Fallout: Equestria, Project Horizons

Chapter 58: Departures

Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons
By: Somber
Chapter 58: Departures

"You and I have some unfinished business. My magic's gotten better since I was here last. And I'm going to prove it! Me and you. A magic duel. Winner stays, loser leaves Ponyville forever!"

I've never liked gravity. It's not heights that're my problem. It's falling. It's the idea of gravity pulling you downward. The sense that there was some force constantly clutching at you simply because it could. It didn't matter how hard you tried or what you wanted, gravity was always there; inescapable, inexhaustible, and unforgiving.
Lacunae looked on, the purple alicorn having replaced her formal wear with the black mourner's gown. She had a minigun from the Harbinger attack squad and an anti-machine rifle floating beside her as she waited patiently. Idly, I wondered where she kept her ammo. I supposed it really didn't matter at this point. Despite her wings, she too was trapped in gravity's inexhaustible pull. So much energy being expended to keep herself from being crushed by its force.
I was falling now as I scribbled out a note in Awesome's study. Every letter was a struggle to put to the page. 'wanted to give you this. Take Fleur and go home. Stop Lighthoves. Hope I see you again. Sorrie if I don't. Talk to' And I tumbled a little bit more as gravity compelled me to scribble out the last two words. 'Love you. Blackjack.' I'd just have to hope that they'd finish what I couldn't. Gravity told me to move. Gravity wanted me somewhere else. I told gravity to fuck off as I looked to the page and scrawled in a trembling pen, 'PS: don't freek out. Last nite was awesem. Giv 21 a hug frm' but that was all I was allowed. I wanted to add a PPS and a PPPS, but if I did, gravity would make me fall on my friends and kill them.
Gravity was a bitch...
I left the note on the gift I'd found in Meatlocker. I'd forgotten to give it to her... being thrown against a wall by an irate marefriend can have that effect... I struggled to stay there a few seconds more. My PipBuck lay beside it; no calling for help in a moment of lucidity, no navigation tags to lead my friends to me. All very neat. I wanted to linger... Just a few seconds. But gravity tore me away, and I turned to Lacunae. "You can port me all the way to Maripony?"
"No. It will take several teleports, and I will need assistance," she said in solemn tones. "You will have to help me till we meet up with the others."
"I don't want to do this," I whimpered as we stood together. I looked at the pathetic note I'd scribbled and ached to stay just another instant, but I couldn't fight it anymore. Neither of us could.
"I know, Blackjack." I looked into her sad eyes and touched my horn to hers. Together, we triggered the spell, her magic supported by my own meager offering. Together, we disappeared.

* * *

Our arrival at Miramare felt like I'd slammed through a solid wall. And I could make that comparison; I'd had more than a bit of experience in the slamming-through-solid-walls department. Every cell of my body ached and my horn had some char on it, but it was beyond relevance now. The spell would be cast again. And again. And again, for as long as it was necessary. Indeed, with Lacunae's guidance, teleportation almost seemed easy. "Go get it," Lacunae told me as she trotted out to the crater to soak up her rads for the next leg of our trip. I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. The Goddess pulled at my every thought, dragging me down into the mass that was Unity. Oh, she wasn't going to consume me fully just yet. She wanted a trump card. Already, I had to think of ways to kill LittlePip and her friends.
If it was just LittlePip, I'd have to take her out from outside the range of her E.F.S. I did not want to fight her up close where she could drop a boxcar on me! How such a little mare had such terrifying telekinesis was beyond me. If I did have to fight up close, I'd need the shotgun with flechettes. She wore light armor; if I was lucky, I could take her out quickly. Maybe blind her... she wouldn't be very good with her super telekinesis if she couldn't see, and E.F.S. and S.A.T.S. don't do you any good if you don't have eyes to sparkle at... oh dear Luna, did I just think that?
