Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 72: Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams

I held the door to the Cantina open for Quiet. Her mood had improved a little since seeing a bunch of her friends get gunned down by the local security team. I wasn’t sure if that was actually a good thing. She waved to some of the ponies hanging around the smoky, noisy space.

“Let me grab you a drink,” I offered. “What do they drink around here?”

“Mostly gillwater,” Quiet said, sticking out her tongue. “Gross. Can you get me a Sparkle-Tuna?”

“Sparkle… Tuna?” I asked.

“Yeah! They’re great!” Quiet trotted over to the bar with me and ordered. “Two ice-cold Sparkle-Tunas, please!”

The bartender didn’t even blink, and two lightly-frosted glass bottles were put in front of us. They were clearly cut from the same cloth as regular Sparkle-Cola, but the bottle was thicker and looked somehow... fishier, like I’d be deep-kissing a salmon when I was drinking from it.

“Oh, there you are!” Chum Buddy said, grabbing my hoof. “Quiet, good to see this crazy lass got you here safely. Can you entertain yourself for a moment while Fabula and I have a few words with her?”

“Sure,” Quiet sighed. “I’ll be around.”

“Thanks, lass. We’ll be right back.” Chum gave her a nod and a smile and led me away, looking at the bottle in my hooves. “You probably shouldn’t drink that.”

“Why?” I asked. “Quiet seems to like it.”

“You ever had Sparkle Cola?” Chum Buddy asked. I nodded. “Right. There was a plant here in Seaquestria, but after the war, they couldn’t get the raw materials anymore. No cola syrup. Can you guess what they replaced it with? Think real hard about the name.”

I blinked. “Tuna? You’re joking.”

“The joke is, tuna is too expensive and it’s actually mostly smelt and bream,” Chum said.

I narrowed my eyes. He had to be putting me on. Nopony would make a soda out of fish. It probably wasn’t even possible. What would they do, juice the fish? You might be able to tune a fish but you couldn’t distill them. I popped the top and took a big, defiant sip like the smart adult I was.

As it turns out, Chum Buddy had been a hundred percent honest with me. The soda had the cool, smooth flavor of cat food and sugar with a big hit of salt. Chum Buddy watched my expression progress through every stage of grief, and just kept smiling. I swallowed with an effort that felt like holding my hoof to an open flame.

“You going to throw up?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“You need a minute before you can talk safely?”

I nodded.

“I understand completely. I’m amazed you managed to get that sip down, lass. You’re braver and stupider than I thought.”

I nodded.

Chum Buddy shook his head and took me back to Fabula’s private booth. This time we were expected, and one of the thugs standing guard held the silk curtain open for us to enter without having to be asked.

“Welcome back,” Fabula said. “This would be the part where I say ‘good job’ if you had done a good job.”

The queasiness had faded enough that I thought I could risk speaking. “It wasn’t my fault. I got Quiet out of there. That was the job.”

Fabula sighed. “You and I both know it was a disaster. Foals are dead. There was a shootout inside the Galleria. You wrecked the private sea wagon of a Seaquestrian noble. And, as it bears repeating, foals are dead.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said quietly.

“No. The security team did. If you’d gotten there a few minutes earlier, none of it would have happened! You would have found Quiet, told her what was happening, and gotten away before the security forces got there! They wouldn’t have arrested and executed Quiet’s gang for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It would have been quick, quiet, and clean, which is how we prefer jobs. Instead, you made it loud, messy, and expensive!”

“Would it be better if I’d walked away?” I asked. “The foals would be dead, Quiet would be gone, but it would have been a little neater and quieter. Why do you care about her anyway?”

“She was important to my predecessor,” Fabula said quietly. “Shore Leave thought he could change the system from within with friendship. Make allies among the elite and ease the inequality in society.”

“And then he got stabbed in the back,” Chum Buddy noted.

“I thought he died in the riots?” I asked.

“It was a complicated situation,” Fabula said. “It was when the Ripper killings were at their wost. The ponies in the undercity were driven into a mass hysteria.”

“I got to the city in the middle of all this,” Chum Buddy noted. “Shows how poor my timing is.”

“There were rumors the Ripper was one of the nobility, and ponies thought they had to fight for their lives. It almost tore the Stable apart. Security teams made things worse because they were on both sides.” Fabula sighed. “The Guild tried to organize things. Shore Leave and his second in command, Deep Blue, tried to turn the violence into something productive. It might have worked, except Deep Blue killed Shore Leave in the middle of negotiations.”

