Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 63: Take On Me

“Have you come to free the Pillar? He will resist. Darkness is his friend now.”

I blinked and looked back. “Did you say something?” I asked.

“No, why?” Somnambula asked.

“Never mind,” I sighed. I must have been getting tired. I looked around at the cavern around us. The portal had dumped us inside a huge cave somewhere between a geode and a sewer system, almost every surface covered in crystals from the size of pebbles up to pillars of amethyst too big for me to wrap my hooves all the way around. Water pooled in the lowest levels, so clean and pure that it was only visible because of the rippling of its surface. It was too deep to wade through, so all of us were following a stone ledge not quite wide enough for two of us to walk abreast.

“This place reminds me of something…” Destiny mumbled.

“The Earth Shrine,” I said. “From that game.”

“No, not just that. It looks like…”

“The crystal caves under Canterlot,” Maxilla said, flitting past me on buzzing wings. She looked nervous. “Be careful. I heard it too.”

Before she could elaborate, she flew off to the next blind corner, taking it carefully with her plasma rifle at the ready. I looked back along the narrow path we were walking to the others. Stylet, the changeling pilot who’d gotten stuck with us, was even more of a ball of nerves than Maxilla. She looked ready to have a breakdown, even now that we were in a relatively safe place.

“Ma’am?” Gypsum asked, when I looked back at her. She was a crystal pony, and the only one of us that couldn’t fly. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Only one?” I asked. “That’s way better than I thought we were doing.”

She smiled a little, but it was strained at the edges. “When we were giving you covering fire, our rifles drained much more quickly than they should have, and we’re not really packing spare batteries.”

“Our Fusion Core drained a lot too,” Destiny added. “We need to ask Raven about a replacement when we get back.”

“Right,” I agreed. “We can’t be that far from civilization. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have these!” I tapped a hoof on the shallow set of stairs we were using that followed the contours of the cavern. “We’ll get out into the open air and then go back to the castle.”

“Really?” Stylet asked, perking up.

I nodded to her. “Of course! I’m not going to make you find your way back alone, and we’re definitely not continuing with this mission after that ambush.”

Somnambula nodded in approval. “Yes, I agree. I am worried about what one of those thunderbolts would do to you on a direct hit, Miss Chamomile.”

“I think a direct hit to any of us would be bad,” I joked. “The good thing is, we’re indoors right now so we don’t have to worry about inclement weather.”

“I see light up ahead,” Maxilla called back. “It looks like everything opens up!”

“Stay there!” Somnambula yelled over to her. “We’ll be with you in a moment!” She motioned to me.

“Got it,” I said, taking off and leaving Somnambula to keep an eye on the others.

Maxilla had stopped what seemed like a wide archway, and I landed next to her to look at what she’d found. The room beyond was huge, a crater the size of a lake and half-full of water. Pipes snaked into the central dip and I realized what it was after a long moment.

“A reservoir?” I asked.

“We have to recycle our water as much as possible,” Maxilla said. “This is really good. Look at that!” She pointed to the wall. Lights shone down from scaffolding above us hanging from the cavern roof, with spotlights pointing at a flat section of concrete marked with a big blocky number ‘5’ in red paint.

“So this is… reservoir number five?” I asked.

“Right! And I know where that is! We’re not far from the palace!” Maxilla smiled, her wings buzzing at her sides. “Ponies have to come down here once in a while for maintenance and stuff, so there should be a way out.”

“I see it,” Destiny said. DRACO chirped and zoomed in on the far wall. Another concrete wall stood out from the crystal growths, leading out to a platform with brightly painted safety railings.

I was about to tell Maxilla to grab Gypsum and carry her over, but a sudden flash of intuition hit me.

“He’s coming,” I said.

“Who’s coming?” Maxilla frowned.

“Chamomile, what’s wrong?” Somnambula asked, setting down next to me an instant before everything went to Tartarus.

The roof exploded, a backwash of static sending tingles down my spine. Light streamed in above for just long enough that we could see the dark shape slowly descending towards the center of the artificial lake. A moment later and the natural light snapped off like the sun had gone out, with only darkness stretching above.

“I wasn’t expecting an aerial attack while underground,” I muttered.

