Railroad Seven-Three

Chapters

1. Washington
2. Annapolis
3. Chesapeake
4. Salisbury
5. Assateague
6. Canterlot

1. Washington

Her love rains down on me as easy as the breeze
I listen to her breathing—it sounds like waves on the sea
I was thinking all about her, burning with rage and desire
We were spinning into darkness, and the earth was on fire

-Pink Floyd, “Take It Back”

Gavel watched the air-carriage slip away into the clouds, leaving the parking lot of the Conversion Bureau far behind and disappearing into the darkening sky.

He sighed and looked down at his hooves. They were nearly the same color as the gray, cracked asphalt beneath them. He couldn't seem to get away from it, it seemed; he'd traded in his gray hair for a gray coat. Gavel chuckled. He didn't mind, really. Perhaps, not too long ago, he would have, but now that he was a—

"I'm sorry, my little ponies, but the air-carriage won't be back for two more weeks," said the pony standing in front of him. Gavel looked back up and into the face of the pretty young unicorn mare, a clipboard hovering by her head. She gave him a pleasant, apologetic look, and he returned it with a smile.

"Oh, that's all right," he said. "I guess another two weeks of a comfy bed and good food is something I'll just have to live with."

"I'm sorry, Tidy Sum, I think I misheard you: two weeks? It should only be a matter of hours to get to the Barrier and back!"

Gavel looked over at his company. Aside from himself, two other ponies had been left behind there in front of the Conversion Bureau. One was a unicorn, dark green with a gold mane and eyes to match, two crossed wooden spoons for a cutie mark. Gavel knew her well enough; she had been one of the cafeteria workers. She was a native Equestrian, and, for the moment, she was rather upset.

"It's the rush, Sugar Spoon," said the unicorn with a shrug. "You saw how packed that carriage was, and that's the biggest one operating in the region! Hay, we probably violated about a dozen safety regulations cramming in as many ponies as we did."

Tidy Sum's erstwhile co-worker let out an exasperated grunt and pawed at the smooth white line under one hoof. "Ugh. Three months and I already can't stand this place anymore." Her eyes widened and she looked back up at the two ponies next to her. "Uh, no offense."

The other pony, Melody, was a bright red pegasus, and a newfoal like Gavel. She shrugged a little and smiled. "None taken," she said, flipping her long pink mane out of her eyes. "From the pictures I've seen of Equestria, I guess our world could seem a little... bleak."

"I think we have it easier," said Gavel with a grin. "We've had time to get used to it." The two newfoals chuckled at each other, buoying Sugar Spoon's mood somewhat, but still not enough to make her forget she wouldn't be seeing Equestria for another two weeks.

"So what now?" asked the pegasus, turning back to Tidy Sum.

The blue unicorn pursed her lips, using her magic to flip through the leaves of paper on the clipboard. "Well, that carriage has to make runs for us, for Richmond, for Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and..." She flipped another page. "...and now that Dover's closed down, it's taken on Raleigh. Factor in shift changes, meals, carriage maintenance, and roster adjustments, and... yeah. It's a lot of work for those pullers."

"Raleigh!" Gavel went to whistle, but he hadn't quite mastered his new pony-lips yet. "Not exactly a stone's throw from the coast."

Tidy Sum nodded. "Not for pegasi having to pull carriages that large, no, certainly not."

"Is it... is it really that hard?" asked the newfoal pegasus, her ears drooping.

Sugar Spoon walked over and nuzzled her friend. "Aw, don't worry, Melody, it's not like they'll be strapping you into one of the pullers' seats! All you'll have to do is enjoy the ride. Flight practice'll come later."

"Actually, I guess I have two weeks to kill, so I might as well practice here," said the pegasus, looking up at the sky. She gave her wings a tentative, experimental stretch, and her stomach chose that moment to rumble loudly. Melody's wings snapped back to their folded position, betraying her embarrassment.

Tidy Sum giggled and shook her head. "A newfoal trying to fly on an empty stomach? That's a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one."

Sugar Spoon nodded her agreement. "All things in their time, Mel," she said. "Besides, I've got a more appetizing recipe in mind for you two."

Gavel's ears perked up past his charcoal mane. He couldn't keep the smile off his face. "Cinnamon Eye-Rolls?"

The unicorn smiled slowly, then nodded. "Cinnamon Eye-Rolls."

The two newfoals looked at each other, grinning ear to ear.

* * *

"Spoon, I don't know where in Equestria you're from, but wherever it is, they gave up a lot letting you come to Earth," said Melody between bites of her glazed cinnamon roll. The cafeteria was quiet, shut down for the night. Everyone, human and pony alike, were asleep in their respective quarters, but Sugar Spoon had surreptitiously opened the kitchen back up to make consolatory Cinnamon Eye-Rolls for her fellow stuck ponies.

"Haha, slow down, Mel, or you'll get a tummyache!" chided Sugar Spoon, batting the pegasus with a hoof. "Besides, I am but a humble pastry chef; I'm sure Fetlock has done just fine without me."

"Well, when we get to Equestria, I'll ask them," she said with a quiet giggle. "I think they might chain you to your kitchen's island on sight!"

"They just might!" agreed Gavel, halfway through his own roll. "Before I came here, Melody, let me tell you... not since my mother cooked for me at home. That's how long it's been since I've had food this good."

The pegasus gazed at him, mouth agape, flecks of frosting and crumbs visible in her teeth. "But for that to be true, it'd have to be hundreds and hundreds of years ago!"

Gavel chuckled and narrowed his eyes at her. "Ohh, watch your tongue, little missy. I may be old, but I'm feeling better than I have in... well, hundreds and hundreds of years, to hear you tell it. I can still get around to boxing your ears, if I need to!" He then stuck his tongue out at her, flashing his own array of frosting and half-chewed cinnamon roll.

They all laughed, Gavel hardest of all. It was true enough; he hadn't felt so young—so unburdened—in many long years. He had been afraid, while still human, that he wouldn't be able to think of a pony-name for himself when the time came; he didn't think he had the mindset for it. As it turned out, though, he was one of the lucky few newfoals to get their cutie mark as soon as they converted. His cutie mark had pretty much decided the name for him, and he certainly wasn't complaining.

The sound of a delicate, feminine voice clearing her throat made them all freeze.

"And just what are my little ponies doing out of their quarters after lights-out?" asked Tidy Sum with her trademark pursed lips.

Sugar Spoon turned to face the other unicorn with a pouting look. "Aw, come on, Sum, we're just trying to get un-bummed about not fitting on the carriage! Surely you can overlook it just this once."

Tidy Sum stood there, lifting her chin and looking down her nose at the forlorn trio with narrowed eyes. "Hmm... I think I might be able to recall having never gone into the cafeteria tonight... for a price."

The forest-green unicorn grinned. "Lemme guess," she said, "you want a Cinnamon Eye-Roll."

"I'm not asking for anything," Tidy Sum was quick to reply, "but I must say that things such as Sugar Spoon's world-famous treats can drive me to distraction from my duties... duties such as making sure everypony is in bed after lights-out, for example." Her mouth crept up into a small smile, despite her efforts.

"Say no more!" cried Sugar Spoon, rearing up and charging back into the kitchen.

* * *

Melody felt a gentle hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake.

"Mel. Mel, wake up!"

It was the voice of her roommate, Laura. Melody cracked open one large blue eye to see orange dawnlight spilling over the bottom of the dormitory window. She rolled onto her side and regarded the human with disinterest.

"Ugh," she grunted. "S'too early. Lemme sleep."

"Mel, they're saying something happened to the transport carriage last night," Laura said quietly.

Melody quickly forgot about her sleepiness and sat up, getting her legs under her. She looked at her roommate clearly, and saw distress darkening her face. Her ears drooped.

"Oh no. Please, Celestia, no," she whispered.

Laura nodded sadly, tucking some hair behind an ear. "You were supposed to be on that carriage too, weren't you?"

Melody shook that rather unpleasant fact from her head, trying to stay calm. "Who? Who's 'they'? Who told you this?"

"C'mon, they're still here," she said. "That's why I woke you up: they were asking for you."

The red and pink pegasus wriggled free of the sheets and rather clumsily hopped to the floor. The two of them left the room and headed through the Bureau to the lobby, where a few dozen newfoals and humans were already milling around, fretting and talking amongst themselves. Laura navigated the small throng, shouldering her way towards the exit, and Melody followed.

"Everypony, please settle down!" called out Kite String from her position atop the receptionist's desk. The teal pegasus reared up and brought her hooves down as hard as she could on the black marble of the desk, and the resounding clop cut through the current of panic running through the crowd. Even Laura and Melody stopped to turn towards the Bureau director, her stern gaze a rather interesting contrast to the whimsical diamond-shaped kite on her flank.

Kite String gathered up her composure once more, re-straightening the glasses on her nose with a hoof and a dignified flutter of eyelashes. "Now then," she said, clearing her throat, "there is no cause for alarm. The attack occurred out in Annapolis, so there is no immediate threat to us or anypony within the Beltway."

"But that means they're watching the roads east!" came a male voice.

"They're putting themselves between us and the Barrier!" added a female voice.

"What about transportation?" asked a second man.

Kite String held up a hoof. "That carriage was servicing the emigration efforts of the entire Mid-Atlantic, not just here in DC," she said, "so we're not the only ponies in this boat. The Royal Immigration Office back in Equestria had already commissioned the construction of extra carriages to answer for the increased logistical demand, and several are nearing completion. However, it's going to be another six to eight weeks before we—"

The remainder of Kite String's sentence drowned in a sea of groans.

"Why that long? It shouldn't take that long!"

"The Barrier will probably be here in eight weeks! We may as well not even bother with carriages!"

The pegasus director sighed. "Extra carriages have been needed for a long time now in Europe and West Africa," she explained. "Believe me, as thin as they're spread here, it's even worse over there. They'll be getting the first ones off the line. We're a bit further back in the queue, that's all."

Melody was snapped out of the distracting clamor by a pat on her head from Laura's hand. She turned to look at the girl, who was starting to work through the crowd again. Melody followed her.

Out in the young morning sun, there in the parking lot where she'd been standing not twelve hours ago, Melody saw three of the sacks issued to every newfoal leaving the Bureau, with Gavel and Sugar Spoon both standing by one. She guessed the third was hers.

"W-wait, are we leaving now?" she asked, looking up to Laura.

The human shrugged. "I dunno," she said. "Tidy Sum just asked me to go get you, so I did."

The pair started to walk over to the other two ponies, but as Melody approached, a horrible coppery smell assaulted her nose. Reeling, she turned to look at a few sizable bloodstains on the ground, standing out stark and impossibly bright on the asphalt, as though someone had been fiddling with the color knob on a TV.

"What—"

"There was a Railroad team here just a couple minutes ago," explained Laura. "They were the ones who told us about the carriage. The back of their truck was full of badly-injured ponies. I helped them, Nurse Tincture, and Doctor Heartbeat get them to the infirmary inside. Word got to everypony while they were eating breakfast; that's what kicked off this whole panic."

"The Railroad was here?" asked Melody, who immediately looked around the empty lot. "Where'd they go?"

As if to answer her question, a pickup truck the color of champagne came barreling around the corner of the Bureau building, skidding to a stop directly in front of Gavel and Sugar Spoon, who had taken cover behind their respective newfoal sacks. It seemed configured for off-road use, with tall tires and square lights atop a tubular roll-bar behind the cab. A long CB antenna on the hood whipped back and forth for a few moments after the truck had come to a stop. On the whole, the pickup had seen better days, though; it was full of rusting dents and scrapes, but more alarming were the sparse bullet holes along the side and in the door.

A huge dark-skinned man jumped down from the pickup bed, making the leaf springs creak as they were relieved of his weight. The doors of the cab opened, and out stepped two other humans: one was a lean fair-skinned man with a rather amused expression, the other was a pale young woman, shielding her eyes from the low sun. They were all dressed rather oddly: light, comfortable button-up short-sleeve shirts, sturdy khaki trousers, scuffed black kneepads, hiking shoes, and a pair of hearing-protective earmuffs around their necks. The white fellow had on a stained beige baseball cap, and the woman was wearing a watch cap made of gray fleece.

Ever since becoming a pony, Melody had found that humans had seemed to take on a mildly menacing air, especially unfamiliar ones. She took a step backward, feeling her ears flat against the back of her head.

Laura noticed. "H-hey, relax," she said, kneeling down by her friend. "It's the Railroad team I was telling you about. They're not going to hurt you!"

"Just had to swing around to the side to make some deliveries and fuel up," said the large black man. "Hope you ponies like cauliflower and beets. Anyway, glad you're here; this means we can get going."

"Wh... wha—"

"Hold it right there!" cried Tidy Sum from behind Melody. Everyone turned to look at the blue unicorn, the pneumatic glass door still creeping closed behind her with a muted hiss.

The black man grinned from one corner of his mouth and shook his head. "Aw, hell."

Tidy Sum stalked past both Laura and Melody, making a beeline for him, her face a mask of anger. "You didn't think you could just leave my Bureau scot-free, did you?"

The big man looked over to the other two, grinning. "Well, we tried, folks." They smiled and nodded silently, watching the unicorn approach.

Tidy Sum stopped and planted her hooves, looking straight up into the huge human's eyes and scowling. He sighed and knelt down, and to everyone's surprise—except for the other two humans at the truck—the unicorn threw her hooves around his neck, pushing her cheek to his.

"Thank you for bringing the injured to us," said Tidy Sum, her voice now quiet. "I know you had to leave behind a lot of supplies to make room for them."

The man snorted, patting the unicorn's back, trying to play it off as though it were nothing. Tidy Sum seemed positively small in his arms. "It was just food. We left it with the survivors, figured it'd do some good there anyway. Besides, y'all ain't gonna starve in the next three days, are you?"

Tidy Sum let go and backed away, brushing at her face with a hoof. Melody cocked her head; had she been crying?

"Heh, no... I shouldn't think so," she said.

"Well neither should I!" cackled the man, poking repeatedly at the side of her belly with a finger. "Look at how much you're growing outwards! You ponies are soft, and you're gettin' softer all the time, I tell you. Before long, I'm bettin' we can just roll all y'all down to the Barrier, huh?"

Tidy Sum whooped and laughed, shrinking away, trying to dance out of range of the big man's tickling jabs. Everyone couldn't help but grin at the sight. After a few moments of clowning, they settled down, and Tidy Sum caught her breath.

"But seriously, thank you, Gaspar." she said. She craned her neck over to make eye contact with the other two. "Melchior, Balthazar, you too... thank you. I just know Celestia is smiling over what you did for those ponies."

The lean man by the cab rolled his eyes a little, and Melody caught a twinge of something negative there in his expression.

"We talked to the guys at the cordon," said the woman. "They saw the wounded and detached a rescue team to start shuttling them back to the Bureau here. Hope you have enough beds."

"It'll all work out, I'm sure," said Tidy Sum. "As long as we can get a roof over their heads, that'll be a good start. The important thing is that we make sure as many ponies as possible are safe and secure."

The black man, Gaspar, nodded at that and stood back up, making a show of dusting his hands. "Well? We gonna get this show on the road, or what?"

Melody looked to Gavel and Sugar Spoon, who shot back their own confused gazes.

The other man—Melody wondered if he was Melchior or Balthazar—opened his arms and knocked once on the pickup's door. "We're the real deal," he said. "Ask your director if you don't believe us. Callsign 'Railroad,' designation seven-three, at your service. We're here to take you guys to the Barrier."

"Er... us?" asked Sugar Spoon.

"Well yeah, you!" said Tidy Sum. "You three were the next in line on the manifest, so that means you're first in line for a Railroad escort, whenever one is available."

There was a lingering silence. The unicorn raised her eyebrows. "Unless... you'd like to... give up your spot to somepony else?"

Gavel's ears perked up. "We can head for Equestria today? Right now?"

"We're gonna be pretty busy with moving all these ponies," said the woman, "but yeah, we're gonna get as many of you to the Barrier as we can while they scramble to fill in the gaps left by the downed carriage."

"It's right now or two months," said the thin man, "and I think Kite String will be needing all the extra space she can get."

Sugar Spoon eyed the truck. "Looks dangerous..." she murmured.

"Ah, relax!" said Gaspar. "The damage is all cosmetic. This baby runs like a top and stops on a dime, you have my w—"

"No, I mean, like..." she sputtered out a single laugh. "Are... a-are humans gonna be shooting at us or something?"

"S'why you'll have us along," said the woman. "If the Railroad was in the habit of getting ponies killed, the Bureaus wouldn't trust us with the responsibility. Out there, reputation is everything, and the Railroad has earned theirs. Nobody'll be shooting at you while we're around. Believe that."

"I'm going," said Melody immediately. "I don't care if it's dangerous or not."

Gavel nodded slowly, coming to his own decision. "I was never afraid of my home while I lived here, so I'm certainly not going to start now."

The Equestrian-born Sugar Spoon blinked a couple of times, then looked down at her travel bag and sighed. "Oh, what the hay," she said.

While the earth-pony and the unicorn walked to the pickup, Melody turned to Laura. The human girl knelt down and hugged the pegasus tight, eliciting a choked gurgle from the pony. She giggled and lightened her grip.

"It-it's like hugging a marshmallow," she said, her voice cracking. Melody felt a hot teardrop on her neck.

"G'bye, Laura," said Melody, putting her hooves around her. "Look me up once you get to Equestria, okay? We'll go paint the town red, whichever town that happens to be. They won't be ready for a couple of wild fillies like us!" Melody was starting to feel tears of her own welling up.

