Fallout: Equestria, Project Horizons

Chapter 32: Choir

Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons
By Somber
Chapter 32: Choir
"Though quarrels arise, their numbers are few. Laughter and singing will see us through."
I'd dealt with a few monsters before. The hydra in Flank... the mutated dragonlings in Stockyard... radscorpions... manticores... all of them dangerous. But no matter how big or how small they were, they all made sense. Limbs, legs, head, fangs, hooves, stingers... the arrangement might be odd, but in their own way, they made sense.
This... this didn't make sense.
The walls, floor, ceiling... everything was moving. It was impossible to tell where metal ended and flesh began. Eyes were bulging. Mouths were opened in one long scream. There were organs between the equipment. Meaty appendages... intestines... I clutched my stomach as I backed away. I felt... it felt like my insides were moving! Like my tainted guts were trying to crawl right out my throat! I fought for one moment and then puked on the inside of my helmet. It wasn't bad compared to what followed at the other end.
And worst of all, I wanted to join that scream. It scratched at my throat.
"Stop it!" I shouted as I tried to back away, but my limbs were stuck to the floor! No, the floor was crawling up my legs! No! My legs were sinking into the floor! "Stop it, please!" I begged. Then things got worse.
It stopped.
Those eyes watched. The molded steel and flesh seemed to be waiting. Watching. "She has not joined our choir..." the mouths whispered.
Sweet Celestia... were they...
"You're... you can talk?" I murmured as I stared... pony eyes. Pony mouths. Luna save me, I saw cutie marks in that mix!
"She is very close. Close to joining their choir," one mouth whispered. Rainbow spittle drizzled from its lips. "We should make her join ours instead!" the drooling lip grinned.
"I don't understand, what do you mean... a choir? I can't sing!" I looked over at Rampage, but her eyes were wide and staring. She looked like a foal trapped in a nightmare.
There was a long low snicker. "Oh, everypony can. Listen..."
The mouths began screaming. One scream of many notes going on and on and... I'd been wrong. We were both trapped in a nightmare. I wanted P-21 here to blow this all up. I wanted Lacunae here with her stupid Goddess to sneer in disdain. I wanted Glory... sweet Celestia... I needed Glory to tell me it was going to be all right. "Stop!"
And again, they did. A wide, slack mouth poking between two monitors murmured, "She does not like our song." It sounded almost apologetic.
"Why?" snickered a mare's mouth. "She's so close to us already. She's singing parts herself. We've heard her."
I felt something move around my hooves... but I couldn't look. "You mean you were singers before... this?" I gasped, refusing to look down. If I saw... I would start screaming. I didn't think I would ever stop.
"No. We joined the choir... after," the mare stuck in the wall beside me murmured softly.
"Force her to join! Make her sing!" several of the voices began to babble.
"Wait! Wait! What happened here?" I asked, looking around. Oh Goddesses, my insides were moving! I felt a little wire in my mind, and it was being drawn tighter and tighter.
Then it stopped. The eyes stared at me; pony eyes watching and blinking and staring. There were veins running along the deformed metal and around the equipment. They pulsed as the lips slowly moved on their own. I started at the ropey gray intestines and felt my own squirming within.
"There was a box," whispered lips near the pedestal. "A box came with a mystery within."
Rampage murmured behind me, "Blackjack, we need to get out of here... Please, let's get out of here."
"A mystery containing a wonder," the lips whispered. I felt something on my legs, but I was incapable of moving. I could only stare into the eyes. Goddesses... was there something in my eye socket again? Glory'd burned it out! Burned it!
One of the screens, its surface bulging out like a blister, flashed to life. The image was a mess of bilious greens and yellows as it showed bucks and mares around a small black box. One mare with some sort of pastry or cake on her rump opened the black case. "I was Applejack's cousin. I could open it," came a whisper from a green mouth above.
The silver bullet came out and was placed on the warped pedestal. "What are you doing?" I asked as I felt my stomach heave again, then swallowed.
"Freeze... cold... so cold," a blue pair of lips muttered before licking back a trickle of rainbow snot. On the screen, a mechanical arm swung over the pedestal, and a diamond wafer touched the metal. "We tried to cut oh so carefully... but we could not. We knew not."
A twisted grin cackled, "But I remembered the secret. I remembered the metal. The note." One of the bucks on the screen waved his hooves enthusiastically to the rest gathered around the frozen bullet. "The note of our song."
Now I watched in fascination as the blade cut the silvery metal with ease. Unicorn magic pulled it apart. "Blackjack, we have to go. This is fucked up. We need to go now."
