Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 50 - POWER

“Entry… thirteen? No, I’ve… I’ve had a few thirteens already. I don’t remember what number I’m on. I’m starting to lose track of time. I should have made several more entries. Not seeing the sun and moon every day is really having a knock-on effect with my internal clock. A whole month passed, but it only felt like a few days. I guess without my assistant here it’s too easy to fall down the rabbit hole and study for days on end.

“I think I need to start limiting my exposure to the Anomaly. I’ve mentioned the artifacts recovered from around it. There’s a partial catalog here somewhere. Today, when I was trying another variation of the standard thaumatic scan, I found something. It wasn’t anything dangerous but…

“When I was a filly I had a doll that I played with until it literally fell apart. I don’t know what happened to it, I lost it years ago. Today I found it in the Anomaly chamber, sitting right next to me, exactly as I remembered it. Not a brand-new doll of the same type. My doll, with all the stitches and stains and worn spots.

“I’m holding it right now. It’s real. It isn’t a dream or an illusion or… how did it know? I’ve been casting all this magic into the Anomaly. Has it been looking back at me this whole time?”

---

“I don’t like the idea of leaving the professor alone with that… thing,” I said. I kicked at the floor of the hallway, sending up a puff of clouds. “Anything could happen. We never even found a body!”

“He’s got a small army of soldiers to protect him,” Cube said with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “You’re just feeling guilty because you were on the first boat out of there. Do you really think you’d be any help? You’re not smart enough to do research. You’d just get bored and cause trouble.”

“If another monster shows up…” I mumbled, trailing off.

Cube snorted. “If another monster shows up they’ll leave. Do you know most ponies see monsters and they think ‘hey, I should leave’ and not about the best way to get it into a headlock?”

“What’s wrong with putting monsters in headlocks?” I mumbled.

“Don’t listen to her, Chamomile,” Destiny said, floating in front of me while we walked. “Personally, I think it’s one of your best traits! You fight monsters and aren’t afraid of anything!”

“You’re biased,” Cube said.

“I am,” Destiny agreed. “It’s called being her friend. Friendship is important, you know. If you’re not careful, you’ll be visited by three ghosts who’ll teach you about the meaning of Hearth’s Warming! Or you’ll get eaten by a windigo.”

“Windigos aren’t real,” Cube retorted.

“They’re real,” Destiny and I said at the same time.

“I tried to punch one in the snout,” I continued. “It didn’t work because it was a ghost and they’re tricky to punch.”

Cube frowned and looked at me for a few more seconds. “Ugh. I hate that I can’t tell if you’re lying or not! Why can’t I read your mind? Are you just that stupid?”

“Can you actually read minds?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you do it. You just stare at my forehead and get frustrated.”

“Shut up! I can do a lot of things!” Cube snapped. “I’ll prove it later. Let’s just find the library and see if there’s anything about that fortress.”

“Professor Orate said he found the location in some old MAS files, right?” I asked.

Cube nodded, starting to calm down. “Right. The old guy just got lucky, but we know what we’re looking for. The Ministry Mare spent a lot of time there, she must have figured out where all this stuff was coming from at some point.”

Destiny bobbed in the air. “She wasn’t the kind of pony to let a mystery go.”

“Unless the war interrupted her,” I reminded them. “There was a lot going on.”

“She found out enough to make her want to seal the place off,” Destiny countered. “Whatever that knowledge is, it’s worth knowing.”

“Knowledge is a weapon,” Cube said, nodding along. “A double-edged sword. Either you’re holding it and you need to be careful how you use it, or it’s lying somewhere in the dark and you risk stumbling into the blade.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed. “You’re right. You’re both right. It’s already there. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

“I like it when you admit I’m right,” Cube said smugly. “Now open the door.” She waved to it.

“I’m sorry, is the doorknob too high for you?” I teased, pushing open one of the library’s big double doors and letting her and Destiny through. I had certain expectations about what a library was like. Walls of books, ponies trying to be quiet, big desks, low lighting. Basically like my Dad’s library back home except on a grand scale.

This was… different.

“Where are all the books?” I asked, unable to stop myself.

“We went digital!” a pony called out. I looked up to where four ponies were clustered around a large, complicated piece of cloud technology, with veins of lightning and rainbow cabling pulsing through the gaps where panels had been removed. The pony who had spoken was a slim stallion in a silver suit. They waved to us.

