Security Saves Ponies: A Project Horizons AU Anthology

by Strawberry Sunrise

Rating: mature
Tags: Suicide / Self Harm, Profanity, Violence, Dark, Death, Alternate Universe, Anthology, Drama, Gore, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 5874

What if Blackjack and her friends had been just a bit smarter ponies?

What if Blackjack and her friends had been just a bit smarter ponies?

A series of Project Horizons AU vignettes in which alternate solutions are found to certain major problems. This story contains significant spoilers for Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons, and it's very highly recommended that you read Project Horizons first.

The cover art is "Happy blackjack 2" by Vector-Brony. CC-BY-NC-ND-3.0.
Available here.

Published 2024-12-07 09:50:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-12-09 21:34:39 UTC

Vignette 1: Chapter 74.5

Author's Note

I considered opening each of the first two vignettes with an appropriate paragraph directly from the original story for the purpose of placing the points where they diverge, but wasn't 100% sure if that would be allowed by the rules. It should hopefully still be clear enough as to approximately where they fit in given the context of what's happening, but if you do want more specific context, this first vignette diverges while the characters are trying to figure out how to save P-21 at the Lunar Palace.

I also want to preface this anthology by expressing that it's been written only for fun and maybe for a bit of catharsis for people who want it. It's not in any way intended to be any kind of replacement for or criticism of the original story (the "smarter ponies" thing is mostly just a reference to the original story), and I wouldn't change how these events played out in the original story.

Thank you to Somber for writing Project Horizons, and to Kkat for writing the original Fallout: Equestria!

Vignette 1: Chapter 74.5

“Wait,” Rampage said. There was an odd expression on her face. As all of us stared at her, her lips curled in a small smile. “There is one more thing you could try,” she said archly.

“Anything,” I pleaded. There was a pause, and I willed her to continue speaking. We were running out of time.

“You could kill me,” she said. “Or at least, you could let me die.”

“What?” said P-21, almost losing focus on the keyboard for a moment but repeating the keystrokes just in time. What was Rampage thinking? There wasn’t time for this! But as she continued…

“It wouldn’t be the first time the talisman has been transferred. You really think I wouldn’t have thought about it after Blackjack showed me that memory of Shujaa’s? Sure, my soul might still be in there afterward, but it was about the closest to death I could get, right? At least until now. I tried digging it out of myself and then killing myself with it outside my body, but I regenerated, anyway, so I put it back. It must need to latch onto another soul in order for the regeneration to disconnect,” she said. “I would have given it to somepony else months ago, but as much as I wanted to die, I still couldn’t bring myself to subject anypony else to…this.”

“Then why now?” asked P-21, a slight look of hope beginning to dawn on his face for a moment before being replaced by a hint of shame. While my mind reading seemed to have stopped upon switching back to my original body, I suspected that he was weighing the possibility of his own survival with the fact that it would mean a friend would die for him. One who wanted to die, sure, but that wouldn’t make it hurt much less.

“Do you see another option?” Rampage asked. “I’d rather fully die, soul and all, but not if it’s at your expense. Besides, we’ll both need to stay here either way. You stop typing, and Horizons goes off. I move, and there’s a good chance you get squished and Horizons goes off while Blackjack and Scotch are still here. At least you might be able to delay it a little longer, and maybe you can get out of the way whenever it hits its limit. We might even avoid the two-for-one sacrifice special.”

“But…but…” I said. “Would you really be okay with that?” I asked P-21.

He was silent for a moment. “I’ll let Rampage…make that choice,” he said, wincing. “But please hurry, one way or the other.”

“Daddy…” Scotch started. “Rampage…” She frowned, tears in her eyes and seeming unsure what to say.

Rampage just smiled. I just stood there, my mind racing, trying to come up with some other option. Any other option.

“If you won’t do it, then I will,” Bastard said. He stepped forward, then frowned. “Wait…what exactly are we doing?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, tears in my own eyes as I stepped forward. I hated to admit it, but she was right. If she was determined to sacrifice herself either way, then at least this way, one of them might have a chance. I just hoped I could stay off the mattress after this was all over.

