Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 41 - And You And I

The Grandus hovered in a way a huge brick of metal and armor shouldn’t. The same aura that surrounded it was holding me down on the concrete, and all I could do was watch it launch off into the sky while I was lying there like a speed bump.

“Buck,” I said. I didn’t even feel properly mad. That weird resonance, seeing Four floating there… the whole thing left me feeling emotionally drained. She vanished into the smoke and distant fires. I groaned and bonked my head against the ground. Stupid. I was stupid. I knew letting her fight was wrong. Morally, I mean. She’d totally lost it.

“It’s not your fault,” Destiny said.

“Yeah, I know,” I sighed. “But I still feel bad it happened.”

“Good! You should feel awful.”

“Thanks, Destiny. Do you know you’re one of my closest friends? Because sometimes I think you don’t like me.”

“Sometimes I don’t like the decisions you make. I don’t know how much you could have changed about this one, though,” she admitted. “I’m pretty sure she’s leaving the city. DRACO was tracking her until she left his detection radius.”

“It was tracking her?” I sat up and looked around at the rubble. “Can we go after her?”

“As a friend, I’m going to tell you right now that when a girl is really upset, you’ve got to let her just be upset for a little while. She probably wants to be alone. We’ve got to respect that.”

“The fact she’s in a giant invincible suit of assault armor doesn’t factor into that decision, does it?” I asked.

“Oh it definitely does. I’m worried if you go after her while she’s upset she’ll murder you before you even have a chance to talk to her,” Destiny said. “I know you have some kind of weird crush on her but she has serious issues and needs a therapist even more than you do!”

“Yeah, we can agree on that,” I said. “Now we just need to… put out these fires, I guess?”

“Halt right there, terrorist scum!” somepony yelled. I looked up to see even more soldiers bearing down on me, banking towards where I’d fallen.

“I’m really not in the mood to fight!” I shouted. “Can we just call a truce and try to get some of the civilians--”

Beam shots rained down around me and I scampered into cover behind a chunk of broken rubble.

“That’s a no,” I said.

“The best thing for us to do might be to leave,” Destiny said. “I’m listening in on the military channel and they’re organizing fire and rescue, but they’re not allowing them into combat areas.”

“So if we sit here, they can’t save anypony stuck in the rubble?”

“Exactly.”

“Great. Let’s get out of here and make it flashy so they know we’re actually gone.” I popped my head out to look, and a barrage of laser fire almost took it off before I ducked down again. They were going to have a better angle to fire over the concrete in a few seconds. “Give me a bearing on that underwater subway entrance!”

An arrow popped up in my HUD and I took off just as the soldiers overflew my position. They were so ready to fire on me while I was taking cover that they weren’t ready for me to be moving and flying. That’s good because -- and I’m not ashamed to say this -- they were way better in the air than I was. It’s not like that’s something to be embarrassed about! They were highly-trained elite soldiers, I worked in a bar!

“Keep going serpentine,” Destiny said. “I’m worried about armor integrity after the beating we took. We’ve got a lot of error messages on the back-end.”

“How are you even looking at them, anyway?” I asked. “Are you like, jacked into the computer directly? I never really thought about it before!” I kept moving. It was tricky. I could have lost them in the fire and smoke, but I needed them to see me leaving the city. And that meant they were going to shoot at me the whole time.

“The HUD is a modified illusion spell. I just have it wrapped all the way around your head, and I hide all the windows you don’t need back behind you where they won’t clutter your display,” Destiny explained. “Sort of a hack, but I figured you don’t really care about outside temperature or the raw terminal data.”

“Cool, cool,” I said, trying to ignore that the soldiers had better aim than I had mobility and I’d taken a few glancing shots already. Nothing had exactly gone through, but something about the way they interacted with the armor made the hits give me a jolt like a low-power stun gun.

The city streets disappeared from under me, dropping off to the waters of the bay. The arrow on my HUD started getting bigger and blinking. I could tell the soldiers still had a good look at me because I was getting pelted by beam fire. I got what I could only call a really brilliant idea and slowed down a little. I let one of them get a direct hit, right in the middle of my back.