“Digital?” I asked. They nodded and flew down to us from the upper level.

“In the long term, storage of physical media is problematic,” they explained. “Shelving that can hold books and is enchanted not to fall through clouds is expensive, but even if funding was unlimited, the humidity is a big issue.”

He offered a hoof to shake.

“Synonym Storm. I’m the head librarian.”

“Nice suit,” I said, nodding to the foil one-piece he was sporting.

He blushed and tried to smooth the wrinkles out of the crinkling metallic fabric. “It’s an anti-static garment. Better safe than sorry when working with delicate equipment.”

“Good, you’re the pony in charge,” Cube said, pushing between us. “I need all the documentation about Site K1 and Mogile Uzhasov you have.”

“That could be a problem,” Synonym said with a grimace. “We had a small incident last week.”

“An incident?” Cube asked, unamused. I could feel the waves of annoyance radiating off her.

The librarian gestured to where ponies were working on the large computer. “While having all our books digitized is extraordinary in many ways - no waiting for a checked-out copy to be returned, no need to worry about wear and tear… It also means that if something particularly disruptive happens, it can take the entire library offline.”

“Something disruptive?” Destiny asked.

“Indeed,” sneered a voice from the doorway behind us. I turned to look at the sneering sneerer, the political officer I’d met in the Dean’s office. He glared at us in a detached, professional way. “Another example of a dangerous, disruptive element in society that has made things worse for everypony. A rebel showed their true colors and sabotaged the school’s maneframe!”

Synonym Storm sighed. “Professor Wisp--”

“Former professor,” Cypher Decode corrected snippily.

“Wisp had multiple grants for his research denied. He was on the verge of losing tenure, and he… snapped. He left and took some vital components of the maneframe with him.”

“He sabotaged the school to work with a rebel group of surface ponies!” Decode snapped. “He is a criminal and if he ever returns to the Enclave he’ll be executed on sight!”

“Whatever,” Cube sighed. “How long until this mess is working again? A few hours?”

“Ah…” the librarian hesitated. “We’re hoping by the end of the next semester we’ll have… some functionality restored.” He looked at Cube’s face and offered a nervous smile. “The components involved are very rare. He knew what he was taking. From his correspondence, we think he was in contact with a research team operating on the surface.”

“Computer research?” Destiny guessed.

“Ghouls, actually,” the librarian said. “It’s why his grants kept getting denied. There really aren’t any ghouls up here.”

“It made his research unnecessary,” Cypher said. “I looked over his file after he went rogue. He was wasting precious resources for his pet project. The committee did the right thing in denying him students and funding. His proposals to actually capture feral ghouls for study were not only logistically dangerous, but insane on the face of things!”

“Great, whatever. So we know where he went?” I asked.

“We can solve this in a few hours,” Cube said, looking up at me in agreement. “We’ll just need a VertiBuck and a pilot.”

“Denied,” Decode said. “You have caused enough trouble. I don’t know why you’re really here, but I won’t let you simply run amok and do whatever you want! I don’t like having elements I can’t control!”

Cube narrowed her eyes. I felt a subtle pressure pulse out of her.

“You do like control,” she agreed. “You really like it when somepony else is in control, too. Like when you caused a training accident and you were given ten lashes, and right in front of everypony in your squad…” she trailed off and shook her head. “Ew. I guess that’s one way to find out what you’re into.”

Decode paled.

“What was the nickname they gave you?” Cube asked. “Dirty Little Secret?”

“How- how dare you look at those file!” Decode screeched. “They’re restricted! You have no right to go into a pony’s personal files! I made sure they were erased!”

“Do we need to talk about the thing with the griffon?” Cube whispered.

Decode stiffened up and very quickly walked out of the library.

“I think you almost killed him,” I said. “How’d you do that?”

“I told you I can read minds,” Cube said.

“He’s not going to help us get a VertiBuck,” Destiny noted. “We’ll need to figure out where else we can get those parts.”

“No need,” Cube said. She smirked. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“Not really, it’s hard to see you all the way down there,” Destiny muttered.

Cube ignored her. “Get your things and come with me. I can get us to the surface on my own!”

---

“Destiny, please tell me you know what’s going on,” I whispered.

