Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 56 - Ghost Riders in the Sky

“Do you know what’s happening?” the pony asked, looking right at me. I didn’t say anything right away, glancing behind myself. It took a moment to realize he was talking to me. “You must know something about all these alarms!”

“Sorry,” I said softly. I wasn’t sure he could hear me over the blaring siren whooping through the deck. He looked to the side and sprinted over to another pony who’d just walked in and started asking them the same thing.

I shook my head and just watched for a second. They were all young and inexperienced, in pressed uniforms with all the flash and pomp of a ceremonial unit. None of them seemed to know what was going on, and maybe that was for the best. The room was clean and outside the sky was clear and blue, and everypony running around in confusion was glowing just a little, just slightly translucent.

You’d almost think they were still alive if not for that.

I stepped out of the way of a team rushing past with a length of cable and a box of ghostly tools. That put me right up near a window, and I looked out to see a city floating in the sky, surrounded by rainbow falls and open sky, a far cry from the way things were built these days. It looked so open and peaceful.

In the middle distance I could see a few other ships circling it, not like vultures around prey, but just maintaining a perimeter.

“Is that Cloudsdale?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Destiny said. “It wasn’t the easiest place to visit, and that was before they started upping the security. Even if you could cast a cloudwalking spell, you needed help getting around or to get really good at self-levitation. The pegasus ponies liked it that way. It made them more independent from the rest of Equestria.”

“Like a nation of their own?” I guessed.

“You’re the one who grew up in that nation, you tell me.”

I shrugged in acknowledgment. I might not have learned a whole lot back in Dark Harbor but I’d made a ton of mistakes and that was nearly as good. Unsung and the others hated the Enclave, and that hate hadn’t come from nowhere. I’d seen terrible things the Enclave had done, but at the same time, there had been some good.

“Maybe the system is bad, and the way it’s being used is bad, but there are a lot of good ponies,” I said. “Someday, maybe, the good ones will stop being afraid and things will change.”

Just as I said that, the bomb went off. You already know which bomb. It’s the only one that really mattered, the first strike the Zebra made against Equestria. The ponies on the deck around me stopped what they were doing, freezing in place, most of them staring out of the armored windows at the city beyond.

A terrible, otherworldly light blazed at the heart of Cloudsdale. A bubble of flames in a color that didn’t belong in the world. In slow motion I saw the city being torn apart and the wall of fire kept coming, a tide that hit the ship, everything going white, the terrible light blinding me even through closed eyelids.

When I opened my eyes, it was dark. The ship was wrecked, like it always had been. The ponies that had been standing there, watching doom approach them, were gone. Mostly gone. Now that I knew what I was looking at I could see them. There were places where the paint wasn’t burned by that wall of fire and death. Reverse shadows showing just a little brighter and cleaner than the walls and floors around them.

“Like I said, they’re echoes,” Destiny said. “I wonder how many of them knew what was going on? In that last, helpless second when there’s no chance of survival…”

“You’re really cheery,” I mumbled.

“I’m dead, I’m allowed to be melancholy,” Destiny quipped. “Besides, you’re not much better. We’ve got a mission to do, remember?”

“Yeah, we’ve got to track down that necromancer and get the Dimension Pliers,” I sighed. “Any idea where it went? I don’t want to chase it around in circles until whatever’s holding this thing together gives up and it crashes.”

“I was getting a lot of interference while that echo was replaying,” Destiny said. “It’s sort of like an illusion created by loose energy from necromancy reacting with the lingering auras. It’s the same kind of energy I was using to track the zebra, and it was like chaff.”

“And?” I sighed.

“And now that it’s faded, I’m stalling you for time until the scan completes.” There was a beep from DRACO, and the gun’s tip moved slightly. “There we go. I’m updating the objective marker in your HUD.”

A new arrow appeared, and I started following it, trying to look at it instead of the sad horror of the tombship around me. I could just block it out, follow the little light, and try not to stumble on anything.

“I just wish I knew one thing,” Destiny said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Well, I can understand why it would want to keep you from getting the Pliers. It has some connection to whatever the Black Pyramid is, and it knew you were a threat to it, so it got sent out to deal with it. That’s fine. But why not just destroy the Pliers? It would have been faster and easier.”

