Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 73: The Boogie Mare

I was, in theory, being escorted at gunpoint. I just would have been more impressed and less mentally exhausted if the pony doing it had brought something more threatening than air pistols. They’d taken me through the back entrance of a Neightalian place and up the stairs to a private dining area with just a few booths. Only one had a light turned on over it.

“Is this really necessary?” I asked.

“Lady Thresher likes to set the right tone when somepony is meeting with her,” he explained.

“Whatever,” I sighed, trotting over to the booth and sitting down even more heavily than I’d intended. Lady Thresher was well-dressed, her dusky indigo coat groomed until it shone in the light. My off-white fur was ragged at this point. Salt and scabs and not having enough time for a shower, much less real care, had taken their toll.

“You’ve--” she started. I waved over to a waiter.

“Hey, you. Vodka. Leave the bottle.”

Lady Thresher frowned at the interruption. She frowned more when I continued to largely ignore her until the bottle was in front of me and I’d poured myself a double and downed it. It didn’t really do much for me at this point, but at least it felt like I was trying.

“Are you done pretending to be cool and in control?” she asked, obviously annoyed.

“I’m neither of those,” I said. “I’m lame and stupid and I just want to find my friend and get my armor back and go home! Not that I even know where home is anymore! Everything in my life is bucked up and twisted around!”

“Ah…” Lady Thresher hesitated.

“I know you want to yell at me or whatever, but I just don’t care anymore.” I poured myself more vodka. I stared at the glass, letting the silence stretch for a few moments. “I think I’ve been dead a couple times.”

Lady Thresher looked at me then took the bottle of vodka and poured herself a drink.

“Let’s talk,” she said.

---

“Your mother sounds awful,” Lady Thresher said.

“She’s literally a monster,” I said. I rested my chin on the table, feeling almost as bad as when I’d started drinking. “Ever since she had me and Dad arrested, it feels like I’ve been dealing with the fallout, and you know what the worst part is? I’m pretty sure nothing I do matters. If I believe Star Swirl, I was supposed to die horribly in that one accident. Is that why he put me down here? So I didn’t mess anything else up?”

“I’m confused about the timeline,” the thug said. He wasn’t really a bad pony once he had a few drinks in him. “So Sentinel is wearing your armor, I get that, and it was stolen from you just before you got thrown out an airlock. But he showed up months ago!”

“Maybe I was in a coma?” I guessed. “Or dead. But if I was dead for that long and I came back without getting to see the other side, it kinda sucks.”

“You ended up in the morgue somehow,” Lady Thresher said. “That means somepony found you.”

“I didn’t think about that,” I admitted. “Maybe I can track down whoever found my body. At least then I’d know for sure.”

“What you need first are legitimate papers and database entries,” Lady Thresher noted. “If you want to get close enough to Sentinel to stab him and take his pants, you need an identity that won’t get you arrested when you try to get through any security checkpoint. Normal ponies don’t have the same rights as hippogriffs.”

It made me uncomfortably aware of certain practices in the Enclave about dividing the tribes up. Pegasus ponies were citizens, unicorns were expensive resources, and earth ponies got to go back down to the ground. The lucky ones didn’t get there just by being dropped through the clouds.

“Normal ponies,” Lady Thresher continued. “Are the ones who are going to have to decontaminate a bottling plant full of radioactive steam. Not the elites or the police or the corrupt, ponies who will get sick and suffer because they can’t afford to see a doctor.”

“But…”

“But you thought you were being clever and smart by causing a meltdown,” she said, waving a hoof dismissively. “You never have to go back there. It’s not your problem. Instead, ponies with faulty protective gear will scrub it down in your wake, and society will pay for it.”

She wasn’t yelling, but I could tell she was disappointed. Very disappointed. I would have liked it more if the pony with the gun had shot me in the back a few times.

“I didn’t think about that,” I mumbled. “I saw the control panel and then…” I hesitated, not sure how to describe what had happened. It had been like a dream, or a nightmare. Deja vu with a big scoop of night terrors.

“Smart enough to know how to keep Stable-tec’s safety systems from working, but not smart enough to know when to do it,” she said.

“I read about a disaster with one of the reactors,” I said quietly. It was easier than the truth.