“Was he bribed or stupid or what?” I asked.

“Probably thought he’d be able to get a job on the winning side,” Fabula said. “Everything collapsed. The nobility pushed back hard, and with no leaders, the rioters were isolated and put down. Since then, they’ve been pushing to get things back to normal, and that means being tough on crime.”

“Tough like… executing foals in a gang,” I said.

“Exactly,” Fabula confirmed. “They probably would have ignored them until they caused trouble, but Quiet Seascape got involved with them. It’s the third time she’s run away from home since the riots.” Fabula shrugged. “We kept tabs on her.”

“How did you all survive if they’ve been this tough on crime?”

“We’re smart,” Chum Buddy said. “And when I say smart, I mean we have Fabula. She can tell when a job is going to go badly, predict targets for us, and gives us some heads-up when a raid from security is on the way so we can lie low for a while.”

“It isn’t easy,” Fabula said. She shuffled her tarot cards. “I can only do so much, and my predictions aren’t perfect. We can protect the small group of guild members here, but not the other gangs scattered around the Stable. Bringing that many ponies together is too dangerous anyway.”

“That’s why I had to vouch for you,” Chum Buddy explained. “Think of us as a small, elite group of survivors.”

“And I’d kick you out for being a liability if I had the option,” Fabula noted, looking directly at me. “Unfortunately, we need you. An important client asked for the pony that’s been causing trouble. They want to send a message and they think a sledgehammer is the right tool for the job.”

I frowned. “I didn’t think criminals had clients.”

“Yes, this must be really disillusioning for you,” Fabula said, flatter than my fish-flavored drink. “Who would have thought that criminals might do something just for the money.”

She had a point but I didn’t want to admit it. “Why should I help you? And don’t say it’s because I’ll get a cut. I need information, not shells or clams or whatever you use for money down here.”

“You need a friend in the nobility.” Fabula shuffled her cards, putting the deck down in front of me. “Our client is in a position to get the information you want, as long as you can meet her exacting standards.”

I cut the deck. She hadn’t asked, but she hadn’t said I couldn’t do it either. I watched her reaction, and she didn’t seem bothered. Maybe it wasn’t entirely an act, or at least not the kind of act where she was forcing a draw. Fabula flipped over the top card.

“The Deuce of Coins,” she said. The card showed a pony reared up and trying to balance two heavy coins in their forehooves while balanced on one hoof. “It represents a struggle to juggle wants and needs. It’s a card about balance.”

I shrugged. It was too poetic for me. “Is that a good sign or a bad sign?”

“It’s a sign that you can’t afford to let responsibilities slip or you’ll drop everything,” Fabula said. “Chum Buddy, you can explain the job to her. You tried it before, so you might have some insight.”

Chum Buddy groaned. “You’re sending her to the Briney? That’s a touchy job.”

“It’s what Lady Thresher asked for,” Fabula said. “Your gentle touch failed. She heard about the shootout in the Galleria before we did, and wanted the pony responsible. If they were alive. It’s a job that should go to somepony smart, subtle, and careful, but it’s out of my hooves.”

Fabula stood up. “Get the job done. If we can get Lady Thresher in our debt, we might be able to find out more about Sentinel. Both of us want that, I believe.”

I nodded. Fabula walked out through the back of the booth, and Chum Buddy helped me stand and took me back into the Cantina, leading me over to another booth.

“I can’t believe she’s sending you on the Briney job,” Chum mumbled.

“You seem to know all about it,” I prompted.

“That’s because I tried to get in and bungled it.” Chum waved to the bartender, and a small bottle was brought over. “You know what this is? You might not have run across it if you’re new around here.”

I shook my head.

“It’s called gillwater. Does two very important things. First, it lets a pony breathe water like a hippogriff does. Second, it’s a narcotic. This is the cheap stuff, and working ponies use it to get through the day and do jobs outside. Takes the edge off the grind, keeps you from getting the bends, and you don’t have to lug around an air tank and mask.”

“Okay?” I was going to have a bad time if ponies drank weird stuff like this and not good, healthy drinks like vodka.

He turned the bottle so I could see the logo. “This bottle was made in the Briney Gillwater Plant. It’s the cheap stuff, only lasts about an hour, made from the dregs so it tastes like slime.”

“Am I going to go in and do quality control?”