“Hello?” Bastard said. I took a piece of sharp debris and pressed it into Rampage’s chest.

Rampage grimaced, then the grimace slowly turned into a smirk. “Don’t forget to pull out my heart, too, so you’ll have a nice snack for your trip back,” she said.

Despite myself, I snorted and my tears dried a little. Bastard just watched with an expression of extreme shock and confusion as I began to tear a gash through Rampage’s hide. As blood started to run from the wound, she faltered, the debris she was holding up slipping slightly lower as she adjusted her stance, but it didn’t fall.

“Keep going,” she said through her teeth. I quickly tore a longer hole and inserted my hoof, the wound already beginning the process of healing. After a few moments of uncomfortable fumbling, I felt the talisman and tugged. I extracted my hoof from the wound and the gash slowly drew closed. She was right; even with the talisman outside her body, it was still healing her, albeit at perhaps a slightly reduced rate.

“You’re sure about this?” I asked. As much as I wanted to save P-21, there would be no taking it back once it was done. It wouldn’t be right without giving her one more chance to change her mind.

“Do it,” she said.

“And you’re ready?” I asked P-21.

P-21 nodded, but seemed barely lucid at this point. He was still typing on the keyboard, but he had lost a lot of blood. There was no time for finesse. No time for overthinking this. Rampage would still be alive at least until Horizons went off. I wasn’t technically killing her. Her soul would live on in the talisman if P-21 was able to get clear. So she would technically be alive, right? Sort of? So this wouldn’t make me an executioner, right? Right? Maybe she’d get clear, too! As my mind raced, trying to rationalize things as best I could, P-21 gasped.

I took one more deep breath, then with a blur of movement, as if I was trying to move too fast to change my own mind, I sliced P-21’s chest with the piece of levitated debris and inserted the talisman. He gasped again, his eyes closing and his head slumping for just a moment as he lost more blood from the new wound. I froze. No. No. NO!

Then he reopened his eyes, having never lost the necessary rhythm of typing. He looked at me with a strained smile as a pink glow closed the wound on his chest and lingered in all of the places where the debris had impaled him. I carefully pulled out the shafts one-by-one and each wound closed. He stood up, now fully healed.

The four of us - P-21, Rampage, Scotch, and me - all looked at each other in quiet contemplation for a moment. Bastard stood off to the side, looking from each one of us to the next, and finally asked again, “What the fuck is going on?” We ignored him.

“Thank you, Rampage,” P-21 choked, tears now running from his own eyes as he looked at her and continued to type on the keyboard. “I don’t deserve a gift like this, but…thank you. I might…I might be able to see my daughter grow up because of you.”

Scotch was bawling her little eyes out as she looked back and forth between her father and Rampage. Finally she walked over to Rampage and gave her a long hug that seemed to have no end in sight. That one act said all that there was to say.

“Well…tell me how much of a gift you still think it is once you’ve lived with it as long as I have,” Rampage said uneasily. “No, really, tell me. If I'm really Peppermint, then my soul’s probably still in there, and I’m sure you’ll see me again eventually in some form or another.”

P-21 didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. “You really need to get going,” he said to me after another long moment. “I can override this a little longer, but it’s going to hit the limit before long. I’ll do my best to get clear, but you need to get out of here.”

“Are you sure you can’t come?” I asked Rampage. Scotch Tape finally released her, turning toward P-21.

“Like I said, if I move, there’s a good chance he gets squished and none of us get out of here before Horizons goes off. The talisman would keep him alive, but there needs to be room for the body to reform properly, and it’d be kind of hard typing on a terminal or running away from a doomsday device if he’s a pancake,” Rampage said.

“Maybe you can get clear, too?” Scotch finally spoke up.

“Maybe, kid,” Rampage said, and Scotch gave a sad smile.

“Oh,” P-21 said. “Since you’ll need the rocket intact to come back for…” He paused for a moment and glanced at Rampage. “...us, make sure the automated systems don’t take you back to the space center. It’s probably a crater now. If you can change the heading, somewhere away from the Core would probably be best.”