"Try not to get into too much trouble 'till then," chuckled Laura. They held the hug for a few more moments, then separated. Laura went to stand by Tidy Sum, and the both of them waved as all three ponies—one returning home, two heading there for the first time—mounted up into the pickup's bed. Gaspar joined them in the back, and the other two got into the cab.

Sugar Spoon settled in on the thin padded mat lining the truckbed as best she could, sending a suspicious look to a long crate next to her. It was made of rough wood, with even rougher rope for handles, and it was painted olive drab. Yellow lettering was stenciled along the sides and top, but its abbreviations and acronyms were completely arcane to a native-born Equestrian such as her.

As the truck started up and left the parking lot, she asked "What's in there?"

"Ammunition," said Gaspar. He reached behind the crate, pulling out a rather vicious-looking assault rifle with wood furniture that had been secured between the crate and the back of the cab. "For this."

The unicorn groaned as the wind caught her gold mane. "Oh, Celestia watch over us."

"And if she can't, well, that's why we're here," said Gaspar, his tone not quite humorous enough for Sugar Spoon's liking.

Gavel just looked out the back of the truck, watching the road go by beneath the wheels. The pickup made a turn, and the Washington DC Conversion Bureau building, once upon a time known as the DC Armory, disappeared around the corner.

* * *

The DC Cordon was a rather grand name for what, in practice, was nothing more than a loose association of human fighters keeping watch at the major inroads to the capital city. It was far from a perfect operation, but more than a few HLF and PER probes had been chased away from and out of the city since the watches were established, so it remained in operation. Given their limited numbers, the Cordon had found it easier to secure and patrol the Capital Beltway itself rather than stand guard at every single exit along it. Even so, the symbolic presence of the Cordon was usually enough to discourage scavengers and disorganized extremists looking for easy prey.

The ponies looked out along the overpass as they crossed over the Beltway. Traffic was no longer a concern, since there was no more government presence and therefore no more work to speak of in the city. Despite that, the split highway was still a tangle of abandoned cars on the shoulder, uncleared accidents, and mysterious pockets of congestion where everyone just seemed to give up on the same day, stop their cars, and walk home. It was eerie, this empty-world syndrome, and the Beltway was a sight that Gavel in particular had never gotten used to.

The Railroad, with their four-legged cargo in tow, stopped after passing east over the Beltway out of DC, pulling off the road at the underpass for Whitfield Chapel. The underpass had been converted into a base-camp, a micro-town of shanties made out of corrugated metal and sheet-rock with ugly blue tarp for curtains and doors. A large plywood sign, painted white and with the black letters "CORDON 19" spray-painted on it, faced east out of town from the top of the underpass, warning unfriendly types that someone was watching. A cold fire pit formed the center of the micro-town, the metal rafters of the underpass above it stained black with soot.

The group dismounted there, and while the ponies stretched their legs and wings, the Railroad team went to talk to the sentries.

"So there are at least nineteen of these Cordon thingies?" Sugar Spoon asked Gavel.

"I think it has more to do with the exit number," said Gavel. "Exit 19 is what you'd take to leave the Beltway and get on this road here."

Sugar Spoon shook her head. "I'll never understand human urban planning."

Melody laughed, and her voice echoed slightly in the relatively confined space of the underpass. She winced, hoping she hadn't disturbed anyone, and then smiled at the unicorn. "At least you'll never have to, from here on out."

"Small favors, right?" chuckled Sugar Spoon, and the two newfoals chuckled their agreement.

The Railroad team came jogging back to the truck, their contacts having already resumed watching the roads.

"Mount up," said Gaspar, "we're moving on."

"Is anything wrong?" asked Gavel as everyone piled back into the truck.

"Maybe, maybe not," replied the big man. "The team that they sent out to recover your pony friends hasn't radioed in yet."

"That doesn't sound like it could be good," said Melody. The thought of humans getting hurt while trying to help ponies made her feel incredibly guilty, and she had been a human herself not a week ago!

"Like I said, maybe, maybe not. It could be they're busy kicking ass, or they could be dead in a ditch three miles down the road. Either way, we're now the ones in the best position to find out, so we're gonna move with a quickness."

Railroad Seven-Three sped off eastward on Route 50, leaving Washington DC behind.

2. Annapolis

The old get old and the young get stronger
May take a week and it may take longer
They got the guns but we got the numbers
Gonna win, yeah we're taking over
Come on!

-The Doors, “Five to One”

"So, uh... which one of them is Melchior and which one is Balthazar?"

Gaspar had been watching to the sides and rear of the vehicle as Railroad 7-3 moved east on Route 50. Obstacles had pretty much killed anyone's ability to go highway speeds ever again, so it was slow going. There wasn't much to watch out for on the highway, though, with sound walls on the north side and the south side lined with trees, so he took his eyes off of the road and looked over at Melody, who had asked the question.

"She's Melchior, he's Balthazar," he said. "Your name is Melody, right?"

The pegasus nodded slowly. "For the time being, yes."

The big man's eyebrows lifted. "That ain't a pony-name? Sounds like one."

"No, it's uh... it's what my mom and dad named me."

He looked at her for a moment, considering something, then gave her a small smile. "Take this time to think up a new name," he said, looking back out over the road again. "Can't be havin' two ladies on this trip whose names both shorten down to 'Mel.' Liable to get confusing, you know. Seems to be gettin' harder to keep your real name anyhow, these days."

Gavel smiled. "You mean you three didn't just happen to have names that fit so well together?"

Gaspar kept scanning. His assault rifle was slung, but he was keeping it at the low ready, which was making Gavel nervous. "Code names," he said. "Every Railroad team has 'em, and we're always teams of three. Ain't much use for real names this close to the Barrier."

"So 'seven-three' is—"

"Seven is state number, three is team number. Maryland was the seventh state to join the union, we're the third team out of twelve operating in-state. Get it? Railroad Seven-One has the code names 'Moe,' 'Larry,' and 'Curly.'" The man snorted and smiled. "Lucky bastards. Seven-Seven is 'Athos,' 'Porthos,' and 'Aramis.' You get the idea."

Melody smiled a bit. "Thank you for taking us home, Gaspar," she said.

"You're welcome," replied the man, almost too quietly to hear over the hum of the tires on the road.

The pickup started to slow down a few minutes later. Sugar Spoon put her hooves up on the side of the bed to lean over and look ahead. A large snarl of abandoned traffic had jammed up the eastbound lanes of Route 50, forcing the truck to cross the grassy median to the westbound lanes.

"What's going on?" asked Sugar Spoon as she eyed the glut of stationary minivans, cars, and SUVs across the way. "I thought everypony was meant to keep moving on roads like these. Why are there spots where ponies just stop?"

"You want to know?" asked Gaspar.

She settled back down into the bed and nodded. Gavel's ears swiveled forward in curiosity.

Gaspar sighed. "PER attack. They like to potion-bomb people sitting in traffic. Makes for a nice big blob of cars full of people suddenly unable to drive them."

"That's horrible!" cried Sugar Spoon. She and Melody exchanged sorrowful looks.

Gaspar sucked on a tooth. "They don't do it much anymore," he said. "People got wise to it, and besides, there aren't enough folks driving nowadays to make traffic jams anyway."

The truck shuffled and shimmied over the median back to the eastbound lanes once clear of the blockage. There were still accidents and stray vehicles here and there, however, and the group couldn't get up too much speed with having to constantly maneuver. Gavel saw Gaspar's grip on his rifle tighten.

"Is there something we should be worried about?" he asked.

"Not in particular," he said, "it's just that slower is more dangerous. No fighter worth his salt likes bein' in a slow convoy, and the bigger the convoy, the slower it has to go. That's just a rule of nature."

Sugar Spoon cocked her head, not understanding. "Surely there's safety in numbers, right?"

"You think so? Back when ferries were running out of Rehoboth Beach, lots of ponies around here were trying to make the trip to the coast on foot. Hoof. Whatever. Anyway, they were ripe for ambushing, and that's just what'd happen. HLF had a field day back then, before the Railroad. The ponies..." He shook his head. "...they didn't know what to do. Our first couple runs, we'd see the odd caravan of ponies. They'd be dead on the roadside in a colorful little pile. Some of 'em still had their goodie-bags around their necks."

Melody looked at her sack of food and reading material that the Bureau had provided her. She swallowed a lump in her throat and hugged it tighter to her.

"The Railroad was born out of that," said Gaspar. "The carriages were supposed to just be for the Bureaus out west, for convenience. Celestia didn't know what humans were capable of." He gave a small, bitter smile as he scanned. "She thought she knew, starting out, but we surprised even her."

"Ah, I see," said Gavel. "'Railroad.' So it's like Harriet Tubman."

Gaspar tapped his own nose twice.

* * *

"Cordon One-Niner, Railroad Seven-Three, how copy, over?"

"Railroad, you are lima charlie, go ahead, over."

"Cordon, we've located your patrol, they're about two miles east of the 301 interchange. Battery died while they were siphoning fuel. We gave 'em a jump, they'll be traveling in convoy with us the rest of the way. They should establish contact of their own once they're charged up a bit. Over."

"Railroad, Cordon copies all. Thanks for the assist. Out."

Melchior hung up the radio handset and leaned out of the window. The rest of the group was helping the Cordon team rearrange medical supplies in their SUV, getting them out of the flatbed trailer it was towing and into the interior cargo space of the vehicle.

"Guys, your HQ is up to speed," she called out. "Good to go."

The three ponies were standing off to the side, watching the humans work. Melody sighed.

"I wish I could help them somehow," she said.

"We'd just get in the way," said Gavel. He looked over at Sugar Spoon, who was running a hoof through the grass of the median.

"Hey, I'm just a chef," she said. "About the heaviest thing I have to lift with my magic on a daily basis is canisters of flour."

The patrol out of Cordon 19 was a team of two men and two women. Gavel knew fatigue and stress when he saw it, and it was written all over their faces. Seeing friendly humans pull up must have been like water in the desert for them. They hadn't said much while the ponies were around, though that may have been because of more pressing matters at hand. It could also have been burnout, though. Gavel wondered when their last hot meal and good night's sleep had been. Melody had been right, he decided: he hated not being able to help.

He smiled bittersweetly to himself. As a human, he would have felt a passing regret, but it actually pained him now. Pony nature was going to take some getting used to.

After the medical supplies were loaded, Balthazar dusted his hands and gestured to the pickup. "We're mounting up," he said to the ponies. He and Gaspar followed behind them, unslinging their rifles and bringing them to low ready once more, their heads constantly turning back and forth as they walked along. All three of the ponies noticed that their escorts were never without their weapons, and all three found it a little unnerving.

Gaspar lowered the tailgate and the ponies hopped into the pickup bed once more. He raised the tailgate back up and then jumped in himself, causing the truck to sit down a little lower than it had before.

Balthazar laughed as he got into the driver's side of the cab. "Too many donuts, man, I'm tellin' you!" Gaspar grinned and swatted around at him through the open window. The engine started, and they were off once more, the Cordon patrol following behind them.

"Well, that was refreshing," said Gaspar.

Sugar Spoon lifted her head, catching a gust of a breeze from the side of the truck. "Hmm? What was?"

"Team goes radio-silent and it's not due to casualties," replied the man, once again not letting the conversation interrupt his scanning. "Usually it's bad juju."

The Equestrian's ears drooped. "Oh. I'm, er... I'm glad too, then." She put her head back down and murmured something.

"What was that?" asked Gavel.

"I... I said 'this place.'"

The two newfoals winced and looked to Gaspar. If he had heard, he made no indication.

* * *

It was a mile's detour north of Route 50 to get to the crash site. Railroad 7-3 and the patrol from Cordon 19 pulled up to the carriage from a small residential road. Everyone in the convoy dismounted, with the Cordon patrol hurrying to unpack supplies while Gaspar and the ponies surveyed the scene.

Gaspar slung his rifle and whistled. "I tell you one thing: if I ever had to convince you ponies to wear horseshoes, I couldn't say it's because you need the luck!"

In front of them, the broad air-carriage had landed and skidded to a stop in an open field surrounded by trees. Paths of orange packed dirt lead from the field to the road, and large herringbone-patterned tire treads ran all along the clearing. The ground was suddenly cast into shade. Melody looked up to see clouds gathering overhead. It was quickly becoming overcast.

"This is a construction site," said Gavel. "New houses must have been scheduled to be built here. These tire tracks are from heavy equipment."

"Freshly wooded and stumped," added Gaspar with a nod. "Soft dirt, not a thing to slam into. If you had to crash, you couldn't have asked for a better landing strip."

"Somepony out there's looking out for us," said Melody quietly. Sugar Spoon gave her a smile.

"I dunno about all that," said Gaspar as he walked away from them to help with the unloading of supplies. "If that were true, then why'd they crash in the first place?"

Sugar Spoon bristled at the comment, and Melody put a hoof on her shoulder. "Don't mind it, Spoon," she said. "He's heard about Celestia, but he doesn't know about her. He can't know about her, not really. No human can."

The unicorn looked over at her friend. "What do you mean?"

Gavel stepped up to join them. "There's the broadcasts on TV, the... well, I guess they're not commercials, since they're all that's on, but humans see Celestia and hear her voice, and she seems graceful and powerful, but it's not really conveyed until you're in her presence for the first time."

Melody nodded at that. "Exactly. When you take the potion, you... you kind of dream. Only it's real, but still dreamlike. Celestia and Luna talk to you, one-on-one, and you feel like you really get to know each other. It's... hard to describe. There isn't much talking, but there's a lot of communication. I never understood what Celestia was until I had that dream. Gaspar won't, either, until he has the dream himself."

They watched the seven humans approach the field, carrying boxes and bags with a red cross painted on them. Several ponies rushed up to meet them, some jubilant, others panicked. The humans began to split off as ponies led them to the remaining wounded, who were scattered around the hull of the carriage, its angular final resting position providing some impromptu shelter.

"Should we stay here?" asked Melody. She really didn't want to feel useless anymore.

"We could at least see if we can be of any help," said Sugar Spoon. "You never know."

They cantered across the soft dirt field, soon catching the notice of the other ponies at the site. When they reached the massive lean-to that the carriage had become, they saw a short line of ponies there under the carriage in various states of injury. Melchior and one of the men from the Cordon team were busy treating one pony, while Balthazar and one of the female Cordon members tried to keep the gathering crowd of ponies calm. A light mist was starting to form in the clearing as the sky darkened further.

Sugar Spoon swiveled her ears forward and began to catch snatches of the dialogue between the humans and the ponies.

"—husband is dying and there's only two medics here to—"

"Ma'am, your husband is stable, Mel triaged him earlier this morning. All of the immediate and delayed wounded were evacuated to the Conversion Bureau. We dropped them off ourselves, personally. Anyone we left here was capable of surviving at least until we got b—"

Another pony. "What about Mainsail? You left her behind and she died not ten minutes later!"

"She was expectant, there was nothing we could do for her. We needed room for the ponies that actually had a chance of being saved but couldn't wait for treatment."

"You're lying! I was human once too, you know, and I know how much humans like to lie! You just wanted her to die, that's all!"

"We know how to evaluate casualties, sir, and Mainsail would not have survived even a couple of minutes on the road anyway."

"You can just go... g-go... go jump in a lake!" The stallion who had spoken snorted and pawed at the ground; obviously his pony nature was getting in the way of expressing himself as he was used to.

Another mare came running up. "Sir! Mister Human! My daughter has a tummyache, do you have something in there for it?"

Yet another mare. "A tummyache? Lady, there are ponies dying over here, can't you see them? Wait your turn!"

"Everything we're doing here is just to get the more seriously hurt fit to travel. We are not equipped to treat everything here and now. We'll get you all back to the Conversion Bureau just as soon as we can, but you have to let us do our jobs."

The clamor went on. Sugar Spoon was getting the urge to leave; it was getting too unpleasant here. She found herself backing away, chuckling uneasily.

"I don't, uh... I don't think we can be much help here."

She felt her rump hit another pony. She spun around to apologize, but the pony she'd bumped into spoke first.

"You weren't on the carriage," she said. "Where'd you come from?"

Gavel and Melody joined Sugar Spoon as, behind them, the humans scrambled to calm down the ponies and see to the injured.

"We came with the humans," she said. "With a Railroad team."

The mare's eyes widened, and the wings on her back shifted a bit. "Railroad?"

Gavel and Melody looked at each other. Melody bit her lip.

The pegasus shouldered past Sugar Spoon and craned her neck to look at the humans. "There's a Railroad team here?"

A passing stallion's ear flicked in her direction. "There is?" He ran down into the shade of the carriage and jumped in front of the crowd facing off against Balthazar. "Take me with you, Railroad! Just take me the rest of the way!"

Sugar Spoon sucked in a breath. "Whoops," she whispered.

The crowd in front of the humans exploded, and they swarmed Balthazar, pawing at him and begging to be taken along.

"I'm a native Equestrian! I deserve to go!"

"I was first on the manifest for this carriage trip!"

"Well I was second!"

"Holy shit, we already have three passengers, and it's just the one truck!" shouted the man over the pony voices. "We can't take any more, or we would!"

"More lies!"

"Dump some of those guns and make room!"

"Why do they get to go? What makes them so special?"

A hoof pointed at the trio outside of the shelter. Melody's ears drooped.

"I think... we should go wait somewhere else."

