13. Old Manehattan
“Wah!” Forgetting safety for a moment, Zest flew deeper into the city, ahead of the others. If it was a bad idea, nopony bothered to stop her.
The buildings were enormous, even compared to those in Trotonto. It wasn’t just one or two towers that went up and up, they were everywhere! Even six meters in the sky, Zest felt as though she might as well still be standing on the ground.
Ascending became more difficult the higher you got. She wondered if she could fly to the top of one of these big ones. She started going up, only to have the rest of her fraid overtake her once again and rushed after them.
Many of them appeared in surprisingly good shape. She expected half this city to be a pile of rubble, but less than a quarter of the buildings lay in heaps on the ground. She quickly learned that if one building on a block went, they all did. With few exceptions, each block was made of either intact buildings or a heap of debris.
Did ghosts live inside these skyscrapers? Zest certainly wouldn’t trust them were she alive and it looked as though nopony was washing the dingy windows.
It didn’t take a genius to guess this place was haunted. Already, Zest saw more orbs than she’d ever seen in her entire life, including the part where she’d been a ghost herself. They made it to the top of the skyscrapers, floating around them like lethargic bees around a hive.
It shouldn’t have been so surprising, but snow blanketed much of the ground. A deathly hush complimented the snow and contrasted the enormity of the construction.
Building with entire chunks missing had been shorn up with walls of ice that filled in the missing gaps and broken windows. This place had to be freezing! Thankfully, Zest was immune to that along with all the other problems of the city.
It didn’t take long before Zest realized that every south-facing window in Old Manehattan had been blown out, likely from something Equestria fired at it.
“Did they shoot a giant, sonic bomb or something?” Zest pointed her observation out.
“Huh? Nah!” Indigo gestured up towards the roof of a surviving building, all too excited to explain. “See, Toxco mounted huge artillery weapons on top of these skyscrapers. One shot from a force canon would blow those suckers right off. But those things shattered windows like all get out.”
Zest swore Indigo talked about the war like it was a camping trip she’d gone on.
“We’re close. Let’s see.” Indigo surveyed the landscape. Her ears perked up upon finding the right spot. “Oh! Here!”
Indigo rushed down towards a block of destroyed buildings.
“This used to be the Toxco Shopping Tower. My body’s buried somewhere under all this. Smashed straight through the window before it collapsed a little while later.” Indigo slammed her hooves together. “We were going after that one.”
Indigo pointed up at one of the taller buildings. This one appeared to have had the top few floors ripped off by some mysterious force. Yet the other buildings on that block were fine, save the windows. Zest looked around, unable to imagine where the top part of that skyscraper landed.
“Should we try to get it out?” Zest moved closer to the rubble, coming close to the ground of this city for the first time.
“No digging,” Sugarcoat warned against her. “That’s one of the rules you have to follow in this place. And you can’t cross the red line by the large wall to the south.”
That sounded easy enough.
Zest noticed, just then, the orbs beginning to form a stream. She followed them a little way to find them joining a larger path that even more orbs were following. A little path had been cleared for the orbs to move along the path carrying small objects.
Zest counted three taught ropes making two little roads that the orbs stayed between. They all moved along so neatly, with those going left on one path and those going right on the other. Each orb floated at its own height, too, some of them going up as high as the second story.
“Oh, and no obstructing the orb highways,” Sugarcoat added. “If you put a physical object in the way, the orbs won’t be smart enough to go around and they’ll drop their packages.”
“Oh, wow!” Zest’s eyes sparkled as she watched the orbs move back and forth. “An orb highway? That’s an amazing idea!”
Indigo started giggling behind her.
“What?” Zest pointed at herself.
“This is like freaking out over seeing a road for the first time.” Indigo pressed her cheek up against Zest’s and smiled a little too smugly. “You’re so adorable!”
Indigo laughed and flew ahead, and Zest blushed in embarrassment. Sugarcoat came up from behind and gave her a reassuring pat on the head. But Sugarcoat had the barest hint of a smile, too! She could feel the slight amusement from her boss!
