The Conversion Bureau: Setting Things Right

Chapters

Chapter II: Understanding
Chapter III: Turbulence
Chapter IV: Scars
Chapter V: The Masks We Wear
Chapter VI: The Descent
Chapter VII: Interview with a Princess (REVISED AT LAST)
Chapter VIII: A Royal Arrival
Chapter IX: A Royal Assault
Chapter X: The Bureaucracy
Chapter XI: Twilight's Armor
Chapter XII: War Room
Chapter XIII: The Newfoals Activate
Chapter XIV: Little Filly
Chapter XVI: Shining Gets The Boot
Chapter XVII: Escape
Chapter XVIII: Five Years Ago
Chapter XIX: Change
Chapter XX: "A Couple Of Harmless Diplomats"
Chapter XXI: Stirrings
Chapter XXII: "A Couple More Harmless Diplomats"
Chapter XXIII: The Heretic Princess
Chapter XXIV: The Continuing Show
Chapter XXV: Shining's Scars
Chapter XXVI: Back In Canterlot...
Chapter XXVII: Thompson
Chapter XXVIII: Flutterheart
Chapter XXIX: Jerusalem
Chapter XXX: The Hospital And The HLF
Chapter XXXI: Transmission
Chapter XXXII: One Lone Filly
Chapter XXXIII: HLF Rising
Chapter XXXIV: Luna's Plan
Chapter XXXVI: Back On The Ship
Chapter XXXVII: Japan At Last
Chapter XXXVIII: Introductions
Chapter XXXIX: Attack
Chapter XL: Ambush
Chapter XLI: The Russian and the Brazilian
Chapter XLII: Capture
Chapter XLIII: Prisoners
Chapter XLIV: Counterattack
Chapter XLV: Death in the Family
Chapter XLVI: Revelations
Chapter XLVII: The Gun Fires
Chapter XLVIII: War On Humanity
Chapter XLIX: Guaranteed Survival
Chapter XLV: Two Weeks Later
Chapter XLVII: New Plan
Chapter XLVIII: The Prodigal Sons and Daughters Return
Chapter XLIX: Loss, and Conversion
Chapter L: A Final Meeting In A Cell
Chapter LI: Final Escape
Chapter LII: Final Battle
Chapter LIII: Return
Epilogue
Chapter I: Old Wounds
Chapter XV: Setting Things Up
Chapter XXXV: Tokyo Nights
Chapter XLVI: Gathering Together

Chapter II: Understanding

1100 HOURS
FARMLAND OUTSIDE CANTERLOT CASTLE

CANTERLOT, EQUESTRIA

Ask any soldier in the Royal Guard's garrison at Canterlot for a story, and odds are they'll come up with six right off the bat. From the reemergence of Discord to the changeling invasion, these guards were forced to confront more nightmares, demons, and talking toasters in a single day than most ponies might face in their lives. Whether this was a blessing or a burden to shoulder really depended on who you asked, but personally, Shining Armor always felt lucky to even be a Guard. Where else did somepony get the chance to defend his loved ones from evil, resurrected kings, love-sucking monsters, and love spells running amok (although that last one was more his sister's fault, a fact he was never going to let her live down)? So being named the Captain of every guardspony in Canterlot was just a huge bonus to him. He got to command more ponies, play a more active role in the defense of his nation, and hey, by the end of it all, maybe he'd have a few more stories for his foals when it was time to retire.

Or...even my grandfoals, if Cadence has her way and we start popping them out like no other. A shiver raced down his spine as he trotted along, and immediately the pony walking alongside him took notice.

"Big brother?" She asked, an eyebrow arched. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, uh..." he cracked a grin for her. "Just remembering...uh...something scary that crossed my mind the other day."

"Cadence on you about having foals again?" She asked with a sly half-smile, a wing flexing towards him predatorily.

Another shiver raced up his spine, this time making him shake so hard his armor clinked. "You girls know me way too well," he grumbled.

"Maybe that's because I'm your sister?" She replied with a cute little nuzzle to his chin. "C'mon: we don't want to keep the Princess waiting!"

The Guard Captain nodded and trotted to keep up with the little Alicorn, the pair galloping along the dirt path leading through the farmlands outside Canterlot, kicking up a decent amount of dust. Despite being within Canterlot's shadow, this little rural haven was still underdeveloped, partially out of a few nobles' reluctance to fund a public works project in someplace that didn't have easy access to five-star accommodations, but mostly from the local Earth Ponies' love of the feel of dirt under their hooves. Still, Shining Armor enjoyed the rustic charm of it all: the friendliness and openness of the ponies and the smell of fresh farm air could really appeal to a guy who had to spend most of his time in the frozen tundra of the North. Not that he could ever complain about his job as Prince of the Crystal Empire: he loved his wife dearly, and the work was hard but rewarding, but still, a guy started to miss the feeling of a warm breeze on a cool spring night after a while.

But I wouldn’t trade any of it for all the gold in the world, he thought, a smile cracking his muzzle.

"Shining?"

"Hmm?" He turned to his sister, the reassuring smile reappearing on his face. "What's up, Twi? Did I shiver again?"

"No, you just looked like you were thinking about something really nice," she replied. "Care to share what it was?"

"Oh," his cheeks flushed a deep, crimson red. "It's...nothing. Just nothing." His sister didn't need to know her big brother was such a sentimental sap, reflecting on how lucky he was to have a loving wife, an awesome job, and the best family anypony could wish for. She'd never let him live it down!

"Hmm - well, since I know you so well, let's see if I can guess it," the Princess stared him down, brows furrowing in that cute little way she'd done since childhood. A hoof went to her chin and she started hobbling along without missing a beat in her step. The recently-crowned prince started sweating, and not just from the heat building under his armor. He knew his sister, and he loved her dearly, but still, he sometimes wondered if some of those Alicorn powers might have added to her already-impressive analytical abilities. Did he think she had the ability to read thoughts now? No, that was ridiculous. But darned if she wasn't close.

"Hmm...I think..." she trailed off, and then her eyes lit up and she nodded satisfactorily. He gulped. If she seriously guessed this, he was calling for an exorcist and moving someplace where the scary, mind-reading sister could never find him. Acapulcolt, probably. Oh sweet Celestia if I just thought that then doesn't she know... "I think you were thinking about Cadence just now!"

He visibly relaxed, his shoulders slumping. "Close," he smiled. "You got a part of it, at least."

"Oh, Shiny," the mare tsked, shaking her head. "You really need to get your mind out of the gutter. I mean, how can a Princess be seen with somepony when he's thinking about that all the time?"

"What!?" He gasped, instantly straightening up. "I wasn't - that wasn't what I..."

He calmed down and snorted a few times once he saw the mischievous grin on her face. "You really shouldn't tease your older brother like that," he grumbled.

"Oh, but it's so much fun!" She laughed, galloping ahead of him. “Pick up the pace, slowpoke!”

He just smiled and upped his pace a tiny bit, the armor clattering like a set of pots and pans in a tumble dryer. He felt something warm and cozy blossom inside him every time she started acting like a little filly around him: like his little Twily again. Nopony was prouder of her ascension into royalty, of course, but sometimes it was nice to be reminded that the filly he grew up with was still in there.

Still clattering along, he sighed as he turned a corner and found her twirling in circles, wings spread out and face raised to the sky in victory. “YES! The winner, and still champion: Twilight Sparkle!” She gasped, letting her breath out in hot gasps to imitate a crowd’s cheer.

“Aww, you guys were havin’ a race?” Rainbow asked, appearing right next to the young Alicorn. Twilight let out a surprised, Fluttershy-esque squeal and leapt back a few paces.

“Well shoot, y’all should know better than to have any sorta physical contest without invitin’ us.” Applejack added, trotting right on the pegasus’s hooves.

“Ohhhh, and that means I missed the chance to referee again!” Pinkie sighed despondently as she skipped up to the rapidly-growing gathering.

“Aheh,” Twilight said, her cheeks turning bright red beneath the perfectly-tended locks of her mane. “How much of that did you girls see?”

“All of it, dahling,” Rarity said, trotting up to the violet mare and immediately running a hoof through her royal mane. “And I must say; you really should be treating these curls better! Not every mare is so lucky to be born with hair as malleable as yours. Think of somepony less fortunate, somepony stuck with one manestyle her entire life!”

“You’re making it sound like I’m flaunting a purse full of bits in front of somepony who sleeps in a cardboard box,” Twilight grumbled, allowing her friend to fret over the violet curls to her generous little heart’s content.

“She’s just complimenting your mane in her own special way, Twilight,” Fluttershy said in her usual, quiet little voice, completing the group as she brought up the rear. “It is a very nice style, even I can see that.”

Shining Armor just smiled and shook his head at the group’s behavior. Who knew such a varied bunch of mares could wind up being the ultimate paragons of harmony; a group whose bond was so strong that it represented the spirit of friendship itself, powerful enough to defend Equestria from tyrant gods and cleanse an evil as vile as Nightmare Moon. But, such was his life. The Elements of Harmony had to choose new Bearers to save Equestria from Nightmare Moon’s return, and his sister just happened to be one of them. On top of being a unicorn so talented she was chosen to be Celestia’s protégé. And the embodiment of the spirit of magic itself. And slated to become part of the ruling elite, meant to guide Equestria under her wise hoof alongside other immortals such as…

Wow. Throw in all the stuff he had going for him, and he had one crazy, bucking life! What was with his family and attracting so much insanity? Just standing there, he watched Pinkie pull a cupcake out of her mane and divide it amongst the rest of the group without any questions asked whatsoever! And he thought Discord’s rule was nuts!

Thankfully, before he could start getting really in-depth into the craziness that was his existence, a familiar silhouette fell on the ground before him. He smiled. He didn’t need to be a veteran of the Royal Guard to recognize that shape: just about everypony in Equestria knew the Princess's silhouette against her beloved sun. Reacting immediately, he sank to his knees, head bowed in submission, making sure to remain as quiet as a mouse in a pillow factory as he did. Then he waited to see how long it would take every other pony to follow suit. Turned out, the answer was “however long it takes Princess Celestia to land right in the middle of everypony so they could see her right in front of all their faces.”

“Princess!” The mares screamed, instantly bowing, their eyes on the ground, though Twilight did have time to hiss out the corner of her mouth: “Why didn’t you tell me you saw her coming!?”

To which Shining Armor could only reply: “Because it’s funnier this way.”

“My dearest, most loyal subjects: please rise,” Celestia said, that always-constant, never-condescending smile on her face, her eyes (well, the one that was visible beside her mane, at least) lit up with that sparkle of love and caring. Everypony obeyed, immediately looking up to the elder Alicorn expectantly, with the exception of Twilight, who somehow managed to shoot the dirtiest glare she could muster Shining Armor’s way in the split-second it took her to raise her head.

“Princess,” Shining Armor said, hoof rising in salute, his voice reeking all the authority of a military man. “Element Bearers retrieved, Former Captain of the Royal Guard and Crown Prince of the Crystal Empire Shining Armor, reporting for duty, ma’am!”

“You can drop the formalities, Captain,” Celestia replied, waving for him to relax. “As the mare who married you to your wife and attended your little sister’s coronation, I thought we were past that.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” he replied, his shoulders dropping half a micron at her order to relax. “Old habits die hard, ma’am.”

Rolling her eyes and shaking her head with a tiny smile, the Princess of the Sun turned to the smaller Alicorn at her hooves. “And hello again, Twilight Sparkle. You look even more radiant than when last we met.”

“Heh…thank you, Princess,” Twilight replied, her eyes darting away bashfully. “Shall we…uh…get going?”

“But of course, Princess,” Celestia replied with a little wink Twilight’s way, making the younger mare flush an even deeper shade of red.

"Okay," Shining Armor sighed to himself, letting his breath out in a slow, drawn-out wheeze as he trailed behind the other mares. He patted the fetlock on one of his hind hooves, ensuring his dagger was still in place. He wondered what the Princess would say to him smuggling a weapon around at all times. She would probably frown upon it, saying something about entrusting others to uphold the virtues of Peace and Harmony, but that was just because she didn't understand. He was a former Guardstallion, trained to always be ready to retaliate no matter the situation. Part of that training involved drilling into his head that he needed a weapon on him at all times. It was why his wedding tux had a concealed pouch for a throwing dagger sewn on the inside of the left sleeve (not that he’d had the chance to use it: by the time he snapped out of his trance, that wicked Queen was charged up enough on his own love that any physical attack would have been suicide), it was why he'd had the ceremonial sword meant for the crown prince of the Crystal Empire sharpened and rebalanced to serve as an actual weapon, and it was why he now tightened the strap securing the holster to his hind leg before galloping to catch up with the rest of the group.

"Okay," he breathed again as he fell in step behind the mares, listening to them chat amicably for a while before falling into his own thoughts, his eyes glazing over as he reviewed the process for drawing the dagger: Breathe, relax, flick the clasp open with edge of hoof, draw it out with levitation, keeping blade down to prevent self-castration, because that's the last thing you need to do in a combat situation. And imagine Cadence finding out! Good sweet Celestia, 'Shiny! How are you gonna give me babies now!? You need to march back out there and find your balls again so we can...WHAT...

His highly-distracted thought process came to a screeching halt as he walked head-first into something smooth, yet firm and well-toned, bouncing off and landing on his haunches with a loud clamor. Coming to his senses, he blinked a few times until the little birdies flying around in his vision went away, and immediately his face dropped. Rainbow Dash stared back at him, her face visible just over her flank, her eyes wide with surprise.

Quick, say something to keep this from exploding into a marriage-destroying incident! His brain gasped.

"Uhh..." he stammered.

Nice one, retard.

Rainbow just shot him a cocky half-smile. "Dinner and a movie first, bub," she said.

"Wha-wha-wha-what!?" He gasped defensively, kicking up a massive cloud of dust in a frantic attempt to back as far away from her flank as he could. "I'm married!"

"As if that ever stopped a stallion," she laughed, her wings spreading out as she took to the air, swooping over the crowd of ponies that had stopped her in the first place. Shining blinked a few times and snickered to himself. He loved his wife more than any mare he'd ever know, and would rather slice off his own stallionhood than violate her trust, but if he wasn't married...

A sudden crack of lightning put a stopper in any lecherous thoughts, as if Faust herself were slapping him across the face and telling him to not even think about it. "Okay, almighty Faust, I got it," he mumbled fearfully, taking his place alongside the rest of the crowd admiring the sight: the very reason he had been asked to gather the Elements of Harmony. A strange, multicolored cloud boiled and flashed in front of them, occupying a good half of a cornfield and preventing Hayseed the farmhand from harvesting a good half of his produce (which was of much more concern to him than "whate'er magical nonsense those Canterlot city folk're up to now," as he so eloquently put it). The cloud raged like a thunderhead, little jets of smoke puffing off its surface as if it were just barely containing something inside, struggling to remain the same shape. Every now and again, a lightning bolt lashed out and cracked through the air, thunder booming off in the distance.

Yep. Looked like another story for the grandfoals brewing right here. Half of Canterlot had to be gathered in Hayseed’s field, just to watch this one weird cloud, and if something was weird enough to attract attention from the city that had seen the resurrection of Discord and the changeling invasion, you knew something had to be up. Even now, ponies streamed from the castle proper, stamping the firm dirt paths leading around the field into even more compact surfaces.

“I say,” Rarity muttered breathlessly, eyes transfixed on the spectacle. “I know Twilight briefed us on this, but it’s still something to see up close.”

“Have the royal mages made any progress on just what it is?” Twilight asked, and Shining noticed how she remained staring at the cloud the entire time, so shocked that she’d forgotten the royal courtesy of giving the Princess eye contact while talking to her.

She’ll probably give herself a heart attack worrying about it later, he mused as Celestia nodded sagely. “They have, and it’s why I’ve called you all here. I thought the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony should be witness to a truly historic moment in Equestrian history.”

The ponies, Shining included, all turned to the Princess, their eyes still wide in shock from the sight. She beamed warmly and fanned her wings out, giving her already-impressive appearance a boost into near-intimidating levels of size. “The royal mages have determined that this is a portal to another world, populated with beings of intelligence comparable to our own, and almost certainly possessing a level of civilization we might find familiar!”

The small group of ponies fell silent. A few onlookers who had noticed the Princess walking up (hard not to notice a six-foot tall, white, winged horse in a world of multicolored ponies) started murmuring to each other, mostly inane things like “An entire, alien world!?” or “What if they’re dangerous?”

Pinkie was the first to break the silence, of course. “WOOH!” She gasped, back-flipping into the air with an enthusiastic bounce. “An entire planet!? I’m gonna need to throw the mother of all welcome parties!”

“Oh…my…” Fluttershy whispered, shrinking behind her mane and shivering, her frozen eyes locked on the cloud.

“Well, so long as they’re gonna act all civilized…” Applejack muttered thoughtfully.

“…and they don’t try anything.” Rainbow Dash added with a defiant snort.

“What would creatures on another world consider beautiful?” Rarity mused in a surprising burst of philosophic thought. “Do they even have clothes and fashions?”

For the most part, Shining remained mute, his brow joining his sister’s in furrowing: his in concern and determination, hers in thought. As he checked the dagger on his hind leg for the hundredth time that day, Celestia noticed the look on her student’s face and took the moment of distraction her announcement had caused to lean in closer to the smaller Alicorn. “Twilight?” She asked. “I know that look. What’s on your mind?”

The lavender mare sighed and turned back to the cloud, another bolt of lightning cracking off its surface as she watched. “What if that one pony was right?” She asked quietly, keeping her voice low to avoid attention. “What if they’re dangerous?”

“Oh Twilght,” Celestia smiled and shook her head. “They may very well be. In fact, it’s quite likely they are dangerous.”

Twilight turned to her mentor, eyebrows raised. “That’s not very comforting.”

“I know, but look at it this way: what would you say is the most dangerous creature in the Everfree forest?” Celestia asked, a knowing glint growing her eye, as it did whenever she was about to lead Twilight right into a lesson.

“Well…probably a manticore,” Twilight replied with a confident nod.

“Now, if manticores are so dangerous, why don’t they eat ponies regularly? Why aren’t they freely roaming the streets of our cities and villages, just gobbling up anypony that crosses their path?”

“Because they would never get far, and they know it,” Twilight said with another confident nod, as if every assertion needed to be punctuated with a bob of her head. “If local unicorn magic wasn’t enough, just about every town has a trained militia or Royal Guard outpost for dealing with a wild animal incursion. And even unarmed, a pegasus attack from the air or an earth pony’s kick is nothing to sneeze at. The only reason manticores do eat the occasional pony is if that pony is alone or frightened and caught off-guard.”

“So knowing all this, knowing that a manticore is so easily fought off by a pony settlement that only the most isolated of communities ever see attacks, wouldn’t it be easy to say that ponies are far more dangerous than manticores?” Celestia asked innocently, a knowing smile lighting up her face.

Twilight’s confident grin dissolved, returning to an unsure look of shock. “Well…I…uh…”

Celestia arched an eyebrow, and Twilight sighed, resigning herself to the fact that the Princess had beaten her with her own logic. “Yes, Princess. It would be perfectly fair to say that ponies as a whole pose more of a threat than the manticores ever could.”

Celestia smiled brightly and nuzzled her student, glowing as Twilight returned the nuzzle. “Just because something’s dangerous doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be given a chance,” she whispered.

That sentence right there did it for Shining Armor. Despite his Princess’s reassurances, he realized he absolutely needed to be ready for anything to come tearing out of that cloud. A civilian might be able to “give something dangerous a chance,” but as a soldier, it was his duty to be prepared for the possibility that this chance wasn’t deserved. He reached out, a magical hue going to the dagger, intending to levitate it ever-so-subtly to his forehoof and hide it in his fur.

To his surprise, the weapon shook as he drew it from the holster. Grimacing, he focused a bit more magic into it, but the only result was a slightly faster, still shaky draw that ended with the weapon tumbling out of its place and embedding in the dirt. This time he clenched his teeth, focusing all his considerable power in getting that stupid dagger to do what he wanted. Instead, its hilt poked up out of the ground, the blade dragging through the mud before it leaned weakly against his foreleg, as if saying it was too tired and needed a rest.

“What the…” he mumbled.

“Hey, guys? Anypony else having trouble with their magic?” Twilight asked. The former Guardstallion looked up in surprise, watching his sister, the Element of Magic itself, trying to wrench a gate open. Eventually, she snorted in frustration and just bucked the thing open.

“Hmm,” the group watched as Rarity turned to a rock and attempted to make it hover, a simple little trick that even foals could do. They watched the rock as it glowed with her magic, shook a bit, and did absolutely nothing else.

“What in the world…Princess?” Twilight asked, turning to her mentor.

Eyebrows hunched in a rare display of concern, the Princess of Day turned to Rarity’s rock and focused all her incredible might into it. The rock promptly lifted off the ground and performed a few shaky orbits around her, nearly dropping back down several times. Panting with effort, the Princess dropped the thing again, sweat visible on her face from what obviously should have been a simple task.

“What is going on?” Twilight asked.

“I…I don’t know,” Celestia admitted.

An instant look of panic overwhelmed the younger Alicorn, her ears folding back, her jaw dropping, her pupils shrinking to little pinpricks. At that, Celestia let out a little chuckle, the kind you used when the ship was going down in shark-infested waters and you had to tell the captain about your impending doom while a four year old kid stood within earshot. “Bu-but I’m sure it’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m rather certain our magic will return soon, and we’ll greet this other world with…”

No sooner did the Princess speak when the cloud gave them new and unexpected gifts. Four metal canisters sailed out of it, clattering to the ground near the group just as the rest of the unicorns in the line started to notice the same magic drain affecting them as well. Immediately, Shining sprang into action, throwing himself in between the canisters and the seven mares.

“B-big brother?” Twilight asked fearfully. “Wha-what is it?”

“I have no idea,” he replied, his back arching in a battle-ready stance. He studied the objects, his piercing gaze scanning them for any threats. They were each dark-green, and covered in white lettering that looked familiar but remained indecipherable. Other than that, the only remarkable features on the canisters was a pair of handles sticking off their top, as if they were meant to be clenched in teeth, perhaps?

“I’m…sure it’s nothing to be worried about,” Celestia replied, her voice starting at a nervous quiver, then adopting its usual confidence as she talked. “Perhaps even a gift from the other side! Still, we should have our experts keep them quarantined until…”

She didn’t even get to finish her sentence before the canisters exploded. Light as bright as her sun at midday flashed in their eyes, followed by a bang that put the worst thunderstorms to shame. Shining dropped from his stance, totally stunned. He shook his head a few times and opened his eyes, not realizing he’d shut them. Darkness greeted him. For an instant, his mind flew into panic mode, fear of blindness nearly making him cry out. Then the training kicked in and he took a few breaths, letting each out slowly through his nose. His vision returned in time, as he’d hoped it would, though that didn’t stop him from letting out a sigh of relief when it did.

Something was standing over him. He could only make out a silhouette right then, but he could tell it had to be rather tall, maybe even taller than the Princess (not including the horn). His hearing returned a bit after his vision, and he heard voices from somewhere far off.

”Get bloody goin’! MOVE!”

“None of you little shits move a fuckin’ muscle! None of ya!”

“What’s the ruddin’ time!? We need to be movin’ now!”

“Princess secured!”

Princess! That last one made an icy knot of fear clench in the unicorn’s stomach. Focusing what little of his magic remained, he managed to force the rest of the darkness out of his vision. What he saw made his blood turn to ice in his veins. Celestia was being scooped up by a pair of…things. They stood on two legs like Diamond Dogs, but their arms were much shorter, and they wore strange clothes in patterns that reminded him of the trees back in the Everfree Forest. Their faces were totally alien, covered in more of the strangely-patterned cloth, with blank, pitch-dark eyes that bulged from their heads, right beneath shiny, smooth helmets made from some material he knew he’d never be able to place. They each wore black vests and carried strange, black sticks that they waved around threateningly, pointing them at anypony who so much as looked at them funny. Finally, they each had two patches on their arms. One was a pair of red crosses outlined in white on a sea of blue, red bands reaching out to the corners of the patch. The other was a light-blue patch with a sphere pictured on it, strange continents and shapes stitched into its surface.

He watched in horror as the creatures clamped a ring around Celestia’s horn, and she winced in pain, dropping into unconsciousness with a quiet gasp. A pair of them locked another ring around the Princess’s forelegs while another pair lifted her up onto their shoulders, carrying her back to the cloud. “No!” He gasped, starting towards the group, but the creature standing over him stamped its boot into the back of his head. The blackness returned immediately, his mind reeling as he watched the Princess, his sovereign to whom he had pledged his life, carried off by a pair of strange, alien creatures.

“NONE OF YOU LI’L FECKERS MOVE, Y’HEAR!?” One of the creatures barked. Still hovering on the brink of consciousness, Shining watched some other pony make a charge for the group carrying Celestia off, only for one of the creatures to turn its black stick on him in a single, fluid motion. The stick barked once or twice (it was hard to tell which echoes were real and which were in his head) and the pony instantly dropped, body skidding across the ground like a sack of potatoes dropped from a speeding cart. The crowd screamed in horror.

“Nobody follows! You gits follow, you die!” Another creature screamed as it backed away into the cloud, tactically sweeping the ponies with that terrible weapon.

“Princess…” Shining gasped as he laid there, his mind finally making the final plunge into unconsciousness. However, before unconsciousness claimed him entirely, he heard a few more words in the creatures’ strange, terrible accents; words he hoped were just figments of his own imagination.

”Hey, who the bloody ‘ell’s this?”

“I dunno, but you see the wings and horn? She’s royalty! Bag her like the other one!”

"Funny, I didn't know princesses came in normal pony size."

Author's Note

Unlike my other stories this one is gonna update somewhat more sporadically. Sorry :)

Chapter III: Turbulence

1215 HOURS
30,000 FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL

NORTH SEA, OFF THE COAST OF SCOTLAND

The mushroom cloud bloomed like the fist of a vengeful god, terrible and foreboding even at this distance. Something inside it glowed with the heat of a thousand suns, a terrible energy being unleashed upon the unsuspecting world below. A deep rumble filled the air, humming with the explosion’s power. To David, it appeared as if the cloud was growing as slow as molasses, except he knew it had to be expanding at hundreds of miles an hour just for the motion he was seeing, punching into the sky at the speed of a rocket.

He wished he could tear his eyes away. He wished he could just turn around, close his eyes, and maybe even wake up from this nightmare. If only. As it stood, he couldn’t move a muscle, not even to crack that little kink developing in his upper back, he could only stand, transfixed by the incredible display of power before him. His eyelids seemed to be fused open as well, his pupils forever locked on the image blooming in his sight.

“God above…Christ alive…don’t tell me that’s her! Please, Jesus Christ almighty…” his radio garbled, clouding with static. David’s only response was to drop to his knees, a metallic clang coming from the ground as his legs hit. Somewhere nearby, someone started crying the Lord’s Prayer in between choked sobs, crying it out over and over again. Finally, as if a spell had been lifted, his eyes fell away from the massive, glowing column of smoke.

David fell to all fours, dry-heaving. The Dramamine in his bloodstream was the only thing keeping him from puking his guts out all over the flight deck. The water on the other side of the railing suddenly looked too glassy as it undulated beneath him, the world sliding in and out of focus as his mind reeled with each buck of the ship.

Just as something resembling coherent thought started to reappear in his mind, a deep whoosh sounded off to his right. He looked up, clutching his stomach as something burst out of the water and rocketed up into the sky, trailing smoke behind it. Then another whoosh and a splash, and another object punched up into the sky, and another, and another…

“This is it,” he gasped, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be sitting in his tiny living room again, a beer in one hand and a cheesy 90s action flick on his cheap television screen. That living room was so far away now, so very far away from the atomic detonations and the nuclear warheads sailing into the sky; but that’s where he wanted to be, as far as possible from this terror, from that mushroom cloud punching so high up that it might be destined to reach out and touch God, from the contrails of the missiles screaming into the air, and from the voices howling out his radio in panicked fright. This is how it all ends. Oh God, I’m sorry, this is it…this is it…this is…

Dave jolted awake as the plane bumped in a spot of turbulence, a scream of terror lodged in his throat. His mind spun, but quickly settled when he remembered he was on an airplane in 2025, not…back there, back on that horrible day when the world changed forever, looking so much like it was going to end.

Something cold dribbled through his fingers, and he remembered the drink he’d made for himself before drifting off. “At least my arms didn’t spaz out or anything, thank God,” he mumbled, wiping the sweat from the glass off on his dress shirt.

Somewhere up ahead, the television screen glowed with flickering images, remote clenched firmly in the hands of David’s German counterpart. “A refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions,” a BBC newscaster announced, and on screen a massive column of people flowed into ferries waiting along the English Channel, just outside Dover, according to the caption along the bottom of the screen. Each of these people wore the worried, downtrodden look of the refugee as they packed themselves in tighter and tighter, trying to cram as many people on board each ship before they could set out. “Thousands of Britons fleeing the isles into France upon the emergence of a new Equestria! That’s right, you heard it here, a new-”

The screen flickered, Francis switching the channel to ABC, where a man with far too much hair gel picked right up where his British counterpart had left off from the safety of his broadcaster’s desk. “…and this with the reappearance of the asteroid Ceres V has some groups claiming this to be a sign of the end of…”

Another flicker, another channel, another announcer with fantastic cheekbones and enough botox in their face to kill an elephant. “…sources have confirmed that the anomaly is, in fact, yet another Equestria! The UN is already rushing a bill through to aid the beleaguered French and British as they prepare for what could be a repeat of the attack on-”

Another flicker. “…despite the panic gripping the British countryside, these men just south of Glasgow have decided to ride out the crisis in a local pub!”

For some reason, the screen dwelt on this one, the controller’s finger hovering over the power button. The view turned to a large man with a pint of Guinness in one hand and a Red Sox baseball cap perched high on his head. When he opened his mouth, it revealed his heavy Scottish accent, the massive gaps in his smile (a true testament to countryside dentistry, for sure) and his opinions on the apparent reemergence of one of the greatest threats mankind had ever faced: “I jus’ wanna git one thing straight, lads: this is oor home, and no pastel-colored freaks’re gonna fook it up! They wanna try, let ‘em! We’ll kill ‘em all!”

This announcement was met with whoops and hollers from behind him as the camera zoomed out to reveal two more things: 1) The man was in a pub of sorts, the kind of place in the countryside where Guinness was always on tap and where the picture of the owner looked like it’d been hanging there since Thatcher was Prime Minister, and 2) The man wasn’t wearing a shirt, a fact made all the more obvious by the suds clinging to his sparse, blonde chest hair as he immediately set to chugging the ale clenched in his hand.

“It’s not going to be anything else, you know,” Andre mused, his legs crossed in his seat as he leafed through a copy of TIME magazine, not even bothering to look up.

“Ja, I know,” Franz sighed as he flicked the plasma screen off. “Still, it’s nice to remind myself that there are people out there with far less intelligence than me.”

“Careful, Franny,” Dave said, the scotch sloshing about in his hand. “That’s the same line of thinking that gave us Cops and Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo.”

“Plus, those guys are staying on land at least,” Lisa was quick to point out. “We’re the ones flying straight at the damn thing. How much smarter can we be?”

Dave snickered and brought the drink to his lips, starting to tilt it down, but then he lowered it back to the armrest. For some reason, the thought of this next drink joining the three beers and the rum and coke already sitting in his stomach sent a jet of acid oozing up his throat.

The plane bumped in yet another air current, sending another surge of acid up from his stomach. At least he was faring better than Akshat. The poor guy had locked himself in the bathroom a few minutes after takeoff and hadn’t emerged since, only replying with a ragged “Yes” whenever Lisa knocked on the door to see if he was still breathing.

It’s not like they’d had a choice in the matter, though. After less than an hour of being screamed at by politicians and bureaucrats alike through their big, red phones, a convoy of limousines and police cars had shown up in front of their building and a few dozen men in suits and sunglasses had filed into the office, bundling the group into the limos and rushing them to Heathrow, right up to a private jet waiting on the tarmac. Dave could remember the crowded terminal building as they shot past, the limo’s engine straining to pull them along at top speed. All those faces, filled with fear as they waited for a plane going somewhere, anywhere but England, anywhere but the place that might soon be a large crater on the surface of the Earth…

“Some guys just can’t handle their own stomachs, eh?” Liu mused, raising his fifth rum and coke in the air before downing it in a single gulp.

“Yeah,” Dave replied nervously, swallowing his bile and forcing a smile to his face, even as his stomach did backflips in his body. He managed to choke down another sip of scotch, mostly to keep anyone from wondering why the infamous David Preston suddenly couldn’t handle his liquor, because the most obvious answer to that question would be right on the money: because he was scared shitless. They all were, probably. The way Andre’s hands shook with every bump in the ride, a shake he unsuccessfully tried to disguise by turning to a new page in his magazine. The way Francis kept fondling the damned remote like a baby hunting for a special spot on its security blanket. The way Felipe kept typing away at his laptop, occasionally hammering the backspace down so hard the whole plane could hear it click. They all had their little idiosyncrasies, and not a single one of them had the guts to bring it up with anyone else, as if they were afraid that simply talking about their fears might make the bitch herself appear in the cabin, eyes blazing with xenophobic hatred and vials of that cursed serum in her magical grasp.

David took another swig of his drink, and this time he didn’t find it so hard to swallow.

“So, do you remember?” Liu asked suddenly.

Dave whipped his head around in surprise, as if he’d momentarily forgotten there were other people on the plane with him. Which, judging from the alcohol sloshing into his bloodstream, might not have been too far from the truth. “Re-remember what?” He stammered, immediately promising himself to ease up on the sauce until he at least had solid ground beneath his feet again.

“What do you think I mean?” The younger man replied, punctuating his sentence with a sip from his drink. “When Equestria first popped up, what were you doing?”

The American only needed a half-second to come up with the exact answer. Something like that was burnt into his mind, like the fact that he had been pulling his assignment book out of his backpack and trying to remember whether or not he’d done his math homework that one fateful Tuesday morning in September, or how his grandfather could recall weeding the small window garden they’d had in the old house, just starting to search through the tomato plants for any hidden trespassers when his brother had come running outside, bare feet smacking against the pavement, screaming over and over again that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

He had been seated in the library at the U of M, head in his hands, trying to commit Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion to memory. He could still see the picture on that specific page as clear as day, but for the life of him, the laws themselves still eluded him. Funny how that worked: everything else about that moment from the cheap, plastic wood grain of the table to the musty smell of the books lining the shelves around him still rang clear in his mind, but the laws which would have actually helped him pass the midterm he’d had coming up were still as murky and questionable as the water in the Detroit River.

He had been maybe a couple hours into his study session, and was seriously considering just tossing the book off the table, bolting for the door, hopping on the 5:15 to Cincinnati, and becoming a hobo for the rest of his life when he’d heard a few hushed whispers from the librarian’s desk. The librarian, a stereotypically mousy woman in her early forties who only needed a little chain to hang her glasses on to complete her ensemble, was loudly chatting with a student about something nearly-indecipherable, something about “cartoons” and “make-believe” and “can’t fucking believe it.”

Considering this was the first time in his life David had heard the small mouse of a woman utter a phrase worse than “Oh, shoot,” his curiosity piqued instantly. Not wanting to alert her to his eavesdropping, he had simply whipped out his smartphone and hopped on the local WXYZ station’s website, hoping whatever had made the bashful librarian swear for the first time in his memory had been newsworthy enough for the 5:00 local report.

The screen on the little phone had loaded up the site. David had blinked, then his jaw had dropped. “No fucking way,” he had reported, voicing his agreement with the librarian’s assessment.

There, splashed across the main page, just below the red bar announcing “BREAKING NEWS: More on the situation developing in East China Sea,” was a picture of six characters from a certain TV show for little girls, all in the same pose they showed on their entry in Netflix, with the six gathered together for an apparent photograph. Six ponies, all waving and winking for the camera, in a stock photo almost certainly downloaded right off the Internet in a rush. That, of course, wasn’t the incredible part. Rather it was the headline along the side of the page, in big, black, all-capital text: “LAND OF PONIES REAL!” with the subhead “Mysterious anomaly appearing in the Pacific Ocean, apparently populated by characters from the popular children’s TV show ‘My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic’.”

Slipping out of the memory, he tried to condense everything about that moment into words, tried to capture all the emotion and disbelief and impossibility of seeing a talking cartoon horse princess on the six-o-clock news, standing next to Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, both with massive smiles on their faces in an apparent show of friendship and understanding, as was expected of the Equestrians. Of course, those days would soon end, settling into general fear and disbelief as things went south and culminated in a few more “flashbulb” moments in David’s life, moments he would probably remember until the day he died.

Eventually, he realized there was no conveying that emotion. Not in a conversation being held over scotch at 30,000 feet over the North Sea. So he sighed, crossed his legs, and turned to his companion. “I was studying for a physics exam when I overheard the librarian cuss like a sailor.”

Liu nodded, copying David’s motion with his legs and peering into his drink with a little sigh of his own. “I was just getting ready for bed when the tsunami warning sirens started up. A lot of people don’t remember that of those first few days: the tidal waves you’d get from just plopping an island in the middle of the ocean, but I remember just fine. Of course, there was plenty of horror afterwards for everybody else to remember, so I guess it balanced out.”

David sat up. “Liu, my man, that was surprisingly deep,” he said, honestly surprised.

“Not bad for a drunk Chinaman, eh?” Liu grinned and tilted his head back, downing a few more sips of his drink. The grin didn’t last long, though, fading with another soft sigh and a sad glance to David. “I had a great aunt in Shanghai. When the Barrier hit, I mean.”

“Really?”

“Really. She was just too stubborn to leave when the evacuation orders came down,” he sat up in his seat and twisted the corners of his mouth downwards in an imitation of an old lady’s scowl, then he faced Dave and said in a high-pitched, aged, warbling voice: “’There has been a member of the family in Shanghai since this city was built, and there will be a member of the family here when this city is destroyed.’ That’s what she said to my mom when she tried to get her to join the rest of us in Xian.

“And you know what?” The grin returned, though much weaker and more resigned than it had been before. “She was right. She was absolutely right. Thanks to her, there was a member of the family in Shanghai, right until the last moment.”

David nodded, his brows hunched in thought. Unsure of what else to do, he raised his glass and smiled to his companion. “To great-auntie Liu,” he announced.

The Chinese man smiled, raising his drink alongside David’s. “To great-aunt-”

He never got to finish the toast as the entire plane shuddered and wrenched violently to the right in a sharp turn, the floor tilting at an insane 30-degree angle.

“Jesus!” David gasped, his drink clattering to the floor as he gripped his armrest. The rest of the group threw in their own swears and exclamations in their native languages, the cabin filling with the clatter of foreign words and discarded objects being turned into missiles, each member of the team throwing their nation’s own special blend of vulgarity into the mix. Except for Akshat, who simply let loose with another wretch from the bathroom. When it was over, everyone who hadn’t gripped their seat for dear life was on the floor, desperately scrambling for a handhold.

“What the…” Lisa gasped in surprise, picking herself off the floor as the surprise quickly morphed into rage. “Who the bloody hell’s piloting us!? Lemmy fuckin’ Killmeister!?”

The intercom blinked on, and the cabin fell silent, as if it were the word of God speaking to them. “Folks, we apologize for that rough patch we hit back there,” the pilot announced as one of the men in a pressed suit and sunglasses strode out of the cockpit and stood at the front of the cabin, hands folded in front of his body in that way every government man seemed to have practiced to an art. “We just got orders for a rapid diversion to an airstrip on Shetland, the gentleman in the suit will explain.”

“He damn well better,” Lisa muttered, sinking back into her seat with her arms folded across her chest as she glared at the man.

The man in the suit nodded towards her in a rare act of acknowledgement, then raised his head to address the entire cabin. “We will be catching a helicopter from the airstrip on Shetland, which will take us to the HMS Illustrious, bound for Norway.”

“Wait, what!?” Dave stood up, his shoes squishing in the scotch-soaked carpeting beneath him. “Why aren’t we going to the Emergence Zone!?”

“I’m afraid I can’t divulge that information at this time, sir,” the man replied, also in that tone G-men practiced as much as the businesslike hand-fold.

“No, of course you can’t,” he sighed, sinking back into his seat.

“You will be briefed after the helicopter lands aboard the Illustrious,” the man in the suit said, stepping back into the cockpit. “That is all.”

“Typical,” Liu muttered, rising from his seat and heading towards the bar, stepping past the bathrooms where Akshat gave another violent wretch while he passed by. “Ta ma de typical.”

“You said it,” David grumbled as the cabin settled right back into business as usual. He was just starting to consider grabbing a fresh glass from the bar (Merlot this time, perhaps) when he noticed Anton’s flask lying on the carpet. An eyebrow cocked, he picked the tiny container up and held it out to the Russian.

Anton, for his part, had been oddly quiet since their rapid takeoff from Heathrow, nursing a pearl flask from his jacket pocket. David knew better than to interrupt a man when they were thinking through things this big, especially things that could mean the end of human civilization as they all knew it. So they had sat in their large, padded seats, David occasionally joining in with the others’ attempts at staying in good humor and Anton lost in his own little world. Still, a part of him wished he could see just what the cogs and wheels behind the Russian’s eyes were really turning around. Anton might not have been any more than a decade older than any of them, but he was still the most experienced, the de facto leader when shit hit the fan.

Even with the flask practically in front of his face, Anton kept staring straight ahead, eyebrows furrowed, both hands gripping the armrests as if they were still in the middle of that violent turn, his knuckles turning white with effort and blending in with the pleather. David had to clear his throat for attention.

“Hm? Oh,” Anton whipped the flask out of David’s hand and stored it in his pocket in a single, fluid motion. “Thanks.”

Figuring this was his best time to ask, the American prodded his Russian counterpart. “What’re you thinking about so hard, anyway?”

There was a brief moment when he thought Anton must not have heard him, but then the Russian turned and tilted his head up into David’s face, smiling tiredly. He looked so old right then, as if just the effort of looking up into the younger (but not that much younger) man’s eyes had added a couple decades to his life. “Just things, my little Amerikanets, just things.”

“Ah,” David said, nodding as if that answered anything. “What kind of things?”

The tired smile faded. “Just…how badly this complicates things, and not just for us,” he replied, his hand starting towards his jacket for the flask, pausing, and falling back to the armrest.

Guess I’m not the only one who could use a drink on dry land, David thought with a small twinge of relief. Knowing that the aging Russian couldn’t swallow a drop either didn’t make him feel better, per se, but the twinge of sympathy he felt did distract him from his own fear. “I know it’s not just for us. I mean, you saw those people heading south! For all they know, their homes won’t be there tomorrow!”

“No, no, not just us,” he motioned to himself and to the rest of the plane. “I mean…not just…people…”

David’s eyes widened. “The ponies,” he realized.

“Da,” finally, Anton whipped out the flask, flicked the cap off, and upended a single swallow down his throat, grimacing as the alcohol slid to his stomach. “Damned heights…messing with my tolerance for this stuff…”

“Right, right,” David sighed, collapsing into the seat next to him. “Shit, I forgot about the Equestrians…God…how do you suppose the Prince will react to this?”

Anton grimaced, whipping out the flask again and swallowing another gulp with a wince. “After everything that evil bitch took from him, how do you think he’s going to react?”

Author's Note

Sorry this one took a little longer than planned. A few days, I know, hope y'all ain't upset :twilightsheepish:

Chapter IV: Scars

1325 HOURS
NEW CANTERLOT PALACE

NEW CANTERLOT, CENTRAL EQUESTRIAN UNCDI-ADMINISTRATED ZONE, EAST CHINA SEA

Mi Amore Cadenza’s eyelids slowly drifted shut, her head lolling forward and the buzz from the blinking fluorescents overhead becoming a soft, soothing lullaby as she sat there with a form labeled “176-T” before her. Apparently, it was to grant permission for the local German command to use one of the empty warehouses in Baltimare for storing weaponry and…

UGH! So boring! Why did the entire Baltimare council of elders have to face down the nuclear hellfire ‘like true stallions would’!? Couldn’t just one pony have wussied out at the last moment and cowered in the shelters with the rest of the town’s populace!? It’s not like there hadn’t been enough death on that terrible day!

Cadenza peeled her face off her desk and sat with her chin resting on its surface. She knew the petty problems she faced after that dark moment in time paled in comparison to the millions of ponies vaporized by hellfire, and to the landmarks that had stood for thousands of years only to be reduced to rubble within minutes, but right now, it was six-o-clock and she still had a half-dozen petty bureaucratic issues to settle before she could go home. She figured she was entitled to a selfish thought or two.

“Rough day, my little pony?” Someone said from the other side of her desk. She grimaced and pulled her face up, looking up at a pretty little human in an MP’s uniform with the Chinese flag on a shoulder standing there, her black hair tied back in a knot, a sheepish smile on her face, and another accursed stack of papers in her hands.

Cadenza cringed and smiled weakly. “Yeah, hello Tian, how are you?” She asked, automatically slipping into the human's simplified Han Chinese with the ease everypony had possessed since Equestria's emergence on Earth.

The smile on Tian’s face faded instantly. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! I forgot she used to call you…”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Cadence waved her off with a hoof, grabbing the pile of papers and laying them on the desk manually, her magic being firmly secured by the small metal band around her horn. “A slip of the tongue, Tian, think nothing of it.”

“I just wish I could make things easier,” the human said with a sigh, eyeing the impressive stacks growing on the pony’s desk.

“Yeah, looks like another all-nighter for me.”

The human gave a sympathetic nod and propped her hands on the desk, fingers spread. “Listen, I know it’s technically against the rules, but if you want a hand…”

“Stop right there,” Cadenza raised a hoof to stop the human. “You know that would be against the treaty. A human working in a purely Equestrian bureaucracy? Both sides would throw a tiff-fit!”

“Shit-fit,” the human corrected with a tired smile.

“That too,” Cadenza said, returning the smile as best as she could. “The point is, they’d have your uniform Tian, and I don’t want to lose you. You’re one of the only soldiers in Canterlot not off to take their anger out on some Celestial cultists.”

“Oh, that?” Tian waved her off. “That’s just boys being boys. You should be grateful for the cultists. Without something to fight, those guys would be daring each other to see who could get a unicorn pissed enough to take off their magic suppressor and blast them.”

“I could never be grateful for anything that might remind me of that evil bitch,” Cadence replied flatly, a sudden surge of anger rising in her chest.

Tian took a few steps back at the rage that suddenly appeared on the little pink unicorn’s face. Why, if she had them, the little thing would be flaring her wings! The human immediately bowed her head apologetically, chastising herself for two social faux pas in as many minutes. “Gosh, sorry Cady, I didn’t mean…”

“God, I know,” Cadence slumped in her chair, her rage abating to a point where she could at least keep it buried. “I’m sorry, it’s just been such a long day, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting any shorter. And anything that reminds me of her just gets me so…so…”

Suddenly, Tian leaned across the desk and wrapped the pony in a hug, her uniformed arms cradling Cadence close to her chest. “I know,” she whispered. “I get it. I’m sorry.”

Despite her first instinct to pull back, Cadence couldn’t help but sink into the hug. She didn’t cry, she’d wept enough tears in the past half-decade to be beyond that, but she wasn’t beyond the pain, or beyond accepting a hug when it was obviously needed. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Don’t mention it, sweetheart,” Tian replied before pulling back. “I know how much even thinking about her must hurt, but just hang in there. In a few weeks, the first ponies will be graduating from that special training course, and you’ll get all the help you’ll ever need here.”

“A room full of bureaucrats, whoopee,” Cadence replied with a dry smile, looking up at Tian with eyes that glistened. “You didn’t have to do that, you know?”

“That’s what you say, but your tears say different,” the human pointed out.

“Wha…” Cadence reached a hoof to her face, just under an eye, and felt a few trickles run over the keratin. “D-darn it…I thought I was…past this…”

Tian just shook her head. “I don’t think anyone on this planet is ever going to be past what she did. We all suffered at that tyrant’s hooves,” she looked down at Cadence with all the sympathy she could muster. “Some just suffered more than others.”

“Yeah,” Cadence sighed, shaking her head. “Tian, how is it your species produced those Jackass movies and is still capable of saying stuff so wise?”

At that, Tian just tossed her head back and laughed, her warm laughter bursting from her chest and echoing throughout the room. “There’s a question for the ages, hon! Hey, if I ever figure it out I’ll let you know, alright?”

“Sounds like a deal.”

“You sure you don’t want me to stay? If not for help, at least for moral support?”

“No, no, go on,” Cadence waved her off. “We ponies have to stand on our own some time. Besides, you’ve been here almost as long as I have, judging from the bags under your eyes.”

The human scowled playfully. “Ah, me and my lack of makeup. Oh well,” she shrugged, turning to leave. “You have a good night Cadence.”

“You too, and hey, don’t be so afraid to try makeup! You might get one of those testosterone-addicts outside to finally notice you!” Cadence called after her.

“That’s what I’m afraid of!” Tian laughed before she walked out the door, letting it slam behind her. With the boom from the door echoing in the chamber, Cadence sighed and sank deeper into her seat.

“Alright, let’s see what we have here,” she sighed, sorting through the documents with her bare hooves. It might have been easier with her magic, sure, but the suppressor was such a pain to yank off, and even then, if one of those “testosterone addicts” happened to peek in, she’d have to explain why she was using magic to help with paperwork when it was only to be released in the most extreme circumstances. “Either at the behest of a neutral United Nations observer or in situations where massive loss of property or loss of life would be at risk,” as the treaty so eloquently put it. Besides, she’d grown used to working with her hooves. It felt nice to feel the paper as it travelled over her skin, rather than robotically sorting through a page kept in the air with her magic.

“Request for more funds to Manehattan reconstruction effort…pass…ten pages requesting a new filter for Ponyville aquifer…pass…” she muttered, the minutes ticking by as she sorted through the pages. “Request for expansion to the Crystal Palace…”

She paused, her eyes widening. Leaving the sheet on her desk, she immediately circled the room, checking and double-checking that every door and every window had been sealed and locked shut. She then returned to the desk, her eyes darting over every corner of the room. Thing was, the Crystal Palace had been renamed the Solar Hold after Prin - she had vaporized the wicked King Sombra in battle following his attempted insurrection against her (though looking back, it’s hard to tell if that had been a true victory for good or just one evil destroying another). Which meant this document was…

…a coded transmission from one of the embassies! She thought, practically bouncing in her seat with glee. Finally, she got to put the crash course in code-breaking she’d taken at the Prince’s request to use! And a message directly to Canterlot, meant for the Prince? It had to be huge! Oooohh, I’m just like Daring Do! Or that James Pawned guy the humans are always going on about!

Settling herself with a few deep breaths, she took her seat and set to work decoding the message. Judging by the stationary, it was from Equestria’s London office, wherever that was. She kept promising herself to learn Earth Geography when she had the time. “Let’s see…setting at 0800 hours…that means new…request funds in summation of 1200 bits, that’s…materialize? Odd word, but it’s used in this context here…and the message is…E…Q…U…E…”

Her smile faded, her earlier excitement replaced with a wave of dread, washing over her like a cold tide. “No…” she gasped. It had to be a mistake, it had to be! It was impossible!

She finished decoding the entire message. Then, when she had it, she decoded it again, and again, and again. Around the fifth attempt at decoding, she finally surrendered and accepted what she was seeing. A lump rose in her throat as she slumped in her chair in shock, her pen dropping from her hoof. This time, she did feel herself start to cry, the tears rolling down her cheeks, fat and heavy this time instead of the little trickles she’d held earlier. She managed to stifle a sob by stuffing a hoof in her mouth, albeit just barely.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please. Not again. God no, not again…”

When she had collected herself just a bit, it dawned on her that the Prince would need to hear this. He was the only pony with any sort of power to do something about it. She allowed herself a few more sobs and choked-off gasps before she settled again, smoothing out her mane, standing, collecting the transmission, and walking to the ornate oaken doors along the back wall.

She took a few deep breaths, steadying herself, using a technique that another version of her had spent years teaching a little lavender unicorn for relaxation. Then, keeping her head low, she pushed the doors aside and stepped in.

As usual, the shades were drawn and the lights turned off. That had always seemed like such a waste to her: for the humans to go through all the trouble of installing electric lights in this room, one of the first in Equestria they had done so in, and the Prince never even used them. Not that she would ever bring it up to his face, hell no!

She scanned the room, finding the small, dark lump perched on the large oaken desk, the gold-plated ink quill and pen next to his hoof, as it usually was. “Um, s-sir?” She asked, trying and failing to keep the fearful quiver out of her voice.

“Wha-buh!?” The shape stirred and jolted up, the gleam of a rapier suddenly appearing in the dim light. “Oh, Miss Cadenza, you startled me.”

“S-sorry, sir,” she replied, only relaxing after the weapon was safely back in its hiding place.

“Well, what is it? You didn’t come in here for no reason,” the large pony behind the desk stated.

“R-right,” calming her nerves again, she lifted her face to look right at him with as much confidence as she could find in her little, pink, unicorn’s body. “Sir, our London office is reporting an…occurrence in the North Sea.”

“Well? Out with it.” The Prince stated calmly, yet firmly.

She squeaked, wringing her hooves over the paper in her grip. The Prince let out an audible sigh as he motioned to her. “Please?”

“Sir…I, just don’t know how to put this…” she sighed, running her hooves through her mane. “Th-this was never considered a possibility in any of our contingency meetings, with the humans or otherwise.”

