Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 67: Love Deterrence

I looked down over the city from the palace balcony. We were so high up that, as the saying goes, they looked like ants. But one of those ants was going to try and kill everypony, and I had no idea which one it was.

“It’s not like I would have known it was her,” I said. “It was a good disguise. She wanted me to know it was her, so that begs the question… why?”

“Unfortunately, the answer to that seems obvious,” Flurry Heart sighed. “Chrysalis is cruel, sadistic, and spiteful. In our last encounter, she took hostages and it ended poorly for her. She didn’t expect me to act. She thought I would be paralyzed by it all, like most ponies would be, unable to write a final answer to that bloody calculus.”

She stepped over to the edge, looking down over the city she’d built. For a moment I thought she might wave or smile down at them fondly, or show some kind of warmth. Flurry Heart was like steel. I couldn’t tell what she was feeling at all.

Raven shot me a quick look, seeming pensive. The maids had been dismissed when I started telling my story, and I’d been left alone with the Queen, Destiny, Star Swirl, and Flash Magnus. And Raven. She had that kind of quiet omnipresent aura around her that made it easy to forget she was still around.

“She wants to hold up a mirror to my actions. She needs to feed, so she must be around ponies. Even that game you played with her, the friendship and camaraderie of the foals would be a filling meal for a changeling. Chrysalis must be weak from rebirth, and so she gathers her strength while taunting me and daring me to act in the same way as before. Am I bold enough to shoot the hostages when the list extends to an entire city of my subjects?”

“You’re not going to… are you?” I asked.

“No, of course not,” Flurry Heart said. “My duty is to them. If I had to sacrifice myself to save them, I would do that in an instant. That is the difference between myself and the former Queen of changelings.”

“We’ll need to increase security,” Star Swirl said from the doorway. “Whatever she’s planning, letting her have free reign in the city will only make it easier.”

“I can organize some patrols,” Flash suggested. “Teams of three, maybe, so it’s not so easy to replace anypony. Even if there are a few traitors or sympathizers, we can assign ponies at random, maybe force mixed groups of changelings and crystal ponies.”

“Mm…” Flurry Heart nodded.

“We can’t,” I said. They turned to look at me. “They’re not going to do any good. It’s a waste of effort. What are they gonna do, spot-check every pony in the city and make them prove they’re not Chrysalis in disguise?”

“We could run them past one of those big mirrors,” Flash suggested. “They show disguised changelings in their real forms.”

“Ponies entering the palace already have to walk between a set of mirrors like that at the existing checkpoint, right?” I looked at Raven and she nodded a confirmation. “Right. That’s good enough for now. Maybe she’ll be stupid and somepony will spot her. If you set up mirrors out there right now, she’ll know something’s up and she’ll just avoid it or, worse, target the patrols just to scare everypony.”

“You might be right,” Destiny admitted.

“Maybe, if everypony was stuffed in a locked room, you might be able to find her,” I said. “But she could be anypony or anything. When the patrols don’t find her with random checkpoints, are they going to start interrogating every rock in the city? Every potted plant? Every tin can? And the place is so overbuilt you’ve got entire buildings nopony uses. She could just pick an empty house and live there and you’d never know.”

“You’re starting to sound dangerously competent,” Star Swirl groused.

“I had to do a lot of thinking when I was stuck there, unarmed, with foals all around me,” I said. “Even then, it bothered me. She’s smarter than me. Everypony is. That’s probably not true, I know, but it’s a safe place to start. I wouldn’t have shown my face. I’d have stayed hidden, poked at your defenses, made you waste time looking everywhere else in Limbo and spreading your forces out.”

I realized everypony was staring at me. I swallowed and tried not to stumble over my words as I continued.

“Actually I’d probably have run screaming at you with a knife, but I’m thinking of what I’d do if I was a little smarter,” I corrected. “But you ponies, you said she’s real smart, way smarter than me, so she’s got to have a reason why she let us know she was here.”

“She’s arrogant,” Star Swirl said. “Arrogant ponies make mistakes.”

“Maybe.” I nodded in agreement. “Maybe coming back from the dead made her feel invincible? No. That doesn’t feel right. ‘To rule so completely that nothing can exist without your consent.’”

“Hm?” Star Swirl frowned.