“We’re all going to die!” Stylet whimpered. She dropped Gypsum off next to us, then cowered behind her. “We don’t have any ammo and he’s going to find us and blow us apart just like the jumpship!”

“You’re going to be fine,” I said. I bit my lip for a second. “Destiny, pop DRACO off the weapon mount.”

“What?” Destiny asked. “Why?”

“Just do it, please,” I said. The bolts holding it in place opened, and I carefully put the computer-controlled rifle down on the ground. “Okay, pay attention, you three! This is DRACO. It’s a long rifle that does most of the work for you. Stylet, you’re a pilot, you’ve got good eyes. I want you to be a spotter and point him where he needs to go. Can you do that?”

Stylet hesitated. “I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t have very good aim and…”

“My aim is way worse. Don’t worry. DRACO will correct any mistakes you make.” I gave her a gentle pat on the back. “Maxilla, you back her up. Gypsum, give them covering fire if anything starts to get too close.”

“You seem like you have a plan,” Somnambula noted happily.

I nodded. “I’m gonna go over there and wrassle Flash. When I saw him before he seemed like the smallest one, so I’m pretty sure I can get him in a headlock or something. Then you just pick the right moment and pop him with the ritual and job’s done.”

“I should warn you, Flash Magnus is a highly trained soldier,” Somnambula said. “Among all of us, he had the most combat experience.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I waved a hoof. “And it’s a thousand years out of date. I’ve got moves he’s never even heard of!”

“That is good,” Somnambula breathed a sigh of relief. “Please be careful.”

I gave her a salute and flew towards the lake.

“Chamomile,” Destiny said quietly. “You don’t have any moves!”

“I’m really hoping I can invent some very quickly,” I whispered back. “I mean… I’ve fought a bunch of soldiers, right? They’ve all got to be better trained than Flash and it wasn’t much of a problem.”

It was more blind hope than logic. Flash was hovering, dimly visible with the unlight glowing around the reverse shadows of his body. I was a big obvious target, so he probably had a much better view of my bright blue armored flank when I was approaching him, but he politely waited for me.

“Hey there!” I called out to him. “You’re probably not going to say much. Rockhoof wasn’t a talker either. I just thought we should make some kind of attempt to solve this without violence!”

I stopped just far away enough that I could go in for a charge and headbutt him if he tried anything. Flash really was a lot smaller than Rockhoof. That big pony had been head and shoulders taller than me, and Flash was only a little above average height. It felt good to be fighting someone who wasn’t my own size. He stayed silent and drew a short sword, the edge gleaming and polished like it was made out of a single plane of diamond.

“Okay, we can do it the fun way,” I said, drawing my own blade, the gunmetal-silver knife popping out of its internal sheath like a mantis’ claw. “I think yours is bigger, but size doesn’t matter as much as how you use it.”

Flash moved so quickly it was like he vanished in a blur, and I wasn’t even really aware of moving, my hoof twisting on its own to intercept the strike. He didn’t press the attack, vanishing again and reappearing on my other side, slashing at my wing and catching a primary, the blade cleaving through the metal feather.

I turned to face him but he was gone before I could even react, and the short sword slid into my back, Flash twisting it and kicking away, putting some distance between us.

“Ow,” I grumbled. It hadn’t penetrated far, but it hurt like a son of a mule. “Did he really have to twist the blade?”

“It went right through the ballistic fiber,” Destiny grumbled. “So much for stab-resistant fabric.”

“It also went right through me!”

“You need to react more quickly,” Destiny said. “He’s fast. If you don’t want to get stabbed, don’t leave him so many openings!”

“Just keep track of him!” I shouted, fumbling to block an attack that almost went into my neck.

“I can’t! That’s what DRACO was for, and you left it way over there!”

I kicked, hitting only air. I needed to be faster. I dug deep down inside and let ice flood my veins, the glitchy implant near my lower spine kicking in and slowing the world down to a crawl. Every other time I’d done this, it had been like time was stopped for everyone but me, but Flash was so fast he was still moving.

I was just a touch faster, and even through the darkness I saw the surprise on his face when I punched him in the jaw.

The sense of cold faded, and the rest of the world sped back up. Heat rushed through my body as my metabolism caught up with me, fever making me break out in a sweat.

“Didn’t expect that, did you?” I taunted him, motioning for him to try again. “Maybe it was just a fluke. You want to try again?”