“Fabula warned me that you were a walking disaster, so this is at least partly on my shoulders,” Lady Thresher sighed. “I’m sure I can get Briney to sell to me now, since repairing the plant would bankrupt him, but I won’t turn much of a profit from it. I’ll lose a lot of money just bringing ponies in and trying to keep them from dying because of your mess.”

I squirmed in my seat.

“You’re trying to decide how to apologize,” Lady Thresher guessed. “You can’t clean it up yourself. Even if you were qualified to do it, and you aren’t, one pony can’t reasonably do the job. Instead, I’d like you to do a job for me. You found the mail that implicated some unseen patron working to drug ponies, yes?”

I nodded silently.

“I want to know who they really are. Another gillwater plant is having its grand opening, and I’m having some difficulty understanding where its finances came from. Obviously, I suspect they’re part of this same scheme. The Briney plant had a security scare and they wiped anything really incriminating from their maneframe. Things will be different this time.”

“Different how?” I asked.

“For one thing, no one has tried breaking in and put them on high alert. More importantly, I’m not letting the Guild bungle this up. I have my own agent coming up with a plan.”

“You don’t trust the guild?”

“I don’t trust anypony who relies on fortune-telling to decide things for them,” Lady Thresher said. “I make my own luck.”

---

I shouldn’t have had so much to drink. I’d gotten all sad and weepy and agreed to something stupid, and that’s why I was standing nervously in front of a pony and hoping the papers I’d been given were legitimate enough to keep me out of trouble. I tried to look small and harmless, which was very difficult.

“You’re visiting the Reef today on business?” the pony asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “My employer’s paperwork is on the next page.”

“I can see that,” he said. He looked up from the paper to me and motioned for me to turn to the side while he carefully compared my cutie mark to the one on the papers. “Things seem to be in order.”

He slammed a stamp down on the papers and gave them back to me.

“You’ve got eight hours before your pass is invalid. If you need more time, any legitimate employer should have a form you can fill out if you need an extension. I hope you have a pleasant and productive time in the Reef.”

“Thanks,” I said, holding onto the papers and stepping through the security point. My saddlebags, already searched for anything dangerous, were given back to me, and I stepped to the side to strap them back on and shove my papers inside. The security here reminded me of some of the Enclave military bases I’d been to, and as odd as it may sound, that was kind of comforting.

I walked through the crowd of ponies, trying to ignore the ones that had been turned away. The ones being taken into a back room by Stable Security were the worst, pleading for help from the others, but even the ones who’d just been given a firm ‘no’ and told to leave were sitting there blank-faced like they were at the end of the world.

Beyond the checkpoint, the Reef had that same faux-street look shared by the rest of the city. It was a theme park’s version of a pre-war Manehattan, upscale and tall, with buildings towering over the enclosed street-level section and reaching for the distant surface. Sea wagons and hippogriffs swam overhead, too important to bother with the rabble down here.

Maybe it was too much like the Enclave.

---

“Jellyfish,” I said.

“It’s a silly name but they’re a real thing,” Huckleberry Jokester said. He was splotchy purple and blue and was working his way through a bowl of noodles. “They’ve got basically no flavor, but they’re sort of crunchy when they’re cooked.”

“I know they’re real, I just didn’t think anypony ate them,” I said. “They’re like… bags of poison and mush.”

“When ponies are desperate enough, they’ll eat anything. They were one of the only things refugees were allowed to forage. Then they got popular because some hippogriff decided he liked eating them, so now they’re gourmet food instead of trash.” Huckleberry shrugged.

I poked around the bowl he’d ordered for me. It was like slightly slimy, slightly salty celery noodles on a bed of rice. There wouldn’t be much flavor at all, but they’d stuffed bits of pickled greens and spicy peppers in with it.

“I’m not all that hungry,” I lied. Half-lied. My stomach was upset and I wasn’t sure if eating was going to make it better or worse. “I just want to know what the plan is. Lady Thresher told me nothing because she was sure I’d tell the Guild and they’d mess it up somehow.”

Huckleberry scoffed. “Yeah, she’s probably right. Not the Guild’s fault. They lost their leader and they’re relying on bucking fortune-telling to plan their gigs. They say it’s working, but every gambler says their system is working until they owe the casino their cutie mark.”

