“Zenith!?” The man let out a relieved sigh and lowered his weapon, “Where’d yer hat go?” He asked, concerned over the state of my headwear, “Don’ tell me those outlaws shot it off! That is an unforgivable act right there!”

“My hat is fine. I gave it to someone I trust” I brushed the longer strands of my sweat matted hair over my forehead so that they wouldn’t notice the same lack of Focal Gem that Strongheart did, “I see you got my directions?”

“We took a while searchin’ for ‘em, since ya made ‘em challengin’ to spot. But overall it wasn’t too exhaustin’ findin’ this horrid place” Lone Star shuddered, “What I don’t understand is why the slaves aren’t usin’ this opportunity to revolt! We’re their saviors for cryin’ out loud!”

“Don’t blame the slaves” I chided him, “These outlaws have been feeding them some kind of gruel that somehow decreases their independent functioning and increases their reliance on a perceived master figure, namely the outlaws” I idly pondered if Zecora’s knowledge of herbology and insight into some of the crazier plant ingredients in the Neverfree could do this.

“That’s dastardly!” Lone Star railed, “And on top of it they’re resistin’ arrest!” He added indignantly, as if that sign of defiance was all that mattered. I forgot how strange some people’s priorities were in this world.

I used the lull (a relative term, since guns were being shot periodically at our comrades up top) to take in my surroundings, which was occasionally broken by some blockhead shooting though the back windows aspiring to hit one of us. All that was missing to make this a true Western shootout scene were the obscene ricochet sound effects. The embattled building wasn’t as organized as it was when I had left it with the Prospector. Everywhere there were tables that were overturned, playing cards scattered onto the floorboards, and alcohol bottles smashed into a million fragments. There were a few bodies too, and their positions oriented towards the door gave me the idea that they were facing somebody down before they bit the dust. Bullet holes adorned the walls, displaying hardwood fibers frayed from the points of impact. I glanced over at Shooting Star, and saw that he was favoring his right arm (which was the one he equipped his Volcanic pistol with), while his left was held folded towards his chest. Other than the injury to that arm, he seemed to be in acceptable shape, same as his brother. There was something missing though… or should I say someone?

“Where is Applejack?” I deadpanned.

Lone Star head pivoted around him and his eyes widened, “Erm… I could’ave sworn she was with us jus’ a moment ago”

“And how long ago was just a moment?” I grilled him, not pleased with this development.

“Well… erh… ya see…” Lone Star pulled the brim of his hat over his eyes to hide his embarrassment, “We kinda lost track of time. What with all of the outlaws we’ve been trading bullets with. I recall that she was with us when we came in here an’ demanded that these lawbreakers surrender… then they got out of their chairs an’ started shootin’. Some of ‘em ran to get the others. Then all hell broke loose and… she simply slipped away from us?”

I pinched at my nose to halt an oncoming headache. It was a hackneyed excuse if ever I heard one, but I couldn’t be too mad with them. Applejack had a tendency of doing things her own way when left to her own devices, and the chaos of flintlocks discharging their rounds along with massive puffs of foul smelling smoke would make it effortless for her to vanish unseen. She was out there in the valley, immersing herself in the fight where she could function optimally. How she would do this nonlethally without being killed was beyond my meager scope of comprehension. I’d leave that idealistic philosophic approach to Batman. I didn’t have the manpower to scour the valley and bring her into the fold, but I’d be damned if I’d let that stop me.

Speaking of which, “Whose idea was it to split the group?” At his blank look I reiterated, “You know. The Sheriff and Clinky firing on the outlaws from the high ground?”

“Ya told the Sheriff to proceed as he willed didn’t ya? It was his idea to use the rifles to provide us with coverin’ fire while we swept through the canyon” Lone Star explained, “Didn’t expect there to be so many of ‘em though” He expressed ruefully.

Lone Star peered over our bullet riddled cover, “There’s gotta be three dozen of ‘em at the least to support such a fancy operation in this here canyon, and you can bet that they’re waitin’ fer us somewhere in that mess of buildin’s and obstacles. The second they bunch up in mass, they’ll come down on us hard”

That was ill news. After Tumbledown and my first firearm kill in this canyon, I had less than thirty cartridges of ammunition. Not only would have to make every shot count, I’d have to rely on my allies to fell the rest. I prepared a slew of self augmenting spells designed to guarantee the former condition. I chewed myself out for not remembering to replenish my ammo before going to sleep the previous night; all of that storytelling had a toll on my mental checklist. The spells were mostly identical to the ones I used in my first showdown, like giving my eyesight a crosshair aligned with the barrel of my revolver. The new modifications incorporated muscle memory that would enable me to score headshots on tagged enemies if they were in my light of sight. It was an analog to the Deadeye ability from my favorite Western video game, I suppose. If I combined this with my sonar scanning spell, I’d be a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield to be positive. In other words… I would be OP as hell… although that would only be the case as long as I kept my gun fed with bullets.

I shrugged, “We’ll just have to shoot harder than them” I declared nonchalantly, dispensing with the witty repartee. This task wouldn’t be as insurmountable as I feared it might be after all.

“Ya certainly don’ lack for confidence, do ya Mister Zenith?” He chuckled.

“Face down the odds that I have, and guys like these are a metaphorical walk in the park” I expressed airily, “You ready for some action?” I was all but oozing self assurance as I spun Dee-Dee in my grasp.

He held up his gun by his face before smirking cheekily, “Always. You have a plan?”

“Sure do. We’re outnumbered, to be sure, but we also have the Sheriff and Clink providing covering fire from up high. However, they can’t be used to their full effectiveness while the outlaws are able to button them in with returning fire, so we have to disrupt their ability to do that” I elucidated.

“We seize the initiative?” Shooting Star approved of this plan, “Y’all need me ta keep a rein on them while ya do it?” The young deputy offered, loading bullet capsules into his weapon and flip cocking it.

“Eeyup!” I pushed the cylinder of my gun until I had access to the chamber, manually grabbing a bullet from my belt and inserting it into the hole where its brother once slept. My ears discerned Shooting Star berating himself under his breath, “A revolvin’ chamber? Why didn’t ah think of that?”

I crouch scrambled over to a window, “Now on three, we vault over and take the fight to them” I began counting, “One. Two. Three!”

‘Let’s get this party started’ I thought, my blood running in adrenaline fueled torrents through my veins as I leapt out the window.

Shooting Star snapped off a trio of rounds that kept the outlaws poking their heads over their cover pinned while his brother and I rushed them. The outlaws taking positions behind crates of smelted gold and the carts to wheel those crates away were blindsided by our unexpected charge, but recovered accordingly as they took aim. Dee-Dee was leveled at them and barked five times. Each round hit home and those men had departed from this mortal coil before their bodies touched the ground. There was another outlaw in the middle of climbing the scaffolding to get a superior vantage point over the outpost building. The last round in the chamber showed him why that was a bad idea as he plummeted to the earth with a howl, a fist sized hole blown in his stomach. I offhandedly observed that the extreme velocity of my bullets translated into small entry wounds, and incredibly gory exit wounds.

That same velocity meant that I also didn’t have to give any lead on my shots as I fixated on a quartet of men running parallel to us as I reloaded my gun. I engaged my Deadeye spell, pulled the trigger once, and fanned the hammer three times. My steady hand and the compensator on the barrel managed the recoil as my muscles automatically adjusted for the follow up shots. They plowed into the sandy ground as my bullets hit center mass and I heard a general cry of retreat from the remnants of the advanced guard. Lone Star dropped another one who was running and crouched behind a crate to begin the tedious process of reloading a flintlock pistol with gunpowder, cotton wad, ball, and ramrod. I didn’t want the outlaws to regroup merely because I waited for my ally to get in the fight again, but I wasn’t about to abandon him either.

I grabbed him by the arm and hefted him to his feet, “C’mon! We should strike while the iron is still hot!”

“What about mah brother?” He gasped, “We should wait up fer him”

I glanced behind us to see his brother limping out of the blockhouse door and towards us. Apparently he had been nailed in the thigh as well as his arm. I growled in frustration but kept my cool. These men wanted to bring the outlaws to justice as much as I did. Depriving them of the chance to do that would reflect poorly on me as an Agent of this Kingdom and as the unspoken leader of this illegal mining and slave labor ‘crackdown’.

“You know we’ve only bought ourselves a minute or so of respite, right?” I informed the man in my grip, “The next time we make a ballsy move like that, they’re going to be ready for us”

“With that weapon of yers!?” He motioned to Dee-Dee, “I’d say they’re livin’ on borrowed time!”

“I only have so many bullets on me” I exhaled, “And I don’t have an exact estimate of their numbers, so I’ll be counting on your aim to be impeccable”

“Mah brother would often let me practice with his gun” Lone Star let me in on a smidge of his family history, “Got an aim almost half as good as him”

I was about to reply to his boast when an opportunistic outlaw with a musket did it for me. A wooden lantern post next to us was chunked as the leaden ball slammed into it, pulping the material and showering us with splinters. I was facing my back to it, so the durable fabric of my duster absorbed the majority of the shrapnel, but I did hear Lone Star curse in surprise. I hefted him by his collar out of the line of fire and into cover. I utilized the sonar spell (which is not as effectual in open aired environments as it is in enclosed spaces, but workable) and discovered the culprit camping on the roof of one of the storage buildings like the sneaky little bastard that he was. I leaned to the side to take a gander at him, only to jerk it away when another round missed me by centimeters. He had multiple rifles with him, and with his pals behind him suppressing our Overwatch, I’d have to deal with this one personally.

“I saw everythin’!” Shooting Star wheezed as he ducked in beside us, “How can we get past him without eatin’ one of his shots?”

“There is no ‘we’ for this one” I informed him as I reloaded, “I’ve got this”

He seemed doubtful, “Ya sure?”

I flicked the cylinder shut, “I am. Just be ready to move on up once he’s dealt with. We still have to deal with the reserve forces in the rear along with their Scarlipped leader”

They nodded their compliance and waited patiently while I crept around to sneak up on our sniper. I supposed I could have stealthed myself for it, but with all the excitement going on the thought never occurred to me. I crouched low and duck walked to my target, employing sluice gated tubs and boxes stuffed with mining equipment to mask my approach. The natives had vacated this tip of the mining premises, which was fortunate, as they could have easily gotten caught in the crossfire and perished. I finally arrived at the building where the sniper was currently taking guess shots at the spot where Lone Star and his brother were hunkered down. I noiselessly climbed onto the roof and tapped the man on the shoulder. He spun around and his eyes became the size of dinner plates as I sunk a hidden blade into his throat. Blood welled up from the wound and he began to choke on it as he struggled to breathe. I belatedly recognized his face as that of the ranch hand that Tagalong Thorpe had lost to this place.

Some part of me that retained a sense of humanity felt pity for this man, as his death would not be mercifully brief, but my vindictive side reminded it that these men were slavers, and slavers would get no mercy from me. These opinions and beliefs warred inside me as my gaze bored into his. The young man’s eyes were alight with fear, and even regret that it was all over for him. That ‘after colliding with the deer in the headlights’ look got to me and I ended his suffering by caving his face in with my fist, his skull collapsing with a meaty crunch.

It was a decidedly messy way to show leniency, but it was better than nothing. I wiped the crimson gore of my hand on his clothes and appropriated a musket from his stock that he had piled abreast of him. The model was almost an exact replica of the Charleville Musket (which I also learned of from watching military documentaries), having a lengthy barrel, an ornate metal flint striker, and a dark ligneous polish. Its practical range was about fifty or so yards, but the accuracy (or notorious lack of accuracy rather) of unrifled guns like muskets meant that it deviated severely even within those ranges, not mention exceeding those ranges.

Still, a rifle was a rifle. I hopped down from the roof of the glorified storage shed and returned to my allies, who were staring at me warily.

“Ya move like a ghost, Agent” Shooting Star complimented me; though the unsettled tone in his voice implied something other than flattery.

“That’s kind of the point,” I lectured them, “to move unseen through the shadows… otherwise he might have shot me, and I’m deathly allergic to bullets” I tossed the musket to Lone Star, who intercepted it deftly, “Here, you’ll need this”

“Do I hafta?” He whined, “These longer guns are unwieldy as heck, never mind how they aren’t as portable as pistols”

“Sure” I acknowledged, “But pistols don’t have the same stopping power that rifles do, and their range is lacking as well”

“He’s got a point, big brother” Shooting Star pitched in, “It’s why the Sheriff favored his gun. He can reach out and touch criminal scum like these men from a distance, like he’s doin’ now. Besides, you should leave the rapid firin’ pistols to me and Zenith… especially Zenith” He reiterated, eyeing my Magnum with faint jealousy. Who could blame him?

At the reference of his mentor’s preferences, Lone Star appraised his rifle with a newfound appreciation, “All right, I’ll use the damn thing”

“Form up” I commanded, “Standard triangle formation. Lone Star, you take the left, about seven feet back. Shooting Star has the right. Our enemies are somewhere ahead. We’ll finish off these outlaws once and for all”

They obeyed without hesitation, moving into an incomplete diamond pattern like a well oiled machine. I felt proud of their adherence to squad based discipline, though their time with Sheriff Silverus might have been responsible for that. Speaking of the Sheriff, I could still make out a one sided gun fight duked out between the outlaws and the two lawmen nested at the summit of the canyon. They’d need our backup if we were to get anywhere. With a standard ‘move out’ gesture, we advanced in a slight jog as we went ahead with steely resolution to enforce the law.

We encountered minor resistance as we went, mostly from outlaws who were too cowardly to associate with Pyrite’s defense group and sheltered themselves in the various buildings purposed for mining use. I didn’t waste bullets on these miserable excuses for hostiles; electing to breach the doorways, dodge to the side the instant I saw their flint strikers hammer down, and then return the favor my hammering them in the face with the butt of my pistol. I wasn’t intent on killing every outlaw I saw, but these select few men would spend the rest of their lives behind bars once they woke.

The laggardly progress we were making was slow, but sure. In five minutes of shed to shed fighting, we controlled a significant portion of the sunken canyon valley. In ten minutes we were at seventy five percent territorial control. It was quite the feat for only a trio of men and a woman that was missing in action. The worrying decrease of bullets on my belt offset this news. Without my gun, I only had my magic to deal with ranged opponents, and that couldn’t be used as effectively as a firearm. The Sheriff and Clinky moved up alongside us as they saw our gains, though they were still under heavy fire by musketeer outlaws led personally by the Chief Prospector.

I doubted that they would have maintained their stubborn resistance if they had known about their deep mining operation being as thoroughly demolished as it was thanks to me. The equipment was left intact, as I had no intention on destroying such a valuable asset to the Kingdom, but finding tight lipped labor to keep it functional would be difficult. Eh, I’ll leave that to Discord. As the Chaotic Lord of the Bureaucracy, part of his duty was enlisting government workers, screening them for Loyalty, and putting them where they could be useful. Or he could just whip up an army of those broomstick assistants of his, enchant them with the knowledge to mine gold, and send them here. That would be an amusing sight to see, though I shudder to imagine if Disney Corporation jumped the dimensional borders to file a copyright lawsuit; the law’s nonexistence here be damned.

Before deliberations about the mine’s future could take place though, its present infestation of outlaws would have to be taken care of first. This was made inconvenient when a lone counter sniper’s bullet hit Clinky Keys mid-center. His cry of pain was so loud that would have been audible to a deaf person even at the bottom of the canyon, so we knew that it was a truly damaging hit. The man lost his footing and careened into the depths below, tumbling along the approximately vertical drop to land roughly upon a crate stacked cart with a crash. He was deathly still, his discarded carbine laying uselessly a few meters from him. If the bullet didn’t puncture vital organs and killed him, that deadly descent would have.

“CLINKY!” Lone Star screamed in a mix of heartbroken rage and despair, disregarding squad discipline and breaking from the formation to sprint towards his deceased friend. He ran a gauntlet of enemy fire amazingly without a scratch, though not for their lack of trying to put holes in him. They were positioned within the last few, fortified buildings in the valley that we hadn’t secured yet. It was a fifty foot stretch of mostly un-obstacled ground that was dangerous to downright suicidal to traverse without being peppered.

“Dammit, Lone Star, do not be a fool!” I shouted after him, though I might as well have been talking to a brick wall for all the good it did.

His brother was no less inconsolable, “We have to go after him, Zenith! He’ll get himself killed too!” At least Lone Star’s brother was smart enough to realize that Clinky had passed on.

“How do you propose we do that?” I questioned incredulously, “There has to be eight or so men standing between us and your brother right now. We won’t be half as lucky as him if we risk running across that minefield of lead!”

“Ya need to think of sumthin!” He screamed red-faced at me, “Yer a Royal Agent fer Celestia’s sake!”