Cube had retrieved a bundle of metal staves tipped with faceted crystals and drove them firmly into the floor, three of them forming a triangle in the middle of her room. I was in the middle of that triangle, and I was getting more and more worried with every passing moment.

“I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking at,” Destiny admitted. “There’s thaumatic circuitry, but…”

“They’re pattern enhancers,” Cube said. She adjusted one of the three staves, eying the angle. “Teleportation over a long distance is tricky. In the old days, way before the war, they had to use these big ritual circles. Even when methods got better, it was dangerous enough that ponies needed to be licensed for it.”

“I get it,” Destiny said. “These pattern enhancers are like a portable magic circle.”

“Exactly!” Cube nodded sharply. “Actually drawing a magic circle is messy and slow and there are too many ways you can make a mistake. This automates the whole thing. No way to really mess it up. Speaking of which, here.”

She levitated another set of three over to me.

“Carry these,” Cube ordered. “We’ll set them up when we get there.”

“Is this safe?” I whispered, taking the set and settling it between my wings. If something went wrong with the armor, I didn’t want the only way home stuck in another dimension with the rest of my junk.

“That’s a difficult question to answer,” Destiny whispered back. “She’s got talent, but I have no idea how much real experience she has. Teleportation is a really difficult spell!”

“Could you do it?”

“No. I know the basics -- the suit’s Vector Trap is based on half of a teleportation spell. I just never could memorize all the runes to cast it on my own.”

The air filled with an electric pressure. The aura around Cube’s horn flared brighter.

“I’m sure she knows what she’s doing,” Destiny reassured me.

---

“You bucked it up,” I said calmly.

“I did not!” Cube protested.

I motioned below us. Cube looked down for a very long second.

“I made a small mistake,” Cube conceded.

I nodded in agreement, letting the wind rush past me as we fell. The ground was pretty far away, but not that far. We had maybe ten seconds. “Do you want some help?”

Cube stuck her tongue out at me and surrounded herself in her aura, freezing in place in the air and shooting up past me as I continued to fall. I had to brake myself manually and fly back up to her, the little unicorn making a point of maintaining altitude and not coming down to meet me.

“Like I said, only a small mistake,” Cube said. “Both of us can fly. If you really think about it, it’s actually way safer like this! You should congratulate me for coming up with such a good idea!”

“A little higher and the lightning shield would have fried us.”

“It was a risk I was willing to take.” Cube looked around. “Ugh. I hate how ugly the surface looks, and we can’t even see all the mud from here.”

“DRACO is synchronizing maps,” Destiny said. “I can give you a course to the target. You want something on the ground, or as the pegasus flies?”

“Ground,” I said.

“I can get there on my own!” Cube snapped. “Doing this doesn’t even make me tired!”

“I believe you. I also believe you’re glowing like a lightbulb and things are so gloomy down here everypony and everything around is going to take a shot at you.”

Cube smiled. “Sounds like fun!”

---

Ponies adapt to danger in different ways. I spent most of my life just wasting time and waiting for something meaningful to drop into my lap. When it all finally crashed down around me, it was like I’d found a purpose in life. It wasn’t like I enjoyed being shot at or seeing shit that would turn most ponies white. It just felt like it mattered. I wasn’t standing around in a bar and cleaning glasses. I wasn’t scrubbing the deck on a cloudship. I fought monsters.

And I was increasingly worried that the little filly next to me might be one of those monsters. We were already arguing as we reached the crest of one of the low hills through the area.

“No, I don’t think making a necklace out of their ears is a good idea,” I said. “That’s actually, like, kind of psychotic.”

“I guess,” Cube sighed, kicking at the dirt. “But I should get something out of it. I mean, we killed all those raiders!”

“Do you want a broken board with a nail in it?” I asked.

“No, that’s stupid,” Cube huffed. “You just hate fun. You won’t let me take their drugs, you won’t let me take trophies…”

“The last thing you need is weird drugs,” I said. “The last enhanced unicorn I met had seizures if she didn’t get the right medications. I have no idea what Dash would do to you.”

“Chamomile, you’re such a good big sister!” Destiny teased.

“You know what, never mind.” Cube huffed, stomping her hooves. “I don’t want to remember any of this!”

I shrugged. “For what it’s worth, we’re here.”