“What’s that, Miss Cadenza?” The Prince asked, obviously growing tired.

She sighed again and took a deep breath, deciding it would probably be best to just get it out in one go and be done with it. “Another Equestria has appeared, with another…ruler.”

The Prince gave pause at that, his silhouette becoming a frozen statue sitting there for a moment. Eventually, he leaned forward and switched on the small lamp he kept on his desk, the eyepatch concealing most of the scar that ran down his face now plainly visible as his marred, grizzled visage entered the light. The magic suppressor around his horn, bejeweled and gold-leaved but still there at the request of the United Nations, glimmered in the faint glow. “I’m sorry, what was that, Miss Cadenza?” He asked, his voice low and dangerous.

She quivered and squeaked again, all pretense of confidence vanishing as the words tumbled out of her mouth in a rush, like rats from a sinking ship. “Another Equestria has appeared in the North Sea and the humans have already launched a raid into it and they captured Cel…the Solar Princess and they’re holding her and now the whole UN is mobilizing for war and…and that’s all.”

The Prince remained in place, apparently frozen again. His features remained unreadable. Then he leaned back in his seat, crossing his forelegs over his broad chest. “Thank you, Miss Cadenza, will that be all?” He asked.

“Y-yes, sir.”

“Good, now, why don’t you go home?” He asked, waving her off. “I’m sure whatever work you have left can wait until the morning, yes?”

“Um…” Most of it really couldn’t, but at this point, she was willing to say just about anything to get out of that room. “Yes, sir, I’ll just be taking my leave for the night.”

“You do that,” he replied, still waving her off. “Good night, Miss Mi Amore Cadenza.”

“G-good night, sir,” she replied, realizing that was the first time he’d said something even remotely outside of “business talk” in her presence since…well…since that day. Since the day he’d lost the last thing in the world that held any meaning for him at the hooves of the one pony in the universe whose name Cadence still couldn’t say out loud. Bowing respectfully, Cadence turned and strode out the door, closing the door behind her as quietly as possible.

The moment the door closed and the Prince was alone, he visibly shrank, his head resting in his hooves. In a heartbeat, he yanked the suppressor off his horn with practiced ease and tossed it aside, watching it clatter off into the darkness. He reached into one of his desk drawers with a faint, pink glow, pulling out two objects: a tin flask filled with the strongest whiskey he could find in the humans’ lands, and a framed photograph of a little lavender unicorn with pink streaks in her mane and a face lit up with the sort of happiness that only a filly could know.

Taking a swig from the flask, the Prince ran a hoof over the picture, the filly perched on the back of a younger, less-scarred version of himself with a cardboard sword and shield. He smiled. She always had liked playing the savior knight, not the poor, stranded princess when they’d played together. A few drops landed on the photo, and the Prince scowled, gingerly laying the photo back in its place before slumping in his chair again. He took a few more swallows from the flask and wiped the tears from his face on the back of a hoof.

“One way or another, either at my hooves or their hands, you’re going to pay for what you did to my sister, Celestia,” he growled under his voice, keeping it low to prevent any curious ears from hearing. He leaned forward in his chair, a blue curl falling from his mane and dangling over his one good eye in the dim lamplight, his alabaster coat shimmering in the flickering candle. “You’re gonna pay for killing my Twily.”

Author's Note

Edit: OH SHI...and special thanks goes out to Lackrome for editing and for putting up with my temper!

Just so you all know, speech in italics is in a language other than English. Yeah, I know, short update. I hope the twist near the end there makes up for it. And if not, then I pray the comedic stylings of Christopher Titus can do the trick.

Chapter V: The Masks We Wear

1500 HOURS
ROYAL INFIRMARY

CANTERLOT PALACE, CANTERLOT, EQUESTRIA

Shining Armor’s eyes slowly cracked open. Wincing with pain, he squeezed them shut again. Voices echoed in his ears, unfamiliar and garbled, like his ears had been stuffed with cotton. Calm yourself, some inner part of him urged. Take stock of the situation and reorient yourself based on what you know.

Something soft and cottony was at his back, something else cool keeping his head supported. A military cot, definitely, with one of those cheap pillows from the stockroom. He’d lain in enough of these during Basic to recognize the feel almost instantly. Now, what else did he know? The echo-like quality of the voices in his ears probably indicated hearing damage, and the extreme pain upon seeing light almost certainly pointed to a long amount of time knocked out, with the added bonus of possible damage to the occipital lobe.

Thank you, battlefield triage, he thought. Okay, that was all fine and dandy, but what else did he know? How did he get here from…wherever it was he had been? Let’s see…he remembered walking with Twily…he was in full guard regalia, was there some battle going on? No, he remembered talking candidly with her, that’s not something you did in a battlefield situation. A security operation, then? Maybe, some sort of anomaly appearing in Equestria…

Anomaly…

That was it! He could remember everything now! Walking with Twilight, meeting with her friends, accidentally bumping into Rainbow Dash (which he made a mental note to vehemently deny for the rest of his days), and most importantly of all, meeting with the Princess and…

“PRINCESS! TWILIGHT!” He gasped, bolting upright in his cot, allowing his eyes to bug wide open. Bad idea: the sudden sting of light assaulting his eyes combined with the blood rushing from his head knocked him right back down again, cradling his head in his hooves and moaning. At the very least, the sudden rush of emotions seemed to help in discerning the voices from the barely-audible static in his ears, allowing him to hear the ponies around him.

“Has anypony seen my son!? My little Richie, has anypony seen him!?” Distraught mother. No surprises there, considering what happened.

“Oh Celestia above, I can’t see! Why can’t I see!?” Panicking civvies. Again, no surprises there.

“Consarn it, first you city folk mess up one a’ my fields with your dag-blasted magic portals, then y’all tell me I can’t even leave to harvest m’other fields!?” Old stallion Jenkins? What was he doing here?

“Captain Armor, ‘tis good to see you again.” Princess Luna.

“PRINCESS LUNA!” Shining Armor gasped, a hoof automatically flying to his forehead in salute. Unfortunately, with his mind still fuzzy and his body still uncoordinated, all he managed to accomplish was a good, firm punch to his own forehead. “Gyah, sorry,” he grumbled, rubbing at the red hoofmark growing on his face.

“At ease, Captain,” the Princess said, and he felt a reassuring hoof press on his shoulder. “You were among the worst injured, though I suspect we should be grateful for that, all things considered.”

“Yeah, at least I’m still breathing,” Shining guffawed, then he felt a sharp intake of breath on the Princess’s part. His smile faded. “Oh, Celestia above, please don’t tell me there were…”

“We are…sorry, Captain. T’was not your fault, you must realize that.”

Despite her reassurances, Shining pushed himself up until he was leaning on his elbows, ignoring the pounding growing steadily louder in his head. Slowly, carefully, he opened his eyes, remaining patient on opening them despite the urge to just bolt upright in the cot and jolt them wide open. At first, the pain remained, but then it slowly dulled and his vision focused, allowing indistinct blobs and colors to coalesce and form into shapes he could recognize. First came the tent, military-standard canvas he would recognize from any battlefield triage center. Then came the ponies, groups of terrified civilians either resting on cots or gathered around them, all looking around in shock and confusion as medics and nurses trotted amongst them, all of which he also recognized from most battlefield situations. Finally, the area outside the tent started to slide into focus, the still-shining sun beating down on warm blades of grass, the fence they’d all been leaning on not even a day before, and…and a group of guards with grim looks on their faces, setting yellow caution tape up around a tarp-covered bundle that had a single bloody hoof sticking out.

“Oh Celestia,” Shining gasped. He dropped back onto the cot, his hooves pressing into his eyes. “Oh, Celestia and Luna!”

“Yon fool rushed against the attackers on his own,” Luna said, replacing the comforting hoof on his shoulder. “Again, ‘twas not your fault.”

“I’m a royal guard. My job is to keep the Princesses safe, my own sister included,” Shining replied, not bothering to open his eyes. “If I hadn’t failed on that end, would that idiot have even thought to try and attack those things on his own?”

Luna didn’t say anything, though the fact that a Princess known for her use of old-timey wordiness was at a loss for words didn’t encourage him any. Still, the hoof on his shoulder was a decent comfort, all things considered. Between the civilian casualties and missing princesses, he could use a bit of comfort just then.

“Gosh, there’s so many,” he mumbled, head turning on the pillow to the cots alongside him.

“Actually, most of these ponies are just stunned,” Luna replied. “We are merely holding them at the moment to ensure word about this does not leak out.”

“We’re holding them prisoner!? Why?”

“An alien world with abilities we can’t even fathom has kidnapped two of Equestria’s royal elite,” Luna sighed, shaking her head. “If word gets out, there will be panic in the streets. All things considered, with Tia – with my sister and the Element of Magic missing, I just didn’t want to chance having to deal with yet another crisis.”

Shining Armor’s nose wrinkled at that, but he said nothing. Though he found the idea of holding a bunch of frightened civilians hostage for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time just repulsive, he could see the logic in the Princess’s words. Besides, he had always seen himself as a soldier first and a leader in the Crystal Empire second. It was hard to beat the mindset that he was meant to follow orders without question, only relaying the best way of carrying them out to the few ponies under his command. Back in the Crystal Empire, his wife handled all the real administration, writing up edicts and following up with him on how they were being carried out. He was really just there to hang out and look pretty. And yes, stand in defiance against any horrors from the ancient past threatening his home, that was just a given.

“We share your distaste, Captain,” the Princess remarked, reading his features in an instant. “But ‘tis the situation we find ourselves in, and we must adapt to pull through as best we can. Is that not one of the mantras of thine Royal Guard training?”

Despite himself, a tiny grin crossed Shining’s face, earning a look of surprise from the Princess. “Y’know, Cadence does that to me all the time,” he said. “Turn my own guard instincts against me and all. I’ve always admired that about her.”

Luna nodded and returned the smile. “The mark of a clever mare.”

“Oh, speaking of,” he tried to sit up again, failed, and resigned himself to just laying on the bed and tilting his head in her general direction. “We need to call her in. We’ll need all the firepower we can get.”

“Actually, she teleported in the moment she received my letter,” Luna replied. “She’s waiting just outside. She understands we needed this debriefing beforehoof.”

“Ah. Alright then, we’re gonna need reserve units…”

“To be called up, yes, we know. Every reserve garrison from here to Baltimare just received orders for an increased regimen of ‘training exercises’.”

“G-good…oh! And if Cadence is here, we’ll need…”

“Your plants in the Crystal Gardens are being watered, Captain!” Luna said, her wings flaring in exasperation. “The Empire is being managed by the emergency protocols you and your wife laid in place, we have trains inbound from every territory with supplies to support either a long, drawn-out siege or a massive battle, and we’ve cancelled your reservation at this Saturday’s Comic-Con in Trottingham! Everything is resolved, now will you please relax!?”

“Alright, alright,” he said, somewhat surprised at her outburst. He turned over on his cot again.

“Do you wish to know anything else?”

“Yeah, how are the girls taking it?”

“They’re positively distraught,” Luna replied, her eyes glistening. “Or, at least, Fluttershy and Rarity are. Pinkie Pie only just stopped crying, and Rainbow Dash and Applejack had to be restrained to keep them from single-hoofedly attempting an attack on the other world.”

“Yeah, that sounds like them,” Shining Armor attempted another smile, but it came off flat, feeling alien on his face. He gave up on it after a moment. “Can I see my wife now?”

“Of course, Captain,” Luna nodded before trotting back out, leaving Shining with perhaps five milliseconds of alone time to process what had happened before a pink blur sailed in through the tent flap and body-slammed him.

“SHINING!” Cadence cried, her hooves wrapping around his midsection while she showered him with kisses. “HOW BADLY ARE YOU HURT!? ARE YOU FEELING OKAY!? DO YOU SEE A BRIGHT LIGHT!? OH MY DEAR SWEET CELESTIA, STAY OUT OF THE LIGHT SHINING! PLEEEASE! STAY OUT OF…”

He grimaced, teeth clenching in pain as she rocked him back and forth. “My…legs…” he managed to grunt.

“What, your legs!? Oh Maker above, you can’t feel your legs!? Don’t worry Shining!” She held him close, tears pouring down her cheeks. “We’ll get through this as husband and wife! I won’t leave you! We’ll get you a physical therapist, and we’ll find the best wheelchair in Equestria for you, and…”

“No…you’re standing on them…my legs…” he mumbled.

“Wha-oh,” she gave a quick flap of her wings, lifting off his body and landing gracefully at his bedside. He let out a sigh of instant relief, blood rushing back to his legs. “Sorry!”

“It’s fine, really!” He smiled at her, ignoring the pain as he held out a hoof to stroke her chin. His eyes locked with hers and she sniffled. “I’m fine, Cady. I’m just fine.”

“I’m sorry, Shiny,” she whimpered, her hoof clenching his as he stroked the side of her muzzle reassuringly. “For a second, I thought I might be losing you too, and with Auntie Tia gone and Twi…Twi…” she couldn’t even make it through Twilight’s name, the tears now welling up and wetting both their hooves as he continued to stroke her.

“Hey, hey,” he pulled her in close, careful to avoid her horn as her head nuzzled into his chest. “It’ll be alright, okay? Everything’s gonna be just fine.”

“How can they be fine, Shiny? Two of the most important ponies in the world have been foalnapped by monsters from another dimension, who’ve already killed one of our own!” Her tear-filled eyes lifted to face the blood-covered bundle outside the tent flap, which was being loaded onto a stretcher, the bloody hoof hurriedly tucked in. “The things that did that have our Twily, how could they possibly be alright?”

Instead of talking, he pulled her face away from the tent flap and kissed her, long and hard, passionately locking lips while stroking her shoulders reassuringly. “I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out,” he whispered. “I promise. Wherever Twilight is, nothing is gonna stop us from getting her back.”

She sniffled, bit her lip, and leaned in on top of him again. He continued stroking her long into the night, as Princess Luna lowered the sun and her moon rose high into the sky. Then, and only then, with an exhausted Cadence passed out next to him on the cot, did he allow the tears he'd been suppressing the entire day to start flowing. I-I promise, he repeated to himself, over and over again. We’ll get you back, Twily, no matter what. Oh Celestia above, please be alright.

Chapter VI: The Descent

0550 HOURS
THE HMS ILLUSTRIOUS

NORTH SEA, OFF THE NORWEGIAN COASTLINE, BOUND FOR KARELIA

David turned over restlessly in his seat. It was obvious that the AW101 he was flying in had not been built with comfort in mind, but then, what did he honestly expect from a military chopper? Gold plated armrests and a tuxedoed man with a French accent to wait on him?

"I swear, this wouldn't be so bad if they’d allowed us to hold on to our damned luggage," Andre grumbled, brushing a few locks of blonde hair out of his eyes. “They didn’t have to take freakin’ everything!”

Well, okay, they had Andre. He was French: that was something! Maybe he could ask the guy to deck himself out in a tux and serve them all drinks at some point, Lord knows the others would gladly approve of the old stereotype of a French waiter. Hell, Andre might even agree to it as a favor of sorts!

Yeah, sure, right after he finished punching him in the face and asking if that "goddamn Kraut" had put him up to this. Maybe that was one idea he could just let pass.

As David wondered around in his thoughts, Anton grinned and reached into his flight jacket, adjusting the shoulder harness holding him to his seat just enough to reach in and pull out the flask he'd been drinking out of during the flight. He held it up like a gold trophy at a sporting event, a grin of victory plastered across his face. “They did not take everything, little ones.”

"Oh my God," David gasped, Anton's grin spreading to his face. "Don't tell me you seriously did the stereotypical Russian thing and worked like hell to save your booze!?"

"Some stereotypes are there for good reason, mine yankee-doodle tovaricsh," The Russian replied, taking a swig from the flask before handing it to Felipe. "Drink up, everyone. I have a feeling we'll need it."

Though it was obvious the young Brazilian wanted nothing to do with it, Felipe uncapped the small, silver flask and tilted it down his throat, wincing and coughing violently, but managing to keep it all down as he passed the flask on with a painful smile plastered on his face.

Yeah kid, I'm not feeling it either, Dave thought even as he took a swig himself. As expected, the drink burnt the entire way down, feeling more like acid than anything alcoholic, but a second later the familiar tingle of being warmed from the inside out washed over his body, radiating out from his chest. His face morphed from a distasteful grimace to a contented sigh, and he passed the flask on to the next person waiting for a drink.

He turned his head, peeking out the round window built into the chopper’s side. The Illustrious, once a long blip on the horizon, now dominated the view. He could even make out the rows of fighters parked on deck, all with little, ant-like dots racing around them, working furiously. “Nothing like a threat to all humanity to get the military’s collective rear in gear,” he muttered, and it wasn’t just the British. Off in the distance, he could make out at least half a dozen more black dots representing warships, probably American, Norwegian and Russian, all hanging out just over the horizon. No doubt a couple dozen other nations would be joining them soon.

“Davey?” He turned to see his Russian counterpart standing there, having slipped out of his harness, holding his flask out to Dave’s face. “There’s still a little left. The others thought you should have it.”

David did a quick scan of the faces around him. Every one of them shared a variation of the same puckered lips and scrunched-up noses, as if they’d all just had to watch a toddler eat one of its own boogers. Even Liu, the only man ever to drink him under a table, had the corners of his mouth turned down in distaste. The American smiled and accepted the final few sips gladly, this time releasing only a contented sigh aimed in the Chinese diplomat’s direction, much to the man’s obvious chagrin. He handed the flask back and kept that smile up until the helicopter touched down, when he used the sudden bump to let loose with a massive gag capped off with a cough.

“Pussy,” Anton snickered, apparently having kept his eyes on David the entire time, just gripping the overhead support struts to stay on his feet.

“No, just not used to drinking turpentine, is all,” Dave spat back, feeling a surprising amount of satisfaction at the grimace that earned from the Russian.

The rear hatch dropped open and a pair of men in flight uniforms with the Union Jack stitched to the arm ducked inside. One of them took a quick look around, then turned to Anton.

“You guys are the diplomats?”

“Who wants to know?” The Russian replied, keeping a steely glare on the pair.

“Who wants…Her Majesty’s Navy, that’s who!”

Anton gave him a look as if to say Is that supposed to impress me? But he followed up with a quick, curt nod, which the soldier was more than happy to accept as a yes.

“Follow us,” the other soldier said, and the pair jogged out of the chopper and waited on the tarmac, turning back to the group as the blades whipped the wind up all around them. The diplomats quickly shrugged off their harnesses and went after them, thudding down the ramp and onto the deck of the Illustrious as one, marching together in perfect step without a second thought.

The men in camo led the group away from the helipad and back towards the bridge, jogging past men loading up weapons, performing systems tests, and rushing equipment from one part of the landing strip to the next. A civilian might have been impressed by the sheer effort being expended for a war that hadn’t even occurred yet, but Dave kept his mind focused, his eyes on the massive tower jutting out from the otherwise flat landing strip. He hadn’t always been a civilian, after all, and it was easy to fall right back into that old line of thinking from his days as a marine, back during a time when he’d stood on the deck of a carrier not too unlike this, when…when…

God above…Christ alive…don’t tell me that’s her! Please, Jesus Christ almighty…

He shook the memory off, shoving it right back down to the furthest reaches of his mind, as far from the light of day as he could bury it. There was a time and a place to deal with shit like that, and now wasn’t one of them. Problem was, as a psychiatrist might have found, it had been neither that time nor that place for the past five years.

He had just about finished shoving the memory back into the hellish pit from which it came when the group reached the tower. A large, steel door was opened for them, and they all ducked inside, panting with the quick jog they’d been treated to, though not as heavily as one might think a bunch of diplomats would pant. The soldiers stood at attention next to a door at the far side of the small, metal room the diplomats found themselves in, standing ramrod straight and in complete silence.

“Well, nothing like a brisk jog to get the old heart movin’,” Lisa joked once she’d caught her breath. Which was just before I did, David noticed, she must jog. Well, I guess, duh, with a body like that.

“Speak for…yourself…Limey…” Anton huffed, his hand reaching for his coat out of habit, then pausing when he remembered the pair of men watching them. “Cripes…haven’t done that in a while.”

“Yeah, and it shows, tovarisch,” Liu joked.

“Shove it up your ass.”

“Atten-SHUN!” The soldiers cried, somehow standing even straighter than they had been. David had to force the urge to follow suit back down, not wanting to explain why he was standing in the perfect posture drilled into him by the Marine Corps to the rest of the group. In a few moments, the door between the soldiers squeaked open, and through it stepped a large man in the pure-white uniform of an admiral, and again David had to suppress the urge to salute. Foreign navy or not, the uniform of an admiral, especially one as highly-maintained and decorated as this guy’s, was an impressive sight.

The Admiral surveyed the group with a pair of weathered, old eyes, set beneath a cap that only revealed a few strands of red hair that had escaped beneath its brim. He would be the perfect stereotype of an old sea commander if he just had a massive set of whiskers, but nope: his broad chin was as clean as a baby’s bottom, to David’s semi-disappointment. When he spoke, it was with an old, gravelly rasp combined with his British accent, making him sound like the sort of guy who sat alone in the corner of a pub, just daring someone to start something.

“Hello, and I am Admiral Peters,” the gravelly rasp said. “You lot are the UNCDI reps for the Isles?”

“That’s correct, sir,” Lisa said in a timid little tone that, to Dave at least, fit her about as well as clogs on a duck. She offered her hand, which the Admiral took with a firm shake, causing everyone in the room to release a collective breath they didn’t know they’d been holding. “I’m Lisa Townshend, for London, and these are my associates from each of the other Security Council nations.”

Those weathered eyes scanned them, seeming to pierce right into each person’s soul as they passed over. They dwelt on Anton for a moment, the Russian returning the look, each man just looking at one another. Not glaring, per se, but more like sizing the other up. Then the Admiral moved on to David. “You the Yank?” He asked.

“Uh…yes sir,” Dave said, a bit taken aback that he’d been pointed out so quickly and with such ease. In a flash, he had the image of the Admiral having him thrown overboard because of some deep-seated grudge with Americans that nobody dared question. But the Admiral simply nodded, a quick thank you for offering up a simple fact, nothing more. Then he turned to step back through the door he’d walked in through, his hands folded neatly behind his back.

“Try t’keep up,” the old navy man said. He didn’t have to repeat himself. The group was practically on top of him, remaining at his back as they walked at a pace just barely slower than the jog they’d just been put through. Their heels all tapped on the metal plating, the Admiral keeping the pace up as they rushed past rows of closed doors with muffled voices coming from inside, some jovial, some argumentative, a few obviously drunk.

“Sir,” Lisa said, remaining at the Admiral’s side. “If I may be so bold…”

“No questions.” The Admiral said briskly. “I’ll tell you when you can ask, but not here. Too many ears.”

Lisa looked a bit surprised at his quick admonition, but nodded and kept pace with him, keeping her eyes locked straight ahead and her mouth shut, all the while allowing the men a decent look of her behind as it swayed in front of them all, like a carrot at the end of a string. Even Dave couldn’t help but chance a couple quick glances from the bottoms of his eyes while keeping his chin raised.

The Admiral led them to a large freight elevator and swiped a keycard, produced from one of his many pockets. Then he removed his hat and leaned in as a retinal scanner worked over his eyeball, which revealed a numeric keypad from a small slot in the wall, into which he entered a long, impossible-to-follow code. At last, a section of the wall next to the freight elevator opened up with a pneumatic hiss, revealing yet another elevator.

“Clever,” Franz remarked. The Admiral didn’t even look over his shoulder, only stepping into the elevator with the full expectation that the group would be right behind him. He wasn’t disappointed. Once they had all crowded together, the Admiral pressed a large, red button on the far wall and the door slid shut. The elevator jerked once and began the long descent into the deeper underbelly of the ship, machinery humming away somewhere beneath them.

“I apologize for my brashness,” the Admiral said. “Time is of the essence, however, and military protocol strictly prohibits me from discussing this matter someplace where there could be even a chance of eavesdroppers.”

“And this elevator qualifies because…” Dave said.

“Of the amount of money we poured into making this entire part of the ship just that sort of place,” the Admiral replied, a knowing smile on his face. “I’d go into details, but then I would have to kill you.”

“Sir,” Lisa interrupted, again in the uncharacteristic, mousy tone. David couldn’t say he cared for it, deciding right then and there to bring it up with her at some point. “If I may be so bold, what is this all about? We were taken from our headquarters rather abruptly, and nobody seems willing to divulge any answers, especially in the face of the…uh…the anomaly.”

Sure. Anomaly. That was a fair enough name for it. Dave might have gone with “harbinger of man’s doom,” but that was just him.

“The anomaly is exactly why we’re here,” the Admiral explained. “As I’m sure you lot have already been made aware, an SAS platoon was on maneuvers off the Isle of Man when the new portal appeared.”

Anton nodded once again, as curtly as he had before, and the Englishman took this as a sign to continue. “Well, that platoon managed to get their hands on some Tachyon Inhibitors and subsequently launched a top-secret raid into the other side.”

“Oh my God…” David gasped, along with the rest of the group. “What did they find!?”

The Admiral sighed, peeling off his hat and running his fingers through his thinning hair. “There is no simple way to put this,” he explained. “So I’ll keep it brief: the SAS managed to capture this other Equestria’s version of Target Alpha.”

The elevator fell into stunned silence. “The Princess of Day…” Chen muttered in a tiny, childish voice. Everyone recognized the Princess’s old codename on the International Court’s most wanted list. Chen followed up with a long, mumbled string of curses in his native Han.

“Y-you’re serious,” Anton stammered, his eyes wide.

The Admiral nodded, this time throwing in a smile that lit up his whole face. “I am.”

A loud thump filled the room as Franz’s eyes rolled back in his skull and his body slammed into the floor. Felipe stooped to help him up, his eyes wide with disbelief.

“Thank you…” an uncharacteristically small voice said. Lisa again, keeping herself supported with one of the rails lining the elevator’s walls. “Thank Jesus…Thank Christ! Oh, thank you, thank you,” she cried out in relief, sinking to her knees, sobbing the words over and over again.

Anton was the first to reach her, patting her back as she bawled into the stainless steel floor. Everybody understood. It was one thing to know the evil bitch was scheming thousands of miles away from your home, but when your entire country was under threat? Especially considering what she had done the last time, just when humanity thought they had been on the verge of beating her? That was something else altogether. Lisa had just gone from wondering if her home would be a radioactive wasteland tomorrow to knowing it would be safe for another day in less than twenty-four hours.

“Oh my God,” Andre gasped, looking up at the Admiral. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? This is where you’re keeping her.”

“For the time being,” the Admiral shrugged.

“Mother FUCK!” David yelled, suddenly snapping out of his stupor. “She’s here!? On this ship!? Why aren’t we evacuating and nuking her from orbit, then!?”

“Relax, kid. We have enough Tachyon Inhibitors on her to fight the Collision Wars all over again. We could keep both her and the original Celestia locked up here, and they’d still be about as powerful as a gnat. In fact, we are sort of doing that right now.”

The whole group exchanged looks. “What do you mean by that?” Anton asked, ever the fearless leader.

“There was something else,” the Admiral sighed, twirling his cap on one finger. “The SAS squad that captured the Princess captured another Alicorn.”

“Jesus…” Andre moaned. “That can happen? There can be more than one at a time?”

The Admiral nodded. “It seems as though our Celestia wasn’t entirely honest with us, or with her own people. Big surprise there.”

“That’s where we’re going,” Andre mused, his face suddenly growing pale. An inane look crossed his face, a sudden smile that David found all too unsettling. When he spoke again, his accent became almost stereotypically thick, as if what he had learned had turned him into a cartoon version of himself. “We’re going to see ze pretty pony pwincess.”

The Admiral nodded. “You lot are supposed to be the experts on international relations and how these four-legged bastards are supposed to react to us. You’re probably the only people in the entire European sphere even remotely qualified to deal with this.”

“That’s an utterly terrifying thought,” Dave muttered dryly. “So, who gets to chat up the evil, genocidal, bitch?”

“We’ve decided on that, actually: the Princess appears to possess the capability of English-speaking, much like the ponies of the first Equestria could speak Mandarin immediately upon entering our world.”

“Actually, it was simplified Han,” Liu put in.

The Admiral waved him off and continued. “It’s obvious that whatever magic voodoo bullshit was in play at the start of the Collision Wars are in play here, just like it’s obvious that whoever goes in now should be able to speak the language.”

“That’s everybody in this elevator,” Andre quickly pointed out.

“Well, maybe ‘speak’ isn’t the right word,” the Admiral turned to Lisa. “We were thinkin’ it might be best if a native speaker, someone who spent their whole life around the language, went in there first.”

She stood on a pair of shaking legs, pressing herself to her feet with Anton’s help. “I-I dunno,” she said, still supporting herself on the rail. “I-I can try…”

“Lis, you just learned your country isn’t going to be a crater tomorrow morning, when everything in the last twelve hours said it would,” Dave pointed out, stepping up. “You could use a breather. I’ll do it.”

On the outside, he made sure to spend every effort he could on appearing cool and calm. On the inside, every one of his instincts screamed to him how bad of an idea this was. How absolutely he was signing his own death warrant. How completely this would be painting a target on his back for one of the most powerful creatures in the universe to hone in on. But he just had to take one look at Lisa to know he was doing the right thing. She was just regaining the ability to stand; Lord knows she was in no shape to face down Hitler reincarnated as a talking horse princess.

The Admiral scowled, evidently not keen on switching out one of his countrymen for an American, but relented easily. “Just so you know, we’ll be right in the next room while you talk to her. She’s restrained, but that doesn’t mean you should approach her or try to pet her or any shit like that.”

David’s heart dropped into his stomach, had a nibble of the donut he’d eaten for breakfast, and catapulted itself right up into his throat. “Wait, you’re saying I’m gonna be in the same room!?”

“We want this first meeting to be face to face,” the Admiral replied. “We’ll record everything and hopefully, from her reaction to you, we’ll be able to gauge how much she shares with her counterpart. That’s the deal. That won’t be a problem, now, will it?”

Yes, it will be a big fuckin’ problem! Dave almost screamed, but one more look at the way Lisa still trembled allowed him to hammer his jaw shut at the last moment. “No. It. Won’t.” He managed to squeak with a little smile. Sure. Who wants to see their 30th birthday anyway?

“Excellent, then it’s settled,” the Admiral said just as the elevator came to a halt. “And just in time, too. Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re going into the lair of the beast.”

The doors whined open onto a long, stainless steel hallway that looked like it hadn’t been touched until recently, and even then in passing. Dave took a whiff of the air, and his nose wrinkled with the scent of engine oil. “Huh. The lair of the beast smells kinda like my grandma’s house.”

The entire group turned on him, their looks telling him they were honestly questioning his sanity. “What?” He asked. “Grandma was a bit of a car freak.”

“Way to kill the mood, yankee-doodle,” Anton smirked, though his tone suggested that he wasn’t joking.

The group set out along the empty hallways, passing vacant bunks and empty cantinas with darkened vending machines that hummed in an atmosphere that otherwise would have been eerily quiet. “Where are the guards?” Lisa asked aloud, breaking the silence for a blessed moment.

“On the floor above us, behind a few layers of heat-proofed metal and sitting upon a pile of inhibitors,” the Admiral replied. “Trust me, if they are ever needed, that’s where they need to be to even begin containment. Everything down here, from the doorways to the prisoners’ water supply, is controlled from up there. If this Princess is even a fraction as powerful as the first, she would just slaughter any man we have down here before the guys upstairs had a chance to react.”

“Good enough for us diplomats though, right?” Andre smirked. The Admiral said nothing, only leading them to the next set of metal doors.

“This is where we part ways,” he announced, pulling a keypad out of a hidden slot in the wall and punching in yet another long, overly-complex code. He stood to the side, shouting over the pneumatic hiss and grind of another hidden door sliding open, a flashing warning light casting his face in a strange, orange glow. “We will be watching everything from upstairs. A few guards will be sent down later to help you all settle in. Are there any questions?”

There wasn’t.

The Admiral nodded, and saluted once, standing perfectly straight. “Godspeed to you all,” he said, then dropped his hand and strode back to the elevator, his back still as straight as could be.

The group eyed one another, standing in silence until the door opened fully and the warning light stopped blinking. Anton was the first to step forward, a determined look in his eyes while he ducked through the entrance and into the dim light beyond. The rest of the group still stood there, nobody wanting to be the next ones through, and then Anton’s hand appeared from the other side. Swallowing his fear, David took it, grasping the aging Russian harshly, and then he held out his hand. Lisa followed suit, laying her hand in his and offering hers out to the next person, and so they continued until everybody held a hand in a long, unbroken chain. Then, holding their breaths, the group ducked through the portal and into the unknown, some praying, some hoping for the best, all holding onto the hand in their grip for dear life, hoping that the next person in line maybe had a bit more courage than they did.

Author's Note

I am SO sorry for the long wait on this one! Had to graduate, had some stuff go on...but you're not interested in this, you should know though that we're FINALLY going to see Canonlestia in her containment next chapter, which will most definitely be up soon. Like, within the next couple weeks. So you all have that to look forward to. That makes up for things, right? Right? :pinkiesad2:

Chapter VII: Interview with a Princess (REVISED AT LAST)

0610 HOURS
ABOARD THE HMS ILLUSTRIOUS

NORTH SEA, OFF THE NORWEGIAN COASTLINE, BOUND FOR KARELIA

Princess Celestia of Equestria was used to being held prisoner. Surprisingly so, for an ultra-powerful princess ruling over a nation of harmony and light, which in turn was known all over the world for its power and magical prowess. There was the changeling invasion, Tirek’s attack on Equestria, Prince Umbra’s Rebellion of 349. Yes, there had been a whole mess of different scenarios that she could have gone on about for hours, detailing the different accommodations she had received in each (changeling cocoon, the summit of a dark mountain in Tartarus, and a leather BDSM outfit with spreader bars, in that order), but this was the first time she had been held in a land as strange as this.

From the moment she had woken, she hadn't been able to sense even a scrap of magic anywhere around her, although that could have been the restraints. Some weird metal tube was clamped around her horn, locked in place in such a way that no matter how hard she tried to scrape it off, it never even budged. It almost seemed made for an alicorn’s horn, feeling it. So did these creatures have experience with alicorns? Or more accurately, with restraining alicorns? There was a scary thought: these creatures had experience with ponies, and yet she hadn’t even seen a single pony since being bought to this place. She prayed this was just because she hadn’t seen much of anything of this land or its people. She’d only woken up while being dragged along a hallway by two of the creatures wearing cloth masks, her hooves bound and the ring locked around her horn. She hadn’t attempted conversation. The way her captors carried themselves just screamed “soldiers." Probably under orders not to talk with her, too, and based on the sheer ferocity of the attack, there was a good chance any attempt at conversation would have ended in a blow someplace where it would hurt.

She pulled at the metal casts locked around her legs that kept her bolted to the floor, and as with the previous attempts, she got nothing. Whatever metal this was, it had to be incredibly powerful. Ugh, if she could only stretch out her wings, they desperately needed a good crack! But the chains binding them didn’t have an ounce of give in them, probably made of the same metal as the casts. These creatures were thorough, she would give them that much. It might take even one such as her years to escape, if it was possible at all. At the very least, they could have allowed her some mobility to clamp her hooves into her ears. The beeping from the collar around her neck was driving her nuts!

She scanned deeper into the room, at the clear box surrounding her on all sides that looked like glass, but was too strong to be glass. At the strange, whirring and beeping doodads and lights that seemed to be watching her somehow, as if a few beams of light could track her. At the miles of tiny, little cables that seemed to hold it all together, but at some points came loose, so that wasn’t right…what were all these little cables for, then? And why did they run to every little gadget in the room, to the corners of her box, up from slots in the floor and in the shadows, just everywhere she looked? At least the gadgets supplied some light: otherwise she’d be standing in total darkness with nothing but that infernal beeping!

Keeping herself occupied, her mind wondered back to the initial attack that saw her imprisoned. She remembered the objects rolling out of the portal, then white light, and then pain, but that was all. Just what had been the motivation for such a brutal raid? The precursor for an all-out invasion? She shivered at that thought. If that was these creatures’ intent, they were off to a great start. Technology that could nullify magic and the kidnapping of their targets’ leader: she couldn’t even think of a better way to begin a war. Why, she wouldn’t be surprised if Canterlot had been overrun by now. Horrified, of course, but not surprised.

Something shifted in the darkness beyond the circle of lights and beeping. She braced herself for what was to come. What tortures would she be subjected to in this prison? What would these creatures want? In fact, what would they even look like? She only knew that they were bipedal and possessed fingers. Like diamond dogs, but much less bulky. Whatever was hiding under that armor was still a complete mystery. What was under there? Hideous, tentacle-covered faces? Insect-like mandibles? What horror-movie looks would be staring at her in mere moments?

Whatever it might be, she could not afford to recoil, could not afford to show any sign of disgust whatsoever, no matter how hideous they might look to her. There might still be a chance to salvage the situation, and helpless as she was, she needed every diplomatic advantage she could get her hooves on. No matter the situation, she still needed to play the game of diplomacy for her little ponies. She would meet her enemy’s eyes as equals, even if those eyes were compound or at the end of slug-like stalks. Surely they would understand that, these creatures still had to have some good in them.

A tapping noise echoed throughout the chamber, growing closer. She held her breath, her heart beating in her chest, only slowed by a conscious effort she’d perfected through centuries of meditation. A figure stepped into the dim light, clad in a tan shirt, black pants, and impeccably shiny black shoes. Okay, so they had a sense for fashion. That would be great news for Miss Rarity. If she ever saw her again.

The creature stepped lightly, the heels on its handsome shoes tapping away as its head ducked into the light. For a second, she saw the monstrosities in her mind made real, tentacles writhing out of a misshapen head, surveying her with beady, predatory eyes. But then her mind adjusted to what she was seeing and revealed…

Actually, it was rather cute.

Now, it wasn’t as adorable as, say, one of those parasprite pests, but it had these colorful eyes that were small without being beady, much like a newborn foal’s, and there was a little tuft of hair on its head. Aww, and there was even some fuzz on its hands, and a teeny, weeny, button nose!

Recomposing herself, Celestia met the creatures widdle...little eyes and cleared her throat. "I am Princess Celestia of Equestria," she announced. "You have attacked a sovereign nation without declaration of war and without provocation."

Suddenly, the creature's eyes ignited with rage unlike any she had ever seen. For a second, it was not the cute, bipedal monkey that had walked into the room. It was some horrible predator from the dawn of time created for nothing more than destroying anything that got in its way, aimed at nothing short of total destruction. Then the cute little monkey was back, as if nothing had happened to it.

"You're one to talk," it muttered.

”Keep it together,” a tiny, buzz-filled voice said, so small she could barely hear it. The creature nodded once and held one hand over its head, its thumb and forefinger closed in a circle. She didn’t know what that symbol could mean, but knew it had to be a signal to more of its kind.

We’re being watched, she realized. Still, that just distracted from a massive revelation: despite being a completely alien species, she had understood this creature perfectly well. "You speak?" She asked.

"It's some magic voodoo horseshit," the creature replied, pulling a small chair out of the darkness and setting it up right in front of her. It crossed its legs as it sat, eyeing her coldly with its fleshy hands folded in its lap. "Whatever magic created the portal between our worlds also allows you to speak in the most commonly-spoken tongue of wherever it is you appear. Hence, English."

"English," she said, playing with the way the word rolled off her tongue. It did have a catchy sort of cadence to it, even if it was utterly meaningless to her. "Alright, I can understand you, and you can understand me, does your species have a name?"

The creature looked at her, its eyebrows hunching. "Humans," it replied, as if her question had revealed something extraordinary.

"Humans..." she said, again playing with the word. "Now, may I assume you humans all have names?"

"You may."

"May I know your name?"

"No."

Something was wrong. This creature was being overtly hostile. Was it biased against quadrupeds, perhaps? Or it could be the magic thing. She sensed no magic within it, while even Earth ponies from her home held at least some residual traces of magic absorbed from the environment around them. Did this world have no magic? That could explain some of the reactions she had received here. Magic could be quite frightening to a species that had none, and she knew how powerful a weapon it could be in the wrong hooves. Perhaps these humans knew that too, hence the fear. "I can assure you that, no matter your assumptions, we wish no harm upon your species."

"So you say," the creature replied, its arms crossing in front of its chest.

Hold on, she was going about this all wrong. There was something else going on here: that was obvious now that she focused on the human. Her eyebrows furrowed as she faced the creature down, her confusion growing as her keen senses drank in every motion and every little twitch of muscle on the human’s face. "Why are you so afraid of me?" She asked.

The creature looked taken aback, nearly falling out of its chair. "Who says I'm afraid of you?" It spat, though the quivering in its voice told her all she needed to know.

"You do: the narrowed pupils, the reserved speech, the way you were sitting so far back in your chair that you almost fell out of it just now," she continued by trying to meet his gaze, only to watch his pupils dart away almost imperceptibly, just enough to avoid making direct eye contact. "You're doing your best to avoid eye contact...combine that with the fact that these restraints were obviously made specifically for alicorns, and I can only conclude that there has been some traumatic encounter between our species in the past."

The creature stared at her, eyes nearly bugging out of his skull. She had to fight to suppress a smile. She didn't get to show off the intellect she'd built up over the centuries often, but when she did, it always left everyone reeling. “Or perhaps you would like to tell me your name?” She asked, knowing what the answer would have to be.

”Holy motherfuck,” the buzzy little voice whispered.

“D-Dave,” he replied, sitting back up in his chair. He was very good at hiding his fear. Supremely good, in fact, keeping his emotions buried with the kind of skill it would take years of training to attain. Assuming, of course, these humans lived for years, like her little ponies. Either way, there was no hiding it from a being that had needed to read the ponies hiding behind titles and lordships that she had dealt with for the past millennium. “My name is…David.”

“David,” she played with the word on her tongue again. “Odd, seemingly meaningless, but then, meaning can always be disguised.”

He said nothing, making it a point to keep staring at her through the glass that wasn’t glass with those cold, fierce eyes, (though never directly into her eyes, she noticed). “Does this place have a name, David? Can you tell me the name of your lands?”

”Go ahead,” the buzzy little voice said.

“You’re on Earth,” he replied. “And as for where on Earth, well, I’m afraid that’s privileged information.”

She frowned, not even bothering to play with that word. Her language already possessed a word just like it for a certain race of ponies: a link she would have to investigate at some other time. She watched patiently as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small, light-blue notebook. She squinted at it, seeing a logo that consisted of landmasses and forms she didn't recognize, as well as lettering that was, at once, both totally alien and recognizable. UNCDI? She thought. What in Equestria could that be?

“We have some questions for you, and you are gonna answer them,” he said, his voice stern, but still wavering with that slight tinge of fear amplified by the metal walls.

She shrugged and motioned with a nod for him to continue. “Ask away.”

“What are your intentions with Earth and its populace?”

She furrowed her eyebrows at that, honestly confused. “None. We didn’t even know this place existed until a few hours ago! Or…however long ago it was since you 'procured’ me.”

The human nodded, marking down her choice of words in his notebook. She took the time to evaluate her surroundings. If this human was here, there had to be more, perhaps standing in the shadows, evaluating her every move. She made sure to stand as tall as her bindings would allow, her wings stretching as far as possible to make her already imposing frame appear even larger. She could only hope this would help her.

“Next question,” he said as his pen ceased movement on the little pad of paper. “What do you know about the presence of other alicorns in your Equestria?”

Her teeth clenched, her jawline visibly tightening for only a moment. The names of three of the most important ponies in the world to her rushed through her mind, before she shoved them away. They couldn’t know. She wouldn’t allow them to target the ones she loved. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. Other alicorns, you say?”

“Oh?” The human arched an eyebrow, a smug smile crossing his face. Not a mean smile, mind you, but the sort of look one gets that just screams "checkmate."

“And what of the other alicorn we captured? The smaller, purple one?” He asked, that smug smile never leaving his features.

For the first time in over three centuries, Celestia’s heart skipped a beat. A cold finger of dread washed through her body, and she trembled. Whether it was this, or the stress of the past day, or the knock to the head she’d taken when she was first kidnapped, her entire façade came crashing down as her head bowed and she shrieked, “DON’T HURT HER! PLEASE!”

Once again, the human nearly fell out of his chair, his arms and legs splaying out comically in his surprise. He blinked at her a few times as she fought to regain her composure, struggling to retain her stance, then he sat up again, leaning a bit more forward in his chair than he had been. Celestia, for her part, rapidly regained the confident posture and air she had held and switched into damage control as swiftly as possible.

“That pony…is…responsible for quite a few administrative affairs back in the palace,” she said. “I’m just not sure what I’d do without her.” There. Usually, a lie sprinkled with the truth was the most believable. Hopefully, her outburst wouldn’t seal Twilight’s fate as a way for the humans to get to Celestia, because if it had and she’d just doomed her student to Heaven-knows-what torture, that would be it. She would be finished. She wouldn’t be able to stand Twilight’s screams if they were piped into the room, she would give in, she would crack, she couldn’t stand…

Celestia shoved the thought into the back of her mind as the creature nodded. “We will do our best to make sure her internment here is as comfortable as possible,” he said. “And just so you know, that same courtesy will be extended to you.”

Though I have no idea why… he so obviously wanted to say. Oh sure, the fear was still there, but hatred was welling up now. Each moment that passed where she didn’t do anything was, apparently, helping to abate his fear, only for hate to rush right into its place. The way he looked at her now, she felt like the slimiest, most disgusting insect ever seen, crawling across someone’s dinner plate.

Maker above, she thought. As far as she was concerned, this human apparently had two settings: nearly cowering with fear, and visibly trying to imagine how many times he could stab her with his pen before being stopped by the other humans waiting nearby. But why!? What could ponies have done that might be so terrible!?

“Next question,” the human continued, keeping his eyes on the paper as much as possible, if only to remain focused on the task at hand. “What do you know about the process used to force a human to turn into a pony and its negative effects upon the psyche of the affected individual?”

Her frame nearly shrank at that, her façade of power dropping for a heartbeat just in sheer surprise. “What was that?”

His eyes darted to her, then back to the paper. “I said…”

“No, no, I have it,” she replied, studying him closely. “You said you had a way to transform a totally alien creature into a pony?”

His eyes widened, his lips pulling in over his teeth. He looked up at her, then back at the notepad, then back at her, before he all but threw himself out of his chair. “We’re…uh…we’re done here, good day.” He said quickly before heading for the door.

“No, wait, WAIT!” She called after his retreating form, a thousand years’ worth of political wisdom and maneuvering flying out the window as her head spun with questions. “What was that about forcing a human to turn into a pony!?” He didn’t even turn, still barreling for the door.

“What about the other alicorn!? The purple one!? Her name is Twilight Sparkle!” She called, hoping that some small detail would not only satisfy the human’s need for information, but also endear her beloved student to her captors. But still, the human stormed away.

Finally, practically out of cards to play, Celestia desperately screamed: “What did we do that was so terrible!?”

The human stopped abruptly. His hand clenched the pad of paper until his knuckles turned white. That tiny, buzzing voice returned, only now it was just a faint hum from where she stood. After a few minutes of standing there, his back to her, his entire body tensing and relaxing repeatedly, the human spoke, its voice faintly shaking, but with an iron beneath the surface that spoke of a placid ocean surface moments before a predatory shark broke the surface.

“Nothing much,” he said. “Just betrayed our trust, promised us a new era of peace, and then immediately tried to use your incredible powers to wipe us out, except that didn’t work, see? We were smarter than you. So you had to settle for the booby prize.”

“Booby prize?” She asked, unable to keep the tense shake from her own voice. “What do you mean?”

He didn’t respond, just strode right out into the darkness, his shoes tapping against the ground until they faded behind the pneumatic whine of a door somewhere whirring open and slamming shut again. Once again, Celestia was left alone with her thoughts, only now even more questions buzzed through her mind. What did these humans want? What did they mean by a “process” for turning them into ponies? How was that even possible? If she were to be really honest with herself, though, she would know these questions were only there to distract her from the one she needed answered, the one she knew would drive her mad if she wandered about it too long:

What are they doing to Twilight? Oh Maker above…what in Equestria could they possibly want with her?

David stepped through the door, listened to the pneumatic whirr and hiss of twelve-hundred pounds of titanium steel slide into place, and nearly collapsed onto the floor. As it was, he just barely managed to keep himself supported on his hands and knees, panting like a dog onto the white tile. "Oh God," he gasped as the second door to the airlock whirred open. "Oh Jesus Christ..."

"You did good, kid," Anton said, stepping into the lock and offering his hand, which Dave gladly accepted. "A lot better than most would have."

"I think I'm gonna puke," Dave replied.

"You’re not gonna puke, just sit,” Anton said, motioning for him to enter. As Dave pressed himself back to his feet, consciously reminding himself how to walk, the Russian added, “Oh, before you go in…” he motioned to his ear.

“Right,” Dave reached behind his ear and handed over the little plastic bud. “And thanks for the advice. Probably helped keep my sanity in there.”

The Russian nodded and stood aside to let him pass. Dave walked in on legs that quaked like the San Andreas fault during a meteor shower, but still managed to cross the threshold and reach the plush carpeting of the control room. Once again, he felt oddly comforted by the room, set up more like a living area than some ultra-secret military containment facility. Most of the others were seated in the leather armchairs gathered in a circle around an oak coffee table, arranged before a massive flatscreen TV (which only received CSPAN, CNN, and FOX, he'd checked). Honestly, between the stainless steel fridge stocked with water bottles and fresh fruit, the mahogany conference table that dominated the floor, and the fake wooden paneling along the walls, the only thing that felt out of place was the massive airlock leading into the cell he'd just left and the control panel set in the wall next to it, both of which looked like they'd be more at home at Cape Canaveral than here.

As his stomach settled, the American made a beeline for one of the recliners, ignoring the young Latino man who stood at the control panel, as most in the office were accustomed to doing. He might have noticed the intensity with which the young man glared at nothing in particular, gazing over the dials and knobs and gauges with a look of hatred so intense it would have made Dave do a double-take, but at that moment, Felipe was just another part of the background noise, not even worth looking at until the American could get something soft and expensive between him and the ground.

He collapsed into an empty recliner, sticking a leg up on an armrest as he was so accustomed to doing on his own couch at home. He let his breath out in a long sigh, his eyes closing, his fingers pressing into them. As he sat, Lisa reached over and flicked a little switch on a small speaker box sitting on the table. Dave grimaced. “Didja guys get all that?”

“Every word,” Lisa replied. “As I’m sure the men upstairs did as well.”

“Great,” he groaned, sitting up and letting out another sigh. “I know Anton tried to doll it up a little, so how did I do? Really?”

“You…did not piss yourself. That’s something!” Liu said encouragingly.

“That bad, huh?”

“Maybe, and maybe not,” Anton said, striding over to join the group. “We all heard her reaction to that last question, right?”

“Of course,” Akshat said, his arms and legs crossed as he sat up straight in his armchair. His brow was furrowed with either worry, concentration, or a combination of both. “If we are to believe what we all just heard, this version of Celestia has no knowledge of the crimes of her predecessor.”

“That is a big ‘if’,” Franz put in. “We all know how damned smart she is. She could just as easily be faking.”

Dave closed his eyes again, steadying himself, controlling his breath the way he’d been trained in Basic. His mind circled back to the final moments of the interrogation, highlighting every tiny detail from the blinking of the thermal scanners locked on the prisoner to the way her shoulders rose and fell with each breath. Most of all, he recalled the look of surprise in her widened eyes at the moment he informed her of The Potion, the way her breath paused for a moment, the questions she had asked immediately after. “I don’t know,” he said. “Her reaction seemed genuine.”

“For once, I must agree with my German counterpart,” Andre said, his legs crossed, his chin held thoughtfully in his hand. “Loathe as I am to admit it, the Princess has had over a thousand years to perfect her ability to lie right to our faces. Surely, she could feign surprise well enough to fool us.”

“I still don’t…”

A deep thud, followed by the shattering of glass, cut the conversation short. David’s heart leapt into his chest as, for a terrible moment, he believed that thud had been one of the restraints around the prisoner’s cell giving way, or one of the Tachyon Inhibitors keeping her magic suppressed shorting out. Instead, he turned and found Felipe standing at the control panel, his fist knuckles-deep in one of the glass gauges. Even from where he sat, Dave could see blood sprouting out in tiny streams and dribbles where the shattered glass had broken through skin.

“Oh Felipe, honey, here,” Lisa gasped, springing to her feet and heading for the console.

“Let me take a look at that,” Anton said, striding up next to her as she reached under the panel for the first aid kit. Of course, David didn’t question this. It was standard practice in all NATO ships to have a first aid kit underneath every control panel large enough to hide it, and that Lisa knew this never struck him as odd. He did think it a bit odd to watch Anton gingerly remove Felipe’s closed fist from the shattered display and begin analyzing it with the placid, analytical eye of a combat medic, but he quickly shoved this back as one of those things the Russian was just good at.

“Here,” Anton said flatly, reaching into the kit as Lisa held it open in her arms. “We’re lucky. You didn’t open any veins or tear any muscle tissue. Looks like you just cut open skin over fatty deposits. The damage shouldn’t be that bad.”

For a few moments, Felipe didn’t respond. He just kept studying an empty patch of carpet somewhere off to the side with a tired, vacant look, even as the first painful drops of iodine were squeezed onto his hand. Eventually, he half-mumbled, half-whispered: “The damage is already done.”