He blurred into motion and I went back into that cold place just in time. The blade was a hoof-width from my face. I dodged to the side, letting him go past, kicking him in the gut. The world sped back up after half a heartbeat, and he flew back, the impact of running into my kick at that speed rocketing him back.

My vision was narrowed to a tunnel. It hadn’t even lasted half as long that time, and I was exhausted. My joints felt like they were going to come apart. I couldn’t breathe. More than that, I couldn’t let him know how tired I was.

“You think you’re ready for round three?” I asked, fighting to keep my breath steady.

He backed off with a calculating look written across his dark expression, then raised a hoof. The taste of the air in the room changed, oxygen fusing into ozone as sparks crackled around us.

“He’s going to--” Destiny warned unnecessarily. I couldn’t waste my breath to tell her I already knew. We were flying over the middle of a lake. There was no cover anywhere.

An explosion erupted against Flash’s side. The static feeling snapped off and the dark pegasus fell towards the water below us for a few moments before recovering and catching himself.

“Did we take him out?” Stylet asked over the radio.

“Negative,” Destiny said. “You saved our flanks instead! Can you see any cover from where you are? We can’t take a lightning bolt.”

“There are pipes below you in the reservoir walls,” Maxilla said. “If you’re inside, he’ll have to come after you.”

“Good strategy,” I said, shaking my head and trying to gather myself. “Destiny?”

“This way,” she replied, putting an arrow in my face. I was so exhausted I might as well have been blind. I needed to be dragged around by the hoof until I had a second to catch my breath.

Ozone filled the air, and I could feel Flash charging up another thunderbolt. I pushed myself harder, my body burning with fever. The pipe was right ahead, covered by a grating.

“Got a problem!” I yelled. If I slowed down long enough to cut through it, I’d get blasted right in the back.

“I see it,” Stylet mumbled. The grating ahead of me exploded, DRACO blowing a hole through it. I flew through the fireball blindly and found the hole wasn’t as large as I might have hoped. The edge caught my right wingtip, sending me off-course as I flew inside. Out of control and far too exhausted to correct it in time, I slammed into the pipe wall, sparks scraping from my armor as I skidded to a halt in ankle-deep water.

A wash of static crashed over me a moment later, my legs kicking on their own. The lightning bolt had missed, maybe hitting just outside the conduit.

I got up, a faint taste of blood in my mouth. I’d bitten my tongue, either in the crash or from the electrical attack. Destiny’s hornlight bloomed, revealing the concrete walls around me.

“I’m giving you another healing potion,” Destiny said, and I felt it soothe my aches. The blackness washed out of my vision, and my breathing started to come easier. “And a little Buffout to keep you steady. Your blood sugar is probably crashing hard.”

“I don’t think he’s gonna let us take a snack break,” I said, my voice wavering.

A shadow fell across the narrow opening, and Flash flew in, hovering above the ground even in the tight space. I didn’t even want to try, because I knew I’d end up hurting myself somehow.

“Hey there!” I called out.

I don’t know if the pipe was too small for him to gather a thunderbolt or Flash knew we were too close for him to take the time to charge up, or what. Whatever his reason was, the warrior was going to finish this more personally. He pointed his blade at me, holding his short sword lightly in his hoof.

“Cool,” I said. This was what I wanted. I’d take being stabbed a few times over being blown apart by lightning. I drew my knife and motioned for him to come at me. The less I had to move, the better. My legs felt like they were made of lead.

Flash charged, and might as well have teleported right in front of me. I swung my knife and only hit the air. He drove the point of his blade into my chest, hit my ribs, and it stopped, failing to penetrate.

I fell on him. Deliberately, though, I didn’t just collapse because it had hit the very limit of my stamina. He was slowed for a moment by surprise and his sword getting stuck in my body, and that was the opening I needed to pin him down with my body weight. We splashed into the water, and I grabbed into him.

“Chamomile!” Somnambula called out, waving from the entrance to the pipe. Her necklace was glowing, creating an aura of faint green light.

“Do the ritual!” I grunted. Flash was kicking and fighting, driving rock-hard hooves against me. The armor blunted the attacks but it was still rattling me around and eventually, he’d figure some way out. I could feel him twisting in my grip, shifting almost liquidly from one position to another.