“It’s what she said. She’s not arrogant. She’s furious. Chrysalis tried to hide it, but she hates this place and everypony in it.”

“I took her subjects from her,” Flurry Heart said. “To a ruler, there’s nothing worse. I challenged her and won.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But between that and asking about the wasteland, I think she’s going to try and escape.”

“I won’t allow her to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world,” Flurry Heart said.

“That’s okay, because I don’t think she’s going to allow you to stay here, even if it’s in banishment.” I glanced down at the city. “I don’t know how, but she’s going to try and destroy this whole city.”

“I knew Chrysalis a long time ago,” Star Swirl said. “Not as well as Flurry Heart, of course, but I know she doesn’t have that kind of power on her own.”

“Raw power is my domain, not hers,” Flurry Heart said. “When she defeated Celestia, it was because my great aunt was holding back for fear of collateral damage, and the changeling queen was empowered by feeding from the pure font of the alicorn of love. She can rely on neither in this place. I do not hold back, and my mother is not here to be her supper.”

“She’s going to be tricky,” Destiny said. “We’ll need a good plan.”

“It’s going to have to be a really good plan because we need to assume she’ll already know it,” I said. “For all we know, one of us is Chrysalis. What if I got replaced? Or you?” I looked at Flash. “We could go on all day and not be sure.”

“No,” Raven said. “Actually, she couldn’t infiltrate that easily. Several ponies here would be impossible for her to copy.”

“Oh?” Flurry Heart asked.

“I’m afraid you’re not among them, Your Highness,” Raven apologized. “First, Chrysalis couldn’t copy me. Even if she could somehow replicate a SIVA command core and the correct encryption and signaling, it would immediately bring up an error across the network, and the near-field transmission would make her easy to track.”

“She could still look like you,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but it’s trivial for me to prove my identity.” She waved a hoof, and the floor rippled like water, the SIVA in the palace structure responding to her.

“Who else?” Flurry Heart asked.

“She can’t copy me,” Star Swirl said, looking into the middle distance and thinking. “Or at least she can’t replace me. She needs me to open up the mirror. Nopony else here knows how to do it.”

“She also can’t copy Chamomile,” Raven said. “I can monitor her connection to the local SIVA network. She doesn’t have access, but her cortical node and near-field telecommunications periodically query the system.”

“There are other ways to identify ponies,” Destiny suggested. “I know when we were looking at biometrics for security, there were a lot of options. Optical scanners, hoofprints, voice analysis, even a pony’s gait can be used for positive identification. I think the Ministry of Arcane Science was working on a spell that triggered on genetics!”

“I’m not sure how many of those a changeling could bypass,” Star Swirl said. “We never had anything like that in the old days. We just used challenge words.”

“And the blood test,” Flash reminded him.

Star Swirl groaned. “You and Rockhoof used the blood test. Nopony else liked it! Slicing open your fetlocks to show you had red blood -- I still say the changelings could have faked it! Just because it worked against kelpies and bunyips doesn’t mean it always works.”

“None of that’s going to work anyway,” I said.

“Indeed,” Flurry Heart said. “We are not in a position where we are discussing a few ponies who need to be tested and trialed. We have a single enemy in a large population, and time is of the essence. The mirrors are good enough to keep her from brazenly walking in. We will lock the palace down. Raven, see that the entrances are physically secure. Weld them shut with SIVA if needed.”

“Yes, Your Highness. I’ll switch the ventilation to internal-only and secure the vents as well.”

“Good,” Flurry Heart said. “Now, let’s go inside. I want plans on finding Chrysalis, and I want her found soon.”

“I have an idea,” I said.

Everypony looked at me.

“It’s probably better if I don’t say anything, just in case,” I said lamely. “I only need a few things from Raven.”

---

“You remember how I used to be an engineer?” Destiny asked quietly.

“Don’t be so down on yourself,” I said. “You’re still an engineer.”

I jiggled the wires I was attaching to the circuit board, then adjusted the antenna. Around me, dozens of crystal ponies were watching while I plugged electronics into slots, poked around with a circuit tester, and looked at the readout of an oscilloscope. Yellow caution tape kept them at bay, clearing a space around me so I could work without being interrupted.

“Okay, cool, great,” Destiny said. “So I just want to point out that what you’re building doesn’t do anything. That scope is only showing a regular sine wave. The antenna is bucking hooked into a ground!”

