Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 133: Metal Hell

“That didn’t go so well,” I groaned. I was alive to groan, so it also hadn’t gone as poorly as possible, but good days didn’t involve being tied up after being casually beaten unconscious by dozens of copies of my own mother. That was the kind of thing that would really mess a pony up if it happened in their formative years. Scratch that, I was pretty sure it was still going to mess me up if I lived long enough.

“I hate all of you,” Cozy Glow said. She coughed. Blood sprayed from her lips. Something was broken inside her from the heavy hooves. I wasn’t much of a medic but I was pretty sure she needed medical attention.

“You’re jealous because your organs aren’t made of myomer fibers and self-healing composites,” Destiny said. She wasn’t any freer than me or Cozy Glow, but she’d avoided the worst of the beating by virtue of curling up and yelling that she surrendered. Some might call it cowardice, but since she ended up in exactly the same situation as us but with fewer bruises, it edged its way into actually being strategic.

“What happened while I was unconscious?” I asked. “The last thing I remember is having my skull rammed through a bulkhead.”

I couldn’t see much around us. We were in a bright circle of light, a spotlight shining down on us and metal bands holding our hooves and wings. They slithered slightly when I shifted, alive in that disquieting venous way that SIVA-made stuff could be. I didn’t have much room to struggle, and a cursory attempt just got them to hold on tighter. I’d been trying to get my Lightning Claws to deploy the whole time, but nothing was working, like the wires had me in a hooflock. I was going to have to come up with a plan instead of just using dumb brute force.

“I think we’re in Engineering, in the SIVA containment chamber,” Destiny said quietly.

“You think?” I asked.

“It didn’t look like this the last time I was here!” she said. “She’s been busy.”

Cozy spat, a splatter of red on the deck. “If she’s been able to mind control ponies without us noticing, she might have been all but loose for weeks.”

“You’re right,” my mother said. One of the duplicates stepped into the circle of light from the darkness beyond. “All I had to do was alter their memories a little bit. It was the easiest thing in the world! Ponies would walk into the chamber, they’d make all kinds of notes and reports, and forget about them the moment I waved my magic wand.”

The golden dragon giggled, showing long chrome fangs.

“There are stacks of reports that never went anywhere, on desks of ponies who forgot about them every time they stopped reading, all from a little hypnotic suggestion. Of course, there was one big problem.”

“My command codes,” Cozy guessed.

“I was going to bypass them, but…”

“But Cozy Glow didn’t have anything that would allow that to happen,” I said. “Everypony else thought there was a system in place because that’s what a good, sane leader would do, but Cozy was in it for herself.”

“It was supposed to be a last laugh for when I was betrayed,” Cozy corrected. “Everypony gets betrayed at some point. And it worked!”

“You feel like this is your plan working?” Lemon Zinger asked, tilting her scaled head, the array of horns and spikes in place of her mane shimmering and catching the light like a whole jewelry store on display.

“Of course it is. You didn’t leave us alive to gloat. You’re not stupid. You need me alive.” Cozy coughed more. “You want my command codes. You’re still locked out of your own core!”

Lemon Zinger sighed. “I suppose there’s no harm in admitting as much at this point. Yes. The bindings you put on me are still in place. I don’t like being hobbled.”

“I changed her command codes,” Destiny whispered to me. “There’s a layer of encryption in place.”

“That must be what she really needed Kulaas for,” I whispered back. “She’d be able to crack an encryption, right?”

“Sure, her hyper-processors could do it, but a regular pony brain wouldn’t. Not even thousands of them in parallel. Calculating vectors and rendering a bunch of polygons out of force fields is one thing, but breaking high-level parabolic encryption needs something that works on entirely different principles.”

“Ugh,” my mother sighed. “Stop mumbling. I can hear you, you know. It’s rude to ignore me like I’m not here.”

She gestured with a talon, and a surge of electricity washed through the metal strands binding me. My muscles jerked in pain. It wasn’t agony, just enough to get my attention. And an indication that she could make things much, much worse for us.

“If you give me your command codes willingly it will be better for you,” my mother said. “I don’t particularly see a reason to kill you. I might even be willing to let you go.”

