Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 87: Bury a Friend

Ornate Orate put a cup of tea in front of me and gave me a soft pat on the shoulder. The mood was somber, to say the least.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

“His heart gave out,” Emerald Gleam said quietly. “I tried giving him CPR. It wasn’t enough.”

“It’s not like he’s completely dead,” Midi said. She was looking out the window, watching the ponies flying and trotting around Winterhoof’s enclosed campus. “He’ll be fine. Buck, he’ll probably be happier! No sore hip, no worries about food or the cold or griffon raiders!”

“Griffon raiders?” I asked.

“When I was a foal, ponies had more enemies than friends,” Midi said. “I guess that’s not a big worry these days…”

“We’ll have to verify that he’s really in there,” Destiny said. The enchanted veil showed half her silhouette sitting in an otherwise empty chair. “I don’t know how we’d prove it wasn’t just a simulation. Kulaas was playing the part of every pony in the game, it would be trivial for her to pretend to be a pony we barely know…”

“Who’s Sunset Shimmer?” I asked. I still hadn’t gotten any kind of answer to that question. Destiny had tried to avoid it entirely while we were in the game.

“The name is vaguely familiar,” Midnight said. “I swear I’ve heard it before, but there were like a hundred ponies that had names like that. It was a fad for about a century. Every other unicorn was named Morning Twinkle or Sunrise Flash or whatever. They all blend together.”

“She was my boss,” Destiny said, with a sigh. “Whenever I talked about ‘the boss mare’ I meant her. Everyone at BrayTech answered to my family, and we answered to her, and she didn’t answer to anypony at all.”

“Oh right,” I said, remembering a few things. “You said your boss was paranoid, and she used a geas and other stuff to keep you from ever spilling the guts.”

“She was big on operational security,” Destiny agreed. “She was absolutely sure that Celestia would have her head if she even got a hint that she still existed. It’s still difficult to talk about her.”

“Why?” I asked. “What did she do? Everypony knows Princess Celestia was one of the nicest ponies to ever live. I can’t imagine what kind of monster you’d have to be to live in fear of her.”

“Uh,” Midi cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t say I exactly lived in fear of her, but I’d like to note that for a solid thousand years she had a starring role in all my worst dreams. Celestia and her soldiers killed a lot of my kind over the years. Nightmare Moon fixed that when she came back. And then everything went to buck, but a few decades of being out in the open was nice.”

“She wasn’t literally a monster or anything. She was just a normal pony.” Destiny paused. “No, that’s not right. She wasn’t normal. She was exceptional in every way, and she wasn’t afraid to tell everypony around her how much better she was than them.”

“Sunset Shimmer…” Ornate Orate muttered. “Ah! I know where I heard that name!” He trotted over to the bookcase behind his desk and studied it for a few seconds before grabbing a thick tome off the shelf. “Here we are! A Brief History Of Canterlot, Volume 12. It covers the time just up to the return of Princess Luna.”

He put the book on his desk and flipped through it. The professor muttered to himself and ran his hoof down the page.

“This seems like the right passage! Look at this. It’s a list of Princess Celestia’s personal students.” He waved me over. I trotted over to read over his shoulder.

“Silver Folio, The Great Hornsby… Sunset Shimmer.” I followed his hoof. “And right after her, Twilight Sparkle. The Ministry Mare herself.”

“Sunset Shimmer was, according to herself, the greatest student Celestia ever failed,” Destiny said. “I don’t know if I can refute that. Her mastery of the theory of magic was impressive, but her mastery of science was… beyond anything Equestria had ever seen before. And there’s a good reason for that.”

I paused and gasped. “She was from the future!”

“No.” Destiny sighed.

“It would have made sense though,” I mumbled.

“You’re not that far off. She wasn’t from another time, but when I met her, she was a pony from another world.”

“Hold on,” I said. “I can sort of remember…”

---

It was a dim memory. Not just an old one, it also wasn’t mine. It had the feeling of Destiny’s memories, that kind of hazy second-hoof feeling where my own thoughts could come as a surprise.

I -- or really, Destiny, I was just remembering it as her -- was tapping my pale, silvery hoof against the table. She was nervous. Her mane and hooves were professionally done, and that just made her even more uncomfortable.

“If you do that, you’ll ruin the polish,” said a voice from the door. Destiny jerked in her seat, and I felt her realize she’d seen a soft flash of light a second ago and ignored it. It was painfully obvious now that it was a teleport spell, and Destiny felt like an idiot for not catching it immediately.