It was then Zest noticed the first high ghost of Old Manehattan, one peeking out at them from a high building. She felt a slight tension in this pony’s aura, wary of unfamiliar faces. Zest tried waving up to her, but she shied away and floated back into that building.
She wanted to follow, but…
“Come on.” Sugarcoat pushed ahead, following alongside the orb highway but never crossing it. “We need to talk to Meltdown before you can do anything else.”
Zest hurried along after that. She kept her eye on the orbs, wondering what they were carrying. Strangely, most of them seemed to be traveling without cargo.
As they approached the corporate district, Zest started seeing more high ghosts. She decided they all hung out mostly in this area. Unlike that first ghost, these spared them a passing glance at most and allowed them to continue.
A little after that, four or five ghosts started popping out trying to get the fraid to buy things. Sugarcoat quickly waved them all off, but something about this made Zest giggle.
After a year of having to creep about the world, the ability to freely move through a town felt so liberating. Part of her still told her to not move so boldly about in the open, but another part felt normal again.
Zest wanted to talk to all of them! But she’d also learned her lesson last time. She decided to keep her head down and ears up, waiting to see what the mood in this place was like first.
The corporate district brought with it plant life as well. Zest stood briefly surprised at the sight of any plants, having thought nothing could ever grow here. Perhaps the place would have looked better devoid of life, given the plants she did see, though.
The main species to get a foothold here were the most gnarly-looking vines Zest had ever seen. They appeared purple and fleshy to her but had hard, grey knots that caused their direction to change at sharp angles. All along the fleshy portions grew pustules with a thin membrane. Zest could only imagine popping one would kill any nearby predead.
Occasionally, mushrooms grew on top of these vines or out of the buildings. They weren’t normal mushrooms, either. Some of them had hairs that moved up and down to make it look like they were breathing. Others grew with a cluster of caps from a single stalk, making them appear like mutant brains.
Every plant she saw made her shudder.
As for fauna, she could smell animal life around her. Something with warm blood lived hidden away in the abandoned buildings and buried beneath the ground. She could scarcely imagine what sort of bizarre mutants stalked about her.
On further consideration, Zest decided she’d rather freeze one of these things to death than even a turkey. Though she’d yet to see one, she couldn’t conceptualize anything cute or happy in those buildings.
The mutants moved as little as could be afforded from the smell of things, Zest supposing anything living here knew not to come out during the night.
Finally, they got to their destination. They approached what was left of Toxco Corporate Headquarters. Zest had seen pictures of it when it still stood as the third largest structure behind Canterlot Castle and the colossal super reactor. It once had three skyscrapers built on top of a sloping base, the tallest of which broke 800 meters.
None of those towers remained, but the base of it that seemed so small in pictures was now a colossus in itself. She needed to crane her neck to look up at the incomplete pyramid. She counted ten stories as each floor had a recess leading deeper into the windows.
Looking left and right, she estimated it to be a full city blocks long in either direction. Running laps around this place sounded intimidating enough, let alone trying to destroy it while a literal witch and who knows what else was shooting back at you. How tough this fortress must have been to survive such a tall skyscraper collapsing on top of it! Though most of that debris had been cleared out from the looks of things.
Even after all that, only the far eastern part of the building was visibly damaged from the outside. A whole corner of the pyramid was melted and twisted by what must have been an incredible blow.
This, Zest was told, was where Meltdown kept his throne. Another ghost asked them a few questions and then they were allowed inside.
The place became less apocalyptic looking the deeper in you went. The entranceway was an enormous room covered with mostly intact marble. Between the stairs leading up was a huge bronze statue of... maybe a CEO? Zest couldn’t tell as it had its head cut off and vulgar graffiti was written all over it.
It felt so strange standing in the hideout of one of the most infamous witches in history. A bit of residual danger seemed to linger in this room, yet to decay. ‘The witch is dead, but I’m still shaking’. Zest knew the famous quote but not who said it. She understood it a little better now.
All the gilding and plenty of paintings persisted past the lobby. The graffiti and vandalism hadn’t made it far inside. All of it looked so expensive.
The final room was another wide-open space. A stairway led up to a large terrace that perhaps once was a meeting room. Meltdown had a literal throne made of a vulgar-looking metal at the end of the long table on this terrace.