I forgave his using my Sunshine’s name in vain, but he was ultimately right. I had fostered this grand image of a capable agent sent by the Princesses themselves in front of the men, and now it was time to live up to it in front of them too. I scanned the expanse that separated us from a despondent Lone Star at the opposite end. He was bent over the unmoving form of Clinky, hopelessly shaking him and speaking to him, as if bidding him to get up. I didn’t like it when my allies met with their mortality, but couldn’t let that get in the way of my mission. I was like Batman in that regard, putting the mission first, and I think I may have sacrificed the same portion of my humanity to accomplish that mindset into the bargain.

But doing so also signified that I had no emotional baggage to weigh down my decision making critical thinking processes. And it was through those processes that I had spotted a means of protecting myself and my meanwhile companion, whilst also escorting us to our erstwhile squad mate. There was a metal track that emerged from one of the deep mine entrances and curved its way laterally to the general spot where Lone Star was embroiled in grieving. At the opening of this entrance was a mine cart laden with gold ore destined for smelting. The track would take us awfully close to the entrenched outlaws however. But that risk represented nothing to either Shooting Star or myself. I notified him of this and he readily agreed to the idea, not having devised anything that could trump it on the fly. I used my magic to roll the cart over to us before we hunched behind it, using it as cover as we rolled it towards our comrade.

Bullets bounced and sparked off the metal casing of the cart as the outlaws sought to roll the dice with us, and one sent shreds of spalling biting into my hand, causing me to hiss in pain. It was not a debilitating wound as far as most wounds went, and my physiology was actually complex to the point where the metal fragments embedded into my skin would be absorbed and converted into their base elements in time. The best part of the Trifect physiology deal was that I’d never scar, no matter what damage I would stupidly visit on myself. Regardless, it was incredibly annoying to be constrained to a space no wider than four feet, and it felt worse to have to share that space with someone else on top of it. I released some of my pent up anger on the outlaws by tagging them with True Sight with a harmless peek, blind-firing (though my crosshairs painted the targets in my mind’s eye. Magic like this really was just cheating, I admit), and reducing the number of outlaws spitting at us by over a quarter.

“How the hell did ya do that?” Shooting Star inquired, yelping when a bullet smashed into a hunk of golden ore and scattering the particles all over us.

“Magic” Was my reliable go-to response.

His petulant silence told me that he wasn’t a fan of that ambiguous answer, but the reduced volume of fire concentrated on us meant that he had no other reason to complain. The mine cart’s wheels ground to a halt once we were safely obscured by an unloaded horse drawn cart, which was recently unhitched if the fresh hoof marks were any clue. That could be a problem. If the outlaws knew that they were being soundly beaten, then what remnants of them were left might flee and disperse over the south, and they wouldn’t be as traceable as Crooked Cards was. We had to hurry.

Shooting Star ran to console his brother with a hug, before lambasting him, “Darn it, Lone Star, don’t you run off into the line of fire like that! Ya nearly gave me a heart attack!”

His words went ignored, “He ain’t gone, he ain’t gone, he ain’t gone” Lone Star sobbed repetitively, “Wake up, Clinky… please. Don’t do this to us”

“I didn’t know him that well,” I offered my condolences in a solemn voice, “but he seemed like a decent man. He will be sorely missed” If only the outlaws had ‘missed’ him too.

“He was more than decent!” Lone Star bitingly retorted at my word choice, “He was mah friend. We were Silverstar’s first deputies for over a year until he recruited mah brother to the cause of preservin’ justice. We became thick as thieves durin’ that tenure: breakin’ up rowdy drunkards havin’ a spat over sumthin’ trivial, playin’ cards for hours on end, and gettin’ drunk as skunks ourselves when we were off duty” He emotionally swallowed the lump in his throat, “I never thought ah’d lose him this way”

“If you wish to honor his memory, then you won’t let the men who murdered him get away” I appealed to his ever present sense of duty, “There aren’t many outlaws left at this point, but the remaining ones surely realize that this is a losing fight for them; impossible as it seems. They’re contemplating cutting their losses and retreating… and if we let so much as a single one escape… then we’ve failed him in our commitments” I gestured to his dearly departed friend, and the gritted teeth I saw take place in his cheeks told me that it worked.

“The Agent’s right. C’mon big brother, we got a job to finish” Shooting Star said softly to his sniffling sibling. Teardrops wet the sand where he squatted, soaking it up like a sponge.

Lone Star wordlessly shut Clinky’s eyelids with his fingers and took off his gold starred hat (which had miraculously stayed attached to his head during his fall) before laying it over his face as a substitute death shroud. He went erect and rotated in place, planting the butt of his rifle into terra firma, a stark grimness in his countenance that I knew all too well from my own personal experience.

“No prisoners” He monotoned, “They had their chance… and now they’ve killed a lawman. It’s the rope fer all of ‘em” He sounded as if he was reciting a legal code, but I could spy the morbid anticipation behind his words. He wanted vengeance, and that it just so happened that it coincided with justice was a plus.

“Let’s get to it then” I loaded the last of my bullets into Dee-Dee, giving the cylinder a spin for luck despite not believing in the concept.

We resumed formation and flanked the dug in outlaws, drawing their fire with decoy thrusts while one of us, usually me, attacked them from their exposed rear. Like a wounded animal backed into a corner, they fought ferociously. The Sheriff picked off men as he could from where he was, but the increasing intervals between his shots portended that his stock of ammunition was depleting rapidly. Soon it was exhausted and we had no further fire support from the Sheriff, but he had achieved his purpose by then. The Chief Prospector had vociferously recalled about half a dozen of his leftover men and they barred themselves into a sturdier building of brick and mortar by the smelting facility. It was without windows and the vault sized doors were formidable upon close inspection. The outlaws had essentially trapped themselves, but aspired to postpone their inevitable doom by hiding behind a solid oaken shield.

“Bastards shut themselves in tight” Shooting Star observed, tapping at the door with his free hand. It made a dense thunking noise that would require a hell of a lot of force to displace. I could have used magic to rip the gate down, I suppose, but a display of raw power like that would raise questions of the annoying variety, so I thought of the other options I had available to me. It was things like this that made me glad I had saved some sticks of dynamite as I sifted through the pockets of my duster and fished out the explosive rods.

My companions had bug eyes as they witnessed me sticking the rods to the gate with an adhesive spell, “Where’d you get those, Agent?” Lone Star spoke up for the first instance since swearing vengeance on the outlaws over the death of his friend.

“A respectable Agent always comes prepared” I fibbed, sacrificing some honesty for the chance to sound badass. I lit the fuses simultaneously using my thumb as a lighter (a little trick that I emulated from when I first encountered Azure Phoenix in the Neverfree) and motioned for my companions to take cover somewhere safe outside of the blast radius. Dynamite was not the optimal explosive when it came to breaching charges due to its undirected nature, but a door like this ought to mitigate most of the force. If it didn’t, well the world could do with fewer outlaws anyhow.

Each stick had about a five second fuse time, so I availed myself of that delay to dole out a one liner, “Excuse me sirs, but do you have a moment to speak about Freedom?” Then I ran like someone had lit a fire under my ass, diving behind a smattering of makeshift breastworks (hastily constructed from obsolete mine cart plating and wooden planks) along with my temporary squad mates. The dynamite detonated just as my belly kissed the dirt.

The explosive power of TNT in this world never failed to deliver, perhaps being a third more potent than examples that I had seen. The enormous blast of light flared orange and yellow and the earth shook as the frontal portion of the building was blown sky high. Lone Star and his brother whooped and hollered as the dust settled, and I actually smiled along with them. After all, what kind of red blooded male didn’t love explosions, especially when they were used to punish the bad guys?

I popped the cylinder of my revolver and frowned when I counted a single shot staring back at me in the chamber. I’d have to save it for someone who’d truly earned it. I gestured for my comrades to approach the entrance of the building carefully, as the outlaws could still be waiting to give us an unfriendly welcome. As it was, the explosion wasn’t something they were expecting, so the men we encountered as we walked into the smoke and dust smothered room were either obliterated (as in, not enough left of them to bury in a soup can), or writhing in agony on the floor, their limbs missing or their bodies covered in burns from fires that were barely put out. Even as we were entering, some of them gave up the ghost.

It wasn’t the prone outlaws that attracted my attention though, but the massive machine in the center of the building. The chrome plated device was large and complicated, with convoluted light bulbs, pressure gauges, countless gears of all sizes, and whistles all interconnected through pipes. A transparent series of canisters at the apex of the machine dispensed what appeared to be soil, if their half depleted state was any indicator. A rubber conveyer belt was at one end where an unwelcoming aperture gaped at me with inky blackness, while a yawning receptacle bin below devices meant for dispensing was at the other. The mechanical monstrosity gave off a malevolent aura that put me ill at ease.

“Make certain these cretins are subdued” I issued an order to my companions as I made an informal investigation into the explicit purpose of this machine before me.

Lining the walls all around the building were stacks of crates labeled as fertilizer, with the usual Flim and Flam brothers’ red and yellow logo plastered on the sides. It seemed to be the truth, as I propped open the lid on one with the leverage from my Tantō, bags of stinking ruddy fertilizer greeted my sight. This mundane picture of innocence was an insidious façade, and even though the aftereffects of the explosion had contaminated it somewhat, the air in here smelled… wrong, like a whiff of gunpowder mixed with rotting decay. After being around it so many times, I had learned to memorize the scent of death, freshly killed or otherwise. I reexamined the receptacle bin and dipped my finger into its mushy contents. The soil felt unnaturally warm and moist, and when I retracted my ungloved digit, I found that my flesh was stained crimson, and tasted alarmingly coppery. It didn’t take a genius to surmise that perverse things went on in this building that I had sinking suspicions about.

I rounded a corner of the monumental device as I circled it, only to find a gun pointed in my face. Before I could react the flint striker went ‘Klatch!’, only for nothing to happen as it failed to ignite the primer. I briefly thanked God that my ticket hadn’t been punched before I snatched the hand holding the pistol, yanked it towards me, and punched the man in the belly with my unoccupied fist. I didn’t hold much of my strength back in my anger, so the man (whom I recognized as the Chief Prospector) hunched over with a pained wheeze. He lashed out with a feral haymaker with his left that I ducked under. As he pivoted with his bungling blow, I clapped a hand on the back of his unprotected head and made him head-butt the machine, a contest that he lost. I seized him by the throat before he could recover from his concussed daze and slammed him against the metallic surface of the machine, crushing a few of those delicate light bulbs and bruising his spine on the gears. I confiscated any of the other arms he had on his person and tossed them aside, in case he had any funny ideas about injecting me with lead.

I glared at him, “What is this place? What’s the function of this machine?” He would give me what I wanted, be it an excuse to inflict pain or beneficial information. Either one worked for me.

“Go to hell!” He resisted me, before spitting in my face.

I wiped his spittle off my cheek before I wrenched one of his hands that was clutching at his compressed windpipe. He cried out pitifully as I twisted his left index finger way beyond its capacity to flex, eliciting an unhealthy sounding pop that morphed into a crunch as I utilized my steel clamp like grip. I didn’t care that I was being too rough on the suspect. And after what he and his henchmen put them through, neither did my companions. He owed me some answers. Now.

“TALK!” I demanded, “Or I’ll break another one!”

“Y-yer bl-bluffin’!” He eeked out. He may have been pigheaded initially, but I could be most persuasive when I was in one of my interrogative moods.

My reply was to follow through with my promise, forever destroying his ability to use his middle finger. He should have counted himself blessed that I was abusing his non dominant hand.

“Boy, you are dumber than a sack of rocks” Lone Star smugly commented from somewhere behind me, enjoying my excessive demonstration of brutality, “An incensed Agent of the Crown is not someone ya’d want to deny if ya plan on livin’ awhile” They were all dead men anyhow, but he didn’t need to know that.

“AUR-huerk!” He yowled, before giving in after the third finger, “All right, all right! I’ll talk! I’ll talk! Just stop, please stop!” He whimpered pathetically. I unmanned him too easily for my tastes, but some men just didn’t have a high threshold for excruciating pain.

“What is this place?” I repeated, false sweetness in my tone.

“Eerh, sonavabitch” He muttered lowly, “It’s- it’s our packagin’ center” Pyrite explained after the pain became manageable, “We disguise each of the shipments of gold that we smelt into bars by coverin’ it over with a layer of enchanted fertilizer bags to fool the inspectors. Misters Flim and Flam have special units of the stuff exported somewhere overseas as part of their legal dealin’s. The rest of it is legitimate goods, I swear!”

“And the fertilizer that they use to cover it over with?” Was my subsequent question, “How do they make it? I heard there was some sort of secret ingredient that really puts the fertile into it”

He leered at me, “I think ya know… Agent” He somehow made the title sound like an insult.

I felt that pit in my stomach become shallower as I recalled something, “Where is the boy that you sent to ‘reorientation’?”

He grinned fiendishly, not minding the ramifications of me knowing this, “Check the bin. Really dig in there”

I obliged, but not before colliding my elbow into his head to disorient him as I let go of his neck. I folded up the sleeve of my duster before plunging my arm into the receptacle bin and combing through it. I felt a jagged piece of what felt like bone poke into my palm and I latched onto it, withdrawing it from the newly made fertilizer. I inhibited my bile from issuing forth as I comprehended the familiar colored buffalo bone necklace that the boy had been wearing when Pyrite supposedly saved him from a beating at the hands of his underlings. It was chipped and there were pieces that were snapped off, but it was unmistakably that same necklace the boy was wearing when he was taken away. He didn’t survive.

“He was only a child. Couldn’t have seen his tenth year on this Earth” I stated in a voice nearly as dead as he was.

“So w-” Pyrite coughed and rubbed at his head, “So were the last dozen before him. All of ‘em useless workers that are worth more mulched an’ stuffed in a box than alive and takin’ up precious resources needed to sustain our actual workers. One of the reasons Mister Flam made me the foreman of this goldmine was because I was efficient” He was pleased with himself, even when the long arm of the law had caught up to him.

The heartless bastard had no regret in his voice whatsoever, “He was a boy!” I screamed at him, my eyes lighting up like two red hot fire pokers, “He should have been with his people, growing up to be a man of the Buffalo Braves, not fodder for your greedy schemes and subversive aims for the realm!”

“Savages… the lot of ‘em” He hocked a wad of saliva onto the dirt floor, “The fact the Princess never eradicated them makes me sick to mah stomach. Doxy whore”

I did not indulge him with a coherent response to that, as my normal control over my emotions faltered. My vision had taken on a ruby tinting as I stormed over to him, delivered an unprotected kick to his face, shattering his jaw in the process, before unholstering my Magnum. Dee-Dee barked once (expending that final bullet I saved for an occasion like this), and Pyrite’s gray matter was splattered against the metal surface of the infernal machine as the bullet firmly wedged itself into the metallic frame. The blood pattern it made was almost artistic to me in my vindictive frame of mind. Any man with the chutzpah to murder children and insult my Sunshine’s honor forfeited his life to me. I heard our captives curse aloud and try to shrink away from me, only to find themselves entangled in my companions’ fleshy restraints. They were afraid now? I’d make them wet themselves with terror before I was finished.

“Give the Devil my regards” I uttered disdainfully as I holstered my weapon and dragged his corpse to the conveyer end of the machine. I dumped his sooty remains head first onto the conveyer belt and flipped the switch that clearly read ‘Initiate mulching process’ in fine print beneath it.

Even though it was partially damaged from the explosion and my hands-on interrogation of Pyrite, the machine rumbled to life with the gnashing of gears and the blinking of light bulbs. The conveyer belt began its slow revolutions as it rolled Pyrite’s body into the machine’s hungry maw. Once his boots disappeared into the blackness of the machine, there was an unholy cacophony of crushing, grinding, and mashing as Pyrite was pulverized and converted into a slurry that was blended with the soil that was input from the canisters. In rudimentary terms, this machine acted like a refined version of a wood chipper, only it liquefied what was put into it instead of leaving solid matter. The concept that this was a viable way to improve the soil’s fertility was disturbing, as was the unspoken question of how this marketable product was discovered by the Flim-Flam brothers… unless it wasn’t them. Flam did mention working for others higher up a shadowy hierarchy that I had yet to officially unravel the existence of.

The Pyrite Purée was squeezed through a setup of nozzles into a receptacle bin that I switched out with the original, which was reaching its brimming point anyhow. I lidded it with the crate cover that I pried off and made a mental note to have it delivered to the glade beneath my Cloud home later. I was thinking of starting a garden and cultivating some of the unique and exotic plants that called the Neverfree home, and the mush that was once Pyrite was going to help me with that. Since it loosely fell under the category of contraband, I had the right as an Agent to appropriate it as I saw fit.

