Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 57 - Excuse My Rudeness, But Could You Please RIP?

I felt like crap. My whole body was a bruise, inside and out. I was pretty sure that included my brain, because even thinking too hard made me sore. The cut on my left shoulder had opened up again, not that it had ever really closed, and I could feel my entire left forehoof was soaked in my own blood. That’s the worst type of blood to be soaked in!

Destiny was floating nearby and managed to look worried even while she checked all the connections with the Dimension Pliers.

“That’s all the anti-rad stuff I’ve got,” I said, giving the small pile of supplies to a doctor. “Sorry I don’t have more.”

“It’ll still help a lot,” the town doctor said. “Those ponies you rescued spent too much time in a highly irradiated environment. They’ve all got acute radiation syndrome to various degrees.” He saw my expression and gave a weak smile. “None of their lives are in immediate danger, thanks to you.”

“Hey, idiot!” Cube shouted. “Here. One of the scientists wanted me to give this back to you.” She shoved a small box into my hooves.

“Oh, the Telebuck,” I said. I still wasn’t jazzed about having a prototype personal teleporter that I didn’t know how to program properly. “Thanks, I guess?”

“Yeah, you better say thanks,” Cube scoffed, looking away. “I did what I could to recharge it. Your better, smarter half should be able to manage it, if you don’t have her wasting all her magic just keeping you alive.”

“Thank you,” Destiny said, sounding a little strained. I don’t know why she was annoyed, she got to be the better and smarter one.

“Speaking of keeping me alive, I know you’re out of healing potions, but can I have a cup of hot water?” My request was apparently reasonable because a mug was put in my hooves a moment later. I took a little satchel out of my inventory, checked to make sure it was what I thought it was, then mixed the green powder into the water.

“What is that?” Cube asked, wrinkling her nose. “It smells like the leftovers at a salad bar.”

“Datura root tea,” I said. “Zebra medicine. It’s a little like a healing potion but not as convenient.”

“You got it from a zebra?” Cube asked skeptically.

“Some of the nicest people I met down on the surface,” I said, sipping at the tea. It didn’t taste great, like musty old grass, but it was taking away the aches and pains a lot better than the steroids Destiny had pumped into me to keep my body from falling apart.

“I hate to admit it, but they were pleasant,” Destiny said. “We spent a long time with them and they were just friendly and welcoming. It wasn’t what I expected.”

“This is going to take a little bit to kick in,” I said. “Can you give me the run-down on what’s been happening while I was taking care of things on that ship?”

I looked up at the Raptor still circling above us. It had started to list and the course had become erratic, and I doubted it was going to stay in the city for long. It was just adrift now, and relatively toothless aside from being a radiation hazard.

Cube nodded and pointed at the College of Winterhoof. “I tried to get inside on my own, because I can obviously deal with a pencil-pushing dork like Cypher Decode without help, but it’s impossible. The space is warped. If you go in, you don’t really go anywhere no matter how far you try and trot, and the second you turn around, you’re back outside.”

“The Pliers can help with that,” Destiny said. “If we run them in continuous mode, they’ll act as a reality anchor and flatten local space-time. It’ll drain the suit’s fusion core, but all we need to do is walk from here to the gym.”

“Then we just point it at the Pyramid and close the gateway and job’s done and everypony’s safe,” I said with a sigh. I finished the last of the tea. If nothing else it seemed like it was doing a decent job of slowing the bleeding. I looked over at Destiny. “But let me guess, you’re going to tell me I’m not in good enough shape for this?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Destiny admitted.

“Doesn’t this armor have biometrics and stuff? You’ve talked about them before.”

“Chamomile, it wasn’t that long ago that you grew practically a whole new skeleton, and then there’s the dermal mesh, and rewiring half of your nervous system…” She shook herself in midair. “How am I supposed to know what normal looks like?”

I grunted. “Fair enough.”

“You should complain to whoever modified you,” Cube said.

“If I see Mom around I’ll make sure to let her know exactly how I feel,” I grumbled. “Okay. Guess it’s not going to get any better if I sit here and wait.” I groaned when I stood up, but I wasn’t as sore as when I sat down so it was mostly out of habit.