“Sunset, it’s good to--” Destiny turned around, getting up from her chair. She stopped mid-sentence when she saw who she was looking at. Sunset Shimmer was a stunning pony in Destiny’s memories, and I felt the awe and arousal she’d been feeling. I couldn’t blame her. Destiny could feel magic, and Sunset had an aura that blazed like a bonfire. It filled the room with warmth.

The pony standing next to her was almost as impressive in her own right, but I felt Destiny’s heart skip a beat when she got a good look at her.

“Twilight Sparkle?” she yelped, biting her tongue.

“The one and only,” Sunset Shimmer said, with a grin. “Just not the one you’re thinking of, and definitely not the only.”

“Good afternoon,” Twilight said softly. She reached out with a hoof to shake, stumbled, and almost fell on her flank. Sunset had to grab her with magic and hold her up to keep her off the ground.

“Careful,” Sunset said.

“Sorry!” the Ministry Mare squeaked. She sounded about halfway to a panic attack. “I have no idea what I’m doing! I don’t have fingers! Or toes! Well, biologically speaking a hoof is a modified toe, but they’re not the kind of toes I think of when I think of toes! Not that I think of toes much, I’m not into feet!”

Twilight gave Destiny a weak, nervous grin.

“Sorry,” she repeated, apologizing again.

“It’s… not Twilight Sparkle?” Destiny asked, confused.

“I am Twilight,” the mare insisted. She adjusted her glasses, pushing them up her snout. “However, I am not your Twilight. I’m hers.” The lavender unicorn started to raise a hoof to point at Sunset, immediately began to slip, and settled for nodding to Sunset with all four hooves secure on the ground.

“She’s smart,” Sunset said. “Very smart. Almost as smart as me. She’s been helping on my end of our little exchange. While you’ve been working to make the other world’s technology work here, Twilight has been making magic work on the far side of the mirror.”

“I’ve been having some issues with talismans, and working through letters was too slow,” Twilight said. “I need to be able to experiment with live magic to make the breakthroughs I need for mass-production.”

“I decided some personal experience was called for,” Sunset said. “I want you to teach her a few spells. All the basics of magic. If you can develop a training course I can bring back, that would be even better.”

“I could do that,” Destiny agreed. “It’s going to mean taking time away from my other work.”

“Think of it as an investment for the future,” Sunset suggested. “Once you have her trained, she’ll be valuable. She has an intuitive grasp of magic, and that’s pretty impressive for someone who didn’t even have a horn until five minutes ago.”

“I’m not sure it’s worth giving up fingers,” Twilight said, frowning. She sat down on her flank and looked at her forehooves. “I have no idea how I’m going to take notes.”

“Until you get a grip on telekinesis, you’ll have to get creative. Earth ponies use their mouths most of the time.”

“No, earth ponies can’t write anything, they’re just animals,” Twilight corrected.

“I mean Earth Ponies like the tribe, not ponies from Earth-- never mind, Destiny can explain the cultural stuff later. It’s not important. What is important is the other opportunity this gives us!”

Destiny sighed. “You’re going to need to explain, because right now what I see is a liability.”

“She’s a perfect double of the Ministry Mare,” Sunset said. “A little younger, different memories, but aside from that, nopony could tell the difference. Same aura, same biometrics. She’s going to be key to our plans going forward.”

Destiny watched Twilight struggle a little longer, just trying to stay on her hooves, as if she’d never even walked before. Even I was feeling sorry for her. Destiny helped her over to a chair so the purple pony could hang on and keep her balance.

“Thanks,” Twilight sighed. “I swear I’m not usually this awkward! Well, socially I’m awkward, but that’s a metaphor. I don’t go around tripping over my own feet. Sorry. I’m apologizing a lot. Is it too much?”

---

I shook my head, trying to break out of the daydream.

“She had a thing with Celestia,” Destiny said. “And before you ask, I don’t mean anything romantic. The Boss Mare had something to prove.”

“She was also a normal, mortal pony,” Midnight said bluntly. “You’re all talking about someone who’s been dead for about two centuries! If she’s the only one who can open the file Kulaas gave us, we’re bucked up a creek with no lube!”

“Are we?” Emma asked.

I looked over at her. Her brow was furrowed in thought, and she was rubbing her chin.