“I know,” I agreed. “It could have done it with this ship, just leveled the whole lab. But instead they sent a bunch of undead Steel Rangers and zombies in, and that necromancer led them right to the Pliers.”

“So it must need them for something.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like any of these guys are talkative,” I said. “Aside from the zebra leading them I’m not entirely convinced they’re more than just puppets. Even ghouls seem smarter. They’re not all there, but for some of them, you can tell they used to be ponies, you know? Like they’re just really angry and confused. The zombies are… there’s nothing pony-like about them. They’re just monsters.”

“You might be more right than you know. The third eye they bore into the ones they animate -- that’s called trepanning, and it’s the kind of thing that was done ritually for thousands of years, way back to the stone age. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to open the mind up to the spirit world, or give second sight, or whatever else the local witch doctors believed in that week.”

“I had a hole drilled in my head at high speed, and all I got out of it was brain damage and a computer in my skull,” I joked. “Maybe I should complain to somepony.”

“Sorry, spiritual awareness isn’t covered by your health insurance,” Destiny retorted. “The best I can do on your budget is calculus.”

“Ugh. Calculus.” I stepped out into a wider hallway. The arrow was pointing in one direction, but I turned and went down the corridor.

“Where are you going?” Destiny asked.

“I’ve been on so many Raptors I’m starting to learn how the corridors are actually laid out,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind if this one ends up blowing up like some of the others.”

“It’s nice when there’s no moral ambiguity,” Destiny said. “During the war, things were simple. We had a clear enemy, we knew what winning and losing looked like, and we had hope things would be over soon!”

“Those hopes did end pretty abruptly.”

“You know what I mean,” Destiny admonished. “You can count the number of ponies that accurately predicted the end of the world on your hooves.”

“I’m surprised there were any ponies at all who knew what might happen,” I said. I looked up and down the next turn in the corridor and picked a direction, trying to work out how to actually get wherever the waypoint was taking me.

“The Boss Mare was special,” Destiny said. “You would have liked her. I might not remember everything, but I remember her. She had this particular way of doing things -- she could be incredibly direct, but at the same time she was smart and careful enough that the ministries never even knew she existed.”

“Sounds like you had a crush on her,” I noted.

Destiny scoffed. “No way. I admired her, but getting a crush on her would have been like swooning for Princess Celestia.”

“And yet you still won’t tell me her name.”

“Did you know there are magical compulsions that can keep a pony from doing certain things?” Destiny asked. “It’s a totally random question. But such a geas would be a key part of any information security, along with magical methods to compartmentalize memories. Which, come to think of it, might go a long way in explaining why my memory is fragmented.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “And a geas like that, you could use it to make it so a pony wouldn’t be able to reveal certain information, even after death?”

“You’d have to be an amazing spellcaster to do that, and you’d have to have the kind of enemies that would make precautions like that worth taking.”

“Good to know,” I said. “In a purely hypothetical sense.”

“Wow. That implant must really be starting to kick in, Chamomile. I don’t think you’ve ever used the word hypothetical before.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m an idiot, but I’m an idiot who had to do a lot of book reports. I think you’ll find I have a cromulent vocabulary.”

“Cromulent isn’t a word.”

“Maybe you should have read more books,” I said smugly.

“Don’t make me get a dictionary and prove you wrong,” Destiny said. “Because if you make me do that I’ll smack you with it after-- wait, the readings are shooting up again!”

“Does that mean we’re getting close?” I looked around. Would it still be on this deck? Would the corroded metal of the deck block the signal, or could it be above or below me? I wasn’t afraid to do a little demolition, but I’d still need a direction to go in.

“Yes, but--” Destiny started, and before she finished the lights turned on, lights that had been broken and hanging loose a moment ago and were now fixed and clean and shining in a clean hallway flanked with bunks on both sides, set into the wall and decorated with little knick knacks and posters just to turn the cubby-holes into something approaching a private space even more than the thin curtains separating the closed-off bunks from the hallway.

“You were about to tell me we were walking into a ghost zone?” I guessed.

“Something like that,” Destiny sighed. “Keep your eyes open. I think that reading was pretty close by but now there’s too much interference to tell.”

“Right,” I said. I would have asked her what to keep my eyes open for, but I already knew she had just as much idea about what we might find as I did.

“There you are!” Somepony called out to me. “Where have you been, Aquamarine?”