I took another bite of the bowl of weird, crunchy food to be polite. I hadn’t paid for it, so at least it was free.

“I poked around a bit and found out the Honeypot has a little pest problem,” Huckleberry said. “Radroaches in the basement. They’re all over the undercity so that’s not a huge surprise, but ponies here in the Reef like to pretend the undercity is somewhere far away and not just a few levels below their hooves.”

“So? They’re not dangerous.”

“They’re not dangerous,” Huckleberry agreed. “But they’re dirty and scare the delicate little hippogriffs and stallions into needing a strong mare to come around and stomp on them. You get me?”

“You want me to… kill roaches?” I guessed.

“That’s how you’re getting in,” Huckleberry confirmed. “I’ve got some exterminator gear prepped for you. You go down into the basement, take care of the roaches as part of your cover, and then phase two.”

“You’re going to need to be way more specific than ‘phase two’.”

“I have a bottle of Essence of Durian,” he said. “The basement and the cask storage should be connected through the undercity. Like I said, the ponies here like to forget it exists. You’re going to pour it into the cask they brought out for the opening ceremony.”

“You want me to poison ponies?!”

“Durian isn’t poison! It’s perfectly safe to eat, it just smells like hot garbage. Some ponies actually like the stuff for some reason. It won’t hurt anypony, but it will get the plant shut down because the smell and taste are going to make the investors think something’s gone terribly wrong. Then phase three starts and… well, I’m in charge of that, you don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Nopony gets hurt,” I clarified.

“I don’t hurt ponies,” Huckleberry said. “It’s bad for business.”

I nodded, and the spoon I was using hit the bottom of the empty bowl. I’d eaten the whole thing without even noticing.

“Want another bowl?” Huckleberry offered.

---

“You’re the exterminator?” The well-dressed hippogriff looked at me skeptically. I wasn’t sure why. Even I thought I looked the part. The Stable utility barding, a small tank and sprayer of radroach poison, a big stick for the adult radroaches, and night-vision goggles to look into the dark corners.

“Yes, sir, Mister Goby,” I said. He was the owner of the place, apparently, and I was supposed to be very impressed that he’d come out to yell at me in person.

The hippogriff smacked me across the face, instantly furious.

“You’re late!” He yelled. “It’s only a few hours until the grand opening and I’ve still got radroaches in the flipping basement! You were supposed to be here ages ago!” He winced and looked at his talon. “And I broke a nail slapping you! Apologize!”

“I’m sorry my face broke your razor-sharp claws,” I said, flatly. He looked at me closely for any sign of sarcasm and couldn’t find it, probably because he’d lived under the ocean his whole life and the concept of dry humor was foreign to him.

“Good. Yes. You should be sorry.” He huffed and gave me a keycard on a lanyard. “The door to the basement is over there. You can spray in there, but I don’t want any of that poison around the production lines or the product, so stay out of the dunnage.”

“And the dunnage is…?”

He rolled his eyes. “Where we keep the aging barrels, obviously! You ponies just have no idea how to create a superior product.”

“Sorry, sir,” I said. “I can usually only afford the bottom-shelf stuff.”

He nodded, and I actually saw a small amount of sympathy there. “Yes. I imagine so. All rotgut gillwater and white spirits. Nothing that anypony takes pride in.” He sighed. “If you take care of the main nest so they stop coming in, I’ll see that you get a little bonus, hm? A small taste of the good life.”

“It would be very kind of you, sir.”

The hippogriff smiled like the patron of the common pony he was, showing such kindness to an urchin like me. “I am always gracious to the help,” he said, entirely forgetting how he’d just slapped me hard enough to hurt himself. He smile faded. “Now get to work or I’ll have Security drag you away like the lazy pony you are.”

---

Radroaches were about the least exciting and dangerous thing in Equestria.

I smacked the cat-sized roach with a club and watched it twitch a few times and go still. I don’t know why Goby hadn’t been able to deal with them himself. A bored foal could have gotten rid of the half-dozen little beasts. And probably gotten bit a few times, but that built character.