Most striking were two large pools sat on either side of the stairs and terrace. They weren’t filled with water, but with liquid metal. Zest stared into it. It wasn’t hot or glowing, but it was still clearly liquid. She quickly realized the only possibility. This was all mercury!
She just barely resisted the urge to show everypony how green she was by recoiling at the realization. None of the other ghosts seemed to care. To them, the pools of mercury were nothing but decoration.
Zest knew immediately which of the ghosts was meltdown, though he had his whole entourage with him. The ghost at the throne had the same blue eyes Sugarcoat did, marking him as a specter, and his aura overpowered all the others.
The new specter wasn’t as imposing as Zest had feared. Meltdown was a purple unicorn, not particularly large for a stallion of his tribe. He looked a little gangly if anything, and more than tired. Zest could feel that coming off his aura, though he tried to hide it.
He didn’t want to deal with this, he didn’t have the energy, but he had no choice. Zest could feel a tinge of frustration at that lack.
“Sugarcoat.” Meltdown spread his forelegs wide, just barely managing a smile. “I honestly thought you were dead.”
Zest looked between the two, feeling she’d missed something. She’d probed Sugarcoat about her life, but other than talking about Crystal Vale, her boss never seemed interested trips down memory lane.
“I don’t blame you.” Sugarcoat held her glasses in place, her glare firmly on meltdown. “I barely escaped alive.”
“I hope you’re still not angry.” Meltdown shook his head. “Maybe I would have felt bad if the federation just barely lost, but I understand it wasn’t even close. You have to admit my being there wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“No, but it wouldn’t have been the slaughter it was had you not tried to appease our enemy,” said Sugarcoat. “Far more of us would have been able to retreat.”
“You were the ones who were stupid enough to directly defy her.” He rose from his mock-sitting position and moved across the table. “My city is the only one that still stands and I’ve saved far more ghosts than I’ve cost with this strategy. You simply can’t see past the inevitable loss of White–”
“Don’t say his name,” Sugarcoat warned.
Zest kept shifting her eyes left and right but didn’t dare speak out of turn. Who the heck was he talking about?
She had never seen Sugarcoat get this worked up before, not even when a wight was trying to murder them and that kid. Anger radiated off of her, filling the room. Zest got a second-hand high off of it and couldn’t help but feel some annoyance at this guy she hadn’t even met yet.
He’d clearly done something bad to Sugarcoat! Maybe it was just the aura talking but that seemed enough to put him on Zest’s list.
“It remains to be seen if you’ve ‘saved’ anyone,” Sugarcoat went on. “Delaying the death and enslavement of the ghosts here by three or four years is hardly worth the cost of your dignity and everypony you sacrificed. They’re probably having you inflict all manner of humiliation on yourself. I know you’re paying them tribute, funding the enslavement of our kind.”
Yeah! That was another reason to be angry at him! If he was sending money or whatever to Crater Cemetery then he was part of the problem! Though admittedly, Zest was kinda looking for excuses at this point.
Meltdown merely rubbed his temple and closed his eyes. Any fight left in him quickly faded. Just a slight twinge of humiliation was all that was needed to cow him, it seemed.
“And do you have any plan other than delaying the inevitable?” Meltdown asked. “I’d love to hear whatever brilliant ideas you have.”
“I don’t have any yet,” Sugarcoat admitted. “Perhaps I’ll think of something or perhaps I won’t. Perhaps something will save me or not. But I refuse to spend what time I have left kowtowing to Crater Cemetery and paying them tribute. I’ll outlast you without sacrificing my dignity and I’m sure others here want the same.”
Perhaps Meltdown was clever enough to keep up this sparing match, but Zest could tell he simply didn’t have the will for it.
“Well you’re welcome to take anypony who’d follow you.” Meltdown rubbed his face with his hoof. “It’s not like numbers will do me any good now.”
“And if there’s anything you’re hiding from me, anything you know about our enemy–”
“I’ve never even seen her,” said Meltdown.
“Hold on!” Zest couldn’t help but speak out of turn. Her hoof shot up and all eyes turned to her. “If you’ve never seen her, how do you know it’s a mare? Huh?”