The pair kept working as the others fell strangely silent, David included, watching as the last few layers of gauze were wrapped around Felipe's fist. "There we go," Lisa said, giving the wrapping a final pat. "Is that better?"

"Better..." Felipe gazed off into space, his rich, dark eyes locking on to nothing in particular. Lisa's smile faded as the moments crawled by before he finally spoke up again. "She was supposed to be better."

"Who?" Lisa cocked an eyebrow at him, then her gaze drifted to the airlock door. "Oh...you mean...oh, honey."

She smiled and leaned in to wrap her arms around his shoulders, immediately making Dave feel grateful that there was at least one woman in the group. Sexist or not, there was a marked difference between a comforting hug from a woman and the awkward pats on the back from a male friend trying his best to console you in the least homoerotic way possible. “I think we all expected something a bit different from a pretty pony princess from another dimension. Or, at least, something other than genocidal rage.”

Felipe just shook his head, his entire body tensing. "No, she was supposed to be the paragon of light! She was supposed to be the wise ruler of all Equestria! She was supposed to be better than everything and everyone, this wonderful, awesome…this…”

He trailed off, his vacant eyes finally wondering over the airlock, as if trying to memorize every rivet, every ding, the way the light shone off the gray metal, everything he could about the door. "We shouldn’t be standing here, debating whether or not she’s lying to us. None of this should have ever happened. This isn't right...this wasn't..."

Seeing a lull in his tirade, Anton circled around to meet the Brazilian's eyes with what he hoped look like a comforting smile. "My friend, perhaps I should inspect your hand?" Anton pointed at his closed fist. "You're clenching it rather tightly. Perhaps you still feel some pain there?”

Felipe's eyes darted wide open as he cradled the clenched fist to his chest like an infant. He pursed his lips, shaking his head.

“My friend, if you are cut, then we must close the wound,” Anton insisted, reaching for the closed fingers again.

“Not this wound!” Felipe gasped, taking a step back. Everyone in the room gawked at him, and his lips pursed again. “I mean…no, just not now. It’s fine. Really, nothing to be concerned with.”

Anton looked the younger man over, trying to lock eyes with Felipe even as the Brazilian looked side to side, always averting his gaze. He was hiding something; it couldn’t have been more obvious if a question mark tattoo lit with LEDs had appeared in the center of his forehead. Before the Russian could press on, however, the speaker phone in the center of the control panel crackled to life.

Anton kept his gaze on the younger man, still glaring even as the electronic ringing cried out in all their ears. Still keeping his eyes on Felipe, he slowly reached over and pressed the button to activate the speaker. This isn’t over. Far from it. Those eyes said.

Felipe just smiled at him, the death grip on the mysterious object in his hands relaxing. For him, it was.

“Da?” Anton asked.

“I don’t care what the hell happened,” the voice of the Admiral crackled from the other side, distorted by some of the most sophisticated encryption methods on the planet but still easily identifiable to every man and woman in the room. “Somebody talked, and I wanna know who, and I want his or her balls served to me on a silver feckin’ platter come dinner!...Whazzat? Girls don’t have balls? Congratu-fuckin’-lations, Einstein, you want a fuckin’ gold star?”

“Um…hello?” Anton repeated, visibly trying to stifle laughter.

“Fuckin’ hell, almost forgot I called you lot!” The Admiral returned. “Yeah, you got a nice, big surprise headin’ your way, thought I’d give ya a heads up! You’re gonna hafta deal with ‘im, I’ve gotta figure out how in the fuck he found out we’ve got the Solar Princess onboard!”

“He?” Dave stepped away from Felipe, walking up to the speaker. “Sir? Who’s he?”

“Izzat the Yank? Aw hell, it don’t matter: it’s Shining Armor! The fuckin’ Prince of Equestria is headin’ your way right now, and he looks like he’s got a bone to pick with you-know-who! Take a guess as to why! Good luck, you lot!” And then the intercom clicked off.

A stunned silence fell over the room, lasting a solid five minutes. No one talked. No one moved. David felt weird just breathing.

“Well, shit,” Felipe said eventually.

Author's Note

At last, I know.

Sorry for the wait on this, guys. It took a while to figure out what I needed here, and then commit it to paper. Hopefully, the next chapters should come more easily :twilightsheepish:

Thank my prereader, DJK, for this :) Without them, I'm not sure if I would have gotten this right.

Chapter VIII: A Royal Arrival

0615 HOURS
ONBOARD THE HMS ILLUSTRIOUS

NORTH SEA, OFF THE NORWEGIAN COASTLINE, BOUND FOR KARELIA

Shining Armor pressed his forehead against the porthole, feeling the hum of the chopper blades through the glass, taking in the view of the Illustrious from above and trying to keep his jaw from going slack. Here they were, a species with no magic and no unified ruler, and still they had managed to build the massive supercarrier now filling his view: a floating city capable of housing thousands of them and launching dozens of their fighter aircraft at a moment’s notice! Why, imagine what they might have accomplished if she had allowed them…

Shaking off the encroaching thoughts, Shining Armor returned his attention to the cockpit. “Pilot, how long until landing?” He asked, his Chinese accent thick, though his voice carried a calm, sure tone to it that ensured anyone around him would be instantly intimidated.

“Uh…about five minutes, your highness,” the Royal Navy pilot replied. “We…uh…weren’t expecting such an impromptu visit. Mind me askin’ what it’s about?”

“Yes, in fact, I mind,” Shining replied curtly, his face never leaving that steely neutral.

“Ah. Yes, sir,” the human replied, quickly returning his eyes to the windshield and firmly closing his lips.

Shining Armor returned his gaze to the view, looking out over the water, trying not to think about her, about the past, about the wars fought and the lives lost…so many lives…Flash Sentry…Thunderlane…Cloudchaser...

Twilight…

NO! It was me! It should’ve been me!

Shiney, we have to go! She’ll only be distracted for so long!

It wasn’t enough for you to ruin her life, you had to take it too you evil motherbucking…

Shining! Oh Maker above, your face! She got your…

“Prince Armor?”

Shining awoke from the memory with a grunt and a placid stare back into the cockpit.

“We’ve landed, sir,” the pilot said with a half-hearted, obviously-faked smile. “If you need help reaching the bridge, we can have…”

“No, thank you,” the unicorn replied, shrugging off his harness and stepping out onto the tarmac. “I have it now.”

The pilot nodded as he began the rotor’s shutdown sequence, the whine of the chopper’s engines slowing filled Shining’s ears as he trotted towards the massive structure rising out of the otherwise flat surface of the ship’s flight deck. He cast a final, passive glance over his shoulder and caught an obvious look of relief in the pilot’s face as he trotted away. Welp, looked like he had that "special" effect on someone yet again. The kind that left everyone just waiting for him to leave, begging whoever might be listening that the scary unicorn would go be someone else’s problem. Oh well.

His passing earned a few curious stares from the men still working feverishly on deck, most of them morphing from curiosity to sudden recognition and avoidance. Sure, there was the odd human that would meet his gaze with a smile, but they always saw something, something that made their gazes break off suddenly, the smiles fading. Not that the unicorn royal ever noticed or cared.

He was greeted just outside the bridge’s entrance by a tall man in a uniform, which he recognized as symbolizing the human rank of admiralty. Being former military himself, it was no surprise that he’d taken to learning the customs and hierarchy of human military structure like a fish to water, even if such learning had earned him quite a few black marks back when she was in charge. He made it a point to pause, stand ramrod straight, and salute the Admiral as he approached. “Admiral,” he said curtly.

The Admiral paused, seemed mildly unsure of himself for a split-second, then apparently settled on just a short bow, bending slightly at the hips with his head low. “Your majesty,” he said. “This is…quite the surprise.”

“I am aware,” the Prince replied, stepping past the human and into the hallway, his hooves tapping against metal.

The Admiral could only sigh and follow at Shining Armor’s side. Surprisingly enough, he actually attempted to keep the conversation up. Usually, most people took one look in Shining Armor's eyes and all talk came screeching to a halt. That he kept talking had to be a testament to the old man’s ability to think on his feet. “Might I compliment you on your lingual skills, your majesty? I hear you only started learning English a couple years ago. It has come along quite well.”

“If I am to represent the new Equestria to Earth, I will need to in her multitudes of languages,” the unicorn replied curtly. “Am also learning Spanish, German, French, and Japanese.”

The Admiral froze at the Prince’s words. “Your highness…that last one…it’s kind of…”

“I am aware,” Shining Armor interrupted, still not looking at the Admiral as they walked along, his hooves clacking against the metal in time with the Admiral’s heels. “But we all have a duty to remember what was lost, and as one who took up royalty after…the last one…that duty is mine more than others, bùshì ma?”

The Admiral looked like he was about to say something for a second, but then decided against it. Probably for the better. At any rate, his desire for conversation was apparently slaked, as the pair continued the rest of the trip in silence, the only sound being the occasional spillover from one of the dozens of control rooms and bunkers spaced throughout the structure, and the tapping of their heels on the metal floor. All this left Shining in a place he knew only far too well: with his own thoughts. It wasn’t so bad there. At least, not as bad as it used to be, back in the days after the war’s end…

His secretary, Cadence, looked up at him, her eyebrows raised, her jaw agape. He panted, his heart racing, hooves shaking, yet he didn’t know why. Around him, his senators and governors all stared, the less brave ones suddenly focusing on the salads before them. He looked down at his quivering hooves and noticed indentations where they had hit, a blackened scorch mark tracing the entire table’s length, leading to the vacant spot at its head.

“I…I just wanted to know how you were coping with your sister’s loss…” the pony next to him said quietly, his voice shaking. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean…”

Shining Armor grimaced as he forced yet another memory back down. That had been a full-fledged image this time, not just a snippet of dialogue! Ugh, he was not going to do this now, he hadn’t gone through all that therapy on top of his royal duties just to slide back now, at a moment as important as this!

“Your Highness?” The Admiral asked, an eyebrow arched questioningly.

“Headache,” Shining replied, lowering his hoof back to the ground as he continued walking.

“Ah,” the Admiral nodded, picking up the pace now that the pony had all four hooves on the ground again. “Stress of the job, I understand.”

No, Shining Armor thought. No, you really don’t. “We almost there?”

“Almost,” the Admiral led him to the elevator and began the process of opening the secret lift, tapping in the absurdly-long code without even looking, his fingers working on muscle memory. “We have a UNCDI team with Target Alpha already. They should be interrogating her as we speak.”

Shining Armor’s hooves quaked, though not from fear. This was the same quake that his hooves had held all those years ago. Something deep, dark, and primeval rose up in his chest, filling his very being, awakening parts of his soul most ponies (and even some humans) had forgotten they’d possessed. “I guess I arrive at right time?” He asked, his accent coming through thicker than ever.

The Admiral said nothing, but spared a tiny smile for the young royal. “I guess you did.”

“UNCDI, so one Chinese?” Shining Armor asked.

“Yes, so he should be able to act as a translator should you grow tired of practicing your English,” the Admiral stepped aside as the wall slid open. He waved a hand, ushering the unicorn in. “They should be able to let you in, at any rate.”

“Thank you,” Shining replied as he stepped into the car. “I thank you for your hospitality, Admiral. I understand my visit a bit…unexpected.”

“Not at all, your majesty,” the Admiral said, a small ounce of pride entering his smile. “We’re military men! We adapt to the situation, isn’t that right?”

Shining, she’s gone! You’re just gonna have to accept that! Just put down the knife, please, put down …

“Very true, Admiral. Have a good day,” Shining said, only somewhat aware of the ice that had entered his voice.

The Admiral’s smile flickered. “Yes, um…you too, sir.”

Nodding, Shining entered the elevator alone, sighing with relief the moment the doors whisked shut behind him. He took a moment to rub at his scar, massaging his eye with a hoof. The damn thing always hurt when the past started popping up in his mind. Fortunately, that’s why he’d grown used to forcing those memories back down, forgetting them for at least a little while until…yep, there we go. The pain was gone already.

A few minutes later, the doors whirred open. Two men stood in the doorway to greet him, one a thinner man of the Asian race with narrow-framed glasses, the other a somewhat more stout Caucasian man with just a bit of gray appearing in the hair at his temples.

“Your majesty,” the older man said in an accent so obviously Russian it might as well have been swilling vodka and calling everyone “comrade.” Both men bowed at the waist, keeping their heads high.

”{Your majesty,}” the Asian replied in his familiar Han Chinese. ”{I am Liu Guo with the People’s Republic of China. This is my associate, Anton Beloglazov of the Russian Federation}.”

“{It’s a pleasure,}” Shining Armor replied simply. Now was the time to utilize his skills as a diplomat, another thing he’d developed out of necessity. ”{I believe I shall stick with Chinese for the rest of this trip. I know most of you speak the language of the nation you are based in, but I’m more comfortable with this tongue. If your associates don’t mind, of course.}”

“{Oh, of course not, sir, whatever makes you more comfortable,}” Liu replied. {“Do tell us, though: to what do we owe the honor of this visit?}”

“{I am here to take part in the interrogation of Target Alpha,}” he replied simply and curtly, making note of the quick flickers of dread that momentarily washed over the human’s face. Anton saw the look and immediately grimaced. They must have known this was why he was here, but still, hearing it spoken with such affirmation obviously hit them like a slap in the face. Oh well.

“{Sir, with all due respect, this is…}”

“{Just another part of our attempts to build relations with humanity,}” Shining replied, stepping right past the pair. “{Of course, as a foreign dignitary, you could get action from the UN General Assembly to stop me. That should only take, what, six months?}”

Though he didn’t show it, Shining Armor was beaming on the inside. He might never acquire the level of political skills his predecessor had, loathe as he was to admit, but damned if he didn’t like to think of himself as a quick study.

Both humans were visibly struggling to maintain their grins. “{Of course, sir, we’ll look into that. In the meantime, I take it you wish to see her?}” The Chinese man said through gritted teeth.

“{Of course,}” Shining replied, motioning for him to lead the way.

The Chinese man mechanically pulled an about-face and walked down the hallway, his light stride suggesting an internal grace that Shining couldn’t quite place, but admired nonetheless. It didn’t take long for him to reach a small room that he might have confused for a living room had it not been for the massive control panel and the airlock along one wall. Keep your back to that wall, and you might just forget what was being contained here. Four other humans lounged in high-end recliners until he walked in, when they all promptly leapt to their feet and bowed. Shining nodded his acknowledgement, but it was obvious his mind was going to the window long before his body actually reached it.

The Prince gazed at the glass on one of the readout gauges, ignoring the one with the shattered face. His partial reflection was just visible enough to show the line of scar tissue running down the side of his face and the glimmer of the bejeweled magic suppressor on his horn. He glanced at it, smiling knowingly as the humans chatted behind him:

“You sure about this?” One voice whispered. Male. American. Mid-to-late twenties.

“Well, he does have his suppressor on, what’s the worse he could do?” Female. British. Twenties as well.

The knowing smile spread across his face into a savage grin. You’d be surprised, he thought as his focus left his reflection and went to the airlock. What would she look like, he thought? Like her counterpart under lock and key in that Russian hellhole? Or perhaps she would be a little bit roughed up? He certainly hoped it was the latter. He wasn't sure if he could control his temper if she looked at him with that same disgustingly haughty stare, the one she had used so often when addressing her little ponies (a nickname that sent shivers up his spine), or when...

You dare question your Princess!?

I do when her actions reveal what an evil, genocidal pile of horse-apples she is!

Traitor! Trait…

“Your majesty?”

Shining Armor blinked, instantly banishing the memory from his mind. He could see the reflection of the Russian standing just behind him, again just barely visible. The older man looked down at him with a mixture of concern and deep fear. “Are you alright?”

Shining Armor looked at the bound Princess before him, drinking in the despondent, worried look in her vermillion eyes. “Yes,” he replied, a tiny smile playing at his lips. “Yes, I am.”

The human smiled, and though there was warmth to it, Shining could sense the growing unease buried underneath it. The human didn’t like him being here, and he really didn’t like that he was about to walk into the holding cell practically unsupervised. Oh well.

“As you may have already learned, the Princess arrived with prior knowledge of the English language,” the Russian said. “Just like with you, it appears as though the magical anomaly that produced the initial bridge between worlds allows the ponies on the other side to communicate in the most commonly-spoken language in the region where the portal appears. I’m afraid this means you will not be able to communicate in your native human tongue.”

“My English has improved,” Shining Armor said.

“As I noticed, sir. Now,” rather suddenly, one of the Russian’s large hands landed on Shining Armor’s shoulder and gave a good, firm squeeze, catching the unicorn completely off-guard. To say he wasn’t expecting such a heartfelt gesture during his time here would be an understatement. He would have found it more likely to arrive on-deck in the midst of an alien invasion being led by his secretary than to receive any sort of emotional support during his stay. And yet here it was. And that bitch wanted to wipe them out...God damn her...

“Are you sure about doing this?” The human asked.

Shining shrugged his hand off in a heartbeat. “Very. Open the door.”

The Russian looked down at the Prince sadly, dejectedly reaching over and pressing the small, red button to open the hatch leading into the cell. As the cell door slid open, titanium bars and Tachyon containment fields sliding out of place, it hit Shining that the Russian’s sadness was probably the only genuine emotion he had seen on anyone all day, pony or human. Hell, if he looked back, he might be able to extend that to all week! A week without genuine, emotional contact, and he hadn’t even noticed!

Oh well.

Author's Note

From this point on, dialogue in brackets {} are in a language other than English. The italics was getting a little confusing. :twilightsheepish:

The just normal stuff in italics: big blocks of text like this, are Shining's memories. So there.

Chapter IX: A Royal Assault

Celestia released her breath in a long, drawn-out exhale through her nostrils. There had been much to absorb and consider, but she figured she had the main points nailed down.

1: She had been kidnapped by a bipedal alien race known as “humans,” which while lacking in magic, appeared to possess an incredibly high level of scientific technology and an emotional spectrum similar to her ponies’, albeit one a bit more darker and angrier than she was used to.

2: These “humans” had encountered another version of Equestria, perhaps even containing another version of her (though that was pure speculations), at some point in the recent past, and the results were so traumatizing that it had led them to attack her version of Equestria immediately upon first contact.

3: She was being held on the basis of these horrific events, which might somehow involve turning them into more ponies, which may not have been so bad, but if done on a large enough scale…

She frowned behind her closed eyelids. Her observational skills had allowed her to gather much more than most other ponies would have during her brief encounter with the humans, but it still wasn’t enough, not even close. She still had no idea of the nature of this “other” Equestria’s crimes or how bad they were, much less how to even begin convincing the humans that her intentions were peaceful. Of course, she also didn’t know the status of Twilight, Shining Armor, or any of the other ponies that had been gathered at that field around the portal to the human world, or if there had been further attacks, but she kept her mind away from those possibilities. There was no possible way to glean any information about those topics as it stood now, and thinking about it would just have her worrying about what could have happened to the ponies who meant most to her in the world. Thank the Maker Luna wasn’t at the field, thank everything that might be listening she hadn’t been there, because if she had been then having her and Twilight possibly in danger might just be enough to break her, and she couldn’t bear that, she couldn’t, she couldn’t, she..

Celestia bit her lip, fighting back a few stray tears. No matter how much it pained her, she couldn’t concern herself with the others now. That knowledge was simply out of her grasp, no matter how hard she tried to reach for it. She had to remain relaxed, focus on what she did know, and try to formulate a plan of action from there. That was all she could do now.

“Alligator tears, Princess?” A wonderfully familiar voice said.

“Captain Armor!” She gasped, her eyes bolting wide open, hope swelling in her heart. “What are…you…”

She trailed off as she got a good look at the little, alabaster unicorn standing before her in a handsome suit coat covered in brass buttons, and with a bejeweled ring adorning his horn. At first glance, it was her beloved former captain-turned-prince of the Crystal Empire, but a moment’s inspection allowed her to process the jagged scar running over one of his eyes, turned milky-white by its presence. And there was more. Centuries of politics had sharpened her ability to read ponies even further than her observational skills, and what she saw in this unicorn was nothing short of pain beyond any sort of measure. Here was a stallion who had spent many a sleepless night wailing into his pillow, screaming for what had been lost. Here was a stallion who, at some point, had longed for death. Here was a stallion who had visited the deepest chasms of suffering that any sapient being could endure, and still wasn’t quite all the way back.

“Dearest Maker above, Captain, what happened to you?” She gasped, completely forgetting all manner of decorum and political maneuvering in the shock of finding this shattered shell of a stallion in her little glass cell, having apparently sneaked in without her noticing.

The unicorn allowed the smallest grin to perk up one corner of his mouth. He exhaled shakily in a way that she might have confused with a snicker if she’d been sleep deprived or not really paying attention. “You of all ponies should know, Princess,” he said in an accent she couldn’t quite place and a tone that she could, but wished she couldn’t. “After all, you’re the one who did it.”

His words hit her like a punch to the gut. “Wh-wh-what?”

“Oh, come, you always enjoyed looking at what you did,” Shining replied, stalking up to her with that creepy non-smile on his face. “Remember those stained glass windows you had in palace? Smiting Discord? Crushing last changeling hive? The crusades into Gryphon territories? All such great achievements you had immortalized in those damn windows.”

He sighed, rolling his eyes over to her, his head cocked at a crazy angle. “Of course, they’re gone now. Shattered when the bombs fell. So I guess all you have left now is me,” he closed the distance between them, teeth bared, nostrils flaring, thrusting his face into her eyes. A single, sweaty lock of blue hair dangled over his face, swinging between them as he took her face in his hooves and forced her to look at him. “Take a good look, Princess! Aren’t you proud? Do I get a window too!?”

“I…Shining, I…” there was no keeping the tears back now. They welled up in her eyes, dribbled down her cheeks. She tried to back away, but the metal cuffs encasing her legs barely allowed her even an inch of movement. All she could do was stand there and whimper.

“Oh, what’s wrong? Not as pretty as your windows?” The unicorn tsked, shaking his head in mock sadness. "Too bad, because you're stuck here."

Suddenly, his hooves squeezed together, pressing into her cheeks. "Where you fucking belong!" Then one of his hooves reared back and delivered a blow to the side of her face. Celestia cried out in pain and surprise. She wanted to sink to her knees, but of course the metal restraints kept her standing upright. She could only stand there and take it as the unicorn whaled on her, over and over again, earning a new cry of pain with each hit.

"Now, I know what you thinking, the humans help, right? They will help soon, Geneva Convention, all that, but bad news," he cradled her chin in a hoof, running the other hoof over the jeweled band on his horn. "This not my suppressor. Is a cheap replica I made."

He stepped to the side, gesturing to the door, which glowed with the obvious, pink hue of his magic. She would know it anywhere, just like she could take one look at the sick way that hue crackled unstably and popped along the edges with barely-controlled power and know that the pony behind it was not right with himself. Voices boomed from the other side, the humans probably throwing themselves at the door, but she knew what the unicorn was capable of. It would take an army throwing itself against the steel for a month to get through that.

Her eyes drifted back to him, at the bags under his eyes and the way he grit his teeth when he looked at her, and she wanted to burst into tears, disregarding the pain rippling down the side of her face. "Maker above, Shining, Maker above."

"Yes, cry! Cry for god!" His hoof lashed out again, catching her on the chin. "Cry out just like I did when you finished with me!" Another blow, this time across the bridge of her nose, stars appearing in her eyes. And again, he held her face to scream right into it: "Cry to some nonexistent thing just like I did every night after you killed my Twily!"

That hit her harder than anything he possibly could have done. Her swollen, stiff jaw dropped, her throat seizing. Despite her best efforts, her eyes filled with tears, turning into shimmering, vermillion pools locking with his. "Wh-what?" She managed to squeak.

That threw him for a loop. Shining Armor looked confused, uncertain for the briefest moment. He looked around, as if all the answers might be on an inspirational poster tacked up someplace in the room, then his gaze fell back to her. It hardened again, and he advanced, glaring at her with every single fiber of hatred he could gather up from the deepest, darkest places within himself. He held the point of his horn against her throat.

"I could do it right now," he said simply, keeping his horn pressed to her throat. "It would be easy. Wouldn’t kill you, we know, but it would be fun watching you choke on your own blood for a while, gasping for air while your throat healed, trying to grasp at the injuries in agony, begging for some way to breathe again as you drowned on your own blood."

It was no surprise to anyone that the Prince was suddenly so eloquent. He had probably spent months on end daydreaming about this moment, planning out what he would say down to the last syllable. And now, here it was, the moment he had been waiting for. The humans might as well have been on the other side of the planet for all they mattered. To him, they were barely even a light tapping coming from someplace far off. To him, all that existed was the princess, his horn, and the steady crackle of magic building up within himself. Celestia knew how right he was: it would be easy. She could feel the magical energies building up, he was just holding them back now, working up the courage to simply let it go.

She couldn’t help it. The pain she saw in one of her closest friends, the implication of what she had done to her beloved student, it was too much. A choked-off sob filled the room, echoing off the plate metal. The walls finally broke down, and tears flowed from Celestia’s eyes, dribbling down her chin, rolling onto Shining’s horn. She hated herself for a moment then, showing so much weakness, but the pain inside the unicorn was palpable. She could actually taste it in the room, almost feel it radiate from his every motion, every single word he spoke. It was enough to make most who could feel it break down, but then, there was the implication of why that pain was there.

Twilight. Dear Maker above, Twilight…

“I-I’m so sorry, Shining,” she sobbed, hating herself for sounding like a little filly after being scolded but unable to stop herself. The words came dribbling from her mouth almost as fast as the tears rolled down her cheeks, squeezing out her eyes. “I’m so, so sorry…”

“You fucking aren’t!” He screamed, his voice cracking mid-sentence. Steeling himself again, he pressed the horn even deeper into her throat. When he spoke again, it was with an eerie calm: “At least, not yet…”

They stood like that for a solid minute, though it might as well have been an eternity. Just the Prince and the Princess, one absolutely ready to kill the other. Who knows how long they might have stayed like that, or what course Shining Armor might have chosen, if it hadn’t been for one, good thud from the other side of the door.

Shining dispersed his magic and looked over his shoulder. Then, with a sinister little half-smile, he turned back to her. “I wish to continue this…line of discussion Princess, I really do,” he nodded to the door. “But then, I doubt they let me see you again after, even with my status. So just let me leave you with this…”

The unicorn took her cheeks in his hooves and squeezed, tears soaking into the keratin as he gripped her face and stared sadistically into her eyes. This time when he spoke, his words were garbled by his own emotion, though their meaning was still as clear as ever:

“You. Ours. Now.”

And then he left. Just like that, he turned around and trotted back out the door, which finally swung open. Immediately, one of the humans rushed in, this one with another tuft of fuzz on its chin, though she couldn’t even see through the tears blocking her vision. She barely even watched as the human tackled the unicorn and dragged him back out, screaming ”Chyort,” over and over again as he rushed the little white body out of the cell. Somehow, she still sensed the maniacal smile Shining kept on her the entire time he was being dragged away.

“Maker above, Shining,” she whispered. “What happened here!?”

Chapter X: The Bureaucracy

Anton burst through the door, the limp, white form in his arms not even moving as he stumbled across the plush carpeting. Everyone immediately leapt into action, the others moving with the sort of precision usually reserved for military maneuvers.

“Get him to the couch! Get him to the couch!” Lisa screamed as she slammed the door behind the large Russian man holding the unicorn in a bear hug.

In a flash, Anton darted across the room and threw the unicorn over one of the sofas, where Akshat and Franz swiftly pinned his hooves down. “His suppressor! Somebody get a real one!”

David reached under the control panel on reflex, pulling out an emergency kit. Thank God that’s the same on British ships as it is American, he thought, actually grateful as he rushed the kit over to the couch, sliding on his knees next to Shining like a kid sliding into third base. He flipped the metal clasps on the kit as he went. By the time he reached the couch, his hand was already darting into a pile of gauze and assorted bandages and retrieving the small, round tube that had become standard in emergency kits on every military ship since the days of the Collision Wars.

“Put it on! Put it on!” Akshat screamed, never minding the fact that Shining was just lying there, not even struggling, always looking up with that placid neutral look on his face. With a cry of victory, David slammed the tube down on Shining’s horn, right over the fake piece of jewelry. Finally, the humans backed off, standing away from the Equestrian Prince.

They all watched and waited, their breaths all stopping in their throats when Shining sat up. He looked up at the new horn accessory and gave it a good tap, then he looked at the humans all staring down at him. Finally, he did the creepiest thing he could think of at that moment: he smiled. “Yep. It on their good. Well done, everyone. You took care of big, dangerous pony.”

Somehow, that little smile and light tone of voice was even worse than if he'd leapt at them, teeth gnashing and hooves flailing. The group eyed one another warily. Despite Shining's attempts at a reassuring smile, nobody made any moves to close the distance between them, leaving a nice, wide circle around the unicorn. At one point, Akshat looked over to his Chinese counterpart and motioned with a nod quick of his head. Liu replied with a quick glance over at the Prince, followed by a glare back at Akshat while mouthing the words "fuck that shit." Akshat glared right back. The two kept it up until Liu inevitably realized they simply couldn't leave things as they were and stepped up.

"{Well, your highness,}" he said, still with that winning, political smile. "{This has been an...interesting experience for us all, don't you think?}"

"{It has,}" Shining Armor replied, climbing down off the couch. "{Now, may we go see the other prisoner?}"

The grin froze on Liu's face, his shock at the Prince even knowing about the other prisoner transforming into instant dismay. Though they didn't understand what had been said, the others' collective mood plummeted. Despite his political face, they could all tell when Liu was trying to digest something less than appetizing, be it Lisa's attempt at a birthday cake (in her defense, the eggs hadn’t looked spoiled when she’d used them for the batter) or some terrible news. It took a collective effort worthy of a WWI-era sapper squad going up against an enemy machine gunner, but the group somehow managed to keep up their smiles for the Prince, even if they were about as transparent as a well-polished pane of glass. "{A respectable wish, sir, though I'm not sure it would be terribly appropriate for...}"

"{Come now, I am a visiting dignitary, one with special UN status,}" Shining Armor said placidly, finally rising to his hooves. Still smiling that wretched, pale smile, he surveyed the group as he spoke. "{Surely you are not going to hold visiting royalty responsible because a door got stuck? Unless, of course, you have proof that it was somehow being held in place by my actions?}"

Liu grinned, every single one of his teeth becoming visible all at once. "{Actually, your majesty, I was more concerned with the way you assaulted a prisoner of the UNCDI in front of a half-dozen witnesses from an assortment of different countries, all of whom are UN-certified diplomats, and all of whom are starting to grow a little bit tired of your behavior since boarding this ship,}” he hissed, and in an instant, Shining saw something new in the young Chinese man. He saw a fire in his eyes that had been missing before, something that took the proper provocation to ignite. Chen clenched his teeth, and all at once, Shining took a step back, a hint of fear rising in his features as a brand new fire flared up in the human’s features, only tempered by an incredible willpower the small pony had rarely seen before. All of a sudden, they were not diplomat and royal, but human and little pony, staring one another down, and much to Shining’s own surprise, the unicorn blinked.

Then his initial shock faded and Shining returned the step. The fear in his eyes was replaced with something nobody in the room could have expected: happiness. Finally, here, right here in front of him, was the species that destroyed the Solar Tyrant! He grinned at the sight, nearly shedding a tear. It’s incredible, he thought, allowing an extra moment to admire the rage just oozing off Chen’s slender form before making his reply.

"{Ah,}" Shining Armor said, meeting the human’s eyes. ”{I see. Then I take it you already have a subpoena from the global courts asking me to answer for my actions? You know that is the only thing that can stop someone of UN-Special-Administrative status from…}”

“{I am aware of the UN doctrine!}” Chen spat, his breath heaving. Suddenly, he paused, rubbed his eyes, took a few steps back, and when he looked up again, he had some semblance of normalcy back on his face. Sure, his teeth still ground audibly together in frustration, and his eyes practically bugged out of his skull, but still, he managed to keep something on his face that one might confuse for a smile, if they turned their head and squinted hard enough. “{No, in fact, we do not.}”

Once again, the mood fell amongst the group. The Prince had taken to learning politics like a fish took to water, it seemed. To them, the little pony left devastated, alone, and requiring a twenty-four hour suicide watch was long gone. In his place stood a coldly intelligent royal that had just backed a half-dozen UN-certified diplomats into a corner with little more than a bit of knowledge of UN protocols and a title as an international VIP. “{While we wait for that subpoena, why don’t we pay our other guest a visit?}” He asked, a malicious smile spreading across his lips.

“{Do we have any say in this?}”

“{No.}”

“{Then she is right this way, your highness,}” the Chinese man spat, those last couple words practically shooting out of his mouth with all the venom he could muster. He gestured to the open doorway leading back out to the hall.

”{I will lead the way, I think,}” Shining Armor said as he pushed his way past the human, ushering him out of the way gently, but with a firm touch. “{While I was walking down here, I took the opportunity to memorize the layout of this place as best as I could. I would rather like to put that knowledge to the test.}”

“{Of course,}” Liu replied, dismay obvious in his tone. “{Because who are we to refuse such a simple request from a visiting royal of our allies in Equestria?}”

As the pair left with Shining walking ahead of Chen, the humans remaining in the control room assumed expressions ranging from dismay to utter frustration. With the prince in the lead, their last hope of guiding him in circles until the UN General Assembly could be reached had been crushed.

“Can’t we stop him?” Someone whispered once they thought Shining was out of earshot (they thought wrong, of course. Humans always did underestimate pony hearing). “There must be something!”

“Special Equestrian national status,” another whisper replied. “As a UN-administrated disaster zone, their officials have every right to be here that we do. Y’know, like what the Japs got?”

“Who the hell would approve that!?”

“The general assembly looking to alleviate their guilty consciences, that’s who.”

Liu watched and felt a small knot in his stomach twist as Shining’s victorious little smile morphed into a victorious little grin. Though he could still be glad that he and the manipulative little quadruped weren’t enemies just yet, he could see how this unicorn had stood in open defiance against Celestia’s reign for so long, even after his army had been crushed and he’d been forced to flee into the wilderness with the Solar Tyrant herself at his hooves and his sister’s death weighing on his heart.

Knowing this, it took an exceeding amount of courage and more than a few minutes of walking for Liu to speak. ”{You should know, your highness, that I will most definitely be able to protect you should this prisoner prove more violent than the last.}”

“{Oh?}”

“{Yes. In fact, I would like to say that I am more capable unarmed than even my Russian counterpart who seized you back in the cell, and should another…’incident’ arise…}” he trailed off, searching for something, and spying a loose tuft of hair drifting off the back of the Prince’s mane. Without another word, his hand darted out, seized the stray hair, tore it loose with a flick of his wrist, and presented it in front of the royal pony’s face, all in the same span of time most people took to blink. “{Let’s just say I will not only be able to handle myself, but you as well. Especially now that I know your magic is restrained. Do you understand?}”

“{Of course,}” Shining Armor regarded the human with a cocky little smile. ”{However, with my Royal Guard training and experience in the Equestrian underground, I doubt you will have to worry much about me.}”

Liu scowled, flicking the hair over his shoulder. ”{Five years is a long time to be away from combat.}”

Burn them! Burn the rebels, my beautiful Newfoals! Crush them beneath your hooves! Spare none and…

Shining Armor forced the memory back down, disguising his grimace of displeasure with a cough and a grunt to clear his throat. “{Not as long as you might think,}” he rasped, thumping his chest a few times to add to the show. "{Now, what's so special about this other prisoner?}"

"{She's another alicorn, your majesty.}"

Shining paused mid-step and gazed up at the human incredulously, his eyes wide, his jaw agape. For a second, Liu saw the pony that had grown up with a little lavender unicorn, pretending to be her mount as they rushed off to save some generic fantasy princess from the clutches of an evil monster. Then his initial shock wore off and Shining's ice-cold facade returned at full force. "{Damn her,}" he mumbled. "{And she said she was the only one in existence. God damn her.}"

Liu smiled tiredly at him. "{Is lying about her origins and telling everyone she is the only alicorn to have ever existed really her worst crime?}"

"{No, far from it,}" Shining conceded. "{It's just that every time we think we've seen the depths of her evil, every time we think we've uncovered all her wicked machinations, she discovers a new low to which she can plummet. May I have a pad of paper? I would like to know about this new alicorn.}”

Thanking God for a way to change the subject, Liu reached into his back pocket and handed the prince a pencil and pad of paper, both stamped with the UN’s logo. "{So, here's what we know: she is another alicorn, princess status, only recently ascended into her role.}"

"Mmh-hmm," Shining said, absentmindedly jotting things down on the pad with the weak flicker of magic the suppressor allowed him.

"{Female, of course. Aptitude for magic, resident of Ponyville, though she was apparently raised under the Princess's tutelage as a filly.}"

"{Big surprise there,}" Shining snorted. "{The bitch probably saw her power and had her brought in to be turned into her own little toy.}"

"{That would make sense,}" Liu said. "{However, from what I've gathered from the transcripts of our interviews with her, she at least appears to be a bright, happy little pony with an appetite for learning. She asked us for a book of human history the moment she first saw one of our faces!}"

Suddenly, Shining Armor did something so utterly unexpected, Liu wouldn’t have been more shocked if the Prince had pulled off his face and revealed that he was a robot clone sent from the future: he gave a loud snort of laughter. "{Really!?}" He gasped.

"{Y-yes,}" Liu said, staring at the Prince warily, as if the snort was an indication that the Prince's head was about to crack open and reveal a flying saucer.

"{Sorry, sorry, my apologies,}" Shining snorted, an odd spark in his eye and a lightness to his tone that Liu would have said was pleasant if it had come from anyone else. The unicorn looked up at his human companion, that smile still teasing at the corners of his eyes as the pair stepped through a final set of double doors and into another control room. "{What you just described to me sounds so much like something my...}"

"BBBFF?" A little voice called from inside the room.

Shining Armor looked up. The pencil dropped from his grasp. He didn't pick it up.

0620 HOURS
TOP SECRET UNITED NATIONS MAXIMUM SECURITY FACILITY

{CLASSIFIED}, {CLASSIFIED}, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Corporal Bessonov was not a happy man. But then, who would be after being pulled out of bed right after a twelve-hour night shift? He had literally just stepped out of the shower and was about to turn in when the call came in. He had to go down to the “Brickhouse,” as the men under him affectionately referred to their station, not even an hour after leaving for the day shift to take over!

I swear, if that damn yank blew up firecrackers in the men’s room again, I’ll tear his balls off and mail them to his mother, he thought, a small flicker of anger burning away at the bottom of his sleep-deprived mind. Oh sure, PFC Kowalski meant well enough. Lord knows they all needed a break from the pressing knowledge of what they were guarding every now and again, and his antics served as a much-needed release for the men. Even that super-strict Chinese guy they had with them cracked a smile whenever Kowalski was around. That didn’t do much for an aging Russian military man who had gone the last thirty-six hours without sleep, though. Right then, he was wondering if Kowalski's balls should be sautéed or fried.

He stepped into the control room, making the final adjustments to his uniform coat. As expected, the room was packed to the brim with computer equipment and rows of desks, each one seating some desk jockey from Intelligence hunched over his keyboard. Also as expected, the oak conference table dominating the rear of the room was surrounded with each of the UNCDI reps: a soldier from every nation on the new permanent Security Council. What wasn't expected, however, was the horrible unease that filled the air as he stepped in. Instead of talking jovially, the group gathered around the table was busy staring grimly at one another, some with mugs of barely-touched lukewarm coffee in their hands. Instead of working diligently on personal projects or, more commonly, playing Starcraft at their desks, the Intelligence people were all pouring over reams of data scrolling across their screens. When they weren't yelling barely-decipherable jargon across the room at each other, that is.

Bessonov grimaced. He had heard of the terrible events of the past twenty-four hours, and knew they might have some impact on his duties here eventually, but he had still hoped that his little slice of the world might carry on as always for yet a little while longer. Let the Brits and the Norwegians spend their nights worrying, Bessonov was just an old man looking forward to retirement.

Adjusting his cap out of habit, the Colonel strode up to the oak table, noting that each and every man there was in full uniform: an odd sight for such a usually laid-back group, and not one he was sure he particularly liked. "{Tennn-SHUN!}" He barked, and despite the shocked, trance-like look on all their faces, each man stood up from the table as a single unit, one standing so fast that his chair upended itself and clattered to the floor. Again, as nice as this newfound dedication was, there was still something positively wretched about it, something too Children of the Corn for Bessonov's tastes.

“{At ease!}” He announced, and the group sat back in their chairs, all sitting bolt-upright, all staring back at him with the wide-eyed, shocked look of children just learning that there was no Santa Clause. Bessonov’s grimace deepened. He had seen that look on men before, both on the battlefield and off, and each time he had wanted to slap it right off their faces. ”{Does anybody wish to explain to me why I am standing here, tolerating your faces when I should be at home in bed?}”

“{Sir,}” Kowalski rasped. ”{Don’t you hear it?}”

Bessonov turned to the American, and his heart sank. For the first time in memory, a look other than stupid cheerfulness filled the American’s eyes. This look was haunted, wretched-looking, the sort of thing you would see on a man when the enemy had him surrounded and all hope for reinforcements was miles away. ”{Hear what, Private?}” He asked, more gently this time.

Kowalski’s only response was to hold a finger to his lips and gaze upwards. The Russian sealed his lips and closed his eyes, trying to listen past the general bedlam of the computer room behind them. He rested his hands on the table, and that was when he felt it. An unsteady, halting sort of pulse, like a diseased heart going into palpitations. Once he knew what he was listening for, he finally heard it in the air, something coming from the long, metal hallway at the head of the room, marked off with yellow and black stripes. He felt it more than heard it, but it was still there, hanging in the air like gas.

”{What is it?}” He asked, dreading the answer.

”{It’s her, sir,}” Chen this time, his hands massaging his temples. Without another word, he reached over to the wood-paneled intercom box on the table and pressed the little red button on its front grill.

A light blinked on, and the room filled with the most terrifying laughter Bessonov had ever heard in his life. The haunting chortle flooded their ears, sounding like a combination of some evil queen in a kid’s movie and a madwoman locked in the deepest bowls of an asylum. The Russian stood ramrod-straight, held erect by the fear lighting up his entire spine. One of the techs collapsed at their computer screen, hammering their fists into their ears.

After a few minutes with the wicked laughter drowning out all other noise in the room, Bessonov raised his voice, hoping it sounded braver than he felt. “{Princess?}” He called, leaning over the intercom. “{Princess, what’s so funny?}”

All at once, the laughter stopped, dying down into an occasional giggle. The Russian bit the inside of his cheek until he felt blood seep into his mouth. The silence between chortles fell as a deafening pulse on every man’s ears as they all waited, their breaths held, their bodies remaining firm as every muscle in them tensed.

"{He sees her!}" The ragged, maniacal voice on the other end of the line exclaimed with barely-contained glee. For a horrible moment, the Russian believed he might be hearing an enthusiastic school girl talk about some new celebrity pairing. Then he remembered what was down there and that thought sent shivers racing up his spine, coupled with a wave of nausea through his stomach. "{He sees what he can never have again, and it's killing him!}"

Bessonov hammered a finger into the call button, allowing those tinny, humming sounds to echo back up the halls without the monitoring system to clarify them. He really preferred it when he hadn't known what they were. "{Sir?}" Mui asked, visibly shaken by the sounds. "{What did she mean by all that? Who's he?}"

"{For the sake of your sanity, Lieutenant,}" the Russian replied, working like hell to keep the fearful quiver from his voice. "{I pray that we never find out.}”

Author's Note

And we finally see Xenolestia in her natural habitat. Scaring the piss out of everyone around her. WOOT!

Chapter XI: Twilight's Armor

0615 HOURS
ONBOARD THE HMS ILLUSTRIOUS

NORTH SEA, OFF THE NORWEGIAN COASTLINE, BOUND FOR KARELIA

Until the cell door had swung open and her entire world had come crashing down in a nigh-apocalyptic moment of revelation, Twilight Sparkle had been perfectly content with reading about the discovery of the steam-powered locomotive and its impact on the history of these “humans.” While she had found the book she had been granted to be a tad lacking, she did find the history of an entirely alien race completely fascinating, especially the differing reactions they had to new technologies.

“Amazing,” she muttered to herself. “Without the power of the princesses, they seem to have flourished, but at the expense of their environment! My word, what price might they have paid for progress? And was it worth it?”

She turned the next page, and pulled her head back as a cardboard cutout shot out at her, this one being of a man the book described as “Andrew Carnegie,” whatever that name could mean. She sighed. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been complaining: she was just a prisoner, after all, and the humans could very well have just laughed at her request for more information about their world and history. Still, she was having difficulty deciding if her being granted such obviously child-oriented literature was an attempt to withhold information, or just a dig at her intelligence. Honestly, she hoped it was the former. At least that would mean the humans had some respect for her as a thinking individual, whereas the latter would just piss her off.

She tossed the book in with the small stack she had been granted and gave the small ring around her horn another frustrated scratch. Was it just her, or was it honestly beginning to itch? Her horn had never itched before, but right now, she could swear it felt like an entire colony of ants was marching through it, their little legs scratching along its…

Pausing, Twilight stood on all four hooves, rearing up as far as the metal chains wrapped around her waist and her wings would allow her. She breathed in, holding her hoof to her chest, and out again, cleansing her mind as Cadence had shown her…except that brought Cadence to mind…which in turn brought her brother to mind…and then her parents and her friends and Celestia and dear sweet Celestia was she ever gonna see anypony again would she just die down here in this…

In… she breathed. And out.

All in all, Twilight didn’t think she had much to complain about. Her room was well-lit and comfortable, especially now that she’d been given a throw-pillow to lie on instead of the cold, tile floor. She just wished the buzzing from the light panels above her wasn’t so obvious. They were marvels of technological advancement, surely, but in the silence of her cell, that buzzing was driving her nuts!

She gritted her teeth against it, trying to remember her breathing, only to snort in frustration and wind up starting over a few seconds later. She had repeated the cycle at least a couple dozen times when she heard footsteps approach her cell door. This time, she stood as tall as the chains would allow, glowering at the door, trying to display as fierce a look as she could. Last time, when her captors first arrived to check on her, they had found a pony quivering in fear, barely able to stand from being unconscious for so long. This time though, she would be sure they would find a Princess.

Chin up, she thought. Keep your chin up, your wings flared out, and glare. Look scary! Ooh, but not too scary, that might send the wrong message. Wait, is scary the same as intimidating? Oh no! I need to look that up, where are my…notes…

Her thoughts came crashing to a halt like Celestia's carriage after a few dozen Appletinis. The door rushed open with a pneumatic hiss, and a lighter-skinned human stepped through, first drawing her attention before her eye was drawn to the white blur at his side. He was speaking with it in a tongue she didn’t recognize as her view slowly shifted to the blur, slowly revealing blue highlights and a voice that spoke strange words but in a tone she knew better than the back of her own hoof. Her eyes widened, her throat constricting. The tall, intimidating princess disappeared as she shrank in her own shock and wonder, her wings sinking until the feathers touched the ground.

For a few seconds, her throat locked up, unable to voice anything but a barely-audible squeak. She gazed at the white blur as it kept jabbering away with its incomprehensible language and familiar speech, trying to force the words out through the stunned, blubbering idiot she felt ready to become, until she finally squeaked his old nickname: “BBBFF?”

He looked up at her from the clipboard in his grip. His eyes widened. The pencil he had been holding fell from his grasp, clattering to the tiled floor. His jaw hung agape, closed, then opened again as if to say something, except nothing came out.

Finally, her own pure joy overwhelmed her shock like a tsunami over a beaver dam. ”Big brother!” She gasped, skipping towards him in joy. She had to stretch the chains out as far as they would go, and even then she could only get within a foot of him, that was enough. Tears of happiness rolled down her cheeks as she drank in the first familiar sight she’d seen since being locked in this awful place. The alien creature at his side moved to block her, but she still managed to peek around him, poking her head around human’s torso and grinning at her brother.

“Shining!” She gasped, still craning her neck around the body in her way. “Sweet Celestia, Shining! I’m so glad it’s you! Oh gosh, what are you even doing here, did they catch you too!?”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he looked at her with the gaze of a pony that has been trotting along in the sands of some desert wasteland for days on end and just saw their first drop of water on the blade of a leaf. He reached around the human, shoving him to the side to look at her. His hoof reached out, touching her cheek.

“Shining?” She asked, eyeing him queerly. That look was really starting to weird her out now. “A-are you okay?”

“Shuōhuǎng zhě…”* he rasped, his hoof remaining on her face.

“I’m sorry, what was that? You’re not making any sense big…” she finally noticed the scar on his cheek, and a few things rapidly clicked into place. “…brother…”

“Shuōhuǎng zhe!” He repeated, his touch leaving her face only to backhoof her across the cheek. She fell to the tile as he reared over her, motioning to repeat the strike. “Shuōhuǎng zhě!”

“Shining!? What’s happened to you!? What’s going on!?” She cried desperately, hoping to reach the pony she knew somewhere inside this one.

“Shuōhuǎng zhě! Shuōhuǎng zhě!” He repeated the phrase over and over again, moving to strike, but quick as a flash, the human responded. His limbs (‘They call them hands,’ some rational part of her that was somehow still functioning informed her) lashed out against the white unicorn, faster than she could even believe. One moment, the human was just recovering from being brushed aside by Shining Armor, and the next, he was on top of the unicorn. He shrugged, and Shining Armor fell to one knee. The human shrugged again, and this time she could just barely make out the blur that was his hand, delivering another blow to Shining’s head. It didn’t knock out the unicorn entirely, but from the way it moved, Twilight figured knocking Shining out wouldn’t have been much of a challenge for the human. All it did was stun him, allowing the human to wrap his arms around Shining’s neck in a choker hold and drag him back out the door, still screaming those words over and over again.

“Shuōhuǎng zhě! Shuōhuǎng zhě!” His cries echoed off into the hallway like accusations handed down from the judge’s podium as he was forcibly carried off in the grip of the human, the man’s arms locked around him like a vice, the extensions on his hands (‘Fingers!’ that little rational part cheerfully reminded her again) digging into his flesh. She privately thanked whoever might be listening once the door slid shut again and the accusing cries were finally cut off, leaving her with her thoughts and that phrase echoing over and over again in her mind.

“Shining Armor,” she said quietly, looking at the door in utter terror. “What happened to you? What’s going on? What’s…oh Celestia above…what’s happened here!?”

The door and the empty room offered no answers, so after a few minutes curled up in a little ball of feathers on the tile, she finally trotted back over to her throw pillow and grabbed another picture book off the pile. A few minutes into her reading, she noticed a few drops cascading down onto the pages, but dismissed them as some sort of fluid from the ceiling, perhaps fuelling the light panels. It took her a few more minutes to realize they were her tears.

Author's Note

*Liar, in Han

Chapter XII: War Room

0630 HOURS
WAR ROOM

CANTERLOT CASTLE, CANTERLOT, EQUESTRIA

Shining Armor bolted upright in his seat, his ears raised while shivers raced up and down his spine. Old instincts, hardened by his time as a guardspony, kicked into overdrive. For a second, the urge to grit his teeth and growl like a rabid schnauzer welled up within his chest until he forced it back down. Somewhere, something terrible was happening. He knew it, could feel it in his gut.

“Captain Shining Armor?” Somepony asked. The unicorn turned to face Luna, the Night Princess looking at him with her brow furrowed in concern.

“Perfectly fine, Princess,” he said, placating her with an easygoing smile and a nod. “But it’s ‘Prince’ Armor now, remember?”

“Ah yes, my apologies,” Luna said, returning both the nod and the smile. “Old habits die hard, and can even find new life during times of stress.”

Shining smoothed his fur down in the places where it was standing on end and breathed a soft sigh through his nostrils. “Couldn’t agree more, Princess.”

He didn’t turn as his wife slid into the seat next to him, though he did stick his hoof out for her without even thinking about it. She smiled thinly on seeing it, accepting it into her grasp. His grip tightened, just as automatically as offering his hoof had been. Around them, each of the remaining Element Bearers took their seats at the massive table. Once everypony was seated, the glow off the magical torch sconces lighting the room dimmed, casting them all in darkness. The lack of natural lighting did feel rather stifling, but he could understand why it would be so. After all, not a lot of chances to put in a window when one is opening up pocket dimensions with massive bursts of Alicorn magic. The room was a marvel of Equestrian engineering: a tiny pocket folded over in the rift of spacetime, created with humongous amounts of magic built up over half a decade from the most powerful unicorns in Equestria, himself and all four princesses included. Still, it was hard to feel proud of himself when he couldn’t even protect the ones he loved…

For what felt like hours, but could only have been a few minutes, nopony spoke. Those who didn’t have their eyes cast on the floor were holding them shut to try and hold back the flood of tears still threatening to break through. Shining grimaced at the sight. To see such ordinarily cheerful faces holding such terrible sadness felt wrong, like a peaceful-looking field before it exploded with enemy fire, or a nasty-looking thunderhead just before it spawned a killer tornado, or Pinkie Pie a split-second before downing a chocolate bar and a few bags of raw sugar (though that last one, at least, had led to the most exciting post-wedding banquet in Canterlot’s long history). Either way, this feeling was a sign that something needed fixing, and as a high-ranking official in both the Royal Guard and the Equestrian royal hierarchy, he was used to fixing these things. Or, at least, relaying them to the Princesses if he couldn’t handle them himself.

