Super reactor

Ducking her head beneath the surface, Zest could see the seafloor with perfect clarity. This was the most polluted part of the city yet! She could see plenty of sunken warships, even a couple of airships. The ground between them was black and oily, covered in slime time had yet to burry.

And those nasty lobster things were everywhere! They seemed to sense the presence of the ghosts and scurried away into the sunken ships as soon as Zest looked at them.

Just beyond the reactor itself were tall seawalls, converting this part of the coast into a sort of swimming pool.

The others did let her play in the water just a little before moving on. She soon discovered that she didn’t have any trouble staying above the water. Having something beneath you made it easier to fly higher and the ocean counted as solid enough. It was going deeper under the waves that presented problems.

Zest already knew from experience that there was only so much solid rock one could fly through before it became difficult. It felt as though you were swimming through thicker and thicker malaise until eventually, you couldn’t manage any longer. Going so deep underwater gave her a similar, but less extreme feeling.

She could still get to the bottom without much difficulty, but they still weren’t at truly deep waters yet. Water elementals, they told her, had little trouble reaching the bottom of the ocean. For the rest of them, it wasn’t easy.

They drew closer to the super reactor, most of it now underwater. It just kept getting bigger and bigger as they drew near. When they finally crested the outer wall of that shell, Zest found the water enclosed by the sphere was large enough to be a huge lake in its own right.

You could have fit two football stadiums in that yawning mouth and still had plenty of room left over.

“Whoa! They built this thing in the eighties?!” Zest whistled gazing down into the vast chasm below. “How?”

“I guess anything’s possible when you have a witch on your side,” said Indigo. “Manehattan ponies can build things like all get out besides.”

A single island of steel punctuated the artificial sea below. It seemed tiny only by comparison. Upon reaching the platform, Zest estimated the control building to be the size of Shadowbolt Academy’s main schoolhouse.

Though they now stood on the edge of the nexus of aura that the city produced, Zest could still sense one ghost inside, asleep for now.

The Shadowbolts flew inside without knocking. A vast reception room greeted them.

One detail overshadowed anything else that could be said about the interior. The skeleton of a lone unicorn hung by a noose off to the left of the room.

“Uh.” Zest raised her hoof and looked over to Indigo.

“There she is!” Indigo put one foreleg over Zest and pointed to the skeleton with the other.

“There who is?” Zest squinted at it. “I’m not good with matching celebrities to their skeletons.”

“That’s Spatial Tear!” Indigo declared. “The witch who started Toxco in the first place?”

“What?!” Zest flinched.

“She’s clearly dead.” Indigo laughed. “You can even pay to throw tomatoes at her. Where is that guy?”

Indigo flew towards a desk, pulsing her aura to wake the sleeping ghost.

“That sounds a bit much.” Zest didn’t dare take her eyes off the skeleton. Part of her expected it to still get back up. You could never be too sure with a witch.

“Do you know how many ponies died because of that bitch?” Indigo asked. “Heck, [i]I[/i] died because of her.”

“Still.”

The sleeping ghost at last awoke. What Zest assumed to be the tour guide and resident historian of this place emerged with a yawn. He was a portly stallion with glasses grafted on him, reminded Zest of her own history teacher. His mane was braided, which Zest remembered to be a sign a pony was a water elemental.

Maybe he drowned here? Zest didn’t know how much of this used to be above water.

“Welcome to the Toxco War Museum. I’m–” He began with his eyes closed.

He blinked a few times as he took in Indigo.

“Oh, it’s you again.” He yawned. “Look, if you just want to give the tour yourself, I’ll let you look around for free.”

“Nah, we’re good for it,” said Indigo. “But where’re the tomatoes?”

“We ran out of tomatoes,” said the tour guide. “Shortages.”

“How do you run out of tomatoes?”

“You see any tomatoes growing around this place? Where am I supposed to get tomatoes, huh?” The tour guide reached under his desk and pulled out a pack of water balloons. “You can throw these at the skeleton instead if you want.”

“So you can get water balloons but not tomatoes?” Indigo’s skeptical glance turned from the guide to the packet of balloons. “Pass. It wouldn’t be the same. Let’s get on with the tour.”

The tour guide stretched a little in one final attempt to wake up before taking them back to the

“It’s a common misconception, but Toxco is not the official name of the corporation that caused the war.” The guide pointed to a large sign hanging over the door to the next room. “It was actually called the Manehattan Electric Company. Toxco being a derogatory name popularized by Flash Blade just before the war. It’s telling how effective his propaganda was that ponies now think ‘Toxco’ was what they actually called themselves.”