“Thanks, Daddy!” Scotch said, walking over to him and giving him a hug. Though his hooves were still occupied with the terminal, he nuzzled her cheek with his own.

“I love you, Scotch Tape,” P-21 said. “I’m so proud of you. I know you’re going to do great things. I hope I’m there to see them.”

“You will be, Daddy.” Scotch Tape said. “I love you, too.”

I walked over to give him a hug of my own, then surprised him with a short kiss as well. “We’ll see you again soon,” I said. I noticed that the decal was peeling further from his cutie mark, but it still wasn't quite possible to discern yet.

He seemed to notice my look. “We'll find out what it is when you're back, alright? See you again soon,” he said. “And…maybe…Glory, too. I really hope you’re right, but one way or another, you can’t give up, Blackjack. Find a way to beat this. To win. You can. I know you can.”

“I will,” I said. After a moment, I walked over to Rampage, debating with myself for a moment and then giving her a hug, too.

“Hey, there’s no need for you to get all mushy,” she said. “In a few minutes or so, that’ll be my job. You know, because…”

“I get it,” I said, still preemptively mourning her loss but willing myself through the grief…for now. The fact that her soul probably was in the talisman was starting to sink in. Heck, even her mind might be connected somehow; after all, I had pulled memories out of the talisman’s past lives… After we came back for P-21, maybe Snails could do something…? Why didn’t I think of that earlier?

“Thank you, Rampage. For everything,” I said.

She just smiled.

Scotch, Bastard, and I began to head toward the exit to the tram. I took one last look back at the two standing in the field of debris and sighed. We all walked into the tram and it started to move up the track.

***

We finally reached the end of the track and disembarked. Suddenly, from outside the window on one side, there was a brilliant flash of luminescent white. I walked to the window to look down at the chasm and saw that the Lunar Palace had been almost completely destroyed. Massive rocks impacted the track for the tram, and the tram’s lights went out. If the timing had been a little different…if P-21 hadn't held out as long and we hadn’t gotten all the way up here yet…I didn’t want to think about it.

I didn’t want to think about the other implications of the destruction, either. I could only hope that P-21 had gotten out in time. In fact…was that him?! I saw something moving in the far distance, a tiny blue speck. For now, I would tell myself that it was him. I couldn’t lose another friend. It had to be him. Hopefully he’d make it to the Astrostable - walking for long in hard vacuum certainly couldn’t be pleasant - but one way or another we’d be back. We would save him. He and I and Glory would work things out, and Scotch would have her father. We’d even bring Rampage back somehow. We were going to win.

Vignette 2: Chapter 76.5

“Wait…go back a second. It doesn’t have to be a blank Glory, does it?” I asked Triage, almost rhetorically.

“To transfer her mind and soul to?” Triage asked. “I suppose it technically wouldn’t have to be, but…”

I lifted my PipBuck, about to turn on the broadcaster to make a call, then stopped myself just in time. Jelly brains were the last thing Glory needed right now.

I gave Glory a light kiss. “I’ll be right back,” I told her and Triage. I caught a slight eyebrow raise from Triage just as I teleported away, back to where we had landed the rocket.

Where were they…where were they? Hopefully Scotch, Bastard, and my blank were all still together, but they must have started on their way to find Glory themselves. There wasn’t much time, and I was already hoping against hope that I could find Snails in time as it was. So I’d start with that first. He, Xanthe, Carrion, and Silver Spoon had completed their mission…my stomach twisted for a moment…poor Silver Spoon…so hopefully the survivors would have headed back toward the Collegiate just as many of the others had been…

Taking a quick look around, I didn’t see any of them in the immediate vicinity. Xanthe had given her PipBuck to Silver Spoon, but had Snails or Carrion had a PipBuck? I skimmed my list of tags and didn’t see them. Not sure if that was because they didn’t have them or if I had just missed getting their tags.

“Has anypony seen Snails?” I yelled. “Tall, lanky unicorn pony ghoul with a snail cutie mark? Might be with a zebra and a griffin ghoul?”

Those ponies nearby who weren’t still too awestruck by my new appearance quietly shook their heads.

I teleported to multiple other locations around the Collegiate as quickly as I could, repeating the same thing with increasing desperation, and finally a pony pointed to a group over by one of the outbuildings.

