t have to do any foalnapping today.”

“That’s good, but also bad.”

“Dere is another option,” Acadia said. “It was de last halfway decent apprentice I had. She were a fair spellcaster an’ had de right temperament. But she was also in poor health.” She trotted over to a bookcase and started pulling out scrolls, looking for something. “She wanted to become immortal before she died, an’ dere was one way to do it, based on some old zebra spells.”

She found a tattered, yellowing scroll and unrolled it to let it hang in the air like it was nailed to an invisible wall. There were diagrams of the pony body, runes, drawings of herbs and instructions for elixirs, and a large section dominated by details on the creation of a hoof-sized crystal orb.

“Oh,” I said, pointing at the sphere. “I’ve seen that before.”

“...You have?” Acadia actually looked shocked.

“Sure, uh, hold on.” I rummaged around in my saddlebags, finding it at the bottom of the bag next to a mostly-crushed pack of alligator-shaped pretzels. “Here.”

I held up the safety-bagged crystal orb I’d taken out of the commander of the naval base.

“It was inside a ghoul’s chest,” I explained. “I had to go take him out because he was sending other ghouls out to kill some farmers. The bandit leader back on that cruise ship had one too. I never got a good look at Breezeberry, but I saw it in this X-ray scope thing. He exploded so you’ll just have to take my word on it.”

“Dat’s very strange,” Acadia mumbled. “I haven’t made any other phylacteries.” She took the orb from me and spun it around in her magic. “Dis is crude work, but not unpracticed. Dey knew what dey were doing.”

“Think you can use this?” I asked.

She nodded. “I can repair it an’ ready it for a new soul. But dat does not solve de problem of a body.” Acadia put the bauble down on a worktable, clearing space around it. “Dere is one ting dat might work. My apprentice, de one who wanted to become immortal? She did not survive de attempt.”

“I figured that out since you have new apprentices.”

Acadia snorted a single ‘ha’. “De body was prepared correctly for de ritual. It should be jes what we need.”

“I know you’ve been in the swamp alone for a long time but in case you didn’t know, bodies decay.”

“Not dis one. De elixirs and preparations on her body make it proof against time an’ tide. It should be jes de same now as it was den.”

“Do you keep it in a crate, or…?”

Acadia threw a shovel at me. “Don’ be stupid. Dat’s how you get ants. She’s in de graveyard.”

---

“I can’t believe she made me come with you,” Bird of Paradise held up the lantern and watched while I struggled with the lid of the stone sarcophagus. The shovel was proving more useful as a prybar than for digging. The lock on the mausoleum door had been open already, but the heavy stone casket was annoyingly awkward.

“She probably wants to remind you of what happens to ponies that don’t work out on the job,” I grunted. The edge of the shovel found purchase, and I took a deep breath, ready to crack the plaster seal.

With a heave, I popped the lid. It came free almost instantly.

“That didn’t look too hard,” Bird said.

“It wasn’t.” I stepped over to look. “Somepony’s been here already.”

“How can you tell?” Bird of Paradise asked, stepping closer and holding the lantern high.

“There were a few clues. The plaster was already broken all the way around the lid, and the dust has been cleared away from here. But the biggest clue is this.” I motioned inside the casket. “Where the buck is the corpse?”

“I think it went for a walk,” Bird said. She prodded my shoulder and pointed at the overturned lid. There were scratch marks on the inside, from a pony’s hooves beating against the heavy stone.

“Acadia’s experiment didn’t fail,” I mumbled. “That’s not good.”

“Somepony had to take that lid off and put it back on,” Bird noted. She wiped dust from her hooves. “Well, my job’s done. I’m leaving. You can figure this one out on your own.”

She was nice enough to leave the lantern on the floor where it meant I still technically had light but couldn’t see a darn thing.

“What about-- never mind,” I sighed. I started muscling the top of the sarcophagus back on. What else was I gonna do, leave it open like I was a grave robber? I might have intended to do some grave robbing, but somepony beat me to it, so technically I wasn’t committing any crimes against nature.

I might’ve needed to commit a crime against physics to get the lid back in place, though. It was huge and awkward and this time gravity was working against me even more than before. I grunted and struggled, dropping it with a loud bang.

“Shoot,” I mumbled. I spotted Bird of Paradise coming back in the corner of my eye. “Hey, if you’ve decided to help I could use some rope or something to make it easier to get a grip--”

“Shhh!” she hissed, her back hoof hitting the lantern.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

“Something’s here to see you,” she said quietly. The ground shook slightly. Dust fell from the mausoleum’s roof. A low growl filled the air, something wet and ancient. It was going to be one of those days. I walked past Bird and peeked outside.

