Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 129: Cyberdemon

It’s worth taking a moment to talk about technology that interacts with magic. First, you’ve got stuff like beam rifles or, if you push it far enough, megaspells. They use talismans and circuitry to replicate spells at the push of a button or the pull of a trigger. Put some energy through a talisman, get a death beam. If you use the technology a little less directly you get water talismans for Stables, air scrubbers, preservative charms, and so on.

The main thing about that category of magitech is that it’s purpose-built like any other machine. Most of the things they do could be done, more or less, by mechanical means. A beam rifle and a shotgun firing solid shells will both do a pretty similar job, and preservatives and canning do almost as good a job as a charm to keep food from rotting.

The second category is something much rarer. The thaumoframe and thaumobooster. They both work along similar lines, from what Destiny has told me. She’s the expert with thaumoframe tech since she invented the little tiles, and has first-hoof experience with the thaumobooster after working on the Grandus.

Exodus Armor uses thaumoframe tiles instead of hydraulics for muscle. They change a pony’s natural magic into a variable field effect. It makes the wearer stronger because it’s assisting their movement with telekinesis. It stops bullets with skintight force fields. Unlike regular power armor, since it was all energy fields, Destiny could dial things up or down as needed. It would eat through the power core really quickly if everything was left at maximum, but it was sure effective.

The Grandus’ thaumobooster was much bigger. The thaumoframe was all integrated circuits and field manipulation, but that thing’s thaumobooster was all about power. It was almost like a continuous megaspell array boosting whatever the pony sitting at the focus was doing with their magic. Four used it for simple telekinesis and it let her fly something weighing as much as a small battleship around as fast as thought, crush buildings with her mind, and completely negate anything that even tried to damage the assault armor. She wasn’t terribly creative with it but she didn’t have to be. It was a magical sledgehammer and we were all ants.

I wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that Cozy Glow was more flexible with it.

The top of the Exodus Black’s hull bulged outward and exploded, a brilliant blue beam slicing through the heavy, weathered plates of armor like a knife through butter. Molten steel splashed into the air, forcing me to dodge the volcanic spray.

“Get back here!” Cozy Glow shouted. She smashed through the hole she’d opened and into the open air, the red-hot metal parting around the huge form of the Queen. It was the biggest thing I’d ever seen that pretended to be armor, even more massive than the Grandus. If the Grandus had been reminiscent of a steam engine rebuilt into a giant pony, the Queen was streamlined and modern. It was an art-deco horror, rounded and smooth and painted the same crimson as Cozy Glow’s set of Exodus armor. The rear legs had been replaced by huge banks of thrusters, and boxy weapon racks were mounted on its back, a huge shield generator and battleship-grade cannon on the sides like my own battle saddle mounts.

“You’re not giving me much incentive to do that!” I shouted back. A missile streaked past me, and I thought she’d missed by a mile until it peeled open and released a swarm of mini-missiles. They shot out in every direction, smashing into floating debris and twisting towards me.

I focused my will and braced myself. It was too late to dodge. A flickering magic shield appeared in front of me, the rockets impacting against it and exploding into smoke and shrapnel. Stray shards broke through, peppering me with metal splinters.

“I’ll kill you!” Cozy Glow snarled. “You ruined everything! Everything!”

I risked a glance back at her. A dark aura surrounded the Queen. It was multicolored, a rainbow in shades of sickly gold, twisting to red and green around the edges. A black knot at the center stood on the Queen’s massive head like something riding the assault armor.

“You seem pretty upset! Maybe when you calm down?” I flew deeper towards the Cage at the center of Limbo, ducking around a long stone bridge floating in the air. The Queen’s chest erupted with light, a scattering spray of beams smashing the rock into powder.

“Chamomile, are you still alive?” Destiny asked, her voice in my ear. It reminded me of the old days.

“Cozy Glow is trying really hard to change things, but for the moment, I’m not dead!” I dodged a flurry of unguided rockets and dipped into a chunk of floating debris the size of a city block. A handle on the wall called to me, and I grabbed it, twisting around and stopping in place. Another shot from that huge cannon on the Queen’s side blasted through where I would have been if I’d kept going, burning the broken metal into vapor.

“Keep leading her away from the evacuation effort,” Destiny said. “You did great getting her out of there before she could hurt the refugees.”

“What about her soldiers?” I asked.

“They’re mostly reasonable ponies. There’ve been a few incidents but we’re getting out of here before it goes bad.”