“Snails!” I shouted. The group looked over at me.

“Is…is that you, Maiden?” Xanthe asked.

“I’m telling you, she’s getting weirder and weirder…” Snails said.

“Yes, it’s me, Blackjack,” I said quickly. I still wished I could teleport other ponies with me, but I’d have to hope Snails was athletic enough for it not to matter. I didn't have time to find an alicorn, too. “Snails, I need you to get to the third floor of the hospital as fast as you possibly can. This is really, really important.”

He stared at me for just a moment, then to his credit, he immediately took off running with no further hesitation at all. “I’ll try my best!” he shouted back. Please let him make it in time. Please. I wasn’t typically one to be religious; I wasn’t even sure who or what I was praying to, but in that moment, it felt right.

“I’ll explain later,” I said to Xanthe and Carrion, then teleported back to Glory’s room. Mercifully, the machine was still beeping…but Scotch and the others weren’t here yet.

“Blackjack…I need to tell you…” Glory said.

My mind warred with itself for a moment as I wondered if I could afford to leave Glory again. Surely the others were on their way, but I had to be positive.

“Tell me in just a second,” I whispered. “You wouldn’t let me die. I’m not letting you die, either.”

I teleported outside the hospital and fortunately saw Scotch and Bastard nearing the entryway, Bastard carrying my blank on his back. I ran over to them. “Get to the third floor as quickly as you can!” I told them. Bastard started to set my blank down, apparently assuming he could leave it behind to go faster without the weight. “NO! Make sure you have my blank with you,” I said. They began to pick up the pace, and I teleported back again.

***

A/N: At this point, Blackjack and Glory share a very similar mindscape scene to the one present in the original story. It proceeds slightly differently because Blackjack insists that she’s still going to save her rather than being resigned to her death, though Blackjack avoids telling her how exactly she’s going to save her, as a callback to when Blackjack didn't know she was going to be saved via cybernetics. Glory is skeptical and still expresses most of the same things she expresses in the original story. They still share a similar vision of what the future could be like, but Blackjack insists that it’s what the future will be like. Enough of the wording would be exactly the same as in the original story that I probably can’t include it here. Suffice to say that it gets interrupted just as Glory is about to start explaining her plan for how to defeat the Eater of Souls without destroying the world…

***

“Blackjack?” I heard a voice say as if from the far distance. “Blackjack!”

“Hold that thought,” I told Glory, giving her a kiss.

“Wait!” Glory said, but I extracted myself from the mindscape.

“Blackjack!” I heard Scotch shout again. I turned toward her and saw her face covered once again in tears. “Snails is here,” she whispered. “He said you asked him to come?”

Bastard stood behind Scotch with my blank still on his back, a neutral expression on his face but shifting back and forth awkwardly as if he wasn’t sure if he should be there or not. “I was originally going to stay outside…” he said.

And beside Bastard was Snails, still breathing heavily. He must have just arrived.

I glanced back at Glory. She was still breathing, but I didn’t know much longer that would last. “Blackjack…” she whispered.

Triage re-entered the room, seeming about to say something and perhaps surprised by the number of new visitors, but then inexplicably gaped in shocked horror at Bastard. “You’re supposed to be dead!” she said.

His face bore the same expression. “No, you’re supposed to be dead!” he said.

“You…know each other?” I asked. “Never mind; it’s not important right now.” I dragged my blank off Bastard’s back. “Snails, you need to put Glory’s soul in here right now.” Triage and Scotch’s eyes both widened a bit.

“Do you need me for anything else?” Bastard asked.

“Just go!” I said, and he walked out. Triage stared at me for a moment, then followed him somewhat reluctantly.

“Uh, Blackjack, I don’t know…” Snails said, looking back and forth between Glory and my blank.

“You can do it, right?” I asked Snails desperately. This was my last hope; if he couldn’t do this, then…then…

“Well…usually there would be more preparation, sigils to help focus the magic…and Snips was usually the one who did the cutting…” Snails started.

“Snips did it on his own without preparation,” I said, recalling Cognitum making him transfer my own soul.

