Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 69: Leaving on a Jet Plane

“Man, that sounded like I knew what I was actually going to do,” I mumbled, looking up at her massive, fang-filled maw. In death, the bony plates had locked open like a blooming fleshy flower, exposing the chaotic swathe of now-cloudy and dull eyes and an open jaw as wide and tall as a hallway.

What I’m saying is, she looked pretty dead. I was just about ready to leave and let somepony else do the hard work of disassembling her or whatever it was you do to a giant monster when I saw it.

A glimmer of light, way deep down inside that throat.

I’m not proud of what I did. I knew it was stupid, even in the moment I was doing it, but it was the right decision even if it was stupid.

I climbed into the mouth, wincing at the slight give of her long, segmented tongue and ducking under rows of mismatched fangs. There was just enough room to stand and walk down her throat, and… she wasn’t built like anything alive. Even to my untrained eye, it looked more like the same kind of slapped together creature that Raven had turned into, except this machine was made of tendons and meat.

“Weird,” I mumbled. I tried to ignore the feeling that at any moment, I was going to be swallowed. Then, I saw what I was walking towards. The throat opened into a gullet or stomach or some organ ponies don’t have a good word for, and we definitely don’t have a word for one that’s as big as a hoofball pitch. Tendrils reached up from every surface like wet, meaty grass, and light poured down from outside. I looked up to see the edges of broken ribs and the obvious exit wound from that last gout of flame.

In the center of the room, just like that throne room that had been hanging under the floating islands of Limbo, was a plinth. And on top of it was a black egg, glowing softly from within. It looked like an altar to an evil goddess.

“Oh buck,” I whispered, walking through the fronds towards it. “What is that?”

“My backup plan,” Chrysalis hissed. She dropped down onto my back and sank fangs into my neck. I twisted, trying to shove her away, and felt one snap in my skin. Heat poured into my body from the bite wound, and I grabbed at it, backing away from her in alarm.

She got up from where I’d tossed her, on four unsteady legs. She looked… wrong. Not just monstrous. She’d always looked like a monster. She looked like she was already dead, as wasted and hollow as whatever zombies were left in the city outside.

“I’ll escape, and be reborn again, and again, as many times as it takes to have my revenge,” she growled, blood dripping down her lips. Only some of it was mine. She was weak, probably dead already. I might have been able to talk her down if I tried.

I punched her in the snout to establish dominance. Her carapace shattered, and she cried out in pain, ichor splashing against me.

“I was thinking about sparing you and trying to be merciful, and this thought hit me,” I said. “I realized you’re a prehistoric bitch and you need to go all the way down.”

“Our last fight didn’t go so well for you,” Chrysalis reminded me. She smiled. “How are you enjoying the neurotoxin? I wonder what will stop first -- your heart, or your breathing?!”

“Neurotoxin?” I asked. I pulled the broken fang out of my neck. Something neon blue leaked from the tip. I felt a little flushed but otherwise fine. She cackled, watching me, and I glanced back at my body, made sure I could still move all my hooves and my wings. “Are you sure?”

“I-- of course I’m sure!” Chrysalis yelled. “Why aren’t you dead?!”

I flapped my wings one more time as a final pre-fight check and shrugged. “I’m immune?” The real answer was that my nervous system had been rewired once or twice already, and I could feel a tingle of something not quite right, but it wasn’t enough to slow me down. It was sort of like getting the feather flu and having one nostril totally blocked by gunk -- it was a little uncomfortable but not really a danger.

She face-hooved and winced when she touched the broken, sensitive chitin. “Of course. Why not? Why shouldn’t I be humiliated one more time? You can’t even conceive of how much I suffered, and now my revenge is foiled by an idiot!”

Her horn lit up, flickering and sparking before throwing a weak bolt of magic at me. Weak for her, I mean. It still had the kick of a beam rifle, stabbing into the armor around my right foreleg. I kept my hoof up and blocked a second shot aimed at my face before snapping off a shot with the Junk Jet, firing my last concussion grenade at her.