“I get that the man was despicable, Zenith” Shooting Star spoke up, sidling up to me, “But was that gratuitous display really necessary?” He waved a hand at our prisoners, where a watchful Lone Star had rounded them into a corner, “Our captives are gonna have nightmares fer days afterwards!”

“It got a very important message across” I replied coolly, “They won’t try to pull the wool over my eyes if they value their miserable lives”

I walked over to them, resisting the urge to grin like a shark when they recoiled in fear, “I’m in a poor mood for bullshit today, so I am going to ask you some questions, and if you don’t want to end up like your boss over there…” I gesticulated with a thumb to the bin, “…you will answer them with the utmost of candor and to the best of your knowledge. Got that?”

All three of them nodded fervently, even the man who had a pair of charred, bleeding stumps for a right arm and leg as a result of being too near the explosion. Agrarians were a tough breed, so the man would endure until he bled out if I deemed it imperative. But I was not that cruel, even if I hated them for what they had done.

“Which of you knows the most about this place? Its background history and how this malignancy of a business operation went on underneath the Crown’s nose undetected?” I grilled them.

The three of them looked at each other in a noiseless conference before an older fellow with a bent nose, a grey, worn out Elkhorn Stetson with the brim curved on one side on his head, and maroon whiskers raised his hand, “Very well then. You tend to this one’s wounds however you can” I commanded the only other uninjured man, who set about the burden I placed on him with an unsure expression.

I refocused on bent-nose, “What is your name?”

“Sandy Slate, Mister Zenith. I was one of the recruiters fer this undertakin’” He croaked, his voice hoarse with particulate matter from the unfiltered air.

“That’s Agent Zenith to you” I corrected him coldly, “Let me get one thing straight with you, Sandy Slate. I am neither your friend nor your ally. If you cooperate willingly and offer substantial information that will bring those responsible for this to justice, your sentence might be reduced. Impede me in any way, and I will feed you to that machine… alive” It was not a threat, but a vow.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, “I understand! Ah’ll answer whatever you have to ask!”

Question one, “Who discovered this canyon, and the wealth waiting to be extracted within?”

“That I don’t know, sir… ah mean Agent!” He panicked with the appropriate appellation, which was wholesome proof that he respected my authority, “Ah was among those tasked by Misters Flim and Flam with acquirin’ the men to oversee the construction of the mine in the richest part of these canyons”

“Natives?” I touched on the subject, making sure to use their polite designation.

Sandy shook his head, “No, no. At first it was men from all over the southern towns with desirable skillsets to facilitate the mine’s development. Carpenters, miners and prospectors like the Chief, even a smalltime banker or two to foot the bill for the expenses of haulin’ all that equipment down here without arousin’ undue suspicion. A’course, that ain’t hard when the closest settlement is a day’s ride away and some palms are greased to keep the local authorities lookin’ the other way”

This was definitely going in the report I would send to Celestia once this was concluded. Corruption in the bureaucracy was like a cancer that would spoil the whole system if left unchecked. The Princess would see to it in short order; one of the few benefits I would concede that a Monarchical Oligarchy like Arcania had over the inefficiencies of a fully fledged Democracy.

I frowned. Government corruption consistently left a bad taste in my mouth, “Pyrite alluded that some of these disguised units of gold were shipped overseas. Would you happen to know a specific destination?”

He bobbed his head, “Nothin’ specific mind you. But ah did overhear Mister Flam mumblin’ about how the tariffs in the Gryphondrian seaport of Westcliff were bothersome once when he dragged himself out of his office to come drink with the guys. He had a odd grudge that was contrary to imbibin’ the hard cider we had several stores of” He commented offhand, which I would have chuckled at in amusement had I not been so royally pissed.

This nugget of information was worth more than all the golden nuggets in the canyon valley, “Gryphondrian port of Westcliff, eh? That is interesting” I murmured to myself, “When did slave labor enter this otherwise pristine picture?”

At this the man was uncomfortable, “Please try ta understand, Agent. Ah was always against what Mister Flam suggested when he came to personally manage the mine’s operation, but there was so much gold in this canyon, and we were jus’ too few to harvest a sufficient amount of gold to meet our employers’ ample quotas by ourselves. An’ when he brought in those guns to subdue the villages with and tol’ us he had a method for findin’ those villages and keepin’ the Buffalo Braves complacent and obeisant while they did the literal heavy liftin’. There weren’t many practical reasons fer us to object to it, and that sealed it”

“Either you’re lying or you failed to produce a very convincing counterargument to mass brainwashing and slavery” I derided him, “You were abetting an illegal activity regardless of what it was”

“Ah ain’t lyin ‘bout that!” He expressed indignantly, “I was only a minor recruiter in the grand scheme, so mah opinions were tossed aside without a lick of consideration. If there wasn’t a fortune to be made here, I would have done sumthin’ about it beyond protestin’”

“That excuse would have been valid had you gone to some trustworthy authorities like those of the Sheriff in Appleloosa and spilled this story to them, instead of having it wrested out of you by me” I blew his picture of relative innocence out of the water.

“Did you know about this atrocity?” I referred to the machine I had fed his overseer’s corpse to.

“No, sir, Agent. I didn’t” He denied, “Ah don’t think many of us would have stayed on had we known that they were doin’… this” His face took on a shade of nauseated green, “A terrible thing, even for what we were doin’. Now ah know why the natives that expired were never buried, nor mentioned again”

I believed him, though that persistent tugging cynicism at the back of my mind urged me not to. That kind of disgusted reaction was not effortlessly faked, and I doubted that this man had trained himself to fabricate his emotions. It was a shame that these men got lured into this cesspit of iniquity, though the temptation of vast riches seemingly without end had led many in the past passed their moral event horizon and to their doom before. This regrettable fact held true no matter the world.

He slumped dejectedly in his sitting posture, “I was a week or two’s pay from quittin’ and livin’ like a king in one of the fancy coastal cities like Steelhatten or Las Valkyras” He bemoaned.

His whining raised an interesting point I had not ruminated on, “Has anyone ever quit before?”

“Well sure they have. There were the Billiard twins, who were two of the few others that were ill-disposed to enslavin’ the natives” He shrugged, before scratching at his chin, “Ya know, no one ever did hear from ‘em again… even Mister Cue, who knew ‘em on a personal level. He said their cozy lil’ place in Thackerton was empty when he came to visit durin’ a supply run, which is bizarre… since they constantly talked sweet about their hometown like it was a lover”

They didn’t disappear into the sunset with saddlebags fat with gold. They were disappeared, likely to assure their silence about the whereabouts and dirty details of the mine. These outlaws were just as confined to this mine as their charges, and they didn’t even know it. No loyalty amongst thieves it seemed, at least not when they were expendable liabilities.

Sandy apparently grasped the reality of the situation, “Nah… they wouldn’t! The Billiards were jus’ spinnin’ tales they didn’t even believe”

“They would” I averred, “You and everyone else in this mine were only ever a means to an end” But what was that end? That was the real mystery here.

“Are ya sayin’ that Flam jus’ offed ‘em?” He lifted an eyebrow, “Even if that were true, and ah ain’t sayin’ it is… I simply can’t see the city slicker pickin’ a fight with ‘em and winnin’. They weren’t no pushovers”

“Not Flam” I agreed, “But his enigmatic employers might have provided him the means to keep his own hands clean of blood” I snorted scornfully, “He died like a coward anyhow”

“He’s dead too?” Sandy sighed, “Ah can’t say I ever liked him a great deal, but I made more money workin’ for him than in any thankless job before this one”

“I understand that making an honest living isn’t always easy,” I condoled with him, “but you can’t sacrifice your scruples in get rich quick schemes… especially if those schemes involve violating a person’s free will; let alone hundreds of them”

“Spare me the lecture, Agent” He ignored my advice, “Ah never made no claims to perfection, but I don’t need a holier than thou government boy lordin’ his superior morals over me. Ah made a mistake bein’ here, I get it”

“Watch your tone” I warned him, miffed at his recalcitrant commentary, “I still haven’t decided your fate yet. I’ve reached my ultimate question, and this one had better be acknowledged with nothing but the truth”

“Ask it” He replied, “Then leave us alone or dispose of us. I’ve had enough of Royal Agents fer today”

I overlooked his continued prickly attitude, “Did anyone manage to escape before we apprehended you? I noticed that the wagons were unhitched of their horses. I’d hate to have to hunt them down”

He laughed, “So you didn’t intentionally attack this place on the one day we were about to move a massive shipment out that required every horse we could harness? Perhaps ah overestimated y’all. Ya jus’ had lucky timin’ with yer assault”

“Luck had nothing to do with it” I retorted, “And that’s not an answer”

“Not to mah knowledge, none did” He gestured to the destroyed door, “We were about ta saddle up and ride the opposite way through the canyon as a group to evade y’all. But you were swifter than we expected, an’ whoever ya had shootin’ at us from above delayed us further. Had to abandon the stables and make a stand here. We tried to outlast y’all in here, but as ya can clearly tell, that didn’t work out too well”

“Just goes to show you” I smirked, “Crime doesn’t pay”

“Gloat all ya want, Agent,” He stared darkly at me, “but sooner or later yer pride will get the best of you like it did us”

“I make it a point to simmer down with my hubris after a victory, so I doubt that anything will come of that prediction” I gainsaid him, before speaking professionally, “Sandy Slate. I deem that the information I gleaned from this conversation will save lives, so your sentence will be reduced upon official confirmation of the veracity of your claims” I left out that verified lies would be punished by instant termination.

“I can go free?” He questioned hopefully.

“You’re not fit for comedy” I disparagingly remarked, “For aiding a Royal Agent, you will not be hung for resisting arrest and contributing to the death of a lawman. In lieu of this punishment, you will instead be given a choice between a sentence of ten years in prison, with the possibility of parole for exceptionally good behavior, or ten years of community service with strict supervision. This will be lessened should you be telling me the truth”

“Awful generous of you, but what about them!?” He looked to the others, particularly the injured one (whose arm and leg stumps had been wrapped in torn cloth from the uninjured one’s outfit to form crude bandages), “Sandstone’s mah only cousin!”

“They will be hung by the neck until they are dead” Lone Star described the penalty for me, “Ah’ll tie the noose mahself”

“No, please!” He threw himself at my feet, prompting Lone Star to keep his weapon trained on him until I dissuaded him with a relenting hand gesture, “Let me hang in his place. Ah promised mah aunt that ah’d look after him after she died!” He beseeched of me, “Please, Agent… show him mercy”

I listened to him with a stoic expression on my face, “You would substitute your own life in place of his?”

He nodded furiously, practically dusting the floor with his hat where he knelt. His appeal to my mercy put me in another of those dilemmas. If I outright rejected his admittedly selfless offer of sacrifice, I chanced alienating Celestia, who I intrinsically knew was listening in on this very attentively. However, warping the law to accommodate his cousin, who had not aided me, would also be a debatable choice. The nice perk about being a Royal Agent personally connected to their Highnesses meant that I was their voice when it came to important decisions that they were not present to make. If the man wanted to die in place of his cousin out of a promise he swore to uphold, then I would not prevent him from being a man of his word.

“By all means then,” I slackly rolled my shoulders, “resign yourself to the hangman’s noose for his sake”

“Thank ya, thank ya, Agent!” He continued to prostrate himself before me, “May ah make one final request of you?” I grunted affirmatively, “Can mah cousin keep the wages he’s earned durin’ his time here? And if so, can he have mine to support him? He’s not what ya’d call… prudent with his finances” He whispered low and confidentially to me.

Sandstone overheard him anyway, “I resent that, cuz” His features softened, “But thanks for lookin’ out fer me. So how ‘bout it, Agent?”

“I cannot allow him to retain his wages from a job that wasn’t legally sanctioned by their Majesties’ Government” At both of their disheartened looks, I amended my statement, “However, any nuggets that Sandstone here happens upon while being escorted from this canyon is fair game” I glanced at Shooting Star, “Be sure to take the lustrous route with him to one of the wagons, though do not neglect to keep your gun on him. We’ll convert one of them to ferry these three to the jail cells”

“Agent” He looked at me funny, “Are ya sure ya should be so… nice to ‘em? They were tryin’ to kill us not ten minutes ago”

“I’m aware, but if you recall from last night’s campfire story, I believe in giving second chances to people who are willing to atone for their misdeeds, and I don’t spin tall tales” I glared at Sandstone, “Do not mistake this kindness I’ve extended for weakness. If you so much as think of reverting back to an outlaw, I will find you… and you will wish you’d never been born”

The fear was re-sparked in his eyes, and I knew that my warning was heeded, “We’re done here” I swiped my arm in an arbitrary motion, “Get these men out of my sight”

They complied. Lone Star rounded up Sandy and that one wounded fellow (who had to lean on Sandy for support) while Shooting Star took Sandstone outside for the most money grubbing walk of his life. I pulled Lone Star aside for a second and reminded him to collect the other surviving outlaws I had knocked out cold while we were fighting from building to building. Although the fighting had concluded, my business in the canyon was unresolved. I gave the machine one last look of abhorrence before ambling outside with the others. Strongheart must have disregarded my instructions, because we were surrounded by dozens upon dozens of hazy eyed natives that goggled blankly at us. Somebody was pushing their way through the crowd and they shuffled to the side to make space. Two figures emerged from the crowd in the forms of Applejack and the Chieftain’s daughter.

“Applejack!” I called out, meeting her halfway and scooping her up in a hug, “I was worried about you! When the deputies told me you disappeared when the shooting started, I feared the worst”

She was surprised at first, but returned the hug in moments, “Ah’m okay, Zenith. Ah couldn’t hack it when the bullets were goin’ every which way. Ah’m jus’ too used to closin’ with my opponents, not slingin’ metal pellets at ‘em” She sounded ashamed. Having fostered an image of being a dependable woman in the most tense of situations couldn’t have helped with that shame.

I brushed at her cheek with my thumb, “It’s alright, Applejack. I’d rather you not become blasé about killing” Though this was partly a lie, since I could have used the kick of her blunderbuss when we were house fighting, “I’m just glad you’re safe”

“Thank you for understandin’, Zenith” She smiled sadly, before perking up, “Wasn’t totally useless though! I used the distraction to sneak away and look fer you. Guess who ah found instead” She pointed to Strongheart, who watched us with a hint of bemusement.

“Zenith” The native beside us woman surveyed the damage of the scene, “You have defeated our captors?” I nodded in the affirmative to her, “Your abilities on the field of battle are unmatched, even by our greatest Chieftains” She complimented me.

I wasn’t one for praise, “Stop it. You’ll make me blush” I removed her hat and placed it on my noggin, “I’ll be wanting this back on its rightful cranium”

“I take it that all of your people are accounted for?” I said as I fussily readjusted the fit. I felt strangely naked without it. This was made worse by the sight of Applejack knowingly smirking at me in my peripherals.

She shook her now unadorned head, “There are several missing, I believe. But with my people unresponsive to all but the most basic of questions and commands, I cannot be entirely certain of this”

My chest twinged as I debated over revealing to Strongheart that the people she was referring to had been chopped, diced, and minced into smithereens that were added to soil to make fertilizer, that their blood had been converted into bits for Flim and Flam’s legitimate business, that the remains of those people were now in some farmer’s cornfield somewhere. How did one gently break news such as that to someone else exactly?

Applejack saw the internal conflict rage through the window of my eyes and called me out on it, “Is there sumthin’ you want to tell us?”

Without waiting for approval, I encapsulated the space around Applejack and myself with a magical field that kept outside noise from getting in and out. To an observer unversed in magic, it would have seemed like the air around us had faintly pulsed crimson for a millisecond.

“I know what happened to Strongheart’s missing people” I divulged to the Element of Honesty, who regarded me with shock.

“And why’d you hafta use magic to tell me that?” She questioned with narrowed eyes, “Ya should be tellin’ her!” She stared at me flatly when I raised an eyebrow, “I ain’t naïve, Zenith. I’ve been around Twilight enough times that I can discern the buzzy feelin’ of recently casted magic with the best of ‘em. Now tell her what you know” She commanded me in a voice that brooked no argument.

“I can’t!” I growled, “If I do, it might ruin any chance of there being peace in the South if the truth gets out. That night during the wagon train ambush? It might continue on a larger scale”

“What are ya talkin’ about? What happened to her missin’ kin?” She asked, suddenly wary.

“They’re dead” I disclosed, eliciting a gasp from her, “And there aren’t even any bodies to bury or bring back to their families” Not unless they wanted to buy out all of Flim and Flam’s supply of ‘magically enhanced’ fertilizer.

“W-wha? I-I” She stuttered, before forming an intelligible response, “But how?”

“Physical abuse, malnourishment, being ‘reoriented’ by the Chief Prospector” I scoffed, “Take your pick. Their bodies were recycled into mulch using a machine that might have been designed by men you know. Flim and Flam”

The mention of their names sparked a flame in her, “Are those no good sleaze balls responsible for their murders!? Show me where they are, now! They need to pay for this!”