It stung like the dickens.

I let myself just drop, like the shot had hit something important, spiraling down with one wing tucked close to me.
Destiny started freaking out because I hadn’t told her about my brilliant plan. “Chamomile?! What’s wrong?! I’m not reading any serious injuries--”

“I’m playing dead,” I said. With only one wing out, I fell like one of those seeds that has a big fin on it, coming down in a tight spiral that looked out of control but was slowing my fall pretty good. “Cut all the weight reduction when we hit the water! I want to sink like a rock!”

“Most ponies would want the opposite,” Destiny noted. “Ready to divert power to structural integrity and pressure seals! We’ll need those if we run into any more crabs.”

“Come on, Destiny, what are the odds of that? We pretty much cleared out the mirelurks last time we were here!”

She said something, but I didn’t hear it over the splash.

---

A solid hour and a half later, I got back to Sanctuary, dripping wet and dragging a mirelurk behind me.

“Can somepony get this thing off me?” I yelled. “It clamped on before it died and I can’t get the stupid thing to let go! It’s got a death grip on me, uh, literally!”

Everypony was standing in a rough circle talking, except for Split Moon, because he wasn’t big on talking. Unsung shot me a glance, then looked at him. He nodded and flew over, slicing off the mirelurk’s claw at the joint and then working a blade in between my tail and the pincer, prying it open. It eventually let go.

“Thank you,” I sighed. He patted me on the shoulder, and we walked over to the team meeting. “So what’s the plan for getting Four back?”

Asterism looked at me with a furious glare that could melt steel.

“Getting her back?!” Asterism snapped. “She destroyed half of my city! And these idiots bucked up and got the mayor killed!”

“We got pinned down,” Unsung said. “The Enclave shot him. I suspect it was deliberate. They didn’t want us having him alive.”

“That does sound like something they’d do,” Opening admitted. "It ruins the confession idea."

“You ponies are a bucking disaster!” Asterism yelled. “What am I paying you for?!”

“You’re paying us to put you back into a position of power,” Unsung said. “Both of us know you don’t care about money. You care about what you can do with it. It’s something I respect about you.”

“I also care about not getting lynched when ponies find out I’m responsible for this mess!”

“It’s not a concern,” Unsung promised. “The next mission--”

“There’s not going to be a next mission. Not for a while,” Asterism said. “Right now, the Enclave is out there saving lives. I hate what they’ve done to this city, but I’m not going to let you buck up when lives are on the line!”

“...That’s fair,” Unsung admitted. “You’re right. And you’re right about our funding.”

Asterism frowned. “I am?”

“Yes. Whatever you were going to give to us, could you put it into recovery and rebuilding efforts? Put your name on it. Make it known the Enclave aren’t the only ones helping. That would be good for everypony, right?”

“It would,” Asterism allowed. “I’d get in the good graces of the ponies you put in danger.”

“That’s settled, then. Consider it our punishment for this mission going sideways and a way to improve your own position,” Unsung said. “We’ll avoid taking any action until you think it’s wise.”

I was about ninety percent sure Unsung was lying about that last part, but Asterism nodded slowly, obviously distracted thinking about how to spend her money. The pink and white earth pony started walking away, her bodyguard following along behind her while she was absorbed in thought.

“That should keep her busy,” Unsung muttered. "Opening?"

"I know the drill. Don't plan anything that requires her for a while."

“She isn’t wrong,” Klein Bottle said. “We really bucked this one up.”

“What happened out there?” I asked. “Four just went berserk!”

“It was the spirits of the lost,” Grey Gloom whispered. “They linger in that machine, and it amplifies their voices. She couldn’t tell their rage apart from her own feelings.”

“I’d call that silly if we didn’t have a very well-documented example of something similar,” Destiny said wryly.

Grey Gloom gave me a smile, and I knew she was really smiling at the ghost haunting my armor. “If they were like you, this wouldn’t have happened. The spirits haunting the Grandus are broken and incomplete, just parts of souls ripped apart and hurting in all the cracked places.”

“We need to go after her,” I said.

“If she’s still berserk, that could be extraordinarily dangerous,” Opening warned.

