Fallout: Equestria, Project Horizons

Chapter 65: Knowledge

Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons
By Somber
Chapter 65: Knowledge

"Hello everypony! Did I miss anything?"

Once upon a time, I'd been a security mare in a diseased stable teetering on the edge of systemic collapse, bloody revolution, or both. My work concerns had been limited to dealing with the occasional incident of indecent exposure, tracking down fillies raiding the supply stores for parties during their sleep shifts, and tracking down males who'd either been misappropriated or needed to be retired. My personal problems were just dealing with an overzealous and a simpleminded coworker, feeling my manifest inadequacies compared to my mother, and trying to talk another mare into coitus.
Today, I was a cybernetic mare, pregnant, in the middle of the deadliest place imaginable, and facing an enemy who had beaten me like a drum. Oh, and a friend that I'd thought was an innocent pony also happened to be one of Equestria's most dangerous enemies from before the war. We faced each other in a repository of zebra relics beneath a swarm of floating souls on our way to destroy a mechanical monstrosity and keep a superweapon from annihilating the world. Times like this really highlighted for me how surreal my life really was at this point.
For a moment, the Legate and... Boo? Discord? I wanted a time out for some notes or something... faced each other in the ruined village. The Legate stared coldly, then launched himself at Boo. She raised a hoof, twitched it, twitched it again, and then stared at it a moment. "Oh snap..."
In a flash, Boo ducked behind me, shoving me towards the cloth-wrapped zebra who'd landed where she'd been standing a second before. "On second thought, this really is your thing, Blackjack! I definitely don't want to intrude on your whole thematic aspect of 'badassness'! Come on! Give him a taste of fisticuffs... or hoofsicuffs... or whatever you pony folk call it!" She hopped on her hind legs, jabbing her forehooves at him.
I gaped at her, stunned. "What are you doing in Boo, Discord?" I snapped. "Get out of my friend!"
"Hello! Fight going on here. Priorities," Boo said as she kept me between herself and the Legate. I turned and regarded him, frowning. He could have punted me out of the way if he'd really wanted to, though I had moved up a weight class since we'd last faced off.
"You've interfered for the last time," the Legate growled. Something about his voice was so... familiar. I'd heard it before. Maybe it was the skull he wore distorting things, but there was something definitely familiar.
"Really? The last time?" Boo taunted from behind me, weaving back and forth to peek at the zebra from around my flanks. "I may not be as spry as I used to be - two centuries with a starmetal tomb slowly sucking the life from you can do that to a being of chaos such as myself - but I think I have just a pinch more interference in me. Some meddling, too. Maybe even a whole shenanigan!"
"Enough," he bellowed, leaping at him... her... ugh, Discord was in a mare's body... but male... Whatever! At her over my back. I snapped my wings up, but he simply pushed off them with still more agility than I'd imagined he had. I reached out with a hoof, popping my fingers and grabbing at the end of his hindleg. As before, he yanked the limb out of reach and landed with an agile spin. Rampage, her helmet now battered into shape enough to let her peer out of one eyehole, charged him. He pivoted in a circle, sidestepping her and letting her plough into the stone wall behind him with a colossal crash, bringing it down in a plume of dust.
"Olé!" Boo cheered, and I glared back at her. "Ah. Yes. Wrong side and all that. Boooo! Hisssss!"
If I was going to get any answers, I had to deal with the Legate first. He'd come out of his spin charging at Boo and me again. Twice he whirled, and four times his forehooves smashed into my head. The impacts clanked loudly, but it wasn't nearly as dizzying as the first time we fought. I fired a trio of magic bullets that sent him dodging away. Of course, none of them hit, but at least I was giving a better show than before. "Why do you protect him? He's Discord, the greatest enemy in Equestrian history!"
"What? You mean that whole Chaos Capital thing? That was ages ago, old boy. Really, I think I've served my time," Boo said indignantly.
"What have you done with Boo?" I demanded, jumping to the side to block the Legate as he attempted to dart around me again. He attempted another jump over me instead, and, as before, my wings snapped up again to block him. Really, I was fairly certain that he could have done much more damage to me if he really wanted to. Why was he taking it easy on me?
