Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 78: Night and Day

I flashed my badge when I stepped on the sea wagon, and the pony at the controls barely even glanced at it, just nodding back to the seats behind him, half of them already filled with ponies. I returned the nod with the same casual indifference and trotted down the aisle, settling into a seat at random.

“Hey there,” the pony next to me said, offering me her hoof to shake. I stared at it for a moment, and her cheeks turned red. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she quickly snapped into a salute. “I apologize, sir!”

“It’s fine,” I said. It’s not like I was a real officer anyway. “I don’t think you have to salute while you’re sitting down.” The sea wagon jolted into movement, catching the guide wire above and puttering along through the water towards the next stop. Everypony on board was part of Security. Seemed like I was in the right place.

“Right!” the pony gasped. “Sorry. This is my first real assignment. I’m Carrot. I mean, I’m Officer Carrot Kimchi, sir!” She had a friendly grin and red freckles spread across her orange face. Sort of cute, even if she wasn’t my type.

Carrot had the pressed uniform and go-getter attitude I’d expect to see from an Enclave soldier back home, but that was largely because the military was just sort of parade duty unless you were in special forces. It was easy to keep a uniform pressed if you didn’t have to wrestle a monster or get shot at.

“Relax,” I said. Her energy was making me nervous. “I’m a fresh transfer too.”

“Is that a PipBuck?” Carrot asked. I looked down at my left foreleg. It was a refurbished model, with maybe half the functions broken, but it would work as a portable terminal. Nopony trusted me alone with computers, so I had to carry along a helper. “I wish I had one. There aren’t enough to go around in the Stable.”

“I’m still getting used to it,” I told her. “It’s sort of clunky.”

She looked me over in the gloom of the transport’s cabin. “Are you a refugee from the surface? Or, um, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t--”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Yes, I am.” It was a good excuse for not knowing basic facts or names. “Why do you ask?”

She looked around the cabin like she was worried one of the other officers might be listening in, then leaned closer to speak quietly. “It’s really dangerous up there, right? How did you get those scars?”

“Most of them have boring stories,” I admitted.

“What about that one?” she pointed to my forehead.

“Shot at point-blank range,” I said. “Almost died.”

“What about that?” she pointed to my neck.

“Had my throat slit. That one was bad, too.”

“That one?” She poked at the edge of a scar on my chest. I tugged my collar down a little to show her the burn.

“Cloudship laser anti-missile system. Those things really pack a punch close-in.”

“Wow,” she whispered. “How did that even happen? An accident?”

“Nah, they were trying to blast me off the hull,” I said. “Somepony convinced me I’d be able to take out a Raptor one-on-one as long as I moved quickly enough.”

“I guess it didn’t end well for you,” she said sympathetically.

“It went worse for the Raptor. I think it crashed down somewhere outside Dark Harbor.”

Carrot’s eyes were wide, in awe at a story I was, admittedly, abridging heavily in my favor. Almost all the damage to the ship had been done by Four in the Grandus, and that thing had been strong enough to mortally wound the Raptor just from Four getting annoyed.

I really missed Four. Even though she’d crushed my bones. I think Carrot saw something in my expression, because she cleared her throat.

“How many ponies have you killed?” she asked quietly. “I never killed anypony, but I heard it gets easier after the first time, and I know a Security officer needs to be ready at all times to protect the needs of the many, but…”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. I could feel the answer weighing down on me. It was worse than knowing the number right away. “I don’t even know how to count it. Too many. A lot of them, I didn’t kill myself but they died because I made mistakes.”

Carrot winced. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “So what do you know about this assignment?”

She perked up at that. She looked like the type of pony to actually read every piece of paper they were given. Carrot cleared her throat and looked up, her eyes moving as she spoke like she was reliving the experience of reading something.

“The XAA-04 Nightingale is a prototype Assault Armor developed by a joint project between Seaquestria and Equestria’s Ministry of Awesome after the Battle of Stalliongrad. It was a project commanded by the Seaquestrian royal family to maintain Sovereignty against other nations with their own Megaspells, and was designed to serve as a mobile launch platform for a medium-range Megaspell to go around issues with developing a ballistic weapon that could survive launch from an underwater silo.”

I nodded and tried to play it off like I knew any of that. “Any idea what kind of megaspell it’s loaded with? I wasn’t briefed on it, but if it’s going to be deployed, I’d like to know what to expect.”