I looked to the side, where a thin pegasus with a backswept mane that looked like someone trying way too hard to look cool walked towards me.

“Are you talking to me?” I asked, confused.

“Uh, yeah?” he said, rolling his eyes. “I swear I’ve been looking for you for…” he hesitated. “I don’t know. The alarms just went off but it feels like it’s been so long…”

The pegasus flickered around the edges like a faded, glitching recording before refocusing.

“Anyway, we need to get to battle stations until the yellow alert passes,” he said. “Chicken Tendies and River Ford are already there, but I had to find you.”

“Right, right,” I agreed. “Thanks. Lead the way.”

He nodded and started walking away. I followed at his heels.

“The ghost must think you’re this ‘Aquamarine’ pony,” Destiny whispered. “He must have died while he was looking for her. This could be good. If you play along it could, I don’t know, finish his unfinished business?”

“It’s not hurting anything to be nice,” I agreed quietly.

“Huh, did you say something?” the ghost asked.

“I was, uh…” I had to be clever. Well, I didn’t have to. I could just walk through him and ignore the ghost, but I needed to search the place anyway and there was no reason to cause trouble with the local spirits. “I was trying to come up with a cool nickname or callsign for you while we’re at battle stations!”

“You know the captain doesn’t like us using nicknames,” the ghost admonished. “Just call me Bomber. Or Ensign Bomber. No, wait, we’re the same rank, so using my rank would just be weird.”

“No problemo, Bomber,” I said. I patted him on the shoulder. Or sort of around the shoulder area. “Hey, did you see anyone else not at battle stations? Maybe they looked strange or were acting funny?”

“Stranger than you?” Bomber scoffed. “I don’t think that’s possible, Aqua.”

That’s when I found out what the necromancer looked like in the ghost zone. It stepped out of the shadows like they were a doorway, right behind the ghost I was following. It grabbed the spirit by the back of the neck and whispered in some terrible, blasphemous language, and when I say that I don’t mean that I’m being vaguely racist at Zebras for nor speaking Equestrian, I mean that it literally hurt to hear and even the few syllables I caught gave me a nosebleed.

I sneezed, and blood covered my vision.

“Buck!” I swore.

“Hold on, I’m trying to clean it out!” Destiny yelled. A wave of crimson magic washed over the inside of the helmet, pushing the blood away.

My vision cleared in time to see a rift open under the ghost, and something liquid and dark pour out of it like shadowy ichor, slithering up the spirit’s form. The ghost screamed obviously in awful torment. I rushed forward, trying to break it free. There was no sense of impact, just a wash of cold when I ran through where it was standing.

“Buck, right, can’t touch a ghost,” I said. I spotted the necromancer fleeing down the corridor. “Hey! You! Get back here and undo what you did!”

I got two steps down the hallway before the ghost zone flickered out, leaving the place in darkness. Pipes on the walls rattled and shook and tore themselves free, smashing into me and sending me stumbling back.

“Woah!” I gasped. “What’s going on?”

The ghost behind me wailed. I looked over my shoulder at it. It was totally enveloped by darkness, the shadows glowing and the rest the absolute black you only saw when you closed your eyes, like light and dark had been reversed on its body and it stood in an inverted spotlight.

“I don’t know what that zebra did, but I think we’re seeing poltergeist activity!” Destiny warned. A chunk of ceiling tile ripped free and smashed into the back of my head. It wasn’t dangerous, yet, but that could have knocked out a pony not wearing a helmet.

“Bomber, just calm down!” I yelled at the ghost. “I don’t know what that thing did to you, but you kept it together for two centuries! Remember? You were looking for Aquamarine?”

The ghost wailed, and the deck shook under my hooves before the steel plate shot up and smacked me under the chin hard enough to loosen teeth and spin me entirely around to land flat on my back like an idiot.

“I can see why he never found Aquamarine. She probably didn’t want to deal with him being a jerk,” I mumbled, my tongue probing my mouth. I really didn’t want to lose any teeth. I was half-sure fangs would grow in.

“I can’t track where the necromancer went,” Destiny said. “You’re going to have to do something about that ghost!”

“No problem!” I yelled, charging right at it and punching it in the snout. My hoof went right through, and then I was shoulder-deep in the darkness and something inside it grabbed me and just tossed me aside like a toy. I smashed through a rusting bulkhead and landed on my hooves, skidding to a halt.

