Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 14 - Angels with Dirty Faces

I had a headache. That was nothing new. This time, it was from a hangover and the edge of Med-X withdrawal, so by the time we got to the place Double Nothing had pointed us to, my bad mood had turned into a dark cloud hovering over me. The first pony who said something stupid was going to regret it.

Unfortunately odds were that the first pony to say something stupid would be me, because I said a lot of really stupid stuff. Thinking about that only made my mood even worse.

“This can’t be the right way,” I mumbled. I let Quattro lead because she knew how to navigate around Thunderbolt Shores. Or I thought she knew how to navigate. I kind of thought the place we’d been had been the slums, but it was practically upper class compared to where we were going now.

The one thing the Enclave had in spades was room for ponies. We needed space for crops, sure, but I’d been to plenty of cities and everypony practically had whole buildings to themselves and the more important you were, the more room you were given. Here, though…

The street had been wide and open in the black market, giving ponies plenty of space to move. As we’d gotten closer to where we were going, things had narrowed and walls had closed in and it was like we’d left the shoals and entered some kind of hive. I couldn’t even stretch out my wings without hitting buildings on both sides. The stalls and shops of the market would have looked positively gigantic here. There were stores on both sides of the street with tattered signs advertising that the single window here was selling tool sharpening, and this stall squeezed into a doorway was offering recycled food, and if you wanted drugs, step right up to these metal bars and show the pretty mare the color of your money.

Basically I’m saying it was like if you took every slum I’d ever been in or imagined and put it in a trash compactor, emphasis on the trash.

“This is the right way,” Quattro said. “The address was inside the closed city. I hate this place. You can’t even see the sky.”

I glanced up. She was right. Above us, the looming buildings leaned into each other until they touched. It was like being in a cave. The rain still somehow found its way in, forming streams sometimes ankle-deep around us.

“We should have come armed,” Destiny mumbled. She was staying in my bag. She said she was afraid somepony would try to steal from my saddlebags but I think she was mostly worried that if she was floating around somepony would try to nab her and sell her as a pet.

“Showing up with guns would have sent the wrong message,” Quattro said. “I think they’d have taken it as an insult. We might not have even gotten this far.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There have been ponies watching us since we came in here.” Quattro didn’t point them out or turn around or even lower her voice. “Speaking of which…”

A pony stepped out into the narrow street ahead of us. I saw movement behind us. When I turned, there was a mare with a knife and crude tattoos covering half her face. They looked like they’d been drawn on by a foal, and the knife was easily the least impressive weapon I’d been menaced with. I don’t even think it was sharp enough to cut butter without a lot of help.

“Think they’re with the union?” I asked.

“No, I think they’re on just enough drugs to think bothering us is a good way to earn their next fix,” Quattro said. “Not very smart.”

A crowbar came down on the mare doing her best to make me afraid of a blade as sharp as she was. The pony behind her was in a dirty jumpsuit and didn’t even bother looking at me before he dragged her out of sight, his bags jangling with other tools.

“That didn’t last long,” I mumbled. I glanced back to see the pony menacing Quattro was being dragged the other way.

“Sorry about that, some of the unfortunates around her just lack any sort of dignity or discipline.” A pony with a coffee-colored coat and green streaks through her black mane was standing a few steps in front of us, shaking her head and watching the thugs get dragged off. Her voice had an odd lit to it.

“I’m guessing you’re with the union?” Quattro asked.

“Aye. And they weren’t, in case you were wondering. Well, the bashers who’re cleaning up the mess are Union, but the idiots with the stabbers weren’t. We wouldn’t take ponies like that on, even if things were still the good old days. But they ain’t, and we’ve turned away better for less. Which one of you larks is Chamomile?”

“Me,” I said, raising my hoof.

“Oh good, they’re selling idiot in extra-large tubs now,” the mare said. “I’m Spanner, I’m here to take you to the boss.”

“Do ponies always get mugged when they’re here on business?” Quattro asked.

