Tweed and Flannel: The taste of the rainbow

Time was not running, it was crawling. Eventually, she just sat there, playing minigames on her wrist communicator. Slicing fruit and firing round pig heads with angry faces on birds. Eventually, another hour had passed with nothing happening, and she had grown bored of all the games she had installed. And there was no downloading new ones, because something was wrong with her subspace network connection. To be precise, the connection itself seemed to work, but the entire network was gone. All the sites she tried to connect with weren't there, all the networking apps she had didn't work, there was nothing.

If it was an old, conventional satellite network she didn't reach, it could have been just due to some jammer in the ship. But Subspace was different. You can't just block the subspace network, that doesn't happen. It connects you directly to what ever you want to reach, no satellites, mainframes, servers or spacial stretches where it could be interrupted.

She shook her head again to cast out the thoughts about food, feeling her mane drop on her neck's other side. She had faint thoughts about it, but this time, she couldn't resist at least taking a look from inside this operating room. It was visible from here, decorated with a sign she couldn't read from the angle she was standing in. If she leaned out, still holding the inner side of the doorframe with her hand, she might have been able to read what it said.

Any other thought about this was interrrupted though by footsteps heavy enough for her to feel them, despite the solid walls they were in. "No, no, no, no, no! Out of the way!" The Doctor pushed her aside, paced past her to the controls. "Ah, good, no visible  by far not, phew."

"What's going on now?"

"Time..." He placed his arms on his knees, catching his breath. "How much time does your watch show?"

"Half past eleven?"

"No, no, how much time has passed, since I went away last time?"

"Umm about an hour?"

He clapped his hands in relief. "Ha! No harm done!" He turned around to the console, but before doing anything, leaned on it and stroked it's surface, purring: "Oh, good girl, thank you." This man really must have been very lonely.

"I increased the amount of time in your direct surroundings, but I'd forgotten to turn on the decontamination. Minor mistake, could happen to anyone." He paused. "Except a medical doctor."

"Which you are not...?"

"No I'm not." After pushing more buttons, flipping switches, and hitting a bell with a hammer, he turned around and folded his arms, lifting the fold of his right eye. "No packages, no crumbs, not even a drop of water. You been sitting here for a full hour, all by yourself? What about the curiosity for this place? Where's the desire for adventure I can clearly see in your eyes?"

Dash turned around her comm, showing the Doctor the feed from her movement detectors. "What's this? Everything's moving, but I can't see it moving."

"Oh, these are just other rooms, phased out, oscillating in the same coordinates as us within the first three dimensions, but at a completely different place in another one." So much gibberish, and she didn't understand a word of it. And she could've sworn he knew that. Why was she telling her this? Was it just lies to confuse her? Possible on one hand, on the other hand, the readings didn't seem physically possible to her in the first place, so if the readings seem like random shenanigans, who was she to claim it needed an explanation for it, other than what seems like random shenanigans? She didn't even respond. She just silently stood there, giving him a questioning look.

After a few moments, the Sapian sighed. "Still not trusting me, eh? Okay, you know what? If you really think all the rooms here are just shifting and I'm sneaking past you somehow, how about this?" grabbed in his jacket's left pocket, took out a pair of handcuffs, and locked one hand of both of them in one cuff each before giving her the key to them. "Here's the key, we're attached now. Means if I go into a room, other than you'd expect me to, so do you. See?"

He went through the empty doorframe, stopping barely on the other side. "See? Still here." He was still there. She looked back on her comm. Still everything aglow. And she hadn't heard anyone else walk around in all the time she was here. Then again, if what he said was true, and he somehow made more time pass on her end, for all she knew he could have been gone for five minutes. But that again would require him having told the truth before. And that would mean time really was relative in this place. And the glowing on her movement sensor was just a room separate in a non-space dimension. And this entire ship was a TARDIS after all. Which meant if he was lying, he was telling the truth before, and if he wasn't, he was telling the truth, too.

