It was uncommon for a pegasus to take to diving with such enthusiasm, but Depth Charge was always a bit of a misfit. She led a small diving club at school, and dreamed of exploring sunken ships and finding lost treasures of the deep.
This was before the accident.
~
The J-class naval mine is a touchy creature, to be sure. It differs in almost no visible manner from its Canterlotian counterpart, but, well, Stalliongrad munitions factories aren't exactly known for precision work. Or weren't at the time, anyhow. The mines were known to go off at the barest touch, often destroying the very vessels that sought to lay them like clutches of venomous eggs in the shallow shoals.
And they still turned up every day along the Equestrian coast, threatening divers and boats and ocean life in equal measure, lurking in the shadows like soldiers cut off from their chain of command, fighting a war they didn't know had been over for decades.
~
It had all happened very quickly. What had started as a dive to explore a particularly colorful reef had somewhere gone horribly wrong. Depth Charge's head swam with a combination of hydromorphone and good old-fashioned disorientation. Her memories came in fragments: A water-strangled scream, a mind-rending concussion, a cloud of red fountaining into the shallow seawater, and the characteristic burn of oxygen deprivation.
Through her medicated haze, Depth listed woozily in her bed as it sped through the hallway, shiny metal instruments and white-coated ponies and hospital-green walls competing for her attention. She could feel warmth and moisture up and down her back, and knew she had been badly hurt, but could only relate to it superficially. She was alive, she knew that. Where were the others? Where was Coral? Where was Suncatcher? Had they been so lucky?
~
Grasping the green wire in her teeth, Depth shook off the baleful memory and drew a shaky breath from her regulator. J-88, she thought. It was an observation that bordered on mantra. The damn things were littered all up and down Equestria's coast, and dangerous as it was to get near them, she wasn't prepared to waver in her mission. Her green and aqua hair floated carelessly before her face, dancing among the long, sensitive horns of the mine.
With practiced resolve, Depth Charge bit down and severed the wire with her teeth. Her heart skipped a beat. It always did.
Nothing happened.
She breathed a sigh of relief into a bubble that rose, bending the sun's light into a million interfering waves until it broke as a ring of ripples on the ocean surface.
The sea had lost another monster.
~
Depth Charge swam weakly back to the edge of her boat and crawled aboard, spitting out her regulator and twisting her neck to get the kinks out.
She closed her eyes against the harsh summer sun and took a breath of fresh air, straight from the tap. She could feel Coral's eyes playing over her spent form.
This was when the lecture came. It was always when the lecture came.
This is stupid.
You don't need to keep doing this.
You're going to get yourself killed.
Depth idly wondered what it would be this time. She breathed evenly as the adrenaline seeped from her body.
Overhead, a gull cried, wheeling around in the sky, the only creature that dared to break the silence that hung heavily between the two former classmates.
"That's six for the day," Coral said simply. Her voice was strained as if from crying. It cracked and creaked like the battle-weary wood of an old Mare-o'-War. She scratched off the location on a clipboard set before her with a pencil held in her teeth.
Depth Charge opened her eyes and stared blankly at her friend.
"What, no crass indictment of my life's work today?"
Coral stared at her clipboard. She trembled visibly, as though on the verge of tears, but the red-worn tracks in her cheeks told Depth there were no tears left for her to let go of.
"Look, Coral, I'm sorry-"
"Shut the hell up," Coral quietly commanded, reluctantly dragging her eyes from the clipboard to her friend. "I don't like you putting yourself in mortal danger every day. I know you aren't dense enough that I have to explain that."
The two brooded in silence for a while save for the waves slapping softly on the hull of their little repurposed research vessel. Depth chewed on her lip and stared at the blue sky, marred by an occasional scudding cloud. The gull continued its careless song.
"There isn't a pony alive who understands better than I why you have to do this," Coral said, "but I don't want to lose you like the rest of them."
Depth finally stood and made her way over to her friend, throwing her forelimbs around her in a tight hug. She knew what she wanted to say. You won't. She couldn't promise that.
~
The Stinger pulled gently into its slip as Depth Charge tightened its mooring lines. She ran the gangplank out and locked it into place and reached out to offer Coral her hoof, which the other pony unceremoniously batted away.
"Sorry," Depth said, smiling as she backed away from the gangplank to give her friend some room. It was a little dance they did. Depth offered help, Coral declined it. Their lives were defined by rituals and checklists, as all lives are.
Even so, some things never got old.
Depth's smile broadened as she watched Coral pull her wheelchair up the gangplank. It was a little bit of inspiration that reminded her every day how lucky she was, to still have all her legs, and to have a friend as timeless and resilient and beautiful as her namesake.
Beautiful. Huh. That's a new one.
~
Years after her retirement from mine hunting, Depth Charge was interviewed by the Canterlot Daily about her experiences. She'd held a commanding presence, even in her gray years, and her icy blue eyes never lost their penetrating sharpness.
When questioned about the defusing procedure itself, she had had very little to say aside from "It's an easier job if you've still got all your limbs." The interviewer took this as appreciation of good fortune, and Depth did not correct her.
In all her years, she had never once been offended by being mistaken for an earth pony.
Author's Note
This began life as a Facebook conversation about the implications of Rainbow Dash mentioning bullets and tanks in May The Best Pet Win. I was trying to paint a bleak and depressing image of what that world would be like, but I ended up with a message of hope and perseverance and heroes rising to the challenge, and knew I had to share it here.