“I hate to deprive you of your vengeance, but Flam is dead. I killed him myself” I cut into her hopes, “Flim, if you recall, is still residing in Dodge Junction. His hair lipped brother was managing the operation here down in those mines”

With no target in punching distance to vent her anger upon, depression set in and she sighed onerously, “Strongheart needs ta know, Zenith. Keepin’ the truth from her ain’t right, and you know it”

As it was, I would defer this momentous decision (and the responsibilities for the consequences therein) to Applejack, “Fine. I will let her see what has become of her people who did not make it. But bear this in mind, Applejack, if this open act of Honesty endangers the future between Settler and Native in any manner, it will be on your head” I crooked a finger at her in a severe manner.

She looked hurt by my venomous attitude, but set her jaw firmly, “Ah’ll take full responsibility for this, Agent” She used my title stiffly, the same way I starchily called Celestia or Luna Princess when they irked me in some way or if was feeling like being contrary.

I dropped the sound containment field and faced Strongheart, “Come with me. I have something you’re not going to like, but need to see anyway” Without waiting for her reply, I begrudgingly returned to the packaging center. Strongheart followed suit almost without delay.

To my dismay, Applejack also decided to tag along, either out of morbid curiosity or a resolve to bear the emotional trauma with Strongheart and commiserate if necessary. I noticed that they had been acting more cordial to each other lately. They were maybe not quite friends, but they had reached an accord at the very least.

“Ugh… the smell!” Applejack dry heaved, her stomach rebelling due to the stench, “Only parts of the Neverfree stunk worse!”

She had a point there. Some of the muck bowl bogs in that jungly swamp of a forest smelled like death, which was presumably the case. Doubly so when those Crockodiles (Cragadile wasn’t as catchy a term, so that’s what I prefer to call them) were lurking beneath the surface, patiently biding their time for the next sucker to blunder their way into their domain and become a tasty snack. The extremely territorial reptiles hadn’t died out from starvation yet, so their lazy predation tactics worked out for them. Their rock like hides sold for a small fortune in places like the Capital, which were then remade into a durable, if unevenly textured material that was all the rage amongst feminine fashion circles in Concordia (Another trivial tidbit of knowledge that I learned from my relationship with Rarity).

A crinkle nosed Strongheart examined the building much the same way I had, “I see multiple crates with the sickening likeness of my captors’ faces on them. Why did you bring me here?”

I ambled over to the receptacle where I had left the unnamed native boy’s necklace on the lip of the container. I reverently cradled it in my hands before handing it over to Strongheart. Her confusion quickly turned to realization as she connected the dots in her mind.

“This necklace is that of Wind Whistlers. I recognize the style of the carvings. This belonged to one who had not reached manhood” She looked around with self deceiving hope, “Where is he?”

“Murdered by the outlaws” I answered, “Children weren’t favored by the outlaws to perform labor here in the mines, and so the slightest mishap was punished gravely. The boy that necklace belonged to angered them when he spilled a wheelbarrow filled with gold dust. They sent him here, to be ‘reoriented’, which is a euphemism for being mulched by this machine. Whatever is left of that boy, is in that receptacle over there”

This time Applejack bent over and truly emptied the contents of her stomach onto the floor. I patted her on the back to make sure she was okay and that she had gotten it all out while I monitored Strongheart for her reaction. The native woman was silent for a long time, her face as unreadable as an un-carved slate.

“May the Great Spirit grant them peace, and guide them on to verdant pastures beyond all the pain or sorrow so common in this flawed life” She recited, not choking up once. But I could only imagine what kind of grief she was suffering.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop this sooner” I apologized to her, “Maybe if I had bee-”

She wouldn’t have any of it, “Do not apologize for circumstances beyond your ability to control, Zenith. Powerful as you are, even you cannot save everyone”

Her words stung deeper than I cared to admit. For all of my Arcane might, I still could not prevent a single one of the many tragedies that occurred here. However, what I could do was ensure that all of those responsible for this were put to the sword. This evil had to be destroyed before it could do something like this again. I made a vow to oppose those who misused their clout and got innocent people hurt, and I aimed to keep it.

I saw to my friend, “You okay, AJ?” She waved her hand in the air behind her to say that she was, though her bile had not yet ceased to flow.

Once she had controlled her sickness, I spoke to the native woman, “C’mon, Strongheart. We can’t do anything for the dead, but the living are a different matter” She wordlessly agreed, stoically leaving the building and all of its horror literally and figuratively behind her.

I aided my companions in rounding up the horses the outlaws were about to escape on and set about hitching them to the numerous carts scattered up and down the valley. The Sheriff eventually made it back to us after having some trouble relocating the natural switchback leading into the canyon. He was as aggrieved as Lone Star to learn that Clinky died in the line of duty, though he hid his pain behind a thin veneer of infallible authority, reining in his deputies anew and getting them to wrap his body in tarp and put it aboard one of the wagons before collecting all of the discarded firearms. I gathered everyone together and swore them to secrecy about the existence and location of the mine. The standing excuse they were to use if asked about it was that we discovered an outlaw camp where the natives were being held hostage, which was partially the truth (Albeit Applejack frowned at the ambiguous way I phrased it). As of today, it was an illegal facility under the jurisdiction of the Crown. Even if Strongheart did not technically consider herself an Arcanian, she concurred with my judgment to keep this place off the grid.

Strongheart gave orders aloud for her people to empty the carts of their cargo and free up room for us to use them as transport flatbeds. A ray of light in an otherwise gloomy aftermath was that some of Strongheart’s brainwashed kin were becoming more responsive by the minute, implying that a surplus of time in the sunlight would gradually restore their mental faculties to working condition. With the hundreds of people that the outlaws had kidnapped, it would take dozens of carts to get everyone out, and there were not enough coherent people to drive those carts between the six of us.

There was also the matter of supplies. The trip to Appleloosa (a topic that was a hard sell to Strongheart, who wanted her people home posthaste) would take the better half of the remainder of the day and well into the following morning at our estimated delayed pace with our native passengers in tow. This transitional postponement was also if we decided to make camp to wait for the morning light to guide our path, otherwise we would be able to ride there in a straight line in no time at all. The only reason we had was because Crooked Cards was following a predetermined mandatory serpentine route to throw off any pursuers. It did not deter us due to my enchanted coin, but he didn’t have the nous to suspect that, now did he?

To prepare for this challenging undertaking, we scoured every building in the valley from the smelter to the security slash tavern blockhouse that was shot to hell from the initial gunfight for provisions to take with us. We found plenty of alcohol (no surprise there, given the lackluster moral quality of the majority of the outlaws), maybe two dozen and a half barrels of purified drinking water (the rest of them were to supply the gold dust straining units) in a sequestered storeroom in the mines, but the only substantial reserves of food left were those vessels of gruel that had Strongheart’s kin in the predicament they were currently in.

The native woman’s own stubborn streak was undone when I relayed to her that those who were weakest, elderly, or children would not survive the harsh temperatures without their nourishment. Harmful as the gruel was, it was still considered a source of food. Convincing her that her people weren’t going to get additionally brainwashed from a last serving of gruel was tough, but Strongheart ultimately conceded the wisdom of it when confronted with the reality of her aforementioned people’s physical weakness. The former slaves were in bad shape, notably now that the sun illuminated them. I’m not sure for what period of time they were all kept here, but on average the wear and tear I was witnessing had to be anywhere from a few weeks to over a month. Ribs were exhibited poking above the skin in over half of their numbers, backs were scarred from the whip, and a few natives were even missing some of their fingers.

I was rather proud that Strongheart didn’t seek revenge on the surviving outlaws, who the Sheriff and Lone Star had slung over their shoulders in a fireman’s hold and dumped them on the prison cart with the rest, after binding their arms and legs with coils of rope that they had in their saddlebags of course. Even if they tried to run once they were conscious, the desert would do just as efficient a job of meting out punishment as the lawmen, give or take a few hours.

Eventually we developed a doable travel arrangement for the Buffalo Braves. Those that could still function without requiring aid would trail behind the rear passenger slash armory wagon due to all of the guns compiled on the passenger bench. Strongheart would drive this means of conveyance, while I would be in one of two heavily laden supply wagons after that (Applejack being the other teamster). The Sheriff would cart the captured outlaws in the middle while Lone Star and his brother would spearhead the column with those who were sick, injured, or otherwise too weak to make the journey by foot. I had North Wind and Dusk Breeze hitched to my cart, their combined muscle being the equivalent of six outlaw steeds, which were closer to ordinary Rounceys than Destriers. Our starting pace was slow as predicted until we got everyone out of the canyon. On the flattish ground the brainwashed natives marched in synchronized file that would have even modern militaries jealous. Despite this advantage, traversing the desert on foot would always be sluggish compared to traveling on horseback.

Strongheart requested beforehand that we stop every hour or so to check up on her people. Those who were beginning to lag behind would be swapped out with well rested ones, but the sick and the children stayed right where they were. We had a lunch break to feed Strongheart’s people and to water the horses and ourselves. Other than that though, the return journey to Appleloosa was blissfully uneventful.

It gave me plenty of time to reflect on what I had seen, heard, and done as I composed a longwinded letter to Celestia detailing the events that had transpired since I met with Braeburn and Strongheart at Cherry Jubilee’s Ranch. I left nothing out of my report, from the highlights, to the low points where hope seemed dim. I wrote about the bloodshed that ensued between settler and native, and how the losses might have been worse had I not rallied a haphazard defense and defeated their war leader in single combat. I included how Strongheart’s presence helped influence the second in command to back down and return their Chieftain’s daughter to the main village of Tatankama, where she was unfortunately kidnapped by a surprise raid by the very outlaws who had been raising hell in the region. The now comatose informant, Wild Bull, had been an utter fool to trust them. It was an assessment that I was sure she would agree with.

I even informed her about the Shaman and his warning to me concerning the Great Dissonance’s plans, and how I factored into its schemes. Now that I thought about it, I was positive that it was pulling the strings behind the establishment of the mine and the use of natives as slaves. Flim and Flam’s employers were likely an extension of its will, though whether or not it was directly influencing events had yet to be determined. With the information I learned from Strongheart, I sought after Wild Bull’s outlaw counterpart in Appleloosa, only to be challenged by a gang of outlaws that had a grudge against Braeburn and myself. We prevailed in the showdown, and I shipped the captive leader of the gang off to the natives for them to do with as they pleased. If Chief Thunderfeet was smart, and I had reason to believe he was, he would interrogate him about his activities and discover that the agency that had been stealing his people away from him operated in the shadows.

With the outlaw gang dispatched, I was able to appropriate their weapons and convince the local law enforcement in town to join me in bringing the rest of them to justice. I informed her about the underhanded trick I played on Crooked Cards to get him to lead us back to his comrades. I elucidated on the horrors I encountered within the mines, and how hard fought the liberation of the natives was, as well as adjuring that a team be sent to seize it in the name of the Crown. The rest as they say was history. I rolled up the paper like it was a scroll and utilized the special bottle of dragon fire to relay it to the Princess. The gout of flame that consumed the document without destroying it was a most vivid array of colors; the bright pink shifting to an unbelievable shade of purple that was as mesmerizing at it was dazzling.

The letter transformed into a string of smoke that zoomed off to the North. She would be receiving it within minutes, if that. If she were to conduct a response, I would soon know just how expeditious this two of a kind bottle o’ flame was. The precedent that Crystal Clear set (she wrote replies forthwith, bless her heart) was about two minutes, so I became steadily worried when minutes ticked into hours without a return letter from the Princess. Perhaps I had been too frank when I should have been earnest? I couldn’t have euphemized the deaths of her citizens, or withheld that from her, especially when she could have been keeping an ear on me through the magical seal on my Mage-blade’s hilt at any given moment. The sun was in the initial stages of setting when we were about forty five miles outside of Appleloosa, painting the sky a rich vermillion and dark red, though I overheard either Lone Star or his brother note that it was fifteen minutes later than usual for this time of year.

Even in the lessened light and without any self augmenting spells, my keen eyesight was capable of picking out the shaded silhouettes of riders in the distance atop a small hill, at about five hundred meters to our right. I saw one of them take out a lengthy cylindrical object that I assumed was a spyglass and observe our column thoroughly. He must’ve been the leader of the riders, because he barked an unintelligible order over his shoulder and the two men that were with him rode off, kicking up a tiny cloud of obscured dust in their wake. Further enforcing this concept, he fearlessly rode off by himself towards us. With the outlaws plaguing the south dead or presently our prisoners, I had to presume that this man did not have hostile motivations. Solitary as he might be however, he was an unknown that the others had to be apprised of.

“We’ve got incoming at three o’ clock!” I shouted ahead to the Sheriff, who glanced about in confusion.

“It’s later than that!” The Sheriff erroneously corrected me, “An’ ah can’t see him!” He shouted back, “Are ya sure?”

There was no mistaking it, “Positive! Stop the column! I’ll go see what he wants!” I instructed, yanking on the reins to dissuade my equine companions from trotting another step.

Silverstar called out to his deputies and had them halt. The whole column followed suit as I unhitched North Wind and climbed onto his saddle. I tenderly kicked my heels into him and I rode out to meet our visitor. We met up halfway as the last rays of the sun disappeared beneath the horizon. The man courteously pulled out a torch and lit it with a cigarette he was smoking, before flicking it aside. He was middle aged and had a magnificent walrus mustache. He was clad in the usual western gear of a jacket, vest, and jeans, though he had an epaulet custom sewn onto his shoulder, which I found intriguing. His otherwise ordinary looking Stetson matched the color of his facial hair at a pristine white. His expression was neutral, as though he was guarding his emotions at this development and was anticipating anything. This notion was reinforced by his hand never straying far from his sword sheath, which contained a cavalry sword.

“Howdy” He greeted me in a reserved tone, tipping his hat with his unoccupied hand.

“Pleased to meet you” I mirrored him, though with a friendlier inflection.

He glanced over my shoulder at the column, “Should ah feel the same way?”

“If you’re implying that our intentions might be belligerent, you’d be wrong” I contradicted him swiftly.

He crooked his head as he regarded me, “Ya sound like one of those city slickers from up North, who are you?”

‘Again with the ignorant mislabeling’ I mentally rolled my eyes. Just what was it about me that screamed city boy to those with a country twang?

“I am Agent Zenith, in the service of their Royal Majesties” I answered formally, flashing him my ‘badge’ and widening his eyes, “Who are you?”

“Captain Rockwall of the Frontier Rangers” He introduced himself with a hint of pride and a snappy salute, “Ah assume you’ve heard of us?”

I shook my head, “Nope. Never heard of you until now”

He snorted, “What kinda Agent in these parts doesn’t know about the Rangers? We’re a subdivision of the A.S.M.V armed forces. We keep the peace in the frontier territories as our name implies. We know the lay of the land, its people, and how best to defend ‘em if worse comes to worse” He summarized their role.

“I only started out recently,” I admitted, “though I do believe the Princesses themselves announced my appointment, so you haven’t been keeping up to date yourself” I riposted, “And while I find your background impressive, the question stands… what are you doing here, Captain?”

“The Princesses we both serve have summoned us to the major town of Appleloosa. We’ve been receivin’ disturbin’ reports of troop mobilization in the plains from our airborne scouts as of yesterday. An army of Buffalo Braves is convergin’ on the town as we speak, an’ I don’ think it’s jus’ to chat about the weather” He gesticulated to the column behind me, “My scouts and I thought that this was some sorta flankin’ force deployed to hit us from behind where we’re the weakest, but I doubt ya’d do that much damage to us with mostly women and children doin’ the fightin’” He chuckled, clearly relieved that we were not some hostile army.

“The Buffalo Braves are massing for an offensive? Damn,” I cursed, “I guess the Chief’s hand has been forced to act due to the kidnapping of his own daughter” He did not pledge to me or Braeburn that he would not take drastic measures to respond to that assault on his village. And with his people’s lost loved ones only dozens of miles out, his timing of this could not have been poorer.

“What are ya talkin’ ‘bout?” His brow furrowed, “And who exactly are these people, anyhow? They sure as hell ain’t settlers!” He jibed. The natives’ state of dress was distinct, even when silhouetted.

“These people you see before you are the main reason the Buffalo Braves are preparing to launch an assault on the town you’ve been assigned to defend” I explained, “I was sent here to uncover their whereabouts and return them to their families before they began getting ornery, which I’m late for as it is. We will be cutting it close, but I think if we rush to them now, we can persuade the Buffalo Braves to stand down. How many are they?”