“Well…” Carrot frowned. “I’m not sure. It has to be Equestrian-designed, so it’s not a balefire weapon. Not that anypony would use a balefire weapon inside a populated city! You’d have to be crazy!”

I nodded in agreement with that.

“Equestria had a lot of different megaspells,” Carrot said. “In the beginning, they were single-use rituals, and it took years to turn them into a talisman-based weapon instead of a live casting. They experimented with everything from large-scale megaweather spells to solar storms to non-lethal sleep plagues.”

“I doubt we’ll be using a weather spell underwater,” I pointed out.

Carrot blushed furiously and saluted on instinct. “Of course, sir! You’re absolutely right! And a solar weapon wouldn’t reach these depths! It’s probably a basic megascale evocation effect! A giant fireball spell! It was the most common ‘canned’ megaspell!”

“It’s still insane to use it inside the city,” I mumbled.

“I’m worried about it too,” Carrot admitted. “But I’m sure our superiors know what they’re doing. They wouldn’t order us to deploy a weapon like that if it wasn’t absolutely needed.”

The transport jolted to a stop.

“Looks like we’re here,” Carrot said. “I can’t wait to see the Nightingale!” She giggled and held back a squeal like she was about to meet a pop idol. I raised an eyebrow. The mare blushed again and stopped, mortified. “I mean, um, this is a very important assignment and I’m going to do my best, sir!”

I stood up and helped Carrot to her hooves. “I know you will.” I grimaced, trying not to show how uneasy I was. “You seem like a good pony. Try not to get caught up in anything you’ll regret.”

She nodded, looking confused. I walked out of the transport while the rest of the ponies were getting their gear together. I hated being reminded that not everypony on the wrong side was a bad pony.

---

“Are you still there?” I asked quietly. I was leaning against the wall, just a little out of the way. Panels were pulled off the walls, wires and pipes run through bypasses, and tools were left everywhere when mechanics dashed from one spot to the next.

“I’m reading you loud and clear,” Destiny said, her voice crackling over the undersea radio.

“Security here is a joke,” I said. “They barely even looked at my papers. Is this what it was like during the war?"

“Chamomile, think about where you are,” Destiny said. “You’re a mile underwater. That’s a lot of security all on its own. It’s not like there are zebras around to worry about, and the criminal elements are all secretly working with the police anyway. Who do they even need to secure against? Monsters?”

“They did let one SIVA-infested monster pony in here already,” I noted.

“You don’t count. You came with paperwork. Is the PipBuck still okay?”

I looked down at it, tapping at the big buttons and dial. The screen flickered to life, showing a litany of error messages. I hadn’t been lying to Carrot when I said it was only half-working.

“As okay as it’s going to be, I guess,” I replied.

“We knew it wasn’t going to pick up your biometrics, and the inventory management and eyes-up sparkle weren’t working even before I wiped the database. Just tell me if the programs I loaded are still there.”

“I think so.” I selected one from the screen and went into it, the monochrome screen jittering and flickering a few times before coming back and showing scrolling text.

“Good. It’s a shotgun approach, but if you plug it in and just let the scripts run, it should eventually get through. In theory.”

I backed out and turned the screen off, not wanting to attract attention with the light. “I sure hope you’re right because my backup plan of picking up the megaspell with my bare hooves and running for it is objectively awful.”

I steadied myself, trying to look confident, then trotted into the hangar. The hallway let me out on a walkway overlooking the dock where the Nightingale was sitting in the water, half-submerged and looking as threatening and terrible as some kind of huge, prehistoric shark.

“Guess that’s it,” I mumbled. I trotted past a pony and returned the salute they snapped at me. “I can’t believe they were sitting on this for two hundred years.”

“They didn’t have a reason to get rid of it,” Destiny said quietly, her volume turned down low on the off-chance somepony might hear the buzzing earpiece. “No government likes giving up power. Your Enclave held onto the cloudship fleet to maintain their independence, you can’t blame Seaquestria for keeping their ace in the hole against the old world’s superpowers.”

“Yeah, you never know when you might need to really show some raiders who’s boss,” I agreed. I tried to look confident about walking up to two ponies tapping at a terminal with wires dangling over the water and into a panel on the side of the Assault Armor. The full shape of the thing was on screen, something like a smooth flying wedge with big manipulator claws hanging back along its bottom and movable wings equipped with hydrojet thrusters and launch tubes folded clamshell-like to the sides of the body.