Melchior was already standing up, passing off her duties to another Cordon member. She and Balthazar started edging their way clear of the carriage with the herd of ponies stalking after them, rumbling with malcontent. Once clear, she ran around the side of the carriage to see Gaspar and the other Cordon members gathering up ponies' personal belongings for shipment. The building fog was now thick enough to conceal the perimeter of the clearing; it now seemed as though they weren't surrounded by forest at all.

"Gas! We're leaving!" she shouted, not bothering to slow down. Balthazar pointed to the trio and waved them towards the truck as he too ran.

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear," chanted Gavel as they galloped back to the pickup, a small stampede of ponies hot on their hooves. Bringing up the rear was Gaspar, his slung rifle bouncing around on his back.

Sugar Spoon, Melody, and Gavel got into the truck bed, but immediately behind them more ponies started to pile in as well, pushing and shoving and standing on one another. By the time ponies had gotten to hanging onto the sides and attempting to crawl into the cab through the window (presumably to sit on the humans' laps), Gaspar arrived and started pulling ponies off, his big arms scooping up two at a time and depositing them firmly behind him.

The ponies vocalized their displeasure.

"I just want to get out of here!"

"Don't leave us!"

"Take my daughter, at least, she's just a foal! She doesn't deserve this!"

"You'll all get to Equestria, we promise," he said as he worked. "It's not safe to overload like this. As soon as these three are dropped off, we'll be comin' back to the DC Bureau for more, we swear!"

The ponies crowded the truck, but there was no motion to confront the big human directly. Gaspar flopped into the truck bed and knocked on the back glass window of the pickup.

"Drive, drive!" he shouted. Then, to the ponies: "We're sorry! Hang in there!"

Balthazar gunned it, swerving out of the way of the SUV and trailer as he U-turned the pickup back onto the road. Melody looked out behind them and saw the colorful array of newfoals sitting there forlornly at the roadside before the fog swallowed them up.

Gaspar unslung his rifle, which allowed him to fall onto his back and take some deep breaths. Sugar Spoon laid down next to him, tears beginning to form in her eyes.

"Gaspar, I'm so sorry," she said. "I didn't realize that would happen. I've never seen ponies act like that before."

"S'all right," he said between breaths. "It's the herd mentality. I've seen it a lot. When there's a lot of ponies together, it gets hard for 'em to think for themselves. They just wanna do what everyone else is doing, and ponies aren't equipped mentally to deal with emergencies like those. They panic, and survival instinct kicks in, emotions run high. It's all explainable."

"Still, I wish we could have taken some along," said Melody. "We could have made room!"

Gaspar sat up and brought his rifle to ready; resting time was apparently over. "I meant what I said about safety. Three ponies and one human is already pretty cozy. Even one more pony and one's liable to go flying out of the truck on a hard bump. Believe me, I wish I could help more too, but we can only do what we can."

Balthazar made the turn back onto 50 East. As Railroad 7-3 crossed over the Severn River, the back window of the cab slid open. The ponies were greeted with Melchior's face.

"Just talked with Balth in here," she said. "Shift change before the bay?"

Gaspar nodded. "Yeah. Shift change. Sounds good."

The ponies saw the off-road lights atop the roll bar turn on, shooting cones of white light ahead of the truck. The fog continued to thicken.

3. Chesapeake

Home in the darkness
Home on the highway
Home isn't my way
Home I'll never be

-Blue Öyster Cult, “Burning for You”

The gray-blue fog coming in off of the bay prevented Railroad 7-3 from seeing even a hundred feet ahead. The final six miles to the Chesapeake were a torturous crawl of negotiating husks and wrecks of cars. Broken glass was everywhere on the road, glittering weakly in the truck's off-road lights, and it crunched and popped beneath the tires as they inched along.

The quiet and the closeness of the air was getting to Melody. She had never been claustrophobic as a human, but something was running through her now, an aching restlessness in her wings and a desire to break free of the enveloping mist. She looked at the others. Her fellow ponies seemed calm enough, given the circumstances, and Balthazar looked downright relaxed. The man was sitting on the ammunition crate, reclining against the back of the cab with his black assault rifle cradled in one arm.

She bit her lip. Was something wrong with her?

"You all right?" asked Gavel with a prod of his hoof. Melody startled a little and nodded hurriedly.

"She's spooked," said Balthazar. "It's plain as day." He pulled his baseball cap off, scratched an itch on the back of his head, and put it back on. "Pegasi don't like the sensation of being confined."

Gavel tossed him a sour look, and he shrugged. "Am I wrong?"

Sugar Spoon scooted away from Melody to give her some space. "Is there anything we can do to help you feel better, Mel?" she asked. A small smile materialized on her dark-green face. "Maybe a little carb therapy?"

Melody looked up from her red hooves. "Carb therapy?"

Sugar Spoon giggled. "Look in your bag," she said.

The red pegasus nosed her complimentary Conversion Bureau travel sack open and saw, to her delight, a single glazed cinnamon roll sitting atop a stack of books. Her eyes lit up.

"A Cinammon Eye-Roll!" she squealed, rolling onto her side to be able to reach Sugar Spoon's chin for a nuzzle.

"One last one for the road," she said. "I made one for Gavel and me, too."

The gray earth-pony smiled. "Well hay, let's dig in and eat them together!"

Needing no second bidding, the three ponies pulled their treats out of their bags and began devouring them. Balthazar watched them for a moment, then looked out into the fog.

"'Cinnamon Eye-Rolls'?" he asked. "Doesn't sound too appetizing."

"They're called that because they're so good they make your eyes roll with pleasure," said Gavel between bites.

Melody proffered her roll—now crescent-shaped from the bite taken out of it—to Balthazar, holding it out in her mouth. "Here, Howhahar," she said. "Hry it!"

The lean young man recoiled a bit. "No thanks, you go ahead."

Melody put her roll down. "Your loss. They're really good!"

"Aw, Balthazar is scared of pony-cooties, is that it?" teased Sugar Spoon. Gavel chuckled.

Balthazar frowned. "If that were true, then constantly being around ponies would be an odd choice for me to spend my time running out the clock."

Gavel raised his head, a bit of glaze still on the corner of his mouth. "What do you mean by that?"

Balthazar studied Gavel for a moment. "Fine," he said at last.

He pause for a moment, considering whether or not to continue. "Do you know where it is calculated that the very last piece of Earth will disappear into the Barrier?" he asked.

Gavel looked at him, uncomprehending.

The young man turned to Sugar Spoon. "Do you, Equestria?"

"I have a name," she said sharply.

"Tasmania," said Balthazar. "The antipodal point of the Barrier's epicenter is Tasmania. The Barrier has erased Ireland, Britain, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, and most of France already. Belgium is standing by to be erased and it's knocking on Delaware's door now too. Dover's already had to close their Bureau because humans can't stay that close to all of that magical shit the Barrier's flinging out. Anyway, as it swallows up humanity, we'll all be chased to Tasmania, where..." He shrugged and let out a single, mirthless chuckle. "...where I guess we'll die of magical poisoning and then get ground up into dust."

"That... that doesn't make any sense!" said Sugar Spoon. "Just get ponified and you'll be okay!"

Balthazar was already shaking his head. "You don't understand, Equestria. We've made passenger runs to the coast eight times already, and ponies from the other side never understand."

Sugar Spoon frowned. "But I'm not them," she said. "Try me."

"Don't get me wrong," said the man. "I'm not trying to imply you're stupid. You just... you don't have the perspective needed to understand. I'd rather die than become a pony, and why that is is not something I can explain to you."

"Sounds like HLF talk to me," murmured Gavel.

"Yeah, well, we're not HLF," said Balthazar. "As long as you're with us, you're safe. Like Mel said, reputation is everything now. We'll get you where you want to go. Besides, just because a human wants to hang onto their humanity doesn't mean they're HLF."

"Why don't you want to get ponified, Balthazar?" asked Melody, cocking her head slightly.

The man's voice quieted almost to a whisper. "It ain't for people like us," he said.

Sugar Spoon snorted. "Horseapples!" She said. "I know you've heard Princess Celestia's broadcasts, seen the advertisements. You've read the brochures, right? Ponification is for everypony! All are welcome!"

"Celestia doesn't understand, either," he said. "It's almost funny to see someone supposedly as wise and all-knowing as her miss the mark on something like this. And what was all that nonsense back at the Bureau about her watching us, smiling down on us?" He snorted. "Doesn't matter if it's Equestria or Earth, if you ask me; the folks in charge are fumbling around in the dark at this point, just like everyone else."

He turned to Gavel with a genuine smile. "Isn't that right, senator?"

Gavel sighed and lowered his head. Melody looked over at the earth-pony.

"'Senator'?"

"Paul Lancaster, senior senator from the Great State of Idaho," answered Balthazar for him. He looked to Sugar Spoon with a cocky smile on his face. "Back when there was a government to speak of, Senator Lancaster here voted 'yea' on a bill to seize unwilled assets left behind by familes moving to Equestria. Of course, the people leaving Earth didn't care what happened to their cars and houses, so it seemed a shoo-in bill, but as folks started realizing that Celestia was serious about the Barrier expansion thing, well... suddenly Uncle Sam had all this money and nothing to spend it on.

"And, I do believe," he continued, tapping his chin, "that's around the time that Congress started trading in their slush funds for hooves themselves. Senator Lancaster here's one of—if not the—last holdout of authority left in the legislative branch."

Gavel scowled at him. "It's in the past," he said. "I've changed."

"I don't have much difficulty believing that."

"No, not just the body!" he let out a breath and collected himself. "All right, so you know something about governments, son?"

Balthazar turned his head away to squint into the fog. "I keep my finger on the pulse of who's coming into the DC Bureau, that's all."

"Do you know who the first world leader to get ponified was?"

Still looking away, Balthazar said "No idea. The Queen of England?"

"Close: Queen Rania of Jordan. She went to the Bureau in Zurich, the very first one to open in the eastern hemisphere. She's a unicorn now, and I hear that Queen Rania—well, Sharing Smiles, these days—has her own little chocolate shop in Thistlespring.

"As for your guess," said Gavel with a smile, "Elizabeth the Second now makes crossword puzzles for Fetlock's newspaper. She even brought her corgis with her to Equestria."

Balthazar shifted on the ammo crate, fiddling with his rifle, trying not to look at the senator-turned-pony. "Why're you telling me all this?" he asked.

"Son, maybe Equestrian ponies don't understand what you're getting at, but I do," said Gavel.

The truck began to turn, then dipped off-road again. The truck bed rocked and jostled about, and the ponies splayed out their legs to keep from rolling around. Melody blinked, the movement jarring her back into remembering the fog.

Balthazar slid over to the starboard side of the truck and leaned out, squinting at a murky, square white shape slipping by silently.

"Those were the toll booths," he said, standing up. "We've reached the bridge."

* * *

Conversation died on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Balthazar was tense, remaining standing in the back of the pickup, his rifle aimed forward and resting between two of the off-road lights on the roof. Nothing could be seen, though. There was only the gray curtain that seemed to move with them, the smell of salt, and a gentle sloshing of water against the support pylons far below.

The bridge connecting the two shores of the bay actually consisted of two separate bridges, each a little over four miles long with two lanes headed in one direction. Dead traffic had clogged the northern, westbound bridge with the human exodus from the coast, so the eastbound bridge was now the only way to traverse the bay on foot or land vehicle. Fortunately, Railroad 7-3 was able to pick up a little speed on the bridge, and they started making better time.

Melody studied Balthazar's face as they moved further out over the bay. His eyes had grown steely and distant, and she could see the muscles at the corner of his jaw pulse in and out as he ground his teeth. He seemed like a completely different person now, even given his rather caustic attitude before. Instinct told Melody that now was not the time to be loud.

"Balthazar," she whispered.

Just like Gaspar, the man didn't look away while he was scanning. "Yeah?" he whispered back.

"If you got ponified, I think you'd make a very handsome stallion."

Balthazar smiled. "Well now, something new!" he whispered. "You know, every delivery, a pony gives me the pitch. Equestria's been pitched to me a dozen times and in a dozen ways, and this is the first time someone's tried flattery."

The young man looked at her out of the corner of his eye. The pegasus was looking down, her ears drooping. He went back to watching the road ahead.

"It was nice of you to say," he said quietly, "but maybe you're starting to realize why it ain't for me."

The truck suddenly slowed down hard, causing Melody to slide forward. Balthazar stuck out a leg and cushioned her stop, keeping her nose from hitting the cab.

As the pickup came to a halt, a knocking came on the back window of the cab. Sugar Spoon opened the sliding window with her magic. Melchior's face peeked out from behind the tinted glass.

"You'll be happy to know that the brakes work," deadpanned Balthazar.

"Dispatch called," said Melchior, ignoring the comment. "I've got bad news and I've got worse news."

"Bad news?" asked Gavel. The truck's engine shut off. Gaspar was already getting out with a canvas satchel and a small spool of brown insulated wire. He jogged ahead of the truck, disappearing into the mist after only a few steps.

"Some weather pegasi operating out of Baltimore just told Railroad Seven-Two that an HLF technical is roadblocking this bridge. They saw it from the air."

"What's the worse news?" asked Sugar Spoon.

"This fog we're in? Those ponies put it down to keep the technical from being able to shoot at any air-carriages. The carriages have been diverted north, though, so now they've been ordered to lift the fog again."

"A technical?" said Balthazar. "You think they've got a fifty, then?"

"We're already a mile onto the bridge," said Melchior. "If they're on the bridge too, then they wouldn't even need a fifty to hit us once this fog is up. And if they do have a fifty..." She shook her head.

Balthazar nodded. "...then we're gonna get melted." He picked up his rifle and hopped over the side of the pickup bed.

"Melted?" said Sugar Spoon, her eyes growing large. "That doesn't sound good." She looked to her fellow ponies.

Melchior got out of the truck as well and shut the door quietly. "It isn't good," she said. "Gaspar was tellin' me in the truck that he and the Cordon guys dug several fifty-caliber bullets out of the carriage's hull while we were patching folks up. That means a heavy machine gun, which is serious hardware this close to the Barrier."

Balthazar nodded. "These're probably the boys who shot down the carriage," he said. "We don't have enough fuel to turn around and swing up through Baltimore and then make it the rest of the way; we'll have to go through them."

Sugar Spoon felt her heart start to beat harder. "Wait... w-wait. 'Through' them? You mean fighting, right? Combat?"

The man smiled a little. "Sure do, Equestria."

"Just stay behind the truck, and keep low," said Melchior as she lowered the tailgate. "I already told you that nobody's gonna be shooting at you. Us, maybe, but not you. This ain't our first time to the rodeo." She winked and pulled her own rifle out through the open window of the truck.

At that, the three ponies hopped down from the truck bed and tucked themselves under the tailgate.

"Wait," said Melody, "if you have a radio, just call and ask the pegasi not to remove the fog!"

Melchior shook her head. "They've already taken off from Baltimore, and they don't exactly use radios themselves," she said.

Balthazar knelt down by the pickup, looking Melody in the eyes. "You're a pegasus," he said. "Can you fly?"

"I..." She shook her head slowly. "I can't."

"Have you tried?"

Melody's mouth moved, but she said nothing.

Balthazar set his rifle down on the asphalt and put a hand on her shoulder. "Melody, listen to me," he said. "You've got to try and get above the fog and stop those pegasi from pulling it away. No time like the present to learn."

"I can't!" she blurted.

The man spoke slowly and calmly. "I know you're scared, but you can really help us out. All of us." He gestured to Sugar Spoon and Gavel. "They're your friends, right? You'd be helping them too. You'd be making it a lot safer for us. We know they're here, but they don't know we're here, and as long as we have this fog, we have the advantage."

"Y-yeah, I get it, but—"

"Give it a try, Mel," whispered Gavel.

"Yeah," said Sugar Spoon. "I believe in you!"

"I don't know how easy or hard it is to fly," said Balthazar, still keeping her gaze, "but I've seen pegasi do some crazy shit in the air, so there has to be some natural ability in that body of yours. Just... do what feels right. Or natural, or whatever."

Melody let out a nervous giggle and nodded. "If I don't, we're all dead anyway, right?"

"Hey now!" said Balthazar, picking his rifle back up and standing. "Don't sell us short over here!"

Melody moved out from under the tailgate and looked up into the gray, extending her wings. She closed her eyes and felt the thickness of the air, the mist on her feathers, and the very mild currents of the salty bay breeze in her mane. They caressed her wings, driving a thrill into her, melting the claustrophobia from her mind. Every minute shift in the air registered with her sensitive wings, and as she began to flap, she could almost feel the sky bending to her will. She felt lighter, and lighter, and lighter still, and when she opened her eyes, her hooves were free of the bridge.

"You did it!" cried Gavel, and Melchior promptly shushed him.

"That's great, but we don't know how close we are to the bad guys," she said.

"You're doing great, just keep it up!" hissed Sugar Spoon.

Elated, Melody flapped harder, finding climbing to be easier when she did so rhythmically, like talking a walk and having her steps match the beat of a song on her MP3 player. Crazily, at that thought, "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees began to play in her head, and her wingbeats changed tempo to match. She giggled quietly to herself. In a way, she really was trying to stay alive.

The afternoon sun struck her face, glorious and warm. Her eyelids fluttered, and when the little red pegasus looked down, there was just a white cottony floor beneath her. She had climbed through the fog without even realizing it!

She tried to rein in her glee and keep her wits about her. She had to find those other pegasi, she reminded herself. She began looking around, shielding her eyes with a hoof.