Snails still looked unsure, and I probably would have begun to hyperventilate if I’d had regular lungs.

“You can do it, right?!” I yelled. Snails yelped.

He looked back and forth between Glory and the blank one more time. “I…I think so,” he said. “But there’s already a soul in there,” he said, and pointed to the blank.

“Yeah, that’s probably mine,” I said. Probably? Of course it was mine. After all, only my mind had been transferred back. I’d need my soul back eventually if I was ever going to have any hope of feeling fully like myself again, but for now…

“Well…I know I don’t have the energy to move two at the moment…” Snails said.

“So just move hers. She can share the body with mine and we’ll be closer than ever. We’ll sort it out later,” I said. “Just do it!”

Snails looked at Glory, his horn beginning to glow. A black disk spiraling with hints of green and purple formed over Glory’s chest, and Scotch stepped back in fear. A white orb started to rise from the disk, then stopped and sank partway back in again.

“What are you doing?!” I yelled at Snails in horror, then covered my mouth, hoping I wouldn’t have inadvertently made any problem worse by distracting him. He didn’t answer, just gritting his teeth and seeming to focus harder. The orb rose again, wobbled, then finally came completely free. He relaxed slightly and turned, his spell moving it to the chest of my blank, where it sank inward. He sat down, his mane coated in sweat.

“It’s done,” he said.

My blank still lay on the ground. The machine still beeped. Glory’s body still breathed, but were the breaths getting even slower now?

“Um…Blackjack,” Scotch said. “What about her mind?”

What about her…?

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

I had been so focused on the soul part of the plan that I didn’t even think about how to handle the rest. That was why I needed smart ponies like Glory to help with plans like this! And I still needed to hear her plan for the Eater. Maybe, just maybe, Rampage’s case would be different because of her weird talisman situation, but for Glory, we needed her mind, too!

Um…um…

I stepped out of the room. Glory’s family were still in the hallway. “Triage!” I called. She poked her head out from a room down the hall.

“What?” she asked in annoyance. “I’m in the middle of a conversation with my brother.”

Her brother? Again, not important right now.

“Uh…you said Morningstar had a plan to move Glory’s mind or brain, right? So…what was that plan? Does the Collegiate have tech for that?” I asked.

“Not that I’m aware of,” she said. “The Professor's brain-computer interface could maybe be adapted to do something with more time, but as it stands now, it couldn't connect two ponies together. And we already took a quick look into it, anyway; with the Professor dead, the system seems to have become unusably corrupted somehow.”

“Then what was Morningstar going to do?” I begged.

“I don’t know,” she said, her expression changing from annoyance to something almost approaching pity. “That plan never got that far.”

“Where is Morningstar?” I asked.

“Somewhere around, but I'm not sure where,” she said. “I’m sorry, Blackjack.” And she ducked back into the other room.

“Wait, are you figuring something out?” Sky Striker asked me, his tone desperate. “Are you trying to save her?” Glory's sisters raised their heads with looks of faint hope.

“We’re…working on it,” I said, and ducked back into Glory’s room.

We stood there in silence for a long moment as tears came back to my eyes. I couldn't risk teleporting around trying to find Morningstar at this point; even if I did find him, the mind-transfer part of his plan might not be possible to implement in time.

“I don’t know what to do. I just…don’t know what to do. I should have never…I should have let her…” I croaked. Scotch continued to cry as well, and even Snails sniffed. My blank still lay in an almost comatose state.

Triage came back into the room. “I really don’t think it’ll be much longer now,” she said quietly. “It’s a miracle that she’s lasted this long.”

“How long left? Your best guess?” I asked. Maybe I could go into a mindscape again? Time moved differently in those, so at least I’d have a little longer to think…

Triage opened her mouth, but before she could answer, alarms started to sound from the machine attached to Glory’s body. NOOOO!

“FIX IT!” I yelled at Triage.

“I already told you; there’s nothing I can do,” she said quietly. Scotch curled up on the ground next to my blank.

Mindscapes. Mind magic. Memories. Minds.

“How long will her brain last before it shuts down?” I asked.