“‘Bout four thousand, if the reports are accurate” He didn’t seem too concerned, “I have over a thousand men mahself settin’ up perimeter defenses, aided by whoever the Governor scrounged up to bear arms while he hides behind the thick walls of his mansion” He scoffed, not abiding cowardly politicians, “The savages will hafta go through us first afore they set fire to the town, and Frontier Rangers don’t fold easily”

“If you value preserving the peace, you will refer to them as Natives or Buffalo Braves from now on” I reprimanded him, “How long do you estimate we have until they attack?”

He frowned, “Maybe a few hours or so. It’s hard to verify. Their vanguard is already within spittin’ distance, jus’ waitin’ for their Chief to give the order an’ harass us, like they did when my men and I took the troop train here. The town of Appleloosa was almost sacked once before, an’ we weren’t there to do anythin’ ‘bout it. This time is different, as we’re here to prevent that from happenin’” He patted the curved sword at his side, “But if you say that this matter can be resolved without blood bein’ spilt, then ah’m all fer helpin’ y’all accomplish that”

“Excellent. Then I would appreciate it if you could escort us into town” I suggested to him, “I’d rather not have to have this conversation again with somebody else because you aren’t there”

“Us?” His horse pawed at the hardpan and snorted impatiently, “Who’ll be accompanyin’ you?”

“Only the single most important native in our little column” I vaguely enlightened him as I had North Wind spin on his hooves and gallop back to the cavalcade, to Strongheart’s wagon specifically.

“Zenith? To whom were you speaking to?” She piped up curiously as I settled alongside her cart.

“There is no time to really tell you in detail” I offered her my hand, “You must ride with me” I curled my fingers at the native girl twice, “Chop chop!”

She was stupefied, “You know I cannot leave my people unattended!”

“None of that will matter if you don’t come with me now” I wiggled my hand to emphasize the urgency, “Your people have assembled an army and are bound for Appleloosa, where your beloved is in the process of recovering, if I recall”

“What!? Oh no…” She looked to the blank eyed people resting in the cart’s rear, “But what of them? With no one to drive the cart-”

“Let Applejack take care of that” I interrupted her, “Our supply carts have reached the end of their usefulness anyways” I signaled with an illumination spell to the aforementioned country girl and pointed to Strongheart’s seat before making a flicking motion with both hands. She got the message and disembarked, jogging over to our position.

“Where are you two goin’?” Applejack asked, settling into her new seat as Strongheart sidled over to me.

“We’re going to town” I told her, “Appleloosa is in danger. Jus’ have the others move as fast as they can. Time is of the essence!” She was anxious now, but gallantly agreed to obey my instructions.

Strongheart reluctantly took hold of my hand and I effortlessly pulled her over until she was sitting behind me, “Hold on tight. I’m going to put North Wind through his paces” I rubbed at his neck, “You ready to do your thing, pal?”

He whinnied in agreement and showed us the meaning of haste. Captain Rockwall preemptively rotated his horse around and did the same, acting as our guide to town in the low light conditions (the typically brilliant moon was blocked by the clouds) of the evening. Strongheart did as she was told and held on tight, though she did not bury her face in the space between my shoulders as a headrest or anything personal. She was to be an officially married woman after all, once this blew over. Once we caught up to him, the Frontier Ranger scrutinized my plus one with his torch (which was remarkably still burning in the brisk draft) to see if he recognized her, but I couldn’t surmise if he did.

It was a tense couple of hours for the both of us. For Strongheart it was a rerun of history she was intimate with, though with greater consequences should her people storm the town. For me it was high stakes game of ‘get the girl to her influential father before a lot of people got injured or worse’. There was also the inexplicably sudden manifestation of the Frontier Rangers. The Captain (who I assumed was a local based off of his telltale accent) mentioned that they came into town via train, which was risky these days due to the Buffalo Braves preying on the rail lines.

But this outright show of force on their part (not including the rogue Wild Bull’s massacre of the wagon train) was a worrisome omen indeed. Celestia must have been hedging her bets in case I failed to guarantee a peaceful negotiation (sensible of her, but her lack of absolute faith in me twinged a tad, not that I would blame her), and now the kiddie gloves had been taken off. I had Smoky turned in to the Buffalo Braves, but he must’ve lied with his last, failing breath and assigned the blame on the Appleloosans. If I couldn’t deliver Strongheart to her father in time and get her to convince him that the settlers were truly innocent of all allegations of kidnapping, there would be hell to pay.

We arrived to a scene like a miniature version of the night preceding the taking of Osgiliath and the subsequent siege of Minas Tirith afterwards. The town was alight with lamps suspended on strings that intersected the entirety of the town’s layout. Men with torches could be seen going about the defenses (which were legitimate breastworks with sharpened spikes facing outwards, unlike the slipshod barriers that the outlaws slapdashedly erected to hamper us) and carrying arms to their comrades. I had to admit… the Frontier Rangers knew their stuff. With the stout, angular setup of the defenses, any charge on the town would be funneled into one of three killzones with crisscrossing lanes of fire, and the spikes impeded any cavalry from vaulting over those defenses without risking impalement. From the deficiency of torches indicating a lack of manpower, only the eastern end of town seemed to be vulnerable to exploitation. I could now understand why the Captain and his scouts were monitoring us, as this was the general direction from which we were descending on the settlement.

A glow opposite the town and surmounted on a western high ground pinpointed the location of the Buffalo Braves, though the darkness combined with the distance prevented me from precisely making them out. The concentrated brightness from their torches relative to the town indicated that they already outnumbered the defenders by a significant margin. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t help but admire their promptness. The Natives had mustered up a formidable armed fighting force from their neighboring sub-tribes fairly quickly, and I knew from personal experience that their warriors were no cravens, nor were they weak. If they could be gained as allies, they would make for powerful friends stationed inside of Arcania’s borders. I shook my head of that premature notion.

‘One step at a time, buddy boy. They have come to you as enemies first’ I mused.

“Sweet Celestia, would ya look at that” The Captain muttered from beside us, “There weren’t that many of ‘em when I left to conduct some reconnaissance with mah boys earlier. It’s gettin’ mighty dire out there”

“You didn’t seem worried when we conversed about it” I commented.

“It’s one thing to discuss sumthin’ while miles removed from it, and another doin’ so within’ sight of it” He pointed to the imposing defenses, “You see those? Each of those is manned by hundreds of mah boys. Ah’m responsible for each an’ every single one of ‘em. They’re valiant men who have fathers, mothers, wives, siblin’s, sons, and daughters waiting for ‘em at home. If this fragile peace is lost and the sav-… Buffalo Braves converge on the town? It will be war, and it is a safe bet that many of mah troops will perish in the ensuin’ conflict” He bleakly predicted their fates.

“You seem afraid” It wasn’t a question.

“Don’t question mah bravery, Agent” He brusquely replied, “Each an’ every one of us is ready to dearly give our lives in defense of our people, but ah’m not so willin’ to sell those lives at the drop of a hat”

“And if I can persuade my father to relent from indulging in his rage, you won’t have to” Strongheart interjected, “But why do we linger? Each moment lost brings us closer to warfare!”

“Lady has a pertinent point” Rockwall acknowledged, “C’mon. Let’s getcha into town so we can decide how we want to do this”

She disapproved of this, “Why not meet with my people now? So that we may settle this sooner?”

“Oh by all means, just ride up to their command tent like nothin’ is the matter” The Captain sarcastically retorted before scowling, “If we had men watchin’ all vectors of approach, why wouldn’t they? You get within a hundred yards of them from any direction that ain’t overt and they’ll fill ya with arrows” He shrugged, “It’s what ah’d do”

This was sobering news to Strongheart, “Perchance it would be wiser to address this issue with caution” I felt her squeeze her arms around me, “Though I believe Agent Zenith will devise a worthy solution” She expressed her faith in me, afflicting me with a minor case of the warm fuzzies.

“I may have something in mind” I averred, “Though I do like to keep my options open”

“A prudent policy” The Captain told me, “Wait here for a moment. I had some of mah men ride ahead to inform the town about yer wagon column. If they see us ride to ‘em in a group, they might think us a raidin’ party and sound the alarm. Mah archers could pick flies off a wall with their aim if’n they wanted to” Without waiting for permission, he galloped to his men, waving his torch above his head to signal to his men.

While he was notifying his troops about our presence, Strongheart spoke to me in a voice uneven with inner qualms, “If we do not succeed in getting my people to relent, what will you do, Zenith?”

Her real question was whether or not I would fight and kill her people in order to defend the Arcanian citizens in the town. And I would, if need be (Although I would have to perform at full Trifect output when dealing with so many foes, but that would be as a last resort). But that was why I was endeavoring to secure a ceasefire before the fires started raging.

“Whatever I must” I answered her solemnly.

“Forgive me for spouting uncertainty about our mutual conviction” She humbly requested, “I just-…”

I cut her off as gently as I could, “You have apprehension about the unpredictability of the future, I get that. You’re only human, Strongheart. But whereas my name has a degree of ambiguity… yours fits you to a tee. You have a big heart and an Agape love for everyone to match that heart. I can see why Braeburn adores you so much” Their kids might be a little on the darker side though.

“Our wedding!” She exclaimed, “In all of the chaos that’s been occurring I had all but forgotten about it!” She glanced over to her people’s encampment, “But how could I selfishly think about our uninitiated wedding when our people are at each other’s throats?”

“Prioritize, Strongheart” I advised her, “We have to ensure peace between our two peoples at this juncture, and then you can get hitched”

“Hitched?” She parroted, “As in to a cart?”

“Uh, not quite. It’s an informal term for getting married formally” I elucidated, raising an eyebrow at her lack of knowledge of said term.

“I have read through most of Miss Jubilee’s personal library, and I have never come across such a term before” From her tone I imagined that she was grimacing. Perhaps she hadn’t read enough books. Or perhaps Cherry wasn’t one of those women who were obsessed with steamy romance novels, despite her flirty first impressions.

The Captain had communicated favorably with his men and they dispatched a quartet of riders to retrieve us with him at the fore.

“Alright!” He shouted once he was close, “You’re clear to enter the town. Keep on our tails and don’t stray!”

We obeyed, maintaining formation with the four horsemen. His men rode abreast of us and to our rear, whether to function as a shield or to obviate us from deviating to a course not of their choosing was unknown. We galloped towards the outskirts and I could make out the activity taking place within the town with sharper clarity. Men were scurrying about in various states of alacrity and animated energy. If I didn’t know differently, I would say that these men were looking forward to a good scrap with the Buffalo Braves. A foolish idea, but I imagine that they didn’t get many opportunities to collectively flex their muscles like this.

Experienced as these men must have been to become Frontier Rangers, I suspected that the majority of them had not seen the blood and guts kind of affair that a no holds barred battle was. Only their Captain seemed to have a grimness on his face that appropriately matched the atmosphere, mayhaps he actually knew what I did. The windows on the buildings were in the middle of being nailed over with planks and the citizens who weren’t assisting in the defense locked themselves indoors, many of them grousing about ‘moving somewhere out of reach of the vicious locals’. Some had even barred their doors and moved furniture in front of them, which was a terrible idea if any of those ‘vicious locals’ made it inside the perimeter and felt like razing those buildings to their foundations. Thankfully the town was not in the grips of widespread panic, and I deduced that the presence of the Rangers had to do with that.

Their horses must’ve been temporarily expropriated from the local stables for official usage, because every three in ten men were mounted. The men on horseback weren’t even dedicated cavalry, but mounted coordinators seeing to the buildup of the breastworks. Unlike the westernized wear of their Captain, the Rangers under his command had bronze colored armor similar in style to the Royal Guard, though it protected less of their body. This sacrifice in protection granted them some extra mobility however, and these men moved with grace and purpose. Their armaments consisted of short javelin like spears, longer anti cavalry pikes, Xiphos swords, and a hearty amount of Spritewood bows (those must have been expensive to equip the unit with), crossbows, and innumerable arrows. Most of the defense seemed focused on ranged combat, which made sense when the breastworks were taken into account. If the Buffalo Braves got near enough to engage you in hand to hand combat, you’d done a poor job of fending them off.

“Strongheart, is that you?” Came the familiar voice of Braeburn as we progressed into town. His left arm was in a sling, and in defiance of his injury he was busy lugging along a man sized log for the nascent and unfinished eastern breastworks on his shoulder; likely against the Doctor’s orders. The stubbornness inherent in the Apple family was legendary.

“Braeburn!” Strongheart hopped off the saddle and immediately rushed to embrace him, startling him and nearly causing him to drop the log. The white whiskered Captain was annoyed by this interruption, but he hadn’t the heart to separate the young lovers on the eve of potential battle.

He looked pained that he was unable to return her loving affection with a bum arm and his other occupied at the moment, “Ah’m so relieved yer alright. What did those slobberin’ brigands do to ya!?” He demanded, seeing the marks of abuse on her body.

“I was subject to Mister Flam’s hospitality” She growled, “He and his brother are behind the kidnappings of my people!”

“Flam?” He echoed, his face contorting in recollection, “Ya mean the shady snake oil salesman mah cousin hates with a passion?”

“The very same” I answered for her, “How are you doing, partner? You took a bad hit back in Tumbledown”

“I’ve been better, ah’ll tell ya” He admitted, “Woke up to some searin’ pain in mah arm and the bothersome news that the natives were seen assemblin’ an army in almos’ the same exact spot as they did in the past. Then the Rangers came in and ordered the Governor to put the whole town into lockdown while they prepped the fortifications. They wanted every able bodied man to shore up the defenses, so ah felt it was mah duty to volunteer, Doc’s chicken-shit orders to rest be damned. The Doc told me that you dragged mah sorry butt to his clinic, and that ya also did a decent job pluckin’ the shrapnel from mah wound”

“I’m no combat medic,” I melodramatically laid a hand on my chest, “but I deemed it my duty to return you to health, and then return your beloved to you”

“An’ fer that I am forever in yer debt, pardner” He gratefully dipped his head to me, “Lemme jus’ drop this off where the Rangers can put it to use and we can hunker down at mah place to let them sort this all out”

His duty to his beloved superseded his duty to his townsfolk. Oh Braeburn, if only your cousin could educate you in the art of singular determination without compromising your standards.

“Hunker down?” I gawked at him in disbelief, “Braeburn, we didn’t come here to cower, we came to fight for what’s right”

“An’ what is right? What are ya fightin’ for?” He quizzed me.

‘Truth, Justice, and the American way’ I thought in my mind, but refused to share aloud.

“I tried fightin’ once, and look what it did fer me!” He inclined his neck in the direction of the native encampment, “We got a whole army of Buffalo Braves about to bear down on us… again! And yer idea is to drag the love of mah life into the flame!?”

Strongheart caressed his cheeks in her hands, “Do not fret, my love. History may repeat itself, but the outcome of this misunderstanding will not be what you fear” She bravely portrayed herself to bolster her beau’s confidence. That was one of Strongheart’s most redeeming features, being able to embolden others in spite of her own doubts.

“Ya can’t be thinkin’ of goin’ out there and confrontin’ them, are ya?” He was distressed, “You’re on the wrong side of the fence this time, Strongheart! There’s gotta be thousands of ‘em out there! If yer out in the open when they attack, you could die!”

She detached from him, resolution present in her demeanor, “If that is the risk I must take fighting in the name of peace, then so be it. Know that whatever happens, I’ll love you always” She kissed him with finality.

I observed this hammy exhibition of emotion with a hidden smirk. Did Strongheart forget about the magically empowered Agent looming over her? I had several disparate and clandestine ways I could sneak her into her people’s encampment without being noticed, some of which weren’t even rooted in magic! Still, it was amusing to see how dramatic these people could get when they believed everything they treasured was on the line. I had a abrupt epiphany that I was nothing like them. Sure it was problematic that these two forces were about to clash over a misconception, but it wasn’t a be all and end all element that could not be overcome through an application of effort on my part. Failure simply didn’t factor into it for me. But to ordinary mortals like Braeburn and Strongheart, their livelihoods were at stake. If it came to blows, then they could never be married to each other and be accepted by either group as a legitimate couple for as long as they lived.

It was a sobering concept for me… that I would still be around when these people were dust (Assuming this ominous Great Dissonance didn’t consume the world and all that was pure within it before that). Hell, if I was jaded now, then what would I be like a century from now? Or two centuries? Or even a millennium like their highnesses? It was no wonder why Celestia viewed her subjects like her children. In her aged eyes, they were relatively newborn one moment, and sagging and decrepit the next. The passage of time did not have the same meaning to one who did not age as opposed to one who did. I ceased thinking about it before I got broody for no reason.