But what if it’s even bigger than the Princess? He wondered. What if she’s part of it, and in need of our help? There, he drew a blank. Something bigger than her was so far beyond his pay grade it made him want to gag. Simply put, he didn’t know what to do, and that scared him worse than a Tirek/Discord/Chrysalis/Nightmare Moon team-up. He scoured the faces around him, as if searching desperately for some sort of answer, but only found worried glances, hooves on shoulders, and half-hearted attempts to meet his eye that ended as quickly as they began.

At long last, Luna stood and cleared her throat. “We all know why this meeting has been called,” she announced (though not at Royal Canterlot Voice levels, thank Celestia). “I doubt there is any reason to discuss the dire circumstances we find ourselves in, is there?”

One glance around the room with her steely, blue eyes gave her the answer. “Verily well,” she nodded, taking her seat again. “Now, the reason for this meeting is to discuss how this government is to deal with certain…recent developments.”

“I’ll tell ya how,” Rainbow Dash said, her voice cracking as she suddenly stood and slammed her hooves into the table. “We head into that portal, beat down the freaks that took our friends, and get our ponies back!”

“Rainbow,” Shining sighed. “I get that your heart’s in the right place, but…”

“But what!?” She screeched, pointing a hoof in the direction of the field that, until yesterday, had only known excitement during last year’s pumpkin celebration, when a misplaced goop of pumpkin innards had wound up in Miss O’Bannon’s mane, which she’d mistaken for a bat and nearly caused a riot with her panicked shrieks. “Every moment we sit here is another moment those things could be doing who-knows-what to our friends! Why the hay are we even sitting here when we should be…should be…”

Applejack’s firm hoof on her shoulder caught the pegasus off-guard. Rainbow whipped around, glaring at her friend. AJ just met her gaze with sad, tear-streaked eyes, only breaking eye contact to give a slow shake of her head. It took a few moments, but Rainbow’s glare eventually broke into a defeated sigh as she sank back down into her chair, burying her muzzle in her hooves.

Shining stood, and though his voice was proud and strong, he kept his hooves on the table, like an old man leaning for support. “We don’t know anything about these creatures or their world. For all we know, the air they breathe is poison to us. Add that with the fact that before their attack, they were able to drain our magic, and it’s obvious that a full-on assault could only end in disaster. We all saw their weapons. We all know what these things are capable of.”

Fluttershy gave a frightened squeak. All around him, ponies’ eyes widened with the memories of what they had seen in that field. Yes, the group was all too aware of what the things that had stolen their friends were capable of. Most of them had at least been coherent enough to watch that stallion fall dead without even being touched, from a weapon that made a massive noise and was brought to bear in a single, fluid gesture. Shining thought it sounded a little like one of those cannons the Royal Guard would shoot off during ceremonial events, or perhaps the black powder weapons a few of the Griffon fiefdoms used in their armies. Except the Griffons’ weapons were big, cumbersome, wildly-inaccurate things that took ages to load and luck to keep them from just blowing up in your hand. They probably had nothing to do with the long, elegant weapons the attackers had carried, right?

“Well,” Applejack said, breaking Equestria’s newest prince from his thoughts. “Is there anythin’ we do know?”

For the first time in over twenty-four hours, a genuine smile crossed Shining Armor’s face. Applejack always had been the practical one. “Actually, that’s part of the reason we called you all here,” he said. He turned to the night-blue princess at his side and smiled, a tiny piece of his heart soaring with hope when she smiled back. There’s still hope, he realized as she stood once again, her gaze passing over the ponies around her.

“Over the past night, we have spent a massive amount of energy throwing our subconscious through the anomaly and into the world on the other side,” Luna said, a flicker of hope dancing in her eyes. “We are happy to report that we have discovered a dreamscape similar to what exists in Equestria, allowing us to explore the collective subconscious of the beings on the other side.”

Everypony sat up in their seats, scooting right towards the edges, nopony more so than Shining Armor. Before the meeting, Luna had in fact told him she had some discoveries to announce, but nothing as incredible as this. “Oh my gosh,” Pinkie said, speaking for the first time since walking in, her deflated, straightened mane regaining just a single bit of poofiness at the end of one lock. “Didja figure out how to get Twily and the Princess back!?”

“Sadly, no,” Luna said with a defeated sigh, and the tiny flicker of hope at the table dimmed a little bit. “Whatever these creatures are, they apparently have nopony to guide their dreams. As a result, what I encountered was a level of chaos to make Discord’s head spin.”

“Hold on,” AJ held up a hoof. “There’s an idea! Discord! He might be able t’help!”

But Luna just shook her head. “Even if we wanted to contact that creature – and I personally don’t think we do – he appears to be unavailable at the moment. At least, to my magic.”

All eyes settled on Fluttershy, who simply shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she whispered with sadly. “I haven’t seen him since our last tea party.”

“’Tis not like we ever thought Discord would be a reliable way to handle major crises,” Luna shrugged. “Though it was worth a try.”

“So we’re back to square one,” Cadence mumbled. “Great, now the only thing we know is that these things have brains so messed up we can’t even learn anything from their dreams.” Shining gave her hoof an extra squeeze.

“Actually, we did determine a basic body structure,” Luna said, and as she spoke, a few wisps of her magic entered the air. Her horn glowing, she directed the wisps of night-blue dust with an expertise that could only come with a thousand years’ experience. As they all watched, eyes wide in wonder, the tiny wisps of dust coalesced into a strange form, starting with a pair of feet, a set of stout legs, an elongated torso, a pair of strong arms, and finally, a head with a single, small bulge in the middle dividing a pair of tiny, oval-shaped spots of light blue, supposedly representing eyes.

“This is what took our friends, huh?” Rainbow Dash said, a hoof still on her muzzle, her eyes rolled up to look at the magical construct.

“Yes, and while there is a female variant, this creation is a good basis for what took my sister and your friend.”

The group fell silent for a while as everypony paused to look the figure over, analyzing it, perhaps hoping they could see some gaping weakness to exploit. The minutes ticked by, Shining’s own search growing desperate. “Perhaps,” he put forth cautiously. “It can’t see very well? Those eyes seem awfully small.”

“Um…that’s not actually true,” Fluttershy said. “Owls and tigers have smaller eyes too, but they have some of the best vision of any creature.”

“Oh,” Shining sighed, slumping in his chair, defeated. After a while, the rest of the ponies joined him, realizing that the vague outline of some creature just didn’t give them enough data to work with. The sense of malaise and hopelessness began to descend on the room once again. Snorting in frustration, Shining turned back to the lunar princess. “Luna? Is there any way you think you could head back into those creature’s dreams and perhaps learn more?”

A shiver passed up the princess’s spine. “Apologies, Prince Armor, but we highly doubt such an endeavor would bear any fruit. Besides, I really do not wish to revisit that chaos. The last attempt was rather like a roller coaster without brakes or seatbelts, made up of nothing but hairpin turns and loops for hours on end.”

Shining Armor cringed at the description, but was grateful that it at least explained the hours of retching he’d heard from the Princess’s bedroom a few hours before. And he had been worried it might have been morning sickness, oh Celestia above forbid.

“Just what kind of creatures are we dealing with here?” Rarity asked aloud, her voice shaking throughout the room. “If their dreams are that chaotic, what are we really up against!?”

“Well, this has been productive,” Luna sighed, dropping to her hooves. “As it stands, it doesn’t appear as though we can do anything but maintain a heavy Royal Guard garrison around the anomaly and pray it will be enough.”

“I’m iffy even about that,” Shining Armor replied. “If those things launch an attack coupled with those weapons and their ability to drain our magic, we might as well offer those guards up to a feral hydra.”

“It’s all we can do, Prince Armor,” Luna sighed, her breath coming out in shaky sighs. “We have to protect our little ponies from another attack, it’s what…what Tia would want…” her lower lip trembled, and for a moment she wasn’t the Princess of Night, but instead a mare terrified for somepony she loved. Shining could relate. Except for the mare part, of course. Then, all at once, the mare was gone and the all-powerful Lunar Princess was right back. “That’s all we can do. At least, until we can learn more about what we’re up against or come up with another plan.”

“In that case,” Cadence said, hopping down alongside her aunt as the group strode out of the room. “I believe the only thing we can do for now is try to keep the populace calm.”

“Easier said than done, I’m afraid,” Luna snorted as the group filed out into the hallway. To drive her point home, the Alicorn promptly seized one of the windows in her magical grasp and shoved the curtains aside with a loud rustle. A massive crowd of ponies greeted them, their voices coalescing into a dull roar that shook the glass in its pane. The rest of the group stared, their jaws on their chests, before Cadence spoke.

“Blueblood?” She asked.

“Apparently, he wasn’t too thrilled about my ‘forgetting’ to invite him, and has spread a rumor of Celestia’s disappearance amongst the aristocracy,” Luna sighed, shaking her head. “We love and cherish our nephew, really we do, but sometimes he can be so…”

“Boorish?” Rarity said, a tiny smile on her face. “Pig-headed? An irritating dolt?”

“All of the above,” she said, a smile on her face. “I swear, between this and the ongoing hunt for the Changeling Hive and the economic stimulus going to the Diamond Dogs…”

“We’re good at keepin’ ponies calm, Princess,” Applejack winked. “Dontcha worry none. We got this, right girls?”

“YEAH!” The other Element Bearers shouted, but there was something missing in their tone. Some small hint of listlessness in their shout. It was easy to know why: somepony was missing from their number, and until she was there again, it wouldn’t quite be the same.

“Captain Armor!” Luna called, and the Prince looked up, his eyebrow arched. Luna sighed and rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. A word, please?”

“Of course, Princess,” he replied, giving Cadence a quick peck on the cheek before trotting to join with the Princess. She motioned for him to follow, and he obeyed, keeping pace at her side as the voices of the other ponies faded away behind them.

Shining Armor looked uneasily over his shoulder, then back at the Princess. “Princess Luna? What…”

“That’s just Luna to you now, Prince Armor,” she said with a weak smile tugging at one of the corners of her mouth. “We are of the same status now, are we not?”

“Right, right,” he said, returning the smile as best he could. “What did you need, Luna?”

The smile disappeared from her face, though in all fairness, it hadn’t really been there in the first place. Luna sighed, her shoulders rising and falling with a trembling breath. “It’s the anomaly, or portal, or whatever you wish to call it,” she replied, shaking her head sadly. “It’s growing.”

Shining Armor’s stomach dropped into his hooves, hooked up with the gum stuck to his keratin, got a few numbers, dropped some E, then slammed right back into its old home to crash. “Oh dear sweet Celestia, what?”

Luna sighed again. “This morning, when those things…took our sister,” her voice shivered, but she took a deep breath and recomposed herself with a technique learned through centuries of practice before her imprisonment. “…the southern flank of yon anomaly reached to just within twenty yards to the southern fence of the field it occupies. Now, it’s within hoof’s reach of the fence, if one leans out enough. We haven’t made any accurate measurements yet, but the portal is obviously expanding, and doing so at a high rate.”

“Celestia and Luna above…”

“Yes?” Luna said with another half-hearted smile.

Shining tried to return the smile again, failed, and settled for shaking his head. “How big is it gonna get?”

“By our estimates, it will encompass the entirety of the farmland it resides in sometime tomorrow evening,” she replied, and then shrugged helplessly. “After that, there’s no telling how far it will go. All of Canterlot may well be encompassed and become directly accessible to the creatures on the other side. I don’t think I have to tell you how bad that would be.”

“Does Cadence know?”

“Cadence was the one who recommended we tell you next,” Luna said. “Take no offense to the fact that I went to her first, if you please. She is a fellow alicorn, after all.”

“Of course, of course,” he said, still shaking his head. “We can’t let this out. Just Celestia being gone was more than enough to stir up a near-riot. If Equestria learns that its capitol will soon be vulnerable to enemy attack…”

As if to emphasize his point, the sound of glass breaking followed by high-pitched shrieking echoed from outside. Shining shivered at the thought of what might happen if this got out.

“If anything, this makes the rescue of our friends even more of a top priority,” Luna said, her tone still holding at that cold, political low. “We need the power of both my sister and the Elements if we are going to stand a chance.”

“Whatever you need, Princess,” he said, rearing up, the soldier he once was standing at attention in his eyes. “Anything at all.”

“Anything?” She asked, and all at once she arched an eyebrow coldly at him. “Tell me, Prince Shining Armor of the Crystal Empire, how far would you be willing to go to save your nation and get our ponies back?”

The image of those mares back there, smiling but not really, passed through his mind again. The most cheerful, loving mares he knew, approaching tears because of what they did. Took his sister. Took his princess. Now, they were about to take his country as well. His jaw clenched. “As far as is needed,” he replied.

“Good,” Luna said with a curt nod. “Because we have a plan, but it will require some time to prepare, and when it’s ready, you will be asked to place your life on the line. You will need to go behind enemy lines, allow yourself to be captured, be taken to the heart of whatever constructs the enemy may have built to contain our kind. It’s dangerous, nigh-suicidal, we know, but if it works, our ponies might just have a chance to escape back to us.”

Shining let a large breath in through his nose, and exhaled it slowly. Then he bowed at Luna’s hooves, a mask of stoic determination on his face which hopefully hid the way his shoulders wanted to quiver with his every movement. “Whatever is needed, I will provide,” he said.

Luna smiled back, a weak little smile, then reached out, squeezing his shoulder like an old friend. He didn’t raise his head, instead leaving it where it was as images of wretched, black creatures on two legs simply bashing his brains in the moment he appeared with his hooves up danced in his head. “That is good to know, Captain Armor.”

This time, he didn’t correct her.

Author's Note

I figured it had been a while since we checked on the ponies.

Chapter XIII: The Newfoals Activate

0530 HOURS (2230 LOCAL)
AMBASSADOR BRIDGE

DETROIT, MI, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Doug Robertson was not a happy man. Granted, he wasn’t a particularly sad man: he wasn’t poppin’ pills like “those inner-city faggots who can’t deal when their dyke bosses raise their voices at ‘em,” in his own eloquent words. But still, there were times when he just wanted to pull his eighteen-wheeler off to the side, hop on out, give his atrophying legs (and subsequently, his sizable beer gut) a good shake, and just walk away without looking back. Just leave the big, metal bastard he was forced to drive, oftentimes on seventy-hour shifts, parked their on the side of the road for his employers to pick up. Or leave it to rust, he wouldn’t care. He’d just keep walking, probably find some small town like the one he’d grown up in, where the kids still ran after each other on bikes and built forts over creeks and ate those freezer pops that came in plastic tubes you had to freeze yourself until the cheap syrup coated their faces in reds, oranges, greens, and purples.

He didn’t know what he’d do for work once he found this town. Maybe fix up trucks, God knows he’d spent enough time around them in the last few years. He could start off small in the local garage and work his way up. Or hell, maybe he’d wind up washing dishes at the local greasy spoon, he didn’t care, just so long as he didn’t have to sit behind the wheel of a goddamned truck and wait for the fucking traffic on overcrowded-as-shit bridges anymore.

The beige, rusted-out Taurus in front of him scooted forward a couple feet, and Doug hit the accelerator, the big rig roaring victoriously as it greedily sucked down the precious few inches its patience had earned. Doug’s pulse climbed a few beats as a bit of bile rose up from his stomach in the form of indigestion, though he didn’t reach for the bottle of softchews on the dash just yet, still holding out hope that it would settle itself soon enough. God above. All this pain, all the traffic and the truck stops with filthy rooms and filthier whores and the kids who didn’t know him and the wife who divorced his ass because of the kids, all for what? So a party store in Windsor could stock up on paper plates and cheap, Chinese-made toys that wouldn’t last a week outside of their packages? This was what his life had come to?

He sighed and reached for the bottle of softchews on the dash. Looked like he’d be needing them after all. In reality, he didn’t usually much mind the job. It had sort of grown on him, become part of his definition of himself, like the trademark scruff that constantly coated his face, and the flannel shirt that just barely concealed his belly, and the Scooby-Doo bobblehead that constantly nodded at him as he drove, like it was saying: “You got this, big bud. Just keep it on going.” Except Scooby never talked like that, not that Doug particularly cared at that moment.

He grimaced as he swallowed the pasty chalk the softchew left in his mouth. Naw, he didn’t mind the job much; it’s just that being so close to one of their colonies always made him skittish, made him think he didn’t have much longer to be himself anymore. He snuck a peek in his rearview mirror at the gray, concrete walls erected around the nondescript, hospital-like building behind him, parked right on the shore of the Detroit side of the river. It looked so much like a prison, except that wasn’t quite right. Actually, it looked more like an asylum. An asylum for the incurable madness the ponies’ “magical” potion had triggered in the poor idiots dumb enough to walk into one of their bureaus.

Doug shook his head. If it had been up to him, every one of those little freaks would have been put up against a wall and gunned down. Let them smile and bellow that evil cunt’s praises right up until a 5.56 round to the back of the head shut them up, pow pow, and be done with it. Heartless? Not to him. He’d seen the emptiness in those smiles, the blankness in those eyes. His father-in-law had gone and had that done to himself, and the sight of the resulting “Newfoal” still sent shivers down Doug’s spine. He could still remember seeing the old man’s bifocals perched upon that snout as those cartoonisly-large, completely blank eyes had smiled up at him with their cold dullness. It was those eyes. Those eyes that would always be burnt away into his memories, their depthless emptiness forever gazing at him, usually in the moments right before he slipped into sleep. “Shoulda just killed ‘em all,” he muttered as he revved up the engine again to gobble down another foot of space. “Woulda been a mercy.”

In truth, Doug had been considering conversion at one point. Just an odd fantasy he’d entertained from time to time back when the world of ponies and the world of men had first met and the Bureaus had started popping up everywhere like Starbucks. He had dreamt of swooping through the clouds as a pegasus, or of lifting objects with a thought with unicorn magic. Though he might have settled for an earth pony’s strength, that particular race of pony just didn’t hold the same magic for him as flight and unicorn magic did. Of course, this was back before the reports came out of Newfoals earning lower and lower scores on intelligence tests, of their sudden fascinations with the Solar Princess that had granted them this “gift,” of their growing inability to recall even basic details of their lives before transformation, but for Doug, the linchpin had been when he looked into the eyes of the small, four-legged creature that had once been his father-in-law, and saw nothing he recognized. In fact, he saw little to nothing at all going on up there, except perhaps for that undying devotion to that evil princess bitch. In a way, he could be grateful to the old man for helping him dodge that bullet.

But dodged it for what? He thought gloomily, looking ahead into the filtered haze of the glow off the streetlamps lining the bridge, seeing nothing but a river of traffic stretching into the darkness for miles. For this?

He thought for a moment, and eventually nodded to himself. Yes, for this, he decided, because for all the pain and suffering, all the long lonely nights in motel beds that squeaked under his weight and behind the wheel of this God-forsaken machine, at least he was still Doug Robertson, and not one of those empty shells back there. Not one of those empty, multicolored things. He spared another glance in his rearview mirror at the concrete walls, lined every few yards with searchlights. He peered at the windows where one of the Newfoals would usually spend their days looking outside, smiling that goddamned empty smile down to…

What was that flash he just saw? What in the fuck was that flash he just saw!? There! Right there! Sleep-deprived hallucination, his fat ass! That was definitely a purple flash there in one of the upper-floor windows, and…just for a second…did he see the outline of somebody in them? Somebody in a doctor’s lab coat, their arms suddenly flying up in pain, a clipboard still gripped in their hands? No, no, that was ridiculous! Without their Queen (or wait, he meant Princess), Newfoals didn’t do anything but sit there in their empty little heads with their empty little thoughts, smiling their empty little smiles at the occasional passerby so…

A powerful explosion rocked the Newfoal holding building, and that same upper floor window he’d just seen flash disappeared in a shower of glass and concrete. In that instant, nothing else mattered to him, not the ex-wife, not the kids, not the idyllic little town out in the country somewhere, not even the driver behind him leaning on his Accord’s horn. Doug’s eyes were locked on his rearview mirror in stunned horror, as if it were showing one of those slasher films and the curvy little blonde teenager was about to head down into the dark basement. His stomach twisted again, not from indigestion, but from a deep, primal fear that every man feels when they realize something has just gone horribly wrong.

The feeling climbed as a bright yellow streak shot into the night sky, rising from the still-dissipating cloud of debris like a rocket, spitting off little bursts of magic as it arced overhead. Doug’s mind reeled with the sheer height and speed of the thing, his eyes rolling in his skull to try and stay on the little object. It’s one of them, he realized. Christ alive, those little four-legged cunts are turning on! Something activated ‘em!

The streak shot towards the river and levelled off, water shooting off to the sides in little, v-shaped jets as it focused on the bridge. Suddenly, inanely, Doug remembered his buddy talking to him one night. He couldn’t remember who or where, just that the guy was drunk and ranting about this governor fucking up the school system, and that mayor digging the city into a deeper hole, and most of all, about the bridge. How it was the ultimate testament to the rich owning America. How some millionaire owned it and kept killing bills to fund other bridges across the river to Windsor. How he never allowed city workers to inspect it since it was his private property.

How nobody had any idea if it would stand against a terrorist attack.

He had laughed then, chortled something about a terrorist attack probably being an improvement, the way things were in the city. He laughed now as he watched that little streak shoot towards the bridge, just as he was sure the Newfoal was laughing and smiling its empty little smile right up until it slammed into a piece of supporting strut just a dozen yards above the roadway. Doug’s laughter became panicked, hyperventilating chortles as he leaned out his cab to watch a magical explosion bloom over the bridge, sending the cars and screaming drivers that it hadn’t incinerated flying into the river hundreds of feet below, blinding him with cascading yellows, reds, purples, and greens. The driver behind him had stopped honking.

Everything happened in slow-motion after that, like in that shitty Keanu Reeves movie a few years back: Doug couldn’t remember the name of it. All that was in his mind was the multicolored ball of fire reaching up one of the towering support struts and out over the river, charred and blackened corpses dropping from beneath it to be cooled by the water far below. Something hit the top of his cab, bounced off, and landed on the rig’s engine compartment, still on fire. It took him a few moments after before he realized it was a human hand, the skin charred and blackened like a piece of chicken that had stayed on the grill for too long. He thought he saw the glint of a wedding ring somewhere amongst the burnt flesh. Then the streetlamps went out and the bridge was plunged into total darkness.

Doug heard the twang of supporting cables giving out on his right, and twisted in his cab again. The crippled supporting tower behind him leaned at an insane angle, slowly dipping towards the river with repeated shrieks of twisting metal, the roadway dipping with it. It’s gonna give, he realized, unaware of the crowd of shrieking people running by him, abandoning their cars in a desperate, futile rush for safety, both the drivers of the Accord and the Taurus among them. The whole fucking tower’s gonna give, and when it does...

He didn’t even have time to complete his thought before there was a final, defining screech of metal and the entire roadway tilted insanely. Most of the people around him were thrown over the guardrail, their screams drowned out by the continuous shrieking of the metal warping and twisting in ways it was never designed for. The driver of the Accord was among this unfortunate group, the back of his head striking the guardrail with a sickening, wet smack. The truck skidded sideways and hung itself precariously on the guardrail for a moment. Doug peered at the dark water far below, at how placid it looked. That surprised him; with the number of people he could see dropping to their deaths on either side. It reminded him of the times his parents would take him to the beach when he was young. Of days spent with sand wedged into every corner of his body, grinding against his skin with every flex of his toes, every motion of his feet, and not even caring. That’s not so bad, some small part of him remarked. That’s not so bad, as far as last thoughts go.

And then the guardrail snapped free. The rest of the roadway followed soon after.

Author's Note

Is it morbid that this came to me while crossing a suspension bridge just south of the Ohio border? Because seriously, I was just thinking about how to spice things up a bit while things build back on the Illustrious, saw the bridge coming up, and this entire chapter hit me in a flash. Weird, huh? And not concerning at all? Guys?

Hoboy...

Chapter XIV: Little Filly

0625 HOURS
ONBOARD THE HMS ILLUSTRIOUS

NORTH SEA, OFF THE NORWEGIAN COASTLINE, BOUND FOR KARELIA

“Bodies continue to be pulled from the water here in Detroit, with conservative estimates already putting deaths into the hundreds. The apparent culprit: a local Newfoal endowed with magic from one of his fellow unicorns! That’s right, you heard it here first, folks, a Newfoal from the nearby colony apparently escaped his cell after assaulting staff and…”

*CLICK*

“…recent events in the American mainland, combined with yesterday’s suicide bombing at UNCDI headquarters here at the Newfoal colony outside Hamburg, has some wondering if the terrorist groups so prolific during the Collision Wars have made a return to…”

*CLICK*

“…between pro- and anti-conversion groups broke out into riots that continue to burn through downtown Los Angeles. Already, two people have died and upwards of fifty homes and businesses have been destroyed, with damage estimated to be in the hundreds of…”

*CLICK*

“…before the security lockdown, we interviewed a Newfoal amidst the recent rash of jubilation and celebration appearing in each of their colonies, who said quote: ‘She has returned in a new form to deliver us all into the new world, one free of anger, one free of hate, one free of anything but the joy we all find in…’”

*CLICK*

“…with an additional 10,000 on their way, the British Isles are seeing the largest buildup of American military personnel since the Second World War, though some back in the states criticize spreading their armed forces out, especially given recent events back…”

One final *CLICK*, and the TV went quiet. Felipe sighed and leaned back on the cafeteria bench he’d cleared for himself, the sigh quickly devolving into a groan of frustration that rebounded off the walls, adding to the resonant hum from the vending machines in the corner. Any other time, he might have been creeped out by the empty cafeteria, but right now, he just needed a big empty space with hard tile floors and flickering fluorescent lighting. Just someplace big where he could be alone.

Felipe ran his hands through his dark hair, now greasy with day-old sweat. His untrimmed nails scratched into his scalp, his breath coming in ragged gasps. This again. He really had to go through all this again. He thought he had left this behind in the months after the Collision Wars: that he had forgotten about the riots, the lynchings, the whole fandom going underground.

That he had forgotten about her.

With fingers that trembled like an old, arthritic man’s, he reached into his pocket for the object he had been clenching when Anton had dressed his wounds. His bandaged fingers clenched it, tightening as if he wanted to crush it, but at the last minute they loosened. They always loosened. No matter the pain, no matter the terror, no matter the anger and frustration, he never could bring himself to destroy it. After all, they were his last memories of her…

”{Filly, lookit what I got!}”

Felipe turned, raising his head from the tech specs on some of the new weapons the squad was getting to the little girl jumping up and down next to his chair. He smiled, brushing the book aside and tossing his legs over the armrest to look right into her grinning face. She started to bring her hands out to show him, but he raised his hand to stop her. “Ut, ut!” He said sharply, and she paused with a knowing smile on her face. “{I haven’t seen you all day, so what do we do first?}”

Still grinning, the little girl leaned forward and pressed her tiny lips to his cheek, giving him a hug. “{I missed you, big brother!}”

“{There we go,}” he said, nodding satisfactorily, like a teacher after one of their students answered a question from the previous day’s reading correctly. “{So, which one did you get this time?}”

Still hopping up and down with glee, the little girl presented her prize to the older man: a plastic Princess Celestia figurine with brushable mane, already splayed out crazily thanks to its journey from the store in her pocket. Felipe smiled at the sight. “{Now, this one is…Luna, right?}”

“{You know who it is!}” She giggled, shoving his shoulder playfully.

“{Oh, maybe you need to refresh my memory?}”

The girl, grinning with triumph now, sang: “{It’s Princess Celestia! Twilight’s mentor!}”

“{That’s right!}” He gasped, eyes lighting up as if he really were remembering. “{Thank you for reminding me, my little dreamer!}”

That earned him a salute and a cheeky grin from the little girl. “{No problem, big…}”

The memory ended as he held the figurine in between two of his fingers. Princess Celestia had seen better days: her nose was mashed up, and one of her forelegs was missing below the knee. The little sticker making one of her eyes was almost completely gone, and her mane, once only tangled and bedraggled, was now clumpy with dirt and sweat, its rainbow color almost completely gone. The white coat still carried a bit of soot from when he had first scooped it up from the cold, lifeless hand, crushed to death by a beam when the worst of the riots had rocked his beloved Rio, all because…

“{Because you were supposed to be better!}” He screamed, whipping the tiny figurine at the wall with the force of an MLB fastball pitcher. The figure hit the wall and bounced off with a new dent in its hide.

“{Why!? Why couldn’t you be what you were supposed to be!? Why couldn’t you be what I needed you to be!?}“ He bellowed, following up with a stomp that added another treadmark to the growing collection on its side. His mind lost to his rage, Felipe followed that stomp up with another, and another, the empty cafeteria echoing with his mostly-incoherent cries, his stomach growing sick with his own anger.

When the worst of it had abated, he raised his face to the ceiling, screaming at no one in particular: “{FUUUUUUCK YOOOUUUUU…}”

His shoulders rose and fell as his pulse beat heavily in his ears. He moved his foot a little. One more good stomp would probably do it. One more hit, and the little reminder of what was lost could be gone forever. Another stomp could finally end this pain.

Except it wouldn’t, and he knew it. He would always remember the little girl who would never shove her tiny hand in his again. Nor would she bound back into the house that didn’t exist anymore, beyond excitement to tell him about the new toy she had scrimped and saved to buy. She wouldn’t even sit on his lap in their father’s study with their beat-up old Lenovo, streaming episodes of their favorite show on one tab while he had that night’s article on team tactics or squad-building exercises open in another. So he hesitated, and in that hesitation, his phone went off, a rubber-ducky squeak telling him he had a new text.

His foot still hovering over the figure, Felipe pulled the phone out of his back pocket and scanned it. “Code Red: Target Beta cell,” from Chen. He let out his breath in a long, shaky sigh, then leaned down to scoop up the figure. He added a derisive snort and a muttered “{Fucking bitch…}” for good measure before taking off at a dead run, out the cafeteria, towards the hallway, his dress shoes thudding against the tile…

Until he stopped, right in the hallway outside the door. A thought had occurred to him. A Code Red would have everyone swarming into Beta’s cell, Alpha would be relatively unguarded. At most, Lisa or Anton would be there, and he could probably just walk past them. Who would question it?

He looked down the hall towards the little purple Alicorn’s cell, then turned and began walking in the opposite direction. An odd little smile crossed his face. It was a bit like his own private joke. All this time he’d been demanding answers from a little plastic toy, but now, the real deal was just down the hallway.

Anton Beloglazov didn’t sleep well these days. Maybe nobody did once they reached their forties, and anybody who said they did was just lying through their damned teeth. Either way, it didn’t matter. To him, his bed was mostly a place where he spent nights staring at his ceiling, counting planks in the wood paneling and trying very hard not to succumb to the voices of the past echoing in his head, whispering, echoing, and sometimes, screaming at the top of their lungs for him to make that final leap and dive into the swirling, chaotic pool that was his memories. In the beginning, it had been difficult to repeatedly whisper “no” to those voices until they calmed again, but these days, he found he was able to tune them out most of the time.

Most of the time.

Thankfully for this little afternoon nap, this was one of those times. He was able to prop his leather-soled shoes up in his Lay-Z-Boy (he always hated that name, as if a man ever taking a moment to put his feet up automatically qualified as lazy), entwine his fingers across his chest, and ignore the faint humming of the fluorescent lights, pretending that it didn’t remind him of the whine of a T-90’s engine as it crushed some dark-skinned boy’s skull…

He grimaced. Welp, so much for that plan, he sighed, his face relaxing again as he turned over to face the door, the pleather cooling his cheek. His eyes remained closed, and he felt them strain as they rolled back in his sockets. For some reason, this position felt natural to him, as if it were able to completely shut out the flurry of activity in the darkness behind his eyelids. It signaled the beginning of a sort of meditative state, probably not much like whatever voodoo the Eastern philosophers had come up with, but something he had developed over the years as a sort of substitute for sleep. It certainly resembled sleep, at the very least, and for the Russian, this was often enough.

The door rushed open with a pneumatic hiss, like every door on this goddamned ship, but instead of sitting up to see who it was, Anton felt himself seized by a sort of childish playfulness. People always seemed to take a sleeping man as an invitation to act as if they were alone, as if the sleeper was nothing more than a noise detector, like in that one godawful Tom Cruise film the Americans loved so much. Another thing Anton had learned over the years was how much you could learn about a person if they thought they were alone, as he had learned much about the people who mistook his “meditation” for real sleep. His wife, for instance. Or wait, that was ex-wife now…

The newcomer took two steps into the room before apparently seeing Anton in the Lay-Z-Boy, and immediately froze. That twisted something in Anton’s gut. People who were trying to be courteous to a sleeper might tiptoe, or move with a sort of slow, clumsy gait, but they did not freeze. The only people who froze were the ones trying to hide something. Either way, Anton slipped into his meditative state, his whole body relaxing in a way almost identical to sleep, his mind emptying of everything except for an awareness of every sound entering his ear, cataloguing it to be analyzed when full functionality returned to his brain. The newcomer stepped lightly, though to Anton, this was not the step of a courteous man, but of a suspicious one. Something in the way they carried themselves as they crossed the room, perhaps. There was something too professional about it, too much like a sniper gliding through the bush with a rifle in hand and a target in mind. This was the walk of a man behind enemy lines, and the moment he heard it, Anton almost lost his composure and the meditative state he had achieved. Almost.

He listened on as the nearly-inaudible footsteps tapped across the tile, bound for the airlock door. Then came the familiar pneumatic rush of the lock disengaging, the door shooting open, and a pause. Anton made very sure to remain still during this pause: whoever was over there would be watching him like a hawk, looking for any signs of him stirring. After a few moments of silence, the Russian threw in a yawn and a quick jerk as if his sleep had been disturbed, then he immediately laid back down without opening his eyes, turning over on his side away from the door.

The ploy worked. A few moments later, a couple more taps sounded, and then the door rushed shut. Anton opened his eyes in time to watch the retreating back of a young man’s head through the porthole in the airlock, the man bending over the keypad, no doubt to activate his lockout code.

The Russian smiled knowingly. “Good luck with that,” he whispered, patting his pocket before standing up, still out of sight of the porthole.

Chapter XVI: Shining Gets The Boot

0650 HOURS
CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS OF THE HMS ILLUSTRIOUS

NORTH SEA, OFF THE NORWEGIAN COASTLINE, BOUND FOR KARELIA

If looks could kill, Shining Armor would have died on the spot a thousand times over. Not that he would have noticed: the death glare the Admiral was currently shooting his way was completely eclipsed by the purple visage playing over and over again in his head. Couldn’t be… he thought over and over again. She’s gone! She’s gone forever! That cunt killed her, she never would’ve spared her life…right?

Growing tired of the Prince’s vacant stare, the Admiral shook his head and folded his hands over his desk, covering the forty-second expense report he’d needed to sign that day, ignoring the cramp folding his hands like this had triggered in his wrist. “We both know why you’re here, your highness.”

Shining Armor didn’t respond, instead opting to keep mumbling to himself, rocking back and forth unsteadily in his chair. How was it possible? How could his sister be back!? How how how…how different was this other Equestria?

“Needless to say, your behavior since heading downstairs has been completely unacceptable, especially as a foreign dignitary,” the Admiral replied. He sighed, rolling his eyes. “If you must know, I always knew granting special status to officials from UN-administered disaster zones was a friggin’ mistake, though I always figured it’d be the Japanese who’d abuse it first. Nobody ever imagined one of you ponies would be the first to fuck it all up.”

Shining Armor finally met the Admiral’s gaze, his vacant, shell-shocked eyes locking with that piercing, hawk-like gaze.

“But now that the trigger’s been pulled, you should know the General Assembly’s already voted to revoke your special status,” the Admiral stood, circling his desk like a lioness stalking its prey, his eyes never leaving the little unicorn. “In addition, they’ll soon be voting to alter the guidelines for everyone else’s status. They’ll be wrapping the rest of your little ponies up in so much red tape they won’t be able to find their own ass-pictures without a form filled out in triplicate.”

Shining Armor met the Admiral’s gaze without a hint of hesitation, his muzzle remaining firmly shut.

“That being said, even this never should’ve happened. I should’ve personally thrown you out the moment your hoof first met that prisoner’s face. I should’ve booted your ass off my ship the moment your bird landed. But the past is in the past, all we can do is learn from it,” the Admiral shrugged, his arms folded across the front of his impeccably pressed uniform. “But I have learned from this little experiment, so if you ever set hoof on my ship again…”

Suddenly, he darted across the polished tile floor, closing the distance between himself and the pony royal and seizing his throat before Shining could even think to react. Their noses practically touching, the Admiral seized the unicorn’s throat in an iron grip not meant to harm, but certainly more than enough to show off the strength those wrinkled, calloused hands still possessed. His other hand reached around and grabbed some mane off the back of Shining’s head, again not tugging, not trying to hurt, but certainly demonstrating strength. The old man looked the young prince right in the eyes and hissed: “…I will personally crack your horn over my knee, throw you overboard, and laugh my ass off while the propellers drag you under; interspecies relations be goddamned. Is that clear?”

Finally, Shining snapped out of his fugue long enough to regard the Admiral with a funny little smile. At another time, he might have shrunk back in fear to see the truth in the Admiral’s eyes, to know this creature absolutely meant to carry out his threat with little care for the consequences. He might have made up something quick to try and placate this creature, anything to make him release his grip and back off. Instead, the only thing that passed through his mind was one word: Magnificent.

“Crystal clear, Admiral.”

The Admiral kept his grip and glare locked a while longer, then all at once released both, his hands still trembling with the anger burning through his guts. He turned away to hide the tremble. If Shining Armor had pointed it out, there would have been very little keeping the older man from lunging at him, grabbing his throat again, and squeezing until those sky-blue eyes rolled back to their whites. “Get the hell off my ship,” the Admiral grumbled.

With a curt little bow and without another word, Shining hopped off his chair and trotted out the door, his head held high. The Admiral sighed, his clasped hands relaxing. It was okay to let the image drop a little now, he knew. It’s not like he was putting on a show for someone important anymore.

He took a seat at his desk, opening one of the oak-paneled drawers on his right, gripping it in the same place where a set of little grooves had been worked into the wood by his fingers. He reached in and bought out a bottle of Hennessy and a pair of shot glasses, then thought better and put one of the glasses back. He filled his glass and threw it down his throat in a single gulp, not spilling a single drop on the front of that impeccable uniform. He repeated the action a couple more times, then unbuttoned his uniform and laid his cap on the desk in front of him. He filled the glass one more time, drained it halfway, and put his feet up on the desk just as another knock sounded.

“Come in,” he said with a small slur to his words as he raked his hands through his thinning hair one last time. The door creaked open, and in stepped the eight. Eight diplomats from the most powerful nations on the face of the planet. He had to suppress a smirk at that. Diplomats…

The group trudged in with their heads held high and the air of recently-sentenced convicts. It was obvious they knew they’d failed, knew how badly they’d fucked up, yet they held themselves with a certain air of pride, ready for any punishment lain upon them. In fact, in any other context, the Admiral himself would be ripping them a whole new set of assholes. He’d be screaming, pounding on the desk about the Geneva Convention, rambling on about the amount of shit they could get into if this ever got out, about the number of armed maniacs who would love to use this to stop running around in the woods shooting at cardboard cutouts with blue helmets and start shooting at the real deal.

But he said and did none of these things, instead opting to grin slovenly at the group and raise his glass, as if in toast. “Here’s to you,” he slurred. “For settin’ up the best show this boat’s seen in years!”

The group paused, eyeing each other in concern. This was most definitely not what they had been expecting. Yelling perhaps, pounding on the table perhaps, but not this.

Always the leader, Anton was the first to step forward. “Sir,” the Russian said to the Englishman. “I just want to apologize for the appalling way we’ve been acting, I…”

“Apologize?” The Admiral chuckled, shaking his head as if Anton had just told an off-color joke. “What for?”

Anton’s eyes widened, but he continued unabated. “W-we are aware that our actions – or lack thereof – led directly to the assault of two prisoners in direct violation of the protocols set forth by the Geneva Convention, and as such…”

“Son, I’m gonna stop you right there,” the Admiral said, raising his hand as he took another sip off his Cognac. Anton bristled, obviously not used to people calling him ‘son’ at his age (though the Admiral did look old enough to get away with it). The Admiral just smiled right back. “Barring the ongoing debate on whether or not the Convention applies to ponies, if I gave a single flyin’ fuck about it as far as the bitch is concerned, I would’ve already thrown you off my fuckin’ boat.”

The group stared, absolutely stunned by what they had just heard. “Sir,” David said, stepping up next to Anton. “With all due respect, what you just said violates a few dozen UN protocols, including one of the most highly…”

“Yankee, you might as well quit talkin’ there, I stopped listenin’ a while ago,” the Brit slurred. “Listen, the way I see it, it’s kinda like the legal system: stuff’s only illegal if ya get your arse caught. Besides, ask any lawyer and he’ll tell you that shit’s up for debate.”

The group continued staring. The Admiral noticed the way Anton glared at him, and felt a bit of pride pop up in his heart for the Russian, pride which he quickly crushed, getting soft would only doom him now. “You lot should really learn to relax!” He snickered. “After everything that bitch was probably gonna do, it only makes sense that we get a li’l payback.”

“But sir, we…”

“And if any a’ ya don’t agree, well, that’s okay,” the Admiral leaned back, the friendly, drunken smile vanishing off his lips. “You can just go to the Security Council with what you know, it’s pretty easy. A’ course, just like you can let loose with a few secrets, so can I. Like, say, a few points in somebody’s past that they aren’t supposed to talk about? Knowledge a’ which could violate the contracts they signed with the UN when they took this job?”

David’s eyes widened in sudden terror, as did the eyes of the rest of the group, with the exception of Anton, who just glared holes into the Admiral’s face. The older Englishman felt a bit of bile rise in his throat, not from the alcohol, but from what he was doing here. A man’s past was a man’s past as far as he was concerned. Barring some terrible crime or repeated history of fuck-ups, it should have no bearing on the present. But this was the card he had been given to play, and this was how he was going to play it.

“So,” he said, sitting forward, his elbows perched on the desk. One elbow slipped for a second, but he quickly replaced it. “If that’s all, I take it you’ll be gettin’ back to work?”

It was obvious in the Russian’s eyes that he wanted to do some desk pounding of his own. Maybe do it with the Admiral’s face. The old man always found it hard to read those vodka-swilling commie bastards. Instead, he watched the Russian take a deep breath, let it out through his nose, and shoot him a glare he could swear was killing the petunias in the glass vase on his desk. “Yes…sir…” he grumbled.

The old Brit nodded and leaned back in his chair again, swiveling it around to face away from the group as he grabbed the Cognac again. “Don’t forget t’close the door on yer way out,” he slurred as he listened to the shuffling footsteps walk out the room.

The door slammed after a bit of mumbling from the peanut gallery. The Admiral was still not alone, every battle instinct sharpened by decades devoted to the military life and dulled only slightly by the alcohol and the years he’d spent behind this desk told him that. Not wanting to give away how truly aware he was, the old man tried to push himself up, only to fall to a knee, twisting as he fell on his back.

The Latino man still stood there, regarding the old man with a look reeking of disgust and pity. Young man, if you only knew how aware I really was…if you knew I could snap your spine with my thumb right now if the urge took me… the old man grumbled internally. Smiling shakily up at the Brazilian, the Admiral slurred: “Yes?”

Rather suddenly, the Latino man’s features shifted from disgust to actual bashfulness, like a kid being asked to read a book report for the class. Now, that was interesting. He only ever got this reaction from full-grown adults when they were about to ask for something they weren’t absolutely sure they wanted, and didn’t even want to throw on a brave face for it. In this situation, at this time, in light of everything going on, just what could that possibly be?

“Well son, you went to all the trouble of staying behind, might as well spit it out,” the old Englishman rasped.

“I, sir, I…” the Latino rubbed the back of his head, then adapted a laid-back stance, leaning against the wall. “It’s nothing, really, not even worth your attention.”

“Son, there are three things in this life I value above all else: a good glass of Cognac, jolly ol’ England, and what little time I have left on this Earth. By babbling on, you are wasting two of those,” the Admiral said, allowing just a little bit of that old edge to reenter his voice as he held up the glass and swirled it in front of the Brazilian’s face.

The Latino sighed and stood away from the wall, meeting the Admiral’s eyes for the first time, still holding that aloof look, his shoulders slumped like a poor man begging on the streets of Rio. Nice try, the Admiral thought. But there’s only one play-actor in this room, and it ain’t you.

“Sir, it’s Prin…Target Alpha. She…uh…she requested to see Beta. I know we’re strict on visitation privileges…” or we’re supposed to be, his tone added. “…But I just don’t see much harm in…”

“Oh bleedin’ hell son, is that all?” The Admiral asked before breaking out into jovial laughter. “Come now, after the show you lot just put on, you think I’m gonna turn down the chance for a sequel?”

The Latino’s eyes practically bugged out of his skull. He had not been expecting this reaction. “Sir, I just wanted to shoot it up the chain of command, I didn’t think we should really…”

“Then whydja bring it to my attention?” The Admiral shrugged. “Maybe the purple one is looking for a spot of vengeance on the ol’ bitch herself, eh? Could be a good show!”

“S-sir, I…”

“Or maybe you’re not so good at following orders,” the Admiral said, that sober edge making an appearance in his voice again. “Just remember, young man, what I said earlier was meant for you. Or does that little caveat in your contract need to be activated so the Brazilians can replace you with someone who knows how to follow orders?”

The Latino’s eyes flared for the quickest moment, a fire igniting in them that honestly surprised the old man. Had this one pegged wrong, he thought. Thought he might just be a shy little biddy, but that fire…that’s no shy little biddy in there!

The flames were gone almost as quickly as they had appeared, and the Latino’s eyes sank to the floor again. “Yes sir, I understand, it will be done,” he said, allowing a quick bow before heading out the door.

“Don’t forget to close the door on your way out!” The Admiral called, raising his Cognac. The Latino paused on his way out, then gripped the door and slammed it into its frame until it rattled.

The Admiral raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Yep, definitely a fire in that one,” he muttered before setting the glass of Cognac back down. He ran his gloved hands through his thinning hair. It was ironic, really: he wanted that drink now more than ever, but now he needed to be stone-cold sober, when minutes ago he had to be a loutish drunkard!

Sighing, he reached for the black, rotary-dial telephone on the desk. Might as well get this over with. He dialed his number in and sat back, listening to the static on the other side.

After some static, there was a click, signaling him to start. He spoke clearly, enunciating every syllable as slowly as he could. “Uncle Kramer has a message for us newcomers.”

There were a few more clicks, and then a voice, distorted by the best encoding and electronic encryption on the planet, came on: “Report.”

“First round of experiments complete,” he said, still trying to speak clearly. “Results transmitting now.”

“Excellent. Status of round two?”

The Admiral paused, then reached over to his desktop, clicking through a few screens to find a constant video loop of the Russian and the Latino walking shoulder-to-shoulder in the hallway, grinning to themselves about some private joke as the Russian stuffed a handful of knick-knacks, bolts, and wires in his pocket. He breathed in, and then out again, his breath quivering. “Commencing shortly,” he said.

“Excellent. I take it the Prince was allowed to see the Princess?”

“He was. And the lavender one as well, even after his predicted assault.”

A cold, dry laugh cackled on the other end of the line. It took all of the Admiral’s strength not to slam the receiver down right then and there. “Unsurprising,” the voice whispered. “I must congratulate the Prince on his political skills. We knew he’d be able to outmaneuver them, of course, but this is something! Really something!”

Yeah, it was something alright. And if the old man had half the spine he pretended to have, he’d tell the voice just what he thought that something was.

“Is that all?” The speaker asked.

Again, the Admiral wanted to rant and rave, to scream, to call the voice on the other end of the line every name under the sun until his voice ran out and he was still trying to yell with a few, raspy squeaks. And again, he denied himself. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Another click, and then dial tone.

“And a good day to you, you pencil-pushin’ piece of shit,” the Admiral snarled as he replaced the phone in its cradle. With that done, he buttoned his shirt back up, replaced his cap on his head, poured himself another glass of Cognac, and leaned back as he tried to remember when, exactly, he’d signed a deal with the devil himself.

Chapter XVII: Escape

“Unprofessional!” Anton screamed, kicking one of the Lay-Z-Boys hard enough to tip it over on its side. “Unprofessional, discourteous, old Limey drunk!”

“Oh, you are so lucky Lisa isn’t here to hear you say that,” Andre grumbled, trying to keep his focus on the CNN special report on the Ambassador Bridge attack.

“{That’s a good point, actually, where is she?}” Franz asked in his native German, knowing the Frenchman could speak it. Andre turned in his seat while Anton continued to rant and rave behind them.

“{‘UN-mandated break time,’ she and the Yank are up on the deck,}” he replied, raising his fingers and making quotation marks in the air to show just what he thought about that particular protocol. “{Which is really just a wonderful way to get a couple of us out of the killzone, so the Limeys can say they have two survivors if…how they say…’the shit hits the fan.’ Felipe should be checking the seals on the elevator to make sure that she can only kill us if that does happen, and Akshat and Liu are getting the purple one ready for her visit.}”

“Ah,” the German replied before returning his attention to the magazine in his lap.

“It’s simply unbelievable!” Anton continued behind them. “The man commanding a fleet responsible for containing one of greatest threats humanity has ever known, and he’s drunk off his ass! Un-fucking-believable!”

“{He’s got a point there,}” Andre said, turning to his German counterpart. “{This bitch is really dangerous. Should we be crossing things off our bucket lists?}”

“{Depends, was one of your things being on an Aircraft Carrier? I think we can cross that one off right here, right now.}”

The Frenchman grinned at his counterpart, the two still doing their best to drown out the Russian’s rant. Of course, they shared Anton’s anger, but what could be done? They had orders, and they had a reason to follow them. As far as the pair was concerned, it was best to just put their feet up and enjoy what little time they had before the purple one showed up and they all had to go on full-alert. Still, Andre couldn’t help but notice the wistfulness in the German’s eyes.

“{And what’s wrong now?}” He mused.

“{We should tell him,}” the German replied. “{There should be no more secrets between us all, not now.}”

“{Oh, come now, is it really that big a deal?}” Andre asked, his eyes never even leaving the television screen. “{You only want to tell him because the contracts specifically told us not to tell.}”

“{Well, c’mon! Don’t you want to!? Don’t you want everyone to know what we can do!?}” Franz asked, his voice rising, but still not loud enough for Anton to hear over his own yelling. The German slumped in his chair and stared down at his own hands. “{Everywhere else, veterans get to walk with pride. Everywhere else, they get parades thrown for them and they buy hats telling everyone about the wars they fought in and they get to brag about being able to hit a target from fifty yards and break spines with their bare hands. But here?}”

He shook his head. “{Here, we have to hide it, as if it’s something to be ashamed of.}”

“{It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and you damned well know it,}” Andre said, his eyes narrowing but still locked on the television. “{What about after, hmm? What if nothing happens today and word reaches our home countries that we broke our silence about our veteran’s status? We will be fired, and you know what that means.}”

Franz nodded, his head only able to move slightly with the back of his neck pressed into the chair. His arms hung limply off the armrests, dangling off the sides of the chair. Then, he felt his French counterpart’s hand slide into his own. He looked over, seeing that the other man’s eyes were still locked on the television, but that a small, contented smile curved the corners of his lips upwards. A similar smile crossed Franz’s face, and he squeezed the hand in his. Oh, if only that was the only secret they had to keep…

The door slid open behind them. Anton’s ranting fell silent. Franz gave the hand a final squeeze and sat up, standing with his partner as Akshat and Liu walked in, two soldiers directly behind them in full camo, carrying rifles. L85A2’s with ACOG scopes, just at a glance. One could tell from the bullpup configuration. One could also see how ineffective the standard Multi-Terrain Design camo was at keeping the soldiers hidden on a state-of-the-art aircraft carrier, but no one said anything. Between the pair, the purple Alicorn trotted in with her head held high, her wings pinned to her sides with a powerful metal band. She looked so regal it was almost easy for anybody in the room to confuse the bulky ring around her horn for a crown.

She was bought to a stop just outside the huge metal door, staring straight ahead. Akshat and Liu remained at her side as Anton went to the control panel. A few hits of some buttons, and the locks holding the metal barrier shut began to slide out of place.

“Just so you know,” Akshat said, keeping his voice loud enough for everyone to hear as he turned to the little princess. “If you so much as sneeze suspiciously, the men behind us have been instructed to shoot to kill.”

The purple pony said nothing, continuing to stare straight ahead. To illustrate his point, Akshat nodded to one of the soldiers, who promptly chambered a round with a telltale “K-chunk.” If anyone asked him, the Sikh wouldn’t have been ashamed to admit that it warmed his heart to see the fearful flinch in the little Alicorn’s back. It was comforting to know how universally threatening that sound could be.

A tiny smile alight on his lips, Akshat returned his gaze straight ahead, leaning in to work the massive wheel to disengage the last of the locking mechanisms. The door hissed open, and Akshat resumed his place next to the others. He and Liu nodded to each other, and then stepped forward into the cell. The Princess followed after, and finally the guards.

Anton was quick to seal the door once again, breathing an audible sigh of relief when the pneumatic locks whined back into place. “Done,” he whispered, his attention immediately going to the window. He watched as the group approached the holding cell in the center of the room, and his breath caught in his throat. Beside him, he could hear the same from Andre and Franz as they took spots right next to him.