“They’ve been shut down for two weeks bringing a new production line up to speed,” Chum Buddy said. “That isn’t a big deal, except they shouldn’t have the clams to do it. Lady Thresher wanted to buy them out and made sure they were having money troubles, and then out of nowhere they’ve got the clams for this? Doesn’t make sense. She wants somepony to go in and find out where all that liquidity came from, if you catch my drift.”

I picked up the bottle and sloshed it around while he talked. It was slightly green, slightly thick, and had bubbles trapped in it. It looked almost like a bottle of really thin snot.

“The job is to sneak in, hack their maneframe and get the information, then smash up their new production line,” Chum Buddy said. “The problem is, even though they’re shut down, there’s still security, and I might have slipped up a bit and gotten caught. Barely got away with my hooves still attached, and since then, the Brineys tripled security. Must be more than a dozen armed ponies in the plant.”

“If they’re armed like the ones in the Galleria that’s not exactly a deterrent,” I said. “That reminds me.”

I started taking off the Stable barding, and Chum Buddy stood up. “Woah, lass, I think you misunderstood something! You’re a nice lady and all but I prefer a mare who won’t break every bone in my body--”

I threw the barding at him. “I put too many holes in this. I need something stronger.”

He pulled it off his face and frowned, then looked down at the back. The barding was practically rags from all the bullet holes. He held it up with his magic and whistled in surprise, letting the dim light of the Cantina shine through the holes.

“Never seen that before,” he said quietly.

---

A few hours later I was doing something stupid. I know that doesn’t narrow anything down, but it felt stupid even before I started.

I carefully walked across the sea bed, trying to keep my breathing even. That was apparently really important with a rebreather. My need for tougher barding had neatly overlapped with my need to sneak into the gillwater plant, and unfortunately, that meant wearing a heavy diving suit that dated back to when they’d been originally building the Stable.

“If you follow the path you should get to the cargo entrance,” Chum Buddy said over the radio. “Look up if you get lost. There’s a guide wire running to it.”

“For sea wagons, right?” I asked. I looked up at the bundled cable stretching between pylons and into the distance.

“Right. They mostly run on automatic. There are some private craft that are actually piloted, but they’re mostly pleasure yachts for the elite. Ponies like us have to make do with swimming there ourselves.”

The scenery was so beautiful I could almost forget that I was walking on the bottom of the ocean. With the diving suit’s metal frame and rubberized layers, I couldn’t feel the water around me, so I could appreciate the stone forest of coral around me. It was in every color of the rainbow, with neon-bright fish flitting from one place to another like tropical birds.

“I can see why ponies would want to sit out the war in a place like this,” I said to myself.

A shadow passed over me, and I looked up at a pod of whales. They slowly passed overhead, bigger than I’d ever imagined they could be.

“Nopony bombed the ocean,” Chum explained. “Some fallout poisoned the waters closer to shore, but we’re far enough out to sea that all we have to worry about is each other.”

“You were a refugee, right?” I asked.

“They get a few refugees every year. Ponies go out on boats trying to find something better, and they wind up here. They’re welcomed in, but most of them just end up as slave labor.”

“It’s probably still better than most of the wasteland,” I said. I looked away from the whales and realized I’d almost run into another pony. I scrambled behind an outcropping of rock, the wavering fronds of the sea life attached to it retracting into hard shells when I got too close.

The other pony hadn’t noticed me. He didn’t look like he was noticing much at all. He was wearing an even heavier suit than mine, and he had a slow, deliberate gait like a sleepwalker.

“What’s wrong with that guy?” I whispered. “He reminds me of that weird pony that was throwing me around the arcade.”

“Let me guess, just a little too big, clumsy, and shambling like the living dead?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

“He must be a gillpony. They’re the real unfortunates among us. If the authorities decide execution isn’t bad enough, they’ll take you away to the old MoP hospital and you come out like that. The suits don’t come off. They’re sewn into them. They can’t even breathe air anymore. Those rebreathers just pump gillwater around and keep them pacified and sedated and ready to take orders.”

“Every time I start to like this place, ponies do something to ruin it,” I grumbled.

“That’s just life,” Chum Buddy said. “Do you see the cargo entrance yet?”

“I’m guessing it’s the big door with yellow paint around it?” It wasn’t really a question. The guide wire ran right into it, and the area around it had been cleared out. This wasn’t some unused ruin, it was a place ponies came and went every day.
Inside, concrete stairs led up into an air pocket. When I broke through the surface, I took a look around. It was a dock, with space for a large sea wagon to settle into place between two concrete piers that were still covered in cargo crates.