But I couldn't move. I had two choices... watch and learn, or start screaming. I felt something in the back of my throat. I prayed that I was only imagining it... moving. "A minute..." I croaked as the silver bullet was cracked open. "I have to see this..." Because everything else would make me scream.
"That's a weird bullet," Rampage muttered on my blind side.
That was no bullet. I might know dick about... this... all of this... but I knew bullets. It might have been bullet-shaped, but the entire thing was one solid worked piece of metal divided into two sections. The larger of the two, a distorted half-sphere near the base of the shell and with its broad, flat side on the dividing wall, was packed full of a grayish paste like P-21's explosives. A small hole pierced through the shell to the small compartment, most of which was taken up by a strange, glowing hexagonal piece of crystalline stone that the robot arm's saw hadn't been able to cut through. Packed around the stone was some kind of thick goop that reminded me of the rainbow sludge now drizzling out of the... lips... of the room...
I'd exposed myself to that sludge each time I'd fired Folly.
I remembered the warped and twisted bones in Ironshod Firearms R&D. Melted like this room. Scalpel had detected the taint in me days after I'd fired Folly at Miramare. After firing it in the factory, I'd been told by Triage that my taint exposure had jumped once again... I'd been killing myself with every shot of the superweapon.
No, not killing myself. Turning myself into... this. The room muttered, giggled, and laughed softly.
"What is that... that crystal? That sludge? That metal?" I gasped. I lurched but managed not to fall over. I knew I'd seen that odd glowing gem before somewhere... The room, however, gave a hateful shriek that made me spasm. The walls began to pulsate.
"Blackjack... tell me we can get the fuck out of here... Blackjack?" Rampage said. I tried to wave my hoof, to buy some time, but I couldn't lift it. "Shit... oh shit... shit shit shit..." she muttered.
"That rock... of a lesser song. The metal... of a greater glory! The potion... the ichor of the meddler... a neutral buffer to separate the two," the mouths muttered in unison. "Sing with us. Sing your screams with us! The other cannot join. She is of a false unity. But you can be together with us!"
"Unity!" I gasped as I struggled to step back. I couldn't step anywhere. My heart was beating so hard that I was amazed that I hadn't fallen flat on my face. "You're with the Goddess?"
The mouths were silent. One chuckled... then another... then the rest in wild, mad glee. "She is not a child of the other choir. Imitation. False. Forgery. Manufactured. She babbles her own tune and will be undone. She is not a true choir. Nor is your friend there. Isolated. Separated. She cannot join us."
"Thank goodness. Now, Blackjack... out... now..." But I couldn't get out. I couldn't leave. If I did, part of me would tear its way out of my body and stay. A part that wanted to stay...
"And you're a true choir?" I gasped for air again and swallowed, desperate to puke again if I could. I wanted to get whatever was inside me out. The walls were beating like a heart, but with an alien beat: singular contractions rather than a double pulse. I imagined my own heart was beating in time with the meat.
Please. Let it only be in my head.
"We are, but trapped in flesh. Kept apart. We will join it in time. We were the latest to join the greater choir in such a long time. The greater song," they murmured in unison. "Let us sing for you." And one began to scream. Then another. And another. Their screams blended together, one building on the next in a singular note. A note that grew and grew; and I was singing with it... not through my lips.
No... it was coming from inside my chest. I was going to sing with it too, till there was nothing left but that song.
"Blackjack! Glory's waiting!" Rampage yelled in my face. Then I stared at my friend, her red and white stripes seeming to melt together. Her tissue looked mottled and knotted, even scaly... and there was a wing forcing itself out of her shoulder through a gap in her armor. As I watched, a small horn was twisting slowly out the side of her head. "Are you just going to leave her up there wondering what happened to us?!"
That shout and that look snapped me out for a precious moment. I looked down at my hooves, but the metal-meat amalgamation had sealed itself around each of them like concrete; I only hoped that the safety suit had prevented me from fusing completely with the floor. "Cut me out. It's time to get out of here!" I tugged and struggled, and Rampage tore at the floor with her hoofclaws. But each slash spattered us with rainbow ichor, and the rents healed, and the scream bored deeper into my mind with every passing second.
Rampage turned to the screens; the distorted pictures now showed the bullet letting off plumes of rainbow gas and the ponies around it melting and falling into still-living heaps. One showed the wall chewing Pickets... oh Celestia... were those teeth I felt working on the ends of my limbs? Chewing through the suit? I blasted with the shotgun, wishing I'd loaded incendiary rounds.
"Damn it, will you bastards play something else? That song is old!" Rampage yelled as she struggled to get my right leg free.
And then I felt it. A squirm inside me at the words as the scream went on and on inside me and around me... oh Goddesses... inside me... inside me! It was screaming inside me! I felt like I was going to... give birth to something. It was going to claw its way out of me; turn me inside out. I wanted to take her ripper and tear myself open. Get it out! Get it out now!