The smell hit me first. It was like a bog full of rotting meat. The thing didn’t look much better, either. The squat, long shape was an alligator large enough to eat a pony with one bite. Bones showed through decaying, black flesh, and long seaweed and limp grass hung from it like a fur coat, growing right out of its back and sides.

I don’t think it even had eyes, but I could tell when it saw me.

It roared and charged. It wasn’t fast, but I wasn’t speedy either. Instinct made me want to throw myself backwards and get myself trapped inside a tomb. I went the other way, scrambling into an alleyway in the narrow sidestreet between two of the stone mausoleums. The undead alligator snapped at the air behind me, rotten teeth missing my tail.

With a really cool warcry that wasn’t panicked screaming, I turned and held up my prosthetic, pressing the big red button and dumping the charge from the recharged spark battery all at once as a bolt of lightning. It cracked against the creature and scorched the weeds around its face.

The alligator roared, even angrier now. It redoubled its efforts to get me, smashing through volcanic stone slabs and scrambling after me.

“Why did I give that stupid water cannon back?” I yelped, bolting for open ground. Stone smashed and broke behind me, almost louder than the roars of the creature. I spun and fired globs of glue at it, trying to slow it down. It tore through them without stopping, the epoxy shattering.

I had to think, exercising the one muscle group I had that was extremely out of shape. I’d been here before when I was investigating Bird of Paradise. I was only a short walk out of town. Could I make it back there and to the safety of the resort? Probably not without dragging the monster along with me and getting other ponies killed. A little help would have been nice, though.

I skidded to a stop in front of a tarp-covered form.

“Maybe…” I hesitated, then tore the tarp away from the black-clad construction robot. It was like a larger, clumsier version of the servitors in the rest of the park, painted a tasteful and respectful black.

When I pulled the tarp free, the curved screen of its face flickered and flashed before an emotive cartoon settled into place. It looked down at me with a confused expression.

“I really hope you can understand me,” I said. “I’m a guest here.” I held up my hoof with the season pass bracelet.

The robot made a surprised look and bowed politely.

“There’s an emergency,” I said. “I know the robots here are smarter than they seem. Kulaas probably did something to your programming. Can you do anything to help me with--” I pointed at the zombie alligator, which was pulling itself down the street. It caught sight of me and roared again.

The construction robot didn’t let me finish. It put a big metal hoof in front of me, shielding me and gently pushing me back while it stepped into the middle of the walkway. It faced down the zombiegator and braced itself.

With another wet roar, the monster charged, slamming into the big robot. Steel hooves dug into the ground, sparks flying and joints squealing, but it held its ground.

“If I survive this I’m getting you some kind of cool custom color scheme!” I promised it, running to the tool locker next to where the robot had been powered down and popping it open, hoping to find something useful.

Something caught my eye. A squat metal cylinder with a big hazard warning label. I grabbed the tank and hopped closer to the fight.

“Open wide!” I yelled. I hefted the gas tank up and threw it. The gator snapped at it on reflex, swallowing it whole. There was a long pause. “Uh…”

A dull whump sounded somewhere inside it, and the zombie’s side ruptured, spilling out a torrent of… well, you can imagine. It smelled even worse on the inside. The monster went limp, flopping to the ground in a heap.

The big robot shook it once, then let go and turned to me, face forming into a question mark before returning to a blank smile.

“Thanks,” I said. I held my breath and stepped a little closer to the defeated horror. “I doubt this thing was just hanging around here for fun.”

Deep inside its mouth, I saw something glimmer. A purple light like amethyst. I looked in through the slightly parted teeth, trying to make it out. There was a core, like the ones I’d seen in the bandit leader and the naval base commander.

It flashed with crackling light. The zombie lunged into motion, jaws snapping down around me. I yelped and held up my hooves. A bunch of instincts kicked in all at once. Thankfully my prey instinct to just give up and let it win was outvoted by the rest, but the swing vote went in a surprising direction in my subconscious, no doubt helped by my own fuzzy memories being less sharp and distinct than some of the ones that had been implanted in me with magic and machines.

A shield sprung up around me, and the alligator’s maw stopped like it had closed its teeth on a boulder.

Teeth pressed on the magical shield around me. I could feel them. It felt distressingly like having knives scrape across my soul.

The robot reacted quickly, grabbing the undead alligator. It wasn’t a military robot, no matter how much the supercomputer running things had upgraded its IQ. It didn’t have weapons or any real idea how to fight. It beat against the monster with a big metal hoof, holding it down and trying its best. If it had been a living animal it might have worked, or at least gotten its attention.