All eyes stayed on her for an uncomfortably long time. Nopony answered long enough for Zest to realize she’d just asked one of her trademarked stupid questions.
“I’ve spoken to her enslaved emissaries more times than I’d have liked,” Meltdown at last explained. He paused as Zest lowered her hoof in defeat. “And they call her ‘my mistress’. I suppose you do have to be clever to piece all that together.”
“Eh heh.” Zest blushed and started backing up slowly. “I promise I was a lot dumber before Sugarcoat found me!”
Then she flew behind the other two, determined not to embarrass her fraid any further. She vowed a second time to keep her mouth shut.
Meltdown sized Zest up.
“Oh wait, is your new worm friend a lightning elemental?” Meltdown turned his hooves up and shook his head. “Seriously?”
Zest pointed to herself and then became perfectly still. Was he racist against lightning elementals? Were ghosts racist against other ghosts?!
“I spend all this time looking for a lightning elemental, then right after I find one a second simply shows up out of nowhere?”
“There’s another lightning elemental here?” Zest couldn’t help breaking her vow again.
“Oh, I have my own elemental strike force.” Meltdown clapped his hoof.
Four more ghosts quickly assembled behind him.
“What?! They have an elemental strike force?” Zest looked worryingly at Sugarcoat.
“Hot Streak!” To Zest’s surprise, this pony wasn’t on fire. She did look a little burnt-out, her hair black, and her fur brown. Small amounts of smoke billowed off of her.
“Max Voltage!” He was yellow even! He had green hair similar to Zest, but he embraced his static, using it to style his mane in the same sharp spikes that Zest struggled with.
“Shipwreck!” Zest decided this one was a pirate in a glance! He was big and covered in scars! He had his mane and tail in tight braids and a tri-corner grafted itself to his head.
“Rock Slide!” This green mare looked the most chill of the bunch. Zest got serious hippy vibes off her but nothing screamed ‘I got crushed by rocks’ exactly. Then again, she remembered that book saying eating poisoned berries could turn you into an earth elemental too.
“And their names match their elements?” Zest hissed at her mentor.
“They changed their names,” came Sugarcoat’s dull response. “Just like ‘Meltdown’ here.”
The lightning elemental caught Zest’s attention immediately. It wasn’t just that they were the same type of ghost. No, this stallion was cute! Max was a fairly large stallion but not entirely filled out, giving the impression he died around Zest’s age.
He had such a big, blocky, and handsome muzzle though! And his hair was so cool! Zest tried not to stare.
“For the last time, I did not change my name to Meltdown after the fact!” Meltdown glared down at Sugarcoat.
“And the rest of them just conveniently had those names already?” Sugarcoat asked.
“Alright, maybe there’s one or two…”
Sugarcoat and Meltdown kept talking for a while after that. Admittedly, it fast became boring, neither of them unveiling their backstory. Indigo wandered off, prompting Zest to look over to Max. She wonder if she should try flirting with him.
He might be over a hundred. Then again, they might be close to the same age!
Zest glanced at Sugarcoat, then began floating towards Max Voltage. She scooted as close to him as she could without it being weird, tapping her hooves together.
“So, uh. I noticed we’re both lightning elementals.” Zest turned her eyes to him and smiled
“Oh really?” He smirked and turned his chin up. “I’m surprised you managed that much.”
Zest stopped tapping her hooves.
“Er. Yeah.” Zest cast her eyes down. She really shouldn’t have spoken up before! Zest quickly recovered and turned “Um! You know, your mane is so cute! You really know how to use the static, huh? Do you know any cool places in the city for lightning elementals like us to, uh, hang out?”
The one and only thing that she learned in high school was that boys were oblivious. You needed to be as obvious as possible.
“Let me guess.” Max put her foreleg around Zest, getting a heavy blush from her. “You bit down on a wire trying to get psychic power, yes?”
“Wuh?” Zest glanced left and right. “No! I was, uh… no.”
“You can’t lie to me.” He placed a hoof on his chest. “Look, we’re not the same type of ghost, okay? I can smell a wirehead like you a mile away and you’re just not in the same league as us flushes. You guys put the dumb in dumb luck. Ponies who got struck by lightning are in a whole different league.”