If her friends got involved... I absorbed everything the Goddess knew of LittlePip and her friends. Calamity would die first. Headshot, long range. I couldn't worry about him and LittlePip at the same time. Velvet Remedy would die next; she'd likely linger over his body. That'd eliminate healing and really distract LittlePip. No matter how she denied it, there were still warm and sexy feelings associated with Velvet in her subconscious. Kill her friends and hurt her too badly to come at me thinking straight. Steelhooves would be risky. Oh, not killing him; Steel Ranger armor was tough, but all I had to do was teleport onto his back and cut his head off with the starmetal sword. No, the problem was that that would put me in range of LittlePip and Xenith. Ultimately, magic bullets to the head would be my best bet for LittlePip. Xenith would probably kill me, but the Goddess would be saved from whatever plot LittlePip hatched.
I just needed one little thing.
I walked into Miramare's admin building; I didn't need E.F.S. to spot the squatters who'd moved in. A dozen or so emaciated ponies and three tough, scarred, and all around battle-hardened griffins immediately roused themselves as I entered. From their leather gear and service rifles, I doubted they would be any kind of trouble to me. "Hey! This is our place! Get--" one griffin female shouted as she rose. Then she took in just what she was talking to as my eyes locked onto hers. "By the First Egg... who the fuck are you?"
"Nopony you want to fuck with tonight," I answered. The force of the Goddess was pushing me to end the three; there was no future for the griffins, zebras, or dragons. Their extinction was unfortunate but inevitable. I thought back that they might be protecting the ponies, some Contract arranged. The pressure eased.
"She's with Red Eye. She's a cyberpony, just like him!" one of the earth pony mares shouted in a panic. "She's come to take us back to the pits! Kill her, Lyonesse! Please!"
"I'm not here for any of you. I'm not with Red Eye. In fact, I'll probably be killing him soon." I could feel a whole hit list of people the Goddess wanted dead. I'd be more than her Lacunae; I'd be her personal hitpony. Her executioner. The thought made me clench my teeth and try to think of a way to escape her pull. All I accomplished was a headache as my legs resumed movement through the admin building.
"If you're not after us, we got no argument with you," Lyonesse replied, the young tawny griffin looking at the other two. From the looks they all exchanged, it was clear that this wasn't a fight any of them wanted. That might save their lives. "If you're here for salvage, we picked it all clean and stashed it, so there's nothing for you here."
"Funny. I thought I picked it clean when I swept through here," I replied as I walked past towards the barracks. The three followed. I had to obey that force, but that didn't mean I couldn't chat in the meantime. "You all new to the Hoof?"
"The ponies came from Fillydelphia. Met up with them near Ponyville a couple weeks back. Heard Hoofington wasn't controlled by Red Eye anymore, so we agreed to escort them in exchange for any ammo or weapons we came across," she said, keeping her voice calm as we trotted into the locker room. "So... are there a lot of you around here?"
"Some free advice. Go northeast. Look for a place called Megamart. Premiere traders. They'll buy anything you folks find. Don't go southeast. You'll run into a place called Flank. Used to be a community, now just a lot of killers. Be very careful who you fuck with," I said as I trotted to the terminal and selected Psalm's locker.
I typed in the password. 'Unforgiven'. The locker popped open with a heavy clunk, and I lifted out the large matte black metal case and the black riot armor she'd worn before. I felt the wave of shame from my friend, along with the memory of her placing these objects within when she first returned to Hoofington in exile. Testaments of the bloody legacy she'd carved through ponykind. Popping its catches, I opened the case and looked at the disassembled Penance in its padding. Dozens of tiny scratches on the polymer butt hinted at its bloody legacy. "Forgive me, Luna," I murmured, despite myself. It still smelled of gun oil. It was a gun of beauty, awesome in its design and terrible in its purpose.
The three griffins looked at me, and one them suddenly grinned covetously. "Scramble me, that fucking shit is mi--" Her hand reached for her holster.