She shot it out of the air and it went off between us with a bright flash and pop, making my ears ring from the detonation in the confined space. Chrysalis was on top of me in an instant, still faster and stronger than should have been possible for such a broken mare. Her horn stabbed through my shoulder, sharper than any blade had a right to be.

Before I could react, we were pressed up against the wall together, pinned by the former queen’s horn speared right through me and into the sticky flesh I was pressed against, which was so nasty it was almost as bad as being stabbed.

Some banter would have been really good to give me time to figure out what to do about that, but Chrysalis wasn’t in a talking mood. Her horn sparked, magic surging through it, and I had a sudden vision of my body exploding from inside like a wet grenade. I brought my right hoof down hard on her head, and the already-cracked carapace gave way, the spell backfiring and erupting out. Her horn exploded at the base, knocking her away from me.

I slid down the wall and reached over, yanking the broken horn out of my shoulder with my mouth. I knew it’d make the bleeding worse, but there was no telling what would happen if I left it inside. My own dark blood joined hers on the floor, the waving field of fleshy fronds wiggling with excitement like the giant corpse around me was excited by the idea of eating me.

Chrysalis groaned, holding her head. She was deteriorating even as I watched. Her chitin was peeling away in flakes, and ichor streamed from a thousand tiny wounds.

“I’m going to…” she mumbled woozily. “I’m going to…”

I limped over to her and snapped a kick into her chest, my back hoof punching through the broken armor and leaving a print. She spat up a gout of hot blood and slammed an elbow into my cheek. The sharp edge split my skin open, my eye almost immediately starting to swell up. I went blind on that side and almost missed her follow-up coming.

Her next blow came fast, and I caught it in the mouth, biting down on her long, thin fetlock like a wolf with a bone, crunching into it. Her blood burned on my tongue like acid, the sharp edges of her black armor cutting my gums and lips up. She yanked it back, wobbling and unable to put weight on it.

I pressed my advantage, taking off right in her face in a flurry of metallic feathers and grabbing her around the neck, twisting around and landing on her back, my weight driving her down. With only one forehoof able to really apply strength thanks to the hole in my shoulder, all I could do was squeeze. Her wings buzzed in alarm, and I kicked them frantically, tearing the rotting membranes before she could get lift.

She started to go limp in my hooves. I grunted and threw my weight into it. There was no real spine there to snap, but something broke inside her. Her body shivered in final seizure, and Chrysalis struggled for a final breath before just… stopping, turning off like a broken machine. I held her there for a long few seconds more, holding her neck so tightly my foreleg had broken through the chitin and was squeezing the meat inside.

Slowly, I let her go. She was totally limp, just rags and blood and broken bits of armor.

I didn’t feel like I was in much better shape. I got up on unsteady legs and limped over to the egg. I could smash it and be sure that it would all be over, that she wouldn’t somehow return again. I could be paranoid and assume she had some scheme. It would be the smart thing to do. Destroy any chance she had.

I picked it up carefully and limped back towards the throat and the fresh air outside.

---

“Is this really necessary?” I asked, my voice devolving into a cough before I’d finished the last word. I was lying down in sickbay with a half-dozen IV lines and twice as many bags being flushed through my system. Some of it was RadAway, some was just saline, there was a bag of blood trying to replace what I’d lost, and one was some kind of iron solution that burned a little where it entered my body.

“Do you have any idea how much radiation you absorbed?” Destiny groaned.

“I donno. I thought radiation wasn’t even a big deal for me?” I tried to shrug but it hurt too much. Chrysalis’ horn had really torn up my shoulder. Mage Meadowbrook and Raven had worked on it while I was very heavily sedated. I didn’t know the details, but I got the impression it had been like replacing the suspension on an aircart in more than one way.

“You’re resistant to radiation, not immune,” Destiny said patiently. “You were exposed to somewhere over a thousand rads and maybe twenty percent of that made it through your dermal lining. That’s still a potentially lethal dose.”