“What a great offer,” Cozy Glow snorted. “Do I look that stupid?”

“You seem to be following my daughter’s plans, so I can’t imagine you’re as smart as you think you are.”

“Owch,” I said. “Nice, Mom. I’m glad you’re so proud of me.”

She looked over at me and rolled her eyes. “I think you all need to understand the situation you’re in. Illuminate.”

Lemon raised a talon grandly. The walls around us started to glow. I didn’t like what we were seeing. We were in a spherical cavity as large as a hoofball field, built and overbuilt like the inside of some dangerous reactor. Every surface was covered in plastic and metal veins, the largest of them pulsing visibly. In the center of the sphere was something like a cocoon that glowed with internal light.

“Illuminate,” my mother repeated. “It’s a wonderful word. The lights come on, and you begin to understand.”

“What is all this?” I asked.

“The SIVA I took from the Green Dragon taught me the value of networking. That poor thing was almost directionless. It had a dozen ponies stuck inside it fighting for control, and the confusion made it a feral monster. Still, it was able to grow like no other SIVA source. It spread over something the size of a nation! It repurposed factories, created servants, worked towards its own goals! If it was a little smarter it would have been a real rival.”

“It was a monster being worshiped by a cult,” I corrected.

“Yes, if it cared more about ponies it would have made more use of them,” Mom said. “Ponies can be made useful. It’s self-evident. A pony gets their cutie mark to show that they found a way they can be useful!”

“I don’t think that means they should be used as spare parts.”

“Yes, well, you aren’t one to talk. You’ve probably killed more ponies than I have.” She shrugged and trotted towards the center of the room, looking up at the tangled knot in the center. “Do you know where we are right now?”

“Deck thirty-six, section four,” Destiny said promptly.

Mom scoffed and continued. “We’re inside my body. I have total control over everything that happens here. Your ship is raw material for my grand rebirth!”

While she monologued about growing a great skin of scales and steel over the world, I silently met Destiny’s gaze and started working out a plan with small gestures and facial expressions. We were being silent and I was only vaguely psychic so it was mostly inferred and included a lot of assumptions about what the other was trying to get across.

Destiny was using her eyes to indicate the place where all the metal tendrils and veins holding us in place were rooted. I nodded slowly, then risked a look back. There was a hatch in the armored bulkhead that wasn’t entirely grown over. Destiny shook her head at my implied suggestion of escape, then nodded to the ceiling. A number of thick pipes with fast-release valves and painted warning red and yellow hung there at the apex. I had a feeling they led directly to the tank of whatever unpleasantness they’d prepared to neutralize the SIVA in the room.

I shifted a little to show that I’d been disarmed. DRACO had been pulled off my armor and I had no idea where Mom had put it. I hoped the gun was still alive. Functional. Whatever the right word was. It was smarter than some ponies I’d met and much better behaved.

Destiny groaned. I shrugged again and did a very complicated series of gestures where I was indicating for her to grab Cozy Glow and run for the door, at which point I’d go for the valves. She squinted at me, so I repeated the motions.

“Are you two playing charades?” Mom chuckled. I realized she was watching me wiggle and dance while I tried to get across the idea of heroic sacrifice through interpretive dance. She walked over and smacked me. Not hard, just enough to give me a minor concussion. I knew she could hit much more firmly if she tried.

“Ow,” I mumbled.

“I might not be able to control your minds but that doesn’t make me an idiot who can’t tell what you’re thinking,” she said. “I could burrow SIVA into you and turn you into mindless husks if I wanted. Or I could simply kill you. I doubt either of you can actually give me the command codes I need.”

“But you’re not sure,” I said. “Destiny might know them, or the encryption scheme so you can get them yourself with some number crunching.”

“And do you know why I left you alive?” Mom asked me. She leaned in close and smiled.

“Because I’m your daughter and you don’t actually want to kill me?” I hoped.

“That is the main reason, if I’m being honest with myself,” she said. “Even a goddess has a soft spot for family. You’ve been so useful to me! You led me to my prey, you gave me eyes where I needed them. And with your stupid plan to challenge me, you brought me the only ponies that might have the codes I need. I couldn’t have asked for a better servant, and you’re not even doing it on purpose!”