“If Kulaas is some kind of computer smart enough that it can see the future, it wouldn’t send you a file that was totally useless. If this Sunset Shimmer is the only pony who can open it, it means either we’re wrong, and there’s another way to do it, or there is a way to get in touch with Sunset Shimmer.”

“I’m telling you, it’s impossible,” Destiny sighed, shaking her head. The motion looked more natural now that I could see a little bit of her body. “When the last day of the war kicked off and we launched the Exodus Arks, she wasn’t even in Equestria!”

“She wasn’t in Equestria,” Midnight said slowly. “So… she didn’t get bombed?”

Destiny hesitated. “I… I suppose not? I know things were tense in the other world, but she was light on details and, frankly, I didn’t care all that much. It wasn’t the kind of world anypony should live in. The only magic they had was what we were able to send through the mirror.”

“And that made Sunset Shimmer rich, didn’t it?” I asked.

“Rich and powerful,” Destiny confirmed. “It’s how we built up BrayTech. We’d trade trinkets to each other, patent what we could reproduce in our worlds, and sell even cheaper copies that looked like miracles.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Midnight said. “Equestria advanced more during the war than it did in the previous millennium and a half.”

“I’m proud of the work we did,” Destiny replied. “It wasn’t just reverse engineering, we had to develop infrastructure and production processes that hadn’t ever existed before. My mother built the first photolithography machine in Equestria! The real key was unifying technology and magic. That was a brand-new field.”

“So how does a pony get to this other world?” Emma asked.

“A mirror,” I said, promptly. “Star Swirl had a magic mirror back in Limbo.”

“Star Swirl made the mirror we used, too,” Destiny confirmed, bobbing in a nod. “It was passed down to Celestia, Sunset found out about it, and it passed through a few more hooves before we got it. We kept it in our main facility outside of Stalliongrad.”

“About as far from Celestia as a pony can get,” I noted.

“Anything that minimized the risk of discovery was worth it,” Destiny said. “Besides, Canterlot was a strategic target. Staying there was insane. Even the Ministry Mares recognized that early on in the war and scattered themselves around the map.”

“We must have gone right by that mirror,” I mumbled.

“There wasn’t much of a reason to go looking for it.” Destiny shrugged, and with the shroud she wore I could actually see her do it instead of just inferring it from her tone. “We had more important things to worry about, and my memories were even fuzzier than they are now.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t use it to evacuate,” Emma said.

“We would have, if we could have,” Destiny said. “It wasn’t always open. I don’t know if it was just worn out because of age or if it was designed this way on purpose, but it had a schedule. It would open on a cycle. Every thirty moons, it would open for three days.”

“When’s the next opening?” Midnight asked.

“I…” Destiny trailed off. She floated up and over to the desk, grabbing a pencil and paper. “If I work forward from one of the days I know it was open…” She started scribbling dates. “The current date, days per cycle, work backwards from the end of the next period of activity…”

“It’s soon,” I said.

Everypony looked at me, then over at Destiny. She did a few more math problems, then looked up at me.

“About a week, I think,” Destiny said. “How did you know that?”

I tapped my forehead. “Half my brain is a computer, remember? Not that it matters. Remember the important part of this? Kulaas wouldn’t give us something useless. She must know when we’d go looking for the mirror.”

“That means we need to get back to the surface,” Destiny said. “Last time it was a rough trip.”

“This time we’re doing things by the book,” Emma replied, nodding in agreement. “We’re not outlaws or criminals. We’ll find one of the training missions taking recruits down and go with them. No drama, no breaking through the lightning shield. By the book.”

---

“I hate this book,” I sighed. I flipped through the pages of the textbook. The Enclave Airpony’s Uplifting Primer was full of what could very generously be called advice, very little of it good or accurate.

“You’re lucky all you have to do is take one class,” Emerald Gleam said. She was sitting behind me in the small classroom, technically as an expert observer but more practically to make sure I didn’t get in trouble. “All of your paperwork is fake but it’s been rubber-stamped so many times by so many different ponies that they’re all pretending it’s real just so nopony has to be embarrassed.”

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” I shrugged. “I’ve got more combat experience than anypony else in this room!”

“Including me,” Emma sighed. “I know.”

I looked over at the pony next to me. They were a fresh recruit and were trying to pretend they were reading their copy of the Uplifting Primer when they were really just listening in to what Emma and I were talking about.

“Do I really need to memorize the uniform regulations?” I asked.