“You’re absolutely right,” I agreed. “I don’t even know what most of this stuff does.”

“Then…”

“But I bet Chrysalis doesn’t know anything about electrical engineering either,” I whispered.

“Oh. Oh!” Destiny whispered. “But there’s no way she won’t come to look.”

“Yeah. We just have to find her.” I tilted my head. “Are you getting a good feed from the camera?” The bulky camera on my right side weighed less than DRACO, but not by a huge margin. A digital camera would have been far lighter, even with the same hardened lens array Raven had fabricated.

“I am,” Destiny agreed. “I’ll patch you in.”

The compound lens whirred, and a window popped up in my HUD, showing my hooves from a slightly different angle, just a little behind my usual viewpoint.

“I was trying to figure something out that would let us spot her,” I said. “The crystal mirrors reflect truth, remember? And an analog camera has mirrors in it. All we had to do was swap out one component, and you get a camera that sees through changeling disguises.”

“That’s actually pretty smart,” Destiny said. “Maybe having that logic co-processor in your head is making you think like me!”

“I sure hope so. Anything’s better than thinking like me.” I paused what I was doing. “Now let’s just take a quick look around and see if our special guest has arrived.”

I stood up and slowly panned around, looking at the gathered crowd. There were a few more black, chitinous faces in the camera feed than in my vision, and then--

A tall, gangly horror, like a waterlogged corpse. A mane that hung down like rotting weeds. A twisted horn as sharp as a sword.

I was paralyzed in fear for a moment. I tried to turn it into a joke. “Think that’s her?” I asked.

“So what’s the plan now?” Destiny asked.

This part was a little bit of a blank spot in my plan. I needed to disable her, but she was in the middle of a large crowd. I needed to get her away from the other ponies before I could start throwing nets and sleeping gas around.

“I fought an alicorn that one time,” I said. “She was tough but if she didn’t run away I think I could have taken her.”

“I respectfully disagree.”

“What if I also had snipers waiting to hit her when I picked her out of the crowd?” I boasted. I used my tongue to tap the control Raven had set up, broadcasting the camera feed on a secure line. “Take the shot!”

That was the moment when my really brilliant plan was supposed to come together and Chrysalis would get hit with shock rounds and rubber bullets to stun her long enough for me to finish the job.

It was met with total silence. Chrysalis seemed to realize something was wrong. She took a step back. I could feel it. She was wise to what was going on and she was about to cut and run.

“Guess it’s time for Plan C,” I said. I took to the air and picked my target, charging at an inconspicuous-looking young mare in the crowd. She bounced when I hit her, flying back into a bulkhead and knocking over ponies in her way. The mare jumped to her hooves, baring her fangs with a snake’s warning hiss.

“She’s mad,” Destiny noted.

“Gonna make her angrier,” I replied. I selected a concussion grenade and launched it, the apple-shaped charge going off right below her and exploding with a sharp crack and flash of light. Green fire ripped away her disguise, and Chrysalis was revealed, shaking her head and trying to clear the dust and flash-blindness.

I charged at her, body-slamming her back into the wall. For such a big mare, she was surprisingly light. All the speed holes in her legs, combined with her almost skeletal proportions, made her weigh less than somepony half her height.

Her horn lit up with deadly green light. I felt the wash of magic up my spine, and she and Destiny fired at the same time, evocations colliding in midair at point-blank range. My armor held up, the arcane wards and telekinetic fields almost as good as a shield spell against pure magic, but Chrysalis was less lucky, and the wall behind her was more fragile than either of us. The bulkhead fractured, and she flew back through it.

“Sorry, I panicked,” Destiny said.

I waved my wings, blowing away the smoke and dust, trying to see what had happened. “That’s the good kind of panic,” I assured her.

---

I slipped through the broken wall, stepping into the warehouse. Cardboard boxes were everywhere, piled up and stacked in neat rows, a few opened up and revealing their contents, and there was an obvious trail of destruction through them. I followed it to the end. A dark shape was laying there, totally still.

“I didn’t get her with just one shot, did I?” I mumbled.

“This seems too easy. Maybe she was really weak from her rebirth?” Destiny asked. I gingerly touched Chrysalis, and the black shape crumbled, turning into dust.