“Are you the idiot’s owner?” Spanner retorted. “The closed city is the bad part of town and it’s worse because of the bloody Gov. We were gonna do something about that, but you had to bugger it up so much we’ll be lucky if this place doesn’t burn down by the end of the week!”

I was pretty sure they were always one kitchen disaster away from the whole city going up in flames, but I wasn’t going to say it when I was pretty sure ponies with crowbars and tire irons could appear from around any corner to teach me to be more polite.

“The Gov?” I asked, instead. I might as well try to figure out what I was hoof-deep into.

“The Governor,” Spanner said, obviously uncomfortable using the whole title. “He got voted in three years ago, but I’m being awful generous when I say he got voted in, because what he did was he made it plenty hard to vote for anypony else and still have kneecaps after.”

“Sounds like a great guy,” I said.

“Talk to the boss about it,” Spanner said. “She’s in here.”

She stopped in front of a garage door and knocked hard twice, softly twice, and then one more hard knock for good measure. A pony in a welding mask and holding a circular saw all casually like he’d just happened to be hanging out behind the door with a deadly power tool opened it up, looked at us, and nodded for us to come in.

“Boss is over there,” Spanner pointed.

The inside was a crowded space of tool chests and skeletal shelves full of parts bins. Ponies were working on what looked like huge dismounted engines or generators or something designed to spin around at least. Welding sparks arced all around us like flashbulbs at a fashion show, and the floor was filthy with oil and metal shavings.

One pony stood in the middle of the chaos, watching things with a critical eye. She barked orders left and right, and the herd did as she commanded. She was a mechanic working on the whole shop at once and the other ponies were the tools she was using.

She noticed us the second we walked in, but she made us wait for a lull in the work around us before she decided to even acknowledge we were there.

“Which one of you came to apologize?” she asked.

“I guess that’s me?” I suggested.

“You don’t sound sure,” she said. “If you aren’t sure, get out. I don’t have room for ponies who aren’t sure in my shop. If you need your hooves held through a fucking apology it means you’re too worthless to give one properly to begin with.”

She was as abrasive as sandpaper. The mare couldn’t even be bothered to look at us.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Things went wrong. But--”

“I don’t want to hear any kind of but,” the mare said. She held up a hoof. A steam whistle cut through the air. “Alright, everypony, take a fifteen and get something to drink while I deal with this.”

The working ponies put their equipment down almost as one unit and shuffled out, leaving us alone with the pony in charge. And a few ponies lingering, just far away enough to not be intruding but close enough to be intruding if we tried anything stupid.

“My name’s Spot Welder, but you can call me Boss,” she said. “You’re trying to apologize, so you must be Chamomile, yeah?”

I nodded.

“You catch the news on the radio?” Boss asked, her tone light. She sat down on a sturdy tool box, grabbing a bottle of water and taking a swig from it.

I shook my head. “No, why?”

“Just asking. The name of the pony in the nav station was Convex Glass. I didn’t know that until it was on the news. Did you? I didn’t think so. I doubt a lot of ponies knew his name before he was executed.”

“Ex-executed?! For what?!” I sputtered

Boss shrugged. “Dereliction of duty, apparently. He didn’t die honorably in the line of duty, so he died dishonorably after being found unconscious in a box.”

“A locker,” I corrected, my head spinning. They’d executed him? Why? He hadn’t done anything wrong!

“Oh, right,” Boss said. “You were there. Anyway, I was mostly listening for the list of other names. They executed ten dockworkers too. Everypony on the ship that was supposed to go and deal with the cargo, of course -- they were caught with their pants down when the barge exploded and didn’t have the common sense to get out of there like you did. They also decided to execute the ponies who loaded it onto the barge to begin with, just in case.”

“They executed ten ponies?” I whispered.

“Eleven counting Private Convex Glass,” Boss reminded me. “It was a busy morning. Usually there are only one or two executions a week. Governor Tilt Fuse was pretty upset and decided to do them all at once to send a message to me. Not that he knows it was me. I bet he suspects, but none of the ponies he killed admitted to it. They were good ponies.”

