Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 81: Monster Mash

Some things don’t get easier with practice. Case in point, I was sliding down into the gullet of a giant monster, and it was even worse than the first time I’d been inside something large enough to swallow me whole.

I couldn’t breathe. Walls of flesh squeezed me on all sides. Bile was starting to burn my skin. It was a bad time and nopony was having fun. My right forehoof twitched, and my journey into the wonders of biology slowed, the knife in my hoof springing out and digging into the wall.

There was no leverage to be had, but the creature clearly liked this even less than I liked being eaten alive. It choked and tried to vomit, the blade sliding through its flesh as easily as it would through butter. Something had to give, and with a gout of black and blue blood, I fell out into the open air, coughing and trying to breathe.

The smell hit me in the face and I started dry-heaving. Behind me, the monster thrashed, sending spurts of gore into the air to rain down on the harsh red earth of the Badlands. It was almost twenty paces long, a huge worm big enough to, well, swallow a pony whole. The wound I’d torn in it was mortal, and I watched, too exhausted to do more than just stare at it while it writhed and finally collapsed.

“Buck,” I sighed, sitting down in a puddle of gory mud. “I hate this place.”

“You’re alive!” Destiny popped out from behind a rock, telekinetically dragging the burlap bag of our supplies along behind her. “Alive… and slimy.”

“Couldn’t you have shot that thing with a mind bullet or something?” I groaned, scratching at my skin. It was that annoying level of irritation from the bile and acid where I was super itchy but scratching made it painful instead of relieving anything.

“I tried,” Destiny said. She opened the bag and started rummaging around, producing a broad cactus leaf. “It didn't even notice. Here. I think if you rub this against the burns, it’ll help.”

I took the cactus and split it open, spreading some of the goop inside the thick leaf against my foreleg. “Good thing you know a little about desert survival. I wouldn’t know anything about what plants were useful for medicine.”

“Oh no, I don’t know anything,” Destiny said with a clear mental shrug. “But it’s goopy! Goop is usually good for burns!”

“Gimme a break,” I groaned. “What if it’s poison?”

“You’ve been eating cactus for the last two days. If it was poison, you’d have symptoms.” Destiny paused. “Probably. When we find ponies we’ll get a second opinion.”

“Well I think it’s time to vary my diet,” I said, turning to the creature’s corpse.

---

I vomited again, and it was even worse coming up than it was going down. I wasn’t even sure if I could really call it meat. It was more like leathery, tough jelly filled with sand.

“It’s so bad,” I sobbed. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever eaten!”

“Then why did you have two servings?” Destiny asked.

“I thought it might be an acquired taste!” I whined, vomiting again.

Destiny sighed. “I hope it’s not too radioactive. I can’t even tell with no working instruments. I almost wish we’d kept that broken PipBuck. It might be StableTec garbage but at least it had a decent rad counter.”

“Let’s just hope there’s somepony in town,” I groaned, stumbling through the broken gate we’d spotted a few miles back. I could have flown over it, and I had flown most of the last few miles, but my stomach was feeling too rocky for anything except slow, careful steps.

“We might be out of luck,” Destiny said, flying ahead of me. “I’m not seeing anypony.”

I looked up. The buildings were all weather-bleached wood, beaten down by wind and time, paint scrubbed off by the sandy soil and leaving everything the same dead color. A breeze blew through the single main road, and a tumbleweed rolled between the buildings, getting caught on a fallen sign for what had been a general store before freeing itself and rolling away. Even it didn’t want to stay here.

“There has to be somepony,” I mumbled. I could feel somepony watching us, that subtle pressure that came from being the center of attention. Empty windows like the eye sockets in a skull stared down at us from both sides while we trotted into the middle of town. A clocktower leaned slightly, age leaving it ready to topple over, casting a shadow like an accusing finger at us.

“I don’t think this place even had many ponies living here before the war,” Destiny said. “Wait, look!”

Following her gaze, I spun around, only to find a broken train platform.

“Did you see somepony?” I asked.

“No, but this might be just what we need!” Destiny said. “The train tracks have to go somewhere! We can just follow them to another town and look for ponies there!”

“Good thinking,” I said. “Did I ever tell you how nice it is to have a smart pony with me?”