“...Looks like we got it locked down,” one of the technicians said, a little purple hippogriff with a bobcut. She tabbed through to another screen just full of graphs, putting a pen in her mouth for a moment while shuffling papers.

“It’s quite a machine,” I said without preamble. “Have they loaded the megaspell yet?”

“Um…” the tech looked down at her papers. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“I’ll take it for a spin, then.” I spread my wings and flew over to the bow of the assault armor, looking around for a moment before finding the hatch release. A heavily-armored section popped open with a hiss of released air.

“Hey! Just what are you doing over there?!” the tech yelled. She motioned to the other pony with them, and the second pony ran off, going for the fire alarm.

I gave her a smile and tossed a clumsy salute before hopping in. I’d never actually been inside Assault Armor before, and I looked over the tight cockpit and strange controls with some confusion.

“Destiny, tell me you’ve got a user manual,” I said.

“Take that PipBuck off and plug it into a data port,” she said. I unhooked the thing from my foreleg and pulled the lead from the rear, connecting it to the armor’s systems. Monochrome screens flickered and flashed, booting through different systems.

The entire hangar rocked, and an alarm blared.

“Hull breach on deck ten, forward section!” somepony yelled. “We’ve got multiple incoming sleds!”

“Who’s attacking us?!” somepony else shouted.

“Flares in every direction! Get security deployed to the ridgeline!”

“Sounds like they’re busy,” I said. “Chum Buddy is right on time.”

There was a spark and a pop, and a tiny fleck of pain on my skin. I looked outside. Soldiers were starting to shoot at me. I raised a hoof to shield my eyes, and two more air rifle rounds hit my skin, just barely hard enough to make me bleed.

“How long is this going to take?” I asked. “We’re on a time limit here!”

“Less than a minute! You need to get on the controls.”

“Er…” I hesitated.

“Lay down on the bench, then put your hooves in the manipulator braces,” Destiny instructed. “According to the diagrams I’ve got, there should be grips at the ends for your hooves. Squeeze them twice.”

I settled down on the bench and pushed my hooves into what looked like big, padded boots. As soon as I squeezed the grips, all four inflated around my legs to lock them in place.

“Is it supposed to do that?” I asked.

“Probably. Let’s get you sealed up.” The hatch hissed closed, locking into place and leaving me in the dark, all four legs locked in place, with the only light coming from monochrome screens flickering through technical phrases I couldn’t begin to understand.

“Destiny!” I hissed, starting to feel claustrophobic.

“Main camera coming online,” Destiny said. Something whirred over my head, and a projector sprung to life, turning the bare metal of the hatch into a screen. It was blurry at first, then quickly snapped into focus, showing frantic ponies running around on walkways. “Sonar online.”

There was a massive ping, and the ponies closest to the Nightingale reeled back, folding their ears back and stumbling with sudden disorientation. A wireframe projection appeared over the camera view, showing the contours of the terrain even through the murky water.

“Let’s get out of here before they find a way to stop us!” I yelled. “How do I go?”

“Back legs! Press down with your hooves to go, lean one direction or the other to turn!”

That seemed intuitive enough. I kicked back, and the Nightingale surged into motion. On instinct, I tilted my legs, and the machine dove towards the bay exit. The bulkhead hatch leading out was clearly outlined in yellow, with flashing red lights probably related to the emergency I was causing. Power lines, data cables, and fuel pipes ripped away from ports, the Nightingale’s safety systems disconnecting them safely just before they ruptured.

“Front hooves for those big claws?” I guessed, flexing. The manipulator arms unfolded, and with the force-feedback from the boots, I could feel the slight resistance of the water. I experimentally squeezed, and the three-taloned grips moved along with me. “Nice.”

“You’re a natural,” Destiny said, with a tone indicating that she was distracted by managing some absurd number of subsystems on her own.

I reached out for the seam of the door and dug in, the clawed talons ripping right through the pressure door. It peeled like an orange. Not like one of those small oranges you can sort of peel in one go, but the other kind where it’s messy and you have to rip and tear at it and it comes off in chunks and eventually you get fed up and just eat it anyway and get some of the gross white part of the peel but you eat it anyway because you’d feel dumb spitting it out.

“I could get used to this!” I said. “Why didn’t Equestria ever mass-produce this kind of stuff?”

“The MWT was willing to spend a small fortune keeping each soldier alive, but Assault Armor costs a large fortune,” Destiny said. “Besides, most Assault Armor is dangerous to the pony wearing it. If there was one thing the Ministry hated, it was anything that would hurt the soldier using it.”