I motioned to Destiny, and she popped down over my head, sealing my armor. Thanks to the steadying effect of the Datura, I only limped a little on the way to the College. I could have used a bottle of vodka to really set me right, but that might not be a super-smart plan with a pint of my blood sloshing around in my armor’s sleeve.

“The good thing about the Pliers is, they double as a dimensional distortion sensor,” Destiny said. “I think those sterile thaumatinos are creating this effect. It’s a little like glass. You can’t see them directly, but if they’re arranged just right they can act as a lens.”

“And what’s that lens for?” I asked, standing at the threshold. The light should have gone through the doorway and hit the floor beyond, but I might as well have been looking at a velvet curtain.

“My best guess? The same thing as any other lens. Something on the other side is looking at us very closely.”

“Oh great, the ghost is going to make this creepy,” Cube complained. “Hit it. Let’s see what those Pliers can do.”

The tool hummed to life, and I sort of expected and hoped that the darkness would evaporate like we’d dropped bleach into a pool of ink, but instead, it was just pushed back. No, it crawled back, like cloudbugs scurrying away from light, just a little too slowly to merely be an optical illusion.

“We have limited power, but within this bubble, local space-time connections should remain consistent,” Destiny said. “I’d still suggest hurrying.”

I took a step forward into the terror, and the floor didn’t fall out from under me. Good enough. Cube ran in, staying right next to me.

“You’re not going alone,” she said. “If I let you go alone you’re going to find the jerk who did all this and instead of just shooting him in the head like a sane pony you’re going to try giving him a big hug and forgiving him.”

“You realize he probably is being mind-controlled, right?” I asked. We slowly made our way into the college. DRACO popped a map onto my display with explicit directions on where to go. I kept one eye on that but mostly watched the radius of light around us. Cube was providing some illumination with her horn, and it seemed like the Pliers were keeping about ten meters in every direction relatively clear.

I say relatively because it didn’t do much about the ghosts. The black shadows stared at us even when the gloom was stripped away around them, pony-shaped holes in the world with just enough detail to nearly suggest depth, to imply that if we kept looking we’d see more.

“Well do you realize he’s…” Cube trailed off. She was staring at one of the ghosts. It was smaller than some of the tall, attenuated forms, the same size as Cube herself, but with a distinctive mane style like thick braids that still showed through in the near-silhouette.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“That’s one of the other ponies that was getting augmented at the same time I was,” Cube said quietly. “But he didn’t make it. He died during one of the talisman implantation surgeries.”

“Was he a friend?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter!” Cube snapped. “He was never here! I never talked about him! I haven’t even thought about him in weeks! How does the bucking pyramid know about him?!”

“It’s just trying to get a reaction from you to slow you down,” Destiny said. “It must have some kind of acausal magic. Effects coming before causes. That might even be why it had parts from the Exodus White from before they were actually built! It can start with the outcome and work backwards!”

“Who cares?” Cube snapped. She drew a pistol and shot the ghost. It vanished into less than nothing. “If it thinks seeing something like that is going to stop me…”

“Good thing I don’t have a ton of regrets or a trail of bodies behind me,” I mumbled.

Four shook her head silently. I practically fell over trying to scramble away from the lanky spirit. I hadn’t even noticed it creeping up until it was standing next to me.

“Buck!” I swore.

The shadowed reflection of Four offered a hoof to help me stand. I tried to take it, but my hoof just went right through her. She looked down at her hoof for a moment where I’d touched her, and I could see her starting to fray at the edges, dissolving like smoke from that touch. Her blank, eyeless face was somehow filled with an expression of deep sadness and betrayal.

“No, I didn’t mean to--” I reached for her, but Four stumbled back on three hooves as the erosion tore her apart, falling out of the radius of the Pliers and into the impenetrable darkness beyond.

“Chamomile, stop! She’s not real!” Destiny warned.

“Yeah, don’t be stupid,” Cube agreed. “It’s just this place messing with you.” She peered into the absolute blackness beyond the bubble. “I don’t think it can actually hurt us. It’s just trying to scare us away.”

I couldn’t help myself. I took a few steps closer to where Four had fallen out of sight. “Maybe you’re right,” I sighed. “It’s tough. I’ve been sort of feeling messed up ever since--”

My confession that maybe I did actually need some help and emotional support was cut short by a massive slab-sided shape as big as a house stomping out of the darkness. It shouldn’t have even fit in the corridor, but the Grandus was right there in front of me, and it roared silently, not making a sound but somehow shaking me right down to my core. I could feel the rage radiating off of it, the blind, inequine anger that had consumed her.