“Here?” Cube asked. “But there’s no lab here! No ancient MAS facility, no secret MOA base, just…”

“A shopping mall,” Destiny supplied.

It was a sea of parking lots for carts and delivery trucks, surrounding a massive, low building. The mall had a look to it like the designer, if there was one, had taken a whole city block and squished it together, slamming buildings up against each other before patting it down into a pancake of concrete.

“Correction,” Destiny said. “According to this, it’s a radioactive shopping mall. I guess that explains the locals.”

“When you say locals, you mean the ghouls,” I said. “I’m guessing here, but there are a lot of them.”

There must have been a hundred of them just in the parking lot, stumbling around aimlessly. Maybe they’d died trying to remember where they’d parked, and they’d spent the last two centuries lost in the maze of broken-down cars.

“How dangerous are ghouls?” Cube asked. “I’ve never fought one.”

“I happen to be an expert in fighting undead,” I said. “They’re like, D-tier, same as skeletons. Out in the open like this, when you can fly and you’ve got guns? Basically zero threat.”

“That’s kinda boring. I was hoping for more of a fight.” Cube plucked the pattern enhancers off my back. “This is probably a good spot to leave these things. Let’s shove them in the back of that Sparkle-Cola truck.”

I nodded and trotted over to the back, slicing the lock open and sliding the squeaking door open. Something grabbed my hoof, and I looked down to see a ghoul in the remnants of what had been a uniform before somepony died in it and dragged it through the dirt for a dozen and a half decades.

“See?” I wiggled my hoof and flicked the already-crippled ghoul off. “They’re not very impressive. I guess if I wasn’t wearing barding it might be able to bite a chunk out of me. You should probably watch your back if we get into tight quarters.”

Cube nodded and shot it in the head, putting the groaning undead pony down. “At least we finally found some ponies that make you look like a genius!”

She moved a few empty crates and put the bundle of pattern enhancers in the truck. The last crate rattled and clinked, and she pulled out two sealed bottles of cola.

“Huh,” Cube said. “Are these any good?”

“It’s better cold,” Destiny said. “I never liked them at room temperature.”

“I’ve got a gun that shoots cold,” I offered.

“Perfect!” Cube shut the truck’s back door and balanced the bottles on the bumper. “Go ahead and cool them down.”

---

“Good thing there were more bottles in there,” I said, sipping the ice-cold Sparkle Cola and flying over the ghouls. Cube took a few pot shots at them out of obvious boredom. These ghouls were really out of it. They didn’t even react to the undead ponies next to them getting gunned down.

“You should have known they’d shatter,” Destiny sighed. She shook herself disapprovingly in midair where she was helping us keep an eye out for trouble. “Ice expands! If you freeze anything in a closed, rigid container you run the risk of shattering!”

“I got it right the second time,” I said. “You were right about these being better cold.”

“They were also better fresh, but I don’t think that’s an option,” Destiny said. “Why aren’t we going directly to the mall?”

Cube sighed. “Because, and may the stars forgive me for saying this, Chamomile was right about something. These ghouls aren’t a threat to us, but to an unarmed, unarmored pony they might be pretty dangerous. That researcher we’re looking for might have gotten himself bitten.”

“Right,” I said. “He could have gotten turned into one! So we gotta see if any of them are fresh.”

“Is that how ghouls work?” Destiny asked.

“It is not how ghouls work,” rasped a voice from below us. A ghoul in relatively intact clothing looked up at us, taking off his hat and waving to us. “Could you two stop shooting my test subjects?”

“Are you in charge here?” I called out.

“I’m the head of the Parasol Falls research team,” the ghoul said slowly. “Who the buck are you two?”

“Three,” Destiny corrected. The ghoul rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that! You’re not better than me just because you have a body!”

“We’re from Winterhoof College,” I said, before it turned into an argument.

“Oh great,” the ghoul groaned. “I should have known. You’re here because of Wisp aren’t you?”

“Sort of,” I said. “He didn’t leave on great terms.”

“Come inside and we’ll talk,” the ghoul said. He looked around at the wandering, groaning horde of undead. “These things creep me out.”