The blue mare felt dizzy. She was getting tired of sitting back, playing it safe, not taking the risk. This wasn't her. She used to be different. Where was her old life gone? Come to think of it, where was the life all of her old friends gone? She didn't have much contact with all of them anymore, save for Applejack. They all used to be so close, backing Dash up. Giving her confidence. Instead, here she was, sitting here. Not moving an inch because any far-fetched scenario could be happening. Completely ignoring for all she equally knew, one of these 'parallel rooms' might materialize and slice her apart any time.

She decided to take the step. She started taking into account what this Doctor's point of view might have looked like all this time. He really seemed to be trying, so she could at least try and move in his direction for once, rather than struggling. She took a deap breath, took a look at the doorsill, and gulped. She was sweating, and couldn't help breathing a lot more than she would have, were she calm. She knew she was taking a huge risk. But what was life other than to take one leap after the other, hoping you never jumped too shortly or too deeply? She closed her eyes, lifted her left foot and stepped across, then following with the other.

When she opened her eyes, she was still holding the doorframe. The Doctor had taken a step back to make space, and she was in the same corridor, still seeing Applejack when looking back in. Fixing Applejack in in the centre of her view, she let go of the frame. But she was still there, her chest slowly rising and falling in the rythm of a relaxed, calm breath.

It was done, she was out of the room and Applejack was still there. Rainbow Dash even went back in and out once, just to test if it was some optical illusion, but it seemed it was all real. These rooms were not moving around, they were a solid structure.

"Easy, Dash, easy."

"Hey, that's racist!" She smashed her fist against his shoulder.

"Oi, not so hard, you're a horse after all aren't you?", he asked while they set off to walk down the corridor.

"Pony. And not a lesser one either. That kinda thing you say when you ride a lesser."

They stopped in front of that door Rainbow Dash had been thinking of and eventually looking at for quite some time now. She looked back to still see the same operating room through the trapeze-shaped frame. The door in front of them was closed, but there was a pushable compartment in the doorframe. It bore a sign reading 'Human cuisine'.

Upon pressing in the button, the door slid aside, revealing what seemed like a very long, human kitchen. And she wasn't given very much time to inspect it from outside, as she was soon dragged along by her cuffed hand. "Here we are, ingredients from any place you could imagine, I assume you ponies only eat plants?"

She was starting to get her head around of his intrusive way of going about things but it was still hard to get used to the pace things took most of the time he was present. They were still pacing through the kitchen, that seemed to after turning around a corner, just went on, with one broad aisle following the other. All of them laid out with cooking equipment of all sorts, shelves and cupboards bearing ingredients and cuisine ware.

"I'll just take that as a no. Any preferences? Apples?, Grain? Pears? Mango?"

"Mango?"

"If you never tried one here's your chance." They came to a stop three rows later, as the Doctor pulled a lever on a fridge and then opened it, picking out and handing over to her thee unshapely green fruits. "Mildly sweet stone fruit, very popular in the middle e..." He hasitated, apparently remembering something, but then waving it aside. "Parts of the Royal colonies, I don't know."

"...I think we'll go with some oranges"

"Okay, not in the mood for trying out new tastes then, are we?" He stuffed two of the mangoes back into the fridge and pushed it's lever back up, before leading her two rows further into the kitchen. "I'm not eating them though, only take as many as you're gonna eat. I hate it when stuff has bits in them."

After picking up some oranges from another of those tight-locked fridges, they headed back through the narrow path that connected all the aisles, right back through the corridor into the operating room, the orange-dyed pony now, still in there, thank Celestia, in less of a coma, but rather sleeping like an angel.

At least until the Doctor pulled back to the consoles and flipped some switches. "All right, wakey wakey, can't be sleeping all day all night."