“Looks like you’re causing a ruckus over there!” Chum Buddy’s voice came over the radio.

“Thanks for the distraction,” I said.

“No worries,” he said. “A few empty sleds, some fireworks, and some real shots to keep their heads down. Get out of there fast. I don’t think they’ll be fooled for long.”

“Got it. Watch my back while I get this thing out of here.” The controls felt awkward and I was only nominally in real control. I’d probably need a college-level course to manage it without Destiny co-piloting remotely.

“I’m not letting you go anywhere!’ somepony shouted.

A single pony jetted past me on a sled, like a guppy swerving in front of a mako shark. Bubbles trailed from their rebreather as they struggled to get the armored Stable Security sled to come to a halt in my way, flashing lights and raising a rifle.

“You’re under arrest!’ they yelled.

“Officer Carrot Kimchi?” I asked, finally recognizing the voice.

She fired a warning shot past the Nightingale’s nose. “I don’t know why you’re trying to steal that machine, but it doesn’t belong to you! I’m bringing it back to where it belongs!”

“Stand down,” I said. “I didn’t come here to kill ponies.”

“You stole a megaspell! If you stop right now, I’ll go easy on you.”

“This megaspell was going to be aimed right at the ponies you’re in charge of protecting,” I said.

“My orders--”

I rolled my eyes. There had to be a way to get her to stand down. “The first duty of a soldier is to the ponies they serve. Being an officer means looking at the big picture!”

“Yes, sir! Sorry, sir!” Carrot yelped, saluting.

“She’s the enemy, you idiot!” somepony yelled over the open channel. The displays around me blared a warning, and I jerked myself to the side, the massive assault armor flexing one wing and jetting to the side with a blast of thrust. A torpedo slid through where I’d been, exploding against the seabed.

A team of ponies with armored wetsuits, sleds, and more combat experience than Carrot were coming down at us from above. My sonar pinged, and they lit up on the display, dropping in from above. Four ponies in suits that had to be military, not police, surrounded me.

“Good work distracting him, officer. We’ve got it from here,” the leader said. “Pony in the Nightingale, you are surrounded! Surrender immediately!”

I looked around, trying to figure out how to switch comm lines to get a private signal. “Come on… why did they design this so you need to press buttons blindly to do anything?”

“Switching to encrypted radio,” Destiny said. There was a sharp click and the white noise of the static around me changed its tone, like an instrument switching pitch.

“Thanks,” I said. “It was only a matter of time before I said something stupid.”

“If you just let them shoot you down, they’ll be able to recover the megaspell,” Destiny warned. “They won’t have the Nightingale’s hardware launch authorization, but it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out how to short-circuit the bomb and make it go off anyway.”

“Got it,” I said. “What do we have for nonlethal weapons?”

“Bold of you to assume there are any. You’ve got some multi-launch torpedo tubes, the megaspell launcher, and that’s about it.”

“I’ll have to improvise,” I said. The ponies at my sides came at me at the same time in a pincer movement. With a kick, I sent the Nightingale jumping forward, hydrojet thrusters sending a hurricane of turbulence behind me. The leader of the team raised his torpedo launcher a moment too slowly, obviously not expecting the assault armor to move that quickly. I grabbed him with the clawed manipulators, ripping him off the sled he’d been riding on.

Trying to disarm him was like attempting to very delicately use scissors as a clamp, and it ended poorly. He screamed, and the launcher came off along with his entire leg. I swore in shock and alarm, and my flinch tossed him aside. The ponies behind me had scattered in my wake, thrown aside like leaves in the wind.

“I didn’t mean to do that!” I called out.

“You’re still on an encrypted channel,” Destiny pointed out.

“I know! Buck, I’m bad at this.” I forced the Nightingale into a tight turn. I accidentally pushed too hard at one of the controls, and a button clicked. A spray of bubbles exploded from the armor’s left wing, and a brace of torpedoes swam forward.

The armored ponies were still recovering from the sudden rip tide and didn’t have a chance to recover. One of the torpedoes went wide and hit rocks instead of ponies, which would have been great except it set off the others in a chain reaction, the explosions pulverizing the other three inside their armor. Blood leaked from the ruptured seams and water rushed in.

“What happened?” Destiny asked. “I can’t see what you’re doing.”

“Nothing, uh, nothing’s wrong,” I said quickly. “Just a minor weapon malfunction. Everything’s cool.”