I was holding a broom. Things were never clean enough. Not for the boss. No matter how many hours I spent mopping and dusting and sweeping, there was always something wrong, some corner behind an appliance I’d forgotten, or a stain still barely visible in the right light.

I reached down to grab the handle of the dustpan with my teeth and gently tipped it into the bin, careful not to get the trash can itself dirty. He’d withheld my paycheck last month for leaving the bottom of the trash can filthy. How was I going to make rent?

I snapped out of it with the radroach bodies cleaned up and bagged. I didn’t even remember doing it.

“That was weird,” I mumbled to myself. At least I hadn’t caused a disaster this time. Sort of the opposite. I’d even given the spots where I’d killed the roaches a quick scrub to get rid of the ichor they’d left behind. That wasn’t like me at all.

I put down the mop I was holding and took a deep breath. There was only one reasonable answer. I had more brain damage, probably from when I’d drowned. That was bad, but it was something that could maybe be fixed. All I had to do was find Destiny, and I trusted her to mess with my brain, and then things would be fine.

There was something more immediately pressing to deal with, and I was glad for that. Back in the far corner of the basement was an air vent, and the vent cover had rusted and broken a long time ago, leaving it wide open for the giant bugs to crawl in. I snapped my knife out and got to work on the bolts holding the rest closed. Big enough for a giant bug was not big enough for my giant ass.

Within a minute, I was working my way through the vent and wishing I wasn’t. There was just enough seawater leaking into it to turn the layer of dust and dirt into awful, salt-crusted ooze. I had to hope I was going the right way, because nopony actually thought of making a map of the place, not that I could read a map where I was. It made me wish I had a Pipbuck, just to give me some light.

The vent shifted under me and I froze in place. A voice cut through the silence.

“Don’t be scared, Gastron,” a wheezing stallion said, somewhere ahead. “It’s just the Stable settling. The seafloor here isn’t stable, you know. Built on sand!”

The vent shifted again, the rotting, rusting bottom giving way and dumping me out into the open along with a big splash of muck.

I looked up at a pony in ragged clothing, including a long coat that might have originally been white. His mane stuck out in every direction. The bags under his eyes had evolved into a full set of luggage.

“A spy!” he shouted. “You’ve come to steal my secrets, haven’t you?!”

Something huge reared up behind him. It had to be the biggest roach I’d ever seen, easily twice the size of a pony, with a segmented shell that leaked green light between the seams. It hissed in obvious threat, raising up massive forelegs tipped with scythes.

I held up my hooves. “I’m not a spy! I’m stupid and lost!”

He narrowed his eyes. “Prove you’re not a spy!”

“I was going through the vent so I could find my way into the dunglage of the gillwater plant upstairs! I was going to mess it up!”

“So you are a spy!” he yelled. “But not against me. Spying for somepony else.” He rubbed his chin. “I suppose that’s fine. Down, Gastron,” he said. The giant big hissed one more time, then lowered its forebody to the ground.

“Sorry about the mess,” I said.

“Hm? No, no. The mess was already there.” He waved a hoof. “Would you like something to eat? I’ve been breeding radroaches and I have one strain that tastes just like crab! Well, not just like crab. But they do taste better than the other breeds.”

“I’m good,” I said. “You… breed radroaches?”

“Of course! They’re survivors. Drop a megaspell on them and they just get stronger. Look at Gastron here! He’s half isopod, and he’s so big the laws of physics say he should collapse under his own weight and be unable to move or breathe, but he doesn’t care! So much for the square-cube law! Hah!”

“That’s… cool?” I tried. “Do you know where the dunlage is?”

“No, but I know how to get into the dunnage.” He looked around, then leaned in to whisper. “I’ve been sneaking in there from time to time to replenish my supplies. Not much left in this part of the stable. A few casks of gillwater are nice to have, too.”

“That would be… really convenient if you could show me,” I said.

“No, no, no,” he growled. “You’ve seen too much. You know I’m here, plotting my revenge against all the small minds that said radroaches were just vermin, the fatherless finned fiends that refused to give me funding! I’ve been working too long on my revenge, and I won’t have it threatened by you!”