"You've been deceived, obviously. That creature was never your friend. It simply used you for protection," the Legate snapped. He tried to dive under me and heave me out of the way, but I'd put on a few hundred pounds since we last danced. He still managed to raise me onto my hindlegs, but I forced him back down with powerful upstrokes, trying to pin him. As slick as greased lightning, he pulled back, grabbed one of my forelegs, and, as I plunged off balance to the side, used it to swing me away from Boo and himself towards her. As I crashed to the floor, he twisted in the air and wrapped his forehooves around her neck, one of his hindlegs kicking thrice hard into my side. The rapid-fire blows knocked me back, but I snapped out a hand and grabbed his tail, yanking him off Boo before he could break her neck. "End him!" the Legate snarled, glaring at me from over his shoulder.
"I don't think so," I said, pulling him away from Boo. "I don't know what's going on, but I'm not going to let you kill her!" ...Actually, that was pretty much the story of my life, come to think of it.
"Thank you, Blackjack. Truly you are a wonderful paragon of friendship and kindness. Far more of one than your ancestor," Boo said, her words dripping with unctuous, sarcastic sincerity.
I pointed a hoof at her. "Shut it. I want you out of Boo, now. How did you even get inside her?"
"Well, when two ponies love each other very much..." she began. I must have somehow managed a shooty look without eyes, because she immediately coughed. "Mmm... yes, perhaps I should save that for later." She huffed and rolled her red eyes. "Well, if you recall, when we last parted, I'd gotten out of that tomb with only a tiiiiny remnant of my colossal power. And most of that was used keeping that robot busy so you and your friends could escape. So when I took a peek in here-" Boo tapped a hoof to her head, making a noise like an empty oil drum. "I couldn't help but notice how roomy it was! How homely! After all, it was built from my blood. My stolen blood, I remind you," he explained, his voice taking on an increasingly dark and dangerous tone before he fizzed back to enthusiasm. "Where better to lay low and stay out of trouble but in here?"
Could she be a little less verbose? I wrestled with the zebra, who despite my weight, was still putting up a hell of a struggle. Stay out of trouble? I doubted that. "And why is he trying to kill you?" I asked, pointing a hoof at the Legate.
"Well, I suspect it's because I have this nasty itty bitty little habit of..." Boo began, tapping her hooves together sheepishly.
"Being an insufferable, conniving, degenerate wretch!" roared the zebra. The Legate made his move, and he stopped being gentle. When he lunged at Boo in the same old way, I moved to block him as before. Instead of being pushed back the same old way, however, he grabbed me and lifted me right off my hooves; I powered up my wings, but they only made him strain a bit more. With Rampage-like strength, he arched his back and slammed me upside down into the base of the wall behind him. I hit the deck and nearly bounced, the wall cascading down upon me, as he straightened and lunged at Boo once again. The blank turned and began to run down the boulevard between the broken walls.
I lay curled up beneath the rocks, fighting both panic and anger. I heaved once, then twice, and then a pair of hoofclaws flipped the largest block off me. "He is not Achu, but he is very good," Rampage said in Shujaa's accent.
"I've got to save Boo," I said as I hauled myself to my hooves. I channeled Blackjack of Stable 99 as hard as I could and doggedly ignored all concerns for my baby or anything else. I'd be paralyzed beyond all use if I stopped to think about it for even a second.
Don't think about it...
"And Coyotl as well, for the time being," Rampage said as she scowled down the street. "If he wishes to kill him, it must be for a reason."
I froze and stared at her. "What did you say?"
"Coyotl?" Rampage asked in confusion. I nodded tersely and she continued, "It is my people's name for the one you call Discord. Coyote. The Trickster." She blinked at me, her eyes narrowing skeptically. "Did you believe ponies were the only ones that suffered his cruel games?"
Discord... Coyotl... Flux... Boo... "Brood of Coyotl... they're blanks! Just like Boo! Made with Flux from Project Chimera," I said, my mind running a mile a minute. "But how could he control them? Blanks didn't have any minds or souls to guide them. On their own, they'd be instinctive. You couldn't control them like robots..." I froze again, staring at my own legs. "Or cyberponies..." If you took Project Steelpony and Project Chimera, you could have a mass-produced army of utterly loyal automatons. And there had been a zony in charge of that project...
"I need to find Discord. You have to keep the Legate off us long enough for me to talk to him, and then we need get out of here and deal with Cognitum. Can you do that, Shujaa?" I asked, hoping she could stay in charge long enough for us to get clear. If Rampage asserted herself, she might not remember.
"It would be my pleasure," she replied. "He claims to be Achu. I will show him a true Achu."