I nodded and looked around. The air was rumbling with magical energy. It felt like a hurricane, and the enhanced pegasus magic leaking out of the Queen was stirring up the still air of Limbo towards the same kind of typhoon as there had been around Thunderbolt Shoals.

“She’s got a real temper,” I said. “Any idea how to actually stop her?”

“That Assault Armor is using both Thaumoframe construction and a Thaumobooster,” Destiny replied. “Remember how they resonated with Four?”

“You mean the deep and meaningful connection I shared with a pony I loved and tragically lost?”

“Right, that. Figure out how to murder her with it.”

Sometimes I was starkly reminded of what the world was like when Destiny was growing up. I didn’t have time to start saying sarcastic things back to her. The debris around me flared with light, an aura washing over it like the tide rolling in. The handle I was clutching with my hooves shocked me, the feeling like electric ice. Metal ripped apart as if a dragon’s talons were tearing through it, the debris opening up like a Hearth’s Warming present being unwrapped.

“There you are!” Cozy Glow growled, her voice echoing. The Queen’s aura burst outwards and shoved the floating debris away, seizing me. My whole body was being squeezed in a vice.

“Hey,” I said. “Okay, this time you run and I’ll chase you.” I gave her a cheeky smile. The pressure on my ribs doubled, threatening to crush me no matter how much I wanted to think my bones were unbreakable.

“I know what this is,” Cozy Glow said. The eyes of the Assault Armor glowed brightly with that terrible golden light, and I could swear it was smiling at me, the vents turning into a mad grin. “You’re hoping if I’m angry enough I’ll finish you quickly instead of dragging things out!”

“Actually I hoped if I was funny enough you’d take mercy on me,” I said. I tried to wiggle out of the magical grip.

The golden aura in the air cracked against the stone and wrought iron webbing of the massive Cage around us. I hadn’t really been thinking of it as anything except a navigational hazard until I saw the cracks in the structure start to bleed, shadows dripping out like black rain.

“We shouldn’t be fighting here,” I realized. A chill ran down my spine.

“It’s a little late to complain now!” Cozy Glow cackled and tossed me into a floating block of concrete, smashing me into it and through it. A cloud of dark dust filled the air, and she lost her grip. I don’t know if she let go on purpose or just didn’t have enough practice to keep a hold on me once I was out of her line of sight. I fought through the growing bruises on my body and grabbed one of the larger fragments of cement, pressing myself against it and letting it carry me away.

The Queen shot through the dust cloud, thrusters roaring and blasting the smoke away. I looked up at the Cage. The thing was a labyrinth in three dimensions, all buttresses and walls and bridges built seemingly without purpose, layers upon layers of iron bars and stone blocks surrounding some unseen center.

I knew it contained something awful. I’d explicitly been told that. I hadn’t thought about what was going to happen if we kept causing collateral damage here. Even the little bit of damage that had been done to it over countless years had been enough for nightmares of wind and darkness to escape. We’d done more to break it in the last five minutes than had occurred in the previous ten thousand years.

“We’re going to end up destroying Equestria even after leaving!” I said. I mentally kicked myself for being this stupid, but I couldn’t have predicted we’d come out here. Limbo had so much empty space, and we’d appeared in the worst possible place.

Cozy Glow roared in frustration, sweeping back through the rubble, preceded by a blast of beam energy.

“Where are you?!” she shouted.

I waited, picked my moment, and jumped in the moment she slowed to turn, landing on the middle of her back, right between the two huge weapon racks.

“Hey,” I greeted Cozy. Before she could react and smash me into paste with telekinesis, I let my mind and magic flow into her, my aura melting into hers. The world slowed.

---

I was. We were. In an infinite, echoing space. Luminescent clouds merged and shifted, whispering from an unseen distance like windows to a faraway place.

“What did you do?” Cozy Glow asked.

I turned to see her. All of her. She had been a small pony, young, accomplished beyond her years because she was driven by a terrible hunger for recognition and power. She had friends. She understood friendship, but it was through a twisted lens. She loved her friends, but only because they were hers. She loved them like a craftsmare loves her favorite tools.

I saw glimpses of the events that made her who she was. A parade of promotions. Her enemies broken at her hooves. Celestia smiling down at her. Luna seeing her for who she really was and ruining years of plans.

Cozy Glow looked into me. All of me. She saw me as a real pony and not just an enemy. She saw into my soul. And I saw her seeing me. And I saw how little she cared. Just because I was a pony didn’t make me worth anything.