“That’s not going to work, Chamomile! It’s not something you can just punch!” Destiny admonished. “We’re going to have to figure something else out!”

“No, we just need to try harder,” I said. “Remember the alicorn? I was able to break through its shield with just my hooves!”

“It wasn’t just your hooves. It was resonance from the thaumoframe-- of course! The same effect might work here!” Destiny paused. “Maybe. We don’t know anything about how this works. You went right through it before, so we can’t be sure.”

“We’ll need to push as much power through it as we can,” I said. “Turn off all the limiters and push it to max!”

“That could damage the fusion core but… I don’t have a better idea,” Destiny said. “Buck it. We’ll go with your plan! Let’s do it!”

Warning pop-ups appeared all over my heads-up display. I could feel the magic surging through the overlapping force fields and magical enchantments that were the real protection and strength of the Exodus armor. The thaumoframe blazed, magical circuits shining brightly. The heat was incredible, like being in a furnace, but at the same time the magic was enhancing my body, and I felt amazing!

“Here I go!” I grinned madly. It was like being on some kind of brand new drug. I charged, the air around me shimmering with heat and the glow from the overloading thaumoframe burning around me like fire. I reared back and roared, slamming my right hoof into the spirit’s head.

It screeched, distorting around me. The darkness was torn apart by my touch, the gloom blasted away and banished by the light of the magic around me.

The shadowy being vanished, leaving the glowing form of the original spirit. It looked at me, and I saw a veil of confusion and fear lift from its eyes. Bomber’s ghost whispered a silent thank you and faded away as it slumped and fell, vanishing before he could hit the deck.

The heat faded along with that feeling of invincibility.

“I can’t believe it worked,” Destiny said.

“How’s the power core?” I asked.

“We lost a few percent of the charge with that trick. If you have to do it too many more times, we’ll need to find a replacement. It was a lot of trouble getting our hooves on this one, so let’s hope you don’t have to bust any more ghosts.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That was still pretty cool, though.”

DRACO beeped.

“The interference has disappeared!” Destiny said. “I’m plotting you a course. Let’s get that necromancer and show that zebra how we do things in Equestria.”

---

“It’s in there, right?” I asked, looking at the door to the bridge. The dedication plaque to the ship was hung right over it. The Firefly.

“Yeah, but drink this before you go in,” Destiny said. She popped something out of the extradimensional inventory of the armor’s Vector Trap.

“Isn’t this one of the energy drinks that kid gave us back in Dark Harbor?” I asked, looking at the pink and yellow label.

Passion Energy Drink: All the Time, All the Time!

“I’m a little worried about what that stunt might have done to your body and you’ve been moving at a running pace for hours. When you bust through that bulkhead, it’s probably going to turn into a fight, and I don’t want you collapsing. Especially if you do something stupid.”

I sighed and took off the helmet, letting Destiny float free and crack open the can for me. I could do it if I really tried, but cans like that were easier for unicorns to manage. I took a careful sip.

“What does it taste like anyway?” Destiny asked.

“I thought it would just taste like metal from sitting in a can,” I admitted. “But it doesn’t. It’s more like. Hmmm… It’s so sweet that it’s kinda sickly. And there’s a weird aftertaste like vitamin pills.”

Destiny hovered closer to the can, tilting to get a better look.

“It says it’s supposed to taste like passionfruit,” she said.

“What does passionfruit taste like?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Destiny admitted. “I don’t even know if it’s a real fruit.”

“Why are you so interested anyway?”

“Mm. Ever since that simulation I’ve been… really missing being alive,” she admitted. “I thought it was enough that I could still see and hear and sometimes I could feel things, even if it was mostly magical feedback and not really feeling. It’s starting to get to me.”

“Once we’ve got this pyramid thing kicked in the teeth we’ll pop back in there,” I promised.

“No,” Destiny sighed. “If I start doing that now, it’s going to turn into never wanting to leave. Don’t get me wrong, I one hundred percent intend to come back! I just want to clean up my mess before I do so I can enjoy it without feeling guilty.”

“If you say so,” I said. “It’s important to enjoy yourself sometimes just so you don’t go crazy.”