Before I could process that, she slammed into me from above, bouncing me down into the floor with her weight and standing on me, holding down my hooves with her own.

“That wasn’t very nice of you,” she said. “You know, I was worried about you. I didn’t know what to expect! The Pillars are ancient and predictable. Flurry Heart is hamstrung and afraid of her own power. I know them all too well. But you? You were a wildcard.”

“I’m just great at being annoying,” I gasped, straining against her strength. She wasn’t as strong as I was. I could tell. She had so much leverage that it didn’t matter.

“What was your plan, to take me on by yourself?” She sneered down at me. “I’ve defeated far worthier foes.”

“It’s going to be really embarrassing for you when I kick your flank, then,” I said. I looked up, and my HUD showed a curving line. The software upgrades Raven had been working on included a targeting system, and the computer in my skull was pretty good at geometry. I fired the Junk Jet, launching a grenade into the wall and letting it bounce back, blasting Chrysalis off me and into a wall of cardboard boxes.

“Are you sure those are non-lethal?” Destiny asked.

“It’s sort of relative!” I shouted, rolling to my hooves and bounding after her. I knocked boxes aside, found a crying pink filly, so young she didn’t even have a cutie mark yet. She looked up at me and sniffled, crying with huge, watery eyes.

I punched the foal in the face. There was a flare of green, and my hoof came down on a porcupine. I yelped on instinct and backed off, even though the armor should have been enough to protect me. The changeling flashed with green fire again, assuming her true form and blasting me away with a bolt of green lightning.

The armor started flashing new kinds of alerts that I hadn’t seen before. I had about half a second to wonder what was going on before the pain hit and I realized the bolt hadn’t just harmlessly tossed me across the room like a rag doll. The covering over my left wing was just gone, ripped right off, and a hole had been punched through it the size of my hoof.

My breath caught in my throat, blood rushing away from my face and right out of the big hole. Healing potions immediately hit and washed into my system, but the shock rattled through me. Even the weird alicorn back in the wasteland hadn’t hit me that hard.

“If you’re the best Flurry Heart can send against me, maybe I overestimated her,” Chrysalis taunted. “Punching a foal? Hardly a knight in shining armor, and I’d know.”

“Chamomile, you can’t beat her,” Destiny warned. “You should have walked away when your backup didn’t show up!”

“That would have been a really good idea, huh?” I groaned.

Chrysalis’ horn flashed, and I threw myself aside. The magic burned through the air above me, blasting through the wall and out into the city. She laughed and fired again, barely even aiming, blowing another hole into the crowd outside. Ponies screamed, and I glanced back.

“This is just like Dark Harbor!” I could feel the terror growing, ponies and changelings trying to flee, the awful feeling of fear making the air turn stagnant. “Destiny, give me a shield, we can’t just dodge!”

I threw myself in harm’s way, and I saw the shield shimmer into place in front of me. Chrysalis’ bolt hit it and it exploded through it, most of the energy punching through it and into me, hitting me along the ribs and burning through my armor all the way down to the bone. The rest turned into sparks, spilling out into the cardboard boxes and starting fires all around me.

“Does she really think you’d be enough?” Chrysalis asked. Her expression twisted into rage. “A fake, worthless champion dressed up like an alicorn? Does she think that’s all she needs to beat me? Like I’m the same kind of failure?!”

Chrysalis roared in annoyance and swept me aside with a single blow, the back of her hoof punting me into a steel support beam hard enough for me to leave a dent. I slid to the ground, mildly concussed and suffering from an above-average amount of blood loss.

A green aura sizzled around me, and I was pulled into the air in a telekinetic grip that felt like I was being smothered in burning blankets.

“I’m going to send you back to her in pieces,” Chrysalis hissed. “Sending a weak, pathetic thing like you after me! She’s forgotten how much she should fear me, and your corpse is going to be a harsh reminder!”

I struggled and triggered the Junk Jet. A tightly-packed bundle launched out, smacking Chrysalis in the chest and springing open, weighted wires and memory metal enveloping her in a self-binding net. She sputtered in surprise and dropped me, refocusing her magic on the net and tearing it apart with a thought.