Strongheart climbed into the saddle behind me during my musing, ignoring the weakened protests of her lover, “Let us go, Zenith” Then she spoke in a whisper, “It is… too painful for me to remain here”

I obliged, clicking my tongue and urging North Wind to follow the Captain’s steed as he chaperoned us into the western quarter of town. The man had watched the lovers’ exchange silently, but if he had any opinions about the ethnicities of each, he politely kept them to himself. We passed by a fair number of Appleloosans who regarded Strongheart with suspicious glances and some outright glares of distrust, which aggravated her self consciousness. The only obstacle obstructing them from assailing us were the Rangers, who warded them off with stern words of warning when they got menacingly close. When grilled by the untrusting populace they cited official diplomatic reasons for Strongheart’s presence in their soon to be besieged town. I approved of this shrewd thinking, and knew that the Captain and I had that sense of discretion in common. The free space at the western end of town had been converted into a field headquarters for the Captain and his men, who all saluted smartly whenever they saw him pass on by.

This was one of the few opportunities I had to behold the military discipline of Arcania’s armed forces, and so far I was not displeased. The men were orderly, obeisant and respectful of their superiors, and I somehow knew they would not break when put to the test. They were regimented too, with a Lieutenant on horseback intermittently reporting in to the Captain about the combat preparedness of the one hundred men they commanded. Women were oddly absent from the ranks, despite their gender forming five sixths of this country’s population. I wasn’t sure if this world conventionally employed men to wage wars or if there was a strict no gender mingling policy that countered having heterogeneous military units composed of males and females. I had yet to see a single woman in uniform (The time I first met Luna when she was in her officer’s uniform didn’t count), so the impression I was getting from that belonged to the former category.

Mana Marks for men were obscured on their clothed (and in this case, armored) shoulders, as was juxtaposed to the openness of their female counterparts, who had them proudly displayed on the backs of their hands, so I couldn’t gauge how suitable these men were for the job. As they were participating in the army, one could only assume that their talents were related to combat and the like. Arcania may not have had a large standing force (merely fifty thousand regulars dispersed throughout the nation, with another fifty thousand being slowly pulled from the population and discreetly trained. This was as per my readiness plans contrived in secret with Celestia and later shared with Luna, with the old war hawk concurring), but I could bet that there were few that could match their effectiveness in the field. However, natural talent was like a freshly forged blade still hot from the fires. Without the whetstone of experience to hone its edge, it was dull and not as effectual as it was required to be.

We hitched our horses and followed the man into his domain. Captain Rockwall’s headquarters was basically a Romanesque tent capable of fitting a war table with a map of the surrounding region and wooden sculptures representing allied and enemy troops. Lanterns hanging from posts flickeringly illuminated the space from all four corners of the tent. We stopped at the table and I reviewed what was depicted on its surface. Appleloosa had a lone marble carving of a royal guard erected over its name and topography (Illustrated with contouring sketch lines of varying shades denoting elevation or relief in the terrain). Right to the west were four crudely (and probably recently) fashioned models of Buffalos snarling angrily at the town and elevated on a set of timber blocks to demonstrate their disconcerting high ground advantage, which discouraged counterattacks. His aide-de-camps welcomed him warmly and offered us refreshments of sparkling water, which we amiably declined.

“So, Rockwall” I said as I pored over the war table, “Let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? What is your game plan?”

“Sir?” One of the aide-de-camps uttered in befuddlement at my direct addressing of their Commander.

“It’s fine, Mineral Blitz, he’s a Royal Agent. You may both leave us” He excused them, and they made themselves scarce.

“Mah plan is purely defensive. As ya can clearly see,” He swept his hand over the table, “we jus’ don’ have the manpower to mount any sorties without sufferin’ unacceptable casualties, and that would be a provocative act of war anyhow. At least with the defenses in place, we can inflict enough damage on them that they’d think twice about pillagin’ this town”

He sighed, “There are already two thousand or so overlookin’ us as we speak. And that’s jus’ their vanguard. There’s another two thousand less than half a day from them. If they don’ attack us now, then you can rest assured that they will in the mornin’ once they’re at full force!”

‘Why haven’t they launched probing raids on the defenses yet? Is the Chieftain posturing? Or waiting for his total strength so he can overwhelm us with sheer numbers?’ I had no idea what sort of tactician he was.

“We’re outnumbered, that much is obvious” I tapped at the map, “But there are apple orchards between us and them that will bottleneck them if they attack from the west. Is Appleloosa the only town that’s being ganged up on?” It seemed like an unrelated question, but it was relevant for similar reasons.

“As of today, yes” He bobbed his head once, “But as for tomorrow, or next week? Circumstances might drastically change. And there’s a path through those groves that leads straight into the western bulwark” He traced back and forth at the spot with his finger, “How do ya plan on gettin’ the Chieftain’s daughter past his sentries without them featherin’ her with arrows?”

I turned to my current companion, “Do your people understand what a white flag means?”

The Captain immediately disagreed, “Surrender is not an option here! For all you know, they might use that as an excuse to invade the town!”

On that I agreed with him, “I’m not talking about surrendering, I’m talking about a temporary truce. They wouldn’t be as liable to let their arrows loose if they saw a minuscule delegation heading towards them. They’re not so intractable that they’d kill a non threatening diplomatic party without demonizing themselves”

“This is the truth. Those who nefariously shed innocent blood are held accountable by the Great Spirit in the hereafter. And our people do not recognize flags, Zenith, as we do not have a need for them” Strongheart informed me, “Though we are not completely ignorant to their meaning either, having observed your people using them for some time ourselves” She commented with a slight glare leveled at the Captain, who actually had the grace to shrink back in shame.

“There is no glory for warriors to strike down unarmed opponents if they present themselves to them in such small numbers. I believe we will be able to visit their camp with this method, but it can only be us” She specified, “No one else may accompany us without increasing the chance that my people will retaliate violently. I can speak for my people and you must speak for yours. You have also fought against my kin at one juncture, Zenith. There will be men there who will remember your deeds in the heat of battle, and those stories will disseminate amongst our tribe from the warriors who saw what you were capable of” She smiled somewhat maliciously, “You stood toe to toe with Wild Bull and humbled him. That did not go unnoticed, I assure you”

I snorted, “He relied on brute force to overpower his opponents. He thought with his muscles, not his brain. I defeated him handily”

She clutched a fist to her chest, “Our people value individual strength. Your voice, though belonging to those that they perceive as an enemy, will have weight”

“Ya’ve tussled with these people before, Agent? Color me impressed” The Captain remarked disparagingly, “I thought you city slickers fussed over havin’ a single hair out of place”

I ignored the offhand jab, “I also fought for them” I announced, surprising them both, “When Strongheart’s village was reft and she was plucked from her home, I put down as many outlaws as I could shoot until the Chief could rally his men and oust the rest”

“You did?” Strongheart self debasingly shook her head, “Of course you did. You’ve had such an impact on our tribe that it is quite likely that my father will meet with no other Arcanian, with perhaps the exception of my beloved, though he is too afraid to join us. He fears my father, and he must believe himself responsible for allowing my kidnapping. Oh Braeburn,” She murmured to herself, “you are not a warrior, and you don’t need to be, not in my eyes”

“Would it be possible for you to spare some men capable of driving wagons?” I politely requisitioned to the Captain in a tone that lorded my position over his own, “Even if we can convince the Buffalo Braves to lay idle on that hill, they will want their loved ones returned to them right away”

“I can’t do that, Agent” He resisted me, “I need every man at his post. Besides, any movement en masse out of the town could be disastrously misconstrued by the natives”

“Not in the direction we came in on. Listen to me, Captain” I leveled with him, “Twenty men and some horses won’t make the difference should negotiations fail. Sure you’ll make the natives pay for every inch of ground, but they have the motivation and the manpower to raze Appleloosa twice over before sunrise”

“I think ya overestimate their chances!” He huffed, taking insult at the implied assessment of his soldiers, “We’re dug in hard, and they’ll have a hell of a time diggin’ us out!”

“But you haven’t faced these men before, have you?” He scowled, but his silence confirmed that he didn’t know his enemy that well in this case, “They don’t fight in standard formations. Each man fights more or less for his own glory and the opportunity to collect scalps. And because their warrior tradition is so fixated on personal glory, they fight harder than you’d think. A seasoned warrior is easily the equal of three untrained Agrarian men, maybe four. Your defenses and structured units will only hold them off so long. Once they break, and they will after enduring the might of two thousand or more native warriors, your men will become disorganized and will retreat pell-mell. Buffalo Braves have no qualms with hurtling tomahawks into the spines of withdrawing opponents that they’ve engaged”

“Have ya seen their tactics?” The Captain questioned, “What can ya tell me about their strategies?”

“Only in a smaller scale. And they seemed to relent from the attack after I held their war leader hostage” The Braves may have fought for vengeance and glory, but they had a chain of command like us.

“So if ya were to clasp hands with their Chieftain…” The Captain began deviously.

“Don’t even suggest it” I eyed Strongheart warily, “It’s rather distasteful in our present company, don’t you think?” He shut up after that, conceding the point.

It flew over her head, thanks to her comparative inexperience with double meaning, “I do not understand. Why would shaking hands with my father be an unacceptable gesture?”

“I’ll shake hands with him after we restore his daughter to him and only if he offers” I placated her.

“So all our hopes are pinned on you talkin’ them out of violence?” The Captain was unhappy with that, “At least I ain’t the one chancin’ his health if things go south”

I smirked, “That’s right, Rockwall, focus on the positives. Us young folks gotta retain our ideals and dare to push the envelope when it comes to making progress”

He chuckled, “If you were one of mah boys, I’d tan yer hide until you minded that cheeky tongue of yers. Ah’ll see what I can do about expeditin’ the transport of her people, but it’ll take time that you hafta buy fer us” He saluted me, “May the Princesses smile upon your endeavors out there, Agent Zenith”

With that, he left us to give out the orders for twenty of his men to commandeer whatever wheeled vehicles they could find and to hitch their horses to them before sending them off to find our wagon column and expedite their transition across the desert flats. I improvised with a stained dining sheet stuffed into the Captain’s footlocker storage trunk and an unlit torch to create a white flag that we would use to signal our willingness to negotiate with the natives. It was a ratty dining cloth, so I presumed that the Captain wouldn’t mind if I borrowed it. Strongheart and I then shared a glass of the Captain’s whiskey (for additional courage, I explained to her) before we remounted North Wind to head off ourselves. We were about to search for the exit when two riders trotted over to us.

“You two are the Royal Agent and the Native woman, yes?” One of them asked in a professional, guarded voice.

“Might be” I replied tersely, “Who’s asking?”

“Your escort” The other of the two riders responded, “The Captain ordered us to take you halfway to the Buffalo Brave’s camp. It’s formal courtesy for a member of their Highnesses’ Agency to have an entourage when departing from an army encampment. You are an extension of their Majesties’ will, and it would be remiss of us not to protect you in sight of the men”

“It must only be us seen advancing on them, Zenith, or our mission will be endangered” Strongheart nudged at me, not approving of this courtesy.

“That is why we will be turning back at the designated halfway point” The first one reiterated, quick to pick up the slack, “The apple orchards between the two camps will aid us in being unseen before then”

I wasn’t about to turn down another helpful escort, “Very well” I then motioned for them to lead the way.

We cantered to a thin gap between the breastwork defenses that was wide enough for a man on horse to slip through without risking harm. Pike men vigilantly minded this weak spot however, so there was no danger of it being the chink in an otherwise sturdy armor encapsulating the town. The vaunted apple orchards that comprised the majority of Appleloosa’s exportable products were no different from Sweet Apple Acre’s groves; only these trees grew in sandier soil and were slightly stunted to compensate for the lack of scheduled hydration. Thinking about the Magiville based farm made me wonder which of these trees might be Applejack’s precious Bloomberg, and then the idyllic tangent took a turn for the worse when I envisioned this same orchard in flames from the Buffalo Brave’s assault. The price of failure would be steep indeed if Strongheart’s homecoming was not sufficient to stay the execution.

The woman in the saddle with me was quiet, likely debating what to say to her father and the other tribal leaders in order to persuade them that the Arcanian settlers were innocent without being seen as biased, as she was in love with one herself. Braeburn should have been with us too, but with how displeased Chief Thunderfeet was with him for losing his only daughter to the outlaws, mayhaps he needed time to cool off first. Our escorts kept their attention focused on our surroundings, scanning the orchard for any signs of skirmishing natives hiding in the woods. We traveled without a lamp or anything to light our path, but our escorts must’ve been familiar with the area, since we reached the halfway point sooner than I would have guessed.

“This is where we part ways, Agent” One of them declared, giving me a two fingered valedictory salute, “We’ll be eagerly awaiting your return”

“Hopefully with good news… and your head still attached to your shoulders” Lefty (as I decided to call him for his placement) whispered to himself, earning him a reproachful smack on the head from righty.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, I chortled at his lighthearted comment, “I appreciate the vote of confidence. You boys take care!”

The two riders clandestinely disappeared into the night and Strongheart and I continued our trek up the hill towards the natives’ encampment by ourselves. I kept my eyes peeled, watching for any sentinels or lookouts that might spot us. I handed the rolled up white flag to Strongheart for her to hold. I would need both hands for the reins if I had to make North Wind dance around arrow showers. We must have been stealthier than I gave us credit for, because it wasn’t until we were within smelling range of a chunk of buffalo meat on a spit roast that we were detected by a warrior who was stringing his bow by the wayside. He shouted in his native tongue and soon we were swarmed by dozens of them pouring out of their tents. Each of them was angrily spitting at us in their harsh language. But they weren’t trying to aerate us with arrows, so there was that.

Strongheart sheepishly waved the white flag in a figure eight. She comprehended that her voice would not be heard over the din, so she didn’t even bother speaking until they bothered to listen. I meanwhile was visually scouring the natives’ camp for anything remotely resembling the command tent, though the Buffalo Braves did not distinguish their mobile shelters based on rank, so it was more irksome for me to do than it should have been. Most of the control I had over the situation was deprived from me when one of the men seized North Wind’s reins and began to forcibly lead him where he wanted. I could work with this. I surmised that the man was taking us to his leaders for them to make heads or tails of our little visit.

The natives’ encampment was larger than the Rangers’, but also simpler. Although the wigwams, teepees, and longhouses that were present in their main village were portable (as the natives had a nomadic culture), very primitive and easy to assemble structures had to be employed for massed excursions like this. For a rapid response by their army, they had to rely on buffalo and deer hide tents supported by sticks to shelter them from the natural elements. Circles of these tents would encompass one big bonfire that was used for cooking and lighting by fifty or so men. The men themselves were prepared for a fight. They were decked out in bone armor, had the strangest array of war paint designs for their faces, and looked mean as hell in general. Honor was the only thing stopping them from killing us then and there. If things got ugly, I would be hard pressed to fight my way out of this under normal circumstances.

The Brave conducting us into the interior of the native camp stopped before a tent (whose only distinguishing feature was that it was spacious compared to the others) and poked his head inside to speak to one of its inhabitants. An older man with a clipped ponytail and peculiar war paint pattern (half of his face white and the other black with his ocular pits being the opposite shades for extra contrast) emerged, staring us down with narrowed eyes brimming with hatred. Strongheart must have recognized this man, because I could feel her recoil and lean behind me instinctively for protection. The man walked until he was beside us and spoke to her in an unfriendly sounding tone. I cast a bidirectional translational spell and those grating chirps of foreign verbiage became intelligible words in my mind’s ear.

“You bring a hated milkskin into our midst?” He hissed, “You dishonor our people, Strongheart, consorting with the enemy like this. You father never listened to my warnings, but I see it in your eyes. You value them above your own kin!”

“I have done no such thing!” She objected, tearing up at the hurtful words, “Our people can coexist, we must look past our differences and live together in harmony! As they do!”

“You have even adopted their pitiful ideology” He sneered, “We live by strength and strength alone! Without your poisonous influence to cloud his mind, your hesitant father has finally seen wisdom and sought justice for himself. He has gathered the best of our warriors to wreak our vengeance upon them! Starting with Appleloosa” He jeered.

He pointed to me, “And as for you! I don’t know what foul sorcery allowed you to defeat my son in combat without that coward’s Thunder-Horror weapon… but it will not avail you against me!” He unsheathed a jagged dagger of what I believed was obsidian and grabbed it with his other hand, cutting into it down to the bone. He didn’t so much as cringe at the pain, so I knew that this man was no stranger to it.

‘An important figure, angered by my besting his son in combat? This must be the venerated Standing Bull’ I deduced. No other warrior’s pops had the clout that this man did. What were the chances we’d stumble into his allotment of the camp? This universe loved to test me, it seemed.

He then held out the hand and let the blood drip onto the ground, “You may not be one of our tribe or understand what I say, ignorant foreigner, but the Great Spirit knows my rage is potent, and will abide by this pledge. One of us will die this night”

“So be it” I replied in his own tongue, causing those around us to murmur with interest and faint shock that the ignorant foreigner was not so ignorant after all. I dismounted from North Wind and the congregation took a few steps back to give us some room. There wasn’t even a peep out of Strongheart. This death oath thing could not be overturned, so she could only bear witness.

