Fallout: Equestria - The Long Winter
Chapter 42: Chapter Forty Two - Home Sweet Home
Previous Chapter Next Chapter“Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.”
Somehow, I just knew that something was going to have gone wrong for us. Nothing can be easy for us, even after we’ve come so far, lost so much, and tried so very hard. Then again, I wasn’t alone in knowing that it didn’t change a goddess-damned thing. At least I could be thankfull that we’d almost made it all the way to Ponyville.
“Tuning the broadcast for you…” Pai squeaked just barely over the whistle of the wind coming from outside the skycart. “That should do it!”
“Patrol thirty four, that was a bad copy. Please repeat status report.”
“This is Patrol thirty four, we’ve caught sight of a lone skycart heading towards the objective. Star Wave and I are on route to intercept.”
“Patrol thirty four, good copy. Probably just some locals, but Iron Cross has authorized you to shoot them down if they continue over the mission zone.”
“Affirmative on that, Command. Operative Light Wave out.”
Why the fuck did it have to be Iron again? I swear to Celestia that if I ever saw that mare again, it’d be too soon.
No. Fuck her! She doesn’t get to live after all this, and I wanted the enjoyment of watching her die. I wanted to crush her skull in with my hooves, blow out her heart with my rifle, and then shove a grenade so far up her entitled ass that she’d have to choke it out of her haughty muzzle before she was blasted into meaty chunks. Screw letting her get away. If I had the chance to kill her, I’d take it in a heartbeat!
At that, my heart felt like it seized up, sending a spike of pain through me hard enough to knock the wind out of me. Without my strength, my forehooves gave out from under me and I collapsed onto the skycart’s floor.
“Storm!” Predious called out from his seat. “Storm, are you alright?”
The air around me felt like ice, I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t even breathe. My body felt stiff, and I couldn’t move myself at all. I started to panic, my mind scrambling for anything I could think of to help. The lack of oxygen started to get to me, and darkness clawed at my vision. It felt like the harder I tried to act, the worse it all got, until finally I gave up, and dropped into darkness…
* * * * * * * * *
“Yes, good, good!” The voice of Filius rang through the darkness, but as much as I tried to look, he never appeared. “Let the hatred flow through you.” A sharp cackling laugh echoed through my mind. “You can feel the curse now, can you not?”
“What?” I spoke up, not realizing that I even had a voice in the darkness.
“The kiss of a wendigo is a terrible curse that will make you wish for your own end.” He chuckled at me from the safety of the darkness. “But, it is oh so fitting for a pony the likes of you.”
I wanted to scream and attack him, to find him in this darkness and beat him to death with my own hooves. The moment I thought that, another spike of pain made me scream out again.
“Yes, feed the curse!” He laughed again madly. “Don’t you get it yet? Hatred only makes the curse’s effect’s mature faster!” The giddiness in his voice was only driving more anger into me, making the pain all over me worse until I could focus on nothing else. I screamed out again in my head from both my pain and frustration. How could I fight an enemy that made me weaker the more I hated it?
“We don’t need strength, or speed, or magic. All we have to do is think.” Shadow’s voice echoed from the depths of my mind.
“Oh, you think you can outsmart this curse?” Filius spoke up with a note of intrigue. “Well then, not to worry.” He gave an amused sigh and paused for a moment. “I can assure you that the curse of a god is far more powerful than even your strange magics could cure.”
“They aren’t gods.” I grunted and focused on his voice. “They’re monsters, just like you.”
“No matter.” Filius brushed off my tone like it was nothing. “The longer that you have the curse, the more unstable your mind shall become.” He clopped his hooves together giddily. “You will grow angrier and angrier by the day, unable to feel anything other than the burning hatred filling to burst inside you. You will destroy the lives of everypony you care for, falling into a hatred fueled madness that will freeze you right down to what little soul you have left at that point.”
“Never.” I whispered. “Once you’re gone, I’ll...”
“Please.” Filius interrupted me. “Still think you can beat me? That curse shall kill you long before my ritual is completed!” He snorted and growled at me. “Nothing you or your friend’s could ever do can stop the events that I have set in motion.”