---

“No, not all of them died here,” Doctor Balm said, his voice sounding like it had been dragged across broken glass. I wasn’t sure if it was more or less disconcerting seeing a ghoul excited and happy than it was seeing one hungry for pony flesh. “At first we thought it was just that simple. They died because of the radiation, and they didn’t wander far. You never find feral ghouls outside of radioactive areas, so it made sense. But it turns out it might be more of a survivorship bias - ghouls do wander, but they don’t last long unless they find radiation because we don’t heal naturally.”

“Fascinating,” Destiny said. We trotted along behind her and the good doctor as he led us to where his research team was set up inside an old department store. “Undead weren’t really a serious issue when I was alive, but you can imagine I’m very interested in the nitty-gritty details now.”

“Equestria never studied necromancy much,” Balm agreed. “We started our research looking into Zebra legends, but… that’s a dead-end for a lot of reasons.”

Destiny nodded. “Getting your hooves on Zebra material wasn’t easy even before the bombs fell.”

The ghoul looked back at me and Cube. “Speaking of bombs, are those two going to be okay? This place is highly contaminated.”

“I know Chamomile has a subcutaneous weave of heavy metals that provides a lot of radiation shielding,” Destiny said. “I’m not sure about the little one.”

“For your information, my enhancements aren’t nearly as crude as hers,” Cube said smugly. “I’m much tougher than the average ordinary unicorn.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ve got a bunch of RadAway. I’ll make sure she drinks it.”

Cube huffed. “I hate how that stuff tastes!”

“It’s better than having your organs turn to very advanced and powerful mush,” I said. I grabbed a dose and passed it over to her. “Here.”

Cube took it glumly and sipped at it, grimacing at the taste.

“So where’s Wisp?” I asked. They’d pushed most of the faded racks of rotting clothing off to the sides of the space on the floor and had set up equipment in little pods around anywhere there was room, using the counters, dressing rooms, and displays like the terrain to build their community.

Balm grunted. “He got in good with the boss because of all the stuff he brought.”

It was hard to tell the scientists apart. They were all in brightly-colored yellow suits that covered them from head to tail. I wouldn’t have a chance at picking the Professor, or former professor, out of the group.

“Does that mean he’s got a private workspace?”

“It means he’s basking in her glory,” Balm said. His voice dripped with sarcasm and various other stagnant fluids. “You might want to wait around until she goes off to do something else. She’s… not the kind of pony you want to upset.”

“Neither am I,” Cube grumbled.

“We can wait a little while,” I sighed. “So what are you even researching? How ghouls work?”

Balm grunted. “Take a look at these ghouls over here.” He led us to where large cages had been put together, with stumbling, groaning ghouls inside. One of the researchers got too close, and a ghoul jumped at them, hitting the bars and snapping its teeth, trying to bite them.

“They’d make good attack animals if you could teach them to do that on command,” Cube said.

“That ‘attack animal’ was a nurse. The other one in that cage was an engineer.” Balm sighed. “What we’re studying is why some ghouls keep their marbles and others don’t. Ultimately we want to find a way to reverse feralism.”

“Is that even possible?” Destiny asked.

“I’m not sure,” Balm admitted. “It could be a dead end. Or an undead end, really. If it can be reversed, even if the ponies can’t be brought back to life, they’d be able to have some kind of real lives instead of wandering around and rotting.”

“That actually seems like a pretty good cause,” I said.

“I’m doing it for selfish reasons,” Balm said. “I don’t want to end up like those animals. Wisp has it in his head that we can completely reverse the process and recover all the knowledge and memories lost when these ponies turned. That’s what has our, uh, benefactor interested.”

“And since it’s his pet project, he gets all the attention,” I guessed.

Balm shrugged raggedly. “Like I said, he got in good with her.”

“This is pointless,” Cube said. “Where’s the pony in charge? I’m not going to stand around all day getting irradiated just because we’re being polite!”

“They’re testing the rig, but look, just wait for them to finish! She gets bored really easily and she’ll probably wander off to do something else in a few hours if it doesn’t work right away--”

“That’s not an answer to my question,” Cube said. She looked over at the cages, and grabbed the locks with her magic. They snapped apart, and she yanked the doors open.

“What are you doing?!” Balm gasped. Or rasped, really. It sounded like a rotting whoopie cushion. The feral ghouls stumbled out of their cages, lunging for the rad-suited ponies that had been getting readings on them. Even the docile ones that had been sitting quietly in the back of the cage seemed to come back to unlife, growling and following the pack.