He heard something rattling, only to look down and see his hands trembling against the window pane. Stilling himself, he sighed. Twenty years ago, he wouldn’t even have needed to focus to steady his body. Getting up there, old-timer, he mused, his eyes locked on the backs of the small group as they came to a stop. And it looks like today is gonna add to that.

Admiral Peters still had the glass of Cognac in his hand. Like the others, he watched the small drama unfold in the cell through the monitor on his desk. Unlike the others, however, his screen showed a few statistics of interest, like heart rates, respiration, security status, but all of that was superfluous as far as he was concerned. No, what he was focused in on was the little label in the corner that read “CELL STATUS: LOCKED.”

He refilled his glass and took another sip. The alcohol was finally burning its way through his brain now, finally taking that stabbing pain of conscience away, easing the feel of the bile rising up from the back of his throat. This was his bed now. He would just have to lie in it.

The screen flickered. A heartbeat later, the little label changed to “CELL STATUS: UNLOCKED.”

“Forgive me,” the old man whispered. “Please.”

When the door squeaked open and her beloved student stepped through, it took nearly all of Celestia’s strength just to stay on her hooves and not sob with relief. The mere fact that she was able to keep the tears out of her eyes and merely smile and nod when the little purple Alicorn stepped in was a true testament to her willpower. Twilight, on the other hoof, was a younger Princess and a different story. While she managed to keep putting one hoof in front of the other, her legs trembled with the near-overwhelming desire to rush across the room and bash her skull against the glass until she could wrap her forelegs around her princess once more. She did, however, start crying almost immediately, her neutral expression melting away like an ice cream sundae beneath the Saddle Arabian sun at high noon, replaced with a quivering lip and tears that cascaded down her face.

“My beloved student,” Celestia said, her voice wavering.

Twilight let out a choked-off sob. It was obvious that some part of her had never thought she’d hear those words again. “P-Princess…”

“H-how are you?” Celestia asked with a shaky smile, instantly cursing herself for the stammer. “I trust you’ve been t-treated well?”

“The humans, they…gave me some reading material,” Twilight said, taking a step towards the holding cell.

“Oi!” One of the soldiers behind her shouted, his rifle rising to his shoulder.

The dark-skinned man stepped into her path. “That’s far enough,” he hissed.

Twilight looked up at him, her massive eyes pleading. “Please…”

Suddenly, the soldiers’ radios crackled. “Sir? I…yes, sir,” one of the soldiers said, then he lowered his rifle and turned to Akshat. “Let her through.”

“What!?” Both diplomats screamed.

“I’m sorry, but why the hell would we do that!? Especially after last time!?” Akshat bellowed.

“Orders from the top, sir,” the soldier to Twilight’s right shrugged. “Let her through.”

The pair stared at him in wide-eyed shock, then Liu’s gaze darkened. “I see,” he said placidly. “The Admiral wants another show, does he?”

The men in camo said nothing, even as Akshat’s lips twisted into a disgusted grimace. His fists clenched at his sides, his nails digging into his palm until little, crescent-moon shapes were embedded in the palm. “Fine, and may he die a thousand deaths for it,” the Sikh said, stepping to the side, his arms sweeping dramatically, his tone dripping with venom. “This way, your highness.”

Twilight took a few, tentative steps forward, her unsure gaze resting on him, as if she half-expected him to lunge at her with his fingers outstretched the moment she drew too close. He glared back, but did nothing as she slowly passed. Once she had passed under his raised arm, still angled out behind him, and it became clear that wasn’t going to leap at her like a feral dog, her lip quivered and she took off for Celestia’s containment chamber at a dead gallop. “Princess!” She cried, tears utterly soaking her facial fur as she pressed her hooves against the hardened glass.

This time, Celestia did let out a choked gasp, immediately pressing the side of her head to the glass, as if she were nuzzling the hoof. She closed her eyes, pretending the cold, hard surface of her containment was the keratin of her beloved student’s hoof. Celestia could have stayed like that with that dream for an eternity, but she only allowed herself a few minutes before her eyes opened and she turned to lock eyes with the smaller princess. “Twilight, do you remember that one time last year in the library?” She whispered. “We were studying the spell that allowed Shining and Cadance to repel the changelings? Remember what our magic did?”

Twilight looked at her mentor, and then understanding dawned on her, her eyes widening. “We have to be quick,” she whispered, her voice still quivering.

“Of course,” then, before anybody could react, both mares touched their horns to the glass, the tips as close as the transparent surface would allow.

“Hey, what’re they doing!?” Liu asked.

By the time the words left his mouth, a spark had leapt between the two, fresh waves of magic passing down each mare’s coat, only stopping at the suppressors wrapped around their horns.

“Focus, Twilight,” Celestia whispered. “Meld your magic with mine, like we did in the library. Picture that library, picture that moment…” The lavender mare nodded, her eyes closing as the memory filled her. The reams of musty books, the smell of decaying paper, the small headache the day of studying had earned her. Her eyebrows hunched in frustration as more sparks leapt down the horns, Twilight’s turning a golden yellow while Celestia’s gained a deep magenta.

“Okay, what the fuck are they doing!? Hey!” Liu took a step forward. “Hey!”

“Focus…” Celestia grumbled.

“It’s…so strong…it’s like a brick wall…” Twilight whispered, the pressure in her forehead building.

“Right, that’s it then!” One of the soldiers screamed, stepping forward with his rifle’s butt pressed to his shoulder, his finger sliding around the guard and touching the trigger itself. “You’ve got three seconds before I blast that thing right off your head!”

“Princess…” Twilight whimpered fearfully, her eyes still closed.

“Pay them no mind, Twilight, just focus…”

“Three!” The soldier screamed, not even bothering with one and two. A shot rang out, and Twilight shrieked, but she kept her eyes closed, her emotions now calmed by the presence of Celestia’s magic, like an old childhood blanket. The flow of magic between the two horns continued to build, the tiny sparks growing into powerful, arcing lightning bolts.

“The…hell?” Liu gasped, stepping past the soldier after a couple moments. A few yards from the purple unicorn, he spied a tiny, black dot hovering in the air by her head. Taking another step towards her and squinting, his jaw dropped when he realized he was looking at a 5.56 round hovering in mid-air, spinning sideways around its point like a top. “Oh, shit.”

“Pull the plug!” The other soldier screamed as his comrade let off a few more rounds, all to no effect. He screamed as he smacked his palm against the metal door over and over again. “Lemme outta here!”

“Keep that door shut! If anything happens, we have to keep it contained!” Akshat bellowed as the man in camo pounded on the hatchway.

“Almost…almost…” Celestia whispered.

“Princess! I feel…I think it’s…” Twilight gasped, and suddenly, the wall disintegrated. There was a blinding flash and a sudden release of the pressure in her head. The humans’ hands all rose to shield their eyes, both Akshat and Liu falling to a seated position on the floor. Once the stars left their eyes, they opened them, blinking against the light. Then, both sets of eyes widened.

Celestia was standing just outside her cell without a suppressor, a collar, or anything else required to keep her contained. She blinked in surprise at the humans.

“Oh…shitfuck…” Liu gasped.

The olive-skinned man leapt to his feet, throwing himself at the Princess without a single word, his body sailing through the air with all the sound of an assassin’s blade. Celestia rapidly side-stepped and slammed a hoof into the man’s back, right in between the shoulder blades, sending him sprawling over the ground and giving her an opening. She turned, a glint of silver appearing in the corner of her eye. She raised a shield just in time, catching a throwing dagger in her magic’s shimmering, sunset-yellow glow.

The darker-skinned man screamed a curse in some other language, his hand still primed out from where it had released the dagger. In the blink of an eye, it darted back to his belt, returning with another blade. Meanwhile the man who had attempted to use his weapon against her beloved student now unloaded, the weapon spitting fire until it sounded like hailstones against a metal roof on her shield.

Cringing, the Princess dashed across the room, a sideways buck dispatching the man with the daggers before she flying tackled the man with the long, black weapon, smashing a hoof across his face. She had a moment to breathe a sigh of relief, only now feeling the sting across her shoulder. A long, thin trail of blood oozed down her leg, though she could tell from a quick glance that it was just a shallow cut, probably from the black weapon. So those things can penetrate a shield if they lob enough of those little metal slugs, she mused. Good to know.

A few more of the shots echoed from her side. She turned, seeing the other man in camo with a smaller weapon in his hands, smoke drifting off the little hole in its end. “Oh please,” he whimpered, firing again, the report reverberating throughout the metal room. “Please, please, please…”

Darn, practically forgot about him, she scolded herself as she strode over to the man and gently scooped the weapon out of his hands with her magic, simultaneously sending her magic to hold the metal door shut. You’re getting old, Tia, that never would have happened a few centuries ago.

“P-please…” the man gasped as she promptly tossed his weapon to a corner and plucked him off the ground in her magical hold. She grimaced. For some reason, her magic was having difficulty saturating the door, as if something were draining it much more quickly than it should have been. Still, she maintained both her hold on it and the human with little effort. “I…please!”

Before she could reply, her ear twitched at the sound of footsteps pattering against the floor, silent to most anybody else, but not to ears sharpened by centuries of practice. She ducked, and a fist sailed right through the space where her head had been. She replied with a rear buck, and felt her hooves connect with something soft, followed by a sudden cry of pain.

She turned, facing the olive-skinned man with the short, black hair, doubled-over in pain on the floor. She nodded to him, giving a slight bow with one forehoof behind the other. “You have fought well, young warrior,” she said. “Though you have tasted defeat on this day, know that you and your allies fought with honor and with great ability.”

A whimper off to her side gave her pause. Well, most of your allies, anyway, she almost added. Stifling a giggle, she reared up on the human clenched firmly in her magic, pinning him to a wall. The man trembled. “I-I have a wife…a-and two daughters…” he whimpered.

Family-structured society…not so different after all… she mused. She gazed down at the human. Gone was the strange, brutal, black-clad creature that had terrorized her world, and in its place was…something only too familiar. Something far too like one of her little ponies when she had swooped to the rescue after some terrible disaster, or after her guards had pulled them out of some perilous situation. She had to force down the waves of compassion threatening her heart, now was neither the time nor the place for them.

This idea was reinforced when the man’s arm reached behind him, pulling at something on his belt. Celestia immediately clamped a hoof down on the arm, forcing his hand back while the other hoof reached around in a sort of hug, plucking the object right from the man’s hand. She gazed down at it, frowning as it lay flat against her hoof. To her, it appeared to be nothing but a small, flat brick, but to him, it was obviously something more. She gave it a light shake, and the screen lit up, flashing a set of numbers and the current time before lighting up with a set of dots.

She held it up to his face. “What is this?” She barked.

“Don’t tell her,” the olive-skinned man on the floor screamed, pressing himself onto all fours with one arm still around his stomach. “Don’t tell her shit!”

Cocking an eyebrow, Celestia scooped this other man up in her magic, and bought him back down again, slamming him into the ground. Of course, in reality, she cushioned his fall and pressed him to the floor with her magic, ensuring his lips were sealed and his face turned away to give the impression of unconsciousness, but the effect on the human in her grasp was exactly as desired.

“I’ll tell you everything, please!” The human sobbed. A sharp pain twisted in Celestia’s heart, watching as the human’s boots skidded futilely against the metal floor. It broke her heart to inspire that sort of fear, but then, this was what she was trying to solve. She couldn’t possibly cure anyone of any fear if she didn’t even know the cause.

“The dots!” She ordered. “Tell me about the dots!”

With shaking fingers, the human reached up, tapping one. Celestia reared up on him warningly, the threat clear in her eyes, even if it was just a bluff. Fingers still shaking, the human traced a quick pattern in the dots, Celestia watching in amazement as a tiny light danced around his fingers. This is magic of a new sort… she thought.

“Th-there…it’s just a password screen,” the man whimpered. “Once you’re past it, you’re in.”

Nodding, Celestia waited for the dots to reappear again, then imitated the man’s motions, quickly zipping through the dots. It took her only moments to get a few tries in, and then, the tiny device was hers. “I thank you for your cooperation,” she said, snorting in a way she hoped sounded derisive. She turned to her faithful student, still standing by the transparent cell.

“Princess…that was…impressive,” Twilight said, totally awestruck.

“A Princess must know how to defend herself, Twilight, especially without her magic,” the Solar Princess replied, then leaned in close to whisper. “I didn’t know what effect magical attacks might have on them. I knew from their attack that they could probably withstand physical assaults, but for all we know, even the most basic magical blasts could be fatal to them.”

“That would explain their apparent fear of magic, and their wish to drain all magic from us before their attack on Equestria,” Twilight pointed out.

“A well thought-out conclusion as always, my faithful student,” Celestia allowed Twilight a quick nuzzle as she slammed a bolt of magic into the band around her horn, cracking it.

Twilight smiled and promptly split the ring with a quick flare of magic, then freed her wings and gave them a good stretch, quivering gratefully as the joints popped. “So, what do we do now?” She asked.

“Now,” Celestia smiled, turning to the metal hatchway. “Now we fly.”

Admiral Peterson sighed, a knot twisting in his stomach. The little cell beneath his feet was still on his television screen. He wanted nothing more than to look away, to pretend it wasn’t happening: to hit the power button, kick his feet up, and sip his cognac, with maybe a nap later on. Once again, he denied himself. This was too important to look away from. Besides, he owed it to the men beneath him to watch.

At least I saved two, he thought, watching the little ponies creep across the floor, heading towards the hatchway, the bodies of their victims scattered around the useless containment chamber. That has to count for something, right? I can’t be all that bad.

He remembered a little tidbit from his history class that even Hitler had been nice to his dogs, and he wondered if Der Fuhrer had thought about them in the moments before squeezing the trigger, offering them up, saying something along the same lines the Admiral just had as he looked down upon the destruction of his Empire. The Admiral poured himself another glass of cognac.

The knot twisted again as Celestia approached the door, creeping up to it. He switched views to the control room right outside. There, the men watching were arguing with one another about some thing or another. The beaner and the froggy stood on one side while the kraut and the commie stood on the other. Just minutes ago, they had been doing everything in their power to pry that door open and somehow save the people inside. The Russkie had been ramming it bodily with his shoulder, while that little Latino had worked the controls furiously and the Frenchman and the German attacked the hinges with a prybar. Now, it seemed as though they couldn’t agree on whether or not to even try, or if the risk was just too great.

Inside the cell, Princess Celestia stuck a hoof against the door, and it creaked open. The argument outside stopped. The ponies stood in the doorway, their mouths formed into surprised little “O’s.” The humans looked back at the ponies, their jaws dropping to their chests. The Russian’s fist was still raised against the Frenchman’s face. Their respective allies in their argument still clung to their shoulders, trying to keep them back.

Peterson’s eyes closed involuntarily, a few trickles crawling down his cheeks. With a quick snort, he opened his eyes again and locked them on the screen. “I owe them this much,” he whispered. “I owe them to watch.”

All at once, the Princess’s horn glowed. The Admiral fought back a tidal wave of nervous vomit, swallowing to keep it down. Celestia reared up on her hind hooves…and promptly levitated the little, purple Alicorn onto her back and took off, the wind off her wings knocking the humans off their feet.

The Admiral watched the screen, now distinctly lacking in pony princesses. The urge to vomit was forgotten. The nervous little bundle in his stomach was forgotten. In a heartbeat, he became stone-cold sober. “What?” He asked, still watching the screen. “What was…what!?”

That was not supposed to go that way. The Celestia he knew from the newspapers and reports wouldn’t have hesitated to engulf the entire room in flame, watching as the men before her writhed in agony, their skin charring and blackening. If she didn’t have access to her damned potion that was, in which case everybody in that room could look forward to spending the rest of their lives staring at walls with their big, wide, pony eyes, sitting on their pony butts, thinking absolutely nothing in their empty pony heads. But this Celestia…she just ran! Grabbed her little buddy and flew off like a bitch! This was…not how things were supposed to go…

Thinking fast, the Admiral’s hand darted to the console, his finger hammering a little glowing button labeled “View Switch.” Scrolling rapidly through the screens, he sneered at what he couldn’t see. A flash of white there, a dash of ethereal, rainbow-colored mane there, but nothing significant, not even a scorch mark that used to be a guard’s face or even a dented door! That would be something, but as it was, he could barely find any trace of her passing at all…as if…she was purposefully doing her best not to hurt anything…

For the first time, a new thought regarding his prisoner crossed his mind. Could it be?

Finally, he caught them. The pair were now standing in front of the lift, now just a featureless metal wall. He laid back in his seat, letting his breath out in a long sigh. “Sorry girls,” he whispered. “End of the line.”

It was obvious; they must have known it too. There were enough Tachyon Inhibitors built into the walls of that level to fight the Collision Wars all over again. Escape never was an option, even if they somehow managed to break their bonds and escape their cells, because this final line of defense could not be penetrated. Period. Of this he was certain.

So why did his stomach clench into an icy knot all over again when he saw the pair kneel and touch their horns together?

The Admiral watched the screen, completely transfixed. No need to force his eyes open now, he couldn’t even blink if he wanted to. As seconds ticked by and that same glow began to build on their horns, he watched shadows approaching from the bottom edge of the screen: the diplomats running from their little cell. He could hear the frantic beats of their feet now, drawing closer and closer to the ponies, desperately trying to reach them and try something, anything, to prevent them escaping.

And then a flash of light. The camera phased out for a moment, completely overwhelmed. When the view came back, the Admiral was staring at an empty, metal wall, the warped reflections of four men just barely visible in the gritty footage.

He darted halfway out of his seat, arms locking up against the rests. “Where…” he started.

Then the alarms started sounding. There was shouting after that, and red lights, of course. Sailors running around, panicking, and though he didn’t have the alarms all memorized just yet (he was halfway through the technical guide: page 31, he thought) he knew that one all too well. The Tachyon Inhibitors could no longer detect any sources of magic within their range, which meant either their little prisoners had just committed suicide by vaporization, or…or they simply weren’t contained within the Inhibitors’ boundaries anymore.

“You’ve done it now, Peterson,” he whispered, his arms giving beneath him as he collapsed into the seat. “You and your cowardice.”

Princess Celestia often spent her days signing papers, listening to nobles complain about the downtrodden wretch who had the audacity to be lying by the path they took for their morning walks, and praying for some excitement. Well, before the return of her sister, that was. Since then, it seemed as though some elder god with a sick sense of humor was paying up for all those prayers as quickly as possible. A thousand years of peace, harmony, and boredom, and then in the last five years, Discord breaks out, Tirek returns, and the changelings pop up again. Not to mention all the smaller things that occupied her student’s time in Ponyville.

And now she was in an alien world, split from her magic and hunted as if she’d been single-hoofedly hunting down its inhabitant’s children. Which, based on what little she knew, might not have been far from the truth. Suddenly, those stacks of papers and whiny nobles weren’t looking so bad after all. I swear to you, whoever you are, she prayed silently. I will stop complaining about how boring those nobles are, I will happily sign all those papers with a smile on my lips, I will even go on that diet I’ve been telling myself I’ll go on for the last six-hundred years and swear off cake forever, just please: let us get out of this alive.

“Princess!” Twilight screeched. Right in her ear, too. Celestia grimaced. She and Twilight would need to have a chat about remaining calm in high-stress situations, but that would be later. Right now, there was an army between them and freedom.

Reacting immediately, Celestia turned and bucked another of the humans running after them, a knife in his hand. Her student’s shield fell for a second to allow the blow through before rising just in time to block another hail of bullets from behind. “I saw him Twilight, no need to shout,” Celestia said calmly as she galloped down the hallway.

Even as they moved, the wheels in Celestia’s head spun wildly. The humans’ reaction to their escape had been incredibly fast. They had descended upon the pair almost immediately after they’d torn through the doors at the top of the shaft, wielding more of those long, black weapons and the smaller versions, as well as cups, chairs, and in at least one case, a red canister with markings upon it indicating that it could be used to extinguish small fires. Only quick reflexes and enough shielding to hold off the changeling army had kept the pair alive.

Now, having swooped right over the heads of every human she could see, Celestia could see a hatch coming up. A door opened along her path, and acting on reflex, she slammed a hoof into it as she passed, knocking the human on the other side off his feet.

“Princess!” Twilight gasped, though notably with less high-pitched conviction than before. Celestia couldn’t help but smile at that. Even in such a dire situation, her beloved student took her words to heart.

“Brace yourself, Twilight,” she hissed, before charging the metal hatchway at the other end of the hall, her horn charging with another force spell. Nothing flashy, more like a simple push with a very, very large amount of force behind it. Her magic slammed into the door, tearing it off its hinges and sending it sailing into the clear air behind it. Celestia blinked in surprise and made a quick note to show more restraint. It appeared as though the further she got from her prison, the more her power grew. She would need to show restraint from this point forward.

Curling her wings inward, Celestia darted through the hatchway and out into the sun, her coat glistening as she gleefully absorbed the light pouring onto her from above. Except…it wasn’t her sun. The rejuvenating effects of its rays were different. Not worse or better, just different. So she had been right after all: the anomaly in Hayseed’s field had led to a completely different world. She doubted if the star she had raised and lowered for her little ponies for so long was even in the same galaxy as she was anymore.

Unfurling her wings to their fullest length, Celestia leapt into the air, more of those little bullets whizzing off her shield. Her student gave a sudden cry of pain, and the grip on her neck tightened, and rather suddenly Celestia had to resist the urge to turn back around, hunt down the human that had dared to harm her student and turn them into a scorch mark on the ground. Of course, she instead swooped into the sky, soaring higher and higher, keeping an eye on the ground beneath her for any strange motion. She spotted more humans flooding on deck, some of them still using those weapons against her, though at this distance they were even less effective against the shield. Some of the humans started scurrying into strange vehicles with stubby little wings parked along the edge of…the edge of what now?

Her eyes widened. A ship. Maker above, they had been holding her on a ship! As she flapped in place, her eyes drank in the sheer, absurd size of the thing. It was a city. It was an entire skyscraper from her Canterlot, turned sideways and made to float! Equestria and its Maker! For what purpose could something that big possibly be needed!?

She blinked, shoving those thoughts back down. There was a time and a place for such idle wonderings, this was neither. “Twilight?” She asked quickly.

“I-it’s okay Princess! Just a scratch!”

Celestia craned her neck to see her student. Twilight smiled back at her with an expression that was part brave grin, part pained grimace: one eye closed and her teeth clenched as one of her hooves clenched at her flank, a trail of blood oozing around it from the center of her cutie mark. Thank you, Celestia prayed to whoever might have been listening. Who knows what I would have done if she’d been hurt worse, thank you.

“Come, we must find shelter,” Celestia said, swooping through the sky towards some unseen, new destination. Before her, miles of pale, featureless blue stretched out endlessly, and once again she had to fight the urge to stand back in awe at the realization that the massive, impossibly complex structure she had been held on was a bucking ship.

Chapter XVIII: Five Years Ago

0745 HOURS
DECK OF THE HMS ILLUSTRIOUS

NORTH SEA, OFF THE NORWEGIAN COASTLINE, BOUND FOR KARELIA

David leaned over the railing, gripping the metal until he could feel the cold off the steel under the pads of his hands. It had only been a few minutes since Felipe had shown up with news that they were to allow Subject Beta a visit with Alpha, and he was already wondering if jumping overboard and making a swim for the Norwegian coast might be the safer option here.

He sighed, wishing desperately that the meeting going on below decks was the only thing on his mind. Unfortunately, there was also the little fact about his time in the Corps. He had no idea how the old Englishman had found out, but David did know the contract he’d had to sign, and in there was a big stipulation telling him that speaking about his past in the Corps was a big no-no. It had been right in between accepting bribes and delivering packages from strangers. He could probably guess why: if the other nations knew America had sent a former soldier to what was supposed to be the ultimate act of international cooperation, accusations of spying and infiltration would fly like the nukes on the last day of the Collision Wars.

God above, there had been a shit day for the record books. Even now, just thinking about it made a knot twist in his stomach. Wishing he’d never given up smoking, the American just peered out over the railing, only to draw his head back on seeing the churning, broiling sea below. “Christ,” he grumbled. Christ almighty God, why did he give up smoking!?

“Afternoon, Dave,” Lisa said, walking up to the railing and leaning out as David had. The American nodded in return, envying her stomach as she pulled a package of Mayfairs from her blouse. She offered him one, and he held up a hand.

“No thanks,” he said. The last thing he needed was for lovely little Lisa Townshend to watch him hack and cough like a middle-schooler caught sneaking daddy’s Marlboros in the backyard.

“Don’t smoke?” She nodded, sticking the cigarette between her lips and flicking a Bic lighter out to light it up. “Good. Shit will kill ya.”

He watched her drag a few puffs off the cigarette before pulling it out of her lips, flicking her hair over her shoulders as she leaned against the railing. David had to resist the urge to lick his lips while her mouth puffed out with the smoke. “So, what do you think?” She asked.

“Hmm?”

“About…what we’re doin’ here, the Admiral,” she gestured out across the deck of the Carrier. “All of this.”

He thought about telling a lie, but looking at her now, like this, he realized she was a big girl. She didn’t need any lies, and would probably punch him for trying to tell her one anyway. “I think we’re in way over our heads,” he sighed.

Lisa had to grin at that. “Glad I’m not the only one.”

God above, that little smile…David realized in that moment how much he loved that smile. The way her face genuinely lit up with it, the way her eyes glittered, even the way her lips pursed around the cigarette as they tightened stirred something within him. Funny thing, a week ago David never would have even entertained this thought. Lisa was a coworker, and in his experience, work and romance went together about as well as drinking and driving, or drinking and firearms, or gunpowder and chain-smoking. While drinking. Thing was, last week they were all office workers trying to survive the boredom until five-o-clock, and now they were standing atop the only thing which could undo all the work and progress of the last five years and plunge the world into utter chaos, if not destroy the planet outright.

Stilling his quickening heart (a task much harder than he remembered it being), David took a few deep breaths. “Say, Lisa…” he started.

“Hmm?”

“You know, that asteroid is supposed to be visible in the sky starting tonight: Ceres, I think it’s called,” he said, remembering some report on CNN about another big space rock passing close to Earth. It was almost like destiny. Him, her, the stars above, maybe a few beers between them (one of the flyboys had to have some booze smuggled aboard). It was just about the closest thing to an actual date he could think possible on an aircraft carrier holding the doom of all mankind. “I was hoping that…”

“David,” the Englishwoman smiled, pulling her cigarette out from between her lips. “Is it my imagination, or are you trying to ask me out?”

“Well,” he smiled. “That depends, are you saying…”

Before he could deliver the final one-liner, something caught his attention. A deep rumbling echoed from the bowels of the ship, undetectable to anyone who hadn’t spent enough time at sea: a sudden shift in the usual rhythm beating from the miles of cabling, ducts, and machinery keeping the carrier alive. It wasn’t enough to alarm him, but it was more than enough to break the delicate balance he needed to keep up that confident façade. Like a presenter in front of a class of fifty when he notices a clown just barely poking his head into one of the windows behind the audience.

Unfortunately, Lisa noticed the rapid shift in David’s attention, and her ears actually perked up. “David?” She asked, her hand dropping to her side, her cigarette forgotten. “David, what’s…”

“Nothing!” He gasped, shaking his head with a quick cough. Dammit, that response was too fast, too curt! He was losing it! And still, there had been that shift, that weird break in the ship’s heartbeat…

Nothing! He berated himself. Absolutely nothing, that’s all it was! Your nerves, most likely, or a hiccup in the ventilation. Either way, who cares!? That’s not who you are anymore, all that matters is the girl in front of you getting ready to…

And then it started. The shouts from the direction of the captain’s bridge, the people on deck all making a beeline for the bridge, some of them clambering out of cockpits in heavy gear, others setting down heavy equipment before drawing their sidearms. A couple dozen possible scenarios for why this would be happening went through David’s mind, but…

But you’re just kidding yourself, he realized. You know damn well what it is, and you’re either too stubborn or too scared to admit it.

But it can’t be! Another voice cried out. A child’s voice, he realized, probably still a college freshman holding a physics textbook in his arms. We saw the restraints! We saw the cell! And we trust everybody downstairs to not screw this up! Maybe other things, but not this! Never this…

Once again, his thoughts were interrupted, this time by the massive, steel door leading into the bridge flying open. There was a burst of rainbow, and a hurricane force gale came roaring out, knocking the men closest to the door off their feet while the others’ hands flew up instinctively to protect their faces, even the ones still wearing helmets with visors. And then, David saw something he had prayed every night for two years never to see again. He hadn’t even been a terribly religious man until it happened, but there it was, right in front of him: a burst of white light, thrusting into the sky…

…with magically-induced speed, arcing up high overhead. Fast. Too fast to watch…

“Oh my God, is that…” Lisa started, but she was in a whole other world as far as David was concerned. His thoughts were already flying back to that wretched memory, to standing on a carrier a lot like this: on the bridge, this time. To watching everything come together, and then fall apart in a moment.

He stumbled, the heel of his shoe absentmindedly catching on a rivet that perhaps needed a couple more turns with the wrench to be perfectly in line with the rest of the deck. He fell backwards, something struck the back of his head, and between that and the horribly memory, darkness descended over his vision.

“David!?” Lisa had time to shout before that black fuzziness fell over him, like a limb after you laid on it for too long, except the feeling was inside his skull. He blacked out with the memory in his mind and his lips forming a terrified “oh,” instantly falling away from the world of the present and back into the world of that day, that horrible day five years ago, when he had been so sure he had just bought himself a front row ticket to the end of the world.

0845 HOURS
NORTH VIDOY ISLAND

FAROE ISLANDS, KINGDOM OF DENMARK, NORTH SEA

By the time blessed land was finally in sight, Princess Celestia had pledged that she would go on that diet she’d been promising herself for the last five centuries, would happily sign papers and listen to nobles complain about the poor street urchins who had the audacity to cross their path during a morning stroll without a single complaint of boredom, and would even swear off chocolate cake for the rest of eternity. That last one was the important one. For centuries, she had never thought it to be that big of a problem: it was easy to still think of herself as that mare of legend, who had defeated Nightmare Moon in close aerial combat, and who could do pushups one-hoofed with the entire Canterlot Philharmonic Orchestra practicing on a stage balanced on her shoulder blades. Sure, it had been a while since she’d done so (mostly due to the lack of drunken minotaur kings dumb enough to bet against her), but she was still that mare, right?

After a few hours of giving her student a ponyback ride, however, she had come to the conclusion that whatever was left of that mare had long since been buried under layers of cake, her muscles having grown soft from years of an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. With Luna as my witness, she thought, I will never tease my sister for her workout schedule ever again.

The beach had been a godsend. Sure, the day was dreary and cold and just about the opposite of anything anypony could consider decent beach weather, and the tufts of grass and sharp rocks jutting randomly out of the sand told her this was far from any tourist beach, but just then, it could have been Acapulcolt in the middle of summer with buff stallions serving complimentary martinis to everypony.

Celestia fanned her wings out and swooped down, still managing a dainty landing in the sand, her hooves sinking immediately. Panting heavily, she tilted her wings, allowing Twilight to slide safely off her back before collapsing on her side.

“That was great, princess,” Twilight said reassuringly, the first words she had spoken in the last half-hour, when she’d cut herself off after Celestia’s breathing became too quick and too ragged to continue conversation. “I’ll look around for someplace where we can get out of the open; you stay here and rest, okay?”

Celestia nodded through her panting, her eyes closing as Twilight wrapped her in a quick hug before taking off. She watched her student go, noting the scratch on her flank for any signs of infection or scarring, and sighing with relief when she spotted none. She turned over on her back, wings splaying out under her body, feeling the cool sand on every feather. Honestly, nothing would have given her more pleasure than to follow her student’s advice and just lie there, maybe even catching a quick nap before slinking off to whatever hole Twilight managed to find. They could lie together in there, as they had so many times during Twilight’s years at the Academy for Gifted Unicorns. Perhaps the little princess would still fit in the crook of her forehooves as she had during those long, wonderful nights, but probably not, and even just finding out would still be okay.

But no. There was still too much to do, too much at stake. With a sigh and a moan that “A princess’s work is never done,” Celestia reached under her wing for the tiny device she’d stolen from the human back in her cell. The device lit up immediately, again with the strange symbols that she somehow knew meant “Slide To Unlock.” A quick swipe with her hoof, and the array of dots from before appeared. For a second, her exhausted mind couldn’t quite recall the exact pattern the human had shown her. Her heart leapt into her throat. To have come all this way, have covered all this distance, only for the answers to elude her? To have them sitting here in her hoof, locked away in this device? It was almost too much to bear. But then she fought back the little, skittering sound of panic rising in her head, taking a few deep breaths. She closed her eyes, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, emptying her mind. A few minutes later, the memory came back to her.

The device unlocked with the same, little click she remembered, and a triumphant grin spread across her face. But now what? There were symbols and names that she didn’t recognize, hovering amidst the glow off the small, soft screen, and not much else. She would simply have to try them all.

The first icon was of a small, blocky face (she couldn’t have known that the proper term was “pixelated”) with the name “Ainsley.” With nothing more for it, Celestia tapped the edge of her hoof against the little icon. The icon glowed, then the screen went dark. Celestia’s heart leapt into her throat again with the idea that this “Ainsley” had just destroyed the device and any hope she had of finding any answers, but then a single, red button appeared, with a symbol kind of like the microphones ponies without magic would use sometimes to amplify their voices. Before she could react, a couple tones sounded, and a warm, female voice announced:

“Hello! I am Ainsley!”

Startled by the sudden reply, Celestia sat up in the sand, rising to her haunches. “What sort of magic…” she started, but there was no magic in this device. In fact, feeling it, there was barely even any warmth from it. “Faust above,” she whispered. The more she learned of what these humans had accomplished, and without any apparent use of magic, the more she understood what they were, and the better she felt that such a marvelous species had conquered her so quickly.

Once again pressing the edge of her hoof to the screen, she watched the button glow and heard a click, as if it were an actual button on some strange machine back home. “H-hello Ainsley, I am Celestia,” she whispered to the device before releasing the fake button. A circle appeared over the button, a little ring that slowly arced around it until her words replaced Ainsley’s. Then, the same two tones sounded again.

“I just heard you refer to yourself by a new name: ‘Celestia.’ Would you like me to call you by this name from now on?”

Smiling, Celestia pressed the button again. “Yes please, if you would, Ainsley.”

The circle of light appeared again, then her words appeared onscreen. But when Ainsley spoke again, she or it or whatever it was filled Celestia’s heart with dismay: “I’m sorry, but the name you have chosen for yourself is on a list of banned words and phrases on my hard drive. While you may proceed to make this your username, I must inform you that it will be blocked or censored on certain websites. Would you still like to make ‘Celestia’ your username?”

“My name is a profanity here?” Celestia gasped, realizing what the small device was implying. Dear Maker above, she knew things had to be bad for what had happened to her so far, but for her very name to be a profanity…

“Nevermind, Ainsley, just call me Princess,” Celestia sighed, then under her breath added, “Maker knows everypony else does.”

Ding, ding! “I just heard you refer to yourself by a new…”

“Yes, yes, please do and let’s move along.”

Ding, ding! “Alright! From now on, I’ll refer to you as ‘Princess!’ What can I do for you today, Princess?”

Celestia thought a few moments about her request. She knew she would probably have to word it carefully: if her very name was a profanity, what kind of warning flags might she send up with the wrong kind of search? Finally, a phrase one of the humans had uttered came to mind, and she smiled. “Ainsley, search for ‘human into pony.’”

After a few minutes of fumbling with something called a “Google Search” (she was a bit beyond caring what a “Google” was), Celestia’s smile faded. Then it disappeared, like her sun at the end of a long day. By the time her student returned with news of a small cave just up the beach, the first tears of many were rolling down Celestia’s ivory cheeks.

“Princess, what’s wrong?” Twilight would ask.

Without replying, Celestia took her student’s hoof and followed her to the small cave, Ainsley trailing behind in her magic’s glow. Twilight’s tears would join hers soon, as together in that small cave, they discovered the terrors of what had come before them.

FIVE YEARS AGO
ONBOARD THE USS BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

EAST CHINA SEA, NEAR HONG KONG

If one had asked the college freshman sitting in the library and reading about magical talking ponies appearing off the Chinese coast where events in the next few years would lead him, he would have almost certainly replied with a shrug and a statement somewhere along the lines of “Maybe work for one of my dad’s buddies, I dunno.” He most certainly never would have said anything that would lead him to the deck of a monstrous aircraft carrier, wearing a Marine’s uniform and anticipating the results of the largest effort of the combined nations of the world since World War Two.

Oh, but God, was he glad to be here. Six months of fear, of terror, of watching cities that had stood for centuries disappear, and it was all ending right here. Humans may not have had magic, but they were clever, so very clever. A few Newfoal prisoners (which had been a bitch to contain) and some studies later, and magic was discovered to be nothing more than a new form of energy. One that might well tap into the impossible levels of energy contained within all matter, perhaps, but energy nonetheless. Humans could understand energy very well, and if it could be understood, it could be controlled.

David glanced up at the massive clock ticking down just over the window overlooking the flight deck. He let in a deep breath. Outside, he could see The Barrier glimmering in the distance, watched the strange, shimmering hue it gave off, like a soap bubble the size of Rhode Island. And we’re coming, bitch, he thought with no small amount of restrained glee. We’re coming to pop your bubble, and when we do…I just hope I get to see the look on your face when we waltz right into your throne room and wipe our asses with your flag.

“Admiral?” An important-looking man in a full-length, pure-white naval coat turned just as a sailor walked up to him and saluted. “Our men with the People’s Army say they’re all ready to go. The Inhibitor stations are all running just outside The Barrier’s perimeter. The rest of the Security Council has already given the go-ahead, they’re just waitin’ on us.”

The Admiral grinned at that, his bushy mustache curving upwards as he flashed his perfectly-white teeth. “Savin’ the best for last, eh?” He asked, giving a light chuckle. The rest of the room joined him, mostly to relieve tension, partially because as far as a man as important as the Admiral was concerned, all his jokes were funny. “Fine, fine, tell them the good ol’ U-S of A is standing by to pull their asses out of the fire if things get too scary for them.”

Grinning, the sailor lowered his arm. “Sir!” He announced, marching over to the nearest radio console. Pulling on a headset, he held a microphone to his lips, announcing loudly for everyone in the room to hear. “Shenzhen-One, this is Eagle-Six, you are go to bring down Sasha the Old White Dog, I repeat, you are go to bring down Sasha the Old Dog.”

“Sasha the Old Dog?” One of the Marines next to David whispered.

“Sasha’s a girl’s name, and what’s a female dog called?” He whispered back.

The other marine arched an eyebrow, then realization dawned on his face and he stifled a guffaw. David rolled his eyes. Greenhorns…

“This is Shenzhen-One,” a heavily-accented voice buzzed back to them. “Activation acknowledged, Eagle-Six. Stand by.”

A few moments of breath-holding passed, and then the voice returned: “And we heard that ‘pull their asses out of the fire’ comment, and would like to remind you who fought who to a stalemate in the fifties!”

David let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding in a sudden chortle, the absurdity of someone cracking a joke at a time like this relieving nearly all the tension gathered in the room. The Admiral glanced over at him and snorted. “Eh, them Reds get lucky once, and think they can lord it over us for the rest of time.” The man’s tone was good-natured, however. This was a day of triumph, of humanity’s victory over an alien force the likes of which had never been encountered before. Of science standing before magic and sending it careening into the dark abyss once and for all. Technology over superstition! A species’ right to exist over the xenophobic hordes! For now, at least, all national boundaries had been erased, replaced with only one nation: the nation of humanity, as exemplified by the massive, international effort that was the new world, the new…

“Eagle-Six, this is Shenzhen-One,” the crackling, accented voice announced. “The Inhibitors are charged up now; you should be seeing the effects any moment.”

Once again, David’s breath caught in his throat. The candid talk and laughter which had been so much white noise before all came to a screeching halt, and his ears rang with its absence. He gazed out the window at that shimmering barricade, and for a few minutes, saw no change. Oh God… he realized. It’s not gonna work. She’s too powerful: it’s not gonna work and we’re all screwed, we’re all…

Just then, right along where the dome of magic met the seawater, he thought he saw a flicker, like an old analog TV with a burnt fuse somewhere. For a moment, The Mighty and Unstoppable Barrier had winked in and out of existence. David smiled; as did the marines and sailors who’d also noticed it. The same patch of magic flickered again, only this time, it reached a little bit out of the water, and it remained flickering for a full minute. Then another patch near the apex winked out, followed by another right in the middle of the dome, right where everybody could see it. Bit by bit, and to the cheers of the thousands in the armada, The Barrier vanished, leaving behind nothing but the destruction it had wrought.

It took most of David’s strength to remain standing. For the first time since high school, he needed a smoke. He felt he deserved it after a display like that. Maybe later he could bum one off one of the flyboys on the deck, but for now, he settled for collapsing into the swivel chair to his right, looking up and just smiling at the suspended ceiling.

“Shenzhen-One, we are confirming success of Tachyon Inhibition, repeat, the operation was a success!” The sailor at the console said joyfully. David’s ear pricked up, wanted to hear the euphoric cries of the men and women on the other end of the line, but only picking up static.

“Shenzhen-One, reporting mission success, do you copy?” The radio man continued.

David slouched further in his chair. Surely, the people on the other end of the line were just caught up in the celebrations, having witnessed The Barrier’s disintegration themselves. This was too joyous a moment to be otherwise, this was…

“Y…t…o…”

David’s eyes opened. For a moment there, he could have sworn he heard the bitch’s voice on the horn, the one he recognized from the press conferences and the announcements and the hacked television feeds. But surely, that was just his imagination! Surely, this moment was not going to end with…

“Y…u…too…”

David sat up slowly in his chair. His smile faded. He still didn’t want to believe it, but the pale, drawn look on the sailor’s face told him he’d heard it too, along with the sailor next to him, who was now staring at the speaker with his jaw on his chest. “N…no…” the second sailor said.

All at once, a bright, white streak took off into the sky, arcing high over the ocean, and the radio flickered to life with the voice of none other than Princess Celestia herself: “You too…you too…you too…you too…”

The celebration came to a sudden, screeching halt. All eyes widened and looked out the window, watching the bright streak as it lifted off at impossible speeds, darting across the sky and streaking off to the North. And meanwhile, the voice continued on the radio: “You too…You too…You too…”

“Wha-what was that?” David found himself saying. “Was that…was that her!? What the fuck was that!?”

Just then, the radio crackled, a new voice appearing over the princess’s, her voice continuing to play in the background. “Eagle-Six, this is Tokyo Command, what’s the SITREP?”

With shaking hands, the Admiral himself stepped down to the radio and pressed it to his lips. “I-Inhibitors deployed successfully, Tokyo Command,” he whispered.

“You sure?” The voice barked. “We have an unidentified object heading in at an indeterminate velocity, and we’re spying some Lithium Deuteride and high radiation signatures coming off it, did anybody over there call for tactical nukes!?”

David’s stomach plummeted into his combat boots. The Admiral paused for a moment, then leapt into action. “Somebody get me a satellite view of Tokyo, stat!”

“Coming online, sir!” One of the tech geeks in uniform screamed, tapping furiously at his keyboard.

“Bring it up on the main screen!”

“Yes, sir!” After a few moments, a large projection screen at the front of the room flickered into life, showing the sprawl of downtown Tokyo in its view. In the streets, tiny little white dots milled around, pausing at street corners, waving to friends, walking briskly with suitcases: just people going about their day, unaware of the drama unfolding a few hundred miles to their south.

“Zoom out…” The Admiral grunted hoarsely. The view changed until the city was nothing more than a gray dot, surrounded by a patchwork of suburbs, nestled along a coast of rolling gray mountains amidst sprawling green farmland and forest. Then, the image winked in and out, and an intense white light appeared in one of the lower corners of the screen, rocketing towards the city’s center.

“Oh God…” David mumbled.

“Eagle-Six, we’re also experiencing some radio interference on our end, are you experiencing something similar?” The voice crackled, once again atop the feminine voice of the bitch.

His hands now barely even able to hold onto the transceiver, the Admiral replied: “S-something like that. The Princess saying ‘You too’?”

“Uhh…” some shuffling from the other side, broken up only with that damnable voice, repeating those two words over and over again. “Actually sir, she’s saying ‘Die’ on our end. Why? Is that what she’s saying on yours?”

The Admiral made to reply, when the little white dot reached the center of the screen. In an instant, a bright flash dominated the entire view, the screen flickering with blacks and whites as the intensity of it overwhelmed the camera. “EAGLE-SIX, WHAT…” the voice on the other end managed to get out before disappearing beneath a sea of static.

The bridge fell silent. Everyone stood in fear, gazing out the front windows. Then, the Admiral pressed the radio to his lips again: “Tokyo Command, come in!” He ordered, not quite keeping the desperate quiver out of his voice. No response. “Tokyo Command, come…”

A low rumble from the north cut him off. The radio dropped from the Admiral’s hand and hit the console. He didn’t try to pick it up. Then the shockwave echoed over them, passing over the water before rumbling the windows in their panes. Alarms flashed on every console, lights blaring. Nobody paid them any mind, just keeping their eyes locked on the north in wide, stark horror. The radio buzzed back to life, voices in other languages, but others perfectly clear to David’s ears.

“Oh my God, oh my God! What was that!?”

“Christ alive, don’t tell me that was her! Don’t tell me…”

“Our Father…who art in Heaven…hallowed be thy name…”

Finally, David could see the cloud. On such an overcast day, it was easy to think it was just a weird formation. Surely something that big, that impossibly huge, could only be a curious twist of wind somewhere high above them. Except the shape was wrong. Except Dave could tell the distinct, mushroom-shape was totally unnatural. Except this cloud kept flickering and glowing with arcane magics. The voices on the radio became so much background noise. His feet working on their own accord, the Marine stepped off the bridge, onto the catwalk outside, not even registering the change from boots on tile to boots on metal as he walked onto the deck of the carrier.

It was still there. The mushroom cloud was still there. He had hoped it was just some trick of the glass, some weird way the sun was shining off through a funny cloud formation, and that outside he would see it was nothing more than his overactive imagination. But it was still there. Oh Jesus Christ Almighty God, it was still fucking there.

The deck of the ship reeled beneath his boots, though whether that was just in his mind or not was honestly a crap-shoot at this point. Something clanged to the deck next to him. He turned to find a license plate, charred black and covered in Japanese characters. A splash sounded to his left: the blackened remnants of a Prius smacking into the sea with a pile of ash in the driver’s seat. He craned his neck in time to watch a container ship, its once-red hull now bubbling and scorched, smack into the ocean surface on its stern, metal screeching in agony as it flipped up and over like a lever. It hovered on its tip like that, towering above him, the few containers remaining on its deck spilling out of their moorings, tumbling over and over in their long drop to the ocean below. In that split second, he could swear he could look into the ship’s bridge, could see the charnel house that might have once been a crew of eight or nine, all before the ship overturned and splashed down on its deck, swiftly disappearing below the waves with a final, agonized squeal.

David returned his attention to the mushroom cloud blooming in the distance. Behind him, the radio still clicked away with panicked cries and desperate shouts and prayers interspersed with choked-off sobs, and all at once, there was a whoosh and a splash to his right. He dropped to his knees, dry-heaving while a missile streaked into the skies off to his right. Then there was another whoosh-splash, and another, and another…

Suddenly, he didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be back home, cheap beer in hand, a cheesy 90s action flick on the TV, his small house warmed to just the right temperature to beat off the Michigan autumn. Or hell, just anywhere, anywhere but here. At this point, he would take fucking Siberia if there was beer, because here was madness. Here was the beginning of the end. Here was the destruction of all things. The flight deck burst into activity around him, people scurrying about, running in a near-panic, prepping jets for take-off, undoubtedly arming each plane with nuclear warheads, which the ponies would respond to with whatever they hit Tokyo with, which they would respond to with more nukes…

“This is it,” he gasped, then his voice was buried beneath a series of dry heaves and panicked hyperventilating. This is how it all ends. Oh God, I’m sorry…this is it…this is it…this is-

0850 HOURS
ONBOARD THE HMS ILLUSTRIOUS

NORTH SEA, OFF THE NORWEGIAN COASTLINE, BOUND FOR KARELIA

David just wanted to stay in the dark. Was that too much to ask? Just stay here, in the nice, quiet dark, where everything was peaceful and nobody was screaming and the dreadful knot in his stomach telling him that his actions, or lack thereof, were putting millions of people at risk stayed quiet. Of course, he knew he’d have to open up his eyes eventually. The fact that he was aware enough to know this meant he couldn’t feign unconsciousness for much longer. Already, snippets of voices and blurry shapes from the outside world were starting to return to him, so without further ado and without ceremony, David slowly started to open his eyes and focus his mind on the sounds.

“…and you can tell that sonofabitch he can take that ‘placing of responsibility’ bullshitand shove it up his wrinkly old ass!” Anton’s voice, obviously angry. Hoboy, what had David been missing?

“You hear me!?” The Russian continued. “You tell him who’s really responsible for this fucking mess, and you tell him if he wants a hope of cleaning it up, he’d better shut his big, goddamned mouth and start cooperating, or we’ll leave him here to explain why he sent away the only people with any clue to that cunt’s thinking and the only chance he has of stopping her before she pulls a repeat of the Collision Wars!”

A pause, during which the American could hear the frustrated breathing wheezing in and out of his coworker’s nose. “Okay, you shoot that up the chain,” Anton returned, his dress shoes clopping against metal as he paced back and forth, somewhere in the dark blurriness in David’s vision. “And while we sit here, waiting for you pencil-pushing synov'ya shlyukh to pull your heads out your asses, we’ll be watching CNN for when London goes up in a nice, big fucking mushroom cloud! Or Oslo! Or Berlin! Is that what it’ll take!? Is that what it’ll take to get this shit moving!?”

Another pause. “Uh-huh, okay, you have a nice day too, you stupid motherfucker.” A slam of a phone into a cradle, followed by a long, deep breath. David’s vision returned just in time to watch Anton smack the control console with the palm of his hand, beating it over and over again, as if the world’s most annoying swarm of flies had just appeared on it. “Chyort!” He screamed over and over again, long after the point of pain, long after David knew the older man had to be feeling it. Watching the usually-stoic Anton in such a state might have been funny, if it weren’t for the wretched graveness of the situation they were in, or the memory of…

Arcing overhead, a pure white light punching into the sky, faster than a jet, faster than anything has a right to be, pure magical power and hatred of the purest form descending upon…

David laid back, his head swimming again. This time, he bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood oozing around his teeth, the pain forcing back the dark spots that had reappeared in his eyes. I am not going to do this again, that grim, determined voice from somewhere deep inside of him said. I am not going to keep fainting like some weak, little biddy. I am fine. Just fine. Just like the shrinks back at base said: I. Am. Going. To. Be. Fine.

He repeated those last five words until he was sure he wasn’t going to faint anymore, and kept repeating them a few times even after that. For lack of a better word, he had swooned, but he was okay now. He was going. To. Be. Fine.

Straining, David pushed himself onto his elbows, feeling the give of the pleather off one of the Lay-Z-Boys he’d grown familiar with. So he was back downstairs again, that was nice to know. He raised one of his hands to tap the back of his head, and winced at the sudden flare of pain that blossomed from his fingers and radiated throughout his entire skull.

“David, honey, don’t,” Lisa’s voice urged him, her bony yet powerful hands gently pushing on his chest, forcing him back into the recliner. He sighed, surrendering immediately. Based on the way his head had just nearly flown off his shoulders, he probably did need a bit more rest. Besides, the way Anton was, he probably needed a few minutes to cool down before people started asking what the next step would be.

Ever tactful, Lisa saw this too, and so the pair waited nearly a full minute before Anton’s breathing finally settled and his fists stopped shaking, the knuckles returning to their normal slightly-tanned. A grin grew on David’s face. “Have a nice little chat?” He asked.

A chuckle rumbled up from Anton’s chest. “Little, pencil-pushing cunts trying to blame great military defeat on the soldiers, instead of idiot commanders giving idiot orders,” he replied without turning around, still glaring at the phone on the control panel as if it had just killed his mother. “Nothing we Russians are not used to,” he added as David released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

“So…what now?” Lisa asked, finally giving voice to the question on everybody’s minds.

Anton finally turned, and for a moment, the youth David had once ascribed to him was completely gone. He didn’t even look like a man his age: in that moment, he looked like a man in his sixties, trudging along day by day, praying for the moment his retirement benefits would kick in and he could finally leave some godforsaken job behind. Then the moment ended, and Anton was just another tired mook, like the rest of them. “I’ve just beaten back the first threat: the wolves hoping to make a career out of blaming others for mistakes,” he rasped. “They won’t be the only ones, but the first pack is always the hardest. Next, we need to make good on the promises I have made. We need to find Alpha again.”

“The Admiral?” David asked.

Hidden in his pocket, Anton’s fist clenched until it shook again, though it was a poor disguise to anyone paying attention. It quickly relaxed after a moment of squeezing the life out of thin air. “No longer a factor. He may be our superior and he may have his status to lord over us, but we know everything he’s said. We know everything he’s done. Everyone in the British Armed Forces is keeping quiet, heaven knows why. If I were them, I would want his head on a stick. But the Admiral knows if we go public with the orders he gave us, there’ll be cries for his blood in the streets of every major city on the planet.”

“Ours too,” Dave pointed out. “Normal people on the street usually don’t give two shits about who gave the fucked-up orders and who followed them. We’ll be lumped in with him.”