“My friends will stop you, even if I’m not there to help.” I shouted out. “You think that nopony can match you on their own, then you’re right. But we stand together, and as powerful as you are, you can’t fight us all.”
“Perhaps,” He spoke boredly all the enrapturement gone from his voice. “And they are most certainly welcome to try, but it will all be for naught.” With a tired sigh his voice grew softer. “I grow tired of your boundless ignorance, and I grow bored of your refusal to just die like a good mare. This shall be the last time we speak, dear Storm.”
As I sat there in the darkness, his whispering voice echoed and bounced around in the darkness of my mind. “Enjoy your madness, as it will be the last thing you know before the ice stops your heart forever...”
* * * * * * * * *
“Trust me, the farm and an entrance is there.” Pai’s voice sounded muffled as I struggled to open my eyes.
“Storm, please just wake up.” Predious whispered as he pressed himself into my cold flesh. Like somepony had lifted a weight on me, my lungs opened and drew in a deep breath. “Oh thank you.” He whined and pressed against me harder. With my body able to move again, of course the first thing it did was make me shiver.
“They’re coming around again!” Gauge shouted out the window. The quick reports from her submachine gun as it fired filled the car with a high pitched ringing. I cringed with each shot before the skycart banked to the side hard. “Keep us steady or I can’t fucking hit them!”
“If I fly straight, they’ll hit the cart!” Shadow’s amplified voice yelled back angrily from ahead of us. Almost to accentuate that point, a bright beam of green lanced through the side of the cart, melting a hole straight through and out the other side.
“Can I fly?” Tasteless shouted up at him before pointing her shotgun out the window and firing off a few shots.
“No!” Shadow screamed back as he put the cart into a steep dive.
“Then would you!?” She snapped before grabbing ahold of the window frame to steady herself.
“Not to alarm you…” Ficha called out from the front of the cart, “But the ground is approaching quite quickly!”
“What’s going on?” I finally found the words to ask. My head was spinning from both having to recover from the curse’s effects and the jerky maneuvers we were undergoing.
“Well,” Predious spoke while still pressing himself against me. “those two enclave soldiers following us decided to kill us and we decided it was best that we not let them do that.” Predious let out a hesitant laugh. “You know, just another day.”
“Wise decision.” I grunted as the feeling of cold started to leave my body. I’d started to consider the possibility of standing up and fighting, but as I did the skycart pulled up at an incredible rate. The force of the pitch pulled everypony hard to the floor, and I could feel myself get light headed before the cart pitched down slightly again. Slowly, the cart again listed further and further down.
“The hell.” Tasteless groaned as she picked herself up off the floor. “Don’t tell me you passed out from that!”
The cart slowly pulled itself level, and the rest of us got to our hooves. I’d thought to look out the window to see where we were, and I found a scary sight. We were traveling faster than I’ve ever gone before only twenty feet or so above the rocky open wastes.
“Me? Nah.” Shadow yawned groggily. “Only got a little tired from that maneuver. is all.”
“High G maneuvers are not advisable this low to the ground.” Predious spoke up. “You’re lucky we didn’t slam into the ground.”
“Luckier than the two following us, at least.” Shadow spoke with a tone of reverence. “They were stupid to even consider following us at that angle of attack.”
“You aren’t helping your case.” Ficha grumbled. “Are we at least still on course?”
“Yuppers!” Pai called out jubilantly from my pipbuck. “Approaching the farm. I’ve unlocked boulder for you all, so it shouldn’t take you more than thirty seconds to get safe!”
“Safe...?” I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Oh, right.” Pai gasped. “The radio chatter said that there’s a virtibuck incoming from ponyville. You’re going to need to get out of sight once we touch down.” As soon as she’d said that, we slowed down to a crawl. The scrape of a few rocks under us met our ears as we set down onto the snowy surface. “Which is now! Get going!”
“Fuck, everypony out!” I shouted and grunted, moving with Predious as his magic practically threw the metal cart ramp down. “Shadow, get yourself unhooked now.” The cold air of outside bit into my coat as Pred and I galloped into the empty and rocky farmfield. The two of us spun around, looking for the familiar rock that we’d emerged from at the start of all of this.