From the left came a colossal crash, and I gave the striped mare a nod. She returned it, and together we raced towards the red bar on my E.F.S.
Boo was running full out, with the Legate racing after her with murder in his eyes. If Discord hadn't been some avatar of mischief, I had no doubt that Boo would have been a thin red smear by now. The skull-helmed zebra moved like a cyclone after the mare, but she endlessly retreated with uncanny dodges and weaves. However, while Discord might have been a magical being, Boo's body was flesh and blood; from the sweat pouring off her hide, I wondered how long it could go before it gave out, or just slowed down too much.
Not that she wasn't getting some licks in. As we raced towards them, he struck out with a double hooved stomp that would have crushed Boo if he'd landed it. Instead, after rolling aside, it found the end of a flat tipped shovel. The handle flashed up, smashing the stout wooden handle across the Legate's skull helmet. He whirled, kicking out at Boo with his back legs. Again, she dodged aside. His hooves smashed into the wall behind her, and the wobbly stones at the top fell and thudded down on him.
I'd anticipated a concussion, some broken bones... a little bruising, at least! The Legate, however, shrugged the stones off, whirled, and kicked out at them with his hind legs. A little orange pony in my head couldn't fault his technique as the rocks were sent rocketing right into Boo! The operative barding absorbed some of the force, but she was still sent sprawling to the floor. "Now, to silence you for all time!" he declared, and he pounced with a flying kick at Boo's head.
And impacted with six hundred pounds of cyberpony as I swooped from above and slammed into him, knocking him completely off target and giving Boo a chance to scramble out of the fray. "Next time, don't talk," I chided, shoving him away. He rolled across the ground, pushed himself upright with one shove of a hoof, and got his legs under him. He came to a stop, facing me.
Either taking my advice to heart or simply pissed off beyond words, he charged me without a word. I set myself for the attack, ready to grab whatever limb I could and break it. He was pulling his- With a speed and force I barely registered, he struck me right where my heart should have been. The blow was so sharp that, for an instant, it felt as though I'd been impaled. A small part of me noted how sad it was that I knew that sensation. I staggered back, feeling a throbbing pain in my head, as though all the blood I had left had been squeezed into my skull. He pointed a hoof at me. "You are needed intact, not untouched, Blackjack." Okay, just really pissed.
Rampage, or Shujaa at least, demonstrated the value of silence as she leapt upon his back. I heard the snap of bone and saw the eyes in the skull widen in pain as he crumpled under her strike. Please be out of the fight, I mentally begged as I struggled for breath. That one blow had done something to my support systems. I fought for air and grimaced against the pain in my skull. The Legate, though, gave a heave and tossed her off his back. I saw blood on the jaws of the skull he wore; he was injured, but he wasn't down yet.
Shujaa backflipped, landed, crouched, and launched herself at the Legate once more. The injured zebra, however, had hardly slowed as he evaded her powerful strikes. Over and over again, he deflected attacks strong enough to shatter stone, a quality demonstrated by the holes her blows blasted out of the floor and ruined walls. I trotted over to Boo, my systems slowly returning to normal as my repair and healing talismans restored me. "Don't worry. Shujaa will beat him." Then I could talk about him freeing my friend.
Boo... Discord... Boocord? She frowned at the battle. "While your faith is admirable, I'm afraid that your friend is about to lose."
She was right; the Legate had returned to his rapid fluidity. Shujaa showed ever-increasing frustration and pain. The Legate was striking her body with those sharp, lightning-quick jabs that seemed to create ever more pain. Shujaa had said he wasn't Achu, and watching them fight, I could see the difference. Shujaa's blows were all power. One of them could kill a pony; I questioned how long even I could last against the force she wielded. The Legate had speed and power too, but his blows seemed to cause her far more pain than simple impact warranted.
Suddenly they stopped, Rampage's face frozen in a mask of agony. "How..." she gasped.
The Legate stood smugly. "A simple disruption of your body's biorhythms and connection to your soul. The imbalances build and resonate until-" He reached out and poked the stricken mare's chest. Suddenly her whole body spasmed and seemed to compress all at once. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, and blood erupted from her maw. She finally slumped but didn't quite fall, looking as if a massive hand had squeezed her. "That." He turned towards Boo and me. "I learned the weaknesses and gaps in the Achu fighting style long ago," he said smugly as he approached us.