“Yes,” Emma said, exasperated. “Do you know what happens if you put a suit of power armor on incorrectly? I saw a pony during training who somehow managed to get all four legs popped out of joint because he put something on backwards.”

“I don’t think the Exodus Armor works that way. It’s all sort of solid state stuff and energy fields and there aren’t a ton of moving parts.”

Emma gave me a flat look. “This is going to surprise you, Chamomile, but they didn’t create this course with you in mind specifically.”

“Good evening everypony, sorry if I’m a bit late!” A pony in a slightly fancier officer’s uniform flew into the room, a briefcase in their hooves. She landed next to the desk in the front and started unpacking. “This is going to be a short course to make sure you’re all prepared for your first trip down to the surface-- yes, you have a question?”

I lowered my hoof. “It’s not my first trip.”

“Then this class should be easy for you,” the officer said brightly, with a big friendly smile. “If we have time you can talk about your experiences later to help the class. For now, let’s get started on the most common hazards of the wasteland.”

She started on her lecture and I kind of tuned her out, flipping through the Uplifting Primer. It was mostly harmless, and one thing they had definitely right was that nopony should eat stuff that was lying around for two centuries. I still had burps that tasted like old rations once in a while, and it had been months since I’d eaten any of the ration bars from the valley outside Stalliongrad.

“Hey, um…” the pony who’d been giving me looks hissed and whispered to me. I looked over at her. She looked young, barely old enough to even be in the military. “You’ve really been to the surface?”

“Sure,” I shrugged. “What’s up?”

“Is it true that ponies on the surface are all crazy barbarians that charge at you with rocks and knives?” she whispered.

“No. Only about half of them are like that. The rest are normal. If they’re covered in blood and spikes, start shooting.”

“That sounds really scary,” she mumbled. “I don’t know if I can shoot another pony.”

“If it gets bad, just fly away,” I suggested. “They usually can’t go after you.”

“Unless they have a gun,” Emma added, leaning forward. “Then they’ll shoot you in the back.”

“Yeah, but that’s no big deal.” I shrugged.

“Don’t listen to her,” Emma said, turning to the young mare. “It’s important to be decisive. If there’s a pony willing to shoot you, they’re willing to shoot your teammates and innocent civilians.”

“But they’re not part of the Enclave,” the young mare pointed out. “We’re not supposed to risk ourselves for them!”

“We’re not supposed to throw our lives away,” Emma gently corrected. “The Enclave is all that remains of the legitimate government of Equestria. The ponies on the ground are victims of a disaster that’s lasted for centuries, and someday we’ll find a way to save them. If we can help them, we should.”

The instructor cleared her throat. “Excuse me! Please pay attention, this is important for your safety and the safety of the ponies around you!”

I snorted. The teacher picked up her ruler. My annoyance turned to fear.

---

“I can’t believe she made me sit in the corner…” I groaned.

“You’re just lucky she didn’t make you stay inside during recess,” Emma joked. “You’re an adult, Chamomile! You don’t need to act like a foal!”

“Did I ever mention that I didn’t do well in traditional education?” I asked. “Dad home schooled me because I kept getting into fights. Also because he didn’t trust teachers that didn’t have at least one doctorate.”

I moved down the lunch line holding my tray. One thing that was completely, utterly the same between the military and school life was the food. That might sound like an indictment, but it’s not. One thing my brief stint in organized schools had taught me was that they were mandated by the government to provide a balanced meal, and more often than not it was higher quality than most ponies could get on their own. The same was true here.

The ponies on the other side of the lunch line ladled out food onto my tray. Sky-potato salad, with enough vinegar to give it a sharp smell even at hoof’s length. A big round of black bread. Beans in the kind of sauce that you can’t really identify even while you’re eating it. And of course, the main. A solid lump of green held together with a savory paste and topped with crunchy bits to give it texture.

I grabbed a glass of rainwater and sat down at one of the cafeteria tables, nabbing the salt and some hot sauce.

“Oh this is the good stuff,” I noted, sprinkling the sauce over my plate. It had the sheen of distilled rainbows. “Nice!”

“I don’t know if I’d call it nice,” Emma sighed, sitting next to me. “It’s better than starving, but nutra-loaf isn’t exactly gourmet, Chamomile.”

“Yeah, but it’s different everywhere you have it,” I pointed out. “In my mom’s Stable, it was made with protein paste and chemical dyes and flavors that came out of a talisman. It was almost like a brick of bright yellow cheese. Looks like this is made with some kind of kelp?”