Three dark specks were coming out of the horizon, and as they neared, she could see they were flying in formation. It was them! It looked, however, as though they wouldn't be passing by close to her, so she started waving all four hooves as she flapped, calling out to them once she was able to make out their colors.

"Hey!" she shouted. "Hey, ponies! Over here! Hello!"

One of the pegasi peeled off from the formation and shot towards her, seemingly too fast to stop. Melody could think to do nothing but hover there and curl up into a ball, waiting for impact.

A whoosh of wind buffeted her about, but there was no impact. She uncurled and looked up, surprised to see a pegasus stallion in a flight suit hovering there just a couple of feet away from her.

"A newfoal!" he said in a surprised tone. "What're you doing up here? There's HLF down on the bridge an—"

"I know!" she said. "There's two other ponies and three humans down there on the bridge right below me! You need to let the fog stay! Hurry and tell the others!"

The stallion blinked, then whirled around in time to see the other two pegasi start to drag the misty fog in their wake a hundred meters away. Putting a hoof into his mouth, he whistled sharply twice, signaling them to abort. The two pegasi broke off, releasing the trail of fog, which settled into its new position.

As the other two weather-pegasi joined them, Melody let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you," she said. "Thank you so much."

"You should take this opportunity to turn back," said the stallion, pulling his flight goggles up off his eyes. "We can't do too much to help you against HLF fighters as we are right now."

"That's fine, that's..." she thought about the humans down below and decided not to go into details. "You've done plenty. Thank you."

The stallion nodded once, then turned to his wingponies. "Come on," he said. "We're RTB." He gave Melody a crisp salute and then banked hard, the other two falling in behind him in a V formation.

As they disappeared back behind the sun's rays, Melody realized how hard she was breathing. Her wings began to slow, and she started to sink. Panic set in, and she set to flailing, unable to keep herself aloft.

She slipped down through the clouds (wasn't she supposed to be able to perch on them? she wondered), her descent becoming more rapid. She let out a keening wail of terror as her fatigued new wings gave out completely, causing her to plummet, disoriented and fear-stricken, through the uncaring gray shroud.

She landed roughly, but not roughly enough for it to have been asphalt. She opened an eye and saw Gavel and Sugar Spoon staring agog at her a couple of feet below. She then turned in the other direction to see Balthazar's cold-eyed stare right next to her nose.

He had caught her.

Melchior leaned over. "Fog's still here, so I guess you did it!" she said.

She was set down gently, quickly sidling away from Balthazar, not looking at him. She slowly folded her sore wings up against her sides.

"I... it was such a lucky break!" she said, breathless. "I was up there, and I was just lookin' around, and then suddenly I see these—"

Three muted cracks slid through the air like the sound of two hands clapping far away. Balthazar and Melchior instantly turned and ran up to the pickup, opening both doors to the cab and taking cover behind them. Melchior looked over her shoulder and gestured for the ponies to get back behind the truck.

"That's gunfire," hissed Balthazar. "Stay covered."

Gaspar's huge silhouette appeared in the mist ahead. He was running. He slid to a stop behind Balthazar on the driver's side and tossed his satchel back into the extended area of the cab behind the seats.

"Clays are up," he said, "but they saw me. Some of the fog got pulled off the bridge up ahead. There's three of 'em, and yeah, one's on a fifty-cal."

Melody winced as she heard it. She gritted her teeth. Damn it, she hadn't been fast enough! If only she hadn't been such a scaredy-pony, they wouldn't have lost the element of surprise!

She felt a hoof on her back. Gavel was there, giving her a reassuring smile. Somehow, ponies knew.

"So they're coming," said Melchior.

Gaspar nodded. "Ears on, high ready," he said.

The three humans took the headsets from around their necks and fit them over their ears. Once they were in place, Balthazar and Melchior brought their rifles up and rested them in the windows of the open doors. Gaspar moved to the back of the pickup, and the ponies could see he had his own weapon ready.

"There's gonna be shooting, and gunshots are loud sons-of-bitches," he said grimly. "Cover your ears and wait for instructions."

Sugar Spoon swallowed hard and tried to bury herself in the asphalt, pinning her ears down against her head with her hooves. "Oh Celestia, Luna, Celestia, Luna, Sun and Moon, Sun and Moon..." she chanted in a whisper.

More claps and pops. Weird, miniscule thumps could be felt in the pavement from the force of the gunfire. Gavel wept a tear. Sugar Spoon kept on chanting.

"Vault of the sky, vault of the sky, show us your grace, show us your grace..."

The Railroad was shouting. Melody couldn't make it out with her ears covered. More shooting. Gavel could feel the vibrations of the gunfire in his teeth.

"Horn and wing, hoof and mane, horn and wing, hoof and mane..."

Other voices now. Angry voices. Huge booms kicked up road-dust even in the moist air of the fog. The truck above them shuddered rhythmically, the tires burping out tiny screeches of pain as they moved.

"Beseech thee now to end this pain, beseech thee now to end this pain."

All went quiet. The tangy, smoky smell of spent cordite filled the air. Sugar Spoon gagged on it a bit. Gavel felt a rough hand tap his head, and he craned his neck around to see Balthazar's face, his headset back down around his neck.

"Gaspar's dead," he said. "He was manning the clays. I need you to step up."

Melody's jaw dropped. "Dead?" she whispered.

He snapped his head up to bore a hole in her with his eyes. "No time for mourning, we're not out of this yet," he said. Not waiting for a response, he looked back to Gavel and held out a small, simple-looking device made of green plastic.

"Okay, senator," he said. "This here's the clacker to the Claymore mines Gaspar set up ahead of the truck. The fog's still ahead of us a ways, but we couldn't get them to advance into the mines. Come to the front with me and keep that clacker ready. The mine's hidden behind a light post on the left side of the road. When you see them reach the light post, step down twice—rapidly—on this thing and it'll make the bad men go away."

Gavel stood there, frozen. Balthazar shook him firmly.

"Hey, snap out of it!" he said. "Do you copy me, senator?"

"I... I..."

"Good enough. Come on. You two stay here."

Balthazar jogged back to the front of the pickup, leaving Gavel to look at the green thing on the ground in front of him. He gingerly picked it up in his mouth and stumbled after the human.

Gaspar's corpse lay on the shoulder of the road, belly down, his face mercifully turned away from the ponies. Gavel felt several new tears slide down his cheeks.

"Right here," whispered Balthazar, kneeling and waving Gavel to a spot directly behind him. "Stay behind me. If the HLF boys even see the silhouette of a pony they'll go apeshit."

Gavel looked across the front of the truck to see Melchior there, her rifle trained ahead, her face set and determined.

"C'mon, let's talk this out!" came a gruff male voice from behind the curtain ahead. "We got no beef with brothers and sisters."

Balthazar, still kneeling, lowered his rifle slowly. "We're not with your cause, we were just trying to pass through," he said. "Then you had to go and open up on us. I think you can appreciate our caution now."

"Just a little jumpy, you know?" said the voice. "Nerves is all."

"We get any of your guys?" asked Melchior.

Gavel swallowed. Was he going nuts? Were the humans really talking about this?

"One," came the voice.

"So we're even," said Balthazar. "You gonna let us by if we play ball?"

A pause. "Absolutely, brother."

"Get ready," whispered Balthazar to the earth-pony. The young man set his rifle down on the road and stood up, putting his hands behind his head.

"I'm unarmed," he said. "I'm moving forward so you can see me," he said. "You do the same."

"Comin' up," came the voice again. Seconds seemed to tick by over minutes. Gavel was certain his breathing could be heard out across the bay. Blood thundered in his ears. The clacker waited patiently by his right forehoof.

A human outline took form on the periphery of visible space, then another. Two stood there in silhouette, shifting dark-gray shapes of men holding what were quite easily firearms.

They were standing by the slim vertical line denoting the lamppost. Balthazar cocked his head slightly, catching Gavel's attention.

"Hit it," he whispered.

Gavel lifted his hoof over the clacker, and it froze there. He couldn't. He knew the fact as simply as his date of birth and the name of his wife. He would not be able to step down. He could not kill those men.

"I can't!" he hissed.

Balthazar stalled for time. "Hey, gents, that's not very sporting! I know you can see me, what's with the heaters over there?"

Gavel looked to Melchior, pleading with his eyes. She wouldn't meet his gaze.

"We're just makin' sure you're not trying to pull a fast one on us, calm down," said one of the shapes. They shifted their weight, about to take a step forward.

Balthazar slid to one side, exposing the pony to the men directly, and Gavel's eyes widened.

"What the shit!" shouted one of the man-shapes.

"They're fuckin' pony-lovers!" shouted the others. The rifles went to their shoulders. Even then, Gavel couldn't snuff out their lives. It was beyond the pale to even consider if he could.

Balthazar spun and lifted Gavel easily, carrying him back through the concealing gray wall. The shapes disappeared again.

"Son of a bitch! When we find you, pony-lover, we're gonna—"

An earsplitting pow sounded out across the bridge, and oily white smoke billowed into the space in front of the pickup. Melchior withdrew and rendezvoused with the others at the back of the truck.

"Everyone okay?" she asked. "Everyone got their fingers and toes?"

"Not funny," wheezed Sugar Spoon. Melchior gave a devilish grin and ran ahead again, disappearing.

"H-how did that happen?" asked Gavel. "I-I didn't... I never even touched the—"

"Tripwire," said Balthazar, kneeling by the ponies. The clays were set to go off from a tripwire all along. The clacker isn't a remote control; it has to be wired straight to the mines. You could have stepped on that thing all day and the mines wouldn't have gone off."

The earth-pony looked at the lean man, horrified. "Then why did you—"

"I had to see, all right?" Balthazar snapped. "I had to see if what they say is true."

"What they say?" asked Melody.

The man turned to her. "That ponies can't kill," he said. "That they can't willingly hurt others, not even if inaction would cost them their lives. I had to pressure the senator here, I had to make him think only he could protect us."

He sighed. "I fucked with you, senator, and for that, I really am sorry. But I just kept hearing it, and... and I had to see for myself."

Gavel was trying to work up some anger, but he was still just too confused. "What does it matter?" he cried. "I'm going to Equestria, son, a place that doesn't have HLF or whatchamacallit mines or fifty-cals or anything like that! Why in the world would it matter if a pony could kill or not?"

Balthazar shot to his feet, towering over them. "Because it's what we do!" he shouted. He lifted his rifle, holding it out with one hand. "Do you know what this is? It's a Galil, model AR, manufactured in Israel. It fires the five-five-six by forty-five millimeter cartridge, also known as five-five-six NATO. Its detachable box magazine holds thirty-five rounds and it operates via a long-stroke gas piston design adapted from the Kalashnikov family of rifles, of which my dead friend Gaspar here used to use.

"What in the good goddamn is any of that knowledge going to do me over in Equestria? Huh?"

The ponies shrank away from him, their ears against their necks. Melchior came jogging up.

"The one that Gaspar tagged is still alive," she said.

Balthazar looked up at her. "You sure about that?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah, he was laying still, but he was moaning a bit and had—"

"Might wanna check again," said Balthazar, even quieter. Melchior let out a breath, nodded slowly, and walked back into the fog.

Balthazar looked back to the ponies. "Let's take a field trip," he said. "I want to show you guys something." A gunshot rang out from the grayness. He didn't even acknowledge it.

The young man walked ahead, to where the carnage had taken place. Now rather frightened of him, the ponies tried to resist, but theirs was a herd, and the herd leader had started to move. To Melody and Gavel, it was strange, but also unnervingly right to do it. Guidance, direction, confidence: it was infectious.

He stopped at one of the bodies that had been caught in the Claymore, now a shredded mess of red flesh and flayed clothing. Balthazar turned the body over with a foot and pulled the man's wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. He flipped the wallet open, looked at it for a moment, flashed a joyless smile at it, and then showed it to the ponies.

"I should hope you know what this is, senator," he said to Gavel.

Gavel looked at the slain human's photo ID. "It's a CAC card," he said, "a military ID."

"Ferris Gartner, United States Marine Corps," said Balthazar, letting the wallet drop from his hand. "Once upon a time, he and I were on the same side. That was before Equestria came along, of course."

"You knew this man?"

"Of course not! But we were comrades in arms. I was 82nd Airborne, senator. Gaspar was a Marine, and Melchior was a Navy Seabee. Are you seeing a pattern here? Are you wondering how I'd know that a perfect stranger would have DoD plastic on him?"

Gavel lowered his head a bit. Melody and Sugar Spoon looked at the earth-pony curiously.

"We're prior-service!" he shouted. "All of us out here are! All of us! HLF, PER moles, Railroad, Cordon, good guys, bad guys, we were all military, and do you know why? Because we're the only bastards crazy enough, dedicated enough, to do what we do in the shadow of that god-damned fucking Barrier! The jagged edge, where people who actually give a damn about their lives don't tread! Two years ago, I would have laid down my life for this man, and now he's the one who has to give me the red mist! You're alive because he's dead, and the hell of it is that you can't even fucking appreciate it. Especially you, Equestria."

Sugar Spoon moved her head from side to side, trying to think of something to say. Melchior slipped back in, having heard the outburst, hugging her elbows to herself.

"Why... didn't you become HLF, then, if you hate ponies so much?" she asked at last.

"There but for the grace of God go I," said Balthazar. "If only one or two things in my life had been different, I could very easily see myself as having gone HLF. I didn't, though."

"So what are we supposed to do, huh? I was out! I was a year into college on the GI Bill, but then all... all this shit... happened, and suddenly we don't need systems analysts, we don't need park rangers, we don't need cops or airline pilots or fucking ditch-diggers because hey! A new life awaits in Equestria, come one come all, except for one very specific kind of person, that is. There's only one thing I know how to do, my little ponies, only one fucking thing I'm good at, and since the good senator here was so kind as to confirm the rumors, there's apparently no place for it in your happy-scrappy storybook world."

His shoulders slumped, and he caught his breath. "There's nothing else for us," he said. "That's the long and short of it. We're getting left behind. We are servicemembers." He gestured to Melchior. "Us. We're serving you. But eventually all of 'you' will be gone, and there'll be nobody left to serve, nobody left to fight. Queen Rania is making truffles and Queen Elizabeth is thinking up crosswords? Then what the hell would someone like me be doing? Painting birdhouses? Shoveling manure? Uh uh. No thanks. I'd rather die. I'm not ashamed of who I am as a human, and I'm not afraid to die, either."

Melchior patted him on the shoulder. "We should get going," she said.

"Yeah, you're right," said Balthazar. He then looked to the ponies. "But there's some cleanup to do first, and I don't think you folks want to see it."

As they ambled back up into the truck bed, Balthazar lifted and locked the tailgate, fixing Sugar Spoon with a look. "Think about your princess, Equestria," he said. "Once you're settled in nice and snug back home, try and remember the people her perfect world can't cater to."

"You can yell at me all you want, if it helps you feel better," said Sugar Spoon, "but I'm not giving up on you. You aren't HLF, but you also didn't deny hating ponies. Why are you helping us?"

Balthazar smiled bitterly. "Simple," he said, "because it's the right thing to do."

4. Salisbury

You can run with us
We’ve got everything you need
Run with us
We are free
Come with us
I see passion in your eyes
Run with us

-Lisa Lougheed, “Run with Us”

The two humans and three ponies were now southbound, still following 50 through Easton and out of the fog. There, away from the major city centers of DC and Baltimore, the battered champagne-colored pickup was finally able to get up to respectable road speeds. Balthazar, now taking his turn driving, still kept it slow enough for the benefit of the others in the back, however.

Sugar Spoon wasn't feeling well. Balthazar's rant, coupled with what he and Melchior had done immediately afterward, was making her wary of sharing space with the humans. She had rolled it over and over in her mind again. Sure, she'd been warned not to look, but in her innocence, she thought that there would be no more horrors now that the fighting was over.

It was becoming evident to the others in the bed with her. Melchior looked to Gavel and Melody, who shrugged. They rode along in silence for another mile or so before she asked, nudging the unicorn with a foot.

"Spoon, what's wrong?"

The Equestrian mare sighed. It wasn't good to keep things bottled up, but her interest in engaging with humans directly was also severely diminished. "When you and Balthazar did your 'cleanup'... I was watching."

Melchior sighed as well, keeping her voice gentle. "Oh. Well, I'm sorry for what you saw."

"You stabbed them!" she said, her voice cracking, already beginning to cry. "You took knives and you stabbed them all twice in the chest. Even Gaspar!" Her eyes were huge, shining with tears in the afternoon light. "Wasn't he your friend?"

This was news to Gavel and Melody. They both blinked, joining Sugar Spoon in searching the woman's face for answers. Melchior put her rifle down on the crate and held up a hand.

"It was to puncture the lungs and the thoracic cavity," she said. "The throat closes when you die. If we just dumped the bodies off the bridge straight away, then they'd float, and nobody wants to see that. The stab wounds are to let water into the torso and allow the bodies to sink."

"That's horrible!" cried the unicorn, resting her chin on the bed. "Do you enjoy this? Killing other humans and stabbing them so that their bodies can sink in water? You're staying out of Equestria to do stuff like that?"

Melchior shook her head sadly. "It's not about killing," she said. "If we just wanted to kill people, then we wouldn't be bringing ponies along for the ride. We know you don't like seeing it, but if it's what it takes to keep you safe, then that's what we do. The HLF guys operating here at the Barrier, they're true believers. The real deal. The hard core of the movement. They're not the soccer moms and religious folks out west holding signs and defacing pictures of Celestia. They weren't going to capture you, or yell at you, or lecture you, or throw rocks at you—they were going to kill you.