I studied my opponent carefully as one of his underlings fetched him a duplicate of a Macuahuitl sword baton, which was essentially a wooden stick with over a dozen razor sharp prismatic obsidian blades embedded into its sides. He gave it some practice whirls to familiarize himself with the weight. A weapon like that had serious lacerating potential even if it glanced, so I had to be heedful during this duel. Standing Bull was roughly as muscular as his son was, but this man would not be as foolish in battle, and would study me for weaknesses too. I was out of bullets for Dee-Dee, so I couldn’t ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ my way out of this one. If I had Dichotomy, I could dice this man into neat chunks regardless of how fearsome a warrior he was. That left me with two tactical options, my hidden blades, and my Tantō, both of which I was comfortable with using. One of the Buffalo Braves moved to give me a weapon to duel with, but he was stopped by Standing Bull, who imperiously waved him off.

“He is warrior enough to triumph over my son, is he not?” He posited, “Let us determine how well he fights with what he has”

We stared each other down for fifteen seconds afterwards before Standing Bull attacked first. He closed the gap between us and swung his Macuahuitl overhead, which I ducked underneath as I drew my Tantō and held it in my usual reverse grip. In spite of wielding a bladed, dense piece of wood four feet in length, Standing Bull could swing his weapon as effortlessly as if it was a baseball bat. I had to pull off some mad dives and combat rolls to avoid being carved in half as he swiped at me like a madman. I wasn’t able to counter him as often as I would have liked, since he knew his footwork intimately. He feinted expertly and jabbed the Macuahuitl at my face, slicing into my left cheek and getting first blood. The instant I felt the obsidian kiss me, my magic was temporarily disrupted, which I found as interesting as it was alarming. It ceased once he withdrew his weapon and prepared for another string of attacks. I palmed at the gushing wound and concluded that while it wasn’t superficial, it wouldn’t be debilitating either.

His small victory was emboldening him though, and that made his next moves recklessly sloppy. I counterattacked below the belt, where Standing Bull’s defense was lacking; scoring a punch to his pelvis that sapped the pride right out of him. He retaliated by rotating his baton sword like a windmill, forcing me to consider a new avenue of approach. I wedged by Tantō between the obsidian teeth of the Macuahuitl and punched him again with my left hand in the face. Since this was a true duel to the death, I held nothing back. Teeth went flying as he stumbled backwards, the front portion of his face caved in where his mouth was. He was swallowing a river of his own blood, but he was not deterred. He rushed me and tried to cleave me in twain with an overhead chop. I barely hopped back in time, and his blade clipped the floor, chipping off a few fragments of the fragile obsidian glass. I swiftly used my foot to flip the baton onto its flat end and pin it while snapping it into two with my other foot.

With a throaty growl, he tossed the broken Macuahuitl to the side and withdrew his obsidian dagger. Without his baton sword to ward me off though, countering him in close quarters was second nature to me. I slapped, parried, and blocked his dagger hand while smacking him with my unequipped palm to disorient him and score a few deep gashes in manifold regions that oozed lifeblood like open elongated sores. No matter how stubborn he was to kill me, his body began to slow from the loss of blood (whereas my healing factor had kicked in and was sealing up my cheek laceration) and it was gradually getting easier to outmaneuver and outfight him. I disarmed him with a heavy handed blow after he attempted to bury his dagger in my neck in a last ditch attempt to end the fight. I ringed my arm into his disarmed one and hugged the defenseless man close to me before commencing a stab party on his abdomen and chest, with the man screaming bloody murder the whole time. He vainly struggled to pull away from me as I laid into him, violently puncturing his bone armor like it was paper and rupturing his vital organs until he was terminated.

The dying tribal leader fell from my arms and slumped onto the earth, a red pool forming from his perforated midsection. I stabbed him so many times that some of his organs were showing through the holes or even sliding out of the wounds in some cases. Even as he breathed his last breath, Standing Bull glared up at me loathingly. Then the light disappeared from his eyes and he was an empty shell, dead to the world forevermore. No one made a sound for several moments, save for my partially elevated breathing rate. I glanced about me, only to find expecting gazes reflected at me, like I was forgetting something important. Eventually their stares were becoming unnerving and I looked to an appalled Strongheart for guidance.

“What are they all staring at me for?” I whispered (absently in the native tongue) as an aside to Strongheart. I won that duel fairly! Or about as fairly as a Trifect with enhanced stats like mine could.

“To complete the death oath, you must lap the blood of your adversary off the blade you used to kill him” She answered, relieved that I had lived and her abusive suitor’s father was no longer a threat to us.

“Oh…” I vacillated, before shrugging, “Okay then” I unabashedly gave the flat of my Tantō a lick from one end of the blade to the other like it was a strawberry popsicle.

‘Mmm… Blood! Ah Ah Ah!’ My inner vampire imitated in Count Von Count’s voice. In reality though, Standing Bull’s blood tasted as bitter as he was when he was alive.

Once the ceremonial gesture was complete, the men assembled here bowed their heads and chanted ‘Blood was owed, blood was spilled. The debt is paid, his life fulfilled’. I idly pondered whether it rhymed in their language too. After that, a quartet of men carried Standing Bull’s corpse into his tent to prepare for honorable burial, while the rest of those gathered around us regarded me stoically, neither cordial nor antagonistic. The unspoken signs of respect were in the air. I had earned my right to be heard by slaying one of their veteran warriors in single combat, like I almost did with his son, and I was going to use it.

“Now…” I started, sheathing my blade with a ‘clack!’, “Unless there is anyone else who desires to face me in the ring of honor, you will take me to see your Chieftain”

And as if the words were magic, a partition formed in the sea of painted faces as the men stepped in reverse to make way for us. I motioned for Strongheart to follow me and she pulled North Wind along by his reins as we progressed even farther into the encampment. Additional natives cropped up from their tents as news of a tribal leader’s death circulated about the war camp. A smattering of native’s recognized their Chieftain’s daughter and wondered why she was in my company, while the proactive ones ran to their Chief to inform him of her reappearance. I also overheard rumors as to what this meant for the sub-tribe’s future now that their leader was deceased and his son comatose (And no, I wasn’t going to revive him out of pity. The bastard tried to scalp me!). It wasn’t my problem, so I tuned all news of that subject out as I meandered towards the Chieftain we needed to speak to so desperately.

Standing Bull’s comments about her father seeing wisdom were cause for some concern though, for if there was legitimate, then this will have been for nothing. But after meeting him, I could see where his brash son got his hot headedness from, so it was equally probable that he was expelling (if you’ll pardon the term) bullshit. The two of us were about to find out as we entered a minor clearing in an otherwise crowded war camp, where the Cheiftain’s teepee was puffing a steady stream of fumes. Strongheart could resist her impulsive urges no further and ran ahead of me, vanishing into the teepee flap to reunite with her father. No wanting to intrude, I waited patiently like the good, not tribal leader slaying guest that I was.

There were huts where slabs of buffalo meat hung by hooks, so it also functioned as the camp’s supply depot. A devious part of my mind calculated the devastation I could do to the native’s ability to sustain a war if their plentiful food stocks were to mysteriously go up in smoke (not much I estimated, as they could just go hunting buffalo to replenish what they had lost, but it would slow them down and buy valuable time for a full scale evacuation of the town), but stowed it as a measure of bitter resort. Efforts for peace had priority, but I would not be merciful if they were rejected to spite all that I had done to rectify the damage they believed they had suffered at the hands of the settlers.

There was a commotion and rumbling of multiple voices from inside the teepee, and then the Chief stormed out of his tent in his unbridled glory. His headdress must’ve been another ceremonial kind that the Grand Chief of the Buffalo Braves donned whenever he rode to war. Each feather was as white as the freshly driven snow and nearly seemed to shine, even in the relatively dim light of the bonfires. His armor incorporated both a bony chest plate and solid wooden strips fastened together in a way that reminded me of Tlingit body armor. Again, seeing him so prepared for battle was an uncomfortable reminder that it was unwise to anger this man. He was unarmed however, and didn’t appear to be spoiling for a fight, though his face remained stern.

He snapped his fingers and the immediate vicinity was vacated of people, “Are you the one responsible for my daughter’s return?” He asked in my basic language, his tone indecipherable.

It took a second for me to mentally switch back to English, “Yes, I am, though I had sources of help to accomplish that”

I had no time to react as he swept me up in a fierce hug. I may have yelped in befuddlement as he lifted me off the ground by a fair number of feet. The Chieftain was a big man, approximately my size but beefier, so being manhandled by him was extremely awkward for me.

The Chieftain laughed joyously, “My gratitude know no bounds, Zenith! Twice my daughter has been pried from me, and twice she has been restored to me by you!”

“That’s superb, Chief Thunderfeet. I’m glad to have done my part” I sincerely expressed as I gawkily patted him on the shoulder, “How much has your daughter told you about her ordeal?”

“Much and more” He frowned, “So we were being deceived for the duration our my people’s kidnappings. This is a troublesome occurrence, Zenith, but also a well timed one. My fellow war council advised me to exact retribution on the settlers after my daughter’s second disappearance, and to deny them was to invite restlessness into my tenure. None will cast doubt on my ability and willingness to convene a war group now, but I do not wish to wage a war on your people, Zenith. We would lose in the end…” He predicted astutely, “…badly. Your Princesses who can influence the Sun and Moon themselves would guarantee it”

“I see. So you got my note then?” I inquired.

“Indeed we did” He confirmed, “Along with two most intriguing gifts. The first gift was obstinate and I assume did not perform as you intended him to before he expired. The second gift went to my household guard, though their uses without a method for replenishing the metal balls and black powder are limited. The one who called himself Smoky Joe seemed dead set on laying blame on the Appleloosans. He was too eager and too vocal, according to my instincts, so I knew this was a falsehood” He was onto the outlaw’s game, “But my council took his words at face value and demanded that I stand by my oath to defend our people from all perceived threats… and so here we are, on the precipice of war, and you have arrived bearing assuaging tidings that may yet save us all. The Great Spirit favors you, young one, though you hardly realize it”

I had nothing to say to that.

He craned his neck at me, “Far be it for me to doubt my own ears and the words of my own flesh and blood, but is my daughter’s report that you bested Standing Bull in a duel of honor authentic?” When I nodded, he mirrored the gesture with subdued deference, “An impressive feat, to be sure. He was among our finest warriors, even at his age. His loss was regrettable, as was the fact that he bore you such ill will. He would have thought twice about challenging you had he known you were touched by the Great Spirit”

“He lived as a warrior, and died like a warrior” I spouted a twist on the biblical axiom ‘live by the sword, and you’ll die by the sword’.

“This is true” He rumbled low in his throat, before looking for somebody who wasn’t there, “Where is Braeburn? Why is he not with you?”

“Braeburn was injured fighting to secure your daughter’s freedom” I fibbed, “He was wounded in the struggle, and his left arm is temporarily out of commission. I left him in Appleloosa so one of the Doctors could tend to his wound while I tracked down the men who stole your daughter and hundreds of your people from you”

“My daughter was evasive about what she witnessed while in their clutches” He narrowed his eyes at me, “I trust that you will fill me in where she did not. Where were my people being held?”

I made sure no undue ears were eavesdropping on us before answering, “At the bottom of a canyon to the southeast of here, many miles off, is a secret goldmine. The outlaws were using them to extract gold from a specific section of that canyon, feeding them some foul concoction of gruel to sap them of their will to resist their captors” I hesitated, “I am unsure how long it will be until they recover themselves (‘If they recover themselves at all, that is’). Some of them… did not make it, I am sorry” I was saddened to inform him.

Thunderfeet’s fists clenched themselves into a white knuckled grip, “Why do you apologize for other men’s atrocities? You did not do this, nor was it done unto you. But as my daughter is alive and well, I surmise that they have been punished for this?”

“All but seven of them are dead” I revealed to him, “They’re in the same cart column we’re using to haul the liberated natives to you. It’s on its way to Appleloosa as we speak”

“They are here!?” He exclaimed, “I must give the order to cancel the assault. I will not have my Braves unwittingly slaughtering their own kin” He unintentionally hinted that even he knew how badly he outnumbered the stalwart defenders of the town.

He retreated into his tent and there was another commotion of hushed voices, accompanied by the booming voice of the Chieftain drowning out all others. Half a minute afterwards, a series of men materialized out of the teepee, ranging from war faced warriors, to wizened elders. Each of them had a distinct manner of dress and demeanor, and I deduced that these men were the Chieftain’s war council, undoubtedly comprised of tribal leaders from all across the plains region they designated as home. But if that was so, then why hadn’t Sitting Bull been in attendance at their meeting? Maybe he and Thunderfeet just didn’t see eye to eye. I did sense something of an underlying tension hidden between them when the now dead man mentioned how the Chief had seen wisdom and rallied his men to lay siege to Appleloosa.

Most of the older men ignored me, but the warriors flashed me dangerous glances that I met evenly as they passed on by. Once they had departed, the Chief invited me inside his tent to discuss the future of the relations between settler and tribal native.

“Father…” Strongheart began, “…does my marriage to Braeburn stand firm?”

“Has the man who has won your heart stood firm by you?” The Chieftain countered pointedly, his arms crossed over his chest.

I was about to remind the Chief that he did fight for her honor, but Strongheart fought her own battles, “He has! He has also shed blood in my name” She neglected to go over the part where he wanted to cower in his home rather than speak to the Braves about peaceful resolution, but no man was perfect, “I will be married to him alone, or remain forever untouched!” She petulantly gainsaid her father.

“Still yourself, my precious child” He held out a placating hand, “I do not annul your marriage to the Arcanian. Your union could be paramount in ensuring that our two peoples never come this close to clashing ever again” He turned to me, “There is a final honor I yearn to bestow upon you, Zenith. We presently have had one Arcanian adopted into our tribe through marriage, and blood relations are a given standard of membership” He plucked a feather from his headdress and cut a superficial slit into his palm with a knife. He soaked the feather in his blood, staining the barbs crimson, before handing it over to me.

“I deem you a Bloodfeather of the Buffalo Braves for your unparalleled service not just to myself, but to our Tribe as well. You came to us in our hour of need, and fought nobly for our brothers and sisters in bondage, though none of us asked you to risk yourself so. As of this night, you are one with us” He enveloped me with his arms a second time, with a bizarre tenderness on this go, “Welcome to the family”

I was pleasantly pleased by this turn of events, “I’m merely doing the right thing as ever, Chieftain, though I must proclaim that I am honored to be properly recognized to you. Will your people be as accepting of me, though?”

He hummed in the affirmative, “My decree is law. To challenge this decree is to challenge me” He stood tall, his bulky musculature emphasizing itself with the motion, “You will be accepted, or I shall teach any naysayers the meaning of tolerance” He cracked his knuckles loudly.

“Now you know how my father adopts others into our tribe” Strongheart squeezed me like a oversized teddy bear, “I embrace you as the brother I wish I had, Zenith” She whispered up into my ear.

I twitched and smiled wanly, ‘My only child instincts are in maximum overdrive’ I petted her on the back robotically, “Can’t say I’ve ever had a sister before” I twisted my neck to the Chief, “I’m still an Arcanian though, you know that, don’t you?”

“Of course!” He bellowed, “But you will always have a place here amongst us. Now we must contemplate as to how we can repair the strained relationship between our people and the Arcanians, and your role will be pivotal in this endeavor” He declared, already referring to me as a fellow tribesman. The man was nothing if not traditionally minded.

And so we conversed on how to initiate the process of healing the rift between settler and native, which was agitated by the previous happenings. I would be the go between for settler and native, delivering information and relaying messages. The government authority of the town was Governor Mansion, though unofficially it was Captain Rockwall in charge. But formalities had to be adhered to, and so once the matter of the ex slaves tangibly producing themselves for their kind was tentatively settled, the Chieftain and the Governor agreed to meet on neutral turf to discuss the possibility of a permanent suspension of hostilities, the establishment of a conventional trade system, and the minor issue of reparations made for the innocent Arcanians who died unjustly like those in the Blood Gulch Massacre. It would be an arduous road, but settlers and natives alike looked to be walking it in sync for the very first time.

Thunderfeet’s war council complied to postpone any plans of attack until it was verified that their kidnapped people were safe and sound. The warriors were wary though, many of them suspecting the news to be some kind of ruse to lure them into a false sense of security. With my newly acquired status of Bloodfeather however, they were less frank about their mistrust of me. Rockwall eventually came through for us on his end, and it was only an hour before a rickety train of wagons was spotted bumping and rolling into town with the ex slaves in tow. I spent ten minutes or so convincing Rockwall that the town wouldn’t be sacked the second he dismantled the barricades to allow for the natives to be sent back to their people.