Movement caught my attention, and I froze, watching a pony trot across the dock idly, an air rifle slung across his shoulders.

As quietly as I could, I got out of the water and behind a crate. I waited for him to walk out of sight and made my way to the cargo elevator in the back, hitting the controls and taking cover behind a box full of scrap metal and hydraulic pistons. The elevator smoothly slid up, humming and vibrating under my hooves. I pulled the rebreather off my face and took a deep breath, hoping for fresh air.

Instead, I got a gulp of air that stank like motor oil, burned sugar, and iodine.

“Ugh,” I mumbled. I looked around the floor. It was some kind of loading zone, which made sense. More crates were off to the side behind painted lines on the floor. If nothing else I had to appreciate how clean and orderly it was. It reminded me of the big cities in the Enclave where they had the time and ponypower to do things properly.

“The first thing you’ll want to do is find the maneframe,” Chum Buddy reminded me. “I don’t know how long it’ll take you to crack. I messed up and set off an alarm.”

“Is this a bad time to mention that I’m not exactly an expert hacker?”

“Yes, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t say it. Think you can find Briney’s office?”

I looked up at the standard Stable-Tec labels and arrows. “I might be able to manage that.”

---

The more Stables you’ve seen, the more you realize they were all built out of the same parts. Sure, the layouts were all different to fit into different holes in the ground or particularly attractive mountains, but it was like somepony had designed them using a bunch of plastic blocks.

“Looks like an Overmare’s office,” I mumbled, peeking around a corner. Somehow, I hadn’t been caught yet. This was either a minor miracle or these were actually the worst guards in the world. None of them seemed to have peripheral vision.

Nopony was standing guard outside the office. I had a weird feeling like I was being watched, but all other evidence pointed to the contrary. No armed ponies were storming my position, no alarms had been raised, and I wasn’t full of tiny, stinging bullets.

I carefully slipped inside. With the plant shut down there wasn’t much chance of anypony actually sitting around doing paperwork. It still felt wrong. I’d have put good money on there being a pony just waiting for me inside, but when I opened the door, the big seat behind the desk was empty.

It seemed like I was alone. That didn’t mean I wanted anypony wandering in, so I locked the door behind me.

“How did you get caught?” I asked. “A foal could break into this place.”

“The security on the terminals was better than I thought,” Chum said. “I tried this trick I heard about once where you crack open the case and fiddle with some jumper switches, and I probably didn’t remember it as well as I thought because it set off every alarm in the plant.”

“Cool. What’s a jumper switch?”

“Something you’re not going to fiddle with.”

I nodded. He was right. I walked around the horseshoe-shaped desk and--

“Please don’t kill me!” whimpered the pony under the desk. His hoof was on a big red button. He pressed it over and over again, getting increasingly panicked.

I squeaked and kicked him. Through the desk. It was made out of cheap particle board, which was good for him because if he’d sprung for the mahogany desk I probably would have killed him on accident instead of just ruining his office decor.

“What was that sound?” Chum Buddy asked.

“Uhhh…” I poked the pony I’d kicked. He was still breathing, but he wasn’t going to wake up anytime soon. I spotted something on the wall. A portrait of the pony who owned the place, who looked almost like the pony at my hooves but with fewer bruises. “Buck. I think I just found Briney. Did you know he made himself employee of the month? What a jerk.”

“The company president? That’s good!” Chum said. “If you threaten him, maybe you can get his login and password.”

“I also knocked him out.”

“That’s less good.”

“Why was he under the desk?” I mumbled. I walked back over to the desk and saw two terminals. Or really, his terminal and a security monitor, showing the view just outside his door. Under it, where he’d been hiding, a panic button was hidden just where a hoof could reach it from the chair. Wires hung loose from it, connecting to nothing. “He saw me coming! There are cameras in this place. They never finished installing some extra security or I’d be up to my wingspan in security ponies.”

“Are the cameras just in there, or all over?”

“Hold on,” I said, tapping the buttons. The view shifted to conveyor belts and steel vats. “They’re all over the factory floor.”

“They weren’t there last time, I can promise you that. He must have had them installed along with the extra guards.” Chum Buddy paused. I kept flipping through until I got back to the view just outside his office.

“I don’t see them anywhere else in the office. I got lucky,” I said.

“That’s how the Guild runs, lass. It’s all luck, good or bad. If you can get into the security system, you might be able to--”

I smashed the security terminal. “I hacked it. Nopony’s going to use this thing again.”