"I'm staying out of Equestria to make sure they can't. So is Balthazar, and so was Gaspar. We all wanted to be useful in our own way. That's what Balth was talking about, back there on the bridge. That's who's left here: the warrior caste. The soldiers. The only difference is the side they're choosing. Forces gather to oppose ponies, and so other forces gather to keep them in check."

Sugar Spoon wiped her cheeks with a foreleg. Her rich gold mane fell over her eyes. "I wish I'd stayed at the Bureau and waited for a carriage," she sobbed. "This place is just so terrible, I—"

"Do you hate humans?" asked Melchior.

"No!" said the green mare immediately. "I made tons of human friends while I was working at the Bureau! They always said such nice things about my food, and they'd joke and laugh with me and everything. Then they would go on to become ponies, and they were still my friends, so it was like nothing had really changed. I didn't care if they were on two legs or four, it didn't matter to me, but out here... it's... I don't know. I don't hate you, I just... feel sorry for you."

"Lots of ponies have told us that, you know," said Melchior. A smile crept onto her face. "Pitying someone can make them push back. It's part of the reason Balthazar can't stand Celestia: he thinks her attitude towards humans is condescending." She chuckled and rested her head on the back of the cab. "Man, what I wouldn't give to listen to those two have a chat."

"If Princess Celestia ever wants to speak with him, she will," said Sugar Spoon. "There's no red tape to seeing her. She can be anywhere she likes—even everywhere, if it suits her. If impression is needed, she will appear in her full glory. If discretion is needed, she will enter your dreams. She will speak to ten, or a hundred, or a thousand at a time, and they will all receive her full attention. Humans may know she's powerful, but you don't know just how powerful."

The unicorn pleaded with her eyes. "Become a pony, Melchior. Convince Balthazar to become a pony. Ask my friends here, if you don't believe me!"

She shook her head. "Every human you'd meet out here has their own reasons why they haven't. Gaspar's was revenge. Balthazar's is fear. I'd bet most stories would be similar to theirs."

"Is yours?" asked Melody.

Melchior picked her rifle back up and laid it across her lap. "It's actually a lot simpler than that, " she said. "I don't deserve to go."

"Not this again!" said Sugar Spoon, exasperated. "What is it with humans and this need to make martyrs of themselves? It's like a... a cult of pain! Hay, it's almost like you enjoy the idea of dying!"

Melody leaned her head over the side of the truck to let the wind cut through her mane. "From one Mel to another, let me just say that when I got converted, and I met Princess Celestia and Princess Luna in my dream or whatever it was, I almost cried with happiness. The only thing that could make me happier is if everyone else shared that bliss with me." She brought her head back in and looked squarely at Melchior. "That means you too."

"Is it pride?" asked Gavel. "I had a lot of that when I was a man. It was enough to keep me from going to get converted with my family. Balthazar had even read up on me. He told me about my own history on the way to the bridge, like a judge naming charges. But all that had been washed away when I woke up. I can't even describe how it felt, it was like this huge weight was lifted from me. Now all I have to worry about is how I'm going to be able to hug my wife and kids at the same time when I get to Equestria. Don't you want to have problems like that, rather than eating old MREs and getting shot at and having to find running water to bathe in?"

Melchior looked down at her hands. "We wouldn't have that problem anyway. We never shared too much about our personal lives before the Barrier, but I do know that nobody here in Railroad Seven-Three has anyone waiting for us in Equestria."

"That doesn't mean you'll be alone if you go!" said Sugar Spoon. "You'll make friends, Melchior, more friends than you ever thought possible! And you'll find a special somepony, and you can start a family! Anything you want, you can pursue it there!"

The unicorn stood, carefully making her way over to the woman on hooves unsteady with the swaying truck bed. She set her head down on Melchior's knee, scowling at the rifle next to her face.

"All you have to do," she said, "is give up the gun. Give up your stubborn pride, and forgive yourself for whatever it is that's keeping you here. That's all Princess Celestia asks for."

Melchior bit her lip and looked away, out at the empty road.

* * *

Balthazar whistled as he stepped out of the truck to survey the road ahead. He pulled his cap off and wiped his brow, his eyes wide.

"Ho-lee shit," he breathed.

"I've never heard of anything like this before," said Sugar Spoon.

"How is this even possible?" said Gavel.

Before them stretched Route 50, which split off to Salisbury and to the municipal bypass which took through-traffic around the town. The two lanes leading into town were coated with potion as far ahead as the eye could see, a ribbon of shimmering purple leading into Salisbury.

"PER's got some serious resources to throw around," said Melchior. "Where could it have all come from?"

"Doesn't matter," said Balthazar, walking back to the truck. "We're fording it."

Melody spun around. "Huh? Why?"

"It's a very basic area-denial strategy," said the man. "You've got multiple avenues of approach to cover, but not enough manpower to watch all of them. So, you mine up a road or avenue of approach in a very obvious, visible way, which will funnel enemy forces down another avenue, where you ambush them. The PER must have potion-bombers waiting along the bypass." He leaned into the cab and tossed something to Melchior, who caught it.

Balthazar pulled something else out from behind the driver's side seat and then knocked on the doorframe. "Mount up," he said.

"Can we stop and eat?" asked Melody. "Snacks on the road are fine, but eating meals while moving is bad for the digestion."

Melchior chuckled and herded the ponies back to the truck. "After we're through town, we'll have a nice picnic lunch on the other side somewhere. We could be ambushed too easily if we just stop here, where the PER's obviously been."

"Yeah, that would be a shame," said the unicorn under her breath as the ponies got back into the bed. Instead of getting into the bed with the ponies, however, Melchior got into the cab with Balthazar and they both rolled their windows up, sealing them inside.

Once everyone was in, Balthazar took the road into Salisbury.

Melody leaned over the side of the bed, watching the fragrant purple mixture coat the tire treads and mud flaps. Balthazar had slowed once more, and she guessed it was to keep potion from spraying up onto the body too much with the rotation of the tires. She looked ahead, and the potion-road just kept on going.

"I've never actually seen PER ponies before," said Gavel.

"If you had, you'd have become a pony a lot sooner than you did," replied Sugar Spoon. Her ears twitched, and she looked over at the tinted glass of the back window. The sliding window was closed.

"Hey," she lowered her voice. "The PER: have you ever heard of them actually hurting humans? Like, shooting them or beating them up or anything?"

The two newfoals shook their heads. "That'd be rather counterproductive, I think," said Melody. She looked out at the town. They were passing from a residential area into a commercial district, and the road was rather deliberately clear. There were restaurants and big-box stores, all abandoned, all with vast, empty parking lots. She shivered.

"Also, they're almost entirely ponies, and ponies don't do stuff like that," added Gavel.

"So the most that they'd do is just ponify them. Balthazar and Melchior, I mean. If they were to get their hooves on them."

Gavel shrugged. "I guess, but they're not going to—" he froze, then turned his head to look at the native Equestrian with one eye. "Spoon, what are you thinking?"

"We can save them!" she said, trying to keep her voice quiet just in case. "We can save them from themselves, just like Princess Celestia wants to do! All we have to do is figure out how to expose them to potion before they can react."

"Princess Celestia doesn't want that!" hissed Melody. "She's denounced the PER publically, many times! They're labeled an extremist group, just like the HLF! She's been very clear that ponification should always be a personal choice."

"They can come to Equestria with us! They can be happy, beyond their wildest dreams! All of Balthazar's anger and all of Melchior's regret? We can free them from that! From all that pain!" She looked from one pony to the other, trying to build some enthusiasm for the idea. "Look: with all of the fighting and all the bloodshed, I know they're trying to help ponies in their own... distinctly human... way. Their hearts are in the right place, I get that. They're prolonging their own suffering to keep ponies safe from other humans. Why don't we return the favor? Why don't we help them?"

"Mel's right," said Gavel. "It's not how Princess Celestia would want it. The first thing she and Princess Luna would have to do in their conversion-dream is apologize on our behalf, and how would that make us look? We might as well have gotten our own PER legbands for doing it."

Sugar Spoon gritted her teeth and looked over her shoulder at the flat black window. Empty strip malls and used-car lots ambled past on either side, and after a moment the potion coating the road came to an end. The truck's purple tire-prints soon faded away as the tires shed the potion covering them.

"I want them to convert more than anything myself," said Gavel, "and I want to see them shed all that pain too. All we can do, though, is have faith in them and be their friend. That's what the princesses are doing; I think we should follow their example."

Melody stepped up and nuzzled the unicorn. "Me too. You know what gives me comfort? I wouldn't bring it up while they're around, but... I've been trying to picture them as ponies. What they'd look like, where they'd choose to go, what they'd end up doing with their lives... try as I might, I can't picture them not being happy."

Sugar Spoon tried not to smile, and failed. She chuckled once and shook her head. "So you meant it when you said you think Balthazar'd make a handsome stallion?"

Melody giggled and nodded. "Take it from a former human; I know a handsome fellow when I see it. And Melchior would be a pretty mare, I bet."

"A shame about Gaspar, though," sighed Gavel.

At that, Sugar Spoon gave a small, mysterious smile.

"I wouldn't worry too much about him," she said.

* * *

Inside the cab, Balthazar was fuming.

"We're going to need a new Gaspar," he grumbled. "Fucking wonderful. I just know we're going to get some jagoff from Pennsylvania or the Carolinas who got his team wiped and needed to be offloaded on someone else."

"Yeah, yeah, glass half empty, I know," said Melchior. "We're gonna have to work on your charm a bit, aren't we?"

"Goddamn HLF," said Balthazar. "You know, these ponies get all up on Celestia's jock every chance they get, but if she's so great then why doesn't she do something about the people trying to kill her little yes-men, you know? It'd make our jobs a hell of a lot easier, if nothing else."

Melchior shrugged. "She moves in mysterious ways?" she offered.

Balthazar checked the mirrors—all three of them—for the tenth time in as many minutes. Salisbury was deserted, and even with the lawns around the office parks growing wild and the blue sky above, it seemed gray and decayed from the lack of people around.

"Only because she likes to see us twist in the wind. Humans, I mean. And humans killing humans? Hell, if she'd been watching us on the bridge she probably would've started stroking herself."

Melchior stuck out her tongue. "Don't be gross, Balth," she said. After a moment, she sighed and picked up the CB handset from the radio bolted to the side of the center console. "Guess we should check in, just in case shit goes bad here."

"It won't go bad," said Balthazar, taking his eyes off the road to give her a meaningful look.

Melchior just shrugged again and keyed the handset. "Dispatch, Dispatch, Railroad Seven-Three, come in, over."

A female voice from Railroad headquarters crackled over the pickup's door speakers. "Seven-Three, this is Dispatch, go ahead, over."

"Dispatch, please advise teams on the eastern shore that Salisbury is believed to have a strong PER presence along the bypass, how copy, over?"

"Seven-Three, Dispatch copies PER presence in Salisbury. Is that your twenty? Over."

"Sure is. We'll call once we're clear. Seven-Three out."

"It's bugging me," said Balthazar. "PER shouldn't be out this far east."

"Why not?" asked Melchior.

"'Cause there're no humans here anymore," he said. "The HLF, sure, they're trying to play goalie for all these ponies making a run for the border, but if you're looking for humans to po—"

There was a loud thunk and the entire windshield went purple.

"Shit!"

Balthazar startled, but accelerated, keeping the wheel steady. He turned on the windshield wipers and managed to clear enough of the stuff off of the glass to see again. Through the thin streaks of potion left by the wipers, he saw two pegasi flying ahead of the pickup, a vial of potion in each of their mouths.

Melchior pulled off her watch cap, unbuckled her seatbelt, and twisted around to fish behind her seat. Her hand finally closed around the gas mask she was looking for and she brought it into her lap. She started to loosen the straps, keeping an eye on the side window.

"Are we shooting?" she asked.

"Brandish, then shoot if they don't disengage," said Balthazar. The rhythmic, frantic flicking of the windshield wipers was the only sound in the cab for a couple of moments as she pulled the mask on and sealed it to her face.

"Just keep it steady," she said, her voice sounding hollow and detached through the respirator. Balthazar nodded and Melchior rolled down the window. She brought up her rifle from its resting place between the seat and the door and leaned out of the window, unfolding the buttstock and shouldering the weapon. She aimed directly at the right-hand pegasus.

"Stand down!" she shouted over the rush of wind past her ears. "Stand down or be fired upon. We're not stopping."

The yellow pegasus flipped onto his back and spit out the vial, which was dashed against the windshield. The wipers quickly cleared it out of the way.

"We advise you to stop, Railroad," the pegasus shouted back. "We have a spike strip up ahead."

"Bullshit!" cried Melchior. "You couldn't have set up that fast."

"We have feelers; we've known you were coming since you passed through Easton," replied the pegasus evenly, adding "We really would hate to see your vehicle flip over."

Melchior considered their options for a moment. "Make some distance now and tell your friends to do the same," she said. "If we see any potion, we're shooting. We see more than one pony within three hundred meters, we're shooting. If I so much as think I'm going to sneeze, we're shooting."

The pegasus nodded once, then tapped his comrade on the shoulder. The two flew off in formation, and Melchior lowered her weapon.

"Was that PER?" asked Melody's voice from the back. Melchior ignored her and slid back down into her seat, rolling the window back up.

"They said they have a spike strip deployed," she said to Balthazar.

"Son of a bitch. So we're stopping?"

"They're already watching us, and besides, what're we gonna do? Change a tire twenty feet from a PER blockade?"

"All right, but the second it looks like we're gonna lose control of the situation, start putting them down. Don't hesitate." He pressed on the brakes, hard, and three solid thumps were heard on the back window of the cab. The pickup came to a stop. Leaving the engine running, Balthazar brought the pickup into neutral and fetched his own gas mask from behind the seat, putting it on and sealing it as Melchior had done.

The two humans put on their protective-hearing headsets. Balthazar closed his left hand around his Galil and looked to Melchior, who had a hand on her door handle. His heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his tongue.

They flung the doors open simultaneously and stepped down onto the road, staying next to the truck and behind the doors. Melchior began scanning for pony-colors among the drab gray backdrop, her rifle up and ready. Balthazar listened silently for a moment. All was quiet. He knocked twice on the body of the truck.

"Senator, Equestria, you're up," came his tinny voice. "Get over here. Melody, you stay put."

"That hurt, you know," grumbled Gavel as he and Sugar Spoon hopped out of the truck and walked over to the man.

"You two wanna save lives so bad, well here's your chance," said Balthazar, taking a moment to look up in the sky. "The PER's here, in town. They had some folks watching the through-road after all."

"They're not going to hurt you," said Sugar Spoon.

"It's not our lives I'm talking about—it's theirs," said the man, his voice growing cold. "Mel and I are ready to fight if we have to, but you can keep it from coming to that."

"What do you want us to do?" asked Gavel. A gentle, warm breeze picked up and blew through his mane. It felt good.

"You two are the diplomats here, so talk to them. Go to the intersection up ahead and stand there in the open. They'll get the message. Get them to pull the spike strip up ahead and let us go through. If they do—and if they don't try to make a move on us—then we can keep this from getting bloody."

"Humans are one thing, but you would kill ponies?" asked Sugar Spoon.

"Oh, I see!" said the man, his face hidden behind the gas mask and smoked glass of the eyepieces. "Killing humans is fine and dandy, but when we draw down on ponies, ohh, that's too far!" His sigh was amplified by the respirator. "Look, we don't have time for this. They're PER. They're zealots, just like the guys on the bridge. If there's a snowball's chance in hell of them listening to reason, you'll have to find it. It's more than what we gave the HLF, Equestria."

Balthazar waved them along with his rifle, taking up a defensive stance once they'd cleared the door. Gavel and Sugar Spoon walked out ahead of the truck, down the center of the road.

The gray earth-pony looked over at Sugar Spoon. The green unicorn had a smile on her face.

"What're you so happy about?" he asked.

"This is our chance!" she said. "We can get them ponified."

Gavel's ears flattened. "If the talks go bad, or if the truck gets rushed, they'll open fire and kill ponies first," he hissed. "You don't want that, do you?"

"Of course not!" she said. "Besides, I never said anything about them getting ponified right now."

"Huh? What're you talking about?"

The idling engine of the pickup faded from earshot, and there was only the clopping of their hooves on the pavement. The two ponies stopped.

"You'll see," she said quietly.

It was a T intersection, with a boarded-up strip mall running along one side and the side road opposite. Gavel and Sugar Spoon saw a midnight-blue earth-pony mare approach them from a mattress store across the street. Through the plate-glass windows of the place, they could see three or four other ponies of various colors looking on, but making no move to join her.

She stopped in front of them, bowing her head. "Hello," she said. "My name is Cool Shade, with the Ponification for Earth's Rebirth. Happy to meet you!"

Sugar Spoon grinned. "Hi there, Cool Shade! I'm Sugar Spoon, Equestrian-born, and this is Gavel, a newfoal."

Gavel looked down and saw a band of fabric the exact color of potion around her leg, with the initials "PER" carefully stenciled onto it in white block letters. "We're here to negotiate you letting the humans through with us," said Gavel.

"Oh, of course!" said Cool Shade with a bright smile. "We can get them ponified and then all of you can be on your way!"