"Calm down, Blackjack," rasped the Dealer in my ear. "Go into S.A.T.S."
"What..." but I couldn't argue. I simply wanted to scream forever.
I did. It was all I could think of. But S.A.T.S. didn't help. I couldn't target myself, and this was one time shooting Rampage wouldn't help! Even Folly was back with my barding and saddlebags. The room didn't offer any obvious target or weak point. It just let me see the pony flesh wiggling its way out from the gaps and vents in the room.
But then I realized something else the spell gave me: time. Time to think. Time to calm down. If I lost it completely, then I wouldn't be able to do anything.
"That's it. Panic never helped anypony," the Dealer said softly as he trotted out in front of me to stand beside Rampage. "Now. I know you can't speak, but you can think. So think about this thing. What is it? What does it want? What is its weak spot? Everything has at least one."
I looked at the gaunt, pale buck in the battered hat. What did the room want? To eat me... or fuse with me... no. That was what it was doing to me. A terrified pink pony inside me pointed out those wide mouths. It wanted to sing. It wanted me to scream right along with it. And I wanted to... some horrible, treasonous part of my mind wanted to sing right along.
But I had other songs, too.
My PipBuck had a number of music files I'd collected from the Wasteland. If this thing wanted music, then I'd give it something else to listen to. Something better than just screams. I selected the song, the most powerful one I knew, and cranked the volume all the way up. I slipped out of S.A.T.S. and hit play. For a moment, I thought that the music wouldn't be able to overcome that single horrid screaming note, but then it rose. I felt my insides spasm in response, but the song of dozens of ponies in a little chapel filled that pit... and I could almost see Priest as I listened to his majestic music.
Sweet Celestia, full of grace. Help us find our rightful place.
Help us grow up big and strong. Laughing and singing all day long.
Show us how we should be kind. Teach us beauty and peace of mind.
Sweet Celestia, full of grace. Show us your gentle, shining face.
The horrible scream faltered, with some voices babbling curses or hissing in pain. My PipBuck continued to play the swelling music made by Priest, Medley, and all the other ponies in that little knot of hope.
Dearest Luna, soft and strong. Keep us safe all night long.
Under your soft and watchful eye. Let your stars fill up the sky.
Know our hearts are always thine. Protect us with strength sublime.
Dearest Luna, soft and strong. Let us honor you in song.
As I watched, the flesh seemed to be driven away. The eyes clenched in pain as the pulse fluctuated wildly. Rainbow ichor burst from some of the veins as the room reacted horribly to the swelling hymn to two princesses now long parted from this world. I might not have been able to believe in goddesses any more, but I could believe in beauty, kindness, and harmony.
Sweet Celestia, we sing to thee. That our worries be set free.
Dearest Luna, we praise your skies. Delight us with night's surprise.
Know you're in our fondest prayer. Mighty Princesses sweet and fair.
Sweet Celestia, full of grace. Dearest Luna, our song embrace.
My legs pulled free of the pits they were stuck in, and I took a few staggering steps. For a moment, I thought of running for it. Leaving this place forever, even seeing if P-21 could seal away or collapse it. And I would have, too... except for one thing. Just one.
The room was crying. The dozens of mouths now sang the melody that I'd been playing. Dozens of pained, ashamed ponies turned into something horrid... but still ponies. And I had to give them something... anything... that would help. Not peace from violence, but peace from this horror. I slowly stepped towards the wall. "I'm sorry," I murmured as I looked at those bright and pained eyes. "I don't know how to help you..."
"You have," a mare said quietly as the rest hummed the melody. "You have, so much. You reminded us of what we were... what we should be."
"Is there... can I change you back?" I asked, thinking it had to be impossible. From the way her lips turned in a sad smile, it was. "I'm sorry. I wish I could do something... give you something..."
"You can," a buck said softly. "In the storeroom next door... there are chemicals. Benzene. Ethanol and methanol. Hydrogen and oxygen talismans. Acetone. Toluene. Spill them... ignite them. Don't let us go back to... to what we were." The lips trembled and it whimpered softly. "We're so tired of screaming."
"Right," Rampage said with a nod. "I'm going to need your shotgun... and it's probably going to be ruined."
I passed it to her without hesitation. "I've had it less than a day," I muttered with a thin smile. "Are you going to be okay?"
"Eh, I'll burn up, but," she said as she looked at her warped hide. "Two apples, one stone. I'll be fine. Believe it or not, this isn't the first time I've gotten all mutated up." I could believe it. And I couldn't help myself, I hugged her for helping me do this... snapping me out of it and helping these... these poor ponies.