“Yes, but we don’t have as much to lose as he does, it doesn’t matter so much if we lose our pensions and wind up flipping burgers for next twenty years,” at this, Anton smiled grimly. “Top commander in the British Armed Forces or no, he doesn’t have twenty years to spare. Not the way he drinks. He knows this.”

“We should still report him,” Lisa said darkly, her hand going stiff on David’s shoulder. He didn’t notice, even as her nails dug into the flesh beneath his shirt. “Any man who would risk the safety of the world for a few minutes of entertainment should be locked up, or at least be dismissed from his position.”

“The Admiral is in a weakened state right now, and he knows it. We can bend him; get what we need to track down Alpha. This might not be true with whoever replaces him. If someone else comes in to command this fleet, we’ll be on our way back to London, and then to the media shitstorm brewing.”

“Alright, so with the Admiral, we’ve got the resources and willpower to track the bitch down,” David said, sitting up in the chair with his elbows resting on his knees. “The only question is: where do we start?”

Anton took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He looked lost for a moment. David grimaced: he’d been afraid of this. They had the power and resources, sure, but what the hell were they supposed to do with it? Start going door to door? Put up some posters like you would with a lost cat?

Ever the voice of reason, it was Lisa who hit the nail on the head: “Well, what do we think she wants?”

“Oh please, we all know what she wants,” David snorted. “Fire. Destruction. The end of humanity as we know it…”

“Yes, but what does she need to do that? Her army?”

“She could return to her Equestria,” Anton said, leaning back against the panel with his arms crossed over his chest. “In that case, she’d have everything she needs, and she’d be out of our reach. We’d have to wait for the UNCDI assault.”

“Alright, but where else would she go?” Lisa said. “Returning to her Equestria would be just what she’s expected to do, but we know she’s smarter than that. She probably already knows about the UNCDI blockade around the portal, if only because she’d be expecting her enemies to throw everything they had between her and home.”

“So the question becomes where else she could go to find resources for a new round of attacks,” Anton muttered. “Where else could she go to gather the strength she’d need to start up her own war?”

The answer hit them all simultaneously as their eyes all wondered the room, inevitably drawn to the flatscreen television mounted on the wall. On-screen, a CNN special report was interviewing one of the divers plunging into the Detroit River, hunting for survivors (at least, that’s how they worded it: at this point everyone knew they were just pulling out bodies). It was all too clear at that point.

“The Newfoals!” They all gasped at the same time.

“Okay, that’s gotta be her next move,” David said. “Where’s the nearest Newfoal compound? Dusseldorf?”

“That’s just the one everyone knows,” Lisa said, shaking her head as she pulled out her smart phone. “There’s another one, much closer and not nearly as well-known.”

Anton nodded. “Bedlam,” he said without thinking.

“Now how did you…” Lisa started, but when he cocked a knowing half-smile at her, she just rolled her eyes and returned her attention to the little screen. “But yes, Bedlam hospital. Plenty of Newfoals, heavily populated area: perfect for adding to her body count if things go south on her while she’s rallying the troops.”

“Then that’s where we’ll start,” Anton said. “I still think a team in Dusseldorf would be a good idea, but we need to hit Bedlam ASAP.”

David grinned, a flutter of hope rising in his chest, one he didn’t dare indulge, but was okay with just letting it sit there and carry some of the weight that had been pressing down on his heart. We got you now, you bitch, he thought. What’re you gonna do now?

0930 HOURS
NORTH VIDOY ISLAND

FAROE ISLANDS, KINGDOM OF DENMARK, NORTH SEA

Celestia shivered, tears soaked into the fur on her face. The lump in her throat felt like a basketball as she tried to swallow past it, her sobs continuously interrupting her voice, but still she read: “Wh-while Search and Rescue efforts continue in the ruins of downtown Tokyo, most officials agree that anybody who might be saved must have been found already. C-c-continuing from the front, a m-morbid discovery was made at the T-Tokyo Institute of Technology, wh-wh-where the charred remains of the entire gwa-graduating class of 2018 was discovered in the main auditorium, most having long died of injuries suffered in the initial blast, pl-placing the official death toll at the ten million m-m-m-m-…” she trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

“Stop,” Twilight sobbed. “Princess, please, stop.”

“Okay,” Celestia whispered, slowly closing the tiny device with hooves that trembled like Jell-O and setting it aside. “Okay, I think I’ve said enough.”

“An-an entire nation, Princess,” Twilight gasped, tears cascading down her cheeks and into the sand. “They lost an entire nation, millions dead…oh, no wonder they reacted like they did! Princess, they must hate us!”

“They don’t just hate us,” Celestia replied grimly. “Th-They fear us, Twilight, and based on what little I have learned from their history, that is a highly volatile combination for them.”

“W-what are we going to do?” The little lavender alicorn moaned. “H-how could we ever set this right? What could possibly ease the loss of millions?”

“I don’t know, my dearest student,” Celestia replied. “But we have to try. After all they’ve been through, we have to. They deserve that much.”

As she cuddled her student, Celestia’s eyes happened upon the little device, the “mobile,” as the human had called it. It had scrolled through the pages to yet another article, one that froze her heart upon seeing it. “NEWFOAL TERRORIST ATTACK,” with the subline: “A sign of things to come?”

Words passed through her mind from previous articles, words like “falling intelligence”, “forced conversion”, and “failing IQ tests”. Her brow furrowed, her gaze hardening into one of pure determination. “And I think I know where we can start.”

Author's Note

Woot! Been waiting for this one! And yes, I named a ship after President Obama. Regardless of how you feel about him, he's still the prez, and he's still probably gonna get a ship named after him. Which still isn't an awesome retirement present, if you ask me. I mean, I think it would be fantastic for me, but for a guy who once ruled the free world..."Hey, thanks for leading the most powerful nation on the planet and giving up years of your life to the stress of trying to keep everyone from blowing everyone else up. Here's a boat that you'll probably never see."

Eh, that's just my opinion tho.

Chapter XIX: Change

1200 HOURS
BETHLEM ROYAL HOSPITAL (AKA BEDLAM)

LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM

Twilight Sparkle was not an unstoppable badass, she knew that. She was not the type of pony who leapt into the midst of a battle, single-hoofedly changing the odds with a few well-placed bolts of magic. Sure, she could hold her own in a fight, years of magical study; her ascension into her role as the Element of Magic, and her rise to princesshood had seen to that. However, at the end of the day, she was quite comfortable with putting her hooves up for an evening with a good book and perhaps a friend to chat with. Let other ponies go off on adventures to the deepest parts of the Everfree on quests for artifacts of horrifying power: if she wasn’t needed, Twilight Sparkle was perfectly fine with staying in her own little village in her own little room in her massive and all-too-large palace.

Of course, Twilight wasn’t trying to think about any of this. Right then, she was trying to think about everything she and the Princess had learned about this place. Ever since Ainsley had told them about it, they had studied everything they could, gathering books and newspaper articles from a library that made the Canterlot Archives look like her old treehouse library in Ponyville. Though she had drooled over the prospect of spending an entire night among those shelves, the Princess had insisted they could only take what they needed, spending as little time as possible in the city proper before retreating to the tiny cave dwelling they had found on the outskirts of town. And again, Twilight didn’t focus on that, and instead focused on what she had learned.

Bethlem Royal Hospital: one of the oldest mental health establishments in the world. Formed some 800 years ago, when its time as a prison for the insane earned it another, less savory nickname with the locals, the place’s name had become a word synonymous with chaos, confusion, and general discordance (for lack of a better word, she thought with a roll of her eyes, imagining what Discord might have to say about such a place). The hospital itself had actually moved sites and held many names in its long history, and though its early methods of treatment for the mentally ill would have made even the witch doctors of ancient Equestria shiver in their grass skirts and voodoo necklaces, it had come a long way to becoming a home, a place where the mentally ill could find some form of actual treatment and perhaps even a way back to sanity.

Then the Newfoals had arrived. Suddenly, humanity was inundated with drooling idiots, barely capable of lifting their own heads out of their pillows or sitting upright, good for little more than staring out windows with blank, empty gazes, their minds shells of what they once were. Most families just weren’t equipped for handling that, but who was? Mental hospitals. And so, many of the planet’s asylums had become dumping grounds for these poor souls, these former humans turned into something so, so much less. Twilight had shivered at the newspaper clipping proclaiming the first batch of Newfoals to be mentally deficient, back in the days when a bright future of pony-human cooperation had appeared actually possible. The worst part had been the caption showing a “Newfoal,” a former human that had once been a renowned mathematician, now sitting on a chair, staring at the camera with the most hauntingly empty gaze Twilight had ever seen on a pony. Those eyes had been more like doll’s eyes; that smile practically sewn on. If it hadn’t been for the text explaining that it was, in fact, an actual pony, she might have thought it some creepy stuffed toy.

These thoughts went through her head as she crawled through the ducts of Bethlem Hospital, formerly St. Mary’s, most well-known for being the inspiration for an entire new synonym to chaos. Her every step was muffled by the little booties she and the princess had crafted and imbued with as many noise-cancellation spells as possible, which were effective despite being an ugly brown that probably would have sent Rarity into palpitations. As she crawled along, it occurred to her how curious it was that an institute meant to contain ponies would have such a nice, pony-sized ventilation system, but then she remembered those eyes and realized this place was less of a prison and more of a dumping ground, a spot where Newfoals got loaded off and probably forgotten. More a permanent daycare center than an asylum or a prison

Well, there was an uplifting thought.

Twilight? Her teacher’s voice hummed from her horn, the spell allowing them to communicate crackling to life. Twilight winced and decreased the flow of magic going into the spell.

Right here, Princess, she sent back. But please put less magic into the messages you send. It’s like having another voice screaming in my head, and that’s very disorienting.

A few seconds later, Celestia’s reply came back, but at a much more tolerable volume: Apologies, my faithful student. I am still getting used to this method of communication.

Yeah, Ainsley was good for one more thing. This spell we found will probably throw Equestria ahead by decades! It’s a shame we had to dump her, she was very useful.

And almost certainly being tracked, if those electric pulses were some indication.

I know but stiiiiIIIIIIILLLLLL… Twilight’s mind froze as the ground suddenly vanished beneath her and she tumbled, head over hooves, down a nearly-vertical vent, slamming face-first into an aluminum wall. She groaned as the sound of her muzzle colliding with the thin metal reverberated through both the vent and her skull.

Twilight!? Celestia gasped, her message somehow transferring every single bit of the panic she felt. Twilight would have smiled at the thought of the regal pony dancing on her hooves like a filly waiting for the bathroom were it not for the pain shooting through her snout.

I’m alright, Princess, she sent back, even as she picked herself up and spotted little flecks of blood on the steel. She moaned, turned over on her back, and ran a quick healing spell. Not enough to repair all the damage, but enough where she could crack a grin without nearly gasping with pain. She would need to focus on that later.

I’m okay, she reasserted. Just got distracted and forgot about that 70-degree angle in the building layout.

Ah. Celestia replied, and again, Twilight could just picture her nearly dropping to the ground in relief. Perhaps we should refrain from communicating while you’re in those vents.

Agreed. It’s absurdly distracting. Twilight groaned as she slowly pressed herself back to her hooves. Celestia above, while the spell was fantastic, she could just imagine dozens of idiotic ponies crashing into each other both on the streets and in the air, their thoughts distracted. She chuckled at the sheer absurdity of the idea. As if ponies would be that stupid; walking around, so distracted by conversations with somepony who wasn’t there that they slammed into each other. Fortunately, further communication probably wouldn’t be necessary. If the plans they’d found were at all accurate, the opening she was looking for was perhaps fifty yards away. She could only hope that her stupid little trip hadn’t alerted any of the humans in the building. Noise-cancelling booties could only do so much when you played drums on the walls with your face.

Fifty yards later, and still no signs of a human alert, Twilight peeked through the grating. She nearly sank to the floor with relief. She could just glimpse a colorful shape sitting up on a bed with plain white sheets. With a thought, she teleported down to the bed, a hoof primed and ready to cover the Newfoal’s muzzle. To her surprise, it wasn’t needed. No, because the moment she landed, the only thing the Newfoal did was smile…and stare…with those…empty eyes…

Twilight?

Shaking off the chills going down her spine, Twilight turned away, realized that having those empty little eyes staring into the back of her head was way worse, and opted to pull the Newfoal’s blanket over its head. It didn’t react. This time, she allowed the shiver to pass up her spine, dancing away as if the Newfoal had just become radioactive. I’m here, Princess. Go ahead and teleport on my magical signature.

Thank you, incoming, and in a flash, Celestia was standing right at the head of the Newfoal’s bed. The sheets promptly fell away, revealing those empty little eyes again, and Twilight suppressed another shiver at the Newfoal’s widening grin. She had read the reports of failing IQ tests and lost memories, but to actually be here, standing with one of them, knowing what they had once been…well, it made her grateful to still have the capacity to shiver, to look into those eyes and have the capacity to know something was wrong.

“Princess…” the fake pony started, but Celestia clenched a hoof around its muzzle.

“You need to stay quiet,” she whispered quickly, holding her other hoof to her lips and speaking as she would with a foal. “Your princess requires it, understand?”

The Newfoal nodded, its massive eyes lighting up with a hollow semblance that might vaguely be called joy. Twilight turned away. To think somepony thought this thing was a preferable alternative to the intelligent beings she had interacted with on the ship…

Celestia pulled her hooves back, and the Newfoal remained silent. Just as planned, though it bounced in its bed and made the old springs squeak. Both princesses exchanged sighs of relief. So far, so good, now they just had to get out of here before those “Tacky-one Inhibitors” picked up the magical spike and alerted the humans. Celestia touched her horn to the Newfoal’s forehead. “Remember, quiet,” she whispered again, diverting her attention to her magic. Twilight held her breath. In a few minutes, they would know if these creatures could be saved, or if they were lost forever.

Mrs. Bradford was not an extraordinary woman. She had grown up just south of Essex in a little cottage outside of town, having lived a completely unremarkable childhood before moving to Sandford Village. There, she had staked out a small slice of life for herself in the form of a used bookstore, which had become something of a local landmark over the years, and had provided more than enough income for her to survive in the two-bedroom flat she lived in upstairs. In addition, it was where she had met a young man named Jonas Bradford on a rainy day, when he had ducked in using his briefcase to shield himself from the rain. After discovering a shared passion for books and reading (though he was more a lover of fanfiction, to her endless dismay), the two were wed that same year at a perfectly standard ceremony at the Parish Church of St. James. They had embarked on a honeymoon to one of the Scottish Isles, where they had not only consummated their love, but she had talked him into wearing a kilt for her camera.

The next thirty-five years had been the exact same standard fare, not to say that it was always boring. The pair had their ups, their downs, their days when some stupid little quarrel over who’s turn it was to empty the garbage devolved into night-spanning arguments (though never shouting matches that would alert the neighbors), and their days when they might just sit in their reading room, books in their laps and hands wrapped tightly around one another. Life had been perfectly standard for Mrs. Bradford. Just about the only thing that was odd about her now could be that she was legally considered a widow, though her husband was still very much alive. Even if the legal system claimed that he was as gone as the dodo.

No, Mrs. Bradford would have none of that legal jazz, and had even fought tooth and nail to keep her marital status as “married.” She’d lost, of course. Too many “conversion bureau widows” that just wanted to move on with their lives when their loved one had gone out one night and come back as an empty shells with four legs. Not her. There was no way she could ever leave her Jonesy. So after checking him into the infamous Bethlem Hospital, she had made it her weekly duty to see him at least once. Always with a bouquet of daisies, and always with the framed picture of that one glorious weekend in the Scottish highlands where he had worn a kilt.

Currently, Mrs. Bradford was walking past the receptionist’s desks, towards the comfort-care sectors of the hospital. A hospital which, when she had first approached it, had filled her with both relief and disappointment. Relief that it wasn’t the massive, gothic structure she had seen in her mind’s eye since a child reading about it, but disappointment that the structure looked closer to a high school built in the 1950s than a world-famous medical facility. Sure, it was nice that her Jonesy had such a quaint setting in which to live out his life with his “condition,” but still…

She was babbling in her own mind now, filling herself with meaningless chatter to keep her thoughts off the task at hand. She sighed, straightened out her sun hat, “taking a breather” as her Jonesy would have called it. She didn’t cry. Not any more, at least. At her age there just wasn’t any more room for tears. No, she just kept her attention on the here and now, looking around at the receptionist’s area.

A child sat in one of the seats next to his solemn-looking mother, holding a balloon declaring “MISS YOU DADDY” in big, block letters. At the desk next to her, two men chatted amiably, yet frantically with the receptionist. As if something was wrong, but nothing her fault. Like a couple professionals trying to work with somebody towards a common goal. It struck her oddly: a Sikh Indian with one of those turban things wrapped around his head working with a nice-looking young man in a coat much too bulky for the weather. Who was that other young man, a yank? Accent sounded like it. She tried to listen in, but could only overhear so much gibberish about “Tachyon Inhibitors” and “fluxes in the particle field” before she tuned out again. Much too technical for her, thank you very much. Leave jargon like that to the youngsters.

“Emily Bradford?”

She perked at her name, staring up at the slender man in the doctor’s coat standing next to her, peering down at her through thick, bottle-rim glasses perched on a massive nose. She sighed.

“Just Mrs. Bradford would do, Jerry,” she said. “You know that by now.”

His lips curled into a thin smile that faded almost immediately. “Follow me, please.”

“I know the way.”

“Standard procedure. You know that by now.” He replied, turning to walk through the nearest door. She sighed, gathering up her tiny bundle and following him. She couldn’t blame the young doctor for being so curt. There was no way this was the highlight of his day. Still, a bit more courtesy would certainly be nice.

The usual bustle of activity that apparently filled every hospital dropped off as soon as they stepped into the comfort care unit. Despite the bright colors on the walls and the natural lighting pouring in through the windows, she couldn’t help but feel her heart sink with each step that echoed off the long, lonely hallways. Her nose gained a few more wrinkles at the stench of antiseptic heavy in the air. Around her, the only sounds were the beeps of the EKG monitors and clicks of whirring machinery. No shuffling about or snoring for the patients here. In a way, that was so much worse. Knowing that there were people (sort of) here and still being so quiet…

She shook her head again as the doctor led her to the receptionist’s desk, where a nurse that had obviously been playing solitaire scanned them with alert, hazel eyes.

“Badge?” The young guy asked.

“No need,” the doctor said, waving his hand.

The nurse smiled sheepishly, a smile that seemed to light up his entire face. He’s so young, Mrs. Bradford mused. I wonder how long he’ll stay that way, working in this place?

“Sorry Doctor, new security measures,” the nurse said. “After Detroit, the UN’s not takin’ any chances.”

“Of course,” the doctor grumbled, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small piece of laminated plastic, which the nurse happily scanned before waving them along. The pair nodded their thanks before continuing down the corridor, a walk Mrs. Bradford was becoming only too familiar with. They completed it in silence: everything that needed to be said between the young doctor and the old woman had been said long ago. Now, there was just the same farewell.

The Doctor nodded to her as he held the door open, and she nodded her thanks back as she shuffled inside, the fresh bouquet of daisies in one hand and the framed picture in the other.

“I’m going to try and give you the usual full hour,” he said. “But with the UN coming down on all the Newfoal colonies like this, I might not be able to bend the half-hour limit this time.”

“I understand,” she said. “Thank you.”

He nodded, starting to close the door to leave her alone for her weekly ritual, when a loud thump sounded from the end of the hallway.

The Doctor lifted his eyes as they widened with surprise at the sound of the male nurse’s voice: “Hey, you can’t go in…”

“UNCDI, bullshit we can’t!” Came the reply, followed by the heavy thudding of shoes on tile.

“Wha…” the good Doctor managed to say before nearly being knocked right off his feet by the large man in the turban she’d seen in the lobby. Nearly falling back in fear, she almost didn’t notice the American when he bustled in behind him, his hands wrapped around…was that a gun!? Saints preserve her, she didn’t know he was that much of an American!

The pair shuffled into the room, their eyes darting around every corner, scanning every surface. She steadied herself against the wall, watching them circle the room methodically. Then, that old British stiff upper lip kicked in, and she glared.

“Is there a reason you two gentlemen have just barged into my husband’s room unannounced!?” She barked, standing up to her full height, which only came to the turban-wearing man’s chest.

Both men paused, then looked to her, as if seeing her for the first time. They both blinked, then the American hid his gun away (and thank goodness, bloody things always made her nervous) and the turban-wearer’s fingers shifted strangely, as if shoving something into his sleeves.

“Er…sorry for the intrusion, ma’am,” the American said calmly, raising his hands. “We just detected a magical fluctuation originating from this room, and…er…”

“…after Detroit, the UN doesn’t want to take chances,” the turban-wearer said with a million-dollar smile.

Unimpressed, she cocked an eyebrow at them. “And did it occur to either of you fine gentlemen that this could be because this room contains a Newfoal unicorn?” She asked dryly.

Both men noted the little teal body curled up in the sheets, staring with eyes half-closed at the blank television screen at the foot of the bed. They each shared a quick glance. “Er…right ma’am, but if you’ll recall, it was a Newfoal unicorn that aided the pegasus behind Detroit.”

“Does my Jonesy look like he’s about to attack anyone?” She asked, still politely.

Both men sighed, the American rubbing the back of his head. “Ma’am, with all due respect, I’m quite sure that unicorn in Detroit didn’t look like it was going to attack anybody.”

“Well, I’ll give a shout if my husband does anything untoward,” she said dryly. “Until then, I would appreciate it if we could have our weekly meetup in peace.”

“Er…of course, ma’am,” the American said. “Sorry.”

“Our deepest apologies, madam,” the man in the turban bowed, then followed his partner back into the hallway, the pair closing the door behind them. Mrs. Bradford was alone with her Jonesy at last.

She sighed as she returned to her weekly ritual. That had been quite enough excitement for her that week, and now hopefully she could finish things here in peace. She noted the empty vase on the bedside table and felt momentarily grateful that somebody had had the courtesy to throw away last week’s daisies at some point during the week. Perhaps this generation hadn’t completely forgotten its manners after all, or so she thought as she arranged the flowers in their place.

“What do you think, Jonesy?” She sighed as she set the framed picture on the table, freeing up both her hands so she could make the final arrangements for the flowers. “Do you suppose this generation might be completely hopeless?”

She was so absorbed with the flowers that she didn’t notice his head turn to the side and cock slightly, his cartoonishly-large eyes gazing up at her. Then they traveled down her body to the picture frame on the table, and the Newfoal grimaced. “Well, I don’t know about the current generation,” he said, a hoof extending towards the picture. “But bloody hell, Emmy, do you have to bring that damned picture everywhere you go? You know how I hate it.”

The vase tipped and bounced off the floor, spewing water and scattering the flowers. Mrs. Bradford didn’t pick it up.

Author's Note

I was so tempted to call this chapter something stupid, like "Jonesing for a change."

Also, Mrs. Bradford does reflect my views on Bethlem. Place does look like a school from the fifties. That's nice and all, but dammit, is anyone else disappointed that it ISN'T a castle perched atop a cliff with a constant thunderstorm flashing behind it?

Chapter XX: "A Couple Of Harmless Diplomats"

David settled into the driver’s seat, still a little freaked out that it was on the right side of the car. Even after nearly a year in Europe, that part still hadn’t quite sunk in. Akshat was right behind him, sliding into the passenger’s seat with his phone pressed to his ear while David started them up. “Well,” Dave sighed. “That was a complete waste of time.”

“Speaking of,” Akshat put in, hanging up the call. “That was Anton. That cell phone trace for that Marine’s phone dead-ended. Whole damn military showing up in the arse-end of nowhere just to find a dead phone in a cave.”

“Heh. It’d be funnier if the fate of the world wasn’t in the balance,” David snickered, settling behind the wheel as they pulled away from the curb. He could just imagine a full platoon of dudes in complete combat gear, rifles at the ready, thermal vision probably on as they descended into the darkness of some forgotten cave, weapons trained on a little hunk of flickering plastic on the ground. “Well, at least it got us off the boat. I dunno about you, but any time I can spend away from Admiral Peterson and his UN-jackboots is good time.”

“Careful, you are talking to one of those UN jackboots,” Akshat snickered.

“Oh, shut up, if you’re a UN goon, I’m the King of England,” David guffawed. Akshat grinned back. The guy wouldn’t have been Dave’s first choice for a travelling buddy back in their old hometown (that honor still belonged to lovely little Lisa), but he was friendly enough, even after the little turban incident.

Dear God, had that been just a couple months ago? Seemed so much longer, in a different world perhaps. One where Equestria was a neutralized threat and magic remained under heavy restraints to dull its edge. Now, that world was gone, and a very different one had taken its place.

In hindsight, maybe sitting bored in an office eight hours a day hadn’t been so bad.

Ugh, he needed to get his mind off this, to think of anything but this crazy shit. His mind went to his partner, and figured hey, even small talk with a friend had to be better than imagining what kind of crazy shit could be going on in Dusseldorf or back on that fucking alcoholic’s ship. “Hey, Akshat?”

“Yes?” The Sikh was curled up, apparently intent on taking a nap. Well, too bad. It was a forty-five minute drive back to Heathrow, and then another long flight to catch a chopper back to the Illustrious, David was not spending that time alone with his thoughts.

“What was it like? Back home, I mean? What’s home to you?” An odd question, considering all the time he’d had to ask, but after the infamous “turban” incident, David had always found ways to avoid asking. Or, perhaps more accurately, to avoid Akshat

“Hmm…nice,” Akshat said, turning over in his seat. He’d obviously resigned himself to the realization that he would not be spending the journey back in blissful slumber. “Just…nice. Not what you’d call first-class, yankee-doodle, but not like those mud huts I am sure you have seen on CNN.”

David smiled at that. “Nice. Sounds…nice,” he said awkwardly, suddenly recalling a glaring moment from Cele…Target Alpha’s escape. A moment when the Sikh had moved with his blades using the kind of skill that only came from years of practice. “I take it some of that time involved knife-throwing?”

He heard Akshat shift uncomfortably in his seat. “A little,” he said. “When I was a boy, the village elders decreed that we all learn the proper handling of the Kirpan. They personally supervised our development with them, so don’t go forming the image of us just hacking away at each other like barbarians from age twelve.”

“Ah,” David said, a little hurt that Akshat would even think that image would cross his mind as anything more than a stupid subconscious joke. “So, you kids only threw knives at targets and not at each other, right?”

There was a long pause, and then, a tiny, stupid smile alit on Akshat’s face. “Usually. When the Elders were standing right there.”

David had to copy that smile. Apparently, boys would be boys no matter where you went. Which, of course, was just a nice way of saying: “the entire generation would have probably wiped itself out if it wasn’t for the older generation standing right behind them at all times.”

He was going to ask something else, really he was. And maybe then Akshat would have asked him a question and before he knew it, the miracle of male bonding would be well underway. Unfortunately, his cell phone rang, and as a man directly on the UNCDI’s payroll, he was obligated to answer it. He didn’t even look at the screen as he pressed the phone to his ear, though if he had he would have seen the “Unknown Caller” flashing there, and would have prepared himself for a speedy hang-up for what was almost certainly a telemarketer or a recording promising him the cruise of a lifetime.

“Hello?” He asked.

Instead of a woman asking if he knew about the miracle cure that could take ten inches off his waistline and add them to his penis, David got a sudden and garbled voice screaming into his ear: “Hit the brakes, now! That’s an order, soldier!”

In a split-second, David the eager diplomat slid out of the little driver’s seat in his mind, and David the Marine slipped right back in, grabbing the wheel as if he hadn’t been on a five-year siesta. That Marine heard the voice of a superior officer commanding him (nevermind that it could have been a practical joker at a payphone with incredible luck) and immediately slammed his foot onto the brakes. Tires screeched, the car swayed. Akshat only just managed to remain in his seat by bracing himself against the dashboard, both men’s seatbelts digging into their shoulders. “David, what the fu-“

He never got the chance to finish his sentence. A black SUV came roaring out of the nearest alleyway, obviously intent on smashing into the little sedan’s side using the UNCDI logo on David’s door as a bullseye. Fortunately, with the brakes applied, the SUV’s aim was thrown off and only managed to slam into the driver’s side wheel well, still exerting enough force to spin the sedan around a full one-eighty.

David thought he screamed. Or perhaps it was Akshat, who could possibly have told amidst the chaos of those interminable milliseconds? Shattered glass filled the air as the driver’s side windows shattered, the sickening crunch of metal on metal blasting David’s thoughts out of his head with its sheer volume. The car reared up on two wheels before crashing back down, leaving the dazed diplomats spinning in their seats. Still, it could have been worse. Another second’s hesitation on those brakes, and David’s brains would probably be a red and gray smear all over the driver’s side window.

With the car settled, David the diplomat took a quick peek outside, inspecting the caved-in hood and twisted body where the engine block had been, which now oozed oil like blood out of roadkill. His stomach twisted at the thought of explaining that to his superiors, what little of his mind that wasn’t dazed or spinning already dreading the conversation. Another part flared with anger at the driver of the SUV. What kind of asshole just burst out of an alleyway like that without looking both ways!? What kind of damned idiot driver did that!? What, was he trying to reenact his favorite alleyway chase scenes!? David oughta…

All those thoughts froze as David looked in the rearview mirror at the SUV, and the diplomat slid back out of the driver’s seat to let the Marine back in. Why? Simply because innocent drivers in accidents came stumbling out of their cars, cell phones in hands, babbling about how they ‘didn’t see them.’ Innocent drivers did not walk out of their cars with three of their friends, all dressed with Kevlar vests, mismatched army camo, and black balaclavas, carrying aging but still serviceable Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles. But that’s just what this fine group of gentlemen did.

David the Marine was quick to gather his wits again, but not quick enough. Before he even realized what was happening, one of the men had bashed in Akshat’s window and dragged the delirious Sikh out. David watched Akshat vanish through a cloud of shattered safety glass in awe, but not enough awe to keep him from reaching down his side, his hand trailing down his leg to the tiny little gift his father had given him before seeing him off to his new life as a UN diplomat.

The Colt M1911 was a damn-near masterpiece. More a work of art than a weapon, in David’s opinion. Genuine sandalwood grip, customized for his hand, with a nickel-plated slide embossed with the words “The Preston Express” on the side. David had found it corny at the time, though that didn’t stop him from taking the weapon to the range every Saturday evening to keep his skills sharp. It even came with interchangeable barrels to allow it to shoot .45 caliber or 9mm rounds, though Dave usually kept the .45 barrel in place, with a magazine full of hollow-point rounds just waiting to be unleashed. Sure, convincing the British government to allow someone to just walk around as they would with a CCW back in the states had been a bitch, but totally worth it in Dave’s humble opinion. Besides, what was the point of UNCDI clout if one didn’t use it for a few little concessions?

Now, his opinion that the effort it took to keep the pistol on him whenever he felt like was well worth it only solidified. The fact that the hospital hadn’t had a metal detector, which could have led to all sorts of awkward questions from Akshat, also crossed his mind. He thanked God Almighty, or whoever was listening, for every tiny coincidence that let him keep his favorite weapon as he drew it and waited. He didn’t have to wait long for the sound of scraping glass: the gunman using the butt of his rifle to clear away the rest of the safety glass while using one hand to tug at Dave’s arm. That tug was Dave’s signal. It would be now, or winding up on Youtube with his head cut off.

The Colt was barely a flash of silver in the late-day sun, David lashing out like a coiled spring to sit up in his seat and press the barrel of the weapon against the gunman’s forehead. The man didn’t even have time to realize what was about to happen before a hollow-point slammed through his skull, his brains exploding out the back of his head through the peach-sized hole the round left. Grabbing the man’s body by the collar of the Kevlar vest, David hauled him up, keeping the dead man in place as a shield as he surveyed the street behind him.

The man’s buddy stared back at him, eyes wide. His mouth dropped open, a scream dying on his lips as he bought the rifle up in a panicked attempt to save his own sorry skin. Of course, in his panic, he only managed a spray of bullets in the already mortally-wounded engine, earning a few more spurts of oil for his trouble as Dave emptied four rounds in a close grouping in the man’s chest. The second gunman pulled off a half-circle as he fell, sending a couple 7.62 rounds into the backs of his friend’s legs, not that he minded at that point.

That was two men down in under five seconds. Yes, Dave the Marine was back in business, but that still left two men with something near and dear to him hauling ass to wherever-the-fuck, probably a small, windowless basement to spew their anti-UN hate while decapitating their prize. That was not going to happen, not if the Marine had anything to say about it. He released his grip on the man with a hole in his head, allowing him to slump to the pavement while Dave slipped through the hole the dead man had so graciously cleared for him.

He peered up in time to watch a van, an Econoline by the looks of it, screech into the street, once again driven by some asshole in a balaclava. He primed himself and managed a few hurried shots at the newcomer, but all that accomplished was a broken rear window, which did nothing to stop the gunmen as they bundled Akshat up, tossing him roughly into the back before diving in themselves. Then, David had to leap for cover behind the ruined SUV as one of the attackers took a few potshots out the shattered rear window, bullets pinging off the metal.

Gasping for air, Dave wasted no time rising to his feet, pistol at the ready. Then, with a loud groan, he realized just how miserable his situation was. He’d never been the target of those last few potshots, the holes of steam pouring out the SUV’s engine block told him that much. He looked up and down the empty street, taking stock of his situation. He had two cars: one riddled with more bullets than a Kentucky firing range, the other ready only for the scrapyard. He couldn’t hotwire a vehicle, and he was absolutely alone in the street. The wail of sirens met his ear, but they were at least five minutes away, if the time it had taken to drive from the hospital was any indication.

With no other options left to him, David Preston, aka David the Marine, sighed and started down the road at a dead sprint, barely aware of the way his dress shoes slipped and stumbled awkwardly over the pavement, eyes set straight forward.

Thomas Cavanaugh didn’t think he was a bad man. People rarely did, even those responsible for car bombings that had left mothers and their babies fused together, their skin nearly melted away by the sheer heat of a massive fireball. But hey, that woman had to have known the risks; you didn’t just go around, pushing your stroller right by a viable UN target like a freakin’ embassy! And after all, it was all for a good cause, right? Freeing the world of UN tyranny was what it was all about, or at least, that’s what he told the new recruits, along with all the other thunder and lightning about ridding the world of those that had nearly doomed it five years before.

Of course, in those speeches he always left out the part about his joining the Human Liberation Front the day after the UN signed that damned treaty with those monsters, those fucking animals, those things that had threatened his entire species and were now being allowed to rebuild when the UN should have been working on a way to close up whatever mistake in the fabric of space-time had allowed them to stay in the first place! Or better yet, maybe the UN could have finished the job. That’s what humanity did with smallpox, after all. When something from nature threatened all of humanity, you killed it! You didn’t console the rabid dog or the feral wolf to help them through their issues; you put a bullet in their fucking heads! End of discussion!

Okay, Thomas was an angry person, he would freely admit to that. Still, it was hard not to be in times like these. Especially now, after they’d lost so much. Two more of his brothers had fallen, one of them his best friend since primary school, and for what? Some sand-nigger the UN would probably be glad to get rid of!? The other one, the Yank, had been the big fluffy bunny at the top of the prize wall, and here they were, driving away with a water bottle from the bottom row.

“Aww shit,” Brian was freaking out. Of course he was. He was the rookie after all, the recruit given an easy assignment to test his nerve. The kid peeled off his balaclava and slammed his Kalashnikov against the ground, peering back through the shattered rear window. “Aww shit…what the fuck was that!?”

“That was your first assignment, kid,” Thomas grumbled, wishing for a cigarette.

“No, what the fuck was all that!?” He gasped, his breath coming in near-hyperventilating wheezes. “For fuck’s sake! They were a couple of unguarded diplomats! What the fuck, huh!? What the fuck!?”

“Kid, calm the fuck down, you’re acting like a right ponce,” Thomas said, still clenching his own Kalashnikov just in case the raghead on the floor between them tried anything.

“And we left them!” The kid shrieked, turning an accusing glare on Thomas that immediately made the older man want to pound his face in. “We left Bob and Jacob back there to die! What the fuck, man!? Why didn’t you even try!? Why didn’t you…”

At that, Thomas’s hand darted forward and locked around Brian’s nose, crushing the bridge between the knuckles of his middle and ring finger. The kid gasped in surprise and pain, but remained still, just as he was trained.

“Robert and Jacob knew what they were getting into when they joined the cause,” Thomas said evenly, relieving just a tiny bit of pressure just as felt the cartilage in his grip start to give. “Soldiers lay down their lives every day. This is a war, young one, I thought you understood that.”

“Ah! I do! Ah!” Brian gasped, arms tensing and releasing, caught between trying to claw away at Thomas and knowing the terrible consequences which would follow such defiance.

“Hmph, see that you remember it,” Thomas kept the pressure up until a couple trickles of blood leaked from the kid’s nostrils, then finally released him, allowing him to fall to the floor and cradle his injured nose. “Robert and Jacob were dead by the time we realized anything had happened anyway. Their families will give them funerals, you know that. The only thing we could have done was collect their bodies.”

Brian was still clenching his nose. He was still in too much pain to take the words to heart, Tom knew that, but later he would. Just like his mentor had made him understand how that woman and her baby were just collateral damage. Happened with every war, just like soldiers died in every war. The victors were the ones who could keep fighting despite the losses. Everyone in the group eventually figured that out, or they wound up at the bottom of the Thames with a brick of cement around their feet and a stiletto in their backs. Right now, Brian was looking like he might be one of the latter group, but Thomas couldn’t be sure. You just didn’t know: the kid might turn it around at some point, who could really tell?

The raghead stirred, and Thomas was quick to draw the .38 revolver from his hip holster and jam it against the back of his head. “You just sit tight, sand-nigger,” he hissed. “We’ll get where we’re goin’, but you so much as fuckin’ move and I’ll spray your brains all over the bloody wall.”

“Yeah, w-what he said!” Brian put in, trying to earn a little bit of his pride back despite still clenching his bleeding nose. For a little extra credit, he threw in a kick to the brown one’s ribs, earning a grunt of pain. He looked up at Thomas with a big smile on his face, like a puppy looking for approval. Thomas threw him a little smile. Sure, no harm in that, right?

And then a quick, confused grimace crossed his face as his gun hand went numb. Thomas looked down, rather shocked to see a small stick of metal growing from the middle of his hand. The brown man now glared at him fiercely, his piercing eyes locked on him.

“What the fu-“ Brian started, but the raghead rolled to his stomach and his hand darted to his belt, faster than anything Thomas had seen, faster than should’ve been possible, or maybe that was just the shock from the pain in his hand messing with his mind. And then a handle just like the one in his own hand sprouted from Brian’s throat. The kid fell back, clutching at the knife as blood gushed down the front of his neck. Thomas started to tell him not to touch it, to leave it in so that some of the blood would remain, but it was all for naught. The kid’s hand slumped to the side and his eyes glazed over, his shirt now absolutely soaked in blood.

“WHAT THE FUCKING SHI-“ the driver started. In the rush that had come after snatching this brown one, this demon now slicing his way through them with practiced ease, Thomas had almost forgotten him. One hand on the steering wheel, the driver lunged back with a Glock in his free hand, letting off a couple of wild shots that only perforated the van’s roof before the raghead grabbed the arm, worked the pistol into Thomas’s direction, and forced the trigger a couple times.

The last thing Thomas ever saw was the brown-skinned demon slicing through the artery in the driver’s gun arm before the knife twirled in his hand, opening his throat. Then the van slammed into something, a parked car by the sounds of metal on metal, and the flesh binding the bullet wounds in Thomas’s chest came undone. He died as the man threw him aside to crawl out the side door. Wha-what were we up against!? He thought: he’d lost the ability to speak aloud, even to himself. What the hell did those bastards send us against!?

They were the last thoughts he would ever have before he slid into a dark place where a baby cried constantly from its mother’s limp arms for the rest of time.

Author's Note

Yeah, sorry these two took so long people. Work. Life. A half-dozen stupid one-shots and assorted other projects distracting me. All the usual BS.

Chapter XXI: Stirrings

In a tiny village outside New Delhi, the former matriarch of the Bhat family, now a Newfoal, suddenly darts out of bed. She spends the next five minutes ramming her head against the oaken table while frothing at the mouth. By the time family members are able to restrain her, she has caused irreversible brain damage to herself courtesy of the bit of skull knocked back into her brain.

On the infamous Route 66, the driver of a gas tanker finally loses a battle with sleep deprivation and closes his eyes for a solid twenty seconds. His truck slams into the guardrail and annihilates five lanes of traffic, triggering a chain reaction pile-up which ignites his cargo. By the time rescuers arrive, most bodies are charred beyond all possible recognition, and some never to be identified in what will become the worst multi-car accident to take place in the nation in the past twenty years.

In the specially-administered Equestrian zone, King Shining Armor is awoken from a restless sleep to the news that a British peacekeeper has gone insane, killing three of his comrades and twelve Equestrian citizens before blowing himself up with a hand grenade.

And deep in her cell far beneath the Russian wastes, the princess worked. The disgusting little insects above thought she was restrained, they thought she was totally under their control. Of course, they didn’t know about the ripples, the subtle changes in the magical ambience which allowed her some influence. It took so much time to build up, oh yes, but she had nothing but time down here. Down here, she had all the time she needed to gather some trickle of magic, to make herself at one with the sea of it which flowed through all of creation. Sure, she was but a buoy in a turbulent sea that encompassed reality itself, but if she used her meager influence just so, if she applied just the right pressure where it was needed, the ripples she made could be seen all over the world.

The princess flexed her wings as high as the chains allowed it to go, and a Newfoal at an asylum in the heart of Paris bit the finger off one of its caretakers, chewing gleefully and still smiling despite the blood squeezing out through its teeth.

The princess inhaled, and exhaled, puffing her cheeks out with her breath, and in an office building in Buenos Aires, a man with an Uzi in his briefcase and an undiagnosed case of paranoid schizophrenia whispering in his head decided that today would be the day he gave in to the voices.

The princess smiled and trembled, shaking the forefeathers in her wings just so, and managed one last ripple for the night. Not far away, in Moscow, the children awoke screaming in their beds, tortured by nightmares of burning alive, some developing a deeply-rooted arsonphobia which would last the rest of their lives. The princess sighed. All small stuff, piddling things. Not bad considering her meager powers, but still not her best. No, that had been just a few hours ago, when she’d used nearly all the power she’d built up in the last five years to send a single message to the Newfoals of Dusseldorf.

She smiled and sank to her haunches, breathing heavily. She imagined that other, that imposter, that silly little cunt who had dared raise a hoof in defiance of her wishes, sitting across from her. No, better yet, kneeling across from her, horn shattered, body covered in cuts and gashes, maybe even an eye poked out, all while sobbing and begging for mercy.

The princess smiled at that thought. “This will teach you to steal one from me, you bitch,” she muttered, then she curled up in a ball for her night’s rest, satisfied in her hard day’s work.

2350 HOURS
A SMALL CAVE IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND

OUTSKIRTS OF LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM

“So it was true,” Twilight said breathlessly. “The human mind was just being suppressed, not destroyed.”

“Just as we theorized,” Celestia said, gauging her student’s responses from across the flickering embers of their campfire. “The soul cannot be destroyed, merely eclipsed. This was true for my sister during her time as Nightmare Moon: she too had a far more dominant mind consuming her thoughts while the pony I knew remained underneath. It’s a form of mind control on a mass scale, far more sophisticated than any mind control spell I’ve ever encountered before, but still, it can be understood, broken down, and reversed.”

Twilight nodded, her large eyes suddenly watering.

“Twilight,” Celestia said, reverting from teacher to mother as easily as flicking a switch. “What’s wrong?”

“All those articles, all those deaths,” she whimpered. “That monster used them as living shields, throwing them into suicide charges without another thought. And all this time, all this time they’ve been kept from their families, they could’ve been saved…”

Celestia circled the fire to embrace her former student. “The past is in the past,” she whispered, a wing splaying out over Twilight’s shoulders. “We can mourn the dead when things have been put to rights, and we will do so alongside the humans. Right now, though, they do not require aid in dealing with their grief. Right now, they need somepony to recover what can be saved.”

Twilight nodded, wiping at her nose with the back of her hoof like a little filly. “I know, but is it even worth it in the end? It took you so long and so much power just to save one, what’s that one compared to the multitudes that have been lost?”

Celestia’s wing tightened around Twilight. “Oh Twilight, how can you say that?”

“I know…every life is something special, and we have to cherish them all, but after everything that’s been lost…” she couldn’t even bring herself to finish her sentence, even as Celestia leaned in close to nuzzle the top of her head.

“Twilight, dear, that one is so much more,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Think about it: just that one we saved today is probably someone’s best friend, and possibly a father, and/or a grandfather, an uncle, a co-worker, a…”

“Okay, I see your point,” Twilight said, a tiny smile crossing her face.

Celestia nodded. “Everyone we save is so much more than a tally mark. Remember that, Twilight.”

“I will, Princess, I will,” Twilight said, embracing for a final hug before Celestia pulled away, trotting to the mouth of the cave. She gazed out over the human city, this “London.” It was so alien, so lit up, and so loud, yet the people here spoke in an accent that was unmistakably of Trottingham. At the same time, she couldn’t help but notice other little similarities during the short time she had journeyed through the city with Twilight: the daughters and sons pulling at parent’s hands, the obnoxious drivers dominating the roads (albeit in horseless chariots), and every now and again, young lovers meeting on street corners or chatting in cafes beside older couples sharing a quiet evening meal.

“Not so different,” she muttered. “Why? Why had she wanted to destroy them?”

“Perhaps she was evil?” Twilight Sparkle alerted Celestia to her existence, leaning down for a mouthful of the foul-tasting grass at their hooves, cringing as she tried to stomach their dinner. “Ugh, whatever seasoning they’re using on this grass is just awful.”

“Evil,” Celestia muttered breathlessly, her eyes still locked on the cityscape towering in the distance. “Could you elaborate, my dearest student?”

“Well, Luna had Nightmare Moon, right?” Twilight pointed out. “What if, in her universe, that version of you was overwhelmed with a similar evil? A dark presence similar to the Nightmare, like…Scorching Sun?”

Celestia let out a sort of half-chortle. “While I commend the creativity in naming, I doubt the theory. What little we know about the ‘other’ Equestria is that until it’s collision with Earth, it was much like our own land, though I did find alarmingly few references to any other princesses,” her gaze fell into the sputtering flame between them, her eyes looking ancient and wistful. She let out a long, belabored sigh, the fire’s light dancing over her ivory coat. “No, I’m afraid whatever created this monstrous other occurred more naturally, perhaps gradually and over time.”

Twilight paused in her labored chewing for a while to look up at her mentor with eyes the size of dinner plates. “But Princess, how could you naturally become like that…evil creature? That monster? How could that even be possible?”

“I have lived a very long time, Twilight, and one thing I have learned is that ponies can change, for better and for worse,” Celestia sighed, curling up in the grass. “The thousands of years I have lived would leave plenty of time for me to evolve into something else.”

“I-I don’t believe it,” Twilight said, rising to her hooves. “I can’t believe it’s even possible you might become that monster!”

Celestia would have gone on, would have reaffirmed that believe it or not, some things were simply there, and you could choose to accept them or live in ignorant denial, but now was not the time for a lesson. “Get some rest, Twilight. We have a lot of flying to do tomorrow.”

Twilight looked a bit startled at the insistence she go to sleep, as if she were a small filly again, but then being in the presence of Princess Celestia had a tendency to make any mare feel like a filly no matter what. “Okay Princess,” she said, curling up on the grass next to her.

Celestia smiled reassuringly. “I shall be right behind you in the world of dreams, I just have another few things to check on,” she said.

Twilight nodded, Celestia’s disarming smile going far towards making her relax into the grass, smoothing it out into a makeshift bed. She stretched out and curled her wings around herself, relaxing immediately. “Good night, Princess.”

“Good night, Twilight,” Celestia said, sharing a quick nuzzle and curling in beside her. She waited there for a few hours, only moving after she heard Twilight’s breathing even out into the slow pace that could only be sleep. She sighed, letting out all her frustration into the cool night’s air. Twilight, like the rest of her kingdom, didn’t know just how close the path of darkness always was. Perhaps, in another world, the changeling invasion had ended with the genocide of the entire changeling race, or perhaps Discord’s statue was shattered into a thousand pieces the moment he was immobilized, or…

Cry to some nonexistent thing just like I did every night after you killed my Twily!

She shuddered, and reached into her pack. She knew what she was looking for the moment her hoof ran over its surface. Reaching in, she pulled out a wadded bundle, which she gently unfolded into the magazine article she’d torn out of a magazine called “Time” while Twilight’s back was turned in their hunt through the library. “Interview with a Prince: How One Stallion went from Captain of the Guard to Rebel Leader to Rebuilder of a Devastated Nation.” She raised an eyebrow. Certainly not the most well-written title she’d ever seen for an article, but at least it had caught her eye. And it alerted her to the possible answers it might hold.

Celestia, of course, was no fool. She knew the answers this article might provide would most certainly not be all that pleasant. Especially if this “other” had committed the unspeakable. Did she really need to know this? The other version of her was locked away, would the answers this article provided really help her and Twilight?

Before she could make up her mind, something massive moved inside her skull, as if she were standing just inside the surf at a beach and had been caught by a rogue wave. Her head rose and fell with it, and she came out gasping for air, barely staying on her hooves.

Twilight darted up next to her, stumbling to her hooves with her head cocked weirdly. “Wh-what was that!?”

“I…I don’t know…magic on such a level…” Celestia could barely even speak, though she did manage to stuff the wad of glossy papers into her pack again. She was so overwhelmed by the onslaught of information that it was hard to channel what she had just experienced into any sort of thought process, much less start breaking it down. Something very fundamental had just shifted in the magical plane, and its effects were spreading. But to where? For what purpose?

She knew a moment later, after shifting her focus from her mind to her heart.

“Twilight, I’m sorry but rest will have to wait,” she stated, her eyes blazing with determination as she turned southward.

“P-princess?”

“We’re needed Twilight,” Celestia grimaced. “Something has just shifted in the magical plane. I can only guess what, but we have a direction and an obligation to fulfill.”

“O-of course, Princess,” Twilight fanned her wings, and the two lifted off into the evening sky, swooping towards the English Channel for parts unknown.

Author's Note

Next chapter should be up in a few minutes, and a couple more after that should be incoming pretty soon :)

Chapter XXII: "A Couple More Harmless Diplomats"

0800 HOURS
UNCDI-RUN NEWFOAL COLONY, NEWFOAL POPULATION: ~12,000

DUSSELDORF, NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA, GERMANY

Francis stepped out of the Humvee into the brisk, morning air, letting out a contented sigh. ”{Home sweet home,}” he muttered in his native tongue, delighting in the hard-packed dirt crunching beneath his shoes and knowing that for once, it was German dirt, with a German driver that he had been chatting amiably with during the drive into the compound. He was no frothing nationalist as some foreigners like to think of his people, his ongoing relationship with his coworker was a testament to that, but when one was away from home for so long, one yearned for certain things one took for granted before.

By contrast, Andre immediately clambered out and squinted in the sun, donning a set of designer shades and sighing. “{Let’s get this over with,}” he whispered. “{I do not wish to stay in this place for longer than we have to.}”

“{Oh, come now, Andy! I would be more supportive if this was a trip to your homeland!}”

At that, Andre smiled, took a quick look behind to make sure nobody was watching, then gave the German a quick peck on the cheek. “{It’s not that,}” he whispered harshly. “{It’s where we are, what we’re surrounded by.}”

The German’s face fell. He did a quick scan of their surroundings and drank in the rows of tiny apartment complexes surrounding the concrete UN compound. If this were anywhere else, it would be easy to think this was just another low-income part of the Dusseldorf suburbs, if one ignored the eerie quiet and the heavily-guarded concrete fortress at its center. One would have to know that this was, in fact, the largest Newfoal colony in Europe to understand the sheer scale of it, and to understand why the only vehicles on the streets were APC’s and Humvee’s piloted by men in blue helmets.

Far more than usual, I would imagine, Francis guessed, spotting the numerous dust trails rising over the city, his eyes eventually falling on the scorch marks at the gate they had just passed through, the concrete blackened in the pattern of an explosion. But can you blame them?

Making one more pass to make sure they weren’t being watched, Francis put an arm around the Frenchman’s shoulders. “{How about we get in, check for any magical pony princesses, and get out, ja}?” He asked. “{And then, you and I can partake in some of the finest bratwurst Germany has to offer. I know just the place!}”

“{German cooking,]” Andre scoffed. “{You certainly know how to make a guy feel special.}”

Francis just laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “{Come now, it’s not so bad. In and out, real quick, promise.}”

“{Don’t jinx it, sweetheart,}” Andre said, though a thin smile crossed his lips as they approached the double-doors leading in to a two-story building at the heart of the fortress. Francis gave him a final squeeze before they passed through into a towering lobby obviously designed to intimidate any visitors with its sheer size, their heels echoing off the vaulted ceiling while they walked up to the only person in the room, manning an oak desk which dominated an entire side of the lobby. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the pair pasted on their best smiles and walked right up to the man in the camo uniform, clicking away at his desktop with the apparent interest of a football player in a museum for tabletop gaming.

“{Pardon me,]” Andre said, leading off with his warmest smile while pulling his identification badge out of his pocket.