“You’ve said it at least once every few hours,” Destiny noted. She flew over to me and perched on my back. “I don’t want to stay in this town for too long. I’ve got a bad feeling about it.”

“You too?” I asked.

“It’s probably just nerves,” she admitted. “The ponies here left town almost two hundred years ago, there’s no way whatever made them leave is still around. Maybe there’s a Stable nearby…”

“We’ll never find it if there is.” I looked over the run-down buildings around us. “Before we leave we should at least do a quick pass and try to find food and water. You might not need anything, but I’m so hungry and that food was so baaaaaad!”

“Right. There should be a well. It might not be perfectly safe, but… a little radiation is probably better than dehydration for now.”

---

“If they’ve got a well it has to be out here,” I said. We’d wandered into an orchard at the edge of town, or at least what was left of an orchard. The trees were all dead, talons of broken dry wood reaching for the sky. Even leaves were a rare sight. Wind had stripped almost everything bare except where they’d gotten trapped in a hollow or under fallen branches.

“This place must have been much less arid before the war,” Destiny said.

“Had to be,” I agreed, poking at an exposed root with my hoof. “Even earth ponies couldn’t have kept trees alive in the middle of a desert. Right?”

“No. I mean… probably not.” Destiny shifted where she was resting on my back. “I didn’t really know a lot of earth ponies.”

“Right, right,” I nodded. “You were a shut-in who only knew other nerds working in your lab.”

She made an annoyed noise but didn’t refute that.

The place only got stranger the more I looked around. There were a few clearings full of tall, dried-out grass. Nothing edible, just dead and brown, and with strange circles in the fields like something had pushed everything down.

A gust blew through the lines of dead trees, and my ears twitched, trying to focus on the faint sound the breeze had carried.

“What was that?” I whispered.

“A monster?” Destiny guessed. “Be careful.”

“Maybe this one will taste better…” I took off, getting into the air to look around. I wasn’t going to risk getting swallowed whole by a monster coming up from below. Not again. I got above the highest of the clawing, dead branches and spotted it instantly. It was a splash of color in a sand-colored world.

“Do you see that?” Destiny asked.

Instead of answering, I flew towards what I was sure had to be a mirage. The most elaborate mirage I’d ever seen. A single, living tree still alive and thriving in the wasteland. The wind blowing through its boughs was the sound I’d heard, rustling and alive in a way nothing else in this ghost town was.

“That’s really something,” I said, setting down next to it. It didn’t vanish or try to eat me. It did what a tree should do. It stood there and provided some welcome shade. “Think those are safe to eat?”

I pointed to some apples in the branches, glittering like rubies.

---

“You realize those might be poison, right? There’s no telling what leeched into the soil.”

I shrugged and bit into another apple. The cores were a little tougher but still edible, and I was hungry enough that I wasn’t going to just toss them. I did keep the seeds, though. I don’t know why, exactly. I guess it just felt like the right thing to do.

“Whatever,” Destiny sighed. “It can’t be worse than eating random monsters.”

“Maybe there’s nothing wrong.” I paused to crunch into another bite, trying not to let even one drop of juice escape my lips. “Sometimes good things happen!”

“Maybe,” Destiny cautioned. “Or maybe this tree belongs to somepony.”

She nodded into the distance. I followed her gaze. While I’d been eating, things had started to get dark. Long shadows from the mesas around us cast the town into uneven shadow, and the orchard was a tangle of darkness around me. In that tangle I could see a moving light, orange and strange, almost boiling, like the glow was coming off it as a gas.

A chill ran down my spine, and it wasn’t just because the temperature was dropping.

“I think we should leave,” I said. I jammed one last apple into the bag and took off, trying to be quiet while dragging a bag of steel plates through the air with me. With one eye on that strange light, I could see it glide smoothly between the trees as if it was floating.

“That’s not unicorn magic,” Destiny whispered.

“Let’s go inside one of the abandoned buildings,” I whispered back.

“You’re not going to charge blindly at it?” Destiny asked, obviously shocked.

“Not until I know it isn’t going to eat me,” I muttered.