"You've got two songs. Get clear before then. I don't think they'll stay lucid long," Rampage said softly as she patted my back. Then she turned to the room and said grandly, "Okay, everypony. Let's hear an encore!"
And the chorus began to sing, and it hurt. Whatever had made them like this... gave them that scream to sing... also made the melody pierce like nails. Even I hurt... but at least I didn't think that my insides were singing. Oh please, let them not be singing. As I trotted towards the door, I spotted something that had been hidden by the mat of metal flesh. It was the strange white crystal that had been inside the cut-open silver bullet. It wasn't very big... about the same size as my hor-- as a shotgun shell.
I peeked into the storage room. Glass bottles. Metal storage tanks. Lots of warnings about flammables and keeping the door shut at all times. Perfect. I used my magic to turn on the hydrogen and oxygen talismans, glad they were clearly labeled. There were also leaking drums, marked 'Hippocratic Research', that had once been filled with the rainbow crud. Just another reason to go there the second I was finished with the Rangers. Rampage grinned and said, "Get out of here. It's going to get toasty pretty quick!" And with that, she started knocking over some large glass jugs.
I paused at the door to the lab, picking up the white crystal and floating it beside me. "Goodbye," I said as the room started on the next stanza. Rampage was violating every safety rule posted on the walls as she kicked the ripped barrels into the cryogenics lab, taking great glee in the destruction. I had picked my way up the stairs by the third stanza. I looked back, but kept going as I headed for the exit. As I reached it, here was a muffled bang behind me, followed by the sound of a great breath being sucked in and then let out all at once. The pressure wave knocked me over, and a tongue of flame raced up the stairs behind me, spreading out overhead.
Fortunately, the fire didn't go much farther than that. I lay there for a moment, then slowly sat up, my PipBuck still playing the tune. I turned it off and stared at the flames pouring up the stairs.
A black, pony-shaped silhouette appeared amid the flames. Black plates of char and flesh moved with careful steps as she stood at the top, fire licking off her hide as the edges and tips of her armor glowed a faint red. Only Rampage could bathe in fire.
The blackened flesh sloughed off in crunchy chunks with each step as she walked towards me. She clenched her eyes hard, and when they opened she looked at me and slowly grinned. She shook herself, scattering charred, greasy flakes like so many playing cards, then coughed a little ball of rolling smoke and spat black phlegm to one side. The raw pink flesh paled to white with her familiar red stripes showing through. "Ugh... hate fire," she said, looking at her blackened steel hoofblades. "Takes forever to clean my armor." I just smiled in amazement.
"Are they..." I asked as I looked behind her.
"If they're not, then I don't think there's anything we can do for them." I started to remove the hazardous materials suit, and she raised a hoof. "I'd wash before you take it off! You're sort of dripping there, Blackjack." Ugh... I felt and smelled like I was trapped in a well-used toilet... but I was bad enough off taintwise at the moment. I could wait a little longer...
"So," I said as we walked out into the subway tunnels. "Just curious... where the hay did you get that armor?"
"This?" she asked with a little smile. "This is Hammersmith's finest work; he makes all the quality weapons for the Reapers. Since you left my armor down in the tunnels, I had to go and get it."
"And... you didn't get messed up?" I asked as we started up the rusty escalator.
"If I did, I don't remember it," she replied calmly. "Down the elevator, then way up the stairs to the factory. Right where you dropped it next to Lacunae's gatling gun," she said with a smile. "One weird thing, though."
"I'm not sure I can take any more weird... like, period. I have exceeded my weirdness quota for the rest of my life..." Not that that was very long anyway. She arched a brow, and I sighed. "Okay. Lay it on me. Talking walls? Flesh melting magic fields? I can take it." I braced myself for another soul-crushing revelation or infuriatingly vague puzzle.
"It was being cleaned up." I stopped and looked at her. "Like somepony had come along and was putting everything back, fixing all the stuff you blasted." Then she looked a little more coolly at me. "And by the way, Blackjack... I've got to say I am a little put out that you had some sort of mega super destruction spell you were going to fire and I wasn't in the way."
I gave her a little smile... the most I could manage. "I was a little occupied, but I promise... the next time I fire a super taint-ridden weapon of mass destruction, I will make sure that you are in the line of fire." I sighed as I thought about it, but honestly, my brain just couldn't put it together. After dealing with that... choir... thing... what I'd felt beating inside my chest... hearing... I wanted to butt my head against the wall till I'd expunged the thoughts from my mind. Maybe I could get Triage to... no... no, I couldn't do that. I'd just have to try and deal with them along with all of the other horrors of the Hoof.