She held up her bottle of water in salute and poured it out.

“Good ponies,” she repeated quietly.

I could see him giving the order. I’d seen another pony giving an order like that. My mother.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my throat so tight the words barely escaped.

“I know you are,” Boss said. She got up. “I know you’re not some monster. You just made some mistakes and buggered up the mission. You decided to save the ponies in front of you. You didn’t put down Private Glass when things went bad because even if you didn’t care enough about him to even ask for his name, he was a pony just doing his job. Funny thing is, even if things had gone perfectly, he’d still be dead right now.”

“What was I… I didn’t…” I grabbed for the right words and couldn’t find them.

“I couldn’t even be there for the executions,” Boss said. “I have to get these engines fixed. Governor Fuse has his personal Raptor in port and wanted the props refurbished. We figured it was our chance to take care of him, you know? Use the hustle and bustle of the repair work to get close enough to frag him.”

Everything was swimming around me. Quattro grabbed my good hoof and helped me sit down somewhere relatively clean. Boss shoved a bottle into my hooves and I took a sip. It was lukewarm water, but I needed it.

“For the hangover,” she said. “I’m nursing one myself. It’s not a great idea to be working around all this dangerous equipment with my head pounding, but I’m the Union Head, I can bend rules once in a while. How much do you know about the Union?”

I shrugged and looked up at her. “Nothing.”

“Figured. We’re all just working ponies. We’re not freedom fighters like your friend or White Glint’s other little chicks. We all work together, and we’ve got rules to make the work safer.”

She nodded back to where the ponies had all walked out as a group.

“They’re all on break because if a pony pushes themselves too long without rest, they get sloppy, and then somepony gets hurt. Welders wear masks so they don’t go blind. If something weighs too much we make two ponies carry it, because if we don’t put a limit on how much one pony is allowed to carry some jackass will get himself hurt trying to lift a vertibird on their own. Every rule we have is written in blood, because somepony got hurt before we knew we needed the rule, and more ponies got hurt until it got written into code.”

Boss sat down next to me.

“When Governor Fuse got elected, and we’re not even gonna talk about the mess that was, he decided he didn’t care about Union rules. Now that’s normal for a new pony in charge. They look at all our little rules about never working alone, and how often we need to bring things down for maintenance and how long we’re on shift, and they think they’re silly rules that they can ask us to stop. If they’re polite and nice we might bend the rules a little, not enough to get anypony hurt, but it’s a favor and it stops when they stop being polite.”

“I’m guessing the Governor wasn’t polite?” Quattro asked.

“He pushed, and we pushed back. That’s what the Union is for. We all work together. It’s the real spirit of the Enclave. Not the military. Ponies working together to actually get something done. When he tried to order us to break rules, we refused, and when threats came we all walked off the job. Not great that it came to a work stoppage, but it’s happened before and some ponies need that kind of lesson.”

“What happened?” I croaked.

“He decided we were the ones who needed the lesson. The executions started. Not the sedate few a month we’ve had to get used to. More like today, whole shifts getting lined up and shot. Those were the bad old days, and today reminded me too much of them. Some of my ponies blame you and Double Nothing for bringing those days back. I know it’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything.”

She way she said that made me wince. I didn’t do anything.

“I don’t blame you for not wanting to get your hooves dirty,” she said. She got up. “Anyway, since it looks like Governor Fuse isn’t going anywhere, I can’t spare that fusion core Double Nothing wanted. I need everything I’ve got to get the work done on time. Otherwise…”

“More executions,” I guessed.

Boss nodded.

“...Can I tell you a little history story?” I asked weakly.

“After how much I’ve been working my gums? I’d love a break.”