Then two blood-smeared, red-striped hooves appeared around his neck from behind as Rampage sprang on his back. "How about some good old fashioned Equestrian Commando fighting techniques, then?!" she hissed, bloody froth pouring from her mouth as her hindlegs gripped his back. Her hooves twisted his neck around, and only the lubrication of the blood smearing them kept her from popping his head completely around. Nevertheless, she did manage to get him to turn in pain, then finally flop onto his side. I started to approach to finish him off, but a spasm of pain lanced through me. Ugh, what had that hoofstrike done to me? I was a cyberpony; I shouldn't have had enough 'bio' to my rhythm for him to disrupt!
"Get off of me!" he roared. "You should be dead! Why aren't you dead, you red-striped freak?!" He rammed the skull helmet back, one of its horns gouging her eye socket. She cried out, but held on, though her grip slipped somewhat. He struck her temple with one hoof strike, and she hissed in pain but didn't let go.
Instead, her hooves swapped and grabbed the leg in a hooflock that was familiar to me. "You have the right to shut the fuck up or die, you sick son of a mule!" Rampage replied, levering the limb till it let out a resounding pop. Freaky zebra powers or not, a dislocated limb would slow him down some, right? Right?
It didn't. I watched in horror as the bulging, twisted limb forced itself back into place. "You think... you dare... to believe... you can defeat me?!" he roared as he inexplicably started to pull his leg around. "I have been patient too long to let myself be beaten by the likes of either of you!"
"Blackjack! Headshot!" Rampage cried out as he pulled his leg free and tried to heave her off. She sank her hoofclaws into his side, digging deep furrows as she struggled to remain on top. "Oh no you don't, you motherfucking Pink!" she swore, biting his mane and struggling to keep on top of him. Her barbed tail lashed between his hindlegs, but though his eyes bulged in fury, he did not try to break away. Instead he reared, standing upright, and smashed his back into the wall behind him over and over again. "Hah!," came Rampage's muffled and slightly slurred voice. "I faced worse than that in lockdown!"
"Can you magic that skull off him, B... D... Biscord?" I asked the white mare, desperately, as I assembled Penance.
"Blackjack, I'm using every last bit of power I have left keeping him from popping her like a zit," Boo replied, waving her hooves. "Things would be so much easier if I just had my normal fingers to snap! These hooves are impossible!"
"Fingers are nice," I replied as I popped in the bypass round. The Legate roared as he hammered against Rampage.
"I'm sensing a lot of aggravation from you. Perhaps you can calm down and tell me about your mother?" Rampage grunted into his ear. He heaved forward suddenly, tossing Rampage over him. In a flash, his hooves lashed out, beating at her in a furious flurry of blows. She'd heal. She'd always heal. But if she was knocked out... I took aim with the gun. I had to get this just perfect. I only had one shot.
I wasn't sure who was in charge now. Every second Rampage swapped from the thundering Achu blows to the sharp commando throat and joint strikes to the boxing body blows. The random mix kept the Legate's back to the wall, but he didn't stop moving his head long enough for a clear shot. "Rampage! Give him a noogie!"
Rampage abandoned her defense and wrapped her forelegs around his neck. His forehooves closed like a nutcracker, and I heard her spine crack like a bullet shot, legs dangling limply. But she had his neck...
Penance rang out once. The bullet moved faster than any of us could possibly see, but instantly, the Legate's head exploded out the eye sockets and mouth. His corpse dropped Rampage, then collapsed on his side. I rushed to her.
"I really wish I could die now. More than usual," Rampage rasped, then clenched her teeth in pain. "This really hurts."
I broke down Penance and stowed it, then helped her on to my back. "Well, don't worry. He's done." Not even I could survive having my head blown off.
"Guess again, my dear," Boo quipped tiredly. I followed her gaze to the Legate's twitching body... moving body.
"Oh come on!" I shouted, running over and stomping the corpse over and over again. "Die already!"
"If only you said such sweet things to me," Rampage groaned, her rear legs twitching.
"Don't you start!" I warned her, then resumed stomping. The head was starting to regrow, a pink mist slowly spreading up and forming into tissue. Just like... "Rampage, he's got a phoenix talisman too."
"That's impossible," she muttered weakly. "It was a prototype."
"With all we've run into here, that word no longer has any meaning," I snapped. The only mostly-dead zebra's hooves were starting to block my blows, inaccurately, of course, but eventually he'd have a head back. At that point... "We've got to run. Now."