It was like mirrors facing each other. Cozy Glow saw how disgusted I was with her, and that only made her hate me more.

“I was going to save Equestria,” she whispered, the thoughts hanging around her. “It was my destiny. I was overshadowed two centuries ago, but I waited for the right moment. I waited and planned and got ready and I would have saved them all!”

“Please stop this,” I begged her. “You can see how dangerous this is, can’t you? You can tell I’m not lying!”

“I don’t care,” Cozy Glow whispered. “You’re not the first pony to ruin my plans. You won’t be the last. I won’t stop. I won’t ever stop until I get what I deserve!”

Around us, beyond the clouds of light, darkness wove itself in. It hadn’t been there last time I’d entered this mind-space with Four. This was something else, something dark invading the psychic impression.

“Get out of my mind!” Cozy Glow shouted. Impossibly, I felt force flow out of the spark of awareness and presence that was her mind in the non-space. It forced the blackness back and blasted me away.

---

I came to still holding onto the Queen. My lightning claws dug for purchase into the super-heavy armor, the energy field of her boosted thaumoframe resisting the power field of the talons growing out of my hooves.

“You can’t attack my mind that easily!” Cozy Glow yelled. “You think I’d leave myself vulnerable when I’m surrounded by ponies that could read my thoughts?!”

She spun around, trying to throw me free. The tight maneuver almost tossed me into the wind. A shadow loomed over me. I looked up. A dark shape stood on top of the Queen, ignoring little things like centrifugal force and gravity. Indigo eyes glowed in the thin face.

“Nightmare,” I whispered.

Another dark shape caught my attention, and I saw more indistinct, flickering forms made of living shadow, converging on us even as we rushed through the Cage.

“Cozy, turn around!” I yelled. “You’re going the wrong way!”

“What are these things?” she asked, finally noticing them herself, probably because she was trying to get a look at me so she could figure out a way to murder me. I heard panic edge into her voice.

“They’re pure evil!” I shouted back. “They’re what was attacking your mind!”

The Queen came to a halt like it hit a concrete block, stopping dead in the air with bone-jarring G-forces. Despite how far we’d flown, we still weren’t close enough to even see the center of the Cage, and I didn’t want to know what was there. Even being what had to be miles away with a fortress wrapped around it, there was a terrible awareness to it. It reminded me of a bad dream where something terrible lurked just out of sight and despite not seeing it, I somehow knew what it was.

“The only one allowed to control me is me!” Cozy Glow screamed. The aura around the Queen redoubled, the edges flaring into spikes. I let go and bolted for cover, fleeing as the creatures of darkness converged on us.

A shockwave of telekinetic force erupted behind me, shredding the dark shapes that got caught in it and pulverizing one of the wrought-iron spars that floated too close to the assault armor. The very edge of the attack caught my flank on my way out, tossing me hard end-over-end until I slammed into the underside of a bridge. Gravity felt accommodating, and let me lie there without complaint about not using the correct orientation.

“Ow,” I groaned. A trickle of blood ran down my face between my eyes, parting around my snout. “Okay, note to self. Even if my skull is really strong, I’ve suffered too much brain trauma to be allowed outside without a helmet and adult supervision.”

“There, you see?” Cozy Glow crowed. The Queen slowly turned towards me. She could have instantly spun around, she was taking her time purely because she wanted to be dramatic about it. “Even these stupid nightmare things are nothing compared to me. Luna was always weak. She got pushed to the edge and crumbled. The edge only makes me sharper!”

I don’t know if invoking Luna’s name angered the nightmare creatures, if it was bad timing, or if they were attracted to pure arrogance like a magnet, because in the next second the darkness reformed around her, shadows lengthening and coming to life all around the Queen. They surrounded the cockpit, and the very aura of the machine changed from sickly gold to ghostly blue-grey.

The machine’s face opened up, revealing a confused Cozy Glow in the cockpit.

“What?” She gasped.

The darkness rushed in. I thought it was going to take her over, turn her into some kind of Nightmare Cozy. Blacklight Glow? That would have been a cool evil name if she hadn’t already been sort of a monstrous bitch. Instead, she was unceremoniously ejected, launching out on compressed air. A parachute trailed behind her. She hit the bridge next to me and gave me a confused look.

“What did you do?” she demanded. The parachute drifted down around her. She snarled and tore it free.

“I didn’t do anything,” I protested. “I think it was all her.”