“A little over a week ago, I saw my mom for the first time in ten years,” I said. “She joined the military since the last time we’d talked. I remembered her being a really great pony. I looked up to her. Maybe that was just because Dad was always the one telling me ‘No’.” I shrugged. “Anyway, she pulled me out of a bad situation. I was so happy to get a warm shower and good food and clean clothing that… I didn’t think about why things were bad to begin with. I didn’t push back about why she was running a prison camp. I didn’t mention all the ponies getting hurt. I didn’t do anything except let her lead me around like a pet.”

Quattro looked uncomfortable. “Chamomile--”

I shook my head at her. “You saw when my mom had all those prisoners executed, Quattro. I was there when she gave the order and I didn’t stop her. I didn’t even argue with her! I was too scared I’d end up back in the camp. I should have done something, and I messed up. I still have a chance to do something this time.”

Boss nodded. “It’s too late to stop things, but you can still make a fine apology by learning from the mistake.”

“What can we do to stop Governor Fuse?” I asked.

“Spanner is part of a team doing HVAC work over at the military docks. The Governor is staying on his flagship, so we know where he is.” She rubbed her chin. “I could get you working papers to get you on-site. Spanner can smuggle in what you need when she brings in the parts shipment. We’re not freedom fighters, like I said. Best I can do is get you close to him.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’m in.”

“I’m going with you,” Quattro said. “I got you involved. I’m not letting you go alone.”

“I’ll have three sets of papers made in case you need extra,” Boss said. “They won’t get you into the high-security areas, but they’ll be good enough to get you onto the docks without raising an alarm. Spanner will fly over to your place with a shipping crate and help get you sorted.”

The steam whistle sounded, and ponies started shuffling back in, less eager to get back to work than they were to leave it.

“I’ve got to get back to serious things,” Boss said. “I’ll let them know you’re giving a fine apology.” She slapped my shoulder. It stung, but the sting felt like it was pushing me forward. I was going to make up for things this time.

---

“Are you sure about this?” I asked quietly.

Emerald glared at me. The Union jumpsuit fit her almost too well. A uniform just worked for the mare, even if it wasn’t a military one.

“Letting you and Quattro go anywhere alone is asking for trouble,” she said primly. “First you cause an explosion and now you’ve got us signed up for some kind of revolution. At this rate, you’ll blow up half the city by tripping over a megaspell.”

I heard chuckles from the ponies around us, a collection of welders and plumbers and electricians who were all kind enough to pretend we belonged. I blushed and looked down.

"That's not what I meant. I mean, we're going to actually be fighting the military and..."

"And I'm military?" Emerald finished for me. "That doesn't mean I just accept what other ponies do without question. When Colonel Ohm ordered us to shoot unarmed prisoners, more than half of us refused the orders. Only one pony was willing to put their objection on the record. Do you know who that was?"

"...You?" I guessed.

"Lieutenant Rain Shadow," she said. "I didn't. I told myself that it was pointless, because we were on a secret deployment and the records would all be sealed and all I'd be doing was making my commanding officer angry with me. He did it even though it was a pointless gesture, and not doing it made me feel like a mule. That's why I saved the idiot's life later, even though... he made other mistakes."

"I didn't know," I said quietly.

“Besides,” she continued. “I have security codes that should still be valid. If we need to get into a secured area, I can open the door.”

“Do you think we can--”

“Let’s not talk about the details,” Quattro interrupted, speaking over us. “We’ve got a long day of work ahead of us.”

“Papers, please,” said the uniformed pony I hadn’t even noticed. If we’d kept chattering like idiots he would have heard us planning out how to get rid of his commanding officer. I wondered how many ponies on the fire base would look the other way and let us through, given the chance.

I held up the papers Boss had given us. The pony glanced at them and waved me through with the rest of the workers.

“Hey, you lot!” Spanner snapped, waving to us. “Come on! I know it’s your first day on the site. Let’s move it, and I’ll show you where you’ll be working. Sorry about the slow-down. They’re used to a civilian shop.”

The military pony nodded, the explanation passing muster. He gave me a harsh look.