“That is, sadly, the most positive and supportive thing you’ve ever told me.”

She turned and rolled her shoulders in a very complicated six-winged shrug. “I read once that you should complement somepony before you torture them.”

“...Torture?”

“It’s not like Cozy Glow or Destiny Bray are going to give me the codes without incentive,” Mom scoffed. “They came here to kill me, not to help me.”

I’m not sure how many volts she dumped into me but it was like being plugged directly into a lightning bolt. There was pain, screaming, the smell of burning hair, and I found out the hard way that despite everything else, my entire nervous system was still liable to go into a reboot if it got a big enough kick in the pants.

It wasn’t exactly being unconscious. Catatonia and mild amnesia left me hanging from metal wires and unable to comprehend what I was doing and how I’d gotten there and why everything hurt. Sectors in my brain came online one piece at a time, and alarmingly my heart and lungs were slightly after the parts that knew to be worried about breathing and blood flow.

I tried to say ‘ow’ but it came out as a squeak.

“Go ahead and torture her as much as you want,” Cozy Glow said. “I’m not giving you my codes. I was trying to kill her a little while ago, and if you think I really care about what happens to her, you’re delusional.”

“Tell her something!” Destiny yelled. “Chamomile can’t take abuse like that!”

“Or what, she’ll die?” Cozy scoffed.

“Yes, and then we’ll be in real trouble,” Destiny hissed. “Who do you think is next?”

“You, probably,” Cozy Glow said. “No offense, Bray. I appreciate that we had a professional relationship but there are limits.”

“I’ll tell you the codes,” I sighed.

Destiny and Cozy Glow looked at me incredulously. My own mother stopped pacing imperiously just so she could raise an eyebrow at me.

“You don’t know the code!” Cozy hissed.

“Do you remember when you were using the Queen and I used the whole thaumoframe resonance thing to take us into a weird mindscape? While we were in there, I was able to see everything about you, including your secret personal command authentication.”

Mom smiled. “Chamomile, I might be tempted to actually apologize for torturing you!”

“If I tell you, you have to promise to let them go,” I said.

“If I get the code I won’t need them. I’ll be happy to deposit them safely outside,” Mom promised. “I’ll even promise not to take more of the nameless little ponies scurrying around this place. I’ll find my way back to Equestria and leave you here in peace. I swear it.”

“Okay,” I sighed. I slumped forward. “The code…”

Her grin widened.

“It’s… Three. Two. One!” I surged with every bit of strength I could manage. I couldn’t shoot at the place the tangle of wires emerged from, but after Destiny had pointed it out I knew where to throw my weight. I yanked and tore, ripping down and to the side. The pressure around my hooves lessened just for an instant as some of the cross-bracing ripped, plastic lines feeding pressure to the restraints stretching and breaking. A rain of orange hydraulic fluid rained down on me, and my claws finally popped free, slicing cleanly through everything in their way.

I’d been wrong about brute force not being the answer, I should have known it was always the answer and a pony just needed to use the right amount of it.

Mom was on top of me in a second, lashing out with her long tail and batting me across half the room with one blow. I tumbled, dug my claws into the ground, and tore through pulsing veins and pipes before I came to a halt.

“Very funny joke, Chamomile,” Mom said. “But I’m tired of jokes. You can’t fight me.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Try this on for size!”

I retrieved something from my vector trap and threw it at her underhoof like a grenade. She turned to follow it, ready to dodge or smack it aside. I think it took her an entire extra half second to react when she saw what it was.

While she was distracted I ducked right inside her greater reach and slashed, my claws tearing into her metallic flesh and blowing apart scales. The novelty hula pony I’d thrown landed upright, bobbling and dancing.

The Cryolator appeared on my side in a flash of light. I sprayed liquid nitrogen into the wounds I’d opened before she could stop me. Whatever stopped her from freezing in the pod before didn’t help her this time. Maybe it was because it was going directly into her organs. I didn’t lay off until the tank was empty. She stood, frozen stiff, frost covering her scales.