“More or less,” Emma confirmed. “We’re near an ocean inlet. The academy has a team that creates a tornado a few times a year to bring seawater to a few of the farms in the area, and they grow seaweed and desalinate the water to produce salt.”

“Cool,” I said, poking it with a fork and taking a bite. “Really irony.”

“More metals are probably good for you since you’re about half pony and half tank,” Emma joked. She looked away after saying it, obviously regretting it immediately. “Sorry. It’s probably a sensitive subject.”

“Not really,” I said. “You know, I’m sort of at peace with it now. I met Destiny’s brother, and he had a whole new body that was all metal on the inside. He just looked like a pony on the surface, but robot underneath, you know? And he was totally normal. Not one bit of him was organic and he was still…” I hesitated. “He was still one of the bravest ponies I ever met. He made sure not to leave behind regrets.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet him,” Emma said softly. “You want half my nutra-loaf? I don’t think I can eat all of it.”

“I can absolutely be bribed with food,” I assured her.

The pony that had been whispering to me in class sat down across from us. She looked nervous.

“Have you ever had to kill a pony?” she asked, before even introducing herself. The way she’d said it made it obvious she’d been working up the courage to say it for a while.

“That’s a very delicate question--” Emma started.

“Tons of times,” I interrupted. Emma gave me a look, and I shrugged back at her. “Look, clearly she’s worried she’ll have to kill somepony and I can tell from a dozen paces that she wants to ask me how I got through it.” I tapped my forehead and smirked. “I don’t like to brag about it or even think about the implications of it too strongly, but I’ve been developing weird psychic senses and it’s either some kind of SIVA thing or I got a changeling STD.”

“You got a what?” Emma asked, frowning.

“I already told you I don’t like to think about the implications,” I reminded her. “Anyway, I’m going to be honest, kid. The first ponies I really had to kill were already sort of dead. Emma was there.”

“Oh, right,” Emma’s expression changed. “At the Smokestack.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “There was an accident and some ponies got infected with stuff that drove them insane. It made it… easier to justify what I had to do.”

“They all died anyway once the volcano erupted,” Emma sighed. “Unlike what Rain Shadow did with the survivors when he panicked.” She took a deep breath and looked up at the young mare. “You should never be afraid to defend yourself. If you have to shoot, shoot. But on the other side of that coin, don’t shoot unless you have to.”

“I regret a lot of what I had to do,” I said. “Maybe if I was smarter, or didn’t trust the wrong ponies, I wouldn’t have ended up in some of the places I did.”

“I’m just scared I’m going to mess up and get hurt,” the mare admitted.

“You totally will,” I nodded. She paled.

Emma sighed. “What Chamomile means is, that’s why you’ll have other ponies with you. They’ll watch your back and you’ll watch theirs.”

I shrugged and ate more beans. They were somehow a little too soft and a little too hard at the same time, which was pretty impressive.

“Chamomile and I have saved each other’s lives almost daily as long as we’ve known each other,” Emma said.

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been stuck without friends a couple times and… those were the worst.”

“You should get to know the other ponies you’ll be going down to the surface with,” Emma suggested gently. “Find out who you get along with and team up with them.”

“You’re right,” the mare said gently. “Thank you.” She stood up, picking up her tray and looking over at the other tables before making a decision and sitting at one of the more crowded ones, introducing herself to the other ponies there.

“You’re a pretty good officer,” I told Emma.

“I’d like to think so,” Emma said with a smile. “Too bad I’m on the tough assignment of keeping you out of trouble for a whole day.”

“Basically a suicide mission,” I agreed.

---

“Making me take a written test,” I grumbled.

“I don’t know why you’re complaining,” Emma said. “You passed, and it’s in your record now, so you won’t have to take it again.”

I looked up from what I was doing, getting my armor ready to go. I’d already pulled the crystal-fiber ballistic undersuit out of storage and put it on. It was a spare they’d given me before I left Limbo -- buck knows what happened to the one I was wearing when I was shoved out an airlock. This one was a deep magenta with pink stitches.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” I explained. “I know more about the surface than anypony else. And Midi didn’t have to take a test!”

“Technically I’m a civilian observer,” Midnight noted. She was hanging from the ceiling of the locker room, sucking on a juice box and watching us through a pair of thick sunglasses. “I don’t have to be qualified for anything.”