“If we sent her off to go tear around the wasteland breaking things, we have a responsibility to save her before she kills anypony else.”

Unsung nodded grimly. “Klein Bottle, you were working on decrypting those files. Any idea where she might be going?”

“Decrypting files?” I asked.

“We promised Four we’d help her regain her memories,” Unsung reminded me. “I don’t go back on promises like that. We have some data on the project she was involved with that we hacked out of Enclave databases.”

“We’ve got a few things,” Klein Bottle said. She scratched her nose and looked embarrassed. “Not much of it is helpful.”

“How did you even meet Four?” I asked.

“We broke her out of the hospital,” Klein said. “She was being held there for treatment. There were others, but she was the only one stable enough to move.”

“We promised to help her, she said she had a way to pay us back, and she vanished for two weeks and came back dragging the Grandus behind her,” Opening said.

“She must have gotten it from the lab where they did… whatever they did to her,” I said. “That means she knows where it is from here.”

“You think she went back?” Unsung asked.

“Yes,” Grey Gloom nodded. “Ghosts linger in familiar places. If they’re controlling her actions, they might lead her there even if it’s subconscious.”

“So… where’s the lab?” I asked.

“We do have the coordinates,” Klein Bottle said. “It’s in the files we hacked. We just never had a reason to go looking. The place is a ruin, and Four already told us there’s nothing there that would help with her missing memories.”

“I’ll head over there right away,” I said. “Just give DRACO the location data and we’ll track her down.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Unsung said firmly.

“I need to--”

“You need to be able to help her when you find her, and even if you fly at full speed it’s going to take two days to get there. You’re going to get a hot meal, a nap, and let Grey Gloom check you over for injuries, then you can go.”

I huffed. “You’re not my real mom.”

“You told me about your real mother, Chamomile,” Unsung said. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

---

That had been hours ago. Now I was outside the city, poking at a small campfire. I hadn’t built it, but the raiders that had been using it didn’t need it anymore. I would have felt bad about what happened to them, but one of them had a stick and the other one only had bad language and they still ran at me screaming for blood despite me being in powered armor, twice their size, and heavily armed. They clearly hadn’t wanted to live.

“This feels familiar,” Destiny said.

“Huh?”

“Camping like this,” she clarified. “I think… I think I’ve done this before. It’s like a ghost of a memory. Like when you wake up from a dream and you know the feeling of it but the content just slides away.”

“Maybe you used to do this?” I offered. “Like when your dad took you out to the middle of nowhere to break ground for the Cosmodrome.”

“When… what?” Destiny sounded confused.

“I saw it after we fell,” I said. “I think you were kinda young? And you complained about the snow.”

“I don’t remember any of that.”

“Really? Then…” I frowned.

“It must be the implant in your head,” Destiny sighed. “You might have more of my memories than I do.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Let me tell you, though, in other circumstances I’d love to run a bunch of experiments! Maybe memories stored like that don’t come with a pony after death? It would explain a lot about my missing time. And if they’re not part of the soul, can they be extracted onto memory orbs? It might be an extremely powerful way to defeat mind-reading spells!”

I laughed. “I have no idea how you’d test that.”

“Neither do I,” she admitted. “Part of the problem is the design. It’s adaptive hardware, like the brain.”

“Huh?”

“When a pony gets brain damage, the brain can rewire itself to bypass it,” Destiny explained. “It’s more complete in foals, but even with adults, it’s sometimes possible to make at least a partial recovery even from severe brain trauma. The logic circuits in that implant do the same thing with a modified low-power repair spell. It made itself fit in and do what the rest of my brain asked it to do. And then when I installed it into you…”

“It had to relearn what its job was?” I guessed.

“Exactly. Eventually, it’ll run at a hundred percent, but I can tell you right now that you’re probably up ten or twenty IQ points from when you got shot. You can’t beat organics for adaptability, but silicon is miles faster with basic logic.”

“I don’t feel any smarter.”

“Just trust me, Chamomile. You’re smarter. You wouldn’t have had those ethics questions about shooting the base commander when this all started. Being able to question your own actions like that is a sign of intelligence.”