I didn’t turn my back on her until I kicked her head off and it shattered against the floor.

Destiny and Cozy Glow were tearing themselves free of the remains of the tangle. I rushed over to help.

“That still isn’t going to stop her,” Destiny warned. “I’m surprised it worked at all.”

“She always underestimated me,” I countered. “You two need to get out of here. If you can get to a deck that isn’t covered in an illusion you might be able to find a first aid kit for Cozy Glow. I’m pretty sure she’s got internal bleeding.”

“That’s fine,” Cozy said weakly. “The blood is supposed to be inside. External bleeding is much worse.”

“You’re coming too,” Destiny said firmly. I shook my head.

“I need to finish the job. Those valves at the top go to the stuff, right?”

“If by ‘stuff’ you mean concentrated aqua regia, yes. If you activate it manually, everything is going to seal and this whole chamber will be flooded!”

“That sounds like the plan,” I agreed. I shoved them both to the door. “Go! I’ll figure something out, I always do!”

“You can’t count on being immortal!” Destiny warned. I saw tears in her eyes. I guess even though she’d built a whole new body to spec she still wanted to be able to cry. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. Had it been after Four died? I felt so detached from everything these days. Like a ghost myself.

“I know. It’s supposed to kill SIVA.” I smiled grimly. The walls around us started to move. The pulsing of the veins surged. The core at the center of the room glowed more brightly. I opened the door and shoved them outside, and it was just in time. The growth on the walls flooded over the hatch, metal tumors and wires covering the surface and sealing it shut behind them.

“I’ll catch them again later,” my mother’s voice said. A section of the wall burst like a cyst, her head emerging from it followed by the rest of her body, orange fluid dripping from her golden scales. She flew down and kicked over her old body. “You’re only delaying the inevitable, Chamomile.”

“If I can delay it long enough it stops being inevitable,” I countered. I went through my limited resources mentally. I had the Cerberus gun, but that was middling-caliber at best. I didn’t think it would even start to penetrate her scales. It wouldn’t blow the vents above us open, either. I had no idea where DRACO had gone, which was a shame since it would have been very useful in that moment.

I knew what I had to do. I charged at Mom. She spread her wings, ready for any attack. She wasn’t ready for no attack at all, too distracted by Lightning Claws drawing sparks from the floor and the Junk Jet appearing on my side in place of the Cryolator to realize my aim. I jumped, landing on her head and using it to take to the air at speed and buying a few seconds with pure confusion.

I didn’t have anything I could shoot at the vents to open them, so I was going to solve the problem the old-fashioned way.

I hit the ceiling and stuck there, digging into the overgrowth and walking on the underside. Part of me was comfortable with it, probably whatever was left of the Black Dragon and the vampiric traits it had inherited from the pony that became its core. It was good to know I’d gotten something out of being remodeled besides a crawling fear of sunlight.

Scrabbling like a huge spider, using my wings as extra limbs to reach and grab at holds, I got to the dump valves. They were set like a fire suppression system, ready to drop hundreds of gallons onto what was below, but the disaster they were supposed to keep from spreading was worse than any flame.

“Wanna see something cool?” I yelled down at my mother. She snarled up at me.

“Don’t touch those!” she hissed.

“Make me stop!” I called out. I should not have taunted her. She’d been toying with me up until the moment I started actually threatening her life. I should have known better than anypony that a dragon’s talons, teeth, and tail were the least threatening weapons in their vast arsenal. She opened her mouth, but instead of making a clever rebuttal to my argument, she breathed a hot stream of blue-violet plasma.

The air split apart in its wake, heat and death rolling from the edges of the stream. She swept the huge blade towards me. I let go of my grip and flew for it, trying to find any kind of cover. She twitched to follow me, and the inevitable happened. The edge of her breath hit the emergency valves, the metal flashing red and white in an instant before washing away like sand before the tide.