“Oh. This is a revenge thing.” I nodded. “I understand. I got someone I need to kill, too. Sentinel.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He’s a cop,” I said. “Sort of a figurehead and a supercop, and he’s wearing my bucking armor and I’m going to rip if off him piece by piece!”

“You want to kill a member of the police?” The old stallion looked surprised “Maybe we’re not so different, you and I. I’ll help you!”

“You will?”

“But! In exchange… you have to promise not to reveal my coming terrible revenge! I want it to be a surprise.”

“I can shake on that.”

He smiled and raised his hoof. It was the filthiest thing I’ve ever seen, but I still shook on it. “Please, call me Piper. Let me show you the way to the barrel storage, and I’ll teach you a few tricks on the way.”

---

“Remember,” Piper whispered. “The roaches are everywhere down here. If you need help, just use that and they’ll come running. Skittering, really.”

I looked at the plastic whistle. It had come out of a box of Sugar Apple Bombs.

“They know that exact sound because they’ve been trained to expect treats and food when I blow on it. SImple response, but once you’ve got them, you can try giving them orders. It’s mostly about body language. They’re smarter than they look.”

“Unlike me,” I joked.

“Right,” he agreed. I wish he hadn’t agreed. He crawled back through the vent, closing the cover behind him. I was alone in a giant warehouse full of alcohol and there was no one to tell me what to do.

If I was smarter, I might have just stopped there, drunk myself silly, and had a good day. Instead, I ruined everything by creeping up to one of the copper distillation vats and popping open the lid to look inside, because I was curious. I wanted to know just what they used that let ponies breathe water. It might be good to have a little with me in case of emergency.

“What the buck--” I gasped.

It would have been better to find that they made gillwater from ponies. Instead, I was looking at a huge tank full of lamprey. They were drinking the contents and shedding thick layers of mucus. I was suddenly reminded of the strange, thick texture of the bottled gillwater I’d seen.

“They can’t seriously--” I closed the lid.

I tapped a hoof on the top of the tank, thinking. Was it the most disgusting thing in the world? Was it better or worse than milk?

Why was I even asking this? It was lamprey mucus. It was worse than milk. If I was a sane pony I’d blow up the whole place and say there was no other option. Unfortunately I had a job to do, and I’d agreed to do it while drunk and had to finish the work sober.

A cask had been set aside from the barrels of aging product, already tapped and ready to go. I pulled a secure metal tube from where I’d secured it and unscrewed it. Inside, surrounded by enough padding to make sure it wouldn’t break unless a megaspell dropped on it, was a tiny glass tube. It only held a tiny bit of the oil, sealed shut by a plug of something that would dissolve in the gillwater, but apparently that was enough. I wasn’t going to fuck up this time.

I paused and waited for something dumb to happen, like another hallucination. It was almost depressing when it didn’t happen and instead I was able to do exactly as I’d been instructed and uncork the cask, dropping the vial in and closing it up like I’d never been there at all.

“Now I just need to find somewhere to shower,” I sighed. I was covered in muck.

---

“You finished just in time,” Goby said. “If the investors knew about the infestation…”

“It’s taken care of,” I said. Piper had promised to seal up the vent to make sure no more of his lab experiments escaped until the day of reckoning when all chains would be broken and all prisoners released, when the roach would rise from the world beneath and destroy the decadent world of ponies.

Or something like that. He sounded very excited about the whole thing and I didn’t want to discourage somepony actually living their best life and having a good time.

“Thanks for letting me clean up,” I said. He’d actually just had somepony else spray me down with a hose, and they’d somehow managed to get icewater to make sure it was even more uncomfortable.

“Of course,” he said dismissively. “You’ve done a fine job. If you promise not to bother the other guests, you can stay for the reception and have a drink before you leave.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said as submissively as I could. He went off to find somepony more important to talk to than the Help, and I trotted over to the corner. It was a dark little alcove, the kind of out-of-the-way corner where you’d shove an extra chair, not the cool kind of corner where a mysterious pony might brood.

Something caught my eye. I looked up, and saw Huckleberry across the room. He’d used the glass in a pocketwatch to reflect light into my eyes. I met his gaze and nodded. He smiled and relaxed, going back to mingling with the crowd.