“They’re all dead, aren’t they?” Destiny guessed.

Carrot Kimchi swam up from where she’d been hiding, brandishing a diving knife. She wasn’t a particularly swift swimmer, and just got into my face and started stabbing, going for the edge of the hatch. It took me a moment to realize she might be able to get to the hatch controls and open it up when I didn’t even have a wetsuit, much less a rebreather.

“Get off me!” I yelped. I reached for her with a manipulator and just managed to smack it against the Nightingale’s hull, making the whole ship ring like a bell.

The sonar pinged, and Carrot flinched, stopping for a moment.

“Destiny, maximum power on the sonar!” I yelled.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Destiny said. There was a warning message on one of the screens around me, and the sonar erupted with a massive bass throb, blowing Carrot away, the pony shuddering and clutching her head. The wire outlines showed everything in fine, bright detail for a moment as the sonar wash rolled over them, then faded back to almost nothing, just basic shapes.

“I think that got her,” I said.

“That blew out the active sonar,” Destiny said. “You’re half-blind.”

“Let’s get the buck out of here before they figure that out,” I said. “Get Chum Buddy on the radio and let’s see where he’s planning on hiding this thing.”

---

The water around us turned from faint blue to black as we descended into the trench. A loud creak and pop sounded through the Nightingale’s hull, along with a long squeezing rattle as the weight of the ocean settled down onto it.

“How deep can this thing go?” I swallowed, watching gauges sweep towards the red.

“We need to get deep enough that it’s going to keep them off our tails,” Chum Buddy said. “Even the hippogriffs don’t come this deep. Most of them can’t handle the abyss. Besides, why come all the way down here when you could make ponies do it for you for some beads and trinkets?”

“Are you going to turn this into a metaphor about how the Enclave treats ponies on the surface?” I asked. The Nightingale’s hull creaked and strained. Water was getting in somewhere. I could just tell, sensing it like a boogeymare hiding under the bed.

“I’d never do such a thing,” Chum Buddy assured me. “Besides, the last thing you need is somepony complaining at you when you’re already doing something stupid trying to save a bunch of ponies.” I could just see him ahead, headlights shining through the darkness. One flickered out, and he swore. “In more important news, I think this sled has had it.”

I couldn’t make out fine details on the sensors. The walls around us were invisible except in the wireframe outline of the sonar reconstruction. “What’s wrong?”

“She took a glancing hit in that fight. Just a little crack, but…” I mentally filled in the shrug I couldn’t see. “Anyway, the main gear housing just went. Crushed like a tin can.”

“Is it safe for a pony to be out there?” I asked.

“There’s a reason I wore this hardsuit, and it’s not just because I wanted to look like a gillpony,” Chum Buddy said. “It’s rated for these depths. Think I can hitch a ride with you?”

“Climb on,” I said, extending a manipulator towards him. I saw the smaller lights of his suit in the gloom, moving just ahead of the slow refresh of the passive sonar. He clambered onto the claw and wrapped his hooves around it.

“That’s better. Maybe they’ll find the broken sled and think we bought it, eh?” Chum Buddy joked. His voice sounded strained. He was out there with even less protection than I had. I started moving, taking it slow so I wouldn’t shake him off. “We need to go a bit lower. Just keep on following the trench down and we should see it.”

“You never explained what ‘it’ is,” I reminded him.

“Eh…” he shifted his grip, trying to peer through the gloom ahead of us, the lights on his suit barely even reaching past the Nightingale’s bow. “Back when they were first building the Stable they started with a foundation. Somewhere to anchor everything else. They sank a ship, fixed it to the sea bed, and built outwards from there.”

“And they built it this deep… why?”

“Ah, well, for the most common reason of all,” Chum Buddy said. “Nopony in Seaquestria wanted to look at the fishin’ thing. They like the pretty towers, they appreciate the electricity, but, to paraphrase the griffons, they don’t like seeing how the sausage is made.”

I followed the canyon walls around another turn, and the platform came into view, an outpost in the inky darkness shining spotlights in every direction, more than half of them just pointed at the seabed. It looked like some kind of old warship, with tiny portholes and thick bulkheads. Thick pipes grew from every side of it and crawled up the canyon walls to the city above.

“There are ponies down there,” I realized, spotting them slowly walking along the bottom along the pipes.

“Aye,” Chum Buddy said quietly. “Gillponies. They don’t complain about the conditions, and they’re still just barely smart enough to fix leaks. They’re a bit like trained animals.”