“Her?” Cozy looked up at the Queen, following my gaze. A dark, disembodied shadow formed in the cockpit where Cozy had been. The hatch slammed shut like a steel maw around the half-real pilot. The blue-grey glow around the Queen strengthened, shades of other colors appearing around it, the flames and rainbow haze of Cozy’s aura replaced with vague screaming faces and tormented whispers.

“I warned you we shouldn’t be fighting here,” I hissed, pulling myself out of the crater I’d been embedded into and shaking rubble from the seams of my armor. “If we work together, we can--”

Cozy Glow shot me a look and bolted, ditching me and weaving between bits of floating debris.

The Queen twitched like something animated by electrical shocks, following her motion with its main cannon and firing, the beam wavering and slashing through the air. Cozy Glow dove wildly, barely keeping ahead of it. Part of me wanted the beam to catch her. I wouldn’t lose any sleep if she was vaporized.

The dumber part of me fired a shot from DRACO, an explosive round bursting on an invisible field of energy a hoof’s length from the Queen. Even if it had hit dead-on it wouldn’t have done anything except scuff the crimson paint.

I felt a fragment of the thing’s attention turn towards me.

“Not the best decision I’ve ever made.” I shot into the air. The weapons platform on the Queen’s back sprang open, missiles streaking out of it at an angle before curving around to track me. I took off at an angle, trying to get ahead of their ability to follow.

Magic surrounded the missiles, spinning them to face me.

“That’s cheating!” I yelped. I fired bursts of chaff from DRACO, catching one of them and blowing it apart, the explosion eating two more in a fratricidal fireball. The last three burst in the air, throwing cones of shrapnel. Steel needles put holes in my wing membranes. Bigger fragments lodged into my back. I fell out of control, hitting belly-first onto a steel railing and blasting the air from my lungs.

I mouthed the word ‘ow’, unable to actually say it.

“Find cover somewhere else!” Cozy Glow hissed from the other side of the metal bars. I looked at her and we shared an expression of mutual, honest contempt.

“You could help me with the alien nightmare creature!” I spat.

“Why? It’s doing a good job so far.”

“The second it finishes me, it’s going to go after you!”

Cozy Glow looked behind me and fear flashed across her face before she fled. I sensed the danger even before she saw it and had started moving. A spray of thick wires came down around me like an insane spider trying to throw webbing at its prey. One cord wrapped around me, the tip carried by a tiny rocket that spun it around my rear legs and tripped me up.

I swore and extended my lightning claws, but just before I could take a swipe at the line to free myself, I saw the bright yellow and black striped cable flash with lights from small pods along its length. Detonators. The chain mine exploded, and my legs erupted in pain.

It was literally blinding. There was smoke and dust, but mostly it was the stars and tunnel vision causing a problem. I didn’t even realize I was caught in a magical aura until it spun me around a little too quickly and sent another shock of pain through me.

The nightmare-possessed assault armor pulled me up to its face so it could look right at me.

“I guess you remember me?” I gasped. I had to say something. If I could get it talking, I could figure out something clever to do. I’d fought bigger, stronger things before. Maybe. To be honest I wasn’t all that sure about my chances but I had to have hope or I wouldn’t have much else.

Echoing whispers answered me, a chorus of half-words and hate. It was like somepony using a bunch of slurs in another room, just far enough away that I couldn’t understand the words, only the tone. The telekinetic grip around me tightened, my bones creaking and starting to flex. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even make really clever quips anymore, not that I had more lined up.

Beam shots lanced through the air, scattering against the overlapping energy fields protecting the Queen. The pressure around me let up by a fraction, and Cozy Glow flew into the thing’s side when it turned the other way to look.

“I can’t believe I’m being this stupid!” she shouted. I saw her draw a short sword from her set of Exodus Armor using her teeth and she tossed her head, stabbing the knife into the exposed wires connecting the huge energy field generator and radome on the monster’s side to the assault armor’s main body. Lightning cracked into the air. Cozy Glow yelped and let go of the knife, the metal instantly burning red hot and fusing from the current of the short circuit.

Some kind of feedback must have shot back through the Queen, because it let go of me and the aura around it faded to near-invisibility, that ghost glow turning to a dull illumination from deep within. I took off before it could gather itself, taking cover and catching my breath. I had a salvaged healing potion in my Vector Trap, and I grabbed it, sucking it down and easing the pain in my legs. I hadn’t dared look at them before. I risked it and turned my gaze down.