I obliterated her head in a spray of blood, bone, and brains with a magic bullet. "Oh shi--" screamed the second, trying to bring her guns to bear behind me. One applebuck with two metal hooves, and she made a sound like plywood snapping as she was embedded in the flimsy lockers behind me. Lyonesse I fixed with two glowing pinpricks right in her eyes. The tawny griffin shook as she stared back, filling the room with a salty smell as she wet herself.
Only the fact that she might keep the ponies safe till they could be transformed saved her. I closed the gun case and took the riot armor. Grace's alteration spell was fresh in my mind; I couldn't have cast it myself, but I was connected to the analytic genius of Mosaic and Gestalt. In a trice, the alterations had been made, and I pulled the black armor over my body. When the coat was in place, few ponies would guess I was augmented, but everypony would know I was bad news. No dragonkiller rounds in the locker, unfortunately. I'd have to use normal antipersonnel and armor piercing against LittlePip.
Closing the locker, I made my way to the door, leaving the bodies of the two griffins untouched. I think that unnerved Lyonesse even more. "If you really want my advice, though, get the fuck out of the Hoof as fast as you can," I said calmly. "This place will fucking kill you." And I turned my back on her, walking out the way I came. The dozen ponies shrank back into the offices and barracks as I strode past. Who could blame them?
The Operative walked the Wasteland once more.
When I approached the balefire crater, Lacunae looked at me with profound regret. "No. No. Please. Don't do this to her. Don't make her into her antithesis."
"You are in no position to tell us to do anything. You are the trash bin, and you are starting to stink. Now make the next jump," the Goddess replied contemptuously.
"No!" Lacunae shouted, her eyes flaring bright purple. "I won't!" Dreadful silence filled Unity at those words.
"You what?" the Goddess replied, as if not understanding those two little words.
"I refuse! I will not obey!" Lacunae shouted, sitting in the crater as she pressed her hooves to the sides of her head. "I... I am not your garbage bin! I am... more!" she yelled aloud and across Unity.
"You dare? You think yourself more than us?!" the Goddess retorted haughtily. "You are nothing! You are merely the collection of our weaknesses, flaws, doubts, and pains! You were never born. That vessel isn't even yours. You are nothing! Now obey!" And gravity strong enough to crush her, the focus of not just the Goddess but hundreds of wills, pressed in upon her.
"I... will... not!" Lacunae roared in response to the dark skies overhead. "I have friends! I am... I am lo... I am cared for! I matter to others! I will not fail them now and deliver them to you."
"You have friends..." the Goddess murmured, and a ripple spread through Unity at the word. "How... how could a... a nothing... a nopony... a neverpony... have friends?" she demanded scornfully. Then she growled, "Of all the times you could do this, you choose now? Now that LittlePip is coming! She means to destroy us! Blackjack's own thoughts confirm it. And you dare to do this now? Now?!"
"I will not..." she whimpered. "Think about what you are doing." She fell to her knees in the crater, eyes clenched shut as her whole body shook.
"What we are doing? We? We are saving the pony race! We are becoming a viable species! We are eliminating three of our greatest threats all in one go. We are also going to make sure a zebra artifact will never corrupt another after we've extracted the knowledge we need. We are doing what must be done! What will be done! And nopony, not you, not Red Eye, not Blackjack, and certainly not that undersized pain in our ass is going to stop us!" Unity roared into her like an avalanche. "But what about you! What are you doing? You are putting our entire race at risk of extinction because you're worried about your friend. You are fighting our efforts to protect ourselves from Red Eye, for your friend. You are blind to threats to us out of concern for your friend! How can you be so shortsighted? How can you be so selfish?" It was not rage that poured through the link, but disgust and contempt. "If only we could execute you safely..."
Lacunae pressed her face to the glowing earth as she struggled against the gravity tearing her apart. "Please!" I begged into that raging collection of thoughts and voices. "You had friendship once! You had to! Twilight had friends! She had friends!"
"Echoes and shadows of immaterial things long since passed," the Goddess replied coldly. "Hurtful, wretched, terrible things... do you know what friendship, love, is? It's pain. Pain of loss. Every one of us had friends, family, and loved ones. Do you know what the grief of a thousand ponies feels like? I do. That is why we created the Lacunae. That is why we need her. We couldn't stay sane if we had to feel that."