“What about Destiny?” I asked. She half-turned from what she was doing, checking some of the Exodus Armor’s more delicate systems.

“I count as equipment,” Destiny noted dryly. “I actually wanted to do the course but I wasn’t allowed to participate. Instead I had to watch Midnight vamp on a few very unlucky stallions.”

“Excuse you, but they’re lucky stallions by any reasonable metric,” Midi retorted. “A mare has needs. Like fresh blood. And they all walked away happy!”

“They walked away barely able to stand up,” Destiny corrected.

“That’s because I know how to treat a stallion well,” Midnight said, smirking.

“I’m not getting involved in this,” Emma said, holding up her hooves. “I already know too many details.”

“They consented!” Midnight added.

“I don’t know if that makes it better!” Emma groaned.

“This is where you’ve been hiding!” somepony called out. I looked back behind Emma, towards the locker room entrance. A stallion already wearing his power armor walked in, his helmet flipped back. He smiled at us. “You must be the special attachment to my ground recon team. I’m Colonel Zonda. I’m glad to see we’ll have some beautiful mares coming along.”

He winked at us. He probably thought it was charming.

“Thank you for finding room for us,” Emma said. “I’m sorry about the short notice.”

“It’s fine. General Ravioli filled me in on what he could. Apparently things are very hush-hush.” He shrugged. “I get it. Special forces. I don’t mind being told to go to a different location, or bring some ponies along. Actually, if you’re familiar with the area, that’s a bonus.”

“I spent some time in the region,” I confirmed.

“Good,” he said. “Is there anything I need to know in advance? I heard rumors that there’s a lot of greenery in the area. Some high-level flyovers even spotted signs of civilization.”

I had a flashback to the valley. Some of the nicest people I ever met, and they were zebras. Would the soldiers treat them well? Would they exploit them like the ponies in Dark Harbor? Just shoot them because their ancestors were enemies of Equestria.

“Stay away from it,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.

“If there are civilians, we can--”

I dropped what I was holding and stepped up to him, so close he had to take a step back.

“I said, stay away,” I repeated, my voice low. “It’s for your own good.”

“Are they that dangerous?” he asked.

I grabbed his collar, lifting him off his front hooves so we were at eye level. “I’m that dangerous.”

“Chamomile!” Destiny snapped.

“Calm down,” Emma cautioned, putting a hoof on my shoulder. I let go of the stallion. He dropped, stumbling and almost tripping. “Sorry.”

“I made friends there,” I explained. “I can’t let anything happen to them.”

“You don’t have to be so touchy,” Zonda complained, brushing himself off. “You’re acting like we’re a purge team. We’re just recon. Getting recruits some real experience with their equipment. Maybe if we’re lucky they get to shoot a few radroaches.”

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I…”

Zonda sighed. “I get it. I know other ponies that have spent time on the surface. You had to leave somepony behind, and you’re worried about them, right? It’s okay. I try not to get attached, but I get it.”

I nodded.

“If you really want to protect whoever it is, bring them up here,” he advised. “It’s not easy or cheap, and you’ll need to do some favors, but you’ve got some pull with the General.”

“They’re not in danger,” I said.

“Not now, but nothing lasts forever,” Zonda said. He scratched his mane and shrugged. “I’ll make sure the recruits know to stay away from locals on this trip. Try not to beat any of them up. I’m a forgiving stallion, but I won’t let you do to any of them what you just did to me.”

I nodded in understanding.

“Great!” He smiled and slapped my shoulder. “Get your gear together. We leave in an hour.”

Comments

[Thought Prism]

So, funny story, I'm actually reading Project Horizons for the first time (the original FoE wasn't written very well on first impression, in my opinion), and I can see a lot of inspirational roots for you in there so far. There's a good amount of Blackjack in Chamomile, for one thing, though I appreciate the lighter tone and faster pacing of your take.

[FridayPie]

11357676
Actually, from technical standpoint FOE was written way better, especially with characterization. Somber admitted he screwed up with some things at beginning (e.g., its beginning too drawn out, there are osychology errors which were covered later). I'd say, return to FOE after 16th chapter of Horizons, or you'll get some spoilers.

Blackjack actually had kind of inferiority complex as well as her whole community was royally screwed up and not in a fun way. Chamomile wrangled the former while she was sheltered by father from the latter.

[Ahsoka Tano]

Man some of these chapter titles are very misleading :P