“It can’t hurt you,” Destiny said quickly. “It’s just an image!”

The image stomped on me, flattening me against the floor. White and black magic surrounded me and slammed me into the wall. I choked and coughed on blood, the taste of iron filling my mouth.

The Grandus reared up, and I feebly shielded my head. I closed my eyes when those two massive forehooves started coming down… and when I opened them again it was just gone. I looked around, confused.

“Where did it go?” I asked, my voice rough.

“It vanished. I’m not picking up any traces.”

“Are you okay?” Cube asked softly. She looked over my body. “No, you’re not okay,” she decided. “Are you dying?”

“Probably, but it’s taking its darn time,” I joked, forcing myself to stand. I couldn’t leave Cube alone in here. Not if there were more monsters like that lurking around. “So much for not being able to hurt us.”

“I’m revising my theory,” Cube said. “What was it?”

“The Grandus Assault Armor,” I sighed. “You know how I said I knew another unicorn with enhancements like you? She was enhanced just so she could pilot that thing. They tried to use her like a spark battery to power a weapon.”

“Mmph.” Cube frowned. I could see a mixture of emotions play out across her face. She didn’t know if she should be happy about how obviously strong Four had been, or sympathetic since it was clearly hard for me to talk about.

“It was a messed up situation,” I said. “Most of her memories were gone and they held onto memory orbs like hostages.”

“Sounds like she had some bad doctors,” Cube sighed. “Dad wouldn’t have let them do that kind of thing to me.”

“Nope,” I agreed, smiling a little. “Four didn’t have anypony on her side like you do. I wouldn’t let you get hurt either.”

“Ugh!” Cube rolled her eyes. “You’re so sweet it practically makes me sick sometimes. I shot you a bunch of times, remember? Don’t talk about doing me any favors until we’re even.”

I grunted. “I’m feeling pretty awful, so you’ve got plenty of chances to pay me back,” I said. I checked the map. “We’re almost halfway there. We could go faster if we flew, but…”

“I’d recommend against that,” Destiny said. “If you lose contact with the structure of the building, even with the Pliers I think this space-warping would find a way to do something annoying.”

“It would probably punt us back to the outside,” Cube agreed.

I nodded. I’d come to the same conclusion. Not because of math, just because I knew the universe would never make things easy for me.

The near-silence of the darkness was cut through with a sound. Not a voice or howl of rage but more like the rushing wind ahead of a massive gust.

“What is it gonna be this time?” I mumbled. It could be practically anything. What else was I afraid of? What regrets did I have? It was like trying to pick the right tree in a whole orchard of bad decisions that had all borne far too much fruit.

My mane stood up on the back of my neck I felt the danger a moment before it arrived and pushed Cube out of the way. Ten meters seemed like a good amount of space right up until something slammed through it at supersonic speed. I caught a glimpse of it, boxes strapped together onto a support structure and forced to fly purely on the excessive power of huge thrusters.

It was there and gone in a second, and the sonic boom slammed me into the dirt. Clouds. Floor. I was disoriented, concussed, and down a few pints. I wasn’t eloquent.

“I’ve seen that before!” Cube said. “That was the Heaven’s Sword!”

“Yeah,” I groaned. “Your dad let an idiot with a grudge against me pilot it and he killed a bunch of innocent ponies before I took him out.”

“How?” Cube asked. “That thing always scared me. I tried piloting it once and it almost killed me from the G-shock!”

“Exactly,” I said. “The vulnerable part is the pilot. He was already making bad decisions and I helped him make some more. He was so bad at trying to murder-suicide me that both of us lived through it.”

“How did he convince Dad to let him pilot it?”

“That’s a great question and I’d sure like to know the answer myself,” I said. “If Polar Orbit tells you, let me know what you find out.”

The wind started picking up again, and I braced myself. I had a pretty good idea of where he was coming from. I picked my moment, jumped, and threw a punch at nothing. The Heaven’s Sword burst into the bubble of stable space exactly where I’d guessed, and my hoof connected with the chin of the ghostly pilot strapped into the overpowered death machine.