I chugged down the rest of the drink. It really was sickly and syrupy and it had a metallic aftertaste. I hoped it wasn’t poisonous. I was starting to feel weirdly itchy and my skin was sort of crawling.

“Ready?” Destiny asked.

“Yeah.” I tossed the can aside and cracked my neck. I was definitely ready. I felt sharp and awake and some of the fatigue that had been sitting on my shoulders started to fade. Maybe I really had been dehydrated!

I grabbed Destiny and popped her back on my head, then went for the door. It was armored, ancient, and had been in bad condition even before it spent two centuries in a junkyard. Even rusted and abused, hardened steel lasted a long time, and this hadn’t been exposed directly to the elements. It was, like most pre-war construction, overbuilt and made bigger and bolder just for excess’ sake.

And just like most pre-war stuff, they’d forgotten every detail that actually mattered. The lock was a gaping hole in the bulkhead, the cheap tin and copper having long eroded away. I pulled the door open on its squealing hinges and stepped inside, feeling ready to turn a necromancer inside out.

“Alright, you bone-molesting freak!” I called out into the gloom. “I know you’re here!”

A stark monochrome light shone, a line in the center of the bridge like a door was standing there in the dark and a light had been flipped on the other side.

“Chamomile, I’m getting dimensional distortion readings!” Destiny warned. “I don’t know what it is, but the Vector Trap safety systems are picking it up!”

The line opened wider, and I saw through it into endless darkness. And the things moving in the darkness. It was only open the width of a hoof, and I only looked through it for a second, but I saw far more in that moment than should have been possible. I saw the other ships, just as twisted as this one, waiting in the depths, circling, filled with the hungry dead.

I had to look away, and I saw the necromancer, holding the Dimension Pliers. They were somewhere between a tuning fork, a power tool, and a magic wand, with wires trailing from where it had been torn away from the armature that had supported it.

“I’m not letting you bring more of those things through!” I yelled, charging the necromancer and flying right into it, grabbing the pliers. I felt the wave of dimensional distortion wash over me. It was like a shockwave trying to tear me apart and rupture every bit of tissue in my body, like a grenade had gone off right next to me.

My right hoof kept its grip, and my bones held together, and I soared through, ripping the Pliers out of the zebra’s grasp and slamming into an armored window hard enough to dislodge the blast shield shutters hanging over it.

“Got it,” I groaned.

“Chamomile, that was bad. I’m getting overpressure readings everywhere! You’re suffering from something like an advanced case of the bends because of that pressure wave.”

“Got anything in the medkit that might help?” I fiddled with the Pliers in my grip. “And put this in the Vector Trap. I can’t carry it around.”

“I… yeah. Right. Drugs now, I’ll yell at you about getting actual medical care later. Buffout should do something…” The steroid washed into my system, and the immediate pain decreased and my joints didn’t feel quite as loose.

It didn’t come a moment too soon. A bolt of greenish-purple balefire soared by my head, and I ducked to avoid a second. The zebra screeched in a way that was totally inequine, more like an insect or a machine.

“She’s mad,” I decided. I looked up, realized actually she was furious, and rolled into cover behind what had been a navigational console and was now on fire. I clutched the Pliers to my chest. “Please take this thing off my hooves, Destiny. I’m gonna end up breaking it!”

“We can’t put it in the Vector Trap until we make some adjustments for the distortion talismans,” Destiny said. “But what we can do is this…”

The weight on my back shifted, the Cryolator vanishing in a flash of light. Destiny took the Pliers carefully in her magic and moved them into place, snaking the wires into ports and adjusting a few straps, securing it in place.

“I’ve been hacking together a quick-swap system using the armor’s extradimensional storage,” Destiny explained. “I’ll explain later, and don’t try to use it with the Pliers until I’ve worked out all the bugs. Last thing we need to do is rupture the space and cause a vector flexure…”

“Right, whatever that is sounds--” Another bolt of fire hit the console. It was starting to melt. “--bad. Can you close the rift with this thing?”

“Sounds like a good test before we try it on the pyramid!”

I jumped out of cover and flew across the room - that fire splashed too much to be safe on the ground. If the necromancer was even as smart as I was, it’d just aim for my hooves and catch me in the blast radius.