"Er, no, you don't understand," he said. "They don't want to be ponified. They're helping us get to the Barrier, and—"

"We know that, silly! They're Railroad, right? The HLF certainly wouldn't be tooling around here with ponies in tow! Well, we don't really have a problem with the Railroad as an organization, since they help ponies and all, but... well... you know! We have our principles to consider."

"You can let them by, can't you?" asked Gavel. "Just this once? If you don't yield, they're going to attack."

"Besides, they'll have to come back this way somewhere around here to get back to DC, maybe you can tag 'em then," offered Sugar Spoon, earning her a jab in the ribs from Gavel. The unicorn giggled.

"What team are they?" asked the PER pony.

"Huh?

"Which Railroad team are they?"

"Seven-Three," said Sugar Spoon.

Cool Shade's eyebrows lifted. "Ooh, what an honor for them to be making a trip this far south! Though I guess humans have pretty much given up the ghost on Delaware at this point. Oh well!" She giggled, and Gavel gave her a stern look.

"I don't think they're bluffing," he said. "They have very strong convictions."

"Well so do we!" she said. "And while I'm quite sure they're not above shooting innocent ponies who are only trying to help—they are humans, after all—it would be remiss of us not to spread the gift of ponification to all of the princesses' future subjects!"

Cool Shade then tapped a hoof to her chin and looked up at the sky. "Besides," she said, "if word got out that my chapter's gone soft on humans, we might get reassigned to conversion duty in the middle of nowhere!"

"I figured there would be an impasse here," said Sugar Spoon, "and you know, I've been giving it some thought. Let me know how this sounds..."

* * *

Melchior and Balthazar kept scanning the area for ponies trying to sneak up on them, paying careful attention to the sky. Fortunately, in the wake of the fog the sky had opened up to a deep, cloudless blue.

"What're they doing up there?" muttered Balthazar, peeking over the top of the pickup's door. "What's taking so long?"

"Dunno," said Melchior. "Don't get sidetracked in watching them, though. Keep your head on a swivel."

The young man scoffed, smiling under his mask. "And just who are you tellin' that to again?"

They both chuckled, keeping their rifles raised as they scanned.

* * *

The spike strip at the culvert bridge was barely out of the way before Railroad 7-3 barreled past, leaving the PER checkpoint and Salisbury in their dust.

In the back of the truck, Gavel glared silently at Sugar Spoon, who said nothing and only smiled back. Melody looked from one pair of eyes to the other and back again.

"Well?" she asked, stretching her wings a bit. "What happened? How'd you do it? Don't keep me in suspense!"

She could see that Gavel was rather unpleased. "Let's just say Spoon has a knack for what the PER likes to hear," he said.

Sugar Spoon took it as a compliment and closed her eyes, nodding her head sagely.

A gust of wind tousled Melody's mane, and she folded her wings quickly to prevent catching a drift of air. "We seem to be going rather fast," she said.

"I bet the humans want to get as far away from this place as possible," said Gavel.

Civilization receded from the roadsides, giving way to trees and overgrown fields of weed-choked crops. After several miles, Melody's stomach began to growl. She gingerly tapped on the back window with a hoof. The window slid open, and Melchior leaned into view.

"We haven't forgotten," she said. "We're stopping."

Railroad 7-3 pulled off the road onto a rather lush green field. The ponies hopped down from the truck and the humans got out of the cab, but they had their weapons with them. Their gas masks and hearing protection were also still on. Melody asked if anything was wrong.

"Just stay where you are," said Balthazar quietly. "All of you." He stopped several paces away from them, his rifle in his hands. Melchior pointed to Sugar Spoon, her other hand on her own weapon.

"Open your mouth," she ordered.

Sugar Spoon gave a confused look to her fellow ponies, then sat down on her haunches and opened her mouth.

"Wider."

Sugar Spoon stretched her mouth open as far as it would go.

"Lift your tongue."

The unicorn hesitated.

Melchior's voice grew threatening through the respirator. "Stop trying to think of a way out of this and lift your tongue!"

Sugar Spoon visibly hemmed and hawed with herself before spitting out a vial onto the grass. The vial was corked, and contained a familiar-looking purple fluid.

Melchior shouldered her rifle. "Get clear. Cover your ears."

The three ponies scrambled out of the way and brought their forelegs up over their heads just in time to muffle the sound of Melchior blasting open the vial with a single shot. The potion slid harmlessly down the blades of grass and into the soil.

The woman exhaled and safetied her rifle, slinging it and pulling off her earmuffs and gas mask. Balthazar did the same behind her.

Melchior waited until Sugar Spoon had worked up the nerve to make eye contact with her again. The other two ponies sidled away from the unicorn quietly, averting their eyes.

The woman knelt by the unicorn and brought her chin up with a finger.

"This wasn't our first dance with the PER," she said gently. "We've been able to make eight deliveries for a reason."

"Are you mad?" asked Sugar Spoon quietly, her eyes huge and fearful.

Melchior shook her head. "We used to get mad," she said, "but now we can sympathize. Ponies care, and they show it in many ways. Tough love, right?" She gave a small smile. "Humans care too, though; it's why the Railroad exists." Gavel and Melody relaxed a bit, and came to sit down by Sugar Spoon while Melchior spoke and Balthazar brought over the three sacks and two MREs.

"If we became ponies, what then?" she continued. "What about all of the others who would have come after, who now get hurt trying to make it to the barrier on their own? For us, who have this... unique skillset, getting ponified seems rather selfish, don't you think? There's still fighting to be done, fighting for a good cause, on the behalf of good people. I know you think it's horrible and all, but playing by Equestria's rules on Earth can get you killed. There are very few people who actually want to shoulder this burden, so please, let them do it."

Balthazar remained quiet, and returned once more with a rolled-up green army blanket, which he unfurled in the warm afternoon breeze and let settle on the ground. Everyone sat down on the blanket and began to eat.

"I mean, take Balth for example," said Melchior, jerking a thumb at her comrade. "Sure, he's surly, and he's afraid to be happy, but when it comes to a throwdown, he's definitely someone you want on your side."

The young man grumbled while everyone else had a laugh in the sunlight.

5. Assateague

And the songs that I have sung
Echo in the distance
Like the sound
Of a windmill goin' 'round
Guess I'll always be a soldier of fortune

-Deep Purple, "Soldier of Fortune"

The two remaining members of Railroad 7-3 had another shift change after lunch, with Melchior taking the wheel for the first time that trip while Balthazar climbed into the back with the ponies. It was turning into a lovely afternoon, and cirrus clouds materializing on the highest vaults of sky promised a cool, pleasant sunset.

Both of the humans were more relaxed, and that in turn helped the ponies be at ease. No longer seating himself on the ammunition crate, Balthazar instead chose to sit on the truckbed itself, down with the ponies and more out of the way of the numbing wind flying over the roof of the cab.

The scenery was trees and grass and open fields now, no more shopping centers or office parks. Gavel in particular found himself invigorated by his surroundings. His legs wanted to stretch out and run. He wanted to see how fast and how far he could go, to just run and run and run until he collapsed, exhausted and happy, to take a nap wherever it was he fell. He thought about the scenes of Equestria that were shown on Princess Celestia's TV broadcasts, picturing them, and his heart leapt with anticipation. Oh, to run there, with his wife and his two sons, over an impossibly green hill made of stuff he could now eat! He grinned at the thought of it.

It was only an hour or so away, he reminded himself. It was so close now. He looked over his two friends, and could see the excitement written on their faces as well. It would be a homecoming for all of them.

Balthazar was making conversation to pass the time, a bit of his gruff edge gone. Sugar Spoon was glad to see it, and more glad to see he was incorporating ponification into the discussion now. She hoped the seed of curiosity had been planted, the first vestiges of interest. After having heard Melchior mention it, she too found herself wishing she could be a fly on the wall of his conversion dream.

"What were you doing, Melody, before you got ponified?"

The pink-maned pegasus looked down at her red hooves, embarrassed. "I was a senior in college."

"Where'd you go?"

"...Georgetown."

"Huh, no kidding! What was your major?"

Melody looked up at him and cocked her head. His features seemed softer than they had before. "Wh-what does it matter now?" she asked. "I'm leaving."

Balthazar smiled just a little and leaned his rifle up against his shoulder. "I was a freshman at Georgetown before taking on my... current position. I was just wondering if maybe I'd seen you before."

Melody let her mane fall over her eyes, ashamed for having questioned him. "Foreign Service in Culture and Politics," she said quietly.

"Oh, so you were the diplomat after all!" he said. "And this whole time I thought it was the senator over here. Maybe you can land a job talking to griffins or whatever."

Gavel snorted. Sugar Spoon giggled.

"What were you going there for?" asked Melody.

The man's eyebrows raised. "Me?"

"Yeah, you!" she said with a laugh. "I told you my major, now you tell me yours."

Balthazar looked over to Gavel and Sugar Spoon, who were smiling at him. "Well, you don't have to declare until your junior year, but I was thinking anthropology. Talk about a program with no future now, huh?"

He chuckled, but did so alone. The ponies looked on sadly at him, a young man with a rifle, black gloves on his hands, kneepads on his legs, and a headset around his neck. Dried brown streaks of blood were on his forearms and smudges of black road-dirt were on his face. He was the strife of humanity given form, anger and resolve and fatigue, the deadliest creature to have ever existed, so fearless and resentful that they even used their own deaths as a statement of defiance.

He saw their looks and let out a breath. "Well, it's true enough, ain't it?" he said with a shrug. "No future. Man, Tasmania's gonna be interesting times. I wonder if ponies will line up along their side of the last bits of the Barrier to see what happens."

Sugar Spoon grimaced in distaste and stuck out her tongue. Balthazar threw up his hands.

"Oh, what, do ponies not even have morbid curiosity now? I'm not saying it'll be a day of streamers and party hats—though the way some ponies have looked at me in the past, who knows—but when there's a car accident, you slow down to look at it. You can't not... right?"

The road hummed by beneath them for a time. Balthazar frowned and looked away to study his rifle.

"Stop looking at me like that," he said quietly.

Three taps came on the back window. Balthazar set his weapon aside and swiveled around to slide open the window.

"Dispatch called," said Melchior from inside the cab. "Sounds like the pegasi are looking out for us on this run. Apparently HLF pickets have been spotted along the entrances to Ocean City. We'll be diverting south. We should be able to drop the ponies off on Assateague."

Balthazar nodded and closed the window, turning back around and leaning back once more.

"More HLF?" asked Gavel.

The young man nodded. "We're not out of the woods yet," he said. "In fact, we'll be entering the woods rather shortly."

"More fighting?" Sugar Spoon's ears drooped.

Balthazar shook his head. "Not this time. On the bridge we didn't have much of a choice; this time we got advance warning." He sighed. "They took Ocean City, though... that was a major ferry point for ponies. I guess after Delaware became uninhabitable the fellas at Rehoboth just shimmied south a ways."

Melody craned her neck up to look over the roof of the truck. The very top of the Barrier was just starting to come into view, seeming to shift out of the stuff of a sky like a mirage, an orange-pink dome with the oily iridescent shimmer of a soap bubble. A rush of excitement shot through her.

"Well, fuck it, let 'em," he continued. "Pretty soon there'll be too much land for them to cov—"

"I see it!" cried Melody, pointing a hoof ahead.

Gavel and Sugar Spoon jumped to their hooves, rushing past Balthazar to stand up on the ammunition crate and look past the truck's off-road lights.

"Wow, it's huge!" said Gavel. "We're still miles from the coast."

"It's a sight for sore eyes, that's for sure," added Sugar Spoon.

Balthazar didn't bother looking; he'd seen it eight times before.

* * *

Railroad 7-3 exited Route 50 and moved south towards Berlin. The ponies in the back were fit to be tied. Melody even risked dancing about on the truck bed.

"Whee, Equestria, Equestria, here we come!" she chanted in a singsong voice.

"It's a little early to be jumping for joy," said Balthazar, his rifle now down in his lap. "The job's not done yet."

"Gavel, get on up and bust a move! You're gonna see your family soon! Doesn't that make you wanna dance?"

Balthazar frowned. "Hey, are you listening to me?"

"Woo! You go, pony! Shake your groove th—"

Her vision suddenly filled with Balthazar's face. His brown eyes flashed dangerously.

"Sit down and be quiet," he said through clenched teeth.

The pegasus's ears drooped and her hind legs gave out from under her, dropping her butt onto the bed. The mood had been effectively killed.

"I'm not gonna have you flying out of the back of this truck this close to the end." he muttered, moving back to his spot on top of the crate. "HLF everywhere and we lose a pony to a broken neck delivered via pothole. Yeah, that'd look great for our track record."

Melody stuck her tongue out at Balthazar. "You're mean."

"No, I'm careful. This is dangerous stuff we're doing, and you ponies are far from invincible. Reputation is—"

"Yeah yeah, reputation is everything." Melody lied down and rested her chin on a foreleg.

Balthazar snorted and shook his head with a smile. "And you're my age? Listen to you."

"Relax, Balth," said Sugar Spoon, taking on a satisfied smirk to see the young man bristle at the nickname. "Things have a way of working out. You just have to have faith in Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. They'll take care of us. All of us! Even you."

He fixed her with a glare. "Yeah, it was a great job they did keeping Gaspar from getting his ticket punched."

Sugar Spoon took on an authoritative air, crossing her forehooves in front of her where she lay and holding her head up high. "If only you knew," she said with a sigh. After a moment, she tempered it with a smile, thinking a private thought.

Balthazar looked at her sourly, but said nothing. The pickup rocked a bit on the uneven road.

A pristine cornfield flew by the shoulderless road in a blur, the mighty stalks in full bloom with plump ears peeking out from silky husks. Melody felt her mouth water. They were almost close enough to touch. The young man, too, gazed at the field while he thought to himself.

"I guess he's just going on ahead of us," he said at last. "It's not much of a choice, when you really get down to it. Either you go pony or you die."

Sugar Spoon shrugged. "What can I say? Princess Celestia isn't in the habit of losing." She then gave him a pointed look. "Besides, choosing death is not completely unprecedented, it would seem."

Balthazar held his rifle up to his chest. "Some just ain't cut out for it," he said. "Nothing more to say."

The unicorn's golden eyes twinkled.

"We'll see," she said.

* * *

Berlin came and went without incident, and soon Railroad 7-3 was eastbound once more. Now directly ahead of them, the Barrier grew and grew, seeming to rise like a massive, dim second sun from the horizon. Balthazar had stiffened up again, casting off his relaxed posture and occupying his time more with scanning the road ahead than with conversation. The other ponies chattered excitedly behind him, but none of them could help but marvel at the Barrier's overwhelming presence. Even Melchior, down in the cab, had to keep reminding herself to keep her eyes on the road.

The sight of the Barrier had sapped something vital from the humans. Melchior had slowed the truck, as if to delay their arrival, and Balthazar was grim and taciturn, slouched against the cab, the roof supporting most of his weight.

Gavel sensed it more than anyone else. He took a step toward the young man. "You all right, son?"

The man was breathing slower. "It doesn't care, does it?" he asked, trying to keep his focus on the sides of the road. "It just eats everything up. It's eating up the whole world. Everything will be gone, and it just doesn't care. It's just a big shiny tumor." He laughed once. "And ponies love to say that we're the monsters, even as that Barrier pushes us into extinction. At least the HLF is showing them what loss feels like. Maybe they'll even take a lesson from it."

Sugar Spoon opened her mouth to speak, but she was stayed by Melody's hoof on her shoulder.

"The HLF are fighting a war they can't win, Balthazar," said Melody. "The only thing they're doing is spreading more pain."

"You think they don't know that?" he said, his tone starting to cut once more. "Fucking civilians. You just don't get it. Never did. I thought I explained all this on the bridge. This ain't about winning or losing—for them or for us."

The ponies stared at him blankly. Melody lowered her head and scraped her hoof along the padding beneath her.

"Let's say we could beat back the Barrier. Let's say we could push it back into nothingness and cut Equestria off from Earth completely. Let's say we managed to do this. What then? Do you think the fighting would stop?"

Gavel shook his head. "Of course it wouldn't," he said.

"Exactly! This is what we do. The fighting is the thing, not the winning or the losing. There's only satisfaction in victory if you fight for it. A victory handed to you isn't a victory at all, and that's what ponies are doing: just giving humans an out, a way to duck their responsibilities, no muss, no fuss. Senator? Melody? You're not winning anything, you're escaping, and there's a world of difference. You're refugees, off to live soft lives as soft creatures because it suits you. Well, you're welcome to it, but it doesn't suit everyone. If there's no fighting to be done in Equestria, then we fighters will have to have it out here."

They looked at his back quietly. Sugar Spoon was scowling, and Balthazar seemed to sense it.

"I've been in shitholes, Equestria. Real ones. You think this place is hell? The eastern coast of the United States?" The corners of his mouth tugged up in a smirk, and he shook his head. "Oh no. This place is goddamn paradise, trust me. Live a year or two as a human in a real shithole and these cute concepts of winning and losing you have will start to seem really fucking silly, I guarantee it. You don't know victory and defeat."

The unicorn bit her lip and tried to keep her temper under control. "Then how would I know it, O mighty human soldier?"