“Maybe a few minutes…?” Triage said.

My own mind absolutely frantic, the machine’s physical alarms only part of the alarm that I felt in my head, I looked from Glory’s body to the blank.

“It’ll be okay, Scotch,” I said, gently nudging her out of the way and grabbing my blank. Hauling it up, I pressed its horn to Glory’s forehead.

Triage looked the most confused I had ever seen her. “What the fuck are you doing?” she asked.

“One of you, hold it here,” I said to Triage and Snails. Triage started to back out of the room, but Snails moved forward to help.

I touched my horn to the point where my blank’s horn met Glory’s head, and entered a mindscape.

It may have been a move wrought from desperation, but I could do this. I had extracted memories before. I had gone into minds before. I had helped Deus. I had destroyed whatever effect the Angel’s mind was having on Rampage’s, or at least I was pretty sure I had. I had created a mindscape when I was talking to Glory just a few precious minutes earlier. Mind magic was practically my new specialty! And having Princess Luna’s soul in me had to count for something, right? Manipulating dreams was ultimately just a form of manipulating minds, after all.

Connecting to two minds at once was surprisingly similar to connecting to one. The new mindscape I was experiencing was in two halves, a partition separating my blank’s mind from Glory’s. To the left, I could see the pools that I had entered to view events on Equus during my trips in the rockets. To the right, I could see the landscape in which I shared a bit of time with Glory not long ago.

The pools in my blank’s mind were still hard as rock. I knew now that the one I had put an "X" over must have been Glory's, but the "X" was no longer there. So which one was it? It wouldn’t help to access somepony else's mind right now, even if I could break through.

In Glory’s landscape, the edges of the world were beginning to fade away. The mountains were dissolving into the sky, the sun losing some of its brightness. In the distance, I could see… “Glory!” I yelled. She was still there. There was still time.

“Blackjack?!” she screamed, starting to run in my direction. “The Eater! You have to…!” I couldn’t quite make out what she said, but she was getting closer, the world starting to fold in behind her.

I focused on the pools in my blank’s mind. Which one…which one…wait…

There was a small white mote hovering over one of the pools. It bobbed slowly up and down. Glory’s soul, or a manifestation of it! It had to be!

I zoomed the left focus into that pool and tried to press into it. Nothing. The white mote shifted out of the way, and I bashed at the pool with my hooves, manifested a sword, some guns - even an IF-88 Ironpony - but nothing made a dent.

“Blackjack!” Glory yelled again, still running. I wanted to zoom in on her, too, but feared the possibility that my observation of the wider field might itself be helping the rest of the world stay intact ever so slightly longer. What if I zoomed in and the rest went away immediately?

“Please…Luna…Sister...Glory…give me strength. I have to do this. I need to do this,” I said. I manifested Glory’s own gun, Pew-Pew. It seemed appropriate. I aimed at whatever horrible force of magic or physics was blocking me from entering the pool and fired, pouring every last bit of my love and devotion for her into that shot. For a moment, I thought nothing had happened.

Then the pool was covered in rainbow light and the obstruction disintegrated.

Glory had almost caught up to me. Since I was in two worlds at once, I wasn’t entirely sure what I looked like to her, but to me there was nearly nothing but her remaining now. The right side was nearly as dark as the void in which my blank’s pools were suspended, only a small clearing of green still around her.

“Blackjack, the Eater - you need to shut down half the F.A.D.E. shields - just the inner ones!” she said, looking around herself in fear. “That way, Tom can destroy the Eater, and the energy will be directed up into space!”

“Glory…” I reached out and took her face in a hoof, while simultaneously plunging my left focus into the pool in my blank’s mind. As I maintained the mindscape on both ends, the pool began to tunnel through the partition between worlds. If I could reestablish its connection to her mind…

On the right, the clearing around Glory was shrinking and even her own body was starting to become slightly transparent. I grabbed her hoof as the ground fell away, holding her suspended in the void.

“Hold on!” I yelled as I continued to mentally tunnel on the left.

Glory held on, her eyes wide. “I love you,” she said, her voice barely audible yet full of utmost sincerity.