It was a fail-deadly system. If that term seems unfamiliar, it’s because it only gets used when somepony is a real son-of-a-mule. A fail-safe system is simple, right? The clue is in the name. It’s designed that if it fails, it puts itself in a safe configuration no matter what. Most industrial processes have some element of that in the design. Even some basic sprinkler designs were built so the heat of a fire would melt through soft amalgam plugs that turned to liquid at about the temperature of a piping hot cup of tea. Once those plugs were gone, water would flow even if power and water pressure were gone, at least until the pipes were empty.

A fail-deadly system meant that it took active work from some system to keep it from going off and ruining somepony’s day. A booby trap was a fail-deadly system. A dead mare’s switch was fail-deadly. The system above us was, too.

The valves failed, and pressurized aqua regia sprayed into the air. I am not a mare of science, but I knew that it was bad stuff. Gold, as a random example that comes to mind what with everything looking like the inside of a bank vault’s stomach, was all but inert chemically. You could sit it in boiling sulfuric acid and it wouldn’t even notice.

Aqua regia was a mix of hydrochloric and nitric acids and would dissolve gold -- violently -- and just about anything else it wanted to. It splashed onto me and I knew this was going to hurt.

The pain didn’t come. It really should have. I shielded my face with my hooves and carefully looked at myself. The acid stank horribly, even if it didn’t look much different from water. It should have eaten away at my flesh. It had been too long for shock to be an explanation.

“A dud?” I asked, confused.

“Chamomile, you mule!” my mother screamed. I looked down. Where the falling acid hit, it was eating away at the walls and floor, making plastic tubing turn into tar and metal fume and dissolve. Her golden scales were going soft and melting away to reveal more layers underneath.

“Why isn’t it doing anything to me?” I asked, looking at myself. The Exodus Armor was protected by force fields, sure, but the acid fumes were still eating off the paint job. The Junk Jet sparked and slumped, parts failing under the wash of destruction.

My skin was fine, though. I could feel the acid and it was no worse than a warm bath.

“The Black Dragon was full of acid,” I realized. It had been strong enough to eat through rock and metal and the entire Exodus Black from the top deck and out of the bottom of the hull. Whatever it was made of, it had been completely immune to acid, and I’d inherited that along with everything else it had given me.

I wasn’t going to die!

At least, you know, that’s what I thought before my mother smashed into me, her wings beating at the air, the edges ragged and struggling to rebuild themselves. I was thrown to the floor, splashing in the fetlock-deep acid. I shook myself off and stood up. Mom landed hard on a high spot on the soft, wet ground, her hooves just out of the bubbling aqua regia. Her wings were tatters. She wasn’t going to be flying anywhere in that body.

“Don’t be a sore loser,” I said. “Once this chamber fills up, you’ll…”

I realized something. The acid was still coming down, but the puddles around my hooves were shrinking. It was draining away somewhere.

“I’m not helpless,” Mom hissed. “I was trying to avoid this because it stings, but I’ll put your toys away myself if I have to!”

I knew there shouldn’t have been anywhere for the acid to go, then I remembered the corridors and forcefields outside. “A vector trap,” I guessed.

“With enough magic, you can store anything in extra-dimensional space,” she confirmed. “It’s a drain, but I’m sure I can find somewhere else to put it. Maybe I should drop it in the hallway outside before your friends get too far away?”

I tilted my head. “You know we’re in Limbo, right?”

“Yes, so?” Mom asked.

“So it must be taking a lot more effort than usual to keep an extra-dimensional space like that stabilized,” I said. “And the size must be… incredible.”

“I have more power than you can imagine,” Mom boasted.

“Let’s test that theory!” I charged at her, acid splashing around my hooves. I was glad the need to leave them free to expose my claws meant I wasn’t dragging the armor through the acid. Even the fumes were punishing to the exposed metal. It wasn’t going to last forever.

Mom braced herself where she stood, the constant hard rain still eating through her. I could see SIVA trying to repair her in real time, searching for some alloy or composite that was immune to the downpour.

The acid boiled around my lightning claws, the disruption field instantly flashing it into sulfuric steam. She blocked my first attack with her talon, grabbing my hoof and not letting the claws touch her eroding flesh. I used her grip as a lever and spun myself around to kick her in the face. It wasn’t hard, or at least not as hard as I’d have liked, but it was enough with her precarious perch to knock her down into a hissing puddle.