Somnambula held up the bronze shield Netitus with one hoof and unrolled the scroll she was carrying. “From one to another, another to one. A mark of one's destiny singled out alone, fulfilled.” The shield raised out of her hoof, starting to glow on its own with blue light. “With strong hearts full, our souls ignite. Look to your friends, for hope shines bright!”

The blue light washed over with a phantom rainbow, like the sheen of oil on water. It lanced into the dark pony under me, and the light was almost blinding. I squinted through it and watched the shadows get blasted away, dissolving like the morning mist in my home town when the sun crested high enough to peek over the cloud cliffs.

Flash’s kicking and struggling stopped, and I slumped down as he shrank another size smaller. The light faded, and in the gloom of the tunnel I couldn’t see anything, my eyes needing time to adjust. The floating shield let out a loud clang as it hit the ground.

“Mmph--” he said, against my chest.

“Sorry,” I said, pushing myself up, forcing myself to stand long enough to get off him and lean against the pipe wall. Flash shook himself off, the pegasus looking even rougher than I was. He was covered in small scars, wearing armor that was heavily worn, but the bags under his eyes were what made him look exhausted most of all.

“I feel awful,” Flash said.

Somnambula pulled him into a hug. “I knew we would be able to save you,” she said quietly. “I never doubted it for a moment.”

“It was my own fault I needed saving,” Flash replied. “I made a terrible mistake.”

“You were tricked,” Somnambula said.

Flash gave her a small smile. “I should have known it was a bad deal. The things I saw…”

“Let’s have a touching reunion later,” Destiny said, interrupting them. “Chamomile needs something to eat before she totally crashes after that stunt.”

Flash turned back to me and looked guilty and shamed. “I must have really hurt you. I’m so sorry--”

“It was just some mild stabbing,” I said dismissively. I could barely even feel the wounds now. I was propped up enough by Equestria’s finest pharmaceuticals that the pain was present but so distant that it might be happening to a completely different pony. “I’ll be fine once I’ve had a snack.”

“I’ll go tell the others that we’ve succeeded,” Somnambula said. “I’ll ask if they have any rations!”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Here,” she whispered, picking up the shield and pressing it into Flash’s hooves, flying away before he could refuse it and give it back.

“Are you going to be able to fly on your own?” Destiny asked. “Rockhoof could barely walk after we saved him.”

“I’ll be fine,” Flash said. “I feel like I haven’t slept in a month.” He ran a hoof over the surface of the shield for a long few seconds before putting it on his back and turning back to me. “Are there… two of you in there? Like two foals in a big coat?”

“Not exactly,” Destiny said.

“Destiny is in the armor,” I said. “And I’m in the armor.” I paused. “That was sort of ambiguous. Uh. I’ll explain later when I can brain good.”

Flash nodded.

“I’ll go first,” I said. “If you see me pass out, try to remember where I landed so the others can pick me up from the bottom of the lake.”

“I’ll do one better and try catching you,” he said.

“I’m heavier than I look,” I warned him, stumbling to the pipe entrance and taking off. I almost expected the soldiers to shoot me out of the air with some good old-fashioned friendly fire, but there was no such luck.

Something cold flashed over my awareness, like a pony stepping on my grave.

I looked around, and saw Flash’s face pale. I followed his gaze down to the lake below us. The crystal-clear water was as black as printing ink, a hole in the world yawning below us. The lift vanished from my wings, and I fell. Flash tucked his wings out and dove, reaching for me.

---

He caught me by the scruff of the neck, grunting and pumping his wings as hard as he could. We hit a crater filled with thick dust, but not as hard as we could’ve. I ragdolled to a stop, pushing Flash away with the last of my strength before I could accidentally crush him.

The world was still and dark and cold, like the inside of a tomb.

“Are you alive?” Flash asked, panting for breath.

“I’m okay,” I said weakly.

“Take me off,” Destiny said. “I can’t levitate in here.”

I undid the latches and pulled Destiny off my head, the cold hitting my sweaty skin like I’d been plunged into ice.

“So you’re a regular pony under all that,” Flash said quietly. He looked me over. “You’ve got some--”

“Blood, I know,” I said. I looked around. Nothing was immediately trying to kill us, but we were back in an Eclipsed Place and it definitely wasn’t his doing. “Destiny, can you--”

The cameras in the helmet’s visor flashed, and two bottles of water and some snacks appeared next to me, popping out of the Vector Trap with a flash.