On the left, the pool suddenly broke through. Through it, I could see myself holding Glory’s hoof. On the right, I could see the pool below Glory and myself looking up through it.

“I love you, too, Glory. And you didn’t give up on me, even when I had given up on myself,” I said. “I’m not giving up on you.”

I let go of her hoof and her eyes widened even further. For a horrible moment she was falling away, fading…fading, and I was reminded of that awful day at Flash Industries all those months ago.

Except that this time I was there to catch her.

I reached through the pool on the left and grabbed her with both forelegs as she fell, pulling her through the tunnel and out of the pool just as the connection on the right failed entirely. All of the pools faded away, and my blank’s mind expanded to fill the entire mindscape. The white mote floated over to us and entered Glory's body. With a soft glow, her body solidified, reversing the transparency that had previously begun to overtake her.

I looked down at the pony in my arms and cried, but now they were tears of joy. Glory…my friend…my love…whatever happened after this didn’t matter. She was safe. We’d figure out the details later. I hugged her as tightly as I could, and a clearing of green expanded beneath us. The world slowly filled out to match the same lush mountainous landscape in which we had previously stood.

"You did it. You actually did it," she whispered. She hugged me back, tears in her own eyes, and we sat there for a long moment.

Then we exited the mindscape.

I opened my eyes and pulled my horn away. The machine was still sounding alarms, and Snails was still holding my blank in place.

Suddenly, my blank started to blink and move on its own, stretching out its forelegs, then clambering off the medical table. Snails backed away.

“Well, this is new,” Glory said, turning around and examining her new body. “But it’s not the first time I’ve had a different body, I suppose. Though it does feel weird to have no wings at all...and a horn...”

Scotch looked up, wide-eyed. “Glory? Glory?!” she shouted.

“Scotch!” Glory said. Seeing Glory as…myself…was going to take some getting used to, but once this was all over, we could probably do Morningstar’s plan and get her a blank body more like her own. For now, this was enough. And I couldn't help but wonder what it might be like to have sex with myself...

Glory and Scotch hugged, and I gave Snails his own hug. “Thank you,” I cried. “Thank you.”

“Don't mention it," he said. "But remember that there’s another soul in there with you,” he told Glory after my hug with him ended. “Don’t let yours and Blackjack’s get too intermingled if you can help it. We’ll need to transfer hers back eventually.”

“So that’s why it feels…so…so…” Glory seemed to be lost in thought for a moment, not quite able to find the right words. “It’s…nice, actually.” Well, that was certainly a step up from ‘intolerable’! “It really does give me a better sense of what it’s like to be you.” She smiled.

Glory’s father and sisters filed into the room, their faces seeming to assume the worst. They must have heard the alarms. “Glory?” Sky Striker cried, staring in grief at the body on the table.

“Hi,” Glory said.

***

It took a bit for Glory to convince her family that it was her, and Sky Striker still seemed a bit perturbed by the whole situation, but once explanations were through, the family clustered together for a brief session of hugs and heartfelt love.

The door slid open again and Triage re-entered the room. She looked from Glory’s family happily chatting with her, then to me, then back and forth again. “So you did find a way to save her?” she asked in shock.

I nodded.

“I don’t suppose it could be repeated for anyone else?” she asked.

“Probably not,” I said. We didn’t have any more mindless blanks…other than maybe some of the Brood…and in any case, Snails wasn’t up to moving a soul again anytime soon. I wasn’t sure if I could repeat something like what I had just done without something like those mind pools already being established, either. Saving Glory and not the others who were dying was certainly something that was going to weigh on me later, but I couldn’t think about that right now. And when things did come crashing down on me like so many proverbial boats, I’d at least have her by my side again to help me through it.

“Pity,” Triage said. “Well, we need to free up this room. There are still more injured coming in,” she said.

We began to file out of the room, and I fell into step beside Glory.

"Oh, one last thing," Triage said, and I looked back. "See if you can do something about Velvet and Storm Chaser's...problem. They're just down the hall." Glory, Scotch, and I started to head that way.

“So what were you saying about the F.A.D.E. shields…?” I asked.

Vignette 3: Chapter >77

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