Zest actually didn’t know that! She was learning stuff already!

“It wasn’t founded by Spatial Tear, either. She simply came to the president in secret offering a way to generate near-limitless energy,” he continued. “But in reality, it was all part of the witch’s meta-strategy. Superreacters created cheap electricity, but the tradeoff was generating massive pollution. She hoped to destroy civilization by tempting us into excessively relying on this cheap but dangerous energy source until pollution levels became catastrophic.”

Several large, old-timey photographs covered the wall. Zest carefully looked over what was labeled the actual founder of the Manehattan Electric Company.

“I don’t get why somepony would go through all this trouble actively trying to destroy civilization,” said Zest.

“Something about robots or artificial intelligence taking over the world,” said Indigo. “I think?”

“The line of the witches of spacetime, who now hold the seventh volume of the Book of Shadows, have always been concerned about science and technology allowing the rest of us to rise to the level of witches,” the historian took over. “They’ve done everything they can to impede it through the centuries. Spatial Tear was simply one of the more prolific of them.”

Zest nodded. She knew a little bit about history at least. Famously, that spellbook the guide just mentioned was never recovered.

“And those witches are still out there?” Zest asked.

“The current holder of the seventh volume is her disciple, Minuette,” the Historian confirmed. “Catching one of them seems a near impossible task if history is anything to go by. Even Spatial Tear’s own death mostly only happened because of dumb luck. We may never truly stop them.”

How many unstoppable monsters had to be in the world? At least here, with this witch, they’d managed to deal with a major setback. Perhaps, Zest thought, if she could do the same for her own enemy, it would be enough.

 

[hr]

 

They went through the general history of the room. Indigo let the historian do most of the talking, but Zest could tell she had everything said here and more memorized, going so far as to take over for certain parts.

Finally, they got to the climax of the battle. A small force of elite Equestrian soldiers moved to take the reactor as Toxco began their barrage of chemical weapons and tried to drive the reactor into a full meltdown.

They moved past some ridiculously thick walls made of lead to enter one last area. The room Zest found herself in was circular, with a cement floor. Zest felt a tingle, like a slight electric current was coming from below.

Another skeleton decorated this room, however, it was held in much higher reverence than that of the witch. He lay on his back in a glass coffin with forelegs crossed. Flowers and banners adorned the edges of his tomb. Behind him hung two Equestrian flags.

“So we have no idea who this guy is, but he appears to be the one who actually killed Spatial Tear.” The guide put on a hoof over his tomb. “He was either a hero or a total idiot. Either way, he saved the day.”

Zest scratched her head at that one.

“This is as close as we can get to the actual reactor now.” The guide closed his eyes and pointed down at the cement floor. “We filled the whole thing up with this special cement years ago. The shaft goes down half a mile. Even still, standing here is the equivalent of getting an X-ray every minute.”

“I feel all tingly.” Zest turned to Indigo. “Is that just my imagination? Am I gonna get ghost cancer?”

“Even getting exposed to the core back then wouldn’t have killed you,” said Indigo. “I was there, remember? Intense radiation makes your form get all distorted, but it goes right back.”

“You were in this room when it happened?!” Zest stared in disbelief. Not that it didn’t happen, but that Indigo wouldn’t have bragged about it before.

“Heh. Nah, nah. I was still weak as a kitten.” Indigo laughed. “Don’t you think it’s weird so many got killed by the radiation so quick if it was down there and everypony else was on the mainland?”

“Um.” Zest blinked. She really hadn’t even known the reactor was in the ocean until now. But she was wondering about it now! “Yes.”

“Well, Spatial Tear was famous for her portal spells. She made hundreds of portals all around the core itself leading into the city.” Indigo moved her hooves from one side to the other. “So that moved the radiation from over here and out there. Ponies dropped dead instantly from that!”

Zest winced at the idea. Though it was clever in a ruthless sort of way.

“But then here comes the champion, right?” Indigo flew over the skeleton, grinning over top of him. “He rushes right into this room knowing full well it’s certain death. Then, in his dying seconds, he holds open the portal Spatial Tear escaped through without her realizing it. By the time she noticed the portal had this 300 IQ boss’s body hanging halfway through it, it was already too late. A lethal dose of radiation took her out too.”

“At least that appears to be the gist of it,” the historian added. “Their bodies were found days later, the portal still open, with volume seven nowhere to be seen.”

Zest looked over the nameless hero with new admiration. How many ponies would have given their lives for such a longshot?

Then again, she supposed anypony in the building would have been done for at this point anyway. If you know you’re going to lose no matter what, there was no reason not to try something crazy.