“Oh,” I said. I settled down on the bed, less annoyed now. They’d had to use the biggest, toughest needles they could find to get through my hide, and it stung like a bitch, but maybe it was okay if it was saving my life.

“Most ponies would be unconscious by now,” she noted. “Right after their digestive system started to collapse and they expelled everything out of both ends. And that’s without talking about the burns or the total collapse of their immune system. The infections alone would be fatal!”

My stomach started to turn. “I, um…” I swallowed. “W-when is all that going to start?”

“It won’t. You’ll be fine,” Destiny assured me. “It’s already being flushed out of you. It’s just a cherry on top of the last… however long it’s been. It’s really hard to tell proper time here. Some rooms around here have measurable time dilation, none of the clocks match, and I am never going to get used to that.”

“Maybe that means they can spare enough time to let me heal properly,” I sighed. I closed my eyes. There was no way things would suddenly get worse, right? I waited, listening to my heart beat. Nothing exploded. Nopony screamed. Things were quiet.

I was starting to get restless.

“I’m bored,” I mumbled, done being quietly restful.

“You’re not leaving that bed,” Destiny said. “I’ll ask if you can have visitors, but if you try and get up they’ll sedate you. I’ll be helping.”

“Why wouldn’t I be allowed to have visitors?” I looked around.

“Because you’re radioactive enough that they don’t want cross-contamination,” Destiny retorted. “It doesn’t matter for me since I’m already dead.”

“I just thought I was alone because it was a VIP room for special ponies,” I admitted.

“You’re definitely special,” Destiny agreed.

“How’s everypony else holding up?” I asked.

“It’s all calmed down. The Pillars and Raven are getting the wrecks of the cloudships out of the city. Rockhoof just carved the ground out from around them, and Flash Magnus led the guards to get rid of the zombies and push the contaminated ships away. They’re going to have to lose about half of the city’s area, but it was overbuilt anyway. Mage Meadowbrook is heading up a decontamination team to make things habitable again, Mistmane is designing new buildings for Raven to build, and Somnambula is keeping spirits high until things are settled.”

“They’re lucky to have ponies like that,” I mumbled, closing my eyes.

“Yes. And they wouldn’t have them without us,” Destiny pointed out.

---

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused. “I thought we won!”

A few hours had passed. Ponies in yellow rubber suits had waved wands around the room. Apparently I was safe enough to visit now, because Star Swirl had decided to occupy the chair next to my bed.

“The Darkness isn’t a single enemy or force that can just be stopped like that,” he said. He’d brought books. To read by himself. According to him, my room was the quietest place in the palace, even with my stupid questions.

“Ugh. This is just like that stupid video game,” I mumbled. Star Swirl raised an eyebrow, so I continued my explanation. “The game you had me look at for answers. The Alpha version. The premise of the game was to stop Chaos from conquering the land, and one of the characters said that Chaos was really the way ponies treated one another and stuff like that.”

“Mm. No. Let me compare it to something a pegasus might understand. Gravity. You can fight gravity. If you do it well, you can even keep it at bay for a long time. There are pyramids ten thousand years old that are still standing because it’s a very good way to stack rocks without having them fall down again. Eventually, though, gravity wins. Everything falls.”

“That’s kind of hopeless, isn’t it?” I frowned.

“Do you know what the opposite of the Darkness is?” Star Swirl asked, sighing.

“Harmony.” It was an easy guess, and wrong.

“Chaos. The Darkness is pure law and order, to the point no life or light could exist. In a universe dominated by the Dark, everything everywhere would look the same. Imagine a chessboard. Just a simple pattern, repeating forever. Chaos isn’t much different. Take the same chessboard and make it random. A billion different arrangement of squares and every single one different and meaningless.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “If it’s really random, some of them would show a picture, or letters, or…” I trailed off with a shrug.

“Good point,” Star Swirl agreed. “And that’s Harmony. Finding the things that have meaning to us and protecting them. Total chaos and total order are both anathema to life. Harmony is a delicate balance between them. One that must be protected.”