I grabbed her in my hooves to make sure she wouldn’t fall behind, then dove down towards the town at the edge of the dead orchard. My night vision wasn’t bad, but not good enough to fight something I couldn’t identify.

I stopped in the air and looked back at the orchard, something pricking at my awareness. Lights swung through the dark, and after spending that time on the bottom of the ocean, it reminded me of an anglerfish, a lure trying to drag me in. I shook myself and looked around, trying to find a building with four walls and a roof.

The little general store on the corner seemed pretty intact, so we went that way, and I flew right to the door, hovering in front of the door and pushing it open, the hinges squealing with age and resistance when I opened it. They weren’t quite rusty, but the weather had twisted the wood just a little. The narrow doorway forced me to drop to the ground to fit through, and I bolted inside, shutting the door as quietly as I could and locking it.

“That’s not going to hold,” Destiny noted. She floated out of my hooves and cast a light spell, a ball of light floating to the ceiling and sticking there like a fluorescent bulb. “A foal could kick it open.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I looked around the store. It was a pretty typical shop from the pre-war era, lots of shelves with the top rows just at eye level, turning the shop floor into a labyrinth of great values. They were also flimsy pieces of junk and wouldn’t make for much of a barricade.

I spotted something to the side of the door that might work, though. A Sparkle-Cola machine. It was heavy, sturdy, all metal and machinery, and even I struggled to get it in front of the door. That was good. If it was hard to move from this side, it’d be almost impossible from the outside.

“That should work, right?” I asked, looking at the machine. “Sparkle-Cola Buffalo? What’s that?”

“One of the less popular types,” Destiny said. “It was supposed to taste like apple pie and root beer, but it just tasted like black licorice and sour apples to me.”

I made a sound and rummaged around inside the machine, finding mostly broken and empty bottles. At the very back, there was a single intact bottle. “Nice. Still one left!”

“I know you’re thirsty, but I’m warning you, those are sort of nasty.”

“Trust me, it can’t be worse than Sparkle-Tuna,” I said.

“Sparkle… Tuna?”

---

I couldn’t sleep. The cola helped a little with that. It was full of caffeine and had a strange, bitter taste that kept me from chugging it even with how thirsty I was. It was bracing like black coffee, but even if I’d been having peppermint tea I wouldn’t have been able to rest. It was right out there, a presence, pacing around the outside of the store. Sometimes it would wander off, but it felt more like it was testing me, retreating into hiding to watch from a distance and lure me outside, rather than actually losing interest.

“Can you see anything?” I asked. Destiny shook her head.

“I keep seeing lights, but not the source. I think most of them are far off, but…” she said, trailing off. I nodded in agreement. She backed away from the boarded-up window. “We should check the back room, just to make sure there’s no other way in.”

“Right,” I sighed, drinking the last of the Sparkle-Cola Buffalo and trotting back to the storeroom. “If it could break in, it would.”

I jiggled the handle. Locked. Not that it mattered, with how flimsy the wood was. I popped it with a light kick, and a smell hit me in the snout like it was trying to establish dominance. A rotten smell, but gone all the way to dust and mold.

“Those are corpses,” I said.

There were two skeletons at the back of the room full of crates and broken cardboard boxes. I took a few steps towards them.

“Chamomile, look at this,” Destiny said.

I turned, and she shone a light on the wall next to the door. There were bullet holes in the wall.

“That’s not good,” I said.

“The door was locked from the inside,” Destiny reminded me.

“I know. That’s why it’s especially not good.” I swallowed and stepped closer to the bodies, stopping at a mark on the floor. A set of scars on the boards made by claws that had to belong to a creature with talons each the size of a pony.

And yet, the bodies were intact. Mostly. Some of the bones were broken, but there was no sign they’d been torn apart by some massive monster. Instead, scattered around them were splinters as long as my forehoof.

“It didn’t eat them,” I said to myself.

“How did it even get in?” Destiny asked. “The only window is boarded up!”

A chill ran down my spine. I turned to the window. Rough branches and planks blocked the view, and it took me a moment to realize they were on the outside of the building. And moving.

“Get down!” I shouted, just before it came through. The wooden wall creaked and groaned, distorting like rubber and letting the monster in. It was the same color as the dead trees in the orchard, like a misshapen, half-dead wolf made of broken branches and dried-up roots. Burning orange light came from inside its skull, bleeding out of the eye sockets and into the air around it.