The Heaven’s Sword went out of control and spiraled away in silence. I landed and scoffed.

“The ghost version is even dumber than the real Rain Shadow,” I said. Come to think of it, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was actually dead. Could the Pyramid make a ghost appear of somepony who was still alive? Were they illusions, or necromancy, or some combination of the two?

“You don’t sound very scared of him,” Cube noted.

I laughed and started walking, my legs feeling heavy. It was the kind of fatigue that wasn’t going to go away on its own, so the best I could do was keep moving and let inertia carry me through.

“I’ve never once been scared of him. I’d love for him to show up again for real just so I could beat the feathers off him.”

The doors to the gym loomed in front of us, and they were filled with a more profound darkness than the rest of the school. If that had been like a velvet curtain, this was more like a solid black wall.

I cracked my neck and instantly regretted it because it left me more sore than I had been before.

“Here’s the plan,” I said. “We give him a chance to stand down, try to talk some sense into him, and then when he refuses and insists we fight him to the death, I’ll wrassle him down and you shoot him until he stops moving. Don’t be afraid to take the shot if you might hit me.”

“Don’t worry, you being in the way absolutely wouldn’t stop me,” Cube promised. “I’ll try to keep it away from your face.”

“That’s very kind of you,” I agreed. “Destiny?”

“You’re way too cavalier about getting shot,” Destiny said. “The dimensional wall here is harder. I’m increasing gain on the Pliers.”

The tool attached to my armor vibrated harder, and the black wall lost focus before fading away like mist. I walked into it before it had entirely faded, pushing through it like I was busting through a cloud wall.

The pyramid loomed smugly, rotating slowly. The darkness stayed far away once we were inside the gym, like all the ghosts were sticking to the cheap seats to watch the showdown that was about to go down.

“Before you even say anything,” I started.

“So, you’ve come!” Cypher declared grandly. His coat was a few shades darker, but otherwise, he seemed exactly the same as the last time I’d seen him. “I should have expected no less from one of the Belles!”

“Yes wow who could have imagined that somepony would stop you when you’re trying to do something incredibly stupid,” I stated flatly. “Next you’ll make a dramatic denouncement about how firefighters keep showing up to all the buildings you’ve set on fire.”

“Owch,” Cube giggled. “I think you made him mad, Chamomile.”

“I am trying to bring something great to the Enclave!” Cypher said, his voice rising an octave and squeaking. “Only foals are afraid of the dark!”

“He’s not listening,” I sighed. “You remember the plan, Cube?”

She nodded and drew all four of her pistols, the weapons orbiting her head like a deadly halo.

I charged Cypher. There wasn’t much point in having more of a plan than that. I had no idea what kind of powers he might have. If I didn’t give him a chance to use them, it wouldn’t matter.

He stopped me dead in my tracks with one hoof. It wasn’t some burst of massive strength. I just couldn’t take another step. All my leverage vanished, as if the strength in my hooves vanished, like a nightmare where nothing works no matter how hard you try. Black shadows were wrapped around him like a shroud, and he seemed to grow under them as they shifted and moved, doubling in size until he was head and shoulders taller than me and I had to look up into the white, spotlight-like pits that were his eyes.

“Buck,” I swore.

DRACO fired without me asking, and a bullet went into the shadowy pony and right out the other side without hitting anything solid. He was still holding me off with one raised hoof. I grabbed on and twisted and tried to flip him over like a wing-chun master. I couldn’t seem to get a good grip and just sort of wiggled and grunted with effort and got nowhere.

He laughed, until a bunch of lasers hit him in the face. He took a big step back, and with how tall he was I should have felt the hoofsteps shaking the floor, but there was nothing.

“Come on, Chamomile!” Cube shouted. “I thought you were good at fighting big monsters!”

She was absolutely right. I had to shake off those cobwebs and figure out his weak point. The lasers to the face didn’t seem to really be hurting him, just blinding him like any flashing light would.

Cypher’s body lost its sense of depth and unraveled into flat strips of shadow like cloth, flying apart and lancing past me. The edge of one of the ribbons caught me across the back and sliced through the armor, opening a deep cut almost instantly. I swore and ducked under another deadly tendril, then immediately had to jump over another one at ankle level.

The strips flew together on the other side of the room, reforming into the monstrously tall pony.