The mood of the party was high. I could feel it, and looking out over the crowd, it was like going back in time two hundred years. Ponies and hippogriffs dressed in clean, pressed suits and dresses, snacking on tiny bites of expensive and overcomplicated food, here just to see and be seen. I could feel it, on the edge of my awareness, like prodding around an empty socket where a tooth used to be. I’d been to parties like this.

No. Destiny had been to parties like this. That’s why it felt nostalgic. Her brain implant had to be working overtime compensating for whatever was wrong with me.

“I can’t believe Star Swirl sent me here,” I mumbled. What had he expected? Was I supposed to blend in with the other refugees? They walked among the crowd like ghosts, untouchable and invisible except to pass out long flutes of sticky, pale gillwater and give canapes to the elite.

If I hadn’t ended up shoved out an airlock, if I still had my armor, if I wasn’t worried about finding Destiny, I probably would have done something stupid like tried to overthrow the government.

Maybe I would have been in the middle of the Riots that half the ponies were talking about.

“A glass, miss?” asked a mare a half-dozen years younger than I was and a tenth of the age I felt. She was so bright and positive this had to either be her first job or she was just so good at faking it she could win an award. I felt ashamed I hadn’t noticed her walking up to me.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the offered glass. She nodded and moved on, back towards the kitchen. I’d been the last stop. I carefully sniffed at the glass. Had I doped the right cask? I’d feel really dumb if I’d messed up at the last second like--

The smell hit me like a cloudship’s prow smashing into me at flanking speed. It was the dank rot of hot garbage and burning sugar. I coughed and held the glass at hoof’s length.

“Oh buck that’s worse than I thought,” I gasped, trying not to use my nose at all. A wave of horror spread across the room, subtle at first, ponies trying to hide it, and then it all broke at once when a hippogriff tried to take a sip and spat it up, hacking and wheezing.

“Poison!” he gasped, swooning and dropping the glass. Everypony else looked at their glasses, and the few who hadn’t noticed the smell yet sure knew about it now. Somepony fell over, fainting. Ponies screamed.

“I guess it worked,” I said mildly.

Security ponies rushed in as the chaos swelled. Huckleberry stood up and pulled out a badge, shouting for order. Things were going exactly as planned.

---

“You were a cop all along,” I accused.

The party had been broken up, and everypony had been escorted out. Even Goby had been forced out along with his employees, under the guise of an emergency health inspection and a suspicion that he might try to destroy evidence. I got to stay behind as a ‘witness’ for an interview.

“Halfway,” Huckleberry admitted. “Actually, I’m a Health Inspector, so it’s a little like being an undercover officer crossed with a restaurant reviewer. The pay isn’t great, but the bribes?” He smiled. “The bribes are large, frequent, and the worst thing on my conscience is not telling ponies that there was a radroach in the kitchen.”

“...That’s why you had the exterminator stuff,” I said slowly.

“I knew about the roaches here weeks ago. I was leaning on Mister Goby a bit to get it sorted. He thought my stake in this little scheme was a kickback from what he was going to pay you.”

“So what was the real stake?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure the police aren’t going to keep him in prison for long.”

“The real stake is I have the run of the place for a few hours,” Huckleberry said. “Sending you in after Briney’s maneframe without the right tools or even knowing what to look for? That’s why the Guild is on the back hoof.”

“I really hope you don’t want me to hack this one,” I said.

The mottled blue-purple pony laughed at that. “No, that’s my job. You are off the hook, mostly. You just need to stick around long enough for me to download the files from his maneframe to a portable disk, and then you’re off back home.”

“Sounds good,” I sighed.

“Want a drink while you wait?” he asked. “We have to check the other casks for contaminants anyway.”

I remembered just how gillwater was made, that writhing tank full of lampreys, and shook my head, trying not to dry heave. “I’m good,” I squeaked.

Comments

[Thought Prism]

Piper is great, hope he comes back later. Also the abrupt scene cut of Camomile having just vented about everything had me laughing.

[Reese]

"himself. He smile faded. “Now get to work"
"himself. His smile faded. “Now get to work"?

"The giant big hissed one more time"
"The giant bug hissed one more time"?

"it. SImple response"
"it. Simple response"?