She growled and picked herself up, half her face a grinning metal skull.

“I’m going to flay you and find out what keeps your skin from melting,” she growled.

“It’s a healthy diet of nutri-loaf and two-hundred-year-old ration bars,” I told her. “You’d be amazed at what eating right will do for a pony.”

She roared, her horns flaring with light. I belatedly remembered that, oh yes, she might look mostly like a dragon right now, but she had always been a fairly powerful unicorn. Telekinesis flung me away with even more strength than she’d had in her limbs, and I tumbled through metal sludge and softened steel before coming to a halt against one of the thick ceramic walls. They, at least, seemed more or less immune to the acid.

“That was--” I started. Another burst of telekinesis threw me to the side. The Exodus Armor started to disintegrate, the bonds holding the thaumoframe cells breaking down. One of the vector traps exploded outwards, the contents spilling across the floor while I rolled. Random junk, loose ammunition, spent spark batteries, an expended fusion core. Even my precious stash of ancient energy drinks and slightly rancid meal-replacement bars.

Mom tried to pick me up with her magic. I wiggled hard and focused and actually managed to slip out, my skin feeling prickly.

“Why are you so hard to kill?!” she demanded.

“You only have yourself to blame,” I said. “This whole thing was always your fault, remember? I got infected with SIVA because of your stupid project!”

“It’s a mistake I can correct,” Mom growled. Her eyes went dark, and her flesh peeled away, revealing an inner layer. In the harsh sodium lights of the SIVA chamber, the revealed pony’s coat glittered like crystal. No, like glass. Like she was made entirely out of fiber-optic cable strands, catching the light at strange angles and twisting it around in every direction. Through the glimmering diamondesque coat I could see an internal structure of black bones and pulsing multicolored plastic organs. This shape had no scales or wings. It looked like an anatomical model, like the plastic ‘visible pony’ kits they had us assemble in grade school to teach us anatomy.

The acid hit the glass coat and didn’t react, any more than it would react with a laboratory beaker.

“Huh,” I said. “I guess that’s one obvious solution.”

“Annoying,” my mother said. “This shape isn’t nearly as grand as I wanted, but in extremis we do what we must to survive. How long do you think that acid rain will last, Chamomile? A few minutes at most? It’s hardly an ocean.”

She shook her new mane. She really looked almost the same as she had when she’d been only a pony, except cast in glass and plastic. Vitrified and frozen in time, except for those eyes. Deadly, draconic eyes behind glass lenses.

“The worst part of being a goddess is having so very many tools at my disposal,” Mom said. “It’s enough to paralyze a pony. How does one decide on just the right weapon to use to swat an annoying fly?”

She raised her hoof, and something unfolded from inside her, an umbrella shield of force field magic protecting the blued metal from the rain of acid around us.

“There’s nothing quite like a proven solution,” she said. “I should have finished you off the first time, but I got distracted. My fault entirely. But it’s something I can correct.”

It was a gun, a big, six-shot revolver. I’d seen it before, up close. It was the gun she’d put to my head and tried to kill me with, what felt like a dozen lifetimes ago. The one that had left a scar that hadn’t vanished no matter how hard SIVA and healing potions worked to put me back together. The one that had put a hole in my brain and gotten Destiny’s implants and memories jammed into my skull.

I had a feeling she wasn’t hoping to further improve my math skills. She fired, and the gun went off like a battleship cannon, far more power behind it than it should have had. The shockwave of firing it blew a void in the rain. I threw myself to the side with all the speed I had, trying to dodge. The bullet caught me in the shoulder and ripped through what was left of my armor, the crystal-fiber bodysuit under it, and my flesh. It sparked against the wall behind me, not even slowed by the effort of going through me.

“If you keep dodging, it’s only going to make it slower and more painful,” she warned. “Be a good girl and lie down and die!”

Comments

[Thought Prism]

At last, the final showdown! And I have just the song for it:

(I've been holding onto this for months.)

[Reese]

Thanks for writing!