“Be on your best behavior,” he said. “You don’t want to end up like the ponies you’re replacing.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. Was I supposed to salute? I hoped not.

“Come on!” Spanner repeated, and I ran after her, trying to look like a nervous new worker’s apprentice, which wasn’t too far from the truth. She led us across the docks and to a cloud wall cutting the space in half.

“So where are we going?” I asked. She took us over to a corner where some piles of dented ducts and conduit blocked the view.

“Here,” she said, opening a vent cover. It was big enough for a pony to crawl inside. Even a pony as big as I was. “You squeeze through, it lets out in an air exchange room. Your stuff is stashed in there. Keep going and you’ll be in a security room on the high-security part of the base. If you can knock that out, you might be able to avoid a lot of trouble, yeah?”

“It goes right to the control room?” Emerald asked. “That seems like a flaw…”

“Normally there’d be all kinds of security sensors and gates in the way, but they’ve all been removed as part of standard maintenance that I made sure got written into the book last night,” Spanner said, nodding to the pile of components. I saw a deactivated security talisman lying in the pile. “And here we part ways. I don’t want to be anywhere near you when the fireworks start. No offense. I don’t want to end up on the news.”

“I understand. Thanks.”

“Just doing my job,” Spanner said, walking off and leaving us to it.

“I’ll go first,” Quattro said. “I don’t want to get stuck behind Chamomile.” She slipped into the vent before I could say anything.

Emerald hesitated a moment, then offered me a small smile and a shrug before very obviously agreeing with that reasoning and getting into the vent herself. I grumbled and brought up the rear.

“I’ll get the vent cover,” Destiny offered, levitating it back into place after we got in.

Crawling through the vent could have almost been fun except for the part where if we made too much noise or got caught some other way we’d probably be shot on sight, papers or no papers. Just like Spanner had told us, after a little while the vent opened up into a huge vertical room divided into floors by open gratings, fans spinning languidly above and below us and keeping the air from getting stale.

“This would be our luggage,” Quattro said, kneeling next to a big toolbox. She popped it open and started parceling out what was inside.

“You brought your power armor?” Emerald asked.

“If there’s ever a time for power armor, it’s when you’ve signed up to attack a battleship,” Quattro countered. “Don’t be jealous just because they’re still fixing yours.”

“Mine was fine until they decided to fix it,” Emerald said. “Pass me that uniform.”

“Lieutenant Commander stripes,” Quattro noted when she gave her the folded jacket. “Giving yourself a promotion?”

“There are a lot of newly-minted lieutenants around out of officer school,” Emerald said. “I’m hoping we can get onboard the Shiranui without a fight if I have enough rank over them to make them salute and stop asking questions.”

“Will that work?” I asked.

“If it doesn’t…” Emerald held up a stun gun. “Option B.”

“From the size, I’m guessing this is Chamomile’s dress for the gala,” Quattro said. She tossed me a uniform and a heavy jacket. “Feels like Herr Doktor decided to sew some extra protection into the lining.”

I felt it in my hooves. Steel strips had been put between the outside of the long coat and the lining. It was heavy, and it’d be awkward to fly in, but having a layer of protection seemed like a good idea.

“I’m only a private?” I asked, looking at the rank markings.

“Private first-class,” Emerald assured me. “I think you’re supposed to be my personal guards.”

“Chamomile, help me with this,” Quattro grunted, trying to lift something out of the bottom of the case.

I helped her heft out a battle saddle. Instead of beam guns, though, there was something that looked like an engine strapped to one side, pointing exactly the wrong way.

“What is that supposed to be?” Emerald asked.

“Herr Doktor called it the Junk Jet,” Quattro said. “It’s a non-lethal weapon. Sort of. Depending on what you load it with. It’ll launch almost anything like a cannon. As long as you avoid anything sharp or explosive, you can avoid killing anypony. I asked her to prep a non-lethal option for each of us”

She helped me strap the Junk Jet on. Destiny floated next to it, trying to puzzle out the mechanism. It was heavy, the heft taking me by surprise. I was glad it was on my left side. If I’d tried to take that sudden weight on my bad right hoof, it would have gone poorly.