“There!” He shouted out, nearly bounding through the snow as we all cleared ourselves of the skycart. I spun and found the large rock, the bright white of the interior hallway shining oddly from the center of it. Following him, we all scrambled to get in. Tasteless and Pred were the first inside, followed by Ficha who tripped over the lip and fell through onto his face.
“Move your ass!” Gauge shouted as her horn flared in magic, shoving him out of the way before barreling through with me hot on her fetlocks. Shadow was the last of us, streaking through the air with a whistle. As he zipped past me, I noted how the whistling was only getting louder.
With an abrupt shriek, a bright missile streaked overhead and slammed into the skycart. The old prewar vehicle erupted in a multicolored explosion that forced us all to close our eyes. Among the ringing from the explosion, the metalic slam of the rock-hatch resonated through the air. We all sat there, panting heavily and catching our breaths in the bright hallway lighting. As I sat there, a little nagging thought in my head came to the front of my focus.
Damnit. I’d promised to return that…
“Shit, call Command.” The muffled voice of a stallion came through the hollow rock. “Tell them that their skycart has been destroyed, but we’ve lost sight of them. Tracks leading through the snow point to a hidden passageway inside a rock.”
“What? Who hides a room in a rock?” Another voice spoke up sharply. “Didn’t yah see? They got unicorns with em! They probably just teleported or somethin’ and are around here somewhere.” She gave out a sigh. Pai popped into my pipvision with a ear to ear grin, holding a hoof over her muzzle as she pretended to laugh. “Seriously? Use yah head.”
“Yeah, I guess.” The stallion grumbled. “You check the house. I’ll do a quick flyby of the forest.”
My heart was beating against my chest so hard that I was afraid that the assholes out there might hear it. Nopony else in here made a sound as we sat and kept our ears perked. Only after thirty seconds or so after hearing nothing else did we even all get back to our hooves. In silence, we all turned and started to trot back down the long hallway towards the Orchard.
“So Storm!” Ficha spoke up as he trotted alongside me. “This is your old home? It is quite… bright?” He squinted as he looked around the incredibly bright hallway. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed brighter this time around. Maybe fixing the power will have made the whole facility brighter… and hopefully a bit less creepy.
“We’re in another orchard,” Gauge called out from behind, “And you comment on the lights?”
“Yeah,” Shadow rolled his eyes as he lazily hovered to the other side of me, “maybe this time there won’t be a psychotic AI trying to kill us.”
“Ahem.” Pai spoke up. “So maybe I forgot to turn the lights off when I left. At least I didn’t go all murdertastic on Storm and Predious when they were first here...“ she paused for a moment. “Well, mostly.”
“Since you mentioned it,” Predious interjected rather abruptly. The look on his face spoke to how uncomfortable the both of us felt right now. “I assume that our little incident outside won’t be the last time we’ll see anypony out to kill us while we’re here.” He was right. Just as he spoke up, red lines started to populate my EFS quite quickly. “What is our plan?”
“The plan is to get me back to my core.” Pai spoke up with a note of eagerness in my voice. “Once there, I can find out where and possibly what the necromancer was so keen on getting into here.” She bounced into my vision. “Oh, and of course I can activate all the internal security measures that are still around.”
“You’re core is in the center of this whole facility, right?” I asked, watching as quite a few of the numerous red bars shifted back and forth. We were approaching the large code locked door that we’d used to leave this fucking place the first time.
“Yuppers!” Pai chimed and rolled across my pipvision with a giggle. “Get me there and I’ll have access to everything we’ll need!”
“So, here’s the plan. We keep as quiet as we can, for as long as we can.” I cantered ahead, making sure I was the first to the door. “Everypony understand that? The longer we avoid being seen, the better off we’ll be.” With a flick of my hoof, I tapped the door panel and watched as the door opened up for us again.
Standing on the other side, were two very confused looking Steel Ranger scribes.
“Oh, um…” One of them stated hesitantly, “Hello?”
“Great pep talk, Storm.” Tasteless grunted as she flew up over us, hoisting her shotgun in her hooves. With a tremendous report, the scribe that spoke to us splattered against the wall. “Unfortunately, I think we’re going in loud.”