“I was going to ask if you could plot a course out of here,” I said.

“You didn’t fall into it, so it’s too far for you to reach without rest,” Destiny said. “I don’t want to know where you go if you fall off one of these islands and can’t get back up.”

“Nowhere good,” Flash said, sitting down next to me. He looked around at the grey waste, unsettled. “This place is like the end of the world.”

“You probably know more about it than we do,” I said. I picked up a pastry and tore it out of the plastic pouch. It was some kind of fried cherry pie made almost entirely out of shortening, sugar, and food color. “So what made you go off the deep end?”

“Wow Chamomile, glad to see you’ve got the same social graces as your dad,” Destiny mumbled. I shrugged.

“It’s alright. I was a soldier and I’ve heard a lot worse said about ponies who collapsed the way I did. Battle fatigue. I didn’t think it’d ever happen to me. I don’t know how much the others told you, but we all tried to help. It was Equestria’s darkest hour, and all of us thought we could ride in and be big damn heroes.” Flash shook his head. “Didn’t work out. I popped out of Limbo, and I saw what was left after a pegasus city turns from clouds into poisonous steam all at once. There were a few ponies caught at the edges, and they were blind and burned and they died in my hooves and… I couldn’t do a thing.”

“Must have been Cloudsdale,” I said. “It was the first place that got hit.” I pounded down a bottle of water while he talked, then stuck my muzzle in a bag of green chips and really hoped the color was seasoning and not poison.

“It wasn’t anything, by then,” Flash said solemnly. “I started throwing up. I was sick and burning on the inside and I was so afraid to die and I just wanted to see something normal, to see home one more time… and it got a grip on my heart and didn’t let go.”

“If it makes you feel better, there are plenty of pegasus cities that are still doing okay. Better than most places on the surface.”

“I don’t know if--” he stopped and looked up. “It all looked just like that.”

I could see glowing clouds above us, ragged and evaporating and filled with the rubble of what had been civilization. As if from a distance, the silence was filled with cries of agony and fear, just barely audible over the ringing in my ears. Dark shapes, the hulks of cloudships burning with radioactive fire, flew blind orbits around the destruction.

“Chamomile,” Destiny warned. “Those ships are real!”

“What?” I asked.

The drift of the cloudships became more ominous and purposeful, approaching where we were lying in the dust. Runes burned to life across their hulls.

“Buck.” I pulled Destiny over my head, abandoning the rest of my snacks. Even those few bites were helping bring life back to my tired body. “We need an exit, Destiny!”

“Hold on,” Destiny said. “I can--”

Light exploded behind us. A massive portal like a shimmering wall of water split the shadows apart behind us.

“That works,” I said.

Flash was frozen in place, staring at the ships with mute horror, his expression drawn and his coat pale. I grabbed his shoulder and pulled, dragging him a few steps before he started moving on his own.

“I can’t do this again,” he whispered.

“You don’t have to,” I said. I grabbed him when he started to slow down and threw him into the light.

---

I fell out of the portal and fell, the ground nowhere in sight under me. My armor spun back to life, telekinetic fields flickering around me and negating the pull of gravity, making every motion mean more. My wings caught the air, and I was flying.

“Flash?” I called out, looking for him.

“Here!” He yelled, coming into formation next to me. “I froze up back there. I’m sorry. I just…”

“Wartime Stress Disorder isn’t something to be ashamed of,” Destiny said. “What’s important is letting yourself get help. You’ll start feeling better when we’re back with your friends again.”

“We didn’t go far,” I said. “Look! You can see the crystal palace over there.” I pointed to where the spires poked through the haze, looking so tall their tips might poke right out of the thin blanket of atmosphere between the black sky above and the sea of white mist below.

“I’ll be glad to see them,” Flash said. “I don’t know how I’m going to apologize--”

A lance of green necromatic death swept past us, narrowly missing us and making my Geiger counter crackle a warning.
I looked back over my shoulder. The portal to the dark world yawned wide like a fanged mouth in the sky. The ships we’d seen were pressing through, chasing us.

“This is bad,” Destiny said.