The receptionist took one look, and immediately stood at attention. “{Sir!}” He gasped, though notably without saluting. He took a quick scan of the badge and nodded. “{I take it you are the personnel here for the inspection?}”

“{Yes, of course,}” Andre replied, still with the warm smile and sparkling, blue eyes that Francis had fallen in love with. “{We are terribly sorry to inconvenience you, good sir, but after Detroit…}”

“{Say no more, sir,}” the soldier nodded before jamming his finger into a button at his side, allowing a small, waist-high gate built into the desk to open. “{We understand the security council’s concerns, but I think you’ll find we run a very tight ship here.}”

“{We’ll be the judge of that,}” Francis said darkly, sliding into the role of the bad cop as naturally as he slid into his dress coat every day.

The soldier just nodded to them both as they passed by, standing ramrod straight until they walked past and entered through a white, metal door, and immediately paused just inside.

When one walked into a UN head office, one expected rows of cubicles with phones and desks and people, some in uniform and some not, ducking and weaving around with stacks of paper. Instead, they found a row of hospital beds setup across a narrow aisle from enough computers, printers, beakers, and assorted science equipment to make Twilight Sparkle collapse from sheer euphoria.

“Huh,” Andre said intelligently.

“{You were expecting a bunch of guys behind desks too, right?}” Francis whispered to him. The blonde nodded. “{Oh, good, glad I wasn’t the only one.}”

“{Sirs!}” A squat, balding, powerfully-built man in a white labcoat strode up to the pair, his shoulders relaxed, but his spine still perfectly straight. This was probably his relaxed stance, from what Francis gathered. Or, as close to relaxed as he probably ever got, anyway.

“{Commander,}” Francis said, just barely keeping himself from saluting. “{Thank you for having us.}”

“{Oh please, this is the UNCDI’s main base in Europe! You two probably have more right to be here than half the people in this room!}” The squat man chuckled, and Francis and Andre feigned little snickers themselves. “{You’re both probably wondering about…all this…}”

Andre peeked around the man’s shoulders at the rows of hospital beds and the vacant-eyed Newfoals surrounded by enough lab technicians to discover the Tachyon Inhibitor all over again. “{Oh, we had gotten a bit curious about that, yeah,}” he said almost absentmindedly, his mind falling away as it usually did when people stared into those blank eyes for too long.

“{I trust you gentlemen have been updated on the events in London?}” The man asked.

Instantly, a cold fist clenched tight in Francis’s guts, though he didn’t show even a modicum of discomfort at the thought of the Sikh Indian and the American popping up on CNN. “{I-I’m sorry commander, it took us a while to catch a flight out of Norway, what happened in London}?”

The man paused, taking a deep breath, apparently picking up on the concern despite the pair’s best efforts. “{Nothing dangerous, if it’s friends and family you’re worried about,}” he said, and this time Francis allowed himself an actual sigh of relief. “{However, it is no less groundbreaking. Sometime in the last twelve hours, a Newfoal recovered its memories.}”

Andre blinked. Francis blinked. Andre’s mouth opened as if he were about to say something, then apparently thought better and closed it. Finally, ever the efficient German, Francis summarized their feelings in a single breath: “{Holy shit.}”

“{Our feelings exactly, but see for yourself,}” he reached up to a flatscreen TV mounted on the wall, powering it up. It was already tuned to CNN, showing a Newfoal sitting up in his bed, his hoof clenched firmly in the hands of an elderly woman, as if she were afraid he would simply up and float away like a loose balloon.

“Look, I haven’t the foggiest clue for what happened to me,” he said clearly behind the German translator. “I just know that I’m back with my wife, and after five years of soiling myself, I’m quite happy to be back to…”

“{Wow,}” Andre rasped, both men tuning out the long biography of the Englishman kidnapped by Equestrian commandos late one British night and who, up until yesterday, had been quite happy staring off into space with a blank little smile on his face.

“{Exactly,}” the smaller man said with a smile beaming across his face. “{We’ve gathered an assortment of Newfoals from the major races out of our colony here for closer monitoring. If it happens again, we might have a trigger to bring them back!}”

“{Holy shit,}” Francis said. The man before them might as well have told them he’d just found the cure for death while somebody crawled out of their grave on national TV. For so long, the Newfoals had just been a burden, a reminder of some of the darkest days humanity had faced. For so long, they were just corpses that breathed and unsettled visitors. Now, to think they might be brought back…

“{Commander!}” All three looked up at a male nurse jogging up to them, sweat pouring down his face despite the mild temperature. “{We’ve got something! Increased brain activity on Number 23!}”

Francis and Andre blinked as the Commander grinned ear to ear. “{It’s happening,}” he gasped, turning to the newcomers. “{You see!? It’s happening! They’re coming back to us all on their own!}”

He galloped away without another word, Francis and Andre trailing close behind. They approached a bed with a purple unicorn mare resting in it, swaying upright. Men and women in labcoats clustered close, a few standing ready with respirators and defibrillators as the EKG raced.

“{Status!}” The commander barked.

“{Marie Wouters,}” the nurse said quickly, flipping through a stack of papers cradled to his chest. “{Age 23, taken November of 2019 and converted by commandoes of the Equestrian Royal…}”

“{I said status, not life’s story!}” The commander screamed, watching as a nurse leaned in to shine a light in the mare’s eyes, her massive pupils dilating.

“{High-level Alpha Wave activity spiking in the pre-frontal lobe},” an elderly doctor barked right back. “{We’re not sure what it is, but something is happening in that weird, little head!}”

A couple of the nurses stepped forward with respirators, only to be waved back. “{No, you fools! Let it come on its own time!}”

“{Something’s happening, something’s happening!}” Somebody cried out, impossible to tell who. On the bed, the Newfoal’s ears folded down. Her spine slumped as she looked around, confused. The group held its collective breath. Nobody dared to even breathe.

“{Ms. Wouters?}” The Commander asked. “{Ms. Wouters, are you in there?}”

The Newfoal turned her massive, round eyes on the man, and she smiled thinly, a spark of life dancing back into her eyes. The group gasped and oohed and ahhed, gathering themselves, all leaning forward. Only the veterans from the Collision Wars recognized the look in the unicorn’s eyes. They had seen it before, that gleeful smile right when a Newfoal was about to tear out a human’s throat. Francis was among these unlucky few, and so was one of the few to notice the hint of magic sparking up the unicorn’s horn, and to follow it to the scalpel dancing out of the elderly doctor’s pocket.

“Jesus look out…” he started, defaulting to English as he reached for the blade. Too late. All too late. A flash of silver darted across the bed, slicing through the palm of his hand. A sudden burst of pain stung, but did nothing to dull the horror of watching the scalpel slice right through the Commander’s throat.

“Bullseye,” the mare giggled as the Commander’s curious, child-like delight faded, his body slumping backwards while blood gushed down the front of his labcoat.

Francis clenched his palm as time slowed around him. A hand wrapped his shoulder. Reacting on instinct, he ducked and curled up into a ball on the tiled floor, tumbling away as a shot ran out. He spun in time to see Andre fire the last in a trio of shots into the mare’s forehead, his free hand still on the German’s shoulder, his other hand clenching a Sig Sauer Pro.

The mare died with that smile on her face, the last of her giggles on her lips, and her brains coating the headboard. The nurse standing closest to the Commander was the first to scream, the front of his smock covered in the man’s blood. It was as if the scream were a trigger, as if the sound of human suffering was enough to awaken something horrible in the Newfoals around them. The Earth pony to the left jumped on the back of the closest soldier, snapping his spine with a powerful buck before attacking his carotid with his teeth, grinning all the while. The pegasus to the right rose from her bed, swooping over the group’s heads to come down as hard as she could on a stunned nurse’s face.

Francis was first to react, grabbing Andre’s shoulder. That was all he needed to stir the Frenchman into action, the pair slipping over the tiled floor in their leather-soled shoes as ponies darted out of their beds and attacked. Their jackets billowed behind them, Francis ditching his in the mad scramble to get away, not knowing where the door at the end of the aisleway led but knowing it had to be better than the pure chaos exploding in the makeshift ward.

He paused, narrowly dodging a bed that had just been bucked into his path by an Earth pony stallion the size of a VW Beetle, and finally drew his H&K and pumped a pair of .45 ACP rounds into the stallion’s chest. Not even pausing to make sure the stallion stayed down, he vaulted the bed, glad for the blonde curl of hair in his peripheral, though less so for the Sig Sauer firing wildly next to him, like a group of American rednecks during some celebration they might partake in, like a NASCAR win. Whatever. They could discuss it later, when they weren’t squeezed between battling guards and ravenous ponies.

Finally, Francis grabbed the doorknob, wrenching it open. For a second, he turned to make sure Andre was right behind him. In that second, he wanted to wretch. Men in military camouflage had joined the battle playing out behind him, firing wildly. Bulletholes riddled the far wall and the windows, along with at least a couple dozen Newfoal bodies on the floor. Even in death, they still looked at him, still watching him with those wretched eyes, their fur matted with blood, those smiles somehow even wider. A handful of humans laid next to them, their eyes wide in shock, bodies covered in burns and bruises. One man had his throat crushed; the adam’s apple caved in to an unnatural crater. A Newfoal laid nearby with a smile on his face despite the blood and missing teeth. Francis gagged, then paused, his breath catching in his throat at the Newfoal unicorn gleefully galloping his way.

Hauling Andre in with one hand, Francis threw the door shut, though not in time to keep the creature from jamming its muzzle into the doorjamb with a sickening crunch.

“For Celestia!” The cursed thing chanted despite a shattered jaw. “For Eque…”

Francis bought the butt of his pistol down on its muzzle, feeling a shudder pass through his body as another gut-wrenching squish rippled through the thing’s snout and forced it back. He yanked the door shut and slammed the deadbolt home, breathing heavily.

He turned, slumping to the floor with the continuing cries and near-continuous stream of automatic gunfire from the other side. The pistol hung loosely in his hand. Andre grimaced across from him, still gasping. “{In and out, real quick, promise,}” He scoffed, propping himself up on his hands. “{You had to go and jinx it, didn’t you?}”

“{Don’t blame this on me,}” Francis grimaced, and the Frenchman winced.

“{Honey, I didn’t…}” Andre trailed off at the look on his boyfriend’s face, the sudden look of overwhelming horror that filled his eyes, and turned around. His jaw dropped. The room they had stumbled into opened up with a series of bay windows, partially blocked by dust-covered equipment and long-dead monitors, but not enough to cover the war outside. And that was what it was: a battle reminiscent of the darkest days of the Collision Wars, before the Tachyon Inhibitor was even a thought in some scientist’s head. Smoke columns reached into the sky as the sounds of more automatic gunfire echoed back to them, only partially blocked out by the gunfire in the other room. Another explosion rocked the little village, an entire row of houses bursting into violet, orange, and purple flames from another magical attack, to be answered with an artillery shell pulverizing an empty playground slide just at the head of a cul-de-sac, sending it flying in a gray plume of dust and smoke, adding to the gray and black scorch marks that marred every building in sight.

“{D-dearest,}” Andre said, his voice quivering uncharacteristically. “{P-please tell me I’m not looking at an outbreak of the s-second Collision Wars, because I barely survived the first one with my sanity intact.}”

“{I-I’m sorry, sweetheart,}” Francis whimpered, a faint smile crossing his face. “{Do me a favor though: reload your sidearm. I saw you shooting like an American hillbilly out there.}”

Andre snorted at the German’s dry attempt at humor, but reached for a fresh magazine anyway. “{It’s called covering fire, dearest.}”

“{No, it’s called a repulsive waste of ammunition, don’t do it again.}”

“{Had to make sure we could both made it through okay. I knew I could make it to the door, but you…}”

Suddenly, Francis rounded on the Frenchman, clambering atop him in a sudden roll. Blonde curls touched short-cropped stubble as their foreheads met, their lips touching tenderly, gently, then parting. They sat there, breathing heavily. “{I know, and that’s what scares me,}” Francis whispered. “{Don’t do it again. Like I said, it’s a repulsive waste of ammo.}”

Andre’s eyes widened, drinking in the German’s baby blues, and then he scowled. “{How noble,}” he scoffed. “{You know I’m not gonna change a damn thing, right? Just you asking me isn’t going to do it.}”

“{I know,}” Francis cradled Andre’s chin in one, powerful hand. “{Thought it couldn’t hurt to ask, even if it would be like trying to stop a tsunami with a drinking straw.}”

Andre smiled, then his eyes darted past the German to the bay window and widened. Francis didn’t even have time to react before Andre threw him aside, a wordless scream catching in his throat as he bought the Sig up to bear. Francis only had time to twist in mid-air before his shoulder collided with the tile, drinking in the view of the teal-colored pegasus barreling towards the window, hooves stretched out, that maniacal grin slicing its face right in half. He went for his P9, but already knew he would be too late. In the split-second it took him to draw his weapon, the pony would smash through the window, cross the room, and break Andre’s perfect teeth right down his neck. Worse yet, when the Frenchman levelled his own weapon and squeezed the trigger, the only response was an empty little click, reminding them both of the fresh magazine still in his hand. Not even a bullet had been left in the chamber, meaning he’d shot himself empty back in the medical ward, oh the fool, oh the poor beautiful wonderful fool who wouldn’t have done that if Francis had just been quicker on his feet or maybe…

A shot rang out. The glass broke as predicted, but instead of crossing the room and destroying the only reason Francis had for getting up in the morning, the pegasus crashed into the tile, smearing a trail of blood behind its body before coming to a stop with its grin frozen permanently in Andre’s direction, just a few feet from his leather soles, blood streaming through its mane. Francis had to double-check to make sure smoke wasn’t drifting off the barrel of his own pistol, but it wasn’t. He most assuredly had not squeezed off a round in a final, adrenaline-fuelled attempt to save his lover. So what was that, then!? Just what in the fuck had they-

Francis’s pocket vibrated. His hand reflexively pressed against it, giving him enough time to question what in the fuck he was doing. Even if it was that American phenomenon, the Publisher’s Clearing House David had told him about, telling him that he’d just won $5000 a week for life, was he honestly in any sort of position to answer it?

In the space between the second and third buzz, it hit him: this was his work phone. This was not the personal cell phone he’d left charging in his room on the Illustrious. This was an urgent message. His hand darted into his pocket, returned with the phone, raised it to his ear, and swiped to answer.

Andre looked at him as if he’d gone crazy, and why not? The Newfoals were raising hell, a ton of people had died on this exact spot, and his boyfriend had almost had his skull smashed in by a colorful flying pony. If ever there was time for a German to allow a bit of craziness into his thoughts, this was it.

“Hello?” He asked.

“Good Afternoon, Feldwebel,” a highly-distorted, warbling voice on the other side of the line said in English. “I trust you and your companion are well? All things considered, of course.”

“Of course,” he parroted. It was the only thing he could do, such was the shock of being referred to by such a title for the first time in nearly five years. “Things have been better, but…”

“I’m afraid our time is short, Feldwebel, and while I would normally enjoy an exchange of pleasantries, I must be brief,” the voice worked quickly now, lighting off a rapid-fire bombardment of information that the few, intact thinking processes in Francis’s mind reeled beneath. “As you might have noticed, we have just saved the life of both you and your companion.”

The pool of blood from the broken body at Andre’s feet crept towards his soles, and he quickly bent his knees, earning some extra space. “Yes, thank you,” Francis said.

“Don’t thank us yet, ol’ chum,” and yes, there was most definitely a British accent in that voice. “We can cover your escape, but you two will still have a lot of legwork to do, savvy?”

Arching an eyebrow, Francis slunk over to the nearest bit of cover, a wheeled monstrosity of an EKG machine that would have looked more at home on the set of a black-and-white Frankenstein rip-off than in any hospital. “Pardon me for not trusting mysterious voices on phones, but who is ‘we’ exactly?”

A long pause followed, and then the voice said: “Brickwork building to your southwest.” Francis pushed himself to his feet, scanning the squat, five-story structure the voice had indicated, eyes narrowed. It was a simple thing, with sloped German roofs to allow snow to slide off in the winters and shuttered windows, maybe 600 – no, 700 yards away. As he watched, one of the fourth floor windows opened. Francis squinted to no avail: it was just too dark inside the room and too far away. All he could see was a featureless, black rectangle. Then the tell-tale spark of a muzzle flash rang out from inside. Francis only had time to flinch in the beginning of a duck before the screen of an ancient desktop monitor exploded a few meters to his right.

He never took his eyes off the window, glaring. After a few moments, a figure stepped into the light, clad in all-black camo, a balaclava with matching combat helmet on its head, and an L118 sniper rifle smoking in its gloved hands.

“Tell me, Feldwebel, how big was that target? I cannot tell from here.”

Francis took his eyes off the figure for only a second to glance at the shattered monitor, now lying on the floor amidst a pile of smoking plastic and shattered glass, then returned his gaze as quickly as possible. The figure was still standing there, the rifle resting on its shoulder.

“Old computer monitor,” he replied. “Maybe a foot and a half across.”

“Just slightly smaller than your torso, would you agree?” The voice said. “And don’t give me that bullshit about surviving chest shots, those are NATO 7.62 hollowpoints we’re using, doesn’t matter where you’d get shot and you know it.”

“Yes, I know,” Francis said cautiously.

“Then you understand: if we wanted you and your boyfriend dead, it would be a simple squeeze of a trigger. Or, better yet, we could have let the Newfoal freak pound his skull into the tile, then give you a couple seconds to mourn before ending your life,” the voice grew a cold edge at last, audible even through the audio distortion. “Enough games, Feldwebel. Get moving.”

Andre was already beside him, studying the figure even while Francis hung up the phone. The Frenchman looked over at him with the sort of cold, analytical look one used when one knew they were stepping into possible death. “{So, what happens now?}” He asked in his native French, those piercing eyes turning back the figure in black even as it melted back with the shadows, the glint off the barrel of the rifle the last to disappear before the figure became completely invisible. “{Do we trust them?}”

Francis tried to crack a smile, but his face refused to obey, so he let it remain at simple, numb concern. “{Do we have a choice?}”

Andre regarded the empty black square a while longer, as if the answer to getting out of this place alive was etched into the brickwork around the window. “ {No, we do not,}” he finally admitted.

Finally managing the smile he’d been searching for, Francis pulled out his pistol and used its butt to smash out the glass left by the pony, pulling off his jacket and using it to clear as much of the shattered remains as he could. Then, he stood back and splayed his arms out in a melodramatic fashion. “{Ladies first.}”

“{A gentleman!}” Andre gushed mockingly before accepting Francis’s hand and stepping through the portal, out onto the roof. Francis took note of the utter, crushing silence on the other side of the door to the makeshift infirmary as he also crawled through the shattered glass. For a moment, he had an image of two dozen ponies coated in blood, none of it their own, watching the door with those empty little smiles, waiting for signs of life from the other side to pounce…

Francis shivered, then stepped through, keeping his head low to avoid detection. Andre kept his pistol on the sky the entire time, scanning around. Francis could only hope it would do some good. “There’s a heliport nearby,” Andre hissed. “We can make it, and I can fly us out of here.”

Looking around at the shattered windows, the smoking craters pitting the concrete, the blood-spattered brickwork and bullet-riddled stone, Francis couldn’t say for sure he wanted to make it. Not if it meant this again. Not again.

Across the courtyard, the sniper watched the pair through her scope, a finger resting on the trigger guard, admiring the way the two moved with precision. The entire time along the rooftops, there was never a moment when either man was without cover, at least one pistol scanning the skies for the telltale flap of wings.

“Had you boys pegged from the beginning,” she whispered, smiling to herself and lowering the rifle only after she was absolutely, 100% certain they were out of sight. “’Course, that was just the gay thing, military thing definitely caught me off-guard. Probably should’ve taken you to the range at some point just to make sure.”

Sighing as she worked the bolt on her weapon to eject the round in the chamber, the sniper reached with one hand into a pocket in her armored vest, pulling out a pack of Mayfairs. She stuck one between her lips and lit it, watching the window the entire time. “Somebody’s got some explaining to do, especially you, Admiral,” Lisa Townshend whispered, puffing a while on the cigarette, exhaling gently to keep the smoke contained in the room.

Author's Note

Expect another chapter or two over the next couple of days! :)

Chapter XXIII: The Heretic Princess

Twilight Sparkle was not an unstoppable badass. She had already established this firmly. She did not swoop onto the battlefield with a last minute charge to save the day, that wasn’t her, that wasn’t her, for the love of Celestia above, that wasn’t her! She was supposed to be a hoity-toity pony princess who just gained an even better excuse for spending her Friday nights reading in her library! So why, oh why, did the universe see fit to thrust her into these situations?

She swooped alongside her long-time friend and mentor. They’d made landfall hours before, but Celestia had never even slowed down. And good Sun and Moon above, could anypony blame her? If her intuition was right, what waited for them would be a straight-up warzone, if not a massacre. Still, the ache which had started between her shoulder blades just an hour before had grown into a pretty persistent pain, which was now steadily evolving from “muscle cramp” to “white hot needles.”

“P-princess…” she gasped, reaching out. That was all she needed to do. Celestia cut her speed in half and soared next to her former student, looking her over.

“We can rest if you wish, Twilight,” she said after a single glance, which probably told Twilight all she needed to know about how she looked.

Cursing herself over and over again for blowing off Rainbow Dash every time she offered flight training, Twilight pasted a smile on her face and pushed just an ounce more speed out of her aching wings. “That’s alright…princess…” she managed with only a couple faint pants. “Maybe we could just…slow down a little?”

Instead, Celestia arrowed downwards, settling in an empty hayfield. Thanking anypony that might be listening, Twilight followed suit. “We can rest and make up the distance when we take to the air,” Celestia insisted, trotting over to a hay bale. “In the meantime, let us hope this hay is more satisfying than that accursed grass from last night.”

Twilight furrowed her brow at the hoofful of wispy, dried, yellow stuff in Celestia’s hoof. “Isn’t this stealing?”

“Desperate times, Twilight,” she looked at her former student with a weak, little smile. “We will be of no good to anypony – or anybody – if we are doubled over in hunger by the time we reach our destination. For now, we will simply have to hope to come across this place again in better times, when we are more able to reimburse the owner.”

Twilight nodded, grateful for the Princess’s justification, and immediately feeling ashamed for such gratitude. Still, the last decent meal the pair had eaten had been on that megaship, since then it had been just scraps such as this. There was no way…

Twilight bit into her clump of hay, and heaven itself exploded in her mouth. Woody, yet not like woodchips, more like a breath somewhere deep in the Everfree just after a spring rainstorm, when the forest was still coming to life and that scent of moisture still hung in the air. Without even thinking, she bobbed forward and stuck her entire head into the bale, her jaw hanging slack to fill with the hay. It was even better, now it was reliving a summer picnic with her friends, yet with a sweet aftertaste: not candy sweet, more like a really ripe piece of fruit.

She was gently lifted up and placed on her hooves beside the bale, Celestia standing over her with a mouthful of that sweet, wonderful, succulent hay. She was still chewing, apparently unable to stop, and was only able to talk after swallowing every stalk in her mouth.

“When we improve relations with the humans,” she said. “I know the very first thing we’re going to negotiate a trade deal for.”

“Absolutely.”

They allowed themselves a couple more mouthfuls each before sinking to the grass, finally content for the first time in days. Twilight perked up an ear, listening to the peaceful tweeting of birds that seemed to exist on every farm, even Sweet Apple Acres. Two radically different worlds, yet so alike.

Sitting up and clearing her throat, she returned to business mode with the sort of professionalism one would expect from royalty. “Do you have any idea what could be waiting for us, Princess?”

Celestia just shook her head, content with remaining where she was. “I only know the size and direction of the magical pulse, dearest Twilight,” she said, the content smile and closed eyes never leaving her face. “We crossed the border into a land called ‘Germany’ a while ago, but for all I know, we could still be hundreds of miles from our destination.”

Twilight was about to say something, when a deep thud resounded through the air. The sort of deep thumping sound that actually seemed to bounce your body with it, rattling the ribs as it passed by. Celestia was on her hooves in an instant, eyes scanning wildly. It didn’t take long for either of them to find the columns of thick, black smoke rising steadily into the air, and once they had that direction, they were able to make out the distant ‘ack-ack’ sounds of the humans’ weapons.

“Or we could be standing right on the precipice,” Celestia murmured before fanning her wings and taking off at a speed that would have impressed Rainbow Dash. Twilight nearly lost her then, but keeping track of a white streak trailing rainbows turned out to be an even easier task than she’d imagined. They darted just over the branches of trees across miles of farmland, approaching a small city in the distance.

Twilight could make out more details in the city as they approached. A few minutes after discovering that amazing hay, she could see quaint, brick cottages that made her heart ache for Ponyville, despite the pillars of smoke rising from their midst. After that came the massive, gray fortress with little curls of wire running along the top of its fencing, and where more explosions and gunfire were erupting. Finally, she could see the smaller details: the scorch marks on rooftops, the faint pops and whistles of something exploding someplace nearby, the houses with rooftops that were totally caved-in or had perfectly round holes pounded into them.

“If that’s not it, I’m Discord’s mother,” she whispered to herself, the pain flaring between her shoulder blades long forgotten as she squeezed as much speed out of her wings as she could muster. She arrived on the outskirts of the village to find Celestia perched atop a human ‘automobile’ with a small crowd of Newfoals gathering around her. Her powerful figure was framed by the flames licking out of the storefront behind her. Many of the Newfoals at her hooves had their fur matted and bloodied noses, some even covered in blood, though judging by the way they walked without any difficulty, the blood probably wasn’t their own. She noticed one balanced precariously on three legs, his third just a charred stump of foreleg, and she had to suppress the urge to vomit.

“My dearest ponies,” Celestia said, her voice booming at Royal Canterlot Voice levels. “Your princess has arrived!”

Something was wrong. Something was deeply wrong. As Twilight settled on the nose of the automobile, she pieced it together: the Newfoals were just standing there. The stallion they’d cured in Bethlem had practically knelt at Celestia’s hooves, and had needed to be ordered directly to keep from proclaiming his eternal love and loyalty at the top of his lungs. These ponies were just…staring. Like they were confused. Was that all? Confusion that their Princess would show herself here and now? Twilight could only hope so.

“This…” Celestia spread her hoof out, motioning to the shattered glass and the flaming rubble around them. “This is not what we are meant to stand for, my little ponies. We are meant to be beacons of hope and friendship to those around us, not harbingers of destruction! I ask and appeal to the intelligent, loving minds that I know are in there: stand down, and join me in extending the hoof of friendship to humanity before it is too late!”

Celestia smiled reassuringly at the Newfoals around her, confident in their abilities to make the right decision. Except these weren’t her little ponies. Dear Sun above, these were something else! One look in those big, blank eyes told Twilight that much. Now, as one mare stepped forward with unbridled fury burning in her gaze, the lavender princess realized just how vastly removed from the ponies she knew these Newfoals were.

“This is not the Solar Lord,” the mare proclaimed, levelling a hateful glare at the Alicorns perched atop the ruined sedan. “This is the imposter we were warned about!”

“The Impostor!” A stallion slurred around a shattered muzzle, leaping down from a roof and clipping a small camera hooked to a utility pole, snarling like an animal. “It’s the Impostor! The Heretic of all!”

“Destroy her! Destroy the Impostor! Destroy the Heretics! Let them burn!” The crowd chanted as one, each pony flinging themselves against the car, gnashing their teeth, bashing at the sedan’s side with their foreheads.

Celestia barely had time to react, throwing a shield around herself and Twilight just in time to block the first attacking pony: a pegasus stallion who’s forehead bounced off the solid wall of pure magic and who’s neck snapped back unnaturally. He turned away as the tide of Newfoals broke out around him, stumbling away impossibly as his body tried to understand that he’d just broken his own neck.

“Destroy her! Destroy the Heretic!” The first mare repeated, a makeshift general for a ragtag army of shambling, blank-eyed, hateful cretins. Twilight had a flash of a movie Rainbow had forced her to watch, Night of the Living Dead, and she forced the memory back upon recalling the ending. No time for memories, no time for recollection. She scurried up the sedan’s side, safe within her teacher’s bubble, but for how long?

She turned, saw the way Celestia strained with each physical blow and shuddering blast, and realized that despite all of Celestia’s power, she wouldn’t last a few more minutes. They couldn’t stay here, anyway. The humans would be along soon. They would have to be. What else could they be doing? “Princess!” Twilight gasped.

Celestia didn’t respond, and Twilight was about to repeat herself when she saw the way Celestia’s ear flicked. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard. It’s just that she didn’t want to hear. The strain of maintaining the shield against the blood-soaked, slavering faces was plain on her face, and despite that, despite the beating hooves and the cries for her blood and the shattering bone as the Newfoals literally threw themselves against the shield, she didn’t want to accept that they might have to fight their way out. Twilight’s eyes widened in realization as she turned to the horde outside. Deep down inside those evil, stupid heads were mothers, fathers, grandsons, nieces, and uncles. How many would have to die for them? How many would the Princesses have to kill, extinguishing any hope of ever reuniting them with their loved ones?

Twilight’s mind raced, weighing her options. Stun spells might work. Might. Of course, with this bunch all riled up, it could take three or four hits to get each mare and stallion down, and in that time they could be overwhelmed. Or, even worse, forced to open fire with spells that did more permanent damage. Her wide, fear-filled eyes watched the horde outside, the tide of stupid, angry faces glaring back at her, yet still the rational side of her brain worked away, approaching the problem from every angle. The solution was on her at once.

We don’t have to incapacitate them, she realized, her horn already charging with the spell. She would kick herself later for not seeing the way out immediately, but one could forgive her that if one took into account that terrible horde of awful, yelling faces. We just have to get away…

She finished the spell, there was a blinding flash, and both princesses disappeared, along with the top half of a VW Jetta compact.

There was the rush of magic, the same light-headedness she’d always know, and then reality hit the pair like a speeding semi. Twilight’s head reeled as she snapped back into existence, standing atop a single-story apartment building a couple hundred yards down the street. The horde still gathered around the remains of the sedan, pushing and shoving and jostling each other, apparently unable to believe their prey had just escaped. The former unicorn collapsed out of relief, a few shingles peeling away under her. “Thank Celestia that worked,” she whispered.

Celestia, finally snapping out of her daze, ran a hoof along her former student’s shoulders. “I had nothing to do with that,” she said, wrapping her wings around Twilight’s withers. “That was all you, my dearest former student.”

Twilight was about to say something else, or at least point out they should probably start running, when the roof creaked and groaned. It occurred to both mares that these decrepit structures probably weren’t designed to support the weight of two pony princesses and half a family four-door sedan, especially after having a good portion of their load-bearing walls blown out. Before either could react, there was a loud crash, a creak of splintering wood, and they smashed through into a bedroom.

Twilight coughed, pushing herself to her hooves, ignoring the filth caked into her coat. “Princess!?” She gasped, unable to disguise the raw panic in her voice.

Celestia’s unmistakable silhouette rose to its hooves somewhere amidst the dust, her filth-covered muzzle contrasting with her bright, magenta eyes. “Please don’t mention this to Luna,” she said between hacking coughs. “She’s been trying to put me on a diet ever since she got back, and this might be the final straw.”

Unable to help herself, Twilight wrapped her forelegs around Celestia’s shoulders, squeezing tight, her chest heaving. But she wasn’t in tears. Not yet, anyway. Celestia, for her part, wrapped a foreleg around Twilight’s shoulders, knowing that sometimes the best support to offer was just a shoulder to cry on, even if the other pony was fighting it with all the strength in their little body. One thing they had in common: in that moment, both wished to stay that way forever. Both wished for this moment to remain as it was, because Twilight hadn’t felt so safe in days, and Celestia had never felt closer to simpler times, when the most pressing matter on her mind was what book she would read with her dearest student after they’d finished up their current one.

“Come, Twilight,” she whispered, motioning to the stairs. “We can’t stay here.”

“Yeah, though that’d be nice,” Twilight sighed, following the princess out the door and into the hallway. They both gawped as the door creaked open. The building had been hit by something large and explosive, the large, charred hole in the ceiling made that much obvious. Where the apartment had been untouched, however, the hall was littered with fallen timbers, burnt plaster, and chunks of assorted rubble charred beyond recognition. Just outside the door, a blood-stained pants leg poked out from under a large timber, and Twilight gasped as she realized someone was under there.

“Oh my…” she gasped, a hoof going to her mouth. Her wide eyes scanned the apartment, finding the cold bowl of soup on the kitchen table. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “He barely even made it past his door…”

“Oh Maker above,” Celestia murmured, shaking her head. “What are we even doing here?”

“Princess?”

“T-Twilight…” Celestia turned to her former student, and to her horror Twilight saw fear in those eyes, the same sort of fear as a filly lost in the dark. “I don’t think we should have come here.” She whispered, her voice small and terrified.

And then someone shifted around in the rubble just outside. Twilight thought for a moment it might have been her imagination, and then a few coughs added themselves to the noise.

There was a single moment of processing what was going on, of not understanding, and then both ponies leapt to the air and bounded past the body in the hallway, leaping upon the shattered piles of wood and discarded shingles left by a scorched, gaping hole in the roof. They searched frantically for whoever might be trapped, throwing wood and plaster aside without a moment’s consideration. They found him under a plank of plywood, pinned down by the remains of a support beam: a man in the camouflage clothing they knew all too well, wearing the flag of the human nation they had sneaked into. He stirred and groaned as they lifted the wood off, coughing up a spurt of blood from a mouth covered in filth and dirt.

“Oh no,” Twilight gasped, her shoulders already tensing for hyperventilation.

Celestia eased herself down alongside the man, resting her face gently against his while studying his body. “Burn marks. He was attacked by a unicorn,” she sighed, looking up at the scorched hole in the ceiling. “Just one. Please, after all that’s happened today, let me save one.”

“Wha-wha-wha…” Twilight stammered and swallowed, unable to contain her shaking. Her wings, now frazzled and unkempt, tensed and flexed against her body. “What do we do?”

“First thing’s first, we remain calm,” Celestia said, eyeing her student. All traces of shock and horror were gone from that eye. Twilight visibly paused, then held a hoof to her chest, breathing in and then out, just as Cadence had shown her so long ago. Nodding her approval, Celestia studied the man, her horn igniting. “I will most likely require your aid with this, Twilight.”

Nodding, Twilight leapt to the man’s side. “Do you suppose our healing spells function the same with humans as they do with ponies?”

“We can only try, and hope,” Celestia replied, her horn humming with power. “Are you ready?”

“Ready,” Twilight whispered, their magic humming and coalescing as a small, white orb over the human’s chest. The orb hummed over the human’s body, little arcs of light reaching out across his wounds, sealing them over through the burnt holes in his clothing as he winced in pain. Once or twice, his back arched and he let out a quick gasp, only to settle again.

When it was done, the pair settled back. “Not quite the perfect process we know with most ponies, but manageable for now,” Celestia remarked, rising to her hooves. “Stay with him, Twilight, I wish to poke my head out, see if there are some human forces we can drop him off near.”

“Of course, Princess,” Twilight watched Celestia soar over her head, smiling to herself. Perhaps finally, things were going to start working out for them. Perhaps today they were going to take a step towards convincing humanity that not all ponies were like the wicked demon that had attacked them.

Her gaze drifted back down to the human. His eyes were open wide. “H-hi,” she offered with a little smile and a wave of her hoof.

The man’s boot lashed out, catching her upside the chin and sending her sprawling on her back. Her gaze wavered in and out for only a second, more than enough time for the man to jump to his feet and sprint to the door, screaming the entire way in the strange language of the land. He already had his hand on the doorknob by the time Twilight regained her marbles enough to hop back on her hooves and realize what was happening.

“No, wait!” She cried, running after him and wrapping her hooves around his pants leg. “They’re out there!”

Still screaming frantically, his eyes wide and his teeth bared, the man kicked her off and threw the door open. Twilight still reached for him despite the pain in her forelegs. Too little. Too slow. Too late. No matter what it was, her efforts weren’t enough to stop the panicked human. It only occurred to her to use her magic when he was already halfway out the door, and she reached out, grasping his ankle tripping him up.

The human fell to his hands on the sidewalk just outside the door. A split-second later, his head vanished in a cyan blur and a sudden explosion of gore, bits of skull and droplets of blood blanketing the cheap throw rug proclaiming “welcome” to anyone on the doorstep. His body twitched for a second on the doorstep, then fell limp. Twilight’s mouth gaped open in abject horror, her magic still holding the human’s rapidly-stiffening ankle. She backed away, accidentally dragging the body back into the house, the arms catching on the doorframe and splaying out behind it, soaking the uniform’s sleeves in the blood trail left on the sidewalk. Finally regaining some presence of mind, Twilight released the human, letting the boot drop to the floor with a loud thud.

“That didn’t happen,” she mumbled in a voice that sounded like a timid filly on the verge of breaking down, perhaps like Fluttershy sounded on that first day of Flight School when she was told she would have to learn to step off the clouds and fly under her own power. “That couldn’t have just happened.”

She reached up, a hoof covering her mouth to hold back a scream, only to draw her hoof back at the moisture she felt. Red. It was covered in red. She wondered if she’d scratched herself while plummeting through the roof. Then she realized the blood wasn’t hers.

This time, she did scream. It rose from her throat unbidden, totally out of control, reaching a high-pitched shriek that strained her vocal chords and hurt her ears but she couldn’t stop because if she stopped she might have to look at herself and maybe find a mirror and maybe find a chunk of brain in her hair and oh Celestia oh Luna she didn’t want to see she didn’t want to see that so she just kept screaming, even as a pegasus covered in blood with bits of grey matter in her feathers poked her cyan head in and glared at Twilight.

“Death to the heretics,” she whispered before rushing in, trampling the human’s body. Twilight stood there, still screaming, still paralyzed even as the pegasus rushed her. Her only saving grace was the powerful stun spell that lanced into the back of the mare’s head, dropping her on the run to crash at Twilight’s hooves and now she could feel the blood in her mane oh Celestia it was in her bucking mane…

Twilight didn’t remember much afterwards, and for that she would always be grateful.

Chapter XXIV: The Continuing Show

0900 HOURS
CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS OF THE HMS ILLUSTRIOUS

NORTH SEA, OFF THE NORWEGIAN COASTLINE, DESTINATION UNDETERMINED

A thousand miles away, a man sat staring at his monitor, watching a small side-street in London where two figures ran up to one another, both shoving something away in their belts just before meeting up and running down a back alleyway, all out of view of the van filled with bodies and the burning SUV. The man smiled and shook his head, putting down the satellite phone in his hands and replacing it with another glass of Cognac.

“And still, neither one knows what the other is capable of,” Admiral Peterson snickered, tilting the glass in the direction of the monitor. “Good show, lads.”

He took a sip, then switched the monitor until it showed a small hallway in his own ship. This time, the view displayed the young Brazilian boy from earlier, stooping to pick up something in the hallways outside Target Alpha’s old cell. He watched as the kid’s hand squeezed around the tiny object, his teeth clenching, his shoulders rising and falling with every ragged breath. The Admiral sighed and refilled his glass. “And now for the next show to start,” he mumbled.

The Admiral wished to be a better man, and for the thousandth time in a row, his wish went unanswered. So instead, he resolved to be a drunker man. A drunk man could at least meet his own gaze in a mirror, which was a whole helluva lot more than he could say for himself since that day when the UNCDI helicopter had landed on the deck of his ship and he’d gotten a call on the big, important phone on his desk.

He refilled his glass and drained it. He could lie to himself, sure. Say what he’d just done made up for it, that the lives he’d just saved more than made up for selling his soul and his honor in exchange for a tiny sliver of peace, but even drunk he didn’t believe it. Even when he was at the point where he was on the ground, unable to support his own head like an oversized baby in a military uniform, he still knew nothing he did could ever make up for that betrayal. But at least at that point he didn’t care anymore.

He was raising the glass to his lips when the big, important telephone rang once more. The noise of the bell pierced into his skull like an arrow, aggravating the headache pulsing behind his eyes and adding another millimeter to the growing welt in his stomach lining destined to become an ulcer. He made another wish, this time for the strength and courage to not pick it up. To ignore it. He didn’t know what would happen then, but it had to be better than…

He picked up on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“You delayed.”

“I was napping.”

“We both know that isn’t true, Admiral,” there was clicking on the line, a popping sound, and then the voice continued. “I trust you’re aware of the situation on the mainland?”

“Of course,” the Admiral didn’t even try to suppress his grin. What was the harm in that much? “Quite the setback for you.”

“For us.”

“Of course, for us.”

“They are far more tenacious than we took them for, Admiral,” the voice continued as the Admiral kicked his feet up on his desk. “We’d hoped the Newfoals would handle them, hence why our team was refocused from their original direction to aiding in containment efforts. Obviously, this was an underestimation. A repetition of our mistake in London. We will not make that mistake again.”

The voice sounded more like it was talking to itself than to him. The Admiral smiled. “Of course.”

“Regardless, we have decided this could be something of a boon,” the voice continued. “Perhaps all the team requires is a bit more…oversight in order to reach our common goal.”

The Admiral’s stomach twisted. “Oversight?”

“We already have someone picked out. You may call him Mister M. I trust you’ll make him feel at home?”

Yep, there was that new ulcer forming, right on cue. “Of course.”

“Excellent! And don’t think of this as replacement or further oversight, Admiral, think of this as an opportunity to demonstrate your loyalty before a first-hand witness,” the voice said enthusiastically before taking on a darker edge. “Don’t disappoint us.”

Wow, that new ulcer was really going to work. “Of course not, sir.”

“Very good,” the voice said, and with a click, it was gone, allowing the Admiral to slowly replace the phone in its cradle.

He gripped the metal receiver until he felt its edges dig into his palm. “You goddamned sonofabitch cock-sucking pencil-pushing pile of…”

His tirade was interrupted by a knock on the door. Releasing his grip on the phone, he replaced the receiver with the utmost care, making sure it appeared totally undisturbed and unused before hurriedly unbuttoning his collar and slouching in his chair. “Come in,” he slurred.

The Russian stepped in, his nose wrinkling for a moment upon seeing the Admiral before settling back to neutral. “Hard at work tracking down our little runaway, I see,” he said.

“Work is for younger, lower-ranked men,” the Admiral said with a slanted half-grin, kicking his feet up before taking another sip. “Besides, I might say the same for you, Ivan.”

Bristling at the nickname, Anton took the seat across from him. “I have been hard at work, actually,” he shrugged.

“Oh?”

“Yes, a few things I’ve been noticing,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Mostly with Alpha’s behavior since she boarded this ship.”

Intrigued, but unable to show it, the Admiral raised his glass. “Well, spit it out and be done with it!”

“It’s just the way she worked from the moment she got on ship: not at all like monster we know,” Anton shook his head. “Every interaction, every conversation, the fact that King Shining Armor seemed to recognize her companion…”

He looked up at the Admiral as he arched an eyebrow in confusion. “One doesn’t react the way the King did unless it’s upon seeing someone important,” Anton explained, leaning back in his seat. The Admiral nodded his understanding, then immediately chastised himself for letting that slip. Luckily, the Russian didn’t notice. “I don’t know who she was, someone from his past? Someone who resembled a pony killed in nuclear strikes? Either way, she was a princess, another princess, when the creature we both know would’ve died before she shared power with another.”

“Maybe,” the Admiral shrugged. “Or maybe all those interactions were her way of getting our trust? And maybe that other princess is just another pony this bitch found to be as powerful and corrupt as she was? I mean, they managed t’go through a Tachyon Inhibitor like it was nothing! Fuck knows what the purple one might’ve been able to do on her own!”

“Maybe,” Anton frowned, a hand going to his chin. “Of course, there is matter of escape, and that they did it with minimal casualties despite every opportunity to…”

“Bluffing!” The Admiral scoffed, even as his stomach twisted and his head swirled with possibilities. “Neither really had their full power at the time, the threats they made in their cell were so much bravado, what with them being caught in a Tachyon Inhibition field capable of neutralizing their whole damn island! They knew to conserve what power they did have to punch through the field and make a run for it, or didntcha notice they only used magic twice during the whole escape?”

Anton sat back, head still swimming with thought. Truth be told, the Admiral’s mind was alight with possibility. He might be powerless to do anything about it, but what if? What if this Equestria was…different?

“You’re putting too much thought into this,” he mumbled as he raised the glass to his lips, unsure who he was speaking to. “They probably didn’t have time to do anything back then, if they could have been more secure in their escape plan, then I’m sure you’d have seen something to keep you up at night!”

He didn’t even believe his own words as they left his lips. He tried to convince himself, but still: What if?

“Besides, what’re you coming to me with this for?” He asked, setting the glass down. “You still got the beaner, shouldn’t you be talking with him?”

“Can’t find him,” Anton grumbled, sitting forward with his elbows pressing into his knees.

“Then have a drink!” The Admiral laughed, nudging an empty shot glass across the desk towards the Russian. “Do it while you can!”

Anton’s nose wrinkled for a moment, but was replaced with an arched eyebrow. “While I can?”

“We’re getting a new babysitter,” the Admiral replied, his eyes on the glass as he filled it. “Thought you should know. Some UN pencil pusher, I wouldn’t be too worried about him,” especially since it’s me he’s keeping an eye on, not you, he thought, moving to replace the bottle on the desk but changing his mind and going for a sip straight from its neck.

Anton eyed the small glass in front of him, then eyed the Admiral, and finally, smiled halfway as he pulled his flask out of its hidden pocket.

The Admiral guffawed. “Beat me to it, ‘ey Ivan?”

“The name is Anton,” he replied, dropping a few swigs of his personal stash in with the glass and giving it a few swirls. “And of course I did, you didn’t believe a limey could ever outdrink a true Russian, did you?”

The Admiral’s smile faltered. “In the words of your Yankee friend: ‘them’s fightin’ words’.”

“Simply name a time and a place,” Anton replied with a smart little smile as he raised the glass to his lips. All of this would turn out to be one of the worst moments of terrible timing in either man’s long life.

The door burst open, and in stomped a young Brazilian, his fists clenched, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He scanned the room, looked around for a moment, and when his eyes took in Anton with a shot glass at his lips, his fists clenched harder. One could almost feel the hate-filled anger rolling off the younger man. Completely taken aback, Anton lowered his glass. “Felipe? What’s wrong, my…”

“Don’t,” Felipe hissed. “Don’t you dare finish that fucking sentence and use that fucking name!”

“Young man,” the Admiral put in, sitting up in his chair. “What’s this all about?”

Felipe turned that hate-filled glare on him, then back to Anton. “‘I used to be mechanic of sorts, will be easy to put it all back together,’ you said. ‘Trust me, this is what I used to do for a living’, you said.” He shook his head, his entire face scrunched in, as if his whole head was invested in keeping his eyes closed. “You stupid, stupid, old drunk!”

“I don’t…”

“What’s this then!?” Felipe screamed, opening his hand and dangling the contents out, squeezed between his thumb and forefinger. It took a moment to recognize what it was, and put the pieces together, but Anton did it all at his best speed.

It was a tiny bolt, one that Anton recognized from his brief time disassembling the security lock on Alpha’s cell. One look at the horror breaking across his face was enough to tell the Admiral just what it might be. “C-can’t be…” Anton gasped.

“Oh? Well I guess I must be imagining it, then,” Felipe hissed, walking up to Anton and holding the bolt right in his face. “I also must be imagining holding it up to the housing on that little keypad you took apart and matching them up exactly. Am I imagining that, you drunken old fuck? Hmm? Does it look like I cooked this up in my head?”

The Admiral realized what they had to be getting at almost immediately. “Aw hell, Ivan,” he slurred. “Don’t tell me ya…” He trailed off for effect, but also to disguise his own surprise at how easy it was to lie to a man once you figured out how to look him in the eye and make yourself believe it, at least long enough to maintain sufficient eye contact.

“Care to explain this, Ivan!?” Felipe screamed, still squeezing the bolt in front of his face. “Care to explain how your flawless mechanical abilities nearly got us all killed!?”

Anton couldn’t even meet his gaze. Pursing the corners of his lips, Felipe flicked the bolt at Anton’s feet, letting it clatter and roll to a stop by his foot. Then he stood there, his jawline visibly clenching and unclenching over and over again, a small vein in his temple popping into sight at each clench. Finally, he stopped, took a deep breath, and glared.

“I’m going to walk away now,” Felipe whispered. “If you know what is good for you, you won’t follow.”

And then he turned and did just that. The two men sat across from each other for a few minutes, during which time the Admiral kept a vacant, drunken glaze in his eyes while secretly wondering what was going through Anton’s head. How did a man think when he realized his mistakes might have cost hundreds of people who trusted him their lives? Then he had to physically restrain himself from smacking his own cheek. He already knew.

Eventually, Anton drained his glass in a single gulp and set it back on the desk with some muttered thanks, getting up to walk slowly out the door. The Admiral took a final sip from his bottle and set it next to the glass. Though he’d never been thirstier in his life, he thought he’d done enough drinking now. The Russkie had had some interesting ideas; it was just too bad he was in such a precarious position that they might have gotten him killed. Yes, that was it, he’d just saved the Russkie’s life! It was a good thing he’d just done, playing the game like this, he was keeping them all alive, that was it!

Nodding to himself, he scooped up the bottle and resumed his drinking. If he wasn’t going to be an honest man, he could at least be a drunk one.

Author's Note

Hold on, a wee bit more coming today!

Chapter XXV: Shining's Scars

0900 HOURS
A CAVE IN THE ALPS

NEAR GERMAN BORDER, NORTH OF ST. GALLEN, SWITZERLAND

It had all gone so wrong, and it was all her fault. Coming here was a mistake. Had she really thought it would be so easy? Did she honestly believe that she could swoop down with her precious student in tow and just…make things better?

Celestia could defend herself. There’d been no time to think or plan, they’d barely arrived in time as it was. But in time to do what? Nearly die at the hooves of a ravenous mob and permanently traumatize her own precious student, a mare being groomed for a position of power and leadership in Equestria? No, these excuses could have been made by a young stallion wrecking his father’s produce cart, but not by a centuries-old princess with the fate of two worlds on her shoulders.

Two worlds she was failing. Miserably.

Celestia lay with her muzzle in her forehooves, still watching Twilight on the other side of the small cavern. It had been a few hours since the debacle in the “Newfoal Colony,” and at the very least, she had managed to wash the blood out of Twilight’s coat. It had been awful, like cleaning up a doll: Twilight allowing herself to be positioned in the creek, only moving to raise her hooves when asked, or splay out her wings so each and every feather could be scoured. She kept her eyes forward, staring off into the distance at something Celestia could only guess at. If anything, the princess thanked her lucky stars that Twilight had dropped off immediately after her bath in the cave’s narrow stream. At least then, she didn’t have to look into that vacant stare again, wondering if the old Twilight’s warm brightness would ever return.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered with a quiet sniffle. The only reply was a dribble off one of the cave’s numerous stalactites, little drops echoing along the walls of the tiny cavern.

This couldn’t be allowed to happen again. There was already too much blood spilt in this world, too many sacrifices. She would have to get better, figure things out. She would have to learn all she could about what she was up against.

All at once, Celestia knew what she had to do. And it wasn’t laying here, crying until things got better. This “other,” this enemy, who or whatever she was, obviously still held some power in this world despite her imprisonment, and she possessed more than enough prowess to wield that power to devastating effect. Celestia needed to know everything she could find on her doppelganger.

Turning to her pack, she pulled out the Time magazine article she’d torn out back in their hunt through the library, clenching it between her teeth. “Interview with a Prince: How One Stallion went from Captain of the Guard to Rebel Leader to Rebuilder of a Devastated Nation.” She raised an eyebrow. Certainly not the most well-written title she’d ever seen for an article, but at least it had caught her eye. And it alerted her to the possible answers it might hold.

Celestia, of course, was no fool. She knew the answers this article might provide would most certainly not be all that pleasant, but she knew they would almost certainly be necessary for what she needed to accomplish. Still, she shivered at the full-page close-up of Shining Armor spread out before her. Though he had his trademark blue-streaked mane and pristine white coat, this Shining Armor lacked her own captain’s sureness and confident smile, instead glaring up at her from the page as if accusing her personally for the destruction wrought in his land. And that scar…that awful, deep, jagged scar running along his muzzle…

Sighing, she quickly turned her attention to the next page and, still breathing heavily to counter her rising pulse, she began to read.

SEVEN YEARS AGO
NATION OF NEW EQUESTRIA, SOUTH CHINA SEA

CANTERLOT, EQUESTRIA, SPECIAL UN-EXCEPTION ZONE

Captain Shining Armor of the Royal Guard tried very hard not to tremble as he approached the Solar Throne, his head bowed the entire time. He only partially succeeded. The Solar Princess radiated power, her wings flared out so that her massive size filled her throne, seemingly an entire side of the throne room. And yet, for all this, her eyes were still open and kind as she gazed down at him. He didn’t buy it. Not even for a second.

“Your Highness,” he enthused, bowing.

“Ah, Captain Armor,” she replied with that warm lilt in her voice, like a mother embracing their foal after a day at Kindergarten. “How very good to see you again.”

“And you, your highness,” he lied, trying to ignore the sweat gathering under his helmet as though he were working the engineer’s compartment of a steam engine. In truth, it was never ‘good’ to see her again. Not since he found the documents telling him what really happened to those subjected to ponification, and what a Newfoal truly was. Since then, seeing the princess had felt like playing a game their “enemies” called “Russian Roulette.”