“Can we talk about something less serious?” I groaned.

Star Swirl rolled his eyes. “Like?”

I looked at the stack of books he’d brought with him and gave him my biggest, saddest, cutest expression.

“Can you read me a story?”

He gave me a look. “Only if you’re willing to listen to a true story. One of my grand adventures, which the other Pillars also joined me on. The defeat of the three Great Sirens. It’s also the first time I got eaten alive.”

“I like the sound of this story.”

“Good!” Star Swirl nodded and gave me a rare smile, putting down the book he was holding. “It all started a long time ago, in a land far far away…”

---

Somepony had spent a long time thinking about the throne room because even now, having been in and around it for what should have been more than long enough to get used to it, I was still impressed.

“You’ve done a great service for me,” Queen Flurry Heart said. “And more importantly, you have done a great service for my subjects. They are and have always been the most important thing in this or any other world to me, and I am glad I put my trust in you to fight against the evil forces that threatened them. You have my thanks.”

She stood and bowed to me. I had enough grace to return the bow. It was probably the right thing to do. It felt right. Nopony yelled at me, so that was a good sign.

“As you have been resting and healing, Raven has been rebuilding the city, and life returns to normal. I would like to extend the offer for you to stay with us. The ponies here would love to have another hero among them, and all the woes and trials of the world are kept at bay. If you remain here, you can one day rebuild with us once the world has healed enough for our banishment to end.”

“I’d love to, but…” I trailed off.

“You have responsibilities,” Flurry Heart said. It wasn’t a guess. “You want to hunt down your estranged mother and stop whatever she has become.”

“Somepony has to,” I replied. “If nopony stops her, that day you talked about when the world has healed? It’s never going to come. Raven is everything that could go right with that technology, my mom is everything that could go wrong.”

“I understand. The powerful have an obligation to protect the weak.” Flurry Heart sat down. “It was something the other Princesses understood as well. The world is not a game of chess where pawns can be discarded and pieces sacrificed. True strength is the ability to protect something fragile for its own sake.”

“I don’t suppose you could come with me and blow her apart?” I asked, giving her a smile.

“If only,” Flurry Heart sighed. “I will have your armor and weapons repaired, and we will gird you with what supplies and blessings we can grant. I know you will succeed at your task as long as you have set yourself to it. You have a powerful will.”

---

“Chug!” Flash Magnus cheered.

I gulped, looking down my muzzle at the pony sitting across from me. Rockhoof held his own mug to his lips, both of us pouring drink down our throats. I don’t know what to call it, exactly. Not quite beer. Not quite mead. Something Raven had synthesized with pure alcohol and artificial flavors that was somewhere between citrus and malt.

“Done!” Rockhoof yelled, slamming his mug down. I swallowed two last mouthfuls and slammed mine down a heartbeat later.

“Darnit!” I coughed, the last few drops going down the wrong pipe. I wiped my lips. “Fine, I concede. You win this round.”

We’d all gathered in a little celebration. It had been two weeks since the battle, and I was feeling more like myself again. I was healed, the ponies in the palace had moved out into the rebuilt city, and spirits were high. That morning, Flurry Heart had led a ceremony for the fallen, and now a party atmosphere had fallen over the city, a celebration of life and a wake for the dead. We were in what was the brand new dining room of a rebuild restaurant, and the owner had let us have the place to ourselves.

“Never challenge an earth pony warrior to a drinking contest,” Rockhoof said, waggling his hoof at me. “There’s no pony who can outdrink me.”

Star Swirl rolled his eyes from where he was sitting with a glass of wine. Real wine, from a bottle. He’d offered me a glass, but it was too fine a vintage for me to appreciate and I knew it.

“Somepony is making claims they can’t back up,” Meadowbrook said. “I remember you being put under a table by Mistmane.”

“Bah!” Rockhoof snorted. “I don’t know how our fine lady holds her liquor. Still can’t stand the taste of plums after that night.”

“That’s because you were so sick I had to treat your hangover for three days,” Meadowbrook retorted.