“I’m getting your manager’s attention,” Cube replied.

“Damnit,” I swore. I pointed DRACO at a ghoul about to bite down on one of the scientists and blew its head off, the shot echoing in the confined space. “Cube--”

“We’re not here to negotiate and play nice!” Cube snapped. “Get your idiot boss out here!”

<BE NOT AFRAID>

The voice didn’t come from around me. It came from inside me. It had a harsh, static-filled edge to it, fizzing through my brain like an electric invader in my thoughts. The air cracked open with a brilliant flash of purple light, and the third-most-dangerous pony I’d ever seen appeared above us, hovering with slow, steady wingbeats.

“Is that an alicorn?” I whispered, looking up at the dark violet pony. Her horn was barely glowing with magic, but I could still feel the potential and pressure in the air like an oncoming hurricane.

“How did you manage to get us into an even worse situation?!” Destiny hissed.

“Special talent,” I guessed.

The Alicorn’s horn blazed, and the rampaging ghouls were lifted up and thrown back into the cages, the doors slamming shut and the edges glowing red-hot, the doors flash-welding shut with what seemed like almost no effort at all on her part. She never stopped glaring at us the whole time, not even needing to look over her shoulder to direct her magic.

<WHY HAVE YOU INTRUDERS DARED TO INTERFERE?>

I grimaced. “That kind of stings.”

“What does?” Destiny asked. “She’s just hovering there, ominously.”

<ANSWER US OR PERISH!>

“You can’t hear that?” I asked.

“It’s telepathy,” Cube groaned, rubbing her horn. “It probably doesn’t work on ghosts.”

I cleared my throat. “Hey! Uh, nice to meet you, Princess… I’m not actually sure who you are. Look, we’re here to get back some stolen goods. We can be out of your hair in ten minutes if we can just grab it and go.”

<WE DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU WANT.>

I winced. “Cool, cool. Can you maybe not shout?” I rubbed my ears. It felt like they were ringing even when I wasn’t actually hearing with them. “Why is a princess here, anyway?”

The Alicorn motioned with her chin towards the cages.

<THESE BROKEN SHELLS ARE THE LAST REMNANTS OF EQUESTRIA’S GOLDEN AGE. IF THEY CAN BE REPAIRED, THEY WOULD BE A BOON TO THE UNITY.>

That really hurt. “Yeah that kinda… I have no idea what you’re talking about. We just need the junk that Wisp brought with him. How about we take that, you can keep Wisp, and we part ways as friends?”

The alicorn looked at me for a long moment.

<NO.>

Then she blasted me across the room with a bolt of radioactive green magic. I plowed into and through a rack of last season’s styles and slammed into the far wall surrounded by scorched and smoldering cotton.

“Are you alive?” Destiny asked, floating in front of me along with all the stars in my vision.

“Technically,” I groaned, getting back up and shaking some of the stiffness out of my joints. A scorchmark went from the middle of my chest to my right shoulder. “That was a little like getting hit with lightning.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get hit in the head.” Destiny settled down over my head, sealing up the armor. “I can’t believe you picked a fight with an alicorn. I’ve seen what the Princesses can do when they’re mad. It’s not good, Chamomile!”

“Got any tips on fighting Alicorns?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not Flurry Heart, so you’ve got a chance at living through this,” Destiny said. “I’d suggest groveling and apologizing.”

I saw the flare of beam shots and the crack of another huge magical bolt. Cube ran past me, firing backwards while fleeing towards cover. The cover was my flank.

“Do something!” Cube shouted.

“Did you shoot her?” I asked.

Cube looked at me like I’d asked the stupidest question she’d heard all day. “Of course I shot her! I thought she killed you!”

“Oh wow, I think we’re finally bonding as a family!” I gasped.

“Shut up and kill the monster!” Cube snapped.

I snickered and walked back through the swathe of destruction my body had plowed through the abandoned clothing racks. The alicorn landed and from this angle she was head and shoulders taller than me, making me look up at her.

“It’s funny,” I said. “Usually a mare that can kick my ass is exactly my type, but I’m just not all that into you.”

The Alicorn’s eyes narrowed slightly. I moved just a little faster than her, my forehead slamming into hers at the moment she tried to cast a spell and blast me into next week. The energy crackled through the Exodus armor’s thaumoframe, the spell firing straight up and blasting a hole through the roof.