This time though, she woke up a lot more smoothly. "Wai..wha...what?" She opened her eyes, directly looking at her blue friend, with her hand chained to the simian stranger she had seen before. And as expected, her one visible eye stiffened in an angry look, and at the tip of her head, her mouth formed a visible, questioning frown. "What in tarnation is goin' on here? And what is this here fancy contraption?", she asked before looking at the roughly body-shaped flat white all-round monitoring device above her.

"Well so much for equine gratitude." The Doctor folded up his arms, observing Dash as she tried to talk some sense into her friend.

She took the other mare's hand in her own, speaking up. "Jack, he saved your life. Could we please be a little sensible here?"

Which wasn't very helpful, as it only aggravated the earth pony even further. "We've been over this, Rainbow Dash! You seen the news, you know what ah'm talking about. Monkeys are all drugs, and integration problems and whatnot. I.."

She was at once silenced, as Dash placed the length of her index finger on the angry mare's mouth. "You're right. We've been over it. All over it. I know what you went through, I was there. But we really could do with some help right now, and he saved your life. So why not see what this guy can do for us?"

"Who says we need help?"

The Doctor chuckled,before turning around to pick up one of the bullets and blurt out: "Oh please, first I arrive in your crammy ship with Tomcolt right here scared and desperate to the brink of crying, you mortally wounded with oversized, custom-made high-quality bullets stuck in your tum. You disguising in ominous cloaks and masks. This isn't some little kitty cat child's play here you're in it's serious trouble so you better stop gobbing out slurs and start telling me what I need to know to help!"

He stood there motionless gazing the earth pony directly in her eye. Moments passed by one by one, second by second, with just the left eye on an angry horse's head and the eyes of a Sapian face, staring at each other. And the rare sight that he was did look alien enough to be really creepy, with these wide-open eyeballs just buried into crevaces in this round head. Sure you did see other animals from time to time, but living in Equestria, you met them so rarely it was hard to get used to their looks. And even at that, Rainbow Dash was one of the people who tended to have more contact with foreigners than a lot of others. Most people who just live and work in their own districts of the many urban worlds surrounding Canterlot, had practically no contact with the outside world whatsoever. She wasn't sure, if it was even worse in the rural areas.

In the end, the farmpony sighed, closing her eye, and then opening it to slightly turn to face Dash. "You sure he really saved mah life? Not some fancy-shmancy light show or sumthin?"

Dash leaned across the console, tilting her head to evenly face her sceptic friend. "Ayjay...he didn't just pick us up..."

She realized she only now had time to think of what happened. In the heat of the moment, and the necessity of immediate action, she could just look at everything with a a sentiment as cold as possible. But now she came to really realize it. Only now, that she had to think of it. That she had to, in order to say it out loud, she came to realize what before almost had happened, and what did happen eventually. And what it had meant if it stayed like that.

She couldn't even just calmly say it like this. But she had to. If they were going to go anywhere any time soon, she had to tell her what this man had done for them. She tried to fight it. Stay the Rainbow Dash everypony from the old times knew. But she couldn't. Her nose began to run, and she could feel first tears emerging from her eyes. "Ayjay!" She stepped past the console, not caring about pulling the stranger after her with every movement, to the bed to wrap her left around her almost-gone friend. "We're so lucky he showed up."

At first, the orange pony flinched because of the pain the sudden movement caused her  a lot of pain, with the wide open wound still there on her back. "Dash, what's..."

Laying the side of her head on that of Applejack, she paused for a while, just crying. Crying! She hadn't let herself cry for so long. Always remembering how she grew up to learn not to. Crying was weak. And under the sun of Celestia, no pegasus could allow himself to be weak. But the unwritten rules among Pegasi didn't matter to her any more. This was just - it was just too much. Her last really close friend, the last person she could turn to when looking for support in her life. And she was so close to being gone, never to come back again. Coming to think of it, she was so happy all this was never going to happen.

Eventually she got herself together to mutter what she needed to say "I just...the blood loss...you...it was too much, you would have..." She tried as hard as she could, but she couldn't muster the nerve to pronounce it.