“I guess so,” I admitted.

“It’s… good to see something I created being used the way I intended,” Destiny said. “It makes it easier to hang on. I don’t really feel like a part of the world sometimes. Between how much time has passed and how little I remember, everything gets confusing and…” she went quiet.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I promise I’ll do everything I can to help. We found some memory orbs with you in them, right? There have to be more of them out there.”

“Maybe,” Destiny said quietly.

“We’ll track them down. I promise. We even have a lead!”

“We do?” Destiny asked.

“Sure. Kulaas! Your mom built that supercomputer, right? And it’s obviously still active somewhere! We just have to figure out where, and I bet it has all kinds of files on you! It can probably even help us find memory orbs!”

“That’s…” Destiny sounded surprised. “That’s right! I have no idea where it is, but there can’t be that many places to look for a giant computer complex!”

“And we’ve gotten transmissions from it, and so did the Greywings. Maybe DRACO can do some kind of signal trace?”

“I doubt it. If it wants to stay hidden, it’s going to stay hidden. We’ll have to come up with an actual plan.” Destiny sighed. But it was a sigh of relief instead of annoyance. “Thanks, Chamomile. That actually gives me a little hope.”

“When we get back to the city we’ll call in our favor from Unsung and figure out how to get back abovedeck. Then we can lean on the Greywings and find out what they know. Sound good?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Destiny agreed. “I just hope Four is okay. I know what it’s like to lose yourself.”

“She’s stronger than she looks,” I said. “I mean that literally since she was just swatting me aside. I’m mostly hoping she’s calmed down and she’s in a better mood.”

“What will you do if she’s still…?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it won’t come to that. I’ll save her.”

---

I’ve been to places that were literally haunted. I’ve had screaming skulls launch evil necro-fire at me. I’m pretty sure it left a scar on my soul, and not in a metaphorical way. Even with all that experience, the place I was standing in was creepy enough to send chills down my spine.

It had been a suburb. And I don’t mean before the war. I mean less than a year or two ago. The ruins around me weren’t ancient decaying hulks, they were fresh. Ponies had gotten themselves together enough to build reasonable homes out of salvaged wood planks and brick, they’d put lives together, and then it had all ended in some little apocalypse.

“What happened here?” I whispered.

“I’m worried it might be the same thing that happened in Dark Harbor,” Destiny said. “Somepony went crazy and destroyed everything.”

“You mean Four.”

“If you know any other ponies that fit the bill, you tell me,” Destiny said with a mental shrug that I could feel on my own shoulders. “Klein Bottle said she was the only one from the accident that wasn’t really hurt. What if that’s because she rode it out somewhere safe? Somewhere huge and made entirely out of battleship-grade armor plates?”

I hated to think about that, but Destiny was probably right. I wasn’t stupid enough to think it wasn’t at least a possibility.

“She’s fine when she’s away from the Grandus,” I said. “Maybe if we just convince her to come with us and disable it so nopony else can use the thing? We can leave it here and forget about it.”

“I’ll actually support that plan a hundred percent,” Destiny agreed. “But I’ll do the disabling. We’ll need to smash the thaumatic booster to be sure it can’t ever be used again.”

“Good, cool, we’re on the same page,” I nodded and walked through the dusty streets towards the biggest building in town. It wasn’t hard to find. The place wasn’t really a whole town, it was more like one big warehouse and then enough houses and small businesses to support the ponies working there. If I looked closely at the skeletal, burned ruins I could just about tell which building was which.

Every time the wind blew, I could swear I heard whispers, just a little too soft to make out what they were saying.

A sign still hung over the doors to the lab. Damascus Labs. It was burned a little around the edges, but I was surprised it was there. I was surprised there were even still doors, to be frank. I pulled them open. I might as well not have bothered. There had been floors, rooms, lots of stuff inside the shell of the warehouse frame, but it had all collapsed in the inferno that had consumed the place and fell into a basement level, leaving just the broken outer walls around a huge, crumbling crater of debris.

And Four was sitting in the middle of it.

“Four?” I called out.

She turned in shock, her expression terrified and feral, like a spooked wild bird.