I slowly puttered over them, watching one of the big, slow ponies using a rivet gun to fix a patch over a fitting between two pipes.

“Should we be worried about them?” I asked.

“Nah. They’re the only ones down here these days, and they aren’t going to report anything up the ladder. If we don’t bother them, they probably won’t even notice we’re here. Sad things, aren’t they? Left down here and forgotten about.”

“Is this another metaphor?” I asked.

Chum Buddy sighed. “Stars and garters, Chamomile, I’m just waxing poetic. It’s not all about you and how you treat other ponies. Now would you kindly dock this thing so I can stop hanging on like a barnacle?”

---

There were a couple gillponies shuffling around the moon pool when I pulled the Nightingale into port. We might as well have been invisible to them. I took a deep breath of fresh air the moment the claustrophobic canopy of the assault armor hissed open, and the stink of salt, old metal, and algae hit me in a tide of miasma.

“Still better than swimming around outside,” I decided. “You still with me, Chum?”

“Not entirely dead yet,” Chum Buddy joked. “Think you can get me over to dry land?”

“Best I can do is slightly damp land.” I carefully lifted the manipulator he was holding on to and helped him over to the deck around the pool, using the claws to clamp down on the edge and anchor the Nightingale in place.

While he was climbing out, I wiggled a little and made a whining sound that only somepony

“Hold on,” Destiny said. “I’m releasing the pressure cuffs.”

The airbags holding me securely in place let go with a soft hiss, and I pulled myself free of the machine. “That is not a fun experience,” I said. “I felt like my legs were going to fall asleep.”

“That’s what you get with a prototype,” Destiny noted. “How’s it feel being Seaquestria’s most wanted?”

“Feels a lot like I’ll be happier when I can find a hole to dump this megaspell into,” I said. “Think we could ditch it down here?”

“Bad idea,” Chum Buddy said. He pulled the helmet of his diving suit off and shook sweat from his mane. “Pressure could set it off at this depth, and even if it doesn’t, I don’t fancy a gillpony coming across it and smacking it with a wrench.”

“Would it do any damage if it did go off?” I asked.

“Not directly,” Destiny said. “It’s a relatively low-power megaspell, for whatever that’s worth. It’s only enough to burn a small city to the ground, not vaporize it entirely. I’d be worried about seaquakes. At worst, it could shake the city apart.”

“Fun,” I mumbled.

Chum Buddy laughed, and was cut off with a sharp cough, clutching his side and grimacing.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, flying to his side.

“It’s nothing,” he lied. He gave me a strained smile. I should have known something was wrong. He leaned on the railing, trying to hide the wound.

“Come on, let me see,” I said. “I saw what the pressure did to your sled. It can’t have been good for you.”

“I’ll tap into the Nightingale’s external cameras,” Destiny said. “I might be able to walk you through some basic first aid.”

“It’s really not needed,” Chum said, starting to panic. I narrowed my eyes and grabbed his hoof. He was a unicorn, injured, and not in any shape to hoof-wrassle me. He looked away, like his wound was shameful.

“This is…” I hesitated. “What am I looking at?”

His hardsuit was ruptured, shrapnel or something else having torn into his side. I could see the unicorn’s coat, and that was where normality ended. Right under his skin was a layer of now-broken hexagonal scales, and where there should have been gore and blood were wires and blinking lights, plastic tubing and rubbery padding.

“This is SIVA,” I said, recognizing the style of technology, the quasi-biological structures and humming micromachines. Now that I was listening for it, I could feel the buzz of the near-field communications coming off him like an electric aura.

“What the buck?” Destiny gasped. “That’s impossible.”

“I can explain!” Chum Buddy said. “It’s not what you think.”

“You’d better start explaining fast,” Destiny said. “Chamomile, that’s my brother!”

Comments

[Thought Prism]

Oh. I thought Destiny's brother was 100% committed to exterminating the zebra, though? Why would he be hanging out with criminals in Seaquestria? Also, side note, no wonder you never gave us his physical details. I'd assumed it was just to avoid slowing the pacing.

[Reese]

"I hadn’t been lying to Carrot when I said it was only half-working."
Didn't she just think that, rather than say it?

"“Lay down on the bench"
"“Lie down on the bench"?

"and made a whining sound that only somepony"
The end of that sentence appears to be missing.

[Ahsoka Tano]

RIP Carrot