"Well it seems ah didn't...", the earth pony responded in ignorance, tapping the blue mare's shoulder with her hand.

"You did! You did, and him..." She sniffed while pointing at the man next to her with the hand that was still cuffed. "...this Doctor guy he did something some electrostart thing, and you were back." She hugged her friend even tighter. This time making her really understand.

"That musta been the sudden - everything ah felt when ah first woke up here. Oh Rainbow Dash!" It was only this point, at which Jack understood the gravity of what they just had been through, and returned the hug, pulling her friend closer to run the side of her head against that of her concerned friend. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. This was all a mistake. Ah shouldn'ta gone takin' that job in the first place. There there, I'm right here."

The Doctor waited patiently, as the minutes went by, until Dash finally got herself back together. Once her sobs died down, she stood back up, wiped away one last tear before coming to terms with the truth. "You know, actually, he earned our trust long before I realized it."

Her friend sighed, but at last, she gave in. "All right, guess if ah'm stuck right here, might as well go all the way."

And while the Doctor asked for the key and after undoing the cuffs, went to operate the machine with the hose again, to pour more foam into the now less deep wound, Rainbow Dash told Applejack what she had seen. About the illogically aligned corridors, about the proportionally impossible kitchen, about the Doctor's hint on how time worked in here, all of it.

By the time the Doctor had made some calibrations on the console he fetched the chairs and handed one of them to the pegasus to sit on. Once they were all comfortable, he leaned his elbows against the corner of the bed and put his hands together. "Now, Applejack, tell me what happened. Who were the ones after you and why were you after them?"

"I swear to ya ah have no idea who these fellas were. They never take their masks off and half of 'em dun' even do anything but stand and occasionally follow orders. The latter ones dun' even say a word."

"Okay, obviously a lot of secrecy around this, so why the secrecy and why were you there in the first place?"

"Assignment. Whenever ah can, I take jobs hunting criminals an' such. There's these weird ones too, with an anonymous employer. Not much a fan of personal contact, but he's reliable and pays pretty darn well. This time ah just bit off more than ah could chew."

The Doctor just shook his head and ran his palm across his face. "This isn't going anywhere. Listen. I need you to tell me the whole story. Every detail is important. Think back, were there things even a little different? Somehow not following the patterns you recognize? Anything? Think back of it and tell me the whole thing from scratch."

"Hmph. All right. Just gimme a sec..." She paused for a few seconds, and then continued. "All right. Listen up."

This sorta thing dun' happen every day ya know, ah get this e-mail, ah get inta the booth an...

"Stop." The Doctor stretched out his open hand, almost putting it on the horse's muzzle.

"What is it?"

"We're not doing it like that. I know you can do better, so when you tell us this, please speak clearly. Properly. Every word is important, so make it easy to take notes to keep all the possibly important details audible. Including how things went on when you thought about doing this, what caused you to decide to go where, where did you go when, everything. A bit like a..."

"Like a Police report?", Dash added.

The Doctor clapped his hands pointed at her in approval. "Exactly. Imagine someone reading this. They wouldn't want to read it the same way you talk to fellow farmponies,  would they?"

Applejack grunted, but then resumed recalling the events.

This sorta thing doesn't happen every day, but when it does, there's a chance to pick it up or not, all at one point. It always starts with an e-mail with no real sender. It only arrives if you're checking on your mail in that very moment and it deletes any trace of itself after ten minutes. Believe me, I know this  computer geek Micro Chip, and he tried everything to find some fragment on my hard drives. No chance. Whoever is behind it is doing their job pretty darn well.

Every time, if I respond to it, it then responds with another mail with a specific public terminal that I ought to go to on a specific time on the next day. And here I was again. Ginger Bread Ave 89 on Cloudsdale M twelve. The terminal I was supposed to visit, was one of the publicly available surfing booths. I payed the bits to use it for a few hours just to be sure, and got inside.