* * * * * * * * *
“I’d really like it if you could get this fucking door down!” I shouted out to Gauge, furiously hoofing another few rounds into my rifle.
“Hey, I’m trying to find a way to shut it so they can’t just open it again!” She shouted as the pair of well armed enclave pegasi down the hall opened up with a light machine gun they’d managed to get set up. “Cause I for one, am tired of getting fucked in the ass by the goddess damned enclave!” The heavy chatter of fire thudded across our scattered and makeshift cover. Thank Celestia that the sheet metal filing cabinets were full of scientific reports and shit. Paper is the most under rated armor plating in the wasteland!
We’d made it the few hallways back to where the power generator was before they got the rest of the orchard locked down. The large blast doors that had been a problem without power now served to be even more dangerous with it. More so when the jerks controlling them kept our flank open and were constantly changing the codes on the locks.
A shower of yellow sparks shot through the doorframe before the heavy metal slab dropped down with a resounding slam. The rapid shots from the machine gun died out from the other side, leaving us all to listen to the ringing in our ears.
“Well I for one think that went well.” Predious grumbled as he climbed to his hooves and got back to work on cracking the electronic lock. “Now, would somepony please help me figure out how to get through this?”
“These doors aren’t too far from the design in alpha base.” Gauge’s horn flashed before there was a slight thunk in the door. Slowly, the door began to rise up into the air on it’s own. “Aunt Longbow once showed me how to use the emergency door release, said it was a trick an old friend taught her.”
“So, why even have locks on them?” Tasteless sounded mildly impressed as she fluttered over to Gauge’s side. “I mean, if it’s just a flick of the horn, why bother?”
“Because,” Ficha sighed. “Zebras can’t use magic like that.” He winced as he got up, a crimson stream flowing down his rear from a fairly nasty wound that punched through and through his withers. “Apparently they can’t hide too well either.”
“You… going to be alright?” I was still unsure of how Ficha had come back from the wounds he’d suffered back at chasm. He looked up at me with his stupid devilish smirk and a bold confidence in his eyes. He was hiding something behind those eyes, and one day I’d figure it out.
“With you around, mi amor, I’ll soldier on.” He added just the slightest egotistical flare to his words, and as always, I sighed.
“A yes or a no will do.” I grunted and started to trot into the next section. “So, what did you do to keep them from following us?”
“Oh, nothing much.” Gauge spoke nonchalantly and as if it were just a common question. She walked slower than the others, holding her answer until she was the last to pass through. Her horn lit up slightly, and a dim magical glow emanated from the inner workings of the door. “Just used my magic to trace back the power conduits to the main hydraulic assembly. You know, the main pump cuff is quite susceptible to just the slightest scratch…” As she spoke, a hiss and shower of sparks preempted the door slamming down like the last one. “And the pressure manifold ruptures, letting the door slide down. Heh, let’s see them lift the doors now.”
“Fairly genius...” Pred nodded, giving a slight pause, “However, there is a flaw with this plan of yours.” To that, Gauge sighed and rolled her eyes. “Without working hydraulics, how are we supposed to lift the doors when we want to get out of this facility?”
To borrow one of Harmony’s country-isms, Gauge’s muzzle scrunched tighter than if she’d been sucking on a pre-war lemon.
“Well, heh…” She gave a light chuckle, “You see, I um…”
“Maybe I could lift it?” Shadow stepped up next to me.
“No.” Predious shook his head. “I’d be hard pressed to see Iron Will even open it on his own. “However, Shadow may be able to take us back up through our original makeshift entrance?” He looked over to me with a shrug.
Honestly, I didn’t know what to do, or even why exactly we were here. “Fuck it, that’s the plan for now.” I said as I moved up to the next door. I just wanted to focus on getting whatever the elements needed me to. “Once we get Pai back into her server, maybe she’ll be able to point us in another direction to get out. I mean, this place couldn’t have only had one entrance and one secret exit. That would just be stupid!”
A quick beep from my pipbuck preempted a text message with Pai’s face next to it.
My programing restricts me from audibly criticizing Equestrian military members while in my orchard, but General Macaroni Salad was by all accounts a very stupid stallion. At the very least, he wasn’t the worst of Equestria’s architects… but yeah, it was pretty dumb of him to design it this way.