“Chamomile?” she asked, after a few moments longer than I would have liked.

“No sign of the Grandus,” Destiny whispered. “Maybe she landed somewhere else and walked here?”

“That would simplify things,” I whispered back. I took off my helmet so Four could see my face, letting Destiny float by my side. “Are you okay?” I asked, speaking louder and slowly approaching, ready to stop if she seemed likely to bolt. “I came here to help.”

“You can’t help me,” Four said bitterly. “Nopony can.”

“I want to try,” I said. “Hey, if nothing else I’m a pretty good listener. Can you at least tell me why I can’t help?”

Four glared at me for a few moments before her expression softened. She turned away and tilted her head. I took it as permission to walk closer, so I did, carefully.

“This is… where I was born,” she said. “Or… the first thing I remember, anyway. That’s like the same thing, right?”

I shrugged, sitting down near her, not quite within arm’s distance but close enough that if she started to run I could grab her before she got far.

“I don’t know where I came from. They tested us, poked at us and prodded and cut and drugged us… they told me if I behaved that they’d give me my memories back, but all I can remember now is how much it hurt.” She touched the scars around the base of her horn. “The worst part was the drill, right here. I couldn’t feel the bone being cut, but the sound, and the vibration through my whole head…”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“They wouldn’t take those memories, but they took everything else,” she said, her voice strained. “You can’t imagine what it’s like. Everything. My whole life! Just… surgery and tests to see if the surgery worked, then more experiments to push harder and faster. All so they could make a pilot who could survive using the Grandus.”

“I’m guessing it didn’t go well,” I said quietly.

Four laughed. “I lost control of my magic while I was in the Grandus. Do you know what happens when a unicorn loses control? When you have a magic surge like that? It was like a megaspell going off. Everything burned.”

I shivered, looking around. So she had done all this, after all. But it had been an accident. That had to count for something.

“I woke up in the hospital,” Four continued, her voice a whisper. “Nopony else made it. I was safe because I was in the Grandus. That thing won’t burn. It was like the eye of a storm.”

“Not exactly,” a voice echoed through the ruins, tinged with a slight accent I couldn’t place that sounded like the kind of posh effect some ponies put on when they were trying to sound sophisticated. A dark blue unicorn in a lab coat stepped out of the shadows. “Hello, Four. It’s good to see you again.”

“Doctor Anamnesis?” Four gasped. “But…”

“You thought I was dead. I know.” She smiled coldly. “Very nearly. I had to tell my own physician how to treat my wounds because they were woefully underprepared.” She moved part of her mane to show a nasty burn scar across the side of her head, going from the corner of her eye all the way to her ear.

“Why are you here?” Four started shaking in terror. I stood up and stepped between them, trying to shield her a little.

Doctor Anamensis produced a small, glowing, glass orb.

“I know what you want,” she said. “You want your memories back. You destroyed most of our equipment, but I salvaged this. Consider it a… greatest hits collection.” She smirked.

“Give it to me,” Four said, breathlessly.

“I will,” the Doctor said, putting it back in her labcoat. “We were always going to give you your memory back, Four. We erased your memories so we would have a clean slate to work with. Once the experiment was over, we would have wiped away all the awful recollections you have now and restored you. This you, this little broken bird, it was never supposed to last. You’re not a real pony, you’re just a collection of trauma.”

“I’m not real?” Four whispered.

“If that’s all you’re here for, thanks,” I said. “Give Four the orb.”

“I would, but she’s incurred quite a debt that she needs to work off! She destroyed all this research, all the effort and time we put into this place. And my backers came to collect.”

A shadow passed over me. I looked up. Enclave soldiers were visible through the broken windows and walls of the lab. The place was surrounded.

“Chamomile, we’re reading a lot of hostiles,” Destiny warned quietly. I nodded and carefully grabbed her out of the air, putting the helmet back on. I didn’t want to end up with another serious head wound.

“The one thing I’m good at is math,” I whispered back. “I can count.”

“Come with me, Four,” the Doctor said. “It won’t take long, and then you can have your memories back. I can even make you forget all this.”