“Load things into the hopper here,” Quattro said. “It doesn’t really matter what. I saw Herr Doktor testing it, and I can safely say coffee cups and desk lamps make excellent ammunition.”

“I can probably help you keep it loaded,” Destiny offered. “I’ll stay in your saddlebags on the other side and feed the hopper.”

“Thanks,” I said. “At least I won’t be wasting bullets when I don’t hit anything.”

Quattro stepped back and finished getting her own armor on, the golden plates gleaming in the shifting light coming from between the slowly-spinning fan blades.

Emerald looked at her weapons and raised an eyebrow. “And I notice you’ve still got your very non-lethal rocket launcher.”

“It is non-lethal, actually,” Quattro said smugly. “Clay rounds. They were designed for crowd control. The beam rifle will still put holes in ponies, but I’ll try to be nice first.”

“If we do this right, we won’t need to put holes in anyone except Governor Fuse,” Emerald said. She checked the beam pistol on her side. “It’ll be--”

I stopped her with a raised hoof. “Whatever you’re going to call it, don’t. Let’s just assume it’s all going to go wrong. That way when we have to set everything on fire and shoot our way out I won’t be disappointed.”

Emerald gave me a sad smile and nodded.

---

With the armored coat and Junk Jet strapped to my side, the next set of vents was even more of a squeeze. I was glad whoever built the place apparently decided it was a good idea to make the air-conditioning ducts big enough for two ponies to work in at once.

Emerald held up a hoof. This time I knew enough to tell she was making more military hoof signals and not just trying to do a cool urban hoofshake with an invisible partner.

I waited for Quattro to interpret. She had a much more easily understood signal. She turned to look at me, put her hoof to her lips for silence, then pointed at the floor ahead of us. There was a grate in the duct with light leaking out of it. Emerald carefully stepped around it and looked down into the room below.

She looked back up and nodded, then motioned to Quattro, then herself, then me. I hoped she was indicating the order she wanted us to go through. Quattro nodded, apparently approving, and got closer. She looked down, the light gleaming on her powered armor, and picked her moment, hopping and coming down on the vent cover with all her weight and punching right through, dropping down with it into the room below.

Emerald ducked after her and I scrambled to follow, doing a really cool tactical maneuver where I tripped over my own hooves on the edge of the vent and fell through ass-first to slam into somepony’s desk and break their terminal.

“Ow,” I complained, shaking it off.

“Everypony down!” Quattro ordered. “On the floor!”

Emerald might have had officer’s stripes on her uniform, but Quattro had a rocket launcher, and that had its own kind of authority. The three ponies slowly moved, seeming to comply.

“On your left!” Destiny warned, seeing it before I did.

The pony there had been reaching for a big red button. Quattro didn’t hesitate. She fired, and something smacked into the mare. Smacked was the right word, because it was big and wet and exploded into yellow foam on contact. The mare was buried instantly, and the room erupted into chaos.

“You’re loaded!” Destiny told me. I wasn’t sure what I was loaded with until I fired at a pony going for the doors and launched a snowglobe right into the side of his head.

“Holy stars, I actually hit something,” I said, amazed.

“Great, stop congratulating yourself and help me!” Emerald shouted. She was struggling with the stun gun. She’d hit the last pony, and I could see him react every time she pulled the trigger to shock him, but it wasn’t having any kind of effect. I saw Destiny grabbing for anything in range, but there was no time. I ran over and shoulder-checked him into the wall. He hit it, slid down, started to get back up, and took a clay round to the chest from Quattro, gluing him to the wall.

“Good teamwork, everypony,” Quattro said.

“Useless piece of--” Emerald threw the stun gun at the trapped pony. It embedded itself in the drying foam.