“Damnit.” I sighed, not even flinching as Gauge’s magic caused the next door to rise next to me.
The moment the door was more than halfway up, the high pitched whine of magical energy weapons caught my ear. Spinning around, I did something I hadn’t done in a while and dropped into S.A.T.S. with a flinch. Time slowed down as the green targeting overlay highlighted two combatants in the next hallway. Both of them were lightly armored, one looking to have been another Ranger acolyte, the other seeming to be some Enclave technician in utility barding.
Both of them had small magical energy weapons in their muzzles, and both were defiantly standing in the open. A poor choice for ponies who I’d assumed were probably smarter than the average pony. While I didn’t know why the Enclave had taken to helping Filius, neither of these ponies had the blank expression of one of his mental slaves. In the stillness of S.A.T.S. I thought about them being smart, realizing that without being under Filius’s control, one of them might know what he was looking for here.
One of them being the operative word.
Without much thought to it, I selected the chest of the enclave pony and registered three eighty percent chance shots. With a short beep, S.A.T.S. confirmed the order and guided my hooves as the spell kicked in. As I raised my rifle, my hoof tightened around the trigger, pulling it until the pressure broke the crisp action and hammer fell onto the firing pin.
In the slowness of dilated time, the first round left my rifle before it had even steadied. It was amazing to watch as the lead slug traveled out into the air. The air didn’t provide any real resistance as the bullet traveled, slightly askew from its intended target. As it sailed wide of the pegasus’s chest, my hoof twisted and worked the lever on my rifle, ejecting the spent shell before ramming another one home. As soon as the action closed, my hoof had already depressed the trigger again.
This time, the round had been better aimed and flew true from the barrel of my gun. As the pegasus’s weapon glowed and shot out a thin red beam, my round punched into his chest. From where it hit, I was pretty sure from previous fights that it had sunken into his heart. His outline flashed away as my hoof worked the action again, and the spell canceled itself.
Three shots had been overkill at eighty percent, but if I’d learned anything from dealing with Filius, it’s that dead didn’t mean dead.
The smell of Ozone filled the air as time returned to it’s normal speed, the Steel Ranger mare dropping to the floor. She whined as the Enclave stallion shuddered and slumped down dead next to her.
“Please!” She cried out to us, “Don’t shoot!”
“Nice shooting.” Tasteless chuckled as I walked forward into the hallway past the door. Ignoring everything else around me, I trotted up to the mare. With a tight grip on my rifle, I rose onto my back hooves again, taking aim. With a quick pull of the trigger, I blasted the skull of the stallion clean open.
“Goddesses why!?” The ranger mare sobbed loudly, curling herself up on the floor.
“What is Filius looking for?” I growled out, working the action on my gun again. “What the fuck does he have you looking for here?”
“I… I don’t know!” She whimpered pitifully from the floor.
I turned the gun on her and pressed it down against her trembling head. “I don’t believe you.” There wasn’t any more time to play it safe. We needed whatever was here, and I wasn’t going to let it slip through my hooves. “What is it!” I shouted!
“Ah!” She screamed and cried out louder. “I don’t know!” Her wailing sobs did little to encourage me, but I was numb to the feeling of sympathy.
Quickly shifting my aim, I pointed the barrel at her hoof and pulled the trigger. It was such a close shot that I couldn’t miss, and the scream it pulled from the mare annoyed me. With a burning sizzle, I pressed the hot barrel against her head again.
“Tell me, or the next shot is through here.” It was easy. She would tell me what I wanted to know, or she would die like every other one of Filius’s pawns.
“Storm!” Predious snapped at me. He used his hoof to drag my gun off of her head, rousing another pathetic whine from her. What I didn’t expect was his other hoof swinging up from under me. The strike wasn’t that hard, but to me it felt like his hoof was positively radiating heat. “This isn’t you, Storm.” He seethed through an intense glare. “Back off and take a seat.”