"I know you're just being sarcastic, but my suggestion? If you really wanted to know? Get some pony buddies together and go do what we do. Kill some HLF, keep some humans from getting ponified by the PER, turn away a raid by scavengers and looters. Get bloody by stabbing an enemy or closing the wound of a friend. See people live and die by the actions you take. See gratitude in the eyes of those you've helped. Feel the bond formed with people you've fought alongside and lost along the way. You can't pretend or play at it; there must be risk, and you must fight. It's fulfillment unlike anything else, and if it's not to be found in Equestria, then Equestria doesn't have anything for me. Once you've tasted it, that's you. You're done. The white picket fence and the minivan and all the rest of it will be ruined for you forever. You would mourn the loss of Earth like I do."

Balthazar's head dipped for a moment, and they saw his shoulders raise in a deep breath. He lifted his head and stared down the looming wall of magic up ahead.

"I don't care if ponies think I'm a monster," he says. "I do right by them, even as that fucking Barrier takes everything from me and Equestria renders me obsolete. I'm never going to pretend to be someone else just to keep on living. That's what a coward would do."

* * *

The magical radiation from the Barrier had done strange and wondrous things to Assateague Island.

The beaches facing the Atlantic Ocean were gone, replaced by a thriving forest, a maze of conifer and evergreen trees to rival the size of trees primeval, all standing over a carpet of soft rust-colored pine needles. The close canopy blocked the sun, shading the passage of the pickup truck as it ambled between the trees, throwing dust trails into the shafts of light. There, so close to Equestria's wall, and shielded by the sun, everything was instead lit by that warm, otherworldly radiance of pink-orange. Melchior felt as though she were in Equestria already.

At his own insistence, Balthazar had taken the wheel just before crossing the Sinepuxet. Melchior, perplexed, didn't protest, but it still worried her. His eyes had been sunken and bloodshot, and the ponies were ill at ease. Things must have been said; that was the only explanation for it. Usually Balthazar didn't talk much with ponies for that exact reason. They must have gotten to him somehow.

Still, he was alert and professional in his work as always, moving them carefully along through the forest, the roads of men now behind them. After the bridge, they had swing north to meet the curvature of the Barrier where it met the shore, and even as it got closer, both Melchior and Balthazar could start to feel that eerie probing presence of the magic coming off of the Barrier.

The ponies offered no conversation to her there in the bed of the truck, a combination of awe and moroseness taking their chattiness from them. They were already thinking of Equestria, she could tell. They had neither eyes nor ears for anything else. Ponies always got this way at the end of a delivery, especially the newfoals. It was real, it was happening, they were about to leave the place of their birth and never return.

She looked down at her rifle. She wanted to put it down to help the ponies relax, but at the same time the weight of it was a comfort to her, like it was an anchor that would keep her from drifting away. It also helped her center: the magical radiation of the Barrier did strange things to humans, and none of it was for the better. Aside from the mild itching and painless throbbing in the fingers and toes, there could also be hallucinations and imagined sounds, which was usually the signal not to go any further. To approach any closer would result in permanent damage, and less than a couple of minutes in close proximity was invariably fatal. She had to keep her concentration, just in case Balthazar wasn't keeping his.

The itching was already starting up. Melchior tried not to scratch in front of the ponies because it worried them and made them want to part company while still too far away. They were so thoughtful and innocent; every delivery they tried it, just so she could have relief from the Barrier sooner, she and Balthazar and, once upon a time, Gaspar.

Now Railroad 7-3 was close enough for the Barrier's light to fill in directly from the border. There was no horizon anymore, just a wall of shifting, beautiful, glowing iridescence, backlighting the trees and throwing them into silhouette. Her fingertips began to throb. It felt like nighttime.

Just a bit further, and the ponies would be delivered. Another job would be done. Then they would go back and have to do it all over again.

Melchior's shoulders slumped. The thought of it made her tired. She tried not to make eye contact with any of the ponies; she imagined she probably didn't look much better than Balthazar at this point.

Finally, the truck came to a stop. The ponies were quick to dismount with their sacks, but the humans were not. Melchior slowly stepped down from the tailgate rather than jumping off, and Balthazar did not leave the cab at all.

The young woman let out a breath. "Well, this is it," she said. "No ferries, no air-carriages. You can just walk into Equestria from here. I think you know the way." It took some effort to smile, but she managed it. The throbbing was pretty bad—she could feel it in her knuckles, like a strange twinge of arthritis that forgot to bring along the pain.

All three ponies hugged her at once, and Melchior had to fight back tears as she knelt down to receive them.

"Stay safe," said Gavel. "I, uh... I know I'm not in the Senate anymore, but if it means anything to you, I'd like to thank you for your service on its behalf, both to the United States and to the Conversion Bureaus."

"Take care, Gavel," said the woman. "I just hope ponies don't have the same taste for bureaucracy that we did."

The older pony laughed. "Whether they do or not, I'm done with it. I'm going to live a simple life."

It was Sugar Spoon's turn. "Goodbye, Melchior," she said quietly. "I couldn't do what you do. I couldn't stay here and see ponies hurt and humans killed over and over again, so whatever strength you have that allows you to endure it, I hope it holds out for as long as you need it to."

"Me too," said Melchior. "'If not me, then who?' That's what I keep telling myself."

"Princess Celestia and Princess Luna never asked for nor assumed there would be humans willing to do this," said the unicorn. "You have their gratitude, and that is not a guess on my part. I know you do, and if I could only tell you..."

"It's okay. Just don't run that line by Balth, yeah?"

The two of them giggled. "But seriously," whispered Sugar Spoon, leaning in towards her, "Do not feel bad for Gaspar. If anything, he's feeling bad for you. Just keep that in mind."

"I... don't understand."

Sugar Spoon smiled, but said nothing more.

"Goodbye, fellow Mel," said Melody. "You're welcome to come help me and Laura paint the town red when you finally join us."

Melchior gave a noncommittal chuckle and patted the pegasus's head. Melody closed her eyes to the pleasant sensation.

"There's one last thing to give you all before you go," said the woman. Three pairs of ears perked up in curiosity.

"What's that?" asked Gavel.

"My name," she said with a warm smile. "My real name. It's kind of a tradition the Railroad has. Where you're going, you don't have any need for code names or radio lingo—nor for keeping secrets from the HLF—so what's the harm, right?"

Sugar Spoon and Gavel both grinned while Melody hopped up and down. "Oh, yeah, tell us tell us tell us!" squealed the pegasus.

"My name is Melissa."

"Melissa!" laughed Melody. "So you're still a Mel even now, after all this!"

Melchior laughed with her. "Yep! Sure am! I'm still a fellow Mel—at least until you figure out your own new name."

Gavel looked over at the pickup. The windows were rolled up, and through them, he could see Balthazar sitting completely motionless, looking ahead, his hands still on the wheel.

"What about him?" he asked. "What's Balthazar's real name?"

Melchior looked sadly over her shoulder. "That's... something he'd have to tell you himself," she said. "I wouldn't take that away from him. The best I can do is give him one last shot at it."

She stood back up and rapped a knuckle on the pickup's window. Balthazar cracked open the door and leaned his head towards her.

"I gotta pee," she said. "Why not take a walk and say your goodbyes, Balth?"

Surprisingly, Balthazar made no protest, instead quietly getting out of the truck and taking his rifle with him. He shouldered past Melchior and nodded once to the ponies. "Let's go," he said, not sounding very enthused, "I'm curious to see how close I can get anyway."

Melchior smiled, putting a hand on his shoulder, then walked behind the nearest pine tree to tend to her business.

The young man led the way east, the glowing getting stronger as they moved closer. His skin was bathed in the orange-pink radiance, his brown eyes looking hazel under its intensity. Balthazar was itching terribly, but, like Melchior, he didn't indulge it with a scratch. He kept his head high, and walked on in silence.

"Anything you want to say to us?" asked Sugar Spoon.

"I'm a soldier, not an ambassador," said Balthazar with a sigh. "I'm not like Melody here." He cracked a brief smile. "Once we're all gone, I just hope that... humans, on the whole, will be remembered fondly. I want to believe that some good comes out of all of this, that's all."

He never looked down at them while he spoke—he only looked ahead, challenging the Barrier with his eyes. Sugar Spoon's ears drooped.

"The newfoals will remember, I'm sure," said the unicorn, "and they will probably pass their heritage on to their own foals. Beyond that... we'll have to find out together." She smiled up at the man, even though he wouldn't see it.

A hollow ping caromed off the trees and met Balthazar's ears. He nodded once. "This is as far as I go," he said. "I'm starting to hear things."

Gavel's brow knit. "Wait, you heard it too? I just heard a little metal-type sound."

"Yeah, so did I," said Melody. "That wasn't a hallucination."

Balthazar's eyes widened and he spun around to look back at the truck.

Melchior leaned over to look past the tree she was crouched behind. She hadn't thought she was close enough to imagine sounds. Balthazar was waving frantically to her, though she couldn't quite hear wh—

There was an earsplitting boom, and Balthazar saw Melchior disappear in a fountain of dirt, wood chips, and dead pine needles. The tree she had been next to began to topple, groaning and crackling as it fell to earth.

"Mortar!" he shouted. He looked back at the ponies, who were frozen in place. The young man gritted his teeth and flailed his arms towards the Barrier, waving them on.

"Go! Go! Run!" he screamed, and from there they ran in separate directions: the ponies towards the Barrier, the man away from it.

Another mortar shell landed, this one nearer the ponies as they galloped for the safety of the Barrier. Balthazar slid to a stop next to the champagne-colored, bullet-riddled pickup, threw open the door, and leapt in, starting the engine and throwing it into reverse.

He looked at the steering column, his hand still on the shifter, the red needle hovering over the "R." A third mortar shell whistled down around the ponies, nearly knocking Melody off her hooves.

"Aw, fuck it," he whispered, and shifted the column down into drive instead. Without even bothering to close the door, he mashed down on the gas pedal, launching the pickup forward, straight for the Barrier.

Sugar Spoon panted, dropping her Conversion Bureau sack to lighten herself and make the mad dash for the Barrier easier. It had seemed so close just a few moments ago, and now it only seemed to be getting farther away...

The horn of Railroad 7-3 blared out in rapid bursts, Balthazar coming up quickly behind them, then overtaking them, skidding to a stop in front of them, cutting deep gashes in the carpet of pine needles.

"Get in, get in!" he shouted, pinwheeling his free hand out the open door. The three ponies leapt into the back, and Melody had barely touched her hooves down onto the truck's bed before Balthazar sped off again, a mortar tearing up the soil where they had been a fraction of a second ago.

The shockwave of it threw the ponies against the cab. Fighting to his hooves, Gavel pawed at the window latch until it finally depressed and the window slid open. Balthazar was headed straight for the Barrier, trees whipping by at hairline distances, and he was still accelerating.

"What are you doing?" shouted Gavel through the window.

"Those are mortars!" Balthazar shouted back, not taking his eyes off his path. "Those sons of bitches had us dialed in. They must've had an FO. They must be some right crazy bastards to be operating this close to the Barr—"

"But what are you doing?" asked the earth-pony again.

Balthazar turned to look at him. The man's left eye had gone milky white, and the iris of the other one had turned orange. The Barrier was starting to undo him.

"I'm doing my job," he said simply, a wild look coming over his face.

Four more mortars tried to find their mark on Railroad 7-3 during its last desperate sprint to the finish line. The ponies willed the truck to go faster. It was hard to judge distances with the Barrier; they were finding it had actually been quite a bit further to go. Balthazar finally stopped the truck thirty feet in front of Equestria's front door. The ponies leapt out, but Balthazar fell limply from the cab, getting to his hands and knees in the soft earth.

Balthazar coughed, hard and wet, and thin tendrils of something pink flew from his mouth. He brought up a hand; blood was collecting around the edges of each fingernails.

"It hurts so much, hah, holy shit, this really hurts bad." He laughed, which only caused another fit of coughing and pink discharge. Hairs fell from his head in a steady shower. He crawled to the rear wheel of the truck and sat up, resting his back against the tire.

The ponies gathered around him, oblivious to the mortars exploding nearby at regular intervals.

Balthazar's voice deepened as his throat began to swell shut. "What're you all doing?" he asked, "The Barrier's right there. Go on, it's what you wanted, right?" His breathing grew rapid. "Don't make us... fail our jobs... like this..." He swatted weakly at Sugar Spoon—or rather, in her general vicinity.

"Nice... dodge," he murmured, his voice now growing truly garbled. A couple of teeth flopped out of his mouth, bloody and whole. One fell, and one stuck to his bottom lip.

Sugar Spoon danced in place in a panic. "Gah, if only I still had the potion with me..."

It was taking Balthazar real effort to both speak and breathe now. "You think... I'd let... you do me... after Mel and Gas... went out like they did?" The right side of his face smiled while the left side hung limp. "I'd never hear... the end of it from 'em."

There was another metallic report from the mortar team hidden somewhere in the trees.

"HLF fuckers! I'll hold 'em off!" he gurgled, his hands closing around a rifle that wasn't there. "I'm gon..." the rest of the sentence was incoherent. Balthazar's head drooped, his chin on his chest.

"Balthazar..." said Melody.

"Josh," breathed the man. "My name's Josh."

"Josh, why did you—"

"Fade to white? What kin' bullsh't is this? I allus thought it'd be a fade t'bl—"

Balthazar's hands relaxed, and he didn't move any more. A mortar exploded so close by that it caused the truck to rock on its springs, jarring the human's body into slumping over onto its side on the ground. Clumps of dirt and fragments of upturned tree-roots fell in a shower on them.

Sugar Spoon hopped away. "Come on, we have to get out of here!" she shouted, and together, she and the two newfoals galloped the last few feet from Earth to Equestria.

6. Canterlot

She could take it back
She might take it back
Some day

-Pink Floyd, “Take It Back”

A brown earth-pony was awakened by a hoof on his shoulder, plucking him from strange places in his mind. He grunted and dug his snout further into the soft down pillow. It wasn't fair, he decided: pillows always seemed to feel best when you had to leave them behind.

The hoof shook him again, rougher this time.

"Rockheart, wake up!" whispered a gruff voice.

The pony rolled onto his back and cracked open his eyes. The few candles at either end of the room were barely enough to give him something by which to see. Opening them further seemed a feat of will beyond measure.

When he realized that the voice belonged to Sergeant Wheatgrass, it got a lot easier.

The young stallion startled and threw himself out of bed, standing at parade rest with his dark-brown mane down over his eyes. Sergeant Wheatgrass's steel shoes made nary a sound on the carpeted floor as the senior guardspony—himself with brown coat and dark-brown mane—moved around the bed to eye him from head to hock.

"Her Royal Highness Princess Luna has asked for you," said Wheatgrass quietly, so as not to disturb the rest of the row of sleeping ponies in the open-bay barrack room. "Police that mane and tail, armor up, and report to the antechamber of the throne room."

Rockheart cleared his throat. "Yes, sergeant," he said simply. With that, Wheatgrass turned and strode powerfully out of the room.

Rockheart flipped his mane back down along his neck and shook out the tangles in his tail. He then got busy making his bed, pulling the sheets and blanket tight with his teeth and smoothing out the wrinkles with his broad hooves. His thoughts drifted to his dream, and the stallion just gazed blankly at the bare stone wall of the barracks room while muscle memory did the work. He could barely remember it now, but boy did he have the impression that it had been a weird one.

His armor was in his hooflocker at the foot of the bed. Taking care to be as quiet as possible, Rockheart opened the latch and pulled out his cuirass, helmet, and shoes. He liked his armor, and the weight of it on his body. It had been two months since he'd joined up, and he still felt proud to wear it every day. He hoped that pride wouldn't diminish with time.

He donned the armor with practiced ease, stepping into his shoes and letting the segmented shroud at the back of the cuirass fall down onto his tail, the plates on the flank concealing the cutie mark that had given him his name. Rockheart was working in private on a trick where he flipped the helmet onto his own head by tossing it into the air with his teeth; he was sure it'd impress the other guardsponies once he'd mastered his eye-mouth coordination. After laying the helmet upside-down on the bed and lowering his head into it, he shook off the last remnants of sleep and walked out of the bay.

The royal palace of Canterlot was a massive, labyrinthine complex, and when Rockheart had first arrived he'd thought he'd never internalize the layout of it. Everypony had been quite understanding and helpful, however, especially when they were assaulted by the stallion's enthusiasm for the job. To his initial shock, even Their Royal Highnesses had come to know him, though as he came to learn more about them in turn, it only seemed natural. They knew everypony in the palace: their names, their families' names, their jobs, their families' jobs, where they lived, birthdays, anniversaries, everything. They were goddesses, he figured, so it'd be a trifle for them to remember such things. What was more important to him is that they, in their incredible power, took the time and care to remember at all.

He now walked the marbled, bannered corridors with confidence, though, a proper member of the Palace Watch. The floors and walls in the public areas of the palace were made of marble and the ceilings were vaulted in granite, so red runner carpets covered the center of the corridors. This keep the clopping and clacking of countless hooves and shoes from making it impossible to have conversations in the hallways.

There were three other ponies waiting in the antechamber when Rockheart arrived, guardsponies each. Two were slate-gray unicorns from the Sanctum Watch, one stallion and one mare, and the third, another stallion, was one of the white pegasi of the Sky Watch. Holding mostly ceremonial posts in close proximity to the princesses and their daily haunts, the Sanctum Watch wore gleaming silver armor, nice to look at but not much use otherwise. The Sky Watch, being the branch of the Royal Guard with the biggest public presence, had armor of thin polished brass, providing all of the brilliance of gold for a fraction of the weight, which was an important consideration for pegasi. The brown-coated earth-ponies of the Palace Watch—ponies like Rockheart—wore armor of matte brushed steel, thicker and heaver than the armor of their counterparts. It was functional and no-nonsense, bearing no jeweled accents or plumed brush along the helmet. Rockheart was rather proud of this fact; it felt like an acknowledgement of the physical strength and sensibility his kind had.