Negotiations were a cinch once the Buffalo Braves had their wives, sons, and daughters back in their loving arms. There were some warriors in Thunderfeet’s army that broke from their ranks once they saw someone they knew in the gaggle of formerly enslaved natives that we had liberated for them. Tears were shed over those who were still in the trance like state that the gruel inflicted on them, but there were more than a couple of ex slaves that recognized their family members or spouses among the warriors, and they exhibited promising signs that they were recovering from their mental sickness. There were a few enraged holdouts whose children had perished, but the Chief mollified them when I promised that they could attend the executions of the guilty outlaws who were caught in the raid on the mine. Both sides subsequently stood down from any aggressive posturing, and Strongheart, the town, and I breathed a collective sigh of relief. Neither of the armies dispersed forthwith, but there was nothing to fear anymore.

Braeburn was especially overjoyed, ecstatic that the danger he perceived in his mind was an illusion (One that was perilously close to becoming reality, were it not for myself and Appleloosa’s law enforcement). He and Strongheart started making emergency plans for their wedding to be held the next evening, while Applejack and I enjoyed a bottle of cider together to congratulate ourselves on a honest job well done. I had met with an exhausted Shooting Star beforehand for a curtailed moment to let him know that the Crown was interested in him for his aptitude with firearms, which had his tired eyes lighting up like the Fourth of July. He mirrored the interest prodigiously, and assured me that if the Crown ‘ever came callin’, then ah’d come a’runnin’’ as he so eloquently put it.

After no deliberation whatsoever, the two lovers decided to host the celebratory venue for their wedding underneath the shadow of the butte where they had first fallen in love. Before they shacked up for the night, Braeburn nervously approached me to ask me something important. He invited me to attend his wedding as the best man, and wanted to know what I thought about it, as he was short on guy friends (A snarky part of me was howling like a hyena at his sheepish admission, though for reasons known only to me). I shrugged frivolously and told him ‘Why not?’ to spite my prior misgivings after Tumbledown. Weddings were happy affairs, and a strenuously achieved peace in the south matched that jubilation.

⁂

I absently rubbed at the crimson feather I had stuck to the band of my hat as I surveyed Flim and Flam’s seemingly innocent fertilizer shipping center from twenty meters out, masquerading itself as a place of legal business. But AJ and I knew better, and it was high time that Flim learned that we were in on the sordid secret. The grounds were organized into rows of brick buildings with garage doors at one end, presumably where the carts were loaded up with bunches of crates to be shipped by train to wherever it was that these crates were distributed to in the mainland. Effective as the morbidly created fertilizer was, human blood was not an acceptable ingredient in any recipe in the history of ever. This place had to be shut down, and its workforce thoroughly interrogated for evidence of guilt and imprisoned as was necessary.

“Looks like nobody is home” Applejack observed from beside me.

“Were it only so” I lamented softly, “Just to be safe, AJ. I want you hang back until I can confirm that the coast is clear. Alright?”

She frowned at my unwillingness to put her at the forefront, but relented to my unfaltering stare, “Okay, Zenith. But you gimme a holler if ya need mah help” She had Dusk Breeze rotate in place before galloping somewhere out of sight.

“I’ll certainly make a lot of noise” I half joked, dismounting from my steed and continuing on foot.

My Ackbar senses were tingling like crazy, but I suppressed the urge to go full Trifect and level the place and everything in it. There was bound to be useful evidence here that could shed some light on who was culpable of these crimes or where I could find them. At the terminus of the premises was a lodge style house not unlike Miss Jubilee’s. If my hunch was correct, that building was where I would find Flim, along with the info I sought. As I foresaw, the property wasn’t as deserted as its initial impressions gave off. Six figures bristling with guns surfaced from the local buildings as I passed them. I found myself surrounded by them, and one of their number spoke to me gruffly.

“You lost, stranger? We don’ hire rodeo clowns” His fellows chuckled, finding the situation humorous.

“With lame jokes and an ugly mug like yours, I figure I’d be outclassed by you anyway” I riposted, drawing a string of ‘Oohs’ at the crisp zinger. The man scowled, wrinkles forming in his brow.

“What do ya want?” He spat, no longer in an amicable mood. Fine by me, angry opponents are prone to making mistakes.

“To see your boss” I coolly replied, “He and I have business to conclude”

The man’s chartreuse eyes saw the bullet holes in my duster and drifted down to my waistline, to where my oil secreting pistol belt was slung on my hip specifically. From the sudden shift in the atmosphere, his buddies had noticed Dee-Dee too, and were on edge. They knew who I was, and Flim had wisely advised them to beware of me.

“Yer in luck! Mah boss has cleared his schedule jus’ fer you. No firearms are allowed in his presence though” He, outstretched his palm, “Ah’m gonna have to ask ya to relinquish that gun of yers over to me” His pals responded to the verbal cue and unholstered their weapons, pointing them at me. They were making it plain as day that I was at their mercy.

In the distance, a hawk screeched thrice, and I stifled the desire to smile.

‘Or so they would love to think’ I mentally scoffed. But I obliged them for now, sliding out my pistol nice and slow like, turning it backwards and proffering the handle of the gun to the speaking brigand. This baited them into a false sense of superiority, and that would cause their response time to wane.

“Ain’t never seen a fancy pistol like that before” He murmured, entranced by Dee-Dee’s ornate design, “Ah’m jealous”

I grinned viciously, “Then allow me to acquaint you intimately”

Before he could react, I flipped my proffered Magnum around in an old gunfighter’s trick known as the Road Agent’s Spin by inserting my index finger into the trigger guard and twisting it back into my hand in the blink of an eye. I shoved the barrel into his stomach and pulled the trigger, blowing a hole in his gut. I held him with an arm around his neck before he could sag to the ground like a limp fish. His comrades were shocked by the brazen display of aggression, permitting me to kill two of their number without receiving return shots. The first man to get his carbine up got a shot off, which was absorbed by his buddy’s body (though it did still feel like being punched, though the shock was mitigated significantly) before a bullet burrowed its way into his heart. I repeated the meat shield technique with the remaining two, popping a round into both of their craniums with an explosion of gore.

I dropped the bullet riddled corpse and sprinted towards the lodge house as dozens of armed men poured out of the woodwork. They took potshots at me, but I was too swift for them to get accurate shots at. They had worries other than me to contend with. With a bugle horn sounding the charge, a contingent of Frontier Rangers galloped down the hill where we had been, guns blazing. After the settlers and natives were not poised to tear into each other, the Sheriff had kindly donated the guns we had appropriated in the mines to the Captain, and Shooting Star gave them the crash course in their operation. Before I had set out to hunt down Flim, I requested a favor (which was a creative interpretation for a Royal order) from the Captain to let me borrow some of his gun toting soldiers to conduct a raid on Flim’s place of business. Rockwall consented, with the small stipulation that he led them himself as Arcania’s first Dragoon commander.

Their shouts and enthusiastic clamor attracted the attention of the premise’s security detail. And they rushed to confront them, transforming the shipping area into a miniature warzone as Rangers on horses harried and divided the outlaws on Flim’s payroll. The Captain himself appeared to be having a blast blasting outlaws in the face with his dual flintlocks before dicing them to bits with his cavalry saber. The glorious scene would have brought a tear to my eye if there weren’t a task for me to complete. I made it to the porch of the lodge, where gunfire was erupting from the windows as Flim’s bodyguard justified their pay. I discerned a familiar neigh as Dusk Breeze galloped through the chaos and deposited Applejack (who was wielding her blunderbuss) into my metaphorical lap.

“Applejack!? What are you doing in the line of fire?” I didn’t want a stray bullet to strike her. She was a friend, darn it, and I looked out for those I cared about, even if it meant confining them to the side.

“Don’ give me that hogwash speil!” She snapped at me, pushing her hat down as a bullet flew into the wall above her, “Ah can hack this!”

I knew better than to argue with her in the middle of the firefight, “Alright. But you stick close to me, got it!?”

She smirked in an inexplicably enticing manner, “Not a problem fer me, sugarcube”

I rumbled my throat as I ignored the abrupt rush of heat to my face. Blaming it on the arid conditions of the desert, I inserted a fresh bunch of cartridges into Dee-Dee’s cylinder and flicked it shut before kicking in the door and ducking back into cover.

“Cease and desist in the name of the Crown!” I shouted through the doorway, getting a reply in the form of a hail of bullets.

“They want to play hardball, do they?” I groused to myself, producing a duo of flashbangs that the Captain resupplied me with in Appleloosa, “Well this ought to warn them that I play rough!”

I yanked at their activation rings and tossed them into the interior of the lodge’s entrance. Twin flashes accompanied by eardrum bursting noise erupted from within, and I pressed the glowing chaos button on my revolver before breaching. I shot at the first man I saw struggling to lift his pistol and fire at the blurry shape ahead of him. A phenomenon I could only describe as Arc Lightning sprang forth from Dee-Dee’s barrel, zapping a hole in the man’s face and jumping to his comrades one by one until the foyer was cleansed of all ten hostiles. I noted that the chaos button had lessened in luminosity from the action, so every trigger pull would drain it until it was non functional. I whistled appreciatively as I spun my Magnum in my hand and holstered it in the same motion like a true gunslinger.

I did not delay, “C’mon. If Flim is anything like his brother, he’ll be secluded in his office”

Applejack voiced her agreement as we jogged up the stairs and further into the lodge like building. The defenders in the foyer must have been the only men present, because we encountered no one else to obstruct our way in. Outside, the battle raged on as Rockwall’s mounted Dragoons blitzed the unprepared outlaws. Through a window we saw a storage building explode spectacularly, blowing its contents sky high (like in the mine, but larger) and sending shockwaves through the earth that we felt inside. Flim must have had a contingency plan in place that would erase everything if he and his brother’s illicit activities were ever uncovered. We followed the useful directory sign that directed us to the Co-owner Flim’s office. The door at the end of the hallway was not sealed and barred, but cracked slit width, as if someone had forgotten to close it before everything devolved into havoc.

“We gotta put a stop to this, quick! What if this place has been rigged ta blow?” Applejack agitatedly whispered to me.

“With Flim still inside?” I expelled a stream of dubious air through my nostrils, “Somehow I doubt he has the determination to atomize himself”

“What if it ain’t up to him?” Applejack posited, “Ya did say that he wasn’t the final rung in the ladder”

“I did,” I affirmed, “but he’s the local menace. Whoever he works for doesn’t operate conspicuously. That’s the ulterior motive for us to be here. After we shut him down, we see how deep the rabbit holes goes”

We sidled up to the doorway, and I unholstered my pistol and used the barrel to nudge the door cautiously aside. The hinges were well oiled, so there weren’t any pesky squeaks that gave us away. I heard the crackling of a fire that purred contentedly as something was fed to it intermittently. I got a peek of a sweating and hyperventilating Flim tossing papers into his fireplace from a fat stack in his arms. He was burning evidence before we could recover it! This was unacceptable.

I cocked the hammer audibly to announce our arrival as we crept into the room on our tiptoes, “Turn around… slowly”

Flim yelped, jumping half his height off the ground (accidentally dropping his paper trail, some of which smothered the flame but were consumed in the process) and pivoting on the spot.

Like the smooth conman he was, he recovered relatively fast, “H-hello there, M-mister Zenith. How was Appleloosa?”

“You may dispense with the pleasantries, Flim Skim” I said to him with a spiteful glower, “We both know this isn’t a social visit”

“I can see that. I must say, you duped me good, Agent” He growled, edging over to his desk, “It wasn’t until after you left that I thought to look into your background through my hidden sources. You’re a ghost. Even Princess Luna has more data on her, and she’s only been back a few years!”

“I take pride in maintaining a low profile” I replied with a hint of a grin. It was the truth, but not the whole truth.

“Well if it ain’t the snake that nearly stole mah family’s orchard from us, unfairly ah might add” Applejack made her presence known to him.

“Ah… Miss Applejack” Flim spat out her name, “You’re always there when life takes a dump on me”

“Perhaps that’s the world’s way of tellin’ you that ya need to enter an honest profession” She jibed.

“You nearly ruined our name permanently!” He hissed at her, “That loose lipped incestuous family of yours spread the news about us to every branch of your wretched family in Arcania! And they told their neighbors! It was difficult to set up a new business here, even with outside aid!”

“I’m here to inquire about that ‘outside aid’ as you put it. Is there a face to this organization? What are their aims?” I grilled him.

He shrugged, “Couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to. They had me meet with a different face on every occasion, and each of those faces had the same dead personality attached. But they were affluently wealthy and had connections you wouldn’t sneeze at, whoever they were. If I agreed to do some things for them, they’d help my brother and I get back on our feet. The way I see it? There was only one real choice”

“That choice condemned multiple natives, many of them children, to a grisly death!” I snarled at him.

He was apathetic, even pouring himself a glass of bourbon, “The fewer natives there are to plague the settlers. I was doing the country a favor” He took a sip.

“Do not play the innocent card with me. Your brother made the same mistake. You put your own countrymen at odds with the natives, and while they were dying, you were making a profit. You’re coming with us” I declared.

At the implied death of his brother, he stiffened, “Oh, I think not Agent” He tossed the half emptied glass of bourbon at me and made me flinch from the liquid splashing in my face. He reached into a drawer in his desk and withdrew a pair of flintlocks as I was momentarily stunned. I felt a searing pain in the skin underneath my left armpit before a booming roar filled the room and all was silent. Flim lay lifelessly against the wooden wall with the pistols in his hands clattered on the floor next to him. His body was torn to shreds from the avalanche of lead that Applejack’s weapon discharged in defense of our lives.

“Bucky McGillicuddy says howdy” Applejack shamelessly one liner’ed as she held a smoking blunderbuss. It was in that one searing pain suffused moment that I found the blonde cowgirl incredibly attractive.

‘I have weirdest standards for what I love in a woman’ I thought to myself.

“You named your gun?” I asked incredulously, to which she was bashful, “I am so proud of you right now, AJ”

“Aw shucks, Zenith” She scratched at her scalp below her hat as she fought a blush, “Don’ go givin’ me a swelled head. That was self defense there”

“Only self defense?” I was skeptical.

“Well… ah didn’t like him a great deal, either” She admitted, “Are ya hurt?”

I examined the spot where Flim had scored a glancing hit on me. The duster was torn in that area and my flesh had a neat chunk taken out of it from where the bullet skipped off, but other than that it wasn’t too grievous.

“Yeah, I’m alright” I allayed her worries. I produced a combat dressing from a duster pocket and slapped it on the injury, the natural analgesics soaking into my skin and soothing the leftover pain with a cooling effect.

‘Shame we couldn’t take him in alive’ I mused with a glance to Flim’s corpse, ‘Though I was getting the impression he wouldn’t have helped that much anyhow’

Without any other distractions, I inspected the fireplace where Flim was masking his tracks before we surprised him. Outside the sounds of gunfights were dying down, so I assumed that Rockwall and his men had prevailed and secured the premises. No other buildings had violently exploded, so there was that too. I scavenged the documents that Flim fumbled with when we confronted him, partially burnt and unburnt, and stuffed them into an unoccupied fold in my duster without looking at them. I could review their contents later.

Under the sunlight again, Applejack and I regrouped with our mutual friends in the Arcanian army, who were rounding up the outlaws that prudently surrendered once they realized they were outmatched. I saw dead horses that absorbed bullets meant for their riders, but the Rangers suffered no casualties other than injuries, which was relieving. The Captain saw us emerge from the lodge and trotted over to us.

“Agent” He saluted me, which I returned, “I am pleased to report that we have taken and made safe this facility as per yer request. We’ll begin processin’ the prisoners shortly”

“Excellent, Captain. You are to be commended for your efforts” I made a mental note for the future to praise this man’s leadership.

“What are yer next orders?” He formally wanted to know.

“The show is yours” I relented command to him, before whistling shrilly to the wind, “My companion and I are going home. Isn’t that right, Applejack?”

She smiled as our horses responded to the call, “Darn tootin”

Author's Note

Apologies for the massive delay getting this chapter out to you (And no, I did not deliberately wait to release it today of all days, it just worked out for me like that). I'm not sure what it was about this chapter, but it fought me every step of the way to completion. I think my muse and I are having a divorce, and are fighting for custody over the kids: inspiration and motivation. Don't fret though, this story is something that I will finish someday, once it realizes the vision I had for it not so long ago. There are some hidden references to old westies (and even a Call of Juarez video game) that I'd love to see if you recognize, but I don't require that you do. On an unrelated note. Did anyone think that the Slice of Life episode a while back was an absolute love letter to this reading and writing community in particular? The meta is strong with Hasbro.

As for my fellow Americans, enjoy the remainder of your Independence Day!

Celebratin' muh freedoms

~Zenith