My legs were still attached. Burns and torn muscle were healing thanks to the potion I’d downed, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think it was doing all the work. I could feel the SIVA in my body crawling across the wounds and patching me up. Was the potion doing anything at all aside from acting as a placebo?

I was so distracted I didn’t notice a crazy pony flying right next to me.

“The Queen has a critical weakness,” Cozy Glow said. She landed next to me, looking grim. “It’s got a serious power balance issue that I wasn’t able to correct.”

“Power balance?” I panted, confused.

“The reactor is running too hot all the time. It needs to be beyond the design limits just to keep it going. Any damage to the power system causes cascading system outages.” Cozy said. “You need to attack the points where the additional systems connect. The main gun and the thrusters in back are the most vulnerable.”

“Why are you helping me?” I asked. “I thought you wanted me dead.”

“I do, but you’re right about one thing. That’s going to come after me once you’re finished, and then it’ll go after my ponies. I have a responsibility to them that’s more important than revenge!”

“That’s the first sane thing you’ve said since I met you.”

Cozy Glow gave me a sharp kick. “You go after the thrusters. I’ll take the big gun.” She glanced at me with open contempt. “I know you’d object if I told you to do the dangerous part, so try not to screw up the easy job.”

She took off, her crimson armor flashing with light, the suit’s thaumoframe boosting her speed beyond pony limits. I could do that trick too, and better. I threw myself into high gear and jumped, barely even using my wings. The crazy gravity of the Cage tried to draw me in a kaleidoscope of different directions over the short distance between me and the possessed Queen. I swallowed vomit brought up by the abuses to my inner ear.

The thrusters attached to the Queen were only half-armored and unfinished. They were barely more than clusters of rocket motors and crazed plumbing hiding underneath a skirt of dense steel plate. I grabbed at the edge of a hatch and barely caught myself when the Queen started moving again.

I found myself staring up the nozzle of a liquid rocket engine. Pipes rattled. I swear I saw a glow like dragon’s breath. I swung myself up on top of the skirt armor and tried to stand. My back legs still felt terrible.

“Attack where it connects to the main body!” Cozy Glow ordered. She was hanging on to the side of the long gun. It started glowing, getting ready to fire. She hissed in pain, the stink of burning hair filling the dead air. She didn’t let go, working her way over the burning surface and hanging on despite the Queen’s attempts to throw her off.

I couldn’t be a slacker if she was putting in that much effort. I slashed through the skirt armor, carving deep into it. Ruptured fuel lines sprayed into the air, jets of flame rushing past me. Panic hit me like a truck and I would have fled if I hadn’t been paralyzed with sudden traumatic horror that made my hooves freeze and refuse to move.

“Move you stupid horse!” Cozy Glow screamed. She pulled a second long, thin blade from her armor and stabbed it deep into the junction between the cannon and the main body of the Queen. Lightning exploded through the air, knocking her back.

I fought the panic down and jumped through the spray of fire. I could see where both thrusters joined the body, a spot that looked jury-rigged. I took careful aim with DRACO and fired. This close, inside the Queen’s own energy fields and with the machine overwhelmed by power surges, it couldn’t block the shot. The shell found a vulnerable valve unprotected by the thing’s battleship-level armor and blew it apart.

The sudden surge of radiation washed over me and filled my mouth with the taste of metal. Bright lights and stars flashed in my eyes. I let go and jumped away in alarm, not frozen with fear this time.

The Queen spun out of control, thrusters misfiring and off-balance because of the ruptured fuel lines. The glow inside it got stronger, and the radiation surge flashed again.

“Run!” Cozy Glow yelled. “Or don’t! I don’t care!”

She fled through the air, her singed mane and feathers trailing smoke in the dead sky. I went after her. The Queen’s main gun started powering up, a whine of compressing particles and activating talismans filling the air.

The power surges went beyond critical limits. The Queen roared, the air shaking with frustration. The reactor inside it exploded, steam and molten sulfur blasting the machine apart from within. Supersonic shrapnel cut through the air. I tumbled behind a chunk of broken concrete the size of a suspension bridge’s main span, and the shockwave hit a moment later. The concrete cracked and blew apart, smashing up into me and carrying me away. Shrapnel pelted the other side, shielding me from the worst of it.

My ears rang. I couldn’t hear anything.

Cozy Glow landed next to me, collapsing to her knees. We said nothing.