And this is the point, where this chat client shows up, it's all beige and rocky in the background, the outline's corners aren't smooth like with anything else on these operating systems and all of it just looks terribly outta place. And then it just starts sending you messages and you return them. Nothing. No Avatar or picture of them, just the name 'SEB' and that's it. And that's pretty much it. That's where I get these assignments briefed.

The assignments themselves tend to be pretty random. Be armed and ready at location A, keep your eyes out for area B, corner and catch C if you find them in B. Often there wouldn't even be much happening, and when there was, it was just someone smuggling something or delivering a message you have to interrupt. They always seem to be part of some bigger scheme going on in the background, up to the point, where I ran into a bounty hunter in on the exact same assignment but kept separate from me when briefed.

In the beginning, it really was all standing around, guarding something without being a notable policepony of sorts, and you got a part of your payment for participating. As the months went on, there were actual stirrings. Descriped ponies showed up, I got them, job done, payment received. It was pretty reliable money. But at one point, it changed.

And this time, they even wrote 'This one's a doozie.' Maybe shoulda taken that as a hint and let it go. I affirmed his question if I was game, and got myself ready for some bigger stuff. I had to go to Cloudsdale O twenty-two, get under cover in the slums of 'Pillargrounds' and spend the next tuesday night looking for suspiscious activities regarding incidencts, where locals contacted the cops on intruders abducting people on a regular schedule. It's already been on the news that crime rates had been reaching a high in the recent months, but who am I to complain? All non-registered private venture you can lable 'crime' or 'illegal', it often just comes down to taxation and stuff. And something else in the news was the decline of average Equestrian poverty over the last full year, so I thought it all makes sense somehow. Besides, I dunno how clean the work I do is myself.

Point is, the cops put that aside as migration. You know, economy grows, pony gets a job and leaves the slums, rinse and repeat. But they insisted that was not the case and they were disappearing. And it seems they found their way to whoever this SEB guy is so it was my job to look into what was going on.

So I did my thing, got Rainbow Dash here in on it so she could fly me there and pick me up if something happened. I just dressed up as usual and bought some sloppily made, wide piece of cloth that didn't even look like it was tailored for a pony, more like a buffalo or sorts, mudded it in dirt for a bit and that was that.

When it was time, we parked in an unused garage just outside the district and turned the engine off, with Dash waiting for me there with more stuff in case I needed it. I used the bit of time the sunlight indicated to walk around and scour the area to see where to best stay. Eventually, I noted where the center was, picked some alleyway just outside of it, and sat down, the only things showing being the cloth, my muzzle, and my old hat. I leaned against an improvised, wooden wall, both legs lying elbows-up so nopony could see the boots and waited. It did take a while, but this business is mostly about patience and being ready when the droppings get real. At about quarter past ten, a little freighter arrived and landed in the center of the square-like area with full force, even crushing a cart with dirty, but maybe not inedible bananas.

By the time they landed, I got close enough to stay in a shadow and pick up anything that was happening around there, and adjusted myself to move should I catch attention but kept watching. The hatch in the back opened and out came four ponies. The entirety of their bodies were covered in wide robes in four dark colors who moved out in four directions, then all faced each other and nodded. Not one word said. I can swear, I hear stuff from that distance. Each one picked out a set of pony-sized anti-grav carriages, unfolded and turned them on, and moved out, dragging the carriages with them. They then all set out, apparently to split up. One of them not in my direction, but pretty close by. Not even sure if he really registered me leaning there.

Like all the other ponies, this one was wearing a shiny mask, only emanating a slight glint from the moonlights and torches here and there. It was either  of some solid metal, or just coated, but it was anything but simplistic. It bore the drawn face of a pony, but with an open mouth, spiky teeth on the inside and the mouth was torn to an unnaturally wide smile.