“Oh, please, you know I don’t like to boast,” Mistmane said with a small smile. “A glass of plum baijiu every night before bed is good for one’s health.”

“Aye, that may be so, but that stuff is as strong as a bear that’s as strong as two bears,” Rockhoof muttered.

“I knew a mare named Two Bears,” I sighed. “I miss her.”

“Now I’m trying to think about what kind of mare you might like,” Flash said.

“A beauty, I bet,” Rockhoof said. “The kind of mare who turns heads wherever she goes!”

“Somepony with a kind spirit,” Mistmane suggested. “A safe harbor in the dangerous place the world has become.”

“Nah, I bet she’s some kind of vicious killer who can twist the head off a hydra,” Meadowbrook said, jokingly.

I nodded and pointed at her. “That one,” I said. “The strongest zebra warrior in her tribe, and she likes to turn into a big monster and wrestle things to death.” I groaned. “I want her to wrestle me…”

“No more drinks for her,” Star Swirl said.

“Can we do karaoke?” I asked.

“What is karaoke?” Mistmane asked.

“Oh bother,” Star Swirl groaned.

I wasn’t very good at singing, but we all had a great time being bad at it. It was a goodbye, not a see-you-later, and the night ended slowly and with a melancholy tone. I knew I’d never see these ponies again. Knowing these legends, and being remembered by them, was enough. Something of me would last into the distant future when they rebuilt Equestria.

Assuming I could keep my mom from destroying it.

---

I adjusted the armor slightly. There wasn’t really a need. It was fitted perfectly, fixed and buffed and repaired until it was better than new, but some instinct made me want to tug at the metal collar. Maybe it was just because my last experience with a portal hadn’t been fun.

“Where did you say this is going to take me?” I asked.

“I don’t remember telling you,” Star Swirl said. “Unfortunately, I can’t pop you back up to your little pegasus-only club in the skies. There are only a few suitable places still remaining for an exit, but I know one that should be perfectly safe and sound.”

“And that is?” I sighed.

“I was going to tell you,” he lied. “But now it’s going to be a surprise! It’s safe. If that’s not good enough for you, too bad. I’m doing you a favor. If you had any sense at all you’d stay here until the apocalypse ended and live in some kind of comfort.”

“Thanks.” I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t be rude, Chamomile,” Destiny quietly chided. She was snug on my head, so we wouldn’t get separated if something happened when we went through the magic mirror.

“It would make my job easier,” Star Swirl mumbled. “You have no idea how difficult it is to arrange everything to make sure the future keeps happening. Mostly it’s just making sure memory orbs are in the right place, but it’s a matter of trial and error, and you’re a lot of error to throw in the equation.”

“Uh…” I hesitated.

“We aren’t going to be messing up your plans, are we?” Destiny asked.

“I’m putting you somewhere a bit out of the way,” Star Swirl admitted. “Just keep your distance from Canterlot for the next... oh, twenty years or so.”

“I didn’t have any plans to go there,” I replied.

Star Swirl nodded sharply “Good, the place is a bloody wreck. Nopony should go there!”

“We’ll keep a wide berth,” Destiny promised. “Are you ready, Chamomile?”

I took a deep breath, steadying myself. I was hoping for any excuse to delay, like a scared filly in flight camp standing at the edge of a long drop before they knew how well their wings would carry them.

“Is it too late for me to wish you well?” Raven stepped into the room. She was still sporting those draconic features. I was pretty sure she could repress them if she wanted, but was enjoying them with the pure and simple happiness of a filly with a new dress.

“Not yet,” I said, and she surprised me by pulling me into a hug.

“I’m going to miss you,” she said. “After I became what I am, I spent every day burying myself in work and worrying about if I was still a pony or not.”

“Did I help with that?”

“More than you know,” she assured me. “You’ve been changed almost as much as I have, and you never lost sight of yourself. I hope the little bit of me that you’re carrying inside you is able to help in some way.”