“Don’t listen to her,” I said. “Here’s a better plan -- I shoot the good Doctor, then we take the orb and walk away.”

“The memory orb is quite fragile,” Doctor Anamnesis said smugly. “Do you want to risk breaking it?”

“I’m a pretty good shot,” I lied.

Four jumped in front of DRACO. “No!” Four shouted. “I won’t let you! I need those memories!”

“Four--”

“That’s not even my name!” Four said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s just a number! Test subject number four! I don’t want to be that! I want to be a real pony! With a name and a family and good memories!”

“I want to help you,” I said. “Please, just trust me. Whatever she wants, it’s not good. Let’s go back to the Sanctuary, Four. We can--”

“My name isn’t Four!” she screamed. “I hate that name! I hate it so much!”

The ground rumbled under me, and the rubble in the center of the crater started moving, sliding and shifting like an earthquake. An ultraviolet glow showed through the cracks.

“Leave,” Four said coldly.

I flew up, getting off the ground just before the Grandus rose out of the rubble. I hovered in front of it, watching Four make the biggest mistake of her life. The helmet slid open, the muzzle opening up a hatch like a jaw, and she let herself get devoured by that monster.

“This is what I have to do, Chamomile,” Four said. “I have to go with them. I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough!” Doctor Anamnesis yelled. “You have to prove yourself! She is a wanted criminal and a terrorist! Destroy her!”

“I can’t!” Four said, her voice deep and echoing through the Grandus’ speakers.

“It should be easy with the power of the Grandus!” the Doctor shouted. “Do you want your memories or not?!”

“Let’s just nip this in the bud,” I said. At this range I couldn’t miss with DRACO.

Four saw me take aim. “No!” Magic snatched me out of the air, and the shot went wild. DRACO still almost hit the Doctor, the shot piercing a new hole through her left ear. She raised a shaking hoof up to the wound and looked at me with utter contempt.

“Kill her now or I will smash this orb where I stand!” Doctor Anamnesis screamed.

“I can’t let you-- I can’t let you take away my memories!” Four threw me down, smashing me into the broken concrete slab floor. The force was… I’d never felt anything like it. It was like the G-force of extreme acceleration, my own weight pressing me into the ground.

“She’s inverted her weight reduction spell and cast it on us!” Destiny yelled. “I’m counterspelling it, hang on!”

“You can do that?” I asked, struggling to breathe with what felt like a whole extra couple ponies standing on my chest. The armor wasn’t helping at all.

“Of course! This armor has the same spell already woven into it, and who do you think designed it? I know that spell better than anypony else alive!” The pressure started to let up, the crimson light of Destiny’s magic glowing around me in a soft shield.

“What are you doing?!” Doctor Anamnesis snapped. “Kill her!”

“But… I…” Four hesitated.

“Once we restore your memories, you won’t remember her anyway! She’s nothing! Less than nothing!”

“Four, don’t listen to her,” I pled, trying to get up. Even with the counterspell, I was still feeling about two times gravity. I definitely wasn’t flying out of here. Just getting to my hooves was a struggle. Not as hard as wrestling a bear, though, so not a massive problem.

“My name isn’t FOUR!” she screamed. The aura around the Grandus redoubled, blaring hard enough to hurt my eyes even through the helmet’s filters.

A shadow fell over me. I looked up to see the Grandus’ huge hoof, as big as my whole body.

It came down. I remembered the way she’d crushed an Enclave soldier. The splatter on the sidewalk that had once been a pony. I was too heavy to run. I locked my joints, braced myself in every way I could in that instant.

Metal hit metal. The armor tried to resist. The magic fields around me tried to hold me up. It just wasn’t enough. Nothing could have been.

My bones creaked, strained, and snapped like dry twigs. The pain was… there aren’t words for it. Nopony in that much pain can think. It’s enough agony to push your mind away and out of your body to escape. I was on the ground. Everything was wrong. I was a scared, dying animal.

The hoof came down again.

Comments

[Buzzard]

[Ahsoka Tano]

Didnt Unsung say she wasnt going too let her go yet, this story time jumps as much as star trek lol.