As I slowly sneaked after him from corner to corner, I slid an unlocked window to the side to see why nothing was going on. You'd think if someone landed a ship in the middle of - well not no-where but no-where where anything worth visiting could be, people would get worked up. Leave their houses to see what's going on. But here? Nope. And I wanted to know why. Inside what was barely more than a hut, were an adult mare and a stallion, snuggled together. But they didn't look comfortable at all. They were shivering. One of em even flinched when they heard me. I just closed it right away, to be sure and went on to following the covered pony, past and around one corner after the other, until they stopped in front of another hut's door.

By then, apart from moonlight, everything had gone dark. Any torches in the vicinity were put out. The pony paused to slide out the arm with their communicator, guess to check for messages or their location, then they just kicked the door in. All I heard were desperate begs not to take them away, mentioning they had no other place to go. When I gave another quick look, the hooded pony hadn't done anything. It just went to the next door and kicked that one in.

They ignored the screams of terror, coming from anyone inside and just went to one door or curtain after the other. Until once, I heard more screams, not just from grown ups, but two children one just holding one shrill, soon silenced note, the other one already crying in a shattered voice. With a suppressed gunshot, they all died down. One at a time. Hearing more mutterings from the huts I ran past, I closed in on him, turned on my chestplate's barrier generator to catch one or two shots from him and the moment she was carrying one of the corpses outta the house, I pulled down that hood of her's and gave her head a round of my old forty-five-er.

When I looked through what ever she had with her, it seemed the mare that did all this was nothing different at all. A pony like you and me. But still murdering innocent people at random for some reason. At this point, I could have taken his communicator someplace else, looked through his data and then decided what to do. At that point, I shoulda done that, I understand that now. Cause that was exactly what I didn't do. Instead, I wanted to show what I can do. I wanted to show I can go all-in and take spoils of a full victory. You know, find some undeniable proof of what's going on. Along with finding out what's going on of course.

So instead of that, I just found some hiding place within the hut, dug a hole below what was supposed to be a table and buried my own communicator in there before sending Dash it's exact location and a description where to find it. Instead, I took the guy's one as well as some ID cards he was carrying, along with his robe and mask. The mask was uncomfortable to buckle around your head, but it fit.

Telling from what the people there were like, and from how calmly the masked ponies went about what they did, they were sure as heck not expecting someone with any money, let alone someone with a camera. So if the masks were to conceal themselves from somepony, it was to hide the faces from each other. And if they were several and could afford fancy custom made robes and masks, chances were their little freighter has a Warp Gate device too. The little ship would barely fit em in with all these bodies, so hiding wasn't an option either. Only way to get inside was in plain sight.

So I put on his robe and mask, put up the hood and dragged these bodies on the floating carriages. There was no saving them, after all. Best thing to do is to use them to get inside to give em some purpose. Four bodies, four empty carriages. When I walked back, the others gradually arrived too, walking inside one after the other. We arranged the bodies over each other to fit everything into the narrow space and then all got in ourselves. It was like I expected. Silence. No word spoken, no mask or hood removed, just waiting until we reached our destination. We couldn't even see the cockpit.

When we arrived, things went on pretty fast. The same one that had moved first when they left the ship back in the slums, and when  we got inside, went ahead, pulling all the tied-together beds bearing people, formerly live people, and just tossed them into some cold storage room. On the way were dark halls. Faintly dark-red walls. Hard to see, it was barely lit at all. In all the hallways stood other masked people on both sides. Not ponies or horses for that matter. Flat heads but just stood firm. No motion. No word, nothing. And they were dressed differently to the ponies. Suits with fancy shirts and ties, all black and with black coats over them. The faces painted on their masks didn't look all too equine either. Whiskers, slitted eyes, lot more like cats or something, but still with the crescent, unnaturally wide smile bearing white teeth within.