“Bad touch, bad touch!” Destiny yelled. “I felt that in my whole soul, Chamomile! Leave my horn alone!”

The Alicorn spread her wings and tried to shove me back. I caught her forehooves with mine and held my ground. She was incredibly strong and looked absolutely furious. She seemed more upset that she couldn’t overpower me than about the headbutt.

“I can do this all day,” I said mildly.

<YOU CAN DIE ALL DAY!>

“That doesn’t make any--”

She vanished in a flash and twinkle, and I stumbled forward into the space she’d been standing. There was another flash right behind me and I had just enough time to realize that was a bad thing before the spell hit me in the back and smashed me into the ground hard enough to make me bounce and skip right into a load-bearing steel beam.

I gave small thanks that the beam was tough enough not to collapse from the impact and bring the ceiling down on me.

“Okay, time for a different strategy,” I said. “My whole body is bruises.”

I rolled onto my stomach.

“DRACO, armor piercing,” I said. The gun chirped, and I fired. The bullet hit a wall in front of the Alicorn, a bubble of green magic flaring up around her before fading back to near-invisibility.

“That’s a really nice shield spell,” Destiny noted.

I cracked my neck. “What are we up to, plan E?”

“I didn’t think we even had a plan A.”

“That’s good, because otherwise we would have really messed it up.” I charged the Alicorn, and she smugly stood in place, the shield spell flickering in and out of visibility around her. I slammed into it, and I saw her expression change. The glow got brighter and brighter, and I could feel it distorting where I was touching it.

<IMPUDENCE!>

“Are you implying I’m compensating for something?!” I yelled, pushing harder. The shield flared, and I could see my armor actually starting to glow from within.

“The thaumoframe is having some kind of reaction!” Destiny warned. “It was never designed for this much thaumatic flux!”

“Just hold it together!” I shouted. The magical shield belt and buckled in a way even I knew was completely impossible for something that wasn’t really a physical object, and with a crackle of sparks, it cracked like metal fracturing under stress. The Alicorn looked shocked.

I didn’t give her a chance to get over the surprise. I fired everything I had, spraying her in the face with liquid nitrogen from the Cryolator and pulling DRACO’s trigger. Flares and smoke launched out over her shoulder as she recoiled from the biting cold, bouncing off the other side of her shield spell. Destiny fired a bolt of magic into the winged unicorn’s chest, sending her reeling.

The Alicorn screamed, the sound echoing through my whole mind and body, before vanishing in a flash of light, leaving behind only a few traces of smoke and one bouncing flare that rolled across the tiled floor.

I panted, catching my breath.

“Flares and smoke?” I asked after a second. “Why not bullets?”

“I figured we might only get one shot,” Destiny said. “I thought a smokescreen might help us get away. Also smoke rounds use white phosphorus, so, you know. There’s that.”

“You wartime ponies are great at war crimes,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before she comes back even more upset than she was before.”

“Good idea. Where’s your evil sister?”

“Over here!” Cube called out. “Thank you for the distraction. I finished the mission while you were busy, by the way.” She had a small crate in her aura, along with a gun, pressed to the back of a pony’s head.

“Professor Wisp, I presume?” I asked.

“I had him help me find the right parts,” Cube explained.

“You’re making a terrible mistake,” Wisp pleaded. “The Goddess is the future! There are only a handful of Alicorns now, but in a few decades--”

Cube pulled the trigger, and Wisp collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Ugh,” Cube groaned. “I can’t stand fanatics.”

“You didn’t have to kill him!” I shouted, equal parts horrified and enraged.

“He made us run halfway across Equestria fixing this stupid mess,” Cube retorted. “He deserved to die just for wasting my time. Grow up a little, Chamomile.”

She rolled her eyes and walked right past me.

If our positions had been reversed, and I was her ride home, I would have left her there. But I needed her to get back, so all I could do was shut up and bottle everything up. I had to be strong. For my family.

Comments

[Reese]

"have a chance at picking the “Does that"
Missing text?

"The magical shield belt and buckled"
"The magical shield bent and buckled"?
Or am I missing something?

[Ahsoka Tano]

I like how she answers too evil little sister lol.