“Okay, that’s a neat trick,” I grunted.

“I know you don’t need me telling you this, but try not to get sliced apart,” Destiny said. “You don’t have a lot of blood you can afford to lose.”

More lasers hit him, but they really didn’t seem to do much good. I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out how to actually hurt him. I couldn’t wrassle him, bullets didn’t work, lasers just got absorbed by the darkness.

“When I grabbed the Pliers from the zebra, the shock almost killed me,” I said. “Think you can make that happen with him?”

“A distortion wave? If I turn off some of the safeties, sure,” Destiny said. “You’ll have to get in close. It won’t reach more than two or three meters.”

I nodded. Getting in close was no problem at all. Before it could really start turning its attention on Cube, I charged at him and jumped, trying to give him a headbutt. Before I could connect, he whirled into a spiral of black threads and I spread my wings, stalling out and falling, but it was better than the alternative.

My butt hit the floor and I triggered the Pliers. A wave launched from my side with a deep thud, recoil hitting me like a sledgehammer. Inside the cone, the world bent as if seen through a wavering lens. It washed through the storm of twisting shadows and washed through them with no apparent effect.

“Nothing?” I asked, shocked.

“He wasn’t solid enough! You have to wait for him to come together!” Destiny shouted.

The ribbons turned and swam through the air towards me, and I was trying to dodge raindrops in the middle of a storm. I slid on the floor to avoid a spear of black death and had to roll to the side to avoid another blade slithering there. I stood just in time to see a razor-edge aiming for my neck and twisted, the shadow cutting through the cheek of my helmet and giving me a shallow cut under my right eye.

I tried to catch my breath in the few moments of calm when it was over. It was getting harder. Either he was learning to use his new powers or I was slowing down or both. The whirlwind of black shreds of gloom started to come together.

“Hit it now!” Destiny yelled.

I surged forward, stumbling on half-numb hooves, and hit Cypher’s massive ebony chest just as he reformed into a pony.

“Hey,” I said weakly. I pulled the trigger.

The pulse of force exploded into him, and the shadows were ripped apart. They shattered in the air, and a mere pony dropped to the ground, bleeding from his ears and nose. He groaned on the hard floor of the gym. My hooves carried me a few weary steps closer and I rolled him over onto his back before putting a hoof on his chest and pressing down very lightly.

“You, you…” he gasped, coughing up blood. I could sympathize with that. He looked as bad as I felt.

“Me, me,” I agreed.

He squeezed his eyes shut, a single tear running down his cheek. “Why did you have to come here? Everything was going so well before you came here!”

“If one bump in the road was enough to totally derail all your plans, they weren’t going to work in the first place, big shot,” I said, my voice feeling rough. I tried to clear my throat and ended up in a coughing fit.

“One bump in the road,” Cypher Decode spat, looking away from me. “How could anypony plan for one of Celestia’s Belles to show up? Did you just come here to spite me? What did I ever do to deserve this?!”

“Dude, I don’t know anything about you,” I sighed. I felt exhausted. “You’re not a big shot. You’re just somepony who did something naughty and freaked out because they thought they were going to get caught.”

Cypher started crying. I almost wanted to comfort him. I might have tried saying something nicer, but then Cube shot him in the head just like she promised.

“Okay, that part of the plan still worked,” she said. I was too tired to even yell at her for shooting Cypher after he was already beaten. She had told me in advance she was gonna do it. “So how do we get rid of this stupid Pyramid?”

“I’ll recalibrate the Dimension Pliers,” Destiny said. “I suspect it’s going to be close to what we used to close the portal onboard the Firefly. Let me just get readings with DRACO to make sure and we’ll be good to go.”

“Good,” I sighed. “I just want this to be over. The whole thing was a waste of my time…”

“I guess I don’t hate you as much as I used to,” Cube said. “So maybe it wasn’t entirely a waste. We got some family bonding done or whatever.”

I smiled faintly while she trotted over. “You know, I didn’t think you’d say that kind of thing.”

Cube blushed. “Yeah, yeah, don’t let it go to your head.”

DRACO beeped. For one second I thought it was just done scanning, but then the beeping got faster and higher-pitched in alarm.

“Sterile thaum surge!” Destiny warned, translating for us. “The pyramid is doing something!”