Quattro chuckled. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. He was practically as tough as Chamomile.”

Emerald nodded and composed herself. “Speaking of which, if you didn’t kill that soldier you hit, Chamomile, tie him up so he doesn’t raise an alarm while we’re busy. How long will that foam hold these two?”

“As long as a cleaning crew doesn’t come around and spray them with Abraxo they should be stuck like that for a little over an hour and a half,” Quattro said. She raised his voice. “So both of you had better just get comfortable! Be thankful we’re nice ponies!”

“That’s long enough,” Emerald agreed. “I’m going to get into the terminal. Watch my back.”

“Help me find something to tie him up with,” I told Destiny. She floated free of my saddlebags and I started going through the desks with her. I shoved anything with heft to it into my bag. Stapler. Coffee cup. Participation trophy. Six-pack of beer. I hoped things wouldn’t get so desperate that I had to use that as ammunition.

“Found some duct tape,” Destiny said, floating it over.

“Perfect, because I can’t actually tie knots.” I dragged the stallion I’d downed into a chair and just started wrapping the tape around him, using the last of the roll to keep his muzzle shut. “I’d like to see him get out of that!”

“You didn’t have to be mean about it,” Quattro said. “That’s going to sting coming off.”

“Good news, everypony!” Emerald called out. “My security codes still work! I guess whatever Rain Shadow reported, it hasn’t made its way to every military system. Let me tell you, you don’t learn much working in a prison but you do learn a lot about security systems.”

“That is good,” Quattro agreed. “What can you do from here?”

“First, I can turn off all the cameras,” she said, tapping a key. “That’ll mean they can’t track us even if they use a secondary security station. Then I’ll put a code on the network uplink… and they’re not going to be able to call for help.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “You’re learning from my mistakes.”

“You’re a great objective lesson, Chamomile,” Emerald agreed. “For the security doors… hm.” She looked around. “Grab that pony’s keycard.” She pointed to the one I’d taped to the chair.

Destiny pulled it from his belt and floated it over.

“I’ll just make sure this card has all the permissions… and we’ve got a skeleton key.” She tapped a few more keys. “Good. I think we’re just about-- wait, there’s one more option here. That’s not standard…”

“What’s wrong?”

“It looks like the security system was tied in with something else. It’s not a fire alarm or medical…” she muttered. “Let me see if I can just access whatever it is…”

She tapped a few more keys, and the reaction was instant. When the sound blared from the speakers I flinched, expecting an alarm or siren. Instead, it was triumphant, grandiose music, a scratchy old recording blaring at a volume high enough to blow out the speakers and turn it into a buzzing mess.

Outside, flares and fireworks fired off in an automated sequence, explosions in every color of the rainbow filling the stormy sky.

“...Oops,” Emerald said, wincing. “My bad?”

Comments

[Reese]

"Boss shoved a bottle into my hands and I took a sip."
"Boss shoved a bottle into my hooves and I took a sip."?

"Quattro said. He raised his voice."
"Quattro said. She raised her voice."?

By the way, sorry I've not been commenting much, but I've been enjoying the story. :)
...And I'm rather curious what was going on with that extra system at the end there. :D

[FridayPie]

10804078
Governors Little Fuse's birthday party?

[Reese]

10805600
Possibly!
I mean, I don't know why that'd be hooked into the security system, particularly in a way that it could be set off accidentally so easily, but, uh. Let's just say I've not been especially impressed by the governor's decisionmaking so far, so I don't think I'll discount it just because it seems like a bad idea. :D

[FridayPie]

10806503
The idea came from FO4 crafting paradigms (where all systems linked) and a bit of Fallou76 beginning...

[Reese]

10806610
Oh, interesting; my limited familiarity with both those games apparently didn't extend to knowing about either of those, uh... whatever the events(/features?) you reference are.
(What came to my mind was the Sierra Madre Opening Gala, but of course this place is a bit too not dead for too strong a connection to that event from the games. :D)