“Oh, no you don’t!” Zest threw his foreleg off of her, wanting nothing further to do with it. “I was struck by lightning. You bit down on the wire!”
“Hehe.” Max just shook his head. “That’s what they all say.”
“Well, then how do I know you’re not just saying it?!”
“As I said, flushes are on a whole different level.” He turned his hooves up in a shrug. “Here. You want me to show you?”
Max floated back to the wall, beckoning Zest to follow her. Her phantasmagorical brain assumed a pony moving to a wall was going to go through it. She paused in brief surprise when he led her to the wall itself rather than the next room.
Max gestured at something near the floor. A power outlet? Was he going to possess a power socket? Why would you do that?
“I can take you with me, even.” Max held out his hoof. “Grab my hoof.”
“Ew! No!” Zest turned her head away.
Max just grabbed her anyway. Before she would protest, Zest felt electricity surging through her. Her vision turned to white, reminding her of the time she’d been electrocuted to death. She felt constricted for a moment like she was being wrapped up with rope. But at the same time, a rush of adrenaline filled her
The sensation was so strange and so brief that Zest hadn’t time to even begin to wonder about it. Then the light faded. Zest shook her head and looked about.
They were floating over a small suburb. Zest smelt the sleeping predeads in the houses below, making her brain itch. She knew they weren’t close to Old Manehattan because the night sky was no longer whited out, but maintained some of that stygian blue.
“How did we–?” Zest turned back around and quickly realized the answer. They were right next to a transformer on an electric pole!
Did her really–? Could you–?
Max just smugged at her and grabbed Zest again. The effect repeated.
They were even further away now, in a more rural town with the night sky mostly restored. Once again, they were by an electric pole overlooking distantly spaced houses.
They seriously had traveled over the electric grid.
“H-how far did we?”
“We’re about eighty miles off already. I can travel closer to the speed of light than the speed of sound.”
“Eighty?!” Zest stared at him, stunned. She knew a mile was longer than a kilometer, too!
The return trip took a little longer. Traveling like this wasn’t instant. Now that Zest had more time and some idea of what was happening she could just barely make out little stops and turns as Max dragged them through the power cables.
But before she could study it any further, Zest found herself back in the room they started in.
Okay. Zest couldn’t help but double back around to thinking this pony was cool again.
“Yeah! That was amazing!” Zest grabbed him and looked at him with the biggest eyes she could manage. The possibilities that opened up with this power were staggering. “That’s the coolest ability I’ve ever seen! You gotta tell me how you did that!”
“Heh! As if!”
“What?!” Zest’s ears widened and teared up. “But I wanna!”
Why wasn’t this working?! Was Zest not cute enough?
“I can’t teach you how to use wires.” Max shook his head. “If the wireheads ever figured this out, you’d all go around doing stupid things until the predeads catch on to my ability to travel through the grid. And then they’d going to start putting up some kind of, I dunno, transistor or whatever to block me. Thankfully, I doubt you’re smart enough to figure it out on your own.”
“Hey! I just can’t do that cause I haven’t had my powers as long!” Zest bristled. Her lightning embarrassingly flared up, messing up her mane and earning a snicker from Max.
“You can’t do it cause you’re a wire-biter. I really don’t have a problem with your kind as long as you don’t pretend to be flushes. Tell you what, admit I’m the better elemental and I’ll let you kiss me. That’s what you came over here wanting, right?”
Not anymore she didn’t!
“I got struck by lightning more times than you can count! Which is one! Because wireheads like you can’t even count that high!”
“Yeah, yeah. I get the joke.” He patted her on the head. “Alright. Then if you’re an actual flush, how are you going to prove it, exactly?”
“Yeah?! Well!” Zest tried to think of something she could compete with this guy on.
What was Zest good at again?! Nothing?! It was nothing, wasn’t it? She could sing pretty well but that wouldn’t help her here.
She looked across the room as if an idea would be hidden somewhere in the room. Thankfully, one was. Zest spotted a deck of cards!
Of course! There was always luck. The great equalizer.