It howled and lunged for me. I caught its canines in my hooves, but the sheer mass of the creature meant that lunge carried me through the wall and into the store’s aisles, shelves full of dish soap and empty boxes toppling in our wake.

“You’re not even the biggest monster I fought today!” I yelled, the charge finally stopping, its energy exhausted for a moment after smashing through most of the shop.

The creature growled and its hackles went up, and it took me way too long to notice that those hackles were very sharp thorns and looked a lot like the splinters that had been in the bodies of the ponies in the back room.

I let go and dove for cover, smashing through a boarded-up window and into the street outside. Thorns sprayed in a shotgun blast of botanical death around me, a half-dozen finding my skin and burrowing inside.

“Ow!” I tried to pull one out and yelped in pain. They were barbed like harpoons! While I was distracted, the whole front of the store warped, the wood twisting out of the way and letting the huge wolf made of dead wood through, closing up behind it like it had never been there at all. “That’s just unfair.”

It growled and paced towards me, hunched and ready to pounce.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Not used to prey that fights back?” I grinned. I was starting to feel myself falling into the groove again. It was just a giant monster. Maybe it had a few special powers, but there wasn’t a city on the line, a megaspell about to go off, a threat that could destroy Equestria, just me and something that wanted to wrassle.

The wolf’s hips wiggled right before it pounced. I braced myself and grabbed for its mouth again, not keen on being eaten.

We smashed into the precariously-leaning clock tower across the street, hard enough that it felt like the ground was rumbling under us. No, actually, it was really rumbling. I looked up and saw the top half of the tower coming down. I let go of the wolf and threw myself to the side just before the clock and all of its mechanisms smashed down like a huge hammer of gears and springs. A bell rang out loudly, and a few gears rolled loose of the cloud of dust.

I backed off, waiting for it to spring out, but when the dust settled, the wolf was pinned against the ground, the metal frame and mechanism of the clock holding its broken back down. It scratched at the dry earth, the dead branches of its body cracking and splintering with strain.

“I guess you really didn’t like that,” I said.

As I watched, Destiny floated over to me, and the wolf broke apart, the orange light inside it flickering and dying while it howled mournfully, the wood breaking up in layers. It was like a corpse decaying, bark and dead leaves flaking away to reveal inner layers of bare white skeletal wood before that, too, fell into a compost heap.

“Looks like you got it,” Destiny noted. “And you only broke half the town in the process.”

“It was one building,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “Don’t exaggerate. I’ve blown up way more than half of a town before and you know it. This is a big improvement over my usual!”

“True, nothing’s even on fire yet,” she agreed.

“It feels anticlimactic,” I agreed. I tapped a hoof, waiting. “Think it’s going to come back bigger and angrier?”

Destiny took a slow look around. “It seems pretty dead.”

I trotted over to it and gave it a sharp kick. “That’s so lame! It was a huge magic monster and, and it probably had some cool backstory like it’s the ghost of all the dead trees or a zebra-made terror weapon or something, and it just falls over and dies because one little building collapses on it?”

“You’re just too used to punching above your weight class and barely surviving.”

“Are you calling me fat? I’m just big boned--” I stopped, ears twitching. “What’s that sound?”

“Oh buck there had better not be more of those things,” Destiny groaned.

The lights in the sky that I’d seen before intensified, sweeping along in ways that no pony or beast could match, turning and maneuvering through sharp corners that would shatter bone and tear muscle.

“Wait, those are searchlights,” I realized. “That sound is--”

The Vertibuck cleared the rooftops, the lights in the sky sweeping down to point at us, turning from what had looked like distant disc-shaped objects into the blinding headlights of one of the Enclave’s armored pony carriers.

“Remain where you are!” blared a voice through a tinny loudspeaker. “We’re from the Enclave and we’re here to help!”