I turned to look at it, and I was blinded by something like the sun.

---

I blinked, clearing my eyes. I was standing in a bright, sunny meadow. Naturally, all the flowers were white chamomile, just like my cutie mark.

“Where…” I looked down at my bare hooves. Just regular hooves. No SIVA-made carbide layers or layers of scum and blood. I knew what that meant. “I’m dreaming.”

“Most ponies aren’t that quick on the uptake,” a voice behind me said. It sounded smug.

I turned around and saw myself standing there, looking just as smug as they sounded.

“I’ve done this song and dance a couple of times,” I said. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re not going to talk me into anything just by looking like me.”

“I wanted to talk to you about what you’re about to do,” the other-me said. “Cypher was pathetic, but you knew that. He got a little taste of power and choked on it.”

“You’re gonna offer me power and stuff, right?” I sighed. “I’m not interested.”

The other me pursed her lips and hummed. “I don’t know if I’d call it power. You’re not motivated by power. You also aren’t very impressed by what Cypher got, and I can’t blame you. You did smack him down pretty hard.”

I snorted. “Yeah. You screwed up with him.”

The other me nodded. “What I offer isn’t strength, not always. What I want to do is give you everything. Everything you could have been.” It flickered. I was in the robes of some kind of scholar. “Knowledge.” A high-ranking officer’s uniform. “Prestige.” It became slimmer and wearing something sleek. “Beauty.”

“That’s what was going on with the zebra,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “I saw all the lives she could have had.”

“Every life is made of choices,” my copy said. “You cut away possibility. No athlete can be the best at every event. There’s only so much time to practice, only so much time to live. You make a choice about what you want most in the moment and the rest dies. But what if you didn’t have to choose? What if you had it all. All at once, and more. Not just the things you left behind but the things you never even knew you had a chance to take?”

They were very smug, probably smarter than me, and made the critical error of stepping closer while they made their offer.

“You could--” my perfect, beautiful double started.

I slugged them in the snout.

---

I gasped, and shadows peeled back from my vision, my body present and aching and real.

“Chamomile! Are you okay?” Destiny asked. “I thought we lost you!”

“I’m okay,” I assured her. The worst part of any out-of-body experience was the part where it ended and you had to come back. “Do you have those readings yet?”

“I think so, but I’m worried about feedback!”

“I don’t think we’ve got time to get it perfect,” I said. I was worried about what would happen if it tried the same trick with Cube. She wasn’t as mentally tough as I was. She was young and smart enough that she might actually be tempted into taking whatever deal that nightmare shadow was offering.

“Roger that,” Destiny said. “Be ready to run if it starts to explode!”

“Did she say something about an explosion?” Cube asked, right when I was pulling the trigger. The space between me and the pyramid rippled, and in that cone of distorted air I saw it twist in an impossible direction. I can’t even capture it properly in my mind’s eye, but I saw it right there in front of me, like seeing a square rotate just a little in a direction it shouldn’t and you realize you were just looking at a cube face-on.

“Is it working?” I asked.

The floor rumbled, in a way clouds shouldn’t. Right under the floating pyramid, they rippled and then pulled in, vapor rising up towards the floating black polyhedron. A chill ran down my spine. The air pressure dropped, and I grabbed Cube by the back of the neck and threw her towards the door before it could happen.

Silence cut through her scream of anger and confusion. The shadows around the gym surged, sucked towards the Pyramid like iron filings drawn to a magnet. White and black flashes blinded me.

“It’s imploding!” Destiny said, or I think that’s what she was yelling. I only caught some of it before my hooves came off the floor, the whole room abruptly decompressing, the floor and ceiling spiraling inwards in an impossible inrush of air.

The Pyramid loomed impossibly large, the black surface stretching and time seeming to slow down as I approached. The horizon in every direction turned flat black, the rest of the world falling away in a shrinking circle behind me.

I saw Cube reaching out.

I stretched, trying to grab her, to pull myself out.

The window closed, and everything went black.

Comments

[star1wars3]

Oooh we've reached the cover art part! I hope you put up a link to all of them at some point, can't wait to see the next part in the story.

[Ahsoka Tano]

Into the black she goes

[Lusaminia]

I did not expect Mori Calliope to be referenced in an FOE chapter, but here we are.