"But I do feel it!" Lacunae wailed as she rose slowly to her hooves. "Every second of every day. Friendship. Family. Love. And Blackjack feels it. You might have stripped away the feeling and the memories but they're still there. And if you felt them for one minute, then I know you'd realize what you've beco--"
"What we are is what we must be! Radiation and taint will only spread. We must adapt to survive. That was Mosaic and Gestalt's grand conclusion, and Twilight agrees," the Goddess growled back. "Do you think all of this was made despite Twilight's wishes? No. Her will and intellect have made us possible!"
"She wouldn't! If you returned to her all that you've put into me, she wouldn't! And neither would you. Any of you!" Lacunae wept as she turned about, as if appealing to a massive invisible audience. "Take it back. Before you do this. Take all of what you've put in me back. Then see what conclusions you reach."
"There is neither time nor a point to such an exercise," the Goddess said gravely. "We stripped away those thoughts and feelings decades ago. Only our children matter now, and you will stop behaving so immaturely and do as you are told!"
Lacunae swayed to and fro, staggering in circles. Finally, her eyes came to rest on mine. Tears poured down her cheeks as she whimpered, "I'm sorry, Blackjack. I... I wanted to do better too..."
"You did," I murmured as I bent my head, as the Goddess wanted. Gravity always won in the end. I could see our destination clearly; there were fundamentals of teleportation being dumped into my head to aid in the trip. I tried to project back my own memories and the feelings I'd gotten from Twilight, but they went no further than Lacunae. The Goddess didn't want to feel, didn't want to remember the past.
Our weeping eyes met as we touched our horns. Together, we channeled the spell and disappeared for our next destination, outside the Hoof entirely. We reappeared on the tracks southwest of the city; this time I didn't land on my face, since Lacunae's own radiation-empowered body provided most of the energy.
This was the first time I'd been out of the Hoof while connected to Unity, and the difference was startling. Before, I'd only been aware of Lacunae and the omnipresent screaming note. Now, that scream was just a barely perceptible wail on the horizon, and in the clarity I could hear the individual whispers of dozens, even hundreds of minds. I knew them, and they knew me, and yet... something was wrong. Okay, maybe I didn't have much of a right to judge the state of telepathic mass minds, but as I felt all those different intellects, there were so many and so... little.
Like the two greens flying towards us. I knew that one had been an opportunistic scavenger who'd stumbled upon Maripony a century and a half ago... yet, he didn't even know his own name. He didn't want to know. He didn't even care. And his companion had grown up in a settlement... but that was all she knew; there were no faces of a mother and father. No games played, or friends. The memories she did retain were banal and functional things: how to fix leaky water pumps with scrap metal, and twenty-five different uses for duct tape. But when I pressed on who had taught her, there was only an empty gap.
Hundreds of souls all humming in harmony, but it was a spiritless tune... all the more heartbreaking for what it could have been. Had they been bound in friendship, tapping into that elusive and powerful magic that transcended definition, the Goddess would have been a Goddess in reality. But now that I could see Unity directly, I saw how pitiful they were. Even if they were monstrous, they were still so very sad and small compared to their potential.
And as soon as I was dipped, I would be just like them. Oh, there'd be an alicorn called Oubliette or some other oddly fitting name that had once been Blackjack's body... maybe she'd still have her augmentations... but the real me would be another of those masses of voices around the Goddess. I wouldn't remember my friends, but I wouldn't miss them, either. And I wouldn't remember the bad things. Everything distressing or disruptive would be shoved into the new dumpster. Because despite her threats, the Goddess needed me.
Others besides the greens were coming. In the meantime, I had to find out what LittlePip was up to and how to go about killing her. Because while the Goddess had dozens of technicians, scientists, scavengers, and even raiders, she had precious few heroes connected to her. The idea was alien, stupid, and even insane. The Goddess literally could not put herself in LittlePip's horseshoes and anticipate what she might do. In a rush, I was learning more about the Stabl...