I shielded my face from the blast of dust as the tilt-rotor slowed to a hover, kicking up a cloud of debris even while above the rooftops, the overburdened engines straining. The armored hatch opened, and a fireteam of three ponies flew out, circling around before setting down where the pilot in the Vertibuck could see them, the transport remaining for a few more seconds before flying off, presumably to find an open space large enough that it wouldn’t risk its props in the descent.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see ponies in uniform,” I said. I took a step towards them, and two of the armored soldiers reacted instantly, taking aim at me. I sat down and held up my forehooves. “Woah! Let’s all calm down!”

“What in the-- Chamomile?!” the third pony pushed past the others and took off her helmet, revealing the dark mane of a pony I hadn’t seen in months. Emma looked at me in shock. “You’re alive?!”

“I’m surprised too!” I said.

Emma ran over and pulled me into a hug. “You idiot! Where have you been?!” She let go and took a step back to look more closely at me. “Do you know how long everypony was looking for you? What happened?”

“That’s a really long story,” I said. “Do you have a first-aid kit? I’ve kinda been stabbed a bunch, and it stings like you wouldn’t believe.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Tell me this long story while we’re patching you up.”

---

“...And then the clocktower dropped on it and it died,” I finished. “You know the rest because you were there.” I flexed my hoof, looking at the bandages. They’d finished the first aid long before I’d finished my story.

“I wouldn’t believe it if anypony else told the story,” Emma sighed. “The ponies at Winterhoof said you might still be alive, and I owe somepony a few bits. I didn’t think anypony could really get sucked into another dimension.”

“It wasn’t all that bad,” I assured her. “Except the parts where I died.”

Emma sighed and shook her head. “It’s good to have you back. I just sort of lost hope after a while. You’re officially MIA, but ponies have been gone for longer and come back, and that commission you got just before you vanished should smooth a lot of things over.”

“You lost hope?” I frowned. “I didn’t think you’d write me off so quickly.”

“After a year, even Quattro gave up. I have no idea where she even ran off to. Just left a vague message and never came back. I went back into the regular military--”

“A year?!” I yelped. “I’ve only been gone a few months!”

Emma blinked. “Chamomile, it’s CC 0183. You’ve been gone for three years.”

“That’s impossible…”

“Limbo,” Destiny said. “We should have expected something like this. Time flows differently there. I couldn’t get a real date in Seaquestria because they use their own calendar.”

“Ugh.” I groaned and rubbed my temples. I was starting to get a headache. “I hate complicated stuff. I’ve got too much brain damage for this. Three years. Buck.”

“At least the world didn’t end,” Destiny said.

“Yeah, which only makes me more worried about whatever my mom might be doing behind the scenes,” I said.

“Star Swirl probably would have known if it was time-sensitive. Maybe she’s stuck trying to find the other Exodus Arks? Nopony found the Blue for almost two centuries, the Black and Red could be anywhere. Three years is a drop in the bucket to search a whole world by yourself.”

“Yeah, I hope that’s all it is,” I agreed. “What about you, Emma? How’d you end up down here in the dirt?”

“They needed somepony with real combat experience to foalsit these two recruits on their first scouting mission,” Emma said. “Chamomile, meet Airpony Sunray and Airpony Doppler.”

“Ma’am, are you sure this pony is trustworthy?” one of the other ponies stage-whispered, not nearly quietly enough not to be heard. “That story was total nonsense!”

“I believe her, Sunray” Emma sighed. “Chamomile’s special talent is getting into trouble.”

“Doesn’t that mean we’re in danger just by standing next to her?” the third pony, Doppler, asked.

“Yeah, probably,” I admitted. “I’m not above begging for a ride back to civilization.”

“Or at least a map,” Destiny suggested. “The Exodus Armor needs serious repairs. I want to get us somewhere where I can get a micro-inscriber and a rune probe.”

“Right now we’re pretty far south,” Emma said. “We’re pretty far from anything. This was the frontier even before the war.” She pulled out a rough paper map, spreading it out on the ground. “We’re about here,” she pointed to a spot not far from the coastline.

“We’re not far from Kludgetown,” Destiny mumbled.

“Kludgetown?” Sunray asked.

“It was somewhere between a city-state and a pirate’s nest about… here.” Destiny used a spark of magic to mark it on the map. “It was outside Equestrian control and they remained neutral in the war.”

“And it’s about as far from Canterlot as you can get,” I said. “How big is the Braytech plant there? Don’t give me that look, I know at least a little about the way you think.”