I hit the ground running and had the advantage of not thinking at all. I ran into her, headbutting the queen. If I had anything approaching a plan it was to daze her long enough to come up with a real plan. I wasn’t counting on her head to be as hard as my helmet. She shrugged it off and slapped me right down to the ground, stomping on my stomach. I coughed, almost vomiting at the force. She stomped again, the armor cracking, then kicked me away, sending me skidding across the floor and raising sparks.

“I really must be hungrier than I thought,” Chrysalis said. “If I was at full strength, I’d have already squashed you like a bug!” She cackled.

I swallowed down bile and did the only thing I could, taking another shot at her. She caught the net in midair, setting it on fire and tossing it aside.

“Did you really think weapons like that would work on me? Your silly toys are useless. You are useless. You can barely even stand up!”

It’s true, I was struggling to get back to my hooves, my knees weak and my insides feeling unpleasant and broken in a way that meant I really needed some kind of medical attention as soon as possible. I was panting, struggling to stay awake and avoid passing out.

“But I can stand,” I said, my voice catching and weak. “And I’m not going to stay down.”

“Mm.” Chrysalis smiled, pausing and tilting her head. “I suppose you think that makes you brave. You think it makes you some kind of hero. I’ve seen dozens of ponies like you. Do you know what happened to them?”

Her horn lit up with another spell.

Her smile twisted into a fang-filled sneer, and I’d swear they got longer and sharper while I watched. “They died for nothing, just like you’re about to!”

She fired her spell, and the world slowed down around me. I pushed, trying to dodge it. The world was cold and almost still, moving at a crawl while I was forcing my way through the molasses-thick air. The deadly beam of magic stretched towards me, faster than I was, even in this almost-frozen time. All I could do was move slightly to the left, and when time came back into focus, the beam tore into my right side, hitting the bulky, armored camera and blowing it off my armor, the force of the spell detonating it like a shrapnel grenade. I was on the ground before I knew what was happening, and I could feel a pool of blood forming under me.

Everything was going dark around the edges, and the fires in the warehouse were spreading from box to box, making the air heavy with smoke.

“So weak,” Chrysalis scoffed. She strolled over to me and kicked me, rolling me onto my back. “Give Flurry Heart my regards,” she said, before walking away, leaving me there and flashing green as she stepped out of one of the holes blasted in the wall and into the city.

I whined and tried to crawl after her.

“Easy, easy,” Destiny said quietly, her voice urging me to stop and rest. “You’re in bad shape. You can’t go after her, and with the camera gone you can’t find her.”

“It seemed like a better idea in my head,” I whispered, tasting blood. “I thought I could take her if I had surprise.”

“I know,” Destiny said. “Just hold on. Some medics are incoming. I already sent a distress call.”

“That sounds nice,” I said, watching the fire for a few more moments before everything went black.

---

I gasped, sucking in air that felt cold against my skin. A crystal pony looked down at me, obviously worried, and I blinked against the light.

“How long was I out?” I groaned.

“Only a minute,” Destiny said, floating into view. My helmet was off. That explained why the air was cold. “I needed some help to pull you out of there.”

I looked past her to the burning warehouse.

“Right,” I sighed. “Right.”

“Ma’am,” the pony said quietly. “You’ve suffered several very serious injuries. I need you to stay still while I examine you.”

“How do you know--” I looked down and saw the blasted and broken armor plates. A throb of pain washed over my wing. Just to cap things off, I coughed up some blood. “Right. I’ll stay very still.”

He picked up a bulky box that made beeping sounds as he swept it over me. “I’m having trouble getting clear readings…”

“Oh, is that a DRAMA?” Destiny asked, hovering over to look at the beeping box. “Cammy, you’ll love this! It’s basically DRACO’s little sister! The Digital Recorder, Advanced Medical Assistant! We made these for doctors but…”

“They never caught on?” I guessed.

“With auto-docs in hospitals and healing potions everywhere else, actually diagnosing an injury became a lot less important for EMTs,” Destiny sighed. “There really wasn’t much of a market for them, but we put them on the Arks anyway since we had them.”

“I-- gah!” The pony pressed something against my ribs while Destiny distracted me. It was ice-cold, and some of the pain faded away immediately, leaving a deep ache instead of the sharp pain of torn skin.

“I think there’s internal bleeding,” he said. “We need to get her to a doctor.”

“Aren’t you a doctor?” I asked, confused.