Filius’s laugh echoed again through my mind, sharply forcing me to view the room around me. The spatter of blood from the dead pegasus stallion dampened my coat and jacket, and the whimpering mare cradled her shredded hoof as she sobbed heavily on the floor. The others stood a few feet away in an awkward silence, staring with a mix of emotions ranging from uncertainty to uneasiness. Worst of all, was the look that Shadow gave me when he removed his helmet. The disappointment he wore burned the more I stared at him, and as he looked down at the blood on me, I turned myself from him.
Curse or no, Filius was right. I was becoming a monster like him.
“I’m... sorry.” I struggled to get the words out, when I did, I could feel the cold that came from my muzzle. Maybe Flilius was telling me something truthful for once. This curse had gotten a lot stronger in such a short period of time. How much time did I have left before it consumed me? How long did I have before I became nothing but a pony consumed by the hatred that burned in my soul?
“The antechamber.” The mare whined from the floor, still holding her hoof. “He’s forced us to work to find a way to open it…”
“What?” The word slipped from my muzzle without a thought.
Through her tears the mare answered. “I don’t know why. I just want to get my colt back.” Her soft sobs continued as Predious drew out a roll of bandages from his saddle bags. “I swear, I don’t know anything else.”
The soft beep from my pipbuck caught my attention, my vision shifting to a muted blue as Pai popped up.
“Hey there sis.” She spoke solemnly. “I know that you aren’t feeling quite yourself, but I thought you’d want to know about the antechamber.”
“What is it?” I’d even let Pai down. This was truly a new low I’d reached, and it was only going to get worse. “What’s inside that Filius wants?”
“I don’t know.” She said softly. “When I came online, one of the first things I did was see how far I could reach out in this place. I explored every nook and cranny in the schematics that I could reach. What I found was that there were ‘dark zones’ where my control was restricted to nothing more than observation and PA system use.” She looked up at me with a sad smile. “One of those zones was your bedroom, another was main reactor controls. The final room, was the test chamber.”
“The test chamber?” I thought back to the memory of how I’d disappointed everypony. How I’d murdered those scientists…
“Sis, that wasn’t your fault.” Pai spoke up. “The test chamber is more than it seems, built before anything else in this place.” That caught my attention. “Inside is another room for something important, something I was never given access to even know about.” She looked over to the mare on the floor, giving a sad sigh. “All I know, is that your test chamber was listed on the schematics only as ‘The Antechamber’.”
“How do we get into it?” Predious asked hesitantly, shooting his worried gaze up to mine for only a moment. With another pained expression, he refocused himself and used his magic to wrap the hoof of the injured mare.
“Assuming there is a way to get in, the answer lies in the core.” She spoke, pulling up the map on my pipbuck. A small triangular guide marker popped up in my pipvision. “Get me there, and I will find a way to get you in.”
“Storm,” Predious held his hoof up at me, “I’m going to have to ask that you follow behind us.”
“Pred, I’m fine.” I sighed, trying not to look at the mare still crying under him. “So long as we…”
“No. No excuses, or ‘so long as we’s, or compromises.” He turned and looked at the others. “You obviously aren’t alright, and it would be best if you just stayed in the rear and let us do the heavy lifting.” As much as the notion infuriated me, he was as right as he always was. So I just sat there, silently staring down at the floor as Gauge trotted by getting to work on the next door.
Honestly, I hated how right Predious was, but that was the emotion that got me into this mess in the first place. This curse scared me half to death, not just because it might kill me, but it capitalizes one of the emotions that has kept me alive. In the wasteland, hatred is what fuels you when things go south. It drives you to do more than you ever could without it. I’ve seen those who’ve lost themselves in it, the raiders who flay ponies alive and rape their corpses. That’s what hate breeds, and I’ve always been in control of it.
“Got it!” Gauge called out as the door lifted up slowly.
Before I went to follow them, I looked over at the sobbing mare. “I’m sorry.” I whispered to her. I knew that the words couldn’t undo the pain I’d caused, but I had to say something. She didn’t deserve Filius holding her hostage here any more than she deserved me hurting her.
Picking myself up, I turned and headed out at a canter. The next hallway was one that turned a corner and headed back down inward. Thankfully, it was unoccupied when they locked this place down. After a quick trot, we all stopped at the next door so Gauge could work her magic.