“If you’re really a flush then you have to be even luckier than me, right?” Zest pointed at him.
“What are you proposing?”
Zest grabbed the deck of cards and brought it over.
“We do a poker. One hand, all the chips,” said Zest. “If I win, you gotta admit that I’m a flush and show me how to use the electric grid like that.”
“And if I win?” He turned his chin up, still trying to act all superior even here.
“Uh.” She struggled to think of anything as she started to shuffle the cards.
“Hm! How about this? If you lose, you have to be my girlfriend for the day. You gotta follow me around, saying how great I am for twelve hours straight. I really don’t mind as long as you admit you’re a wire-biter.”
Maybe she wouldn’t have even thought of that as a bad thing before this guy started with his attitude!
“Okay, fine!” Zest slammed the deck down on the table and let Max cut it.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Indigo asked.
“It’s like I said.” Zest kept her eyes trained dead on Max. “A lightning elemental’s greatest power is dumb luck and I got both.”
Indigo shrugged and backed off letting her go through with it.
Both ponies drew five cards. Zest put hers face on the table without looking at them as Max held his own close. This bold move drew the attention of even more lingering ghosts.
“You’re not even going to look?” Max asked.
“A true lightning elemental relies on her luck.” Zest closed her eyes and nodded.
“Whatever.” Max discarded two cards and drew two more.
He smirked the moment he saw them. Zest felt a brief moment of doubt.
“Tch! Strait.” He put down a five through eight.
That was pretty lucky… Zest looked down at her own hand, still face down on the table. She braced herself and turned over the cards one by one.
Heart. Heart. Heart. Heart!
Here she paused. Every ghost came in close and held their breath as all eyes turned upon that last face-down card. Even Max looked down at it with his smile in jeopardy of collapse.
As unlikely as getting to this point was, she now had a one in four chance of pulling this off.
Zest inhaled and turned over the last card.
Heart!
Everypony erupted into laughter, 'oo's and 'ah's, and ‘snap's. They staggered back from the table clapping their hooves.
“Bwahahaha!” Indigo laughed hard, falling into a backflip.
“Hahahaha!” Zest’s face lit up in absolute victory. She pointed to Max and laughed and laughed. “A literal flush! Just like me! Everypony call me Royal Flush from now on!”
Nearly everypony was laughing now. They were all hitting Zest on the back or teasing Max as he stood there with this stupid mouth shut for once!
“And I’m never playing poker ever again!” Zest flew back with her hooves raised in the air. “Struck by lightning, baby! My cutie mark should have been a lightning rod!”
Zest and Indigo laughed all the way out the door.
Before they could leave this place and retire to their room, Sugarcoat dragged them on one last errand to see the few remaining battle dolls this city had.
“Crater Cemetery demanded we start disarming,” Meltdown explained on the way.
“And you're actually going to do it?!” Indigo gawked.
“I have no other choice.” Meltdown merely shook his head. “They won’t be nearly enough to defeat Crater Cemetery. Destroying them will delay our enemy longer than using them against her. Of course… if you just happened to steal one or two of them on the way out? Well, that really wouldn’t be my fault.”
The collection of dolls were assembled in three rows on a recessed balcony partially covered by a metal roof. Though they all looked similar, their sizes varied wildly.
The first row weren’t much bigger than a normal pony. The two that formed the second row were easily a meter and a half tall. And the lone doll in the final row was too big to fit in the building! Even lying down, with its chin against the ground, the things head was bigger than the two giants standing just in front of it!
Instead of hooves, its legs ended with vicious claws. The helmet had a hinge, allowing it to open up and create a mouth with huge fangs that remained visible even when it closed. On either side of its withers were two purple crystals. Zest recognized the same ones used by battle shafts to short blasts of magic at your targets.
If you told her these were robots, Zest would have believed you. Closer inspection revealed not much was under the metal plating other than some rods and ball bearings making up the joints. You must not need any sort of motor when you had a ghost possessing it.
They even had names! The biggest had ‘Crypt Keeper’ spray painted on its side. The next two biggest were ‘Ghoul’ and ‘Tombstone’.
At present, they stood perfectly still with nopony at home.