We eventually got back to the entrance, where I finally got a glimpse of where I was. I could slightly raise my head to look through the one-way transparent lenses and far above us on the building's outer wall, see a brand with it's logo, a twisted rainbow with the name 'Stickles' and the catch phrase 'A taste of the Rainbow' underlining it. This place coulda been a lot, but Stickles are a chocolate treat. Dash here knows, she may be a show pilot, she got this brand on her fighter. I see it every day. What ever was going on in there, it was not what the outside proclaimed it to be.

The masked ponies and I then went through a different set of hallways taking one turn after the other. I knew I was gonna witness some shady meeting or some weird ritual I shouldn't be seeing, so at this point, I silently memorized every turn we took, just to be sure, until we ascended up a railing and stood in line as we watched some factory workers run the machines. Down straps moving on a rail hung cattle carcasses, and one by one were fed into a set of grinding cylinders with spikes, the remains of it only to be smashed by heavy machiery, sewn apart and squashed again. Wouldn'ta thought much of what was going on beyond it being a slaughterhouse, if it weren't for what these ponies just had done before.

A slaughterhouse in Equestria was nothing special. The cattle we raise even if only for milk products alone doesn't last forever and has gotta be brought somewhere eventually, also, the big game farmers' gotta make money of it somehow. But I've seen quite a few now, and they're normal, open factories. Not scarcely-lit catacombs run by weird cult ponies.

I was already having a darn bad feeling. A suspiscion that seemed mad. Crazy. But in the context of where we were and what we had gone to fetch, it was the only sensible connection. Poor ponies that have nothing to offer. And dead ones at that. Sure it was something big under the radar, but it couldn'ta been selling them into slavery. Dead slaves don't do a lot of work.

And I was right.

Among the cattle that was carried inside were ponies. And not lessers. Highers. Not the ones I brought em, but sure as heck here under similar circumstances. It was sick. I felt sick. And all the more, when first the hands, then the center including the head, and then the rest of a young pony were gradually grinded and broken into bits within the machine. I was about to through up. And I would have, had I kept looking. Maybe I shoulda just closed my eyes. But I was scared. I didn't want to stay, I couldn't. Not for all intel in the world would I stand by and watch this.

I reached under the robe to turn my barrier generator back on, and then headed back and ran. They didn't get what was up at first, but that soon changed. Once they wrapped their head arounded, one of em shouted "Seize the running one!" I didn't gain any real pursuers among the masked ponies, nor did even one fire a shot, but the other people with masks seemed to come to life. They produced some horrible noise. I dunno how to describe it. It sounded a bit like a drowned hiss, but different. I don't know how, just different. When I made my way outside, I noticed they weren't running either. They all just took their gloves and kinda walked towards me with their black hands stretched out after me.

Back on the landing area, I noticed the freighter was gone. I ran past the entire space instead and got into one of the personal transport pods. I had no idea where they'd take me, but any head start towards ponies that might be flying after me was welcome. When inside, I quickly took the communicator from the masked mare I'd taken out back in the slums, sent Dash my location along with the message that I'm being chased and wouldn't keep the comm, and then charged my blaster to fry it.

Soon after it arrived at some harbor-like city, the ponies after me were already being dropped off nearby by a little carrier. And this time they were different. They were armed. I unlocked both my weapons, kept them unlocked and slid them out of my robe. At one point, one of them saw me. I could take him out, but he had gotten me by surprise and hit a few shots on me. So then, I couldn't count on my built-in barrier generator to keep me alive. After a while of sneaking around the rest, eventually, one of them found me. The last one I could take out with his own gun, absorbing his shots on the way to him with my shield, but this time, I couldn't do that. Low battery. Self-recharging, but this one's a built-in component, not specialized high-quality tech. I had to fire my own gun. And that, the others heard easily.

They chased me, beyond anything I could do to escape. These guys were good. So good, they found time to fire at me while running after me. At that point, Rainbow Dash finally arrived, but before I really got inside, I took some bigger, fully hitting rounds.

"Ah guess that's the point where you showed your face.", she finished her recollection of the past events with.