“No kidding,” I said. “I don’t think I have it in me to take down a cloudship, Destiny!”

“Chamomile, this is Raven.” Her voice came over the radio, clear and strong. “We can see you from the palace along with the disturbance. The Queen is preparing an attack on the ships.”

“Great,” I said. “You’ll need to give the boarders anti-radiation meds, because these hulks--”

“You have ten seconds to scatter,” Raven continued as if she hadn’t even heard me. “Nine. Eight. Seven…”

“What’s happening?” Flash asked. I grabbed him and moved, diving as fast as I could. I could feel the danger like a burning red claxon in the back of my head.

“Just move!” I yelled. There wasn’t time to worry about the cloudships. Something worse was coming. She didn’t mean the Queen was sending troops. Raven meant that the Queen was about to attack.

A place near the top of the tallest spire of the crystal palace sparked and gleamed. A line of light as hard and bright as staring into the sun cut through the sky above us, passing between the two radioactive Raptor-class ships. I grabbed Flash Magnus, shielding him with my own body.

The heat hit me first, instant burning heat even through the armor. The explosion was so big it felt more like a wall slamming into my body than a burst of force, like a physical thing shoving us out of the air.

I tumbled towards the rocks below, the edges of my armor and my metal feathers glowing with heat. The two ships fared worse. Flurry Heart had aimed away from me, but they hadn’t been as lucky. One had taken a glancing blow that bored a wide hole down the length of the ship, like a trench dug right in the armor and edge in molten, dripping steel. The other was listing, one of the radioactive captive storms on its flanks disrupted and slowing, losing lift. Both of them were trailing smoke and open flames.

“There’s a reason the Zebras never directly attacked the Crystal Empire,” Destiny said quietly. I just nodded mutely, dazed from the heat. I was close to passing out again, and my butt felt like I’d sat on top of a campfire.

“Hold on, let me help you,” Flash said, grabbing my hoof and wincing at the heat, beating his wings and trying to slow my landing and get me to the ground safely. I don’t know how he did it, but he actually stopped us entirely before we hit the rocky island of floating stone below us, and we hovered there for a second before he put me down.

“I hate fire,” I mumbled.

“Tell me about it,” Flash sighed. “If it wasn’t for Netitus I’d have a lot worse than this.”

I focused my bleary eyes on him. He was almost entirely sunburned, an instant tan from the backwash of that massive attack.

“You going to be okay?” I asked. “I think I’ve got some healing potions.”

“All I need is a little aloe,” Flash assured me. “Mistmane always had the best aloe plants but… she’s not here, is she?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” Flash said, patting my shoulder. “If you were able to pull my head out of my ass, getting her to listen to reason shouldn’t take very long at all. Besides, Meadowbrook will have her famous burn tincture! Works almost instantly and doesn’t leave any scars. After some of the adventures Star Swirl dragged us to, we’ve all needed it from time to time.”

He looked around Limbo, at the archipelago of floating isles, the silver plants, the crystals in every color of the rainbow.

“This adventure’s just a little more than I knew we were signing up for,” Flash said quietly. “It’s the first one where I can’t go home and tell my comrades about it…”

“Flash! Miss Chamomile!”

I shifted to look behind us. A concrete bunker poked out of the ground, with a steel door set into it and marked with the number ‘5’. Somnambula was waving from the exit. I waved back dully.

“We found our way out, and you two have already saved yourselves!” Somnambula said. “What an excellent day! I just knew everything would go right!”

Comments

[Reese]

Oof, have I really not gotten to this story since March? Sorry about that. Also sorry that I don't expect to get through more than a chapter of it tonight. I thought I'd let you know, though, that I am still enjoying this. I'm just very behind.

"Maxilla had stopped what seemed"
"Maxilla had stopped by what seemed"?

"like a mantis’ claw"
"like a mantis’s claw"?

"I didn’t just collapse because it had hit the very limit of my stamina"
"I didn’t just collapse because I had hit the very limit of my stamina"?

"and I grabbed into him."
"and I grabbed onto him."?

"You didn’t fall into it, so it’s too far for you to reach without rest"
...But she did fall into it, didn't she?

"in the armor and edge in molten"
"in the armor and edged in molten"?

And a good chapter, as expected; thank you for writing. :)