“Can you really embody something that huge?” Zest flew up to the largest one. She was a foal compared to the ‘medium’ ones but this thing made her look like a large insect.
“Bigger it is, harder it is to control,” said Indigo. “You’re not very agile in one of those big ones and need special training just to move it. It’s got all kinds of counterweights and stuff I don’t understand.”
But did you need agility if you were gigantic?
“We’re taking this big one, yeah?” Zest flew back to Sugarcoat, holding her hooves under her chin. “Nopony would mess with us if we had a giant, metal pony!”
“How would we get it back home?” Sugarcoat asked.
Zest’s ears flattened. Now that she thought about it, they couldn’t possibly go stomping through the countryside with something that huge without starting a fight. Even though galloping around in that huge thing sounded like so much fun.
“That one.” Sugarcoat pointed to a more reasonable, but still huge, two-meter battle doll. ‘Ghoul’.
“You can have it for two hundred fifty thousand bits, I suppose,” said Meltdown.
“A quarter million?!” Zest flew in front of Sugarcoat. “That’s insane! I thought you were giving it to us for free! You know, cause we’re stealing it?”
“That’s cheap.” Sugarcoat pushed her back to the side. “Normally, heavy weaponry like this sells for over a million.”
“But do we even have that kind of–” Zest blinked as Sugarcoat had one of the orbs bring her locked briefcase to her.
There were two huge gold bars inside and a few smaller pieces of gold surrounding them! Zest’s jaw hung open as Sugarcoat handed over the largest bar and three smaller ones, apparently enough to cover it.
Meltdown took the gold and flew to the other room to weigh it out.
“Don’t worry.” Sugarcoat turned her eyes back to Zest. “I left enough back at home to buy out your contract.”
Zest shook her head. She hadn’t even thought of that.
“I had no idea you were this rich!”
“It’s not that much.”
Zest nearly fainted! She had some questions for when they got back.
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I've also updated the Ghost Bestiary with 5 new entries.
I mean, it didn't exactly last all that long for her.
For a second there, I thought Meltdown was being a nerd with his elemental strike force, but he probably just wanted something he could weaponize; Zest has polluted me.
It's interesting that other elemental can determine as to what extent other elementals in the same class are. Maybe it's only for electric elementals or perhaps Max was just being a condescending heck.
Oh, yes, an absolute monster
Perhaps she is converting her non-intelligence into luck potential? The conservation of luck from AWiBD gives me some concern. Will she burn all her luck before she really needs it? 
Where are they going to store a killer robot though? Will Maple Hill kick them out?
Is a contract that important to a ghost? It seems like it would be but I don't think I've seen anything to suggest it's anything more than just numbers.
11235908
I think it's not so much spending her luck as it is she dumped all her other stats (especially Int.) for it.
"How are you?"
"I asked first!"
"Yeah, but you're the one who put so much stock in it in the first place!"
"Screw you!"
"Screw you!"
"The voltage cooks their brains before they die," Sugarcoat said to Meltdown. "That my hypothesis, what's yours?"
"Same, honestly."
In any case, lovely bit of levity in the oppressive shadow of Canter Cemetery. And Lemon seeing just what she might be capable of should provide quite a bit of impetus to refine her electrical capabilities. Looking forward to seeing what else the girls get up to in Manehattan... and just what Sugarcoat was doing before she settled down in Crystal Prep.
This is a weird world. Getting an 70s, 80s vibe at times with the setting.
Mmm. I think I didn't really like Zest obsessively lying about being struck by lightning, I hope she grows out of it.
I think a paragraph is missing here.
Hahaha, her getting that straight flush with pure dumb luck... Oh Lemon, don't push your luck too far.
The battle doll seems interesting.
Contract? The cartel debt she owed? I thought we threw out the table that was on! Guess Sugarcoat just has a backup plan in case the mafia is dumb enough to try and exploit a ghost for debts. I would hate to be the enforcer sent to collect on that debt. The mafia might have a ghost on payroll for that sort of thing, but then that begs the question of why on Equus a ghost would want to work for them.
:( How big tho
Lemmon Zest took a page from Joturo Kujo on how to play poker.