I trotted over to a wall and slammed it with all my weight, knocking it over atop him. "That will slow him down," I said, hoping I was right. A zebra phoenix talisman... the zebras had stolen Project Chimera and Project Steelpony. Why not Eternity, too? With Rampage on my back, I trotted to Boo. "Now, you helped us out at Hippocratic Research, so I'm asking this nicely. Please leave my friend."
"Your adorable little Boo is perfectly fine. And," she said with a gesture at the heap of rocks, "not to put too fine a point on it, but perhaps we should be moving along? One thrilling chase was quite enough for me for the moment."
"Right." Rampage slipped off me and grimaced as she pranced on her hooves. "Oooh! Pins and needles!" We started walking quickly towards the exit. "We need to get out of here and get to Robronco and end this."
"Au contraire," Boo contradicted. "We need to go down."
"Down? No we don't," Rampage said flatly. "There is absolutely nothing good about that direction in Hoofington. Ask Blackjack. Down is where bad things are."
I agreed, but I regarded my pale friend with her new eyes. "Why do you say down?"
"Why, it's the last thing your enemies will expect. Cognitum knows you're coming. I suspect she wants to meet you on her terms rather than yours. Plus, it's Tuesday, and everyone knows Tuesdays are ideal for spelunking." She waved a hoof in the air, scowled at it a moment, and then tapped it against the floor. "Ugh, why won't this thing work? It's infuriating to go from 'embodiment of pure chaos' to 'lucky sidekick'."
Rampage stared at me as we walked. "You're thinking about it, aren't you?" she asked wearily, clearly concerned.
I didn't want to admit that I was. All my experiences with going underground tended to end badly. "Discord makes a good point. They'll be expecting us to come from the surface. Echo thinks Cognitum is in an underground lab. The element of surprise might be the only advantage we have."
"No, Blackjack. Just... no. You remember that thing in the elevator? There are things like that down there. Things worse than that. Just go to Robronco." She hesitated. "Think about your kid. Just, don't go down there!"
I paused and stared at her for a moment. I didn't want to ask. Didn't want to go there with one of my friends. "What did you talk to Steel Rain about?"
A moment of bafflement on her face. "Steel? How..." she began, the confusion growing. "Why... I mean..." We slowed down and she faced me. "He... he wanted me to give you a message. Cognitum can fix you."
"There's nothing wrong with my repair talisman," I replied dryly.
"I mean new body," Rampage replied. "New new. Brand new. No augmentations or anything. Take it, leave EC-1101, and go home. She's determined to fix up the Core." She tapped my chest. "Dawn was the one that wanted you dead. Cognitum is prepared to wipe the slate clean and let bygones be bygones." She gave a weak smile. "Just imagine it, Blackjack. No more shit in your life. The Harbingers will leave you alone. You can go to Star House with Glory and turn my old bedroom into a nursery, and boink each other's brains out all day. Be head of Security for Chapel or Stable 99, or wherever. All this shit could be over. Just... over."
"Oh yes, and I'm sure Cognitum Pinkie promised that she'd keep her word," Discord said snidely. "The insane are immensely reliable. Believe me, I should know."
I didn't look away from Rampage. "There was something else, wasn't there?"
Rampage didn't answer me for a second. "Well, there were promises of Dawn's head on a platter, an IF-88 Ironpony, and bars of gold... whatever you could desire. I figured all that was secondary to a new body." She kept her eyes down. "You know... stuff..." she finished, almost muttering.
I didn't reply for a moment. "She said she'd kill you, didn't she?" Rampage didn't answer. "Didn't she?" I pressed, and when she still remained silent, I turned away with a hiss. "Where's the basement?" I asked Boo. She pointed at the door marked 'stairs' next to me.
"Blackjack," Rampage started to say, and I turned and stared at her. Her head hung down as she stared at her hooves. "I'm sorry. I just... don't want to see you get hurt."
I couldn't trust her now; ending her life was the most precious thing to her. "Well, thank you for your intentions." I turned my back on her. "Goodbye," I said softly. I wished I hadn't asked. Wished that I was still that clueless mare back in a stable worried about getting laid. Ever since I'd gotten EC-1101, I'd been learning things. Learning my Overmare was selling us out. Learning about the dark side of Equestria's government. All my learning had gotten me was misery. Right now... I wished that I could have been just as ignorant now of my friend as I had been about everything else so many weeks ago.
It would have hurt so much less...