I didn’t feel up to standing. I just breathed, the stale, thin air of Limbo barely doing anything to soothe my burning lungs.

“Why did you build that thing?” I asked, looking over at Cozy Glow.

She took a moment to gather herself before she spoke.

“I needed to protect my ponies,” she said. “I lost my trump card. I lost my most skilled ponies. If I wanted it done right, I had to do it on my own. The Queen was supposed to be my way to take on a whole fleet by myself.”

“Sorry.”

“You should be sorry,” Cozy Glow mumbled. “Do you even know what you’re responsible for?”

“I stopped you from taking over the Enclave.”

“This is what I mean. You’re a child! You don’t understand the bigger stakes! My taking over your Enclave would have been the best thing for everypony. Your government is corrupt, a bunch of greedy ponies holding onto scraps! You vote on things as if passengers on a sinking ship should decide what to do instead of the captain! You ended up with everypony crowding to the top deck and nopony bailing water.”

“You’ve used that metaphor before, haven’t you?” I asked.

“I practice a lot of conversations when I’m alone,” Cozy Glow admitted. She shrugged. “It’s part of being a leader. A real leader. I wanted to bring Equestria back, and you stopped me because you didn’t like that it wouldn’t be fun and easy.”

“I stopped you because you were going to murder a lot of ponies.”

“A few more orbital strikes and I would have convinced enough of the military to side with me that it wouldn’t come down to a fight. They’re too conservative to get into a shooting war. They won’t even fire missiles because they might need them later!”

“There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things,” I sighed. I tried to get up and groaned, my back popping. I swear my vertebrae were resetting themselves back into place.

“Your father was a history professor,” Cozy Glow said. I looked up, and she was offering me a hoof. I hesitated, but took it. She helped me stand up. “Do you know what Equestria really was?”

“A monarchy?” I guessed, not knowing what kind of answer she wanted.

“It was a dream. Our ancient ancestors, a dozen centuries back, lived apart from each other the way ponies do now. They dreamed of an easier life without constant fighting and famine and work. The dream only became real when they worked together. Not because they needed pegasus weather to grow crops or unicorn magic to build homes or earth pony strength to move mountains. It was because all that wasted effort and time and stress from fighting each other was the real reason they’d been suffering to begin with, and when they let it go they were able to build wonders.”

“I’m fine with not fighting. You’re the one who tried to kill me.”

“I’m trying to do what I have to for the greater good. You’ve seen the surface. You know there are slavers and raiders and monsters everywhere. Ponies fear each other. Even in the Enclave, ponies are divided by politics. With a single, strong leader Equestria could be real again. It could be great again.”

“I want to believe that,” I told her. “I want there to be hope for the future.”

“For that future to happen, we have to let some bad things happen now in the present,” Cozy Glow said. “That’s why you’re like a child. You don’t want to eat your vegetables because they’re icky, but they’re important to make you healthy.”

“Starting a war and eating vegetables are… that’s a terrible metaphor.”

“Sue me. It’s the truth. You know why I deserve to be in charge? Because I only care about being in charge and making people love me! I want everypony to be my friend! I want to walk down the street and see smiles and know that everypony appreciates what I did. And you know what I want most of all?”

“A statue?”

“I want things to go back to how they were when I was a foal.” She reached over to her side and detached one of the beam rifles from her battle saddle. “The first time I saw a gun, I had no idea what it was. When I walk down the street and nopony knows what this is, I’ll know my work is complete.”

I stared at her.

“You’re completely delusional,” I said.

“I’m an idealist,” Cozy corrected. “I saw what you’re really like on the inside. I know you saw me. We can either work together or we can kill each other. Your choice.”

She was dangerous. Insanely dangerous. She was charismatic, power-hungry, and her understanding of friendship involved a ledger and carefully calculated opportunity costs. If I was a little less difficult to kill and a tiny smidge less useful as a blunt object, she’d be shooting me instead of talking. It wouldn’t even be a debate in her mind, merely calculus.

I offered a hoof to shake. I’d come up on the same side as her this time, and I had bigger fish to fry. She took it. I knew I’d regret this moment later.

Comments

[Reese]

Thanks for writing!

[Plotbuster]

This story really has been a transformative experience for Chamomile. Looking back to the beginning, you can tell she's the same mare, but she's gained a sense of depth. Still as fun a ride as ever.
And any mention of Four still wrenches the heartstrings

[FridayPie]

A murderous idealist.

That;s the most troublesome kind.