The flames that I felt inside, the ones that I’ve had my whole life. They weren’t immune to the temptations of hate. What would happen if I let them out against my friends? How could I go on if I hurt or even killed one of them? What sort of pony would that make me to all of those who looked up to me to help them?
The door ahead lifted without so much as a hiss.
“Shit!” Was all gauge got off before the sound of heavy steel hooves on the ground met our ears. The mechanical whir of a minigun from behind the door, our only warning that the power armored ranger on the other side was waiting.
We all scrambled for cover as a bright line of fire traced along the hallway floor. The quick thumps of a grenade launcher filled the air, and to my surprise, the rounds slowed to a crawl out in the hall next to us. Pred’s magical haze glowed around the three grenades before a quick shift of his head tossed them back the way they’d come. They didn’t do much to the walking tank, but as soon as they went off, nearly everypony popped from their cover and returned fire.
Everypony that is, except for me.
Once the smoke from the blast cleared, it was obvious that our paladin friend was dead. None of us knew who had scored the final hit on him, but somepony’s lucky shot had punched through his thin visor and splattered his brains all over the inside of his helmet.
I stayed silent as we continued, too afraid that even if I opened my muzzle now, that I might say something that could cause an argument. All it would take is one spark to set me off, and I couldn’t risk it.
Another door open, another clear hallway. We were creeping ever closer to the core, and all I could think was that the ponies in there need to surrender. I didn’t want them to fight, because if they did, my friends might get hurt. One errant round, one mistake and one of them takes a bullet, I don’t know if I could hold myself back.
“Is this it?” Predious called out softly. I looked up, finding that I’d been left back from the group more than I’d thought. A double sized yellow and black striped door sat at the end of the hallway, the small keypad next to it blackened and left sparking. They knew they couldn’t stop us, so they were just trying to slow us down.
“Yeah, just give me a minute and I can have it open.” Gauge muttered as I caught myself up.
“Good, because this has been entirely underwhelming.” Tasteless groaned. “Sure, toaster boy back there was a challenge, but he went down too easy.”
“Storm?” Shadow spoke up softly as he landed himself next to me.
“I’m sorry I’m not myself.” I looked up to him, pleading for his forgiveness.
“I need you to promise me something.” His kind expression was out of place amongst the ponies here. Shadow didn’t belong in this wasteland, he was too noble and kind for it. “Don’t give up on yourself.”
“What?” I didn’t understand what he meant by that. “Why would you think I would?”
“Because, I know what it’s like to doubt.” He leaned in and nuzzled against my cheek warmly. “You are the strongest mare I’ve ever known, mentally and physically. I can see you struggling with your thoughts.” He cupped his hoof under my chin and stared into my eyes. “You can beat this, I don’t doubt that at all.”
“I just don’t want to lose myself to this… curse.” I pulled away from him, getting a light chuckle. “What? You think this isn’t serious? I barely lost my temper to that mare, and look what I did to her!”
“Don’t you see?” He smiled and hooked his hoof around me, pulling me in tight against him. “You’ve been so focused on Filius that you’ve got him stuck inside your own head.”
“Because I don’t know how to stop him!” Again, I shrugged off his hold.
“Storm, you know you aren’t alone in this.” Shadow sighed and looked at the floor. “Even if you lose your cool, we’ll still be there for you. I’ll still be there for you.” He put his hoof over his heart and nodded. “But you? You need to be there for you too.”
A set of quick pops and a few sparks pulled both of our attentions. “Hah!” Gauge giggled. “I beat the lock! It’s a little different than any other door I’ve rewired, but it should open here once the timelock counts down to zero.”
“How long will that take?” Ficha coughed out from the wall, looking positively pale. Well, as pale as a black and white zebra could be. “Could really use a nap...” He spoke through a yawn, stretching in a way that made the hole in his flank seep another line of blood out.
“Thirty seconds… or minutes.” She muttered the latter part of that. “But yeah! It should open up soon...ish.”
Being distracted made me miss the fact that Shadow had leaned in close to me again. “Believe in yourself, Storm.” He whispered into my ear before giving me a soft peck on the cheek. “Do it for me.”
--Chapter End--
“What's to come is fire and the end of time.”
Quests Finished: none
Quests Started: none
Levels Earned: none
Perks Earned: none