“Little bit of--” I looked down at myself. “Oh buck, I’m not pregnant, am I?”

“What?” Raven blinked.

“I know we didn’t, you know, but SIVA does weird stuff and I need to know right now if there’s some kind of magical cyborg baby with two moms growing inside me!”

“No, Chamomile,” Raven sighed. “You’re not pregnant. I meant that you have a copy of my SIVA protocols and access codes. It might help you if your mother tries to hack you again.”

“Oh!” I blinked. “That’s what you mean.” My heart started beating normally again. “I got really freaked out there for a second. Sorry.”

“She has a lot of brain damage,” Destiny apologized.

“Hey! I-- that’s technically true, but it feels bad when you say it that way!”

“Is there anything special we should know before we go through the portal?” Destiny asked, changing the subject.

Star Swirl smirked and rubbed his chin, tugging lightly on his beard and running his hoof through it. “Hm. Speaking from experience, which I have a lot of, breathe out before stepping in, and in when you’re on the other side. There’s always an air pressure difference.”

“Good tip,” I said. It was actually practical, useful advice. I gave Raven a smile she couldn’t see through the helmet, a pat on the shoulder, and breathed out before walking into the light.

---

I walked out into damp, chilly air. Unlike the sterile atmosphere of Limbo, it was textured and thick and alive with scent. I’d almost forgotten I had a sense of smell, but now I could smell rust and salt and ponies. I turned around, and I was looking at the base of a statue, a big block of stone topped with a feminine, thin equine’s head cast as large as my whole body. The sculptor had messed up the mane somehow, though. Even for stone it looked rigid and stiff.

“I guess we made it somewhere,” Destiny said. I stepped back and looked around, my eyes adjusting to subtly flickering halogen lights. The shadows and droning hum made it seem foreign until it all clicked. The generic paint. The wall panels. The shape of the supports.

“It’s a Stable,” I said. “A working one.”

It had the standard architecture and design of a Stable, and we were in some kind of auxiliary room. Maybe it had been made just for the statue or as a junction. Corridors went off in a few directions, and it wasn’t in perfect repair. Puddles sat in the lowest spots on the floor, and rust showed where trickles had come through gaps in the wall panels.

The one thing I hadn’t seen before were the large, tall shutters on the side of the wall. They ran from floor to the high ceiling, and looked like the kind of rolling shutter a pony might have over a storefront after closing hours.

“That makes sense,” Destiny said. “Let me take a look around.” She popped off my head and floated over to the wall.

“See if you can find the number anywhere,” I said. “We might be able to tell where we are if we know which Stable this is.”

“You’d be surprised.” Destiny floated to the other side of the room while I watched. “They weren’t regionally-labeled. They were numbered in the order they were proposed. Some never even got past the negotiating table because of funding, some got skipped entirely…”

“Kinda weird they didn’t just build them in a grid.”

“Equestria isn’t a grid. They wanted more Stables near where there were more ponies, but some were privately funded, some cities had nothing because the local government refused to allow them to operate, some were experimental and never opened.”

I spotted something stamped into the brass on the big shutters on the wall.

“Stable S-1?” I read, frowning.

“You mean fifty-one,” Destiny corrected, hovering next to me.

I shook my head. “No, look.” I pointed at the small name stamped into the metal. “S-1.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Stables were numbered, even the test Stables. Where are we?”

“You don’t think he put us in Zebra territory, do you?” I asked. “Did Stable-Tec work with the Zebras?”

“They probably did, but they would have called it Z-1, not S-1. Trust me, they were stupid and obvious like that. Assuming they didn’t name it something overtly racist. Racism was always popular during the war.”

“Only one thing to do,” I said. “This place has air and water.” I kicked a puddle, splashing it. “That means it has ponies. We can just ask them why their Stable has a weird name.”

“Oh! I think I found an intercom!” Destiny said. She shone her horn-light on a panel, highlighting it. There were two big buttons. I shrugged and pressed one to see what would happen.