The pressure around the shield got tighter. I was trapped in a hydraulic press full of teeth. Sweat trickled down my neck. Fatigue was quickly crawling over me. Every second was like running at a dead sprint.

“Come on…” I closed my eyes and focused. I had to get out of here. I pushed in every direction and--

There was a loud, wet pop. I blinked, opening my eyes. The bubble around me had grown to twice its original size and the alligator’s head was in pieces around me. The magic flickered and died.

“Gross,” Bird of Paradise said. She stepped out of the shadows, avoiding stepping on any of the decaying flesh. “You popped it like a zit.”

The construction robot made a noise. It was just pneumatics, but it managed to make it sound like a question.

“I’m okay,” I assured it. I reached over to pat its metal hoof with mine. “You did a great job, buddy. I’m giving you an A-plus in monster wrestling.”

“This whole thing was a bust,” Bird of Paradise said. “Let’s go back to the tower. Mistress Acadia will want to know how it went.”

“Mistress?” I raised an eyebrow.

Bird of Paradise blushed. “That’s what she likes being called, okay? The last thing I need is a bucking curse on top of everything else that’s gone wrong in my life. If she wants me to prance around in an apron and make her awful tea and call her Mistress that’s what I’ll do.”

“You head back. I’m going to stop in at the resort.”

“Why?” the unicorn maid asked.

“They’ve got better drinks than your awful tea,” I joked.

---

It was a very small joke because I very quickly had a drink in my hooves that was flavored some indeterminate super-sweet artificial fruit that I could only call Red along with a shocking amount of rum.

“The firewall should keep anything from happening for a few days,” I promised Fog Cutter. “I got it from a reliable source.”

“If I can get one decent night of sleep I’ll buy you drinks for a month,” he said, tapping the edge of his plastic cup against mine. “Thank you. The Kahuna would thank you too, but…”

He motioned with his drink. The leader of the resort was passed out. Once the enchantment had been broken, the robots had been able to carry the sleeping ponies inside to bed and, more importantly, away from the falling ash overhead.

“I’m working on a permanent solution,” I told him. “I need to track a pony down.”

“Maybe I can help,” Fog Cutter suggested. “Believe it or not we do try to maintain open lines of communication with most of the raiders. They’re mostly scum, but we’d rather buy the trinkets of flotsam and jetsam they get washed up on shore than fight them.”

“They get to save face by not begging for help and you make sure you’re not attacked,” I guessed.

“More or less. And if one gang gets too pushy, the other ones are happy to cut a deal for protection. It’s delicate.”

I nodded. “The pony I’m looking for, she’s been killing and reanimating raiders. And a giant alligator. I’m pretty sure she’s been behind a lot of the stuff going on lately.”

Fog Cutter nodded. “I heard a bunch of raiders died the other day. The Downtown area with all the shops caught on fire and--”

“That was me,” I coughed.

He looked at me, sighed, and tried again. “Another raider base just went silent. It was on a steamboat--”

“It exploded. Also me.”

Fog Cutter held up a hoof and finished his drink before he found the mental strength to continue. “Do you remember how I said things were delicate?”

“Sorry.” I took a sip of my own drink.

“The only other ones I can think of that were missing many ponies were the Outbacks. They live near the old zoo. Last I heard they said the zoo was haunted and then they went quiet. Everypony figured they just got into a stash of gator tranquilizers. There aren’t any robots down there, so they might have bucked something up.”

“No robots…” I mumbled. “Was there one of the big crystals?”

Fog Cutter’s expression fell. He nodded.

“The ponies here and in the main park, they needed the servitors to keep them alive. They didn’t even stop to eat and drink. The raiders that were attacking Acadia’s tower were all dead from starvation and dehydration!”

“They got trapped like the ponies here and just…”

“Wasted away until they died,” I agreed. “I think I’d better go check out this zoo.”

“Be careful,” Fog Cutter warned. “The island is going to be crawling with ghouls, and the zoo isn’t much more than an old boardwalk over big pits full of alligators. The park founder loved the things! There must be a dozen different species, to this day. Buck knows what they eat, but they’re not afraid to include ponies for dessert.”

Comments

[Thought Prism]

See, this arc is neat because the vibes are closer to the other big Fallout Equestria fics. It's not just a cool standalone epic, you're building on that foundation. During much of story it was easy to forget that.

[Reese]

"were gift shots everywhere"
"were gift shops everywhere"?

I continue to enjoy this story; thanks for writing!