The Sanctum-Watch stallion had a rose-colored star on his chest piece, denoting his rank as a captain. Rockheart marched up to the unicorn and saluted smartly.

"Guardspony Rockheart reporting as ordered, sir."

The unicorn returned the salute. "Glad you're here, son. I'm Captain Moonwave." He gestured to the other two with a hoof. "This here is Guardspony Updraft and Guardspony Giving Grace," he said, indicating the pegasus and other unicorn respectively. "Now follow me, all of you."

To their mild surprise, instead of walking through the throne room, Captain Moonwave marched past them and started down the corridor which ran around the outside of the throne room's walls. The three junior guardsponies fell into step behind him, naturally falling into single-file progression.

Moonwave led them through the quiet stillness of the palace at night. All of the servants were home asleep, and most of the night-shift Palace Watch were manning the ramparts or the outer grounds. Soon, the marble of the floor beneath their hooves shifted in color from salmon to white. This denoted entry into the Sanctum, a place of study-rooms, arcane laboratories, compartmentalized libraries, and the personal living spaces of the Sun and the Moon. Strict noise discipline was observed even during daylight hours to assist studious ponies visiting the Sanctum.

After a bit of travel through the Sanctum, the four of them approached a nondescript arched wooden door with wrought-iron banding and a simple ring handle at mouth level. Two Sanctum-Watch unicorns stood at attention on either side of the door. The guard on the right saluted as they drew nearer.

Captain Moonwave returned the salute. Rockheart idly wondered if officers ever got sick of having to constantly do that. It hadn't been the first time.

"Is Her Royal Highness ready for them?" asked Moonwave.

"She said to send them in as soon as they got here, sir," replied the unicorn.

Moonwave shrugged. "Good enough for me," he said, and cocked his chin at the door. "Well, don't keep her waiting, ponies! I dunno what she wants with you, but once she's done with you, you can consider yourselves as you were." He nodded once to his collected subordinates, and then resumed his making his rounds through the Sanctum corridors.

The unicorn on the left used her magic to open the door, and the three visitors filed in. The door closed behind them, giving a nearly inaudible click.

The walls of Princess Luna's study were nothing but bookshelf, and each shelf was full to capacity. In the center of the room was a low mahogany writing desk with a stack of paper, a quill, and an inkwell, and seated on a cushion at the desk was Luna, Goddess of the Moon. A cheery fire crackled in the fireplace at her back, haloing her in warm, flickering light. Her mane seemed to be made of stardust, and her coat shimmered between dusky purple and near black as she moved.

She looked up at the three ponies before her, and in the instant those eyes lifted, all three ponies fell into a deep bow, bending a foreleg and dipping their heads low.

Rockheart intensely studied the fibers of the elaborate carpet next to his eyes, suddenly quite nervous, his heart pounding. What would the Night herself want with three low-ranking guardsponies? Where they in trouble? That was it, wasn't it? There had been something he'd missed in training! If only he'd studied the Royal Guard Hoofbook more closely, and had done a better job of acclimating to the whole—

"Please rise, guardsponies!" came Luna's soft voice. Rockheart had heard that Luna once used to be able to nearly knock ponies over with the power of her voice; he was glad she'd worked on toning that down.

The three of them came up to attention, locking their legs and lifting their heads in unison. Rockheart looked out of the corner of his eyes to the two others on his left. That had gone well, almost like they'd practiced together.

The princess tittered quietly, holding up a hoof to hide her mouth. "Oh, come now, be at ease," she said. "None of your officers are watching, nor are we at court; there is no need to keep up appearances here."

Rockheart relaxed, but not too much. Princess Luna was acting friendly enough, but his heart was still hopping around his ribcage. He was staying silent, and thankfully, none of the other two had spoken either. It was always a good idea to keep one's mouth shut when in doubt. That had been drilled into him way back when—

"Now then," said the alicorn, bringing a paper to the center of the desk with a hoof and looking down at it, "I have before me... Giving Grace, Rockheart, and... Updraft, is that correct?" She looked up at them, eyebrows lifted.

"I am Giving Grace, Your Royal Highness," said the unicorn mare, taking a step forward.

Rockheart took his cue from her. Uniformity was always good. "I am Rockheart, Your Royal Highness," he said, stepping forward as well.

The pegasus then stepped forward too. "I am Updraft, Your Royal Highness."

Princess Luna giggled again, looking less like a ruler of the night and more like a young mare after a night of bar-hopping. "How adorable you three are!" she laughed. "Please, please, we are all friends here; there is no need for the theatrics of parade in my humble little study. Call me Luna for tonight. It'll save us all some time." She gave a warm, disarming wink to them.

The brown earth-pony relaxed a bit more. She certainly seemed in a good enough mood, so that was a good sign.

Luna looked back down at her paper. "Now, on to the next question: all three of you were humans once, correct?"

The three guardsponies exchanged a quick look, nodding a little to each other, then Updraft said "Yes, Your—er, yes, Luna."

"Splendid! So we come to the final question before we get down to business: you three were all... warriors, back in your human lives? Soldiers?"

Again, the answer for all of them was yes.

Luna shifted the paper aside with a hoof and leaned forward a bit. "Now, this isn't a question I need answered—merely curiosity on my part—but I would be pleased to know your human names and where you served."

Giving Grace was only too happy to answer. "My name was Petra Eliopoulos," she said. "I was a truck driver in the Hellenic Army, 31st Mechanized Infantry Brigade."

Updraft cleared his throat, holding a hoof to his mouth, then said "Dhanesh Sawardekar, my beautiful princess. I was a radioman in the 26th Infantry Division, 9th Corps, Indian Army."

Rockheart hesistated before answering, trying to get his pulse under control. "I was... Kyle Webster, Third Infantry Division, United States Army. Eleven bravo."

"Hm!" exclaimed Luna. "Interesting. I suppose you are the one, then, who for a time worked on something called a..." she snuck a look back at the paper she'd slid to one side. "... a 'Railroad'?"

A deluge of rapid-fire memories flashed through Rockheart's head. Maintaining his composure, he nodded once. "That is correct, Luna."

"Outstanding. We will get to that later, but for now, I need the help of all three of you. Please, make yourselves comfortable."

Luna's long horn began to glow, and then Rockheart felt something soft bump up against his back hooves. He craned his neck back to see cushions being set down behind each of them. Needing no second bidding, the three of them sat, once again in accidental unison. Luna gave another amused smile at that.

"How does it feel to serve in Equestria?" she asked conversationally. "Tia and I are certainly honored that it was us you chose to serve."

"I do not regret it at all, my princess," said Updraft. Rockheart and Giving Grace both nodded at that.

"I don't think there was a better choice I could have made," said Giving Grace with a smile.

"Heh, fits me like a glove!" added Rockheart. "Er, well, so to speak."

Princess Luna giggled again. "So indeed! Were the magical alterations to your coats and manes and eyes rather odd? I've been rather curious for a human perspective on what it feels like having that first spell cast on them."

"It was..." Rockheart looked to the other two. "...tingly. Strange. It didn't feel bad, though! Brown probably suits me better than orange anyway." The other two ponies just chuckled and nodded.

"Good to hear," said Luna with a smile. "To business, then! The sooner we finish, the sooner you can get back to your beds, right?" She got up from the desk and began to pace along the edge of the room as she spoke. "My sister had visitors at court today who had come straight from the Barrier. They related a rather unfortunate ordeal that they had gone through involving the loss of an air-carriage and a gauntlet of dangers as put forth by the Human Liberation Front. There was an encounter with Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth as well, I understand. The three humans escorting them were members of what is known colloquially as the Railroad, a militia of sorts, given to taking ponies and Bureau supplies safely across inhospitable terrain. The three humans lost their lives. All of this happened across a stretch of road roughly one hundred miles long. One hundred miles from a Conversion Bureau to the Barrier, and all this takes place. It is worrying, as you may imagine."

The guardsponies remained silent. Luna gazed blankly at the bookshelf by her side for a moment before continuing.

"Tia and I have no jurisdiction in the human world. We cannot dictate how humans act and we cannot involve ourselves in, support, nor sanction any human-created organizations, whether they be for the benefit of newfoals or not." She sighed. "Would that we could, but we cannot take sides, even if the sides we would take are obvious to all.

"The ponies who visited us mentioned that the areas directly in front of the border are a sort of war zone, a hotbed of conflict for humans who feel that they have no place in Equestria, or that there is nothing for them here. Soldiers." She regarded them with sad eyes. As Rockheart looked into them, his heart truly settled. Kindness and regret were there, deep and smooth.

Luna gently stomped a hoof on the carpet. "But soldiers have come to Equestria, many of them, I am certain, and you three are proof of it! Even former members of this selfsame Railroad serving right here in the palace! Tia and I have determined that we must try to reach out to these souls, to find what keeps them there, or what repels them from here. When all is said and done, it must still be their decision and theirs alone to accept our offer, but if we can assuage the reservations even one human harbors, then it will have been worth it.

"We need your help, my stalwart guardsponies, to think as they think, to speak what they need to hear. Tia and I wish for you to recall your time as a human under arms and to give us insight into the warrior's mind. From this, we will fashion a new broadcast and provide it to all of the public-address media that have opened their resources up to Equestria. For your assistance, we can offer no reward beyond the satisfaction that you have helped potentially deliver some former comrades into the safety and fellowship of Equestria, and to ease this fear of peace that we ponies find so baffling."

The goddess's ears drooped, and her head lowered a bit. "I wish we could do more, believe me, but this is a matter for humans alone. We can only provide them the choice and the facts, as we ever have."

The moon goddess lifted her head, and a small smile played across her lips. "And the main fact is the same: we would like for them to choose Equestria."

Rockheart smiled and nodded at that. The other ponies did as well.

* * *

Elsewhere in the palace, Sugar Spoon and the two newfoals slept soundly in beds of silkbird down. They had thought it would be days, or perhaps weeks, before they could gain audience with either princess, but to their surprise they had been given some time to speak at the very next morning's court. In the meantime, Gavel, Melody, and Sugar Spoon had been put up as royal guests for the night. It had been quite an exhausting day, and nopony had trouble falling asleep, though the mood among them was somber over what they had witnessed.

Even as Princess Luna consulted the formerly-human guardsponies, Sugar Spoon awoke to find her coat and her bedspread awash in gentle pastel-blue light. As her eyes opened and focused, she beheld Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia, Goddess of the Sun and co-ruler of all Equestria, standing at her bedside, the light emanating from her restless, lambent mane.

The unicorn made to hastily bow, but some intuition stayed her. No, that would not be necessary. She tore her eyes away from the deity to look over at Gavel and Melody, both asleep in beds of their own in the guest room. She looked back to Celestia. Her normally radiant smile was tempered with sadness.

"Good evening, Your Royal Highness," whispered Sugar Spoon. She figured that, if Celestia wished for the newfoals to be awake, she would have had them awaken as well.

"Good evening to you too, Sugar Spoon of Fetlock," replied Celestia, also in a whisper.

"There... won't be any need for us at court tomorrow, will there?"

Celestia shook her head. "There was never a need; I just wanted you three to stay close for the night. We visited your dreams and the dreams of your companions. Luna and I have learned all we need to know. We are taking steps to mitigate the problem even now, as we speak."

Sugar Spoon looked down at the blanket, the colored light on it shifting and coalescing as Celestia's mane rippled slowly in the still air of the room.

"You almost told them," said Celestia. It was a statement, not a question.

The unicorn's gold eyes watered and she shut them tight. She struggled to keep her voice quiet. "I wanted to, princess! I wanted to so badly! I didn't want it to come to death for them, I wanted to see them as ponies, I wanted to see how happy and relieved they would be, I wanted them to visit me in Fetlock and... and thank me for setting them on the right path. If they had just asked... I... I-I tried to get them to bite, to ask, just so I would have the excuse. I'm sorry, princess!"

"You have nothing to be sorry for," said Celestia. "I know of that yearning well, my little pony, because I have it too. With all my heart I want to tell them, to just cast my voice over all of Earth and remove all doubt, but it would be overstepping our bounds for either of us to tell even one soul. Even though the Barrier is unmaking their world, to come here can never be less than a choice freely made."

Sugar Spoon couldn't bear to look at Celestia's face, beautiful as it was. Her hooves pressed into the blanket, which was sprouting dark spots from her tears. "They think even death will keep them from having to choose," she said. "Why would it be so terrible to tell them it won't? Why not tell them that running from the Barrier is only a delay to having to answer, not an answer in itself?"

"It is a matter of faith, Sugar Spoon," said Celestia. The alicorn brought her head down to the unicorn's cheek and nuzzled her gently, as a mother might comfort her filly. "We must have faith that humans will seek Equestria on their own, that they will say 'yes' when the time comes, and hopefully that time comes while they are still alive. In turn, the humans must have faith that we are not misleading them, that we offer this gift with no ulterior motive or strings, and that they will own the final decision to be made."

Celestia's nose was dainty and soft, but through it Sugar Spoon could feel the heartbeat of the cosmos. She felt very small in the goddess's presence. "Three humans died to get us here," she said. "I could have saved them so much pain. The pain of dying, of having to—" Her voice gave out, her throat catching on a sob.

"Would they have believed you," asked Celestia, "or would they have thought you were feeding them some kind of feel-good fantasy, and only grown more distant? Humans, from what I've seen, are not used to being delivered from their woes by others. In the human mind, some burdens are to be borne alone, and shrugging them off is seen as weakness. They are unused to truly good news."

The princess's voice was lifted from its funereal matter-of-factness and into warmth, prompting the unicorn to look up at her with wide, tear-filled eyes. "You must have faith too, Sugar Spoon," she said, "faith that, in the end, all three of them chose to come to Equestria."

Sugar Spoon sniffed once, venturing a smile. "Did they?" she asked.

"A human can only choose Equestria if they have hope," said Celestia, smiling back. "Do you feel as though you gave hope to them during your time together?"

Sugar Spoon looked back down at the blanket. She supposed she wasn't getting the answer she really wanted. "I... I hope I did," she murmured.

Princess Celestia's laugh was quiet and innocently joyful, like the sound of bells being rung enthusiastically by a very young foal. "Hope breeds hope!" she said. "If you presented yourself as a true and faithful daughter of Equestria, then nopony could have asked more of you. Your part in this is over, my little pony, and even I do not get all of the answers when I would have them. Rest now, and let your mind turn to happier times ahead, both for you and the newfoals who have come back with you. When your thoughts turn to them again, take comfort in hope."

Sugar Spoon was already asleep, the light on her bed already faded away.

* * *

Cool Shade brought her dark-navy-blue hooves to her mouth and called up to the pegasus fiddling with the loudspeaker at the top of the telephone pole.

"Come on, Fleetfeather, get that doohickey unbucked! We're missing it!"

"Hold'ur horhesh, I almoaf go' it!" said the teal pegasus around a roll of duct tape. It was hard to use tape with just hooves—definitely a thing for humans and unicorns only—but Fleetfeather was the only newfoal in Salisbury who'd had experience as an electrician prior to conversion.

As he brought the last two ends of unconnected wires together, Princess Celestia's voice suddenly blared from the loudspeaker, filling the air and making Fleetfeather's ears ring. The pegasus very nearly dropped his tape.

Cool Shade whooped and bucked the air in celebration, then whistled over the other PER members, who all gathered around the loudspeaker to hear Her Royal Highness's latest broadcast.

There in Salisbury, and also on the television sets, radios, and CBs in DC, the US eastern seaboard, and all over the world, Celestia spoke, in languages uncountable:

"I am Celestia, Princess of Equestria and Goddess of the Sun. I am speaking on my own behalf, as well as on the behalf of my sister, Luna, Princess of Equestria and Goddess of the Moon. I wish to address the humans in service of arms, whoever you might be, wherever you might be, and for whatever you fight.

"To come to Equestria is not capitulation. It is not a victory for fear, nor is it the invalidation of what you hold precious. It is nothing more of the continuation of the life owed to you, the life regrettably altered by events beyond anyone's control, my own included.

"Consider your responsibilities as a parent, or a spouse, or a sibling. If you have family here, you can come to them. If you have family with you, they will be safe here. You fight, but do they? Would they have you fight out the rest of your lives, or theirs? Don't they want something better for you? If you have no family, then know that you needn't be alone if you do not wish it. There is a family for you here. You can find love, fellowship, community; all you want—and perhaps need—is here in Equestria. We know a thing or two about friendship here; it is a subject of intense personal interest!

"It is true that, in Equestria, there is almost no knowledge of armed conflict. It is true that you will not do in Equestria what you do now on Earth. However, it is also true that Equestria has need of you nevertheless. We value your perseverance, your perspective, your valor, and your sense of duty and service to an ideal. We recognize these as virtues to be cultivated, not flaws to be expunged. All of what makes you who you are can be manifested anew with us, here, in ways that may surprise you but will be no less fulfilling.

"Some will hear this as propaganda, a tool of war you, as fighters, are no doubt are wise to. But just as we have no need of war in Equestria, so too have we no need of propaganda. The stakes are known by all, including you. You know what is ahead; I need say nothing to that. All I need to say is that you are not forgotten, and you are not abandoned. You are welcomed, as you have always been.

"There is time yet, and will be for a few years to come. I have hope that you—each of you—will join us."

THE END