All that fire made it easy to spot the necromancer in the darkness. I took aim at the zebra and fired, DRACO correcting my awful aim and putting the bullet where I intended instead of where my lack of skill tried to direct it. The shell hit it in the chest and went right through the tattered robes, one shriveled corpse, and out the other side. The zebra half-collapsed, knees nearly giving out.

“Should I be ashamed to say that this is basically exactly what I imagined the war was like?” Destiny asked. “Brave ponies striking down evil zebra witches with the fate of Equestria at stake?”

I landed on the other side of that hole in space, not wanting my back to the zebra. It looked up at me with eyes full of fire and started whispering, reaching towards the rift into the unknown. The darkness inside started moving, rippling and wiggling and oozing towards the zebra’s extended hoof.

I fired DRACO again, and the darkness surged, deflecting the shell.

“Buck! Destiny, I need this space butthole puckered tight!”

“Chamomile that’s the worst description of a portal I’ve ever heard,” Destiny said. “I’m scanning it with DRACO to get the right frequency. Just a few more seconds!”

The black mist, or goo, or whatever the shadow was actually made of surrounded the necromancer. I shouldn’t have looked right at it. I saw the zebra growing, not changing and mutating but like it had always been bigger and stronger and more powerful and that version of itself was replacing this one. That wasn’t the part that scared me.

I saw flashes of what could have been. The zebra alive, with a family. It--she as a mother, with children I knew never existed in our world, in a green place that didn’t exist. A life where the war didn’t happen. The best life she could have had. Other flashes. The zebra as a leader, as a warrior, as a sorceress, as an athlete. All of them blurred together.

The black mass stepped towards me. The vision snapped to nothing.

“Did you see that?” I asked, taking a step back.

“See what?” Destiny asked.

“Never mind!” Bolts of black fire erupted out of the shadow zebra’s sides, twisting in the air and homing in on me. DRACO was crunching numbers, the Pliers weren’t really a weapon, and I was sure I couldn’t punch them to death. I kicked down, popping a deckplate out of place and yanking it up as a shield, letting the dark flames crash into it, burning hot and cold at the same time.

“I’ve got the right frequency!” Destiny called out. “Hold on, I don’t know what this reaction is going to look like!”

I popped out of cover and the Pliers vibrated and activated, the tip glowing gold and opening up, or seeming to open. It was more like the space between the prongs of the fork-like tip bent and distorted, the device bending like rubber but not really moving at all.

The air shimmered and pulled, and the rift collapsed with the crack of a thunderbolt and the whoosh of displaced air.

“Nothing exploded?” I asked, mildly surprised.

“The whole point of getting the right frequency was making sure nothing would explode,” Destiny said. “You don’t want to know what would have happened if we’d gotten the math wrong.”

The transformed zebra necromancer charged me, slamming head first into my chest and slamming me back against the wall. It hissed something in a language I didn’t speak but I was pretty sure it was saying it was going to kill me for messing up her plans or something similar. There was only so much banter an objectively evil undead wizard could really have in the middle of a fight.

I was getting really tired of being thrown around like a toy, though. It happned in practically every fight I was in, and I was already all bruises and sore.

“Can we end this quickly?” I groaned. “I’m not up for a big fight.”

“I’ve got a suggestion,” Destiny said. She told me, and I had to admit I liked the idea. I nodded and stood up, waving to the zebra. “Hey, big girl! Over here! Come and get me!”

The zebra charged, and just as it got close, Destiny pulled a recessed yellow handle at the base of one of the bridge windows. The armored pane blasted out on exploding bolts, and a rush of decompression sucked air out into the open. The zebra couldn’t stop in time, running into me and pushing both of us into the rusted blast shutters and beyond, breaking them apart and falling into the open air.

I felt it start to levitate, and pulled DRACO’s trigger, stunning it with a point-blank exploding round and riding that horror down to the clouds below. I spread my wings at the last second, and it went right through the cloud-top, looking confused for a moment before vanishing forever. I landed softly right where it had gone through.

“Okay! Next we’re after the big one,” I said, turning to face the college. I just had to save the world. No big deal.

Comments

[Reese]

I continue to enjoy this story; thank you for writing!

[Thought Prism]

“You were about to tell me we were walking into a ghost zone?” I guessed.

I'm half expecting Chamomile to end up with Danny Phantom powers on top of everything else before this arc is over lol.