“Let’s hope there aren’t any other monitors hooked up,” Chum sighed. “How about the maneframe?”

I moved over to the more traditional terminal. Destiny had walked me through how to hack into these things before. I just had to remember all the steps.

“Restart while holding down the function button,” I mumbled. “Then go into the BIOS menu and… I think it was this thing?” I tapped the arrows and tried to select the buffer, and the screen flashed green and a box popped up asking for a password. “What the heck? I’m sure that worked last time!”

“Sounds like a password on the BIOS. I ran into the same problem, and that’s when I tried the jumper trick. Didn’t go so well for me, so I don’t recommend it.”

“Got to be something I can do,” I mumbled. I moved some of the papers on the desk to get them out of the way, and something on the top sheet caught my eye. “No. It can’t…”

“What’s wrong?” Chum asked. “Chamomile? Are you alright?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.” I reset the terminal and let it boot up, then I carefully typed something in. “Okay! I’m in!”

I heard Chum Buddy sputter in surprise. “You’re kidding. How?”

“He had his username and password written down so he could remember them,” I said.

While Chum Buddy cursed and mumbled about my dumb luck, I started going through the files on the terminal. There was a bunch of internal mail that I skimmed over, mostly depressing stuff about not making payroll and how they were getting squeezed out by Lady Thresher who was pressuring them into a buyout. Then the tone abruptly changed. Things were looking up.

FROM: Briney Still

TO: <G>
Subject: RE:Project Update
We’ve received the extra equipment for Project H, and we’ve shut down to bring it online and do the required background checks on employees. We look forward to working with you in this exciting and profitable venture! When should we expect the first shipments of polyhypnol?

FROM: <G>
To: Briney Still
Subject: RE:RE:Project Update
Do not discuss Project H except in secure channels. Please delete our previous correspondence from your maneframe. We have security concerns. We will be assigning additional security to your plant in regards to the recent attempted break-in. Do not reply to this message.

“He must have deleted a bunch of mail,” I said. “It says they were involved with something called Project H. He mentioned something called polyhypnol. What is that? I’ve never heard of it before.”

“That’s a drug,” Chum Buddy said. “Sort of a sedative. Makes ponies open to suggestion and puts them in a fog. We see it sometimes in the Cantina and kick out anypony who tries to slip it into the drinks. What’s he doing with it?”

“If I had to guess, they’re going to put it in the gillwater,” I said. I felt less bad about knocking the jerk out. “And somepony was paying them a lot to do it. All the talk about debts and pay problems went away really quickly. There’s no name on the other end.”

“Wonderful,” Chum mumbled. “Feel up to finding that new line and doing the ponies around here a favor by smashing it up before they can drug them all into a stupor?”

“Sounds like fun,” I said. I gave Briney a kick to the ribs on the way out.

“Just remember, Lady Thresher still wants to buy the place. Just do enough damage that this new backer decides to un-back them. Be a scalpel.”

“Right. I’ll be gentle.”

---

“Okay, lass. So the boiler is a standard model, uses talismans to heat up water and then the steam is piped through the factory. It’s a simple job to disable it so it’ll take months to repair.” He paused. “Are you okay? I thought I heard you coughing.”

“Just a frog in my throat,” I lied, still squeezing a stallion’s neck. He made a lot of soft choking sounds and then went limp. I put him down next to his friend, who hadn’t been nearly as quiet and attracted some attention while I was safely and quietly smashing his head into a safety railing until it was his naptime

“Right,” he said, definitely believing me. “I’m going to walk you through this one step at a time. Do you see a big red wheel on a pipe? It should be very easy to spot, right on the wall near the main boiler.”

“Yeah,” I said. I walked over the unconscious guards.

“That’s the emergency relief valve. Make sure it’s open.”

I checked the valve “Uh-huh.” It was clearly labeled, probably because they assumed in an emergency ponies were not good with ambiguity. I started turning it and paused. “What happens if it’s closed?”

“Normally nothing, as long as nothing needs emergency relief.”

I stood in front of the control panel and got hit with a massive dose of Deja Vu. It wasn't just the feeling that I'd seen it before, it was a feeling of total familiarity, that I'd sat and stared at it for hours before.

---

"Take it down. Good, like that," my instructor said.

An alarm bell went off. I jumped in my seat, but the kindly stallion walking me through the process kept a hoof on my shoulder.

"That's just the low power status warning," he said. "It's fine. Just switch everything on the safety panel from 'Active' to 'Test'. That's going to disable the auto-scram and the alerts."