“No, Ma’am. I’m a military medic,” the pony explained.

“What’s the difference?”

“Doctors heal you. Medics keep you alive until you’re somewhere safe.”

I coughed out a laugh and some extra blood that I hopefully didn’t need inside me. “Sounds good. Help me up.” I took his hoof and almost pulled him down to the ground with the effort of supporting me getting back on four numb hooves and an equal number of weak knees.

“At least you aren’t dead,” Destiny said. “Things could be worse.”

The moment she said that, the very moment, the light changed and black, fanged maws opened in the sky, portals vomiting out massive iron hulks glowing with runes and radiation. The Cloudsdale Defense Fleet. The three ships trailed smoke and steam, making no effort to slow or turn on their approach. The first, the most heavily damaged, one of the storms holding it up already pulsing and cracking and ready to escape containment, slammed into the very edge of the city, splitting itself on the knife-edge of the floating earthberg and spilling debris out. Purple and green flames shot into the air, and I felt my skin prickle even at this range from a flash of radiation.

Alarms started blaring from every direction. Ponies screamed, and chaos took hold.

“Oh buck,” the medic whispered.

“Go to the palace,” I said. “It’s the most heavily defended place. This whole city is going to be swarmed with undead in a few minutes. Go!” I pushed him, and his stumble turned into motion, latching onto the instruction I’d given him and bolting for the spires of the crystal castle.

“You’re not in any shape to stop them,” Destiny cautioned me.

A second ship smashed into a row of factories and farms, skidding along the ground, the hull taller than any of the buildings around it. A wave of earth shot up into the air from its prow, the damaged hull peeling off as it slowed to a halt and vomited flames, more flashes of radiation washing over the city as the balefire-infused storms serving as its engines exploded out of containment and showered us with hot shrapnel.

“I know!” I yelled back, over the increasing din around us. “Can you get anypony on the radio?”

Destiny bobbed a negative. “Everypony in the city had the same idea! I can’t cut through the chatter, it might as well be jammed!”

“Wonderful,” I grumbled. I started limping towards main street, my whole body feeling vandalized. I spat more blood onto the ground, but less than the first time, so maybe I was healing. “I sure hope ponies are smart enough to run away from the danger.”

A solid beam of sunlight-yellow magic lanced from the palace, striking the last ship in the middle of its terminal dive towards the city. The air was turned to summer heat in its wake across the entire city. The Raptor’s necromatic shield popped like a bubble. The beam blasted into the metal hull, boiling steel into vapor in a flash explosion that knocked the cloudship’s nose up, letting the rest of the beam play across the hull and carve deeper into it, cutting through it like a sword that could split a planet in two.

The Raptor exploded, but it was already close enough that the debris raining down fell on the city, starting fires across the miniature metropolis.

“This is an emergency evacuation order,” blared the echoing intercoms in Flurry Heart’s voice. “Retreat to the palace. Leave personal belongings. Assist the injured. Your duty is to survive.”

“She really doesn’t mince words, does she?” I asked. I could see changelings buzzing through the air towards the palace, some of them carrying ponies with them.

“This must be Chrysalis’ plan,” Destiny said. “One last attack, throwing all her forces at us and just watching the chaos!”

I followed the crowd towards the castle. Even from here, I could see the press and panic as the throng of ponies pushed and shoved to get through the only remaining entrance, the rest sealed and secured.

“I don’t think this is the last of it,” I said. “I think this is only the setup, and we’re going to find the punchline the hard way.”

Comments

[howard035]

What the happened to all of Chamomile's backup?

[Thought Prism]

11219504
Changeling sympathizers, maybe.

[howard035]

11222889
Yeah, I think that's likely.

[FridayPie]

So, Cham stopped to be infected and promoted to J.C.Denton?

[Reese]

"A dark shape was laying there, totally still."
"A dark shape was lying there, totally still."?

"Chrysalis’ horn"
"Chrysalis’s horn"?

"Chrysalis’ bolt"
"Chrysalis’s bolt"?

"I thought I could take her if I had surprise."
And I'm rather worriedly wondering what happened to that backup that was supposed to be ready and waiting for your signal...

...And now I do need to be going. Ah well. But I'm continuing to enjoy this story, behind as I may be!

[Ahsoka Tano]

Looks like the Pillars are useless as always.