Oh dear sweet Luna. They were the same pony? They hadn't been joking about that?! How... she... I... I couldn't believe that a tiny, sweet, smart mare like her could be the strapping goddess of Wasteland death! I... I'd just not think about it.
Thank goodness, the Goddess seemed to reply as I refocused on my job and on LittlePip's biography. How she'd gone after Velvet Remedy half out of lust and half out of a desperate need for a friend. How she'd met Calamity. How she'd dealt with the crushing realization that she and Velvet would never be, and how she'd met Homage... and oh the things she'd done with Homage!
Really. It made me wish I remembered the events of a few hours ago a lot more clearly...
The Goddess had my meager memories, as well. The thing we did together at Red Eye's camp. Of course, I'd been half drunk the whole time and had no clue what LittlePip had actually gone there for, just that she'd done it. She'd needed... what? Information? It was no secret that Red Eye was trying to duplicate the events that created the Goddess, but hadn't succeeded. Maybe he'd discovered a weakness and LittlePip had asked him about it. Or maybe she'd needed something from him. His balefire bomb? Could LittlePip actually talk him into surrendering it? Doubtful. Red Eye wasn't a hero. He'd never trust LittlePip. If he did give her something, it'd likely be a fake. How about help? An army? He had the soldiers to spare, but would they matter? Something from his Stable? Some kind of tech that could be used against the Goddess?
"What is she going to do?" came the constant pressing question from Unity.
"I don't know. I'm not a smart pony. You should have taken P-21 and Glory," I countered, but I was already imagining it. LittlePip was smart. She'd try and hit the Goddess in some way the Goddess wouldn't see coming. Maybe she was going to dump those thousands and thousands of memory orbs that had been hidden under Shattered Hoof into the Goddess. No clue what would happen. The Goddess made sure she'd telekinetically repel anything small and round. The Black Book? Maybe she had some spell to affect the souls in Unity? That was pondered gravely. What if LittlePip could extract the Goddess's soul from Unity and bind it in a soul jar? Or an even more powerful spell. Twilight recalled the zebra lore of a star falling on Equestria. Perhaps that?
It was a huge unknown, but it was all the more frustrating because every memory of Twilight studying the Black Book with Rarity had been removed from Unity. All Twilight knew was that she had done it. And that she couldn't recall a spell like that... but what if she was wrong? What if there was a clue in one of those missing moments that had been thrown away because the thought of her friend hurt so very much? Unity couldn't bear those emotions, so said the Goddess...
But I wasn't just in Unity, was I? I was connected to Lacunae. I could dig through the 'trash' and try and see for myself. I met her eyes, said "I'm sorry," and invaded her as surely as I'd been invited. I had no choice. Gravity compelled me, no matter how much I hated it. The Goddess knew what I knew, and the Goddess wanted me to look.
But inside Lacunae's mind, past the surface of her consciousness, the contents were a solid mass of compressed thought. There was no organization or cataloguing, simply presence. Like geological strata, the newest memories inside her were all of me and my friends and her experiences with us. Worse, the merest digging shifted psychological structures that even the Goddess didn't fully understand. She'd overfilled Lacunae, pressurized her with so much that even this minor disturbance threatened a chaotic reaction.
The act, though, was like digging through colored stones tagged with cutie marks; the memories had condensed until they crystallized like amber. Many had no identification at all, lost to Unity's members for all time. But I could find interesting stones of purple with Twilight's cutie mark upon them. And with Gestalt's help, I could look inside.
Odd; I had the feeling that half of Unity was trying to peek over my shoulder and see that which had been stripped from them. But which to look in... which to look in... I touched one of Twilight's memories and heard two names at once. 'Rarity' and 'Goldenblood'.
Oh, this I had to see. I took the memory into myself -- don't ask me how, that was being handled at a higher level -- and Lacunae's mindscape swirled away.