I nodded and flipped the switches as he'd instructed.

"So the first thing we do is shut off the main feedwater pump," he said. I hit the big toggle for that, and a red light turned on, but no bells sounded. "Great. And that brings the secondary online, see?"

He pointed to where a yellow light had switched on.

"That's more than enough for the reactor in low-power mode like this. If we were at full power it would still last long enough to shut things down without having to go full scram."

I was about to ask a question, but another bell went off. This one wasn't an alarm for the reactor, it was an alarm for us.

"Shift change," the instructor said. "Third shift can finish up the testing. You go home, I'll make sure--"

"What the buck did you amateurs do?!" the head engineer yelled, storming into the control room with his cheeks bright red from anger and his nose bright red from what he'd been drinking in his office. "Look at those power ratings! You stalled the reactor! We're going to get brown-outs all over the Stable! Raise the power!"

"We're in the middle of a test," my instructor tried to explain.

"Your test is bucking up my power systems!" the engineer shouted, storming over. "Increase the talisman output!"

I stammered something, not quite managing words.

"I said increase the output!" he yelled. "If you don't do it, I'll have you thrown out into the wasteland for being as useless as the rest of your bucking family!"

I closed my eyes and turned a knob.

---

My hoof was on the main power dial. An alarm chattered, cutting through my waking dream. Chum Buddy had been giving me instructions. They hadn’t been related to what I’d been doing at all. “...What was that?”

“Oh, uh…” I looked around. “I think I might have messed something up. I accidentally, um… I accidentally the whole reactor.”

“Did you start a bloody meltdown?!”

I flinched at that. “Stop complaining, you’re miles away!”

“I’m not worried about the bucking reactor, I’m worried about what Lady Thresher will do when she finds out!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. The steam pipes started to rattle, and the boiler made the kind of sound that you don’t want a boiler to make. I grabbed the ponies I’d knocked out, because I was a kind and caring pony. “I’m going to get out of here before it gets too hot. With all the redundant stuff they shove into this kind of Stable-tec junk--”

With a sound like a whale’s upset stomach, a pony half a head taller than I was charged out of the shadows, lights shining through the thick portholes on his diving suit. The gillpony slammed into me head-first and knocked the guards away from me, tossing us like rag dolls. My ears rang from the impact, almost as loud as the alarms around us. Yellow lights flashing above the doorways changed to red with urgency.

“You hear those?” I yelled. “You should get out while you can!”

He wailed and charged again. I braced myself and caught him, shoulder to shoulder. He stopped dead, our armored hooves striking sparks on the deck plates.

“I’ve been thrown around by better ponies than you,” I growled. Just holding onto him like that, I could feel there was something wrong with him. He wasn’t moving like a pony. The joints weren’t quite right, the way his head connected to his neck, the way his back hooves and his front hooves weren’t quite scaled for the same pony.

I twisted and threw the gillpony to the side, and he slammed into a bundle of pipes. The pipework was already strained and at its limit, leaking steam and rattling and ready to tear itself apart. The gillpony hammered them, and they shattered. Steam and shrapnel exploded, and the gillpony staggered away, slamming one hoof into its helmet and screaming.

It reached for me, took a few more steps, and collapsed. Water spilled out of its ruptured suit, and I got a glimpse of what was inside.

Chum Buddy had said they were sewn into their suits, but that was only part of the story. What I saw through the cracked helmet was equal parts pony and some kind of deep-sea fish. The thing’s skin was glossy, hairless, and coated in slime. A dead, silvery eye looked up at me, and parts of the gillpony’s skin glowed, sort of like fireflies.

“You are one ugly motherbucker,” I mumbled.

A bell joined the other alarms, and a complex box of a machine straddling the conveyor belt next to me swelled. Rivets popped like gunshots from the deforming panels, and steam erupted from the broken case.

I turned to leave, sighed, and went back to grab the two guards, leaving the gillpony where he was.

“Sorry,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was alive or dead or what. I wasn’t even sure how I’d find out. I sure as buck wasn’t going to check for a pulse. “If I was in your situation, I think I’d want somepony to put me down.”

He didn’t say anything. I hefted the guards up and ran for the elevator.

Comments

[Thought Prism]

Well, Lady Thresher certainly got her sledgehammer.

[FridayPie]

Bioshock... and... Evil Within?

[Reese]

"killings were at their wost. The ponies"
"killings were at their worst. The ponies"?