“I am so glad to hear you say that, my little pony,” she hummed as she circled around, and suddenly, Shining Armor felt like a zebra being backed into a corner by a manticore. Alarm bells went off. Oh hell, was this the day? Had he finally played this game one too many times? “You know, it can be so hard to find good, loyal ponies these days. Since we opened up our first Conversion Bureau, there have been so many ponies that have lost sight of the truth, and of the guiding light. It can be so exhausting, all the double-talk, the backroom deals, the assassination attempts…”

Most of it carried out by you, he thought bitterly, remembering the freak accident that had destroyed a caravan of picnicking nobles the previous year, wiping out the entire Blueblood line just hours after Vladimir Blueblood had demanded the princess make her secret military research programs regarding the defense of Equestria from any “cross-dimensional incursions” public.

“Heavy is the head that wears the crown, your majesty,” he said, rising in a way that he could only hope looked natural, and not all shivery and janky as though his legs were going to give out from under him at any moment. “I like to think we all have our burdens to shoulder, no matter our occupation, though I’m sure the burdens of royalty are heavier than most.”

“Hmm…I suppose they are,” she mused, and for a second, Shining allowed a glimmer of hope into his thoughts. Was he just being paranoid again? It was easy enough to let his imagination run away with him, especially as he laid in his bed at night, all alone, wondering if today he had made the mistake that would finally get him killed. “There are also the decisions we must make. You see, Captain, ruling requires that we make difficult choices at times. Choices that overall are for the benefit of the country, but might be to the detriment of a few.”

“O-of course, your highness,” what was this? Had she invited him in for some small talk? If so, why hadn’t she put out some tea and coffee cake as was her tradition?

Her gaze drifted over him, and suddenly he felt the stare of a thousand suns looming over him, a creature with infinite power and little to no restraint regarding him like a magnifying glass over an anthill. Shining’s head bowed once more, ears fanning against his skull.

“And if those few happen to be ponies the royal knows, well, that can’t be helped. If a royal were to make exceptions there and put anything above her country, that just wouldn’t be fair.” She paused right in front of him, and he just knew that she was gazing holes into the back of his head with those eyes, those awful, blazing eyes, her mane billowing out to the side without impeding that damnable gaze in the slightest. He swore he could feel the heat of her glare on the back of his head. “Do you agree, Captain? That is fair, is it not?”

Oh dear sweet Celestial goddess above, he was so dead. “Yes princess, I suppose that is very fair.”

Nodding her approval, she turned away, and he felt that horrible gaze leave the back of his head. His relief was short-lived as the doors to the throne room creaked open behind him.

Shining Armor of the Royal Guard turned to catch a glimpse of the newcomer, as was ingrained in him by years of training, and Shining Armor the terrified foal immediately focused back on the tile, his vision blurred by tears, his heart beating in his throat. She wouldn’t… he thought to himself, even as another voice roared back that she so would. Still, he didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t believe it, knew he had to believe it but wanted to refute it with all his will.

He remained like that until a pair of hooves clad in the gold-plated armor shoes of the royal guard halted next to his ear, a pair of loud clacking sounds that echoed in the hallway like an executioner’s gunshot. This was followed by a loud squelch, something fleshy hitting the tile. Something fleshy, purple and covered in blood.

Shining slowly craned his neck around, a drop of blood leaving a trail down the side of his ivory cheek. Twilight Sparkle’s one remaining eye focused in and out on him, the other a bloody hole in her face. A spurt of blood cascaded from her mouth, trailing from the streak her impact with the tile left. Her jaw pressed into the floor at a strange, haphazard angle that told him it had been broken, along with the upper part of her muzzle leading to her snout. Her only eye gave him a half-asleep, thousand-yard stare from the middle of a network of swollen, red cuts, beneath the shattered remnants of her horn.

He looked at her, his back heaving, his breath coming in wretching gasps despite his best efforts. The gasps became longer and higher-pitched as his wide, horrified eyes drank in his sister, his stomach twisting in knots. He wanted to puke. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to reach out and strangle the fuckers who did this. In the end, all he could do was reach feebly for her, wheezing pitifully as the first wails broke from his throat.

His sister, the precious little filly that had become so withdrawn since her admittance to Celestia’s – no, no, even now he couldn’t think that name – to Her School for Gifted Magickers, laid as a broken mare before him. The guard closest to him at least allowed for the embrace, letting Shining cradle the tattered pile of mattered fur until that evil fucking bitch cleared her throat. Without a moment’s hesitation, the guardstallion cracked a hoof up the side of Shining’s face, sending him sprawling, still clutching his sister.

“Did you think I was stupid, Captain Armor?” Celestia asked calmly, retaking her place on her throne. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice the backroom meetings and the missing lab documents?”

He didn’t respond, still clutching his sister, still wailing.

The Princess shook her head. “Such a shame…so much potential from both of you, but then you had to go and lose your spine, Captain.”

At that, Shining Armor turned on her, tears still streaming down his face, teeth bared. “You’re kidnapping sapient creatures for your own twisted experiments in turning them into mindless zombies! What the fuck else could I have done!?”

The Princess just shook her head again. “Such an utter and complete waste,” she sighed. “Oh well, one more rabble-rouser down.”

“God damn you!” He screamed, the guardstallions all gasping at the use of the forbidden expression: the ‘God’ their enemy was so used to invoking. “God damn you all straight to hell!”

“Very well,” the Princess’s horn warmed and Shining Armor knew what would come next. A flash of searing pain, certainly, a couple theatrical peals of flame, and then, the cold eternity of nothingness. He closed his eyes, still gasping, hugging his sister close to him. At least she wouldn’t be in agony much longer.

“Shuh-Shining?” The mare in his grasp asked. He looked at her to see her eye open, trying to focus on him.

“Shhhh…” he whispered, kissing her forehead. “It’ll all be over soon, okay? The pain will be gone soon.”

He felt tears gathering against his legs as they embraced her. He cringed and clenched his teeth, awaiting the final blow. Then the throne room doors opened once more.

“Your highness?” Shining opened his eyes, blinking away the tears as a familiar pink form stepped through. Cadenza. Cadence for short. The Princess’s personal secretary. What was she doing in here?

The Princess turned that burning glare on the smaller unicorn. By some incredible force of will Shining would admire until his dying day, Cadence didn’t shrink back, only kept her head bowed. “What is it, my dear assistant?” The Princess asked tersely, her jaw visibly clenching and unclenching.

“I-It’s an official from the occupied territories in New Manehattan, madam,” Cadence said, keeping her eyes on the floor. “You said to let you know the moment we…”

“I did…” the Princess paused, the magic draining from her horn, and the temperature dropping in the room considerably. Shining noticed sweat dripping down the other guards’ foreheads, though whether that was from the heat or the tension was anypony’s guess. “Now, why would I do that?”

“Something…about…” Cadence glanced around quickly. “Nutmeg?”

The Princess glared at her. Shining had detected the lie instantly, but why was Cadence lying?

Unless…

Oh, that impossibly brave mare. If Shining had had any suspicions before about who had been feeding him documents to supply to the growing rebel army, they were all confirmed right here, in that sideways glance, the pieces coming together in his mind at once. In that moment, he could have rushed over to that scared little unicorn and swept her up in his hooves. As it stood, he could only wait, and pray to an entity that didn’t even have a religion.

Cadence stood there, waiting for some sort of reaction. The room held its collective breath. The Princess regarded her secretary for five of the most terrifying moments in anypony’s lives. Then, one of the royal alicorn’s eyebrows arched.

“Ah yes, Griffonian nutmeg,” the princess enthused, a light smile touching her lips. “Delicious stuff, I was hoping to step up our trade relations to favor its import.”

Of course, by “trade relations” she meant “tribute,” but Shining Armor was a bit too deep in the throes of shock to bring that point up. Instead, his focus strayed to the pink unicorn, letting out a relieved sigh as the Princess stepped around her, barely giving a passing glance as she trotted out the throne room’s doors.

Instantly, they slammed shut, the lock clicking into place. “What’s…” the guardspony at Shining’s side started before the unicorns standing on either side of the throne darted forward, blasting spells that knocked Twilight’s “escorts” to the floor before they could even get a spell off. Cadence fell too, breathing long, heavy gasps of relief. After a few moments, she turned to Shining.

“Captain Armor?” She asked.

He nodded.

“We’re here to extract you, sir,” she said with a wan smile, tears rolling out her eyes as she gazed over Twilight’s broken form. “Both of you.”

Shining nodded, holding the unicorn in his grasp a little tighter.

“Don’t worry, sir,” Cadence continued, galloping to his side even as the undercover guardstallions from Celestia’s side rushed to bind the fallen guards. “We have healing mages, we can help her…though I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for her eye…”

“That’s okay,” Shining sniffled, relieved tears rolling down his cheeks as he kissed Twilight’s shattered muzzle. “So long as she’s alive, that’s okay…”

“You should get moving, sir,” one of the undercover guards shouted. “We know she designed those doors herself, but we don’t know how long they’ll hold against her!”

“Thank you,” Shining repeated over and over again. “Thank you so much, thank you…”

He trailed off while Cadence went to work taking out one of the windows, the guards keeping an eye on the door. It struck Shining as odd how no sound had come through the door since it had been locked. One would think they would hear the sounds of the buckling hinges, the Princess ranting from the other side, something. It didn’t even occur to him that she might know of another way in, not until the sound of granite grinding on granite filled his ears. He looked up to see the keystone at the height of the archway around the door shift, and by then it was already too late.

“She’s coming through…” he started, and then the stone popped out of place and crashed to the tile, smashing itself to pieces with a deafening thud. His eyes widened in horror as the winged figure of the Princess strode through the hole, framed in her sun’s light, shadows trailing in the dust.

“Cadence,” she said in a tone just above a low whisper, her rage flowing off her body in the form of peals of flickering, white-hot flame, fire dancing along the walls around her. “You too? Even you dare to question your Princess?”

After a few moments finding her voice, Cadence replied: “I do when her actions reveal what an evil, genocidal pile of horse-apples she is!”

“TRAITOR!” The Princess cried, diving out of the hole and charging, her rage clouding her mind. One of the guardstallions leapt back at her. She trampled him beneath her hooves, not even slowing down. The next stallion proved quicker in his charge, dodging to the side at the last minute to bring his spear around in a stab at the Princess’s side.

“Traitors!” She repeated, the blow still not enough to pierce her magically-endowed coat, but enough to throw off her charge.

“Move!” The guard screamed, turning to face the trio by the window. “Before she-“ his sentence ended in a choked-off gurgle as the Princess’s horn jabbed into his throat, piercing right through until the tip emerged out the other side. He still let out a couple strangled, clicking sounds as she hoisted him up and catapulted him over her shoulder, throwing him against a wall with enough force to leave cracks.

Her murderous glare turned on the three remaining ponies, blood streaking down her face, her eyes filled with the sort of murderous rage reserved for the worst of tyrants. “Traitors.” She whispered again, stepping forward, kicking one of her own unconscious guards to the side.

Tears stung Shining’s face from the sheer heat. He hugged Twilight closer, like a foal with his teddy. He didn’t notice the way Twilight’s eyes fluttered open as he set her aside, standing, his head bowed.

“Come on, then,” he said quietly, his eyes closing dejectedly as he faced the Princess. “Finish it.”

With a snarl, the Princess reared back for an earth-shattering blow, the light pouring off her body almost too much for Shining, even with his eyes closed. He heard Cadence gasp behind him, assumed it was in horror, and whispered: “I love you, Twily.”

There was a last cry, the snap of a massive spell being unleashed, and then pain seared up the side of his face. Shining Armor collapsed, knowing he was mortally wounded, knowing there was no way he could still be alive. At least, not for long.

To his surprise and amazement, he breathed in, and then breathed out. He was alive. The pain in his face was indescribable, but he was alive. He opened his eyes - or eye, as it was – and focused. It took nearly all his will to climb back to his hooves, and when he did, he wished he hadn’t.

A scorched, charred corpse lay before him, a little pony burnt beyond recognition. The tortured flesh of the face was twisted into a mask of immense pain, the mouth open in a choked-off scream of agony. He might never have recognized it were it not for the mostly-intact flesh of the flank.

Twilight’s cutie mark winked back at him, the only recognizable part left of her.

“No!” He screamed, turning to the surprised Princess in horror and rage. “It was me! It should’ve been me!”

“Shiney!” Somepony far off screeched as hooves grasped at his shoulders. “We have to go! She’ll only be distracted for so long!”

He paid no heed, instead locking eyes with the loathsome, evil creature before him. “It wasn’t enough for you to ruin her life, you had to take it too you evil motherbucking…”

“Shining! Oh Maker above, your face! She got your…”

Twilight came back like one waking up from a deep, restful sleep, clinging to unconsciousness with the greed of someone forced to wake up to an alarm. It had been so peaceful here. Peaceful and quiet. The exact opposite of the last few days, where she'd been kidnapped, held, accused of the most wretched crimes, sent on the lam with nothing in her stomach, and...

...his head vanished in a cyan blur and a sudden explosion of gore, bits of skull and droplets of blood blanketing the cheap throw rug proclaiming “welcome” to anyone on the doorstep...

Twilight bolted upright, sleep fleeing her body. A hoof flew across her mouth, stifling the scream threatening to rise from her throat. Her heart pounded in her chest. Tears gathered in her eyes. Darkness crept in along the edges of her vision, and she squeezed her eyelids shut. She was going to faint. And would that be so bad? Sleep had been peaceful. Sleep had been refreshing. Out here, all that existed was the image playing constantly in her mind, hammering her skull just like...just like that pegasus had...enjoying it...oh yes, they had enjoyed it, that pegasus had stomped that human's brains out and looked back at her with the sort of ecstasy you only saw in foals discovering chocolate for the first time. No, no wait, that was wrong. It had been more like Dashie whenever she pushed some new limit in her flying, or Applejack at the end of an especially hard day when she came over to just relax over a movie with the rest of her friends. As if that pegasus had been meant for this, meant to kill and kill again the same way Fluttershy was meant to take care of her animals.

That somepony could be wired to believe killing was their natural talent forced a bit of bile up Twilight's throat. She swallowed it back and tried to will herself back to sleep again.

Except that would accomplish nothing.

Except sleep meant laying here - wherever here was - like a useless log while Celestia did all the work.

Except sleep would be hard to return now that the image of that man's head exploding kept playing over and over on the inside of her eyelids.

Tears stung at Twilight’s eyes as they opened tentatively. Her lower lip quivered, but she forced the tears back down as she had with the bile. She was a princess, specially selected from an entire generation of promising foals to be Celestia's personal student, and someday, perhaps even her substitute. The mare worthy of these things would not cry in the face of such hardship. The mare worthy of these things would do whatever it took to make sure they didn't happen again.

Twilight laid there until her heart slowed down, her hoof forcing her breathing to remain steady. Eventually, she felt confident enough to lower her hoof without fear of a scream breaking out. She knew if she screamed, she probably wouldn't be able to stop, and a mare screaming and jabbering herself hoarse was the last thing a pair of fugitives needed.

Even with her confidence growing, she laid there awhile, not yet able to roll over onto her hooves. Her mind needed time to analyze the situation, to appraise it. Except it couldn't. It was all too big, too completely overwhelming for one pony to process and deal with. This world had seen so much death and destruction at the hooves of another world like her own, yet not. And in trying to set things right and improve that image, all she had accomplished was a near-death experience at the hooves of an utterly ravenous horde of ponies straight out of a horror story: one of those cheap post-apocalyptic things the griffons were so fond of. On top of that, her sole attempt at saving just one life and sparing this world any more misery had ended in total failure, as well as an image that she just knew would be haunting her nightmares for the rest of her life.

A few years before, Twilight would have been so totally paralyzed by all this she probably would have just rolled over and gone back to sleep. Now though, she knew exactly what she needed: a friend to help her.

Finally pushing herself to her hooves, Twilight gave herself a quick preening. The habit had been surprisingly easy to get into once she had started, and now even a brief nap usually resulted in a small preening. Just another ritual to hold to, like brushing her teeth or running a comb through her mane. Amazing the things one got used to.

If she ever got used to mornings like this, she would slit her own throat.

She sat up, and her eyes fell on a beautifully white form watching her from deeper in the cave. She locked eyes with Celestia, the older princess lying prostrate at the other side of a tiny, stagnant pond. By her hooves were the folded, laminated pages of a discarded magazine article. She looked so tired and old just then that Twilight had to take a step back. She had been old when Starswirl the Bearded was just another promising young unicorn in Canterlot, when the Crystal Empire had first been banished from existence by Sombra’s power, and even when Luna’s rage had first welcomed the power of the Nightmare into Equestria. And finally, it looked like all of those long centuries were starting to weigh on her.

Twilight had to blink at her former mentor. Had those bags under her eyes always been there? Did her muzzle always sag with loose skin? And weren’t those eyes a vibrant, lively magenta before she’d gone to sleep? Or had they always been a sort of dull lavender, the kind you saw on the wallpaper of an elderly pony’s home who was just too old and too tired to change it?

Without really thinking about it, Twilight trotted over to Celestia and tucked in at her side, nuzzling against her, not even realizing this had been the exact position she’d assumed years ago as a filly, whenever she was feeling down about the other unicorns teasing her in class or because she was feeling a little homesick. This was enough for Celestia to pull her muzzle out of her hooves, slightly damp from lapping at the very edge of the stagnant water for who-knows how long, but not much else.

Also without realizing it, Celestia completed the old ritual by fanning a wing over Twilight’s body. Though she missed covering a few errant feathers Twilight had missed in her preening, a contented smile rose on both mares’ faces, one that died almost as soon as it was born.

“A mistake,” Celestia muttered. Her voice was quiet and wavering, as though on the verge of tears. Hearing her princess speak in that voice made Twilight’s heart leap into her throat. “I have made so many mistakes…”

“Princess?” Twilight asked, hoping to snap Celestia out of whatever spell this was and see that old, lively, self-assured confidence return.

“Twilight, I realize now how foolish this was,” she said, her voice still at that eerie quiet. “You are…young…young and inexperienced, and…you should…”

“Princess, no,” Twilight insisted, still ignorant of the way Celestia kept her head down, the shadow of her mane covering her eyes. “I’m here to help…”

“And I can’t lose you!” At that, Celestia finally looked up, and Twilight took a few shocked steps back. Celestia, the Princess of Day, ruler of the sun, the mother figure for everypony in Equestria and abroad, had tears streaking down her muzzle, soaking the dirt beneath her barrel. Twilight had seen her cry before, of course, she’d cried just the other day when Ainsley had called up all those horrid articles about the crimes of her doppelganger. This time, however, Celestia was not crying on behalf of a species or under the weight of the crown. This time, Twilight just saw a pony scared to tears of losing someone she loved.

“I-I can’t do it, Twilight,” she whispered, her voice kept low by a barely-contained bout of sobs. “I will fight hatred and death in this world with my dying breath, I will stretch my magic past its limits curing the Newfoals, I’ll even die fighting that bitch…but if I had to bury you here, if I had to lower your body into a grave, I think I’d just lay down next to it and cry forever and ever until I couldn’t cry anymore and…and…”

Twilight rushed to embrace her teacher, nuzzling deep against her barrel, hooves around her slender neck. She emulated the many long evenings Celestia would spend in this exact position, their roles reversed from those old days when Celestia had to nuzzle away the bullies’ words or the homesickness or the other hundreds of things a pubescent pony might suffer through.

They stayed like that until the sobs finally abated, calming into a series of quivering, hyperventilated breaths. “I can’t…” Celestia whispered as she finally calmed. “I can’t lose you.”

Rubbing her cheek into her ivory coat, Twilight whispered back: “Now you know why I can’t leave.”

There was a pause in the jagged breaths. Celestia’s breathing increased again, and for a second, Twilight was worried she might lose her to another crying fit. But it calmed after a few minutes, and at last, the pair were able to just enjoy one another’s embrace.

“Please, Twilight,” Celestia whispered. “Please go. I’d rather die than lose you.”

“Out of the question,” Twilight whispered back, wiping the tears out of her mentor’s eyes with the tips of her wings, even as tears of her own started wetting her muzzle. “I’m not leaving here without you, and without helping put something right. That would be abandoning a job and leaving things half-finished. I have never done that in my life, and I refuse to start now.”

A few moments of silence passed between them. “You’re a wonderful pony,” Celestia finally said between sniffles and hiccups.

Twilight settled in to stroke the near-pristine ivory coat next to her. “Let it all out, Princess,” she whispered. “And then tell me what the next step is.”

“The next step?” Celestia looked away, biting her lip to control her sobs. “The next step…”

Twilight’s heart sank at the blank look in Celestia’s eyes behind the tears. Perhaps that had been another reason to send her off: she didn’t even know what the next move would be. Not that Twilight could blame her. The situation had looked so simple before the Newfoal colony, but now, after the death and destruction there, what would they do? What could they do?

After a while, Celestia looked over at her, eyes still glistening with tears but her muzzle holding that gentle smile Twilight knew from years under her tutelage. “What is the most important thing for somepony who is just learning something new, and fails?” She asked politely, voice still quivering.

Twilight blinked, her mind shifting into another gear with an almost audible thud, but when it finished the answer was on her lips almost immediately: “To try again, no matter how long it takes?”

The smile on Celestia’s face widened, tears still standing in her eyes. “Precisely.”

Author's Note

Not gonna lie, getting back into this story was one of the more difficult things I've done as a writer. However, I do have some extra material besides just this all ready to go. I know, it's just a flashback, but hopefully a good setup for what comes next.

So sorry for the long delay, as I said, getting back into the swing of things has been terribly difficult, and just figuring out how to move forward, much less put it on paper, felt like trying to push a boulder uphill at points, but hopefully the amount I've gotten down is a sign of steadier times ahead :) If not, and I do take another pause, feel free to send throat-punches through the Internet.

One thing to add: thank you for hanging in there, I know it's been a long, tedious journey with quite a few missteps, but thanks for sticking around, I know I appreciate the hell out of you :)

Chapter XXVI: Back In Canterlot...

1030 HOURS
UNDISCLOSED ROOM IN LOWER COMMONS

CANTERLOT CASTLE, CANTERLOT, EQUESTRIA

As far as training sessions went, Shining Armor had gone through better. Of course, usually training involved strengthening some part of himself: mind, body, or magic. This was something else entirely. He grunted, eyes closing with the strain in his horn.

“Focus, Captain,” Luna cautioned, standing over him. “Focus is the key here, not effort. Remember: you won’t have your magic on the other side. This spell will need to be maintained by your ambient magic, and you must focus to draw upon it.”

Nodding, Shining’s face relaxed, his effort drawing back. His mind emptied itself. Surprisingly enough, this part of the training was coming along easily. The meditation, imagining himself as merely an antenna for the power around him, turning himself into his own magic generator, was turning out to be one of the easier parts of this training. Maybe it was all those fantasy novels he’d read in high school. Losing himself in some other world was kind of like this, only instead of swords and dragons and certain pink princesses in grave danger; there was just himself and a great, blank slate.

And then Luna reared up behind him and screamed her lungs out, the sort of terrified scream that might open a cheap slasher movie. Gasping, Shining’s eyes bolted open and he fell on his back. The spell dissipated in an instant.

“Princess, what…” he started.

Luna merely sighed at him. “Focus, Shining, under any circumstances. Do you believe your captors will stay nice and quiet for you while you maintain the spell? Do you think your capture will be smooth and calming?”

Shining opened his mouth, then closed it. He bowed his head, shame obvious on his face. “I’m sorry, Princess.”

“’Tis alright, Captain. So long as we can move forward,” Luna strutted in front of the former guard, her features calm, her muzzle turned up in a little smile that warmed Shining’s heart. For a second, some traitorous part of his mind imagined darting across the room and sweeping Luna up in his legs, finally discovering if that saucy little smile she liked to use tasted as good as it looked. Only a second though, and the image disappeared as soon as the rest of him, the happily married part of him, was able to react.

He closed his eyes, breathed, and once again ran the standard marriage-saving protocols. Cadence, nibbling at her lip, eyes half-lidded with that needy little smile. Yeah, there we go.

“Ready for another try?” Luna asked, watching him curiously. “We won’t go so easily on you this time around.”

He snorted and lowered his head, ears folding forward. “Bring it on.”

That little smile reappeared, and Luna shook her head. “Focus, Shining, not effort.”

“Er…right, sorry Princess, I…”

As usually happens when one is getting too comfortable with the way things are, a curveball hit in the shape of a panicking guard galloping through the doors, slamming into the room as if there was nothing at all in the doorframe. Princess and prince were both caught off guard, staring at the newcomer in stunned silence.

“The…anomaly…” the guard gasped, not even bothering with basic etiquette, though he did manage a weak salute, holding a shaking hoof to his forehead. “Your highnesses…it’s…expanding!” He finally managed to gasp.

There were a few moments of processing as both royals slowly wrapped their minds around the sheer magnitude of what was just said. Then both leapt to their hooves in a wild state.

“Reinforce the guard!” Luna cried as Shining rocketed out of the room, galloping past the guard and out the door at top speed. “Get our mages moving, and make sure everypony is clear!”

The last, choked-out words Shining heard before he zoomed around a corner and out of earshot were: “We’ve already lost Refugee Camp Alpha…” and then he double-timed it. He didn’t even know he could run faster until the moment those gut-wrenching words graced his ears. He had to see. Even if he could do nothing, he had to see.

He rushed past saluting soldiers and a rising tide of panicking civilians. His teeth clenched as he ran, begging not to be too late, not again, not so soon after his last failure.

He reached the castle walls, shouldering past a few other guards to glare down at that cursed field. His stomach sank into his horseshoes. There was no denying it: the weird cloud of fog was unmistakably bigger. The dilapidated fence which had served as a border for the ponies gathering around it was now gone, completely enveloped. So too was the very refugee center he’d woken up in.

Dear Celestia above, had that only been a few days ago? Was it really less than a week ago when he’d woken up next to Cadence, had a perfectly normal day watching the recruits drill, filled out some paperwork, and received an urgent message to make all haste to Canterlot? On that day, Celestia was in her palace, Twilight was just a letter-send away, and Spike didn’t need to cuddle up with somepony in the palace to keep from crying through the night. Had that all been such a short time ago?

Shaking his head, he glared at the nearest pegasus. The pegasus turned to him, jaw still hanging agape, then his pupils narrowed and he immediately sank in a bow.

“Captain!” He gasped. “I’m sorry, I…”

“I need a ride. Now.” Shining Armor stated, not bothering to correct the younger soldier that he was the former captain. With a nod, the pegasus took to the air and swooped overhead, hooves extended. Shining didn’t even need him to slow down, as he joined hooves and allowed himself to be carried to the ground far below, wishing all the way he had his sister’s talent for teleportation spells.

Panting, the pegasus dropped him off with an unceremonious thud. Shining barely even noticed the jarring landing, taking to his hooves and galloping towards the ring of soldiers gathered at the cloud’s perimeter, some restraining their comrades from charging headlong into the cloud, the rest just standing there with their heads craned back and their jaws gaping.

For a second, Shining was one of the gapers. The moment he got close to it, the new size of the cloud struck him, drawing his eyes up and up as its shadow fell over him. His jaw fell open and his ears folded back as his gallop slowed to a trot, then stopped completely just outside the ring of guards closed in around the new border. It blotted out the sun with its size, stretching up as far as the Crystal Empire’s stadium reached. His heart beat in his throat, and he swallowed. Finally, he snapped himself out of his trance and turned to the nearest guard.

“You there! Private!” He pointed. The guard’s gaze slowly drifted down to him, his spear held loosely in his hooves, then with a gasp he stood ramrod straight and saluted. Rolling his eyes, Shining gave his hoof a little roll. “At ease.”

“Sir!” The stallion lowered his hoof, thrusting his chest out.

“Why wasn’t the hospital evacuated!?” Shining Armor sneered.

“I…sir, there was hardly time for any sort of evacuation,” the guardspony whispered, visibly shrinking. “It was all so damned fast, the stallions around you were either outside or close enough to the perimeter to feel their way out when it happened. The cloud was just…there.”

Snorting, Shining moved on to the next stallion in the circle. “Is that true!?” He barked.

“Wha…oh!” The stallion’s glazed-over look dissipated. “Sir, I…”

“Is that true!?” Shining Armor spat, not even waiting for the obligatory salute and command to relax. “Is it true the cloud expanded in a very brief amount of time?”

“I…it did, sir. I was standing guard at the camp’s perimeter when all of a sudden, I was surrounded by the cloud. I took a few steps back out of surprise, and I was here, sir.”

Shining Armor cursed. At the very least, his stallions weren’t cowards, but holding the witnesses to the princesses’ kidnapping so close to the damned thing had been an obvious mistake. Sure, having everything they needed to hide in one place had seemed convenient, but now…

He closed his eyes and grit his teeth as the sight of a bloody hoof poking out from under a blanket rose up from his mind, despite his best efforts to hold it back. When he opened his eyes again, he made note that most of the stallions around him had taken several steps away. His teeth clenched until he was sure they had cracked.

“How many ponies are still in there?” He growled.

“A-at least thirty counting th-the civilian medical staff and detainees, s-sir,” the guard before him gulped, trembling on his hooves. “W-we don’t have a count yet for the guards currently MIA, so…”

Snorting in frustration, Shining turned his piercing glare on the wall of fog swirling in front of him, much to the relief of the stallions that had been the subject of said glare until that moment. Then he began to stride forward.

“Sir!” The pegasus which had dropped him off gasped, clenching at his shoulder. “What’re you doing!?”

“Getting our ponies out of there before those monsters take them too,” Shining spat as he shrugged the hoof off his shoulder. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“S-sir, wait,” another stallion in golden armor reached for him. “We should wait for…”

“For what!? For it to be too late!? For those things to send us the disembodied limbs of our ponies!?” Shining screamed. The stallion shrank back, but most notably, he didn’t get out of Shining Armor’s path.

“Get out of my way,” Shining snarled.

“N-no, sir, I can’t do that,” the stallion whimpered, still shaking but standing strong. He reached for his spear and began to pick it up. Shining Armor batted it to the ground as if he’d just caught a foal with its hoof in the cookie jar.

“I don’t need to stand here and debate orders with a bunch of cowardly little colts!” Shining hollered. “Now, get out of my way, or I will…”

“Captain Armor!”

Even in his current state, the Royal Canterlot Voice was more than enough to make Shining Armor cringe like a colt hearing his name screamed by his mother. Still maintaining a strong façade, Shining Armor turned to glare eye-to-eye with the lunar princess, only now growing conscious of how freakin’ tall she was compared to him.

“Captain Armor,” she spoke, enunciating every syllable with every drop of icy coldness she could muster, all while returning Shining’s glare with equal, if not greater, force. “What doth thee bethink thou art doing?”

Oh Celestia, ye olde Equish, he thought, suppressing a shiver. This was the Lunar Princess’s way of making sure you knew you were officially one snide remark away from knowing what a full buck to the face from a goddess felt like. Still, he met her gaze, though not with the force he had begun with.

“Saving the ponies I am pledged to protect, your highness,” he replied nonchalantly.

“And how would getting yourself captured accomplish this?” She asked, reverting to her modern tongue, though the fury in those massive, blue pools suggested he was far from out of the woods just yet.

“I was not…”

“You were about to charge full on into enemy territory with no plan, by yourself, with little to no hope of rescue should something go wrong and no idea of what you might face,” Luna shook her head. “Has your time in the Crystal Empire caused you to completely forget all of your military training?”

Hearing his actions put in such frank terms, Shining’s façade crumbled. He backed away, though he still glared. “Princess, I…”

“I understand your concern, Captain,” Luna closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, that warm, soft look she’d held for that instant in the palace was right back. “Probably more than you know. But stumbling headfirst into any situation with no knowledge of what waits will rarely, if ever, help anypony.”

“I…” he bowed his head, ears folding down. The scolded colt had finally realized his mistake. “I’m sorry, Princess, my behavior has been absolutely awful, and completely unbecoming for a stallion of my status.”

Luna nodded, the ice and cold retreating instantly from her gaze. “Thank you, Captain. Apology accepted.”

An awkward silence fell over the group, the other stallions and mares in guards’ armor unable or unwilling to break it. Then Shining Armor lifted his head, his voice gentle, but still booming over them all with authority. “Everypony maintain positions around the cloud! I want a cordon of at least a quarter mile around the entire anomaly in case it expands! Pegasi patrol the skies; keep an eye on the ground for anypony that manages to sneak through the outer defenses! Unicorns lay down some alarm spells, make sure that if anything more complicated than an earthworm enters our cordon from the outside, we all know about it! Earth ponies maintain the outer cordon, I want regular patrols on the perimeter with randomized, scattered incursions into the area immediately surrounding the anomaly, in case somepony breaks out and requires assistance or somepony sneaks through the outer defenses, but under no circumstances is anypony to enter the anomaly itself! I don’t care if you hear your own mother calling for you from inside, there is no reason whatsoever that I should hear about anypony getting close to that thing!”

There were a few more hoofbeats without motion, then the crowd around the royals burst into activity, ponies rushing off in their own, segregated groups to carry out their own tasks, squad leaders already barking orders to the ponies under them. Soon, only Luna and Shining Armor remained. Just as they wanted.

Shining Armor sighed and turned towards the great cloud billowing before them. “What about them, though?” He whispered.

Luna sighed and offered a comforting wing across his withers, and miraculously he found he didn’t need to run the marriage-saving protocol through his head. Then again, he was a bit distracted by the billowing grey smoke which had just devoured another innocent group of ponies.

“’Tis not our place to say where they will be tomorrow, Captain,” Luna said gently. “We can only hope and pray for mercy on behalf of whatever beasts have taken them.”

Shining Armor didn’t speak or bring up how ridiculous the idea of mercy from one of those faceless, black-clad things was to him. Instead, he continued staring at the cloud for an extra few minutes. Once or twice, he attempted to levitate a rock from the ground at his hooves, only to be met with failure. Just like last time. Eventually, he got up and trotted towards the beginnings of the barricade his ponies were constructing around him. Luna followed suit soon after, and all that was left in the little clearing were a few trodden blades of grass where a group of ponies had been just minutes before.

And the gap between worlds widened.

Author's Note

This will be something a bit far from the current plot (heheh), but I figured we needed to catch up on what's going down by Canterlot around now

Chapter XXVII: Thompson

Private Thompson wished for a lot of things. He wished he’d asked that cute little cadet that sat across from him in maths class for most of junior year out just once. He wished his last words to his father before the old man dropped dead of a heart attack at 42 had been “I love you,” or “Be safe” instead of “Sure, turkey sounds alright”. He wished he talked to his sisters more, instead of just seeing them on holidays and sharing awkward “how’s work treating you” conversations over the dinner table. But most of all, he wished that goddamned portal had opened anywhere else. South America, New York, Italy. Hell, drop it on China again, they’d handled it okay before! But here? Right off the coast of Scotland? Where he and his team just happened to be out on a training mission when that damned hole in time and space opened up and destroyed the safe and happy world everyone had slowly gotten used to after the last five years? Just damn his luck.

It was like winning the worst lottery ever. He remembered reading some fucked-up manga as a kid, where Japan had become some ultra-evil dictatorship that picked kids for a lottery and had them fight to the death in an island made up to look like a school, and the one who lived got drafted into the military. It was like being one of those chosen kids. Yeah, that was it. Or maybe like that kid’s book series the Americans got everyone worked up about a few years back. Maybe like that. Something like that. God, what he’d give to be anywhere but on this godforsaken little raft.

The worst part before these missions was the quiet. The buzzing of the small engine and the general tension in the air were enough to strangle any conversation. Plus, it was generally accepted that anything which might distract from the mission during a deployment was a no-no. Thompson understood, most guys had to focus on what was to come, but goddammit they could all be heading to their deaths! Would a few words with another human being really be that bad!?

Okay, maybe it would actually help to focus. Had to be better than thinking about the seawater splashing in his face and the incessant buzz of that damnable engine. So here was the gist: the eggheads had finally detected that the rift between worlds was expanding, just like it had all those years ago. Except slower, on account of there not being an almighty god-princess fueling the change this time around. Tachyon Inhibitors were in place so, from out here, those big bastard things mounted on their ships would have the exact same effect on whatever was in the rift that they’d had on Equestria back in 2020. The only difference between now and last week was that the land inside was finally big enough to care about, maybe the size of a couple football stadiums.

He breathed in, and out. This was going to be a cakewalk. No magic meant they were fighting a bunch of soldiers in plate armor and waving spears around. Easy peasy. Simple shit. Hell, not technically a battle, more like a peacekeeping operation. So why did his hands shake and his stomach twist when he looked up at the damned cloud and noticed how close they were?

“Twenty seconds!” The man at the stern shouted. Thompson let out another shaky breath. Here they were, five men in a dinghy, another couple boats behind them for a grand total of fifteen of Britain’s finest, and what were they expected to do? Make the first formal territorial conquests in what might be the second part of a war that had almost led to humanity’s extinction!? What madman thought this practice in group suicide up!?

Maybe it was just the whole “lack of vision” thing. The commanders couldn’t actually see Equestria, at least not yet, and so it was easier to send a bunch of soldiers in with no intel and no idea what they’d encounter. For all they knew, they were going to land in Equestria’s largest pillow and fluffy kitten factory. Visual contact wouldn’t be established until Equestria was all the way on Earth and the dimensional plane stabilized again, or something like that. He didn’t remember what the article on Google he’d looked up had said exactly, but he remembered the gist. Apparently, the fog wasn’t really there, just a bit of transparent mist that their minds made opaque, simply because their teeny-tiny human minds couldn’t process the dimensional rift. So it just edited right over it, plugging in a giant gray splotch where the rift would be, which sounded a lot like some serious…

“Ten seconds!”

Shitfuck! Why did they have to keep announcing it like that!? Did they think they couldn’t see the massive, gray wall right in front of their faces!? Like they needed a constant reminder it was there!?

“Safeties off, lads,” Thompson’s CO said, gripping his carbine as he looked back at the rest of the men, regarding each and every one of them with an icy glare as if he fully expected one, if not two, of the men in this very boat to fuck up royally at some point. “We don’t know who or what’s over there, or even if there is something, but if you see something that looks like a plushie holdin’ a spear, you make sure you know their intent, and if they make a go at you, you bloody-well cut ‘em down! The boys up top might be worried about keeping civvie casualties low, but what I care about is makin’ sure there’s no empty seats on this boat when it’s all said an’ done, clear!?”

“Yes, sir!” The men all responded, Thompson included. It was engrained in him at this point, of course he responded. Now, if only he could convince himself that it was all true, that his wouldn’t be an empty seat when the raft went back. If there was even anybody left to take it back…

“Contact!” And right on cue, the fog enveloped them. Shivering, Thompson reached up and pulled down the heavy rubber mask, switching on the heat vision, which bathed the raft in an eerie red glow from all the bodies around him. His respirator mask wheezed for a few seconds, then switched over to the new air, falling silent once more. Not long after that, the motors cut out.

“Brace yourselves, lads,” the commander hissed. “Might get a li’l bumpy here.”

There was another thirty seconds of this. Thirty seconds of drifting on the cold, eerily calm water, not knowing when the hit would come. Thirty seconds of dead silence. Thompson glanced around, saw nothing but fog, and wondered if the other boats had made it, or if they’d simply drifted off-course.

There was a sensation like a static shock on the back of his neck that made him flinch, and then the boat dropped, the water simply vanishing out from under them. A crunch sounded as the boat suddenly met with grassy turf, and then silence. Nobody cried out, nobody yelped in surprise. They had been expecting this.

The men climbed out, taking positions at the head of the boats. Thompson squinted, trying to find some change in the purple landscape in his vision, hoping to see a hill or something that might provide cover. There was nothing. An empty field. The last team had said that’s what it was, but still, to see it now and know this was where she had been kind of made him want to scream.

He turned back, and a slice of water rippled at him. His eyes widened under the mask. This had been expected too, but to hear about it and then to see a slice of water rippling in the air, staying totally vertical with nothing holding it back were two very different things. He reached out a hand and dipped it into the sideways water, watched the ripples race out completely sideways in awe, saw a piece of seaweed poke out the side and drift along to his left for a moment before disappearing into the cold, North Sea murk. He shivered.

He turned back to the field just as the squad leader took point, and the rest followed, Thompson included. They all kept low in the hopes of not being spotted. They knew their direction. Nobody had to check compasses or anything. It was all just a question of who would be the unlucky bloke to poke his head out of this mist and see what was coming.

The CO way at the head, next to the squad leaders, suddenly stopped, raising a fist to halt the tiny platoon. He twisted from his kneeling position, levelling a finger at Thompson and waving him forward.

Fuck.

Thompson nodded and crept past the other men, the CO already motioning out a brief attack plan for them. Something to do with circling around in case Thompson got caught, with a few staying back as extras just in case. Great. So if he did get caught, there’d be witnesses to tell his family how he died. Military command at its finest. But he didn’t complain, oh no. Too pro for that. He simply nodded like the badass he always wanted to be and shuffled on ahead, trying very hard not to think about what would happen if the eggheads were wrong and the Inhibitors didn’t work in this weird, grayed-out little slice of Equestria. Though he had heard rumors of guys literally being turned inside-out by unicorn magic…

He shook his head. Later. Later would be the time for freaking out and talking shit with the guys about the absolutely horrible things unicorns were capable of against human beings. Later would be a time for the guys hallucinating about killing their own families and having their dicks ripped off and teleported to random spots inside their own bodies. Now was a time for focus and determination.

At long last, the mist began to dissipate. Hands quivering ever-so-slightly, Thompson crouched as low as he could and looked around for just the smallest bit of cover. Again, no such luck. Buggering fuckedy-fuck-shit. The mist would have to do. Apparently, the ponies saw it just like humans did, unless the little shits were lying about that all these years since the Collision Wars. Still, it would be tricky: too far back in the fog, and he wouldn’t see shit. Too far forward, and he’d be noticed, and then he’d be in the shit.

Welp, no time like the present.

Thompson reared up, his back straightening just the smallest millimeter at a time. Halfway to full height, a dark spot raced across his vision, and he only then realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out, let it in again, taking seconds to do so, all the while straightening. Finally, the faintest hint of an outline appeared in his vision. A touch of gray that was grayer than the rest of the gray, just a bit more solid. Damn. Okay, he just needed to get a little closer, that was all. No problem. Just a little closer to the cartoon freaks that would sooner ram his own mutilated penis up his ass than say ‘hi’ to a human. Not a big deal.

Literally, anywhere else. He would take anywhere at all. He’d heard Pyongyang had done a decent job rebuilding - with Chinese help, of course. Plenty of Chinese help. Maybe the new Grorious Readah was a bit warmer to westerners than the old one, what with a few Chinese puppeteers finally injecting a little sanity into the Hermit Kingdom’s regime.

He sighed. It was a pipe dream, of course. A fantasy born of fear. But nobody could blame him, could they? Even as he approached the dark spot in the fog and found it to be a massive tent made of military-grade canvas, could anybody blame him for the way his breathing increased until the moisture scrubbers couldn’t keep up and his goggles fogged?

Wiping at the tinted plastic over his eyes, Thompson ducked and crouched forward, rifle raised as the fog cleared around him. At last, he could see the end of his barrel clearly, the grass around his boots, and thank Christ but was that blue sky peeking through cracks in the cloud cover above him? And here a part of him was starting to think he’d seen the last of that.

Voices up ahead. Thompson dove to the ground and tucked against the canvas, trying to be as small as possible. His breathing instantly slowed as his ear neared the canvas, listening.

“-about the pegasi!?” Shouted a distinctly female voice. “Can’t you send them out? I can see sky above us, for pete’s sake!”

“Sorry ma’am, we just can’t risk it,” said a very masculine voice. Yep, definitely military, he knew that tone only too well. “It may look like sky up there, but what if it isn’t?”

“I have two dozen patients here that just started pukin’ their guts up!” Retorted the female voice. A nurse? She did say she had patients. “And even if they’re okay, how long are we supposed to just sit here!?”

Thompson tuned them out. In just a few short minutes, that little conversation had established that A) there were civilians in here, and some of them were experiencing trans-dimensional sickness. Which wasn’t much to worry about, a few days of wanting to puke your guts up coupled with disorientation, maybe a runny nose, and then you were alright. More concerning to him was B) there was Equestrian military in the affected area. He bit his lip. That was slightly more concerning. This was what summoned images of guys shooting futilely at unicorn shields until a big stroke of lightning split them in half, of stories about POWs being forced to literally tear one another apart, their hands under a dozen spells that allowed the ponies to use them like toys, all so they could have a little fun before nailing them with conversion serum.

Seriously, a quick report to the Commander and he could probably bluff his way back to the ship, then he’d be on his way back to the Isles, and it was a hop, skip, and a jump from there to catch a flight to Riyadh…they’d done a pretty good job rebuilding from the Anti-Sultan Revolts…

A hacking sound caught his ear, the dry sort of bark usually echoed by someone with bronchitis. Thompson’s grip tightened on his rifle. Okay, so usually TDS wasn’t bad. Sometimes though, in kids, things got a bit more serious. For some reason, the body cranked up mucus production beyond reason. Started in the lungs, and just spread. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, the kid would die choking on the stuff, clear mucus dribbling from their nose and mouth as they desperately tried to drag in their next breath, sometimes clawing at their throats, sometimes leaning over the edge of the hospital bed as the stuff flew from their throats and their stomachs heaved.

Only the kids though. The adults might have a few coughing jags, but they always pulled through. And odds were, that’s what he was listening to right now! After all, why would a kid be near this place? These were just the adults that got caught up when this thing appeared and now were stuck with the portal’s expansion. The only way a kid would be here would be if some incredibly stupid family took junior along as they went to check on the strange anomaly in the middle of…

“Oooh, that was a pretty bad one,” said the feminine voice. “You okay, sweetie?”

“Wh-where’s Mr. Buns?” Asked a distinctly high-pitched and childlike voice. “Mr. Buns was right here…”

“He is, sweetie, see? He just fell over the railing a little…there! All better now?”

Fuck. Of course, that’s exactly what happened. Some goddamned stupid bunch of fucking shitheads heard about the possibly dangerous and unknown occurrence somewhere and decided to have a motherfucking picnic next to it! Of course! Why not!? Why the flaming hell not!? Just pack up some cheese sandwiches and have a blast right next to the strange occurrence from another world, bring the motherfucking kids!

Goddammit, people were stupid all over.

Okay, so what? It was just one kid. And besides, if he returned to his Commander now, help could still arrive in time…no. No use lying to himself, help would not arrive in time. The moment the Commander got wind of a military presence, he’d demand a full pullback, and then Command would sit on their asses and maybe, in a week or two, they’d decide on a date for the meeting to figure out the next step. When TDS killed, it only needed a few days. Okay, so the kid was likely dead. Not certainly, mind you, but likely. So what? What was one little pony to him? Never mind the lifesaving doses of Suphedrine in his field kit, given to him for the runny nose he himself might experience. Never mind the possibility that the few extra hours those meds would buy her might be all that little kid needed for her body to adjust and live through the worst of the TDS, as proven time and again with ponies experiencing it on the other side of the world. And most of all, never mind the possibility that he might spend the rest of his life lying awake, wondering if it would have been possible, if he might have been able to save the life of a child.

Thompson really hated his job in that moment. Really and truthfully.

The rifle went to his back, where a set of mechanized straps silently tightened around the stock and barrel. That was okay, one quick yank and those straps would come loose, only adding a few milliseconds to the time it would take to line up his sights and squeeze the trigger. He most decidedly did not think about what a pony’s magic could do to him with those few milliseconds as he drew his combat knife and tucked the dose of Suphedrine in a front pocket. Holding his breath, he poked the tip of the knife through the canvas and drilled the smallest hole he possibly could for himself, knowing a bunch of obviously-overworked nurses and ponies sick with TDS would likely never notice the tiny glint of metal in the canvas wall but praying to every deity he could think of anyway.

His hole finished, Thompson holstered the knife and drew his sidearm. His hand squeezed the grip, not shaking, too well-trained for that, but not as firm as he’d hoped it would be. The leather in his gloves creaking over the grip, he leaned forward on his haunches, bringing his eye as close as possible to his hole. Every fluctuation of the fabric changed the viewing angle, meaning it took a little while to find the most stable view he could without pressing his face to the canvas and giving off the imprint of his helmet. It still bounced all to high hell, but with it, he could watch the white-coated mare with the pink mane done up in a cute, little bun as she silently did her rounds, looking more positive as she circled the room, only to fade as she neared a filly’s bed. That little filly was a pegasus, light blue coat, periwinkle mane, and oh my sweet Jesus she was cute as a button. Could probably stop a man’s heart just by looking at him and tucking her ears down.

As he watched, the filly let out a few more of those awful, bone-dry coughs while nurse pony looked on with a smile she was probably hoping looked authentic. Probably did to the kid. Not so much to the man watching through the hole.

“You’ll be okay, Sweetie, I’ll get more of the mint tea,” the nurse whispered to the filly, making sure to tuck the kid in before trotting away with a clipboard in hoof. Thompson held his breath. It was now or never. He had to give the kid these pills or…

Or fuck, how did he get the kid to take them? He couldn’t barge in there and shove them down her throat. Necessary as it was, barging in and screaming was the perfect way to get his ass peppered with Royal Guard spears. He couldn’t just leave them lying around. What, was he expecting the nurse to say: “here sweetie, try out these weird red tablets I found on the ground here”? Yeah sure, and afterwards he could begin his new life as a billionaire playboy in Pyongyang.

He clenched his teeth. Fuck, there was really no way around this, was there? The filly needed a guardian angel. Evidently, he would have to become one. He drew his knife again, and set to work widening his hole.

Chapter XXVIII: Flutterheart

Flutterheart was scared. She was scared a lot lately, especially since her mommy and daddy took her to this place. She’d had a bad feeling about it from the start, she’d said she didn’t want to go, and mommy had sounded like she was starting to agree. But daddy insisted. “Once-in-a-lifetime experience!” He’d announced. “We can see something nopony else has ever seen!”

Maybe that was it. Daddy had been “antsy” lately, which was a word mommy had taught her just a few weeks before, and said it meant he had ants in his pants. Flutterheart didn’t know what ants had to do with the constant stream of trips to museums and zoos he was always insisting on but figured it did seem to fit him here. Something about being “left out” he was talking about, something that made him look sad whenever he read in the paper about a royal wedding, or another monster attack in Ponyville, or about some heroic deed by some royal or by the Element Bearers. Mommy just looked at him when he looked sad in that way, shook her head, and mumbled something about a “midwife crisis”. Flutterheart didn’t know what that was either, but figured it was grown-up stuff she’d learn about when mommy and daddy told her.

Right now, Flutterheart could only think back to that awful morning almost a week ago. Daddy had been so excited hearing the crack, and the boom, and spotting the gray cloud from the kitchen window. “We’re on the front lines this time, Jessie!” He had shouted as he’d hurried them out the door, mommy still in her apron with crumbs of apple crumble dessert clinging to it. “No way to miss out now!”

Mommy had asked what they could possibly be missing out on, if a “blurb in the newspaper listing our names and injuries suffered and property damage incurred is really worth letting the crumble get cold,” or something like that. Flutterheart hadn’t really understood what that meant, and daddy probably hadn’t heard it by the excited way he’d pushed them all out the door, but she did know that mommy’s apple crumble was the best ever and letting it cool would be a shame. If she were older, she would have reflected on how funny it was that just a few hours could cause such a dramatic change in priorities. She would have reflected on how funny it was that the apple crumble would be all forgotten in the face of strange, black monsters with bulging, black eyes and oval mouths and weapons that spat fire, so powerful they could take away even the princesses.

Flutterheart’s name became all-too-true whenever she thought about the black monsters. The first night in the camp where the guard ponies had told them they had to stay, it had taken daddy sleeping in her cot with her to keep any thoughts of the black monsters at bay. Daddy had said it was just as well, since mommy wasn’t letting him sleep in their cot together for at least another two days for “getting them into this mess.” Flutterheart didn’t know what that meant either, but said it was okay, she didn’t think it was daddy’s fault that the black monsters came. Daddy just grunted and told her to go asleep with a quick “thanks.”

Only now, daddy couldn’t be here, only Mr. Bun. After the gray cloud had swallowed them up, Flutterheart had nearly lost mommy and daddy, and had spent the first few minutes in the cloud crying into their chests out of relief for tracking down their tent. At first, she was relieved that they were here, even amongst the screaming ponies and the guardsponies running around, shouting at each other in that deep, mean-sounding tone they all used. And then things had been calm for a while, at least until one pony started coughing really loudly. Nurse Redheart had looked him over and then a couple of the guards took him away. Then it happened again with another pony, and then again, and then Flutterheart had broken down in tears when her nose started running, and she just knew that some of mommy’s homemade noodle and onion soup wouldn’t be enough to keep the guards from taking her away too.

Mommy and daddy told her to be brave as the guards took her away and to this tent, but she couldn’t help it. She tried to stop the tears, but just couldn’t. She’d whimpered and blubbered like a baby as she’d waved goodbye (the guards wouldn’t let her hug them), but she’d kept from all-out sobbing at the least, which was good, because mommy and daddy had looked like crying themselves. After that, things had gotten calm. Redheart had taken her to this tent and given her Mr. Buns, and things got a little better, even if her nose kept getting stuffy and dribbling. She could hardly even sleep now because of it, it just kept getting worse and worse. But that was okay, Nurse Redheart had said she was okay, and Nurse Redheart