Destiny sighed. “It was an assembly plant for items that were banned or problematic in Equestria.”

“I’m surprised the Ministries didn’t blow it up,” Doppler said.

“Several of the Ministries were large clients. The best way to keep them from sabotaging us was to make them invested in success.”

“Hmmm…” Emma folded her forehooves, thinking. “Okay. We’ll refuel and head there with you.” She looked at the two Airponies. “There should be good salvage. We’ll scout it out and make a report. You know the top brass wants to prioritize equipment and material recovery with the troubles back home.”

“Troubles?"

“I’ve got a long story too,” Emma sighed. “Not as many explosions as yours. I’ll tell you on the flight over.”

---

“What do you mean, war?!” I yelled over the sound of the engines.

“It’s probably not going to actually be war!” Emma replied, holding up a hoof defensively like I might attack her just for giving me some bad news. “It’s just a little disagreement about resources. Neighvarro and Thunderhead are butting heads, and it’ll probably end with both sides making some concessions and calling it a draw!”

“I leave for a little while and you guys mess up the whole Enclave!” I groaned.

“It’s not on us to fix,” Emma said, shrugging. “It did help me get back into a regular assignment, so I’m not exactly upset about all of it! They want all hooves on-deck and even managed to forget that I was technically AWOL for a while!”

“Lucky you,” I retorted. “I liked your old armor better.”

“The stuff Doktor patched up?” Emma asked. “It’s in storage. This set is practically brand-new!”

I shrugged. The armor she was wearing wasn’t a model I’d seen before, but that didn’t mean much. The suits had been produced by the MoA, and that meant a lot of limited-run sets and custom jobs. These had light plating, painted over in a dark blue and black that would make them well-camouflaged against the night sky.

“If it makes you feel better, if we find enough supplies it might tip things over,” Emma said. “Having a surplus of supplies would be a bargaining chip that could be used to end the war faster and without anypony getting hurt!”

She gave me a solid pat on the shoulder. I nodded. She was probably right. Things always did get tense when there was a bad growing season or somepony’s pet project went bad and… well, I’d caused a lot of trouble right before I’d left. The operation in Dark Harbor had probably been abandoned, with the loss of a Raptor and some of the military’s top brass. There was no telling what kind of ripple effect that might have had.

“We’re getting close!” Destiny yelled from the cockpit. She was floating next to the pilot, directing the young stallion where to go. We’d mostly been following a ribbon of asphalt and tracking along the highway into the city. “Do you see that? The big hexagon shape!”

I moved to the front with Emma to look. We could just barely see it up ahead, an unassuming factory surrounded by fences and abandoned cars.

“There was a helipad on the roof,” Destiny said. “If it’s intact we can set down there!”

“Looks like it’s in good condition,” Emma said. “Is there anything we should be worried about when we go in there?”

Destiny tilted, thinking deeply. I could practically see her searching through her scattered, incomplete memories like she was browsing files on a terminal. “I don’t think so. The most dangerous thing we had were some volatile reagents, and they’re either well-sealed and safe or they’ll have dissipated by now. Volatile chemicals don’t last long in the environment on their own.”

“You didn’t make any monsters here, right?” I joked.

“Just the spare parts for them,” Destiny returned. “We’ll be able to get you all fixed up!”

I rolled my eyes.

Emma stood up straighter and looked back at the soldiers under her command. “Both of you, prioritize your safety and keep your eyes open. This should be safe, but…” she glanced back at me. “Experience tells me we’re going to find trouble.”

Comments

[FridayPie]

You probably should;'ve separated this into 3 books. This chapter is a perfect example of time skip for a new book. The previous transfer to underwater city was too.

[Thought Prism]

Oh, hey, I was expecting them to find some Enclave ponies eventually, but not this quickly. And that was some luck, Emma being with them. I suppose it can't always be bad news, haha. Still, going by the Castlevania inspired new cover art, there's probably some sort of radioactive vampire cat army in Kludgetown ready and waiting to try and murder everyone.

[Reese]

Ah, I got caught up just in time for the next part to start, apparently. :)

[Ahsoka Tano]

Nice Emma is still alive looks like we are close too Pips ending