There was a squeal and the room shook. The lights overhead flickered, and the shutters jerked into motion on aged and rusty bearings, sliding up into the ceiling and revealing two things that no Stable should have. Huge windows, and something to look at on the other side of them.

Blue light filled the room, and I looked out wordlessly. A whole city stretched away from us, wavering weeds and bright sand forming a picturesque garden right outside. Fish swam by, and I could see motion and light and life everywhere. I’d never seen anything like it, even in the Enclave.

“We’re underwater,” I said quietly. “I’ve seen some of those fish in books!”

“I guess the oceans are still in good shape even after everything we did,” Destiny replied. She floated along with a brightly-colored tropical fish as it went past the window. “The wasteland was so bad I was afraid we’d made everything else extinct. This is… it’s beautiful.”

“They had Stables underground, I guess underwater is just as good.” I looked at the city in the middle distance. “This place is huge! It’s got to be ten times the size of the one my Mom came from!”

“We should find the locals and try to explain ourselves,” Destiny decided. “Let me put the weapons away. We don’t need to scare anypony.” She flew closer, and my guns vanished into the vector trap’s storage.

“That’s a good idea,” I agreed. “These ponies have been down here for a long time and might be kind of surprised to have a visitor.” Something tugged at my attention. I spun around, but there was nothing there.

“What’s wrong?” Destiny asked.

“Nothing. I thought I saw somepony in the corner of my eye, but--”

Something metal and apple-sized rolled between my hooves. Or more accurately, it was grenade-sized. It whined like a speaker broadcasting interference before exploding in a flash of lightning.

My world turned stark white. Everything blurred together into a mess of sensations that didn’t fit together. It was an EMP. The part of me still able to think, locked into a body that was seizing and shaking blindly, was dimly aware of what had happened and fought for control. It felt distant, one step away from an out-of-body experience.

I was dimly aware of being tugged at, rolled over, and Destiny yelling about something. My hearing came and went, voices fighting to come through the ringing.

“...this armor is going to sell for a mint…”

“...just put the stupid thing in a crate before it shoots again…”

“...take the hoof off?...”

“...leave it, she’s starting to wake up…”

I felt movement. I was being picked up on both sides and dragged somewhere. The air was cold against my bare fur. I’d been in armor for so long I felt oddly naked and exposed. I tried to fight back, but nothing was working. The best I could do was get myself thrown to the ground and picked up again.

I started to actually come to when I was shoved through a door and hit a metal wall on the far side, hard enough to rattle my brains and restart something.

The door slid shut behind me, and I struggled to my feet.

“Hey!” I yelled. My armor was gone. Destiny was gone. I stumbled to the door, trying to figure out how to open it. I was dazed, but it didn’t look like a normal Stable door. It was thicker, like some kind of armored bulkhead. I pounded a hoof on it. “Let me out, you cowards!”

My IQ steadily ramped up towards something approaching an average amount. I looked around the small room they’d dropped me off at. Was it a prison cell? Maybe a supply closet, with the lockers on both sides that would make sense. Another armored door stood on the far side of the room.

Before I could really gather my wits, an alarm blared, and my ears popped. The pressure was rapidly changing.

That made the truth hit me like a ton of bricks. They’d pushed me into an airlock. The water rushed in. Everything went black.

Comments

[FridayPie]

Stable Subsurface-1?

[Thought Prism]

Well, time for a new arc I suppose. The Chrysalis fight was brutal, and the celebration after fun. I guess Flurry has that egg somewhere safe, now?

I imagine the Siva will give Clementine gills or something so she doesn't immediately die.

Anyway, why didn't they take a Siva White node with them? Mount it to the armor, and you can print those Valkyrie spears on demand.

[Reese]

"Chrysalis’ horn had really torn"
"Chrysalis’s horn had really torn"?

"dining room of a rebuild restaurant"
"dining room of a rebuilt restaurant"?

...Perfectly safe and sound, huh, Star Swirl? I think you information may be slightly off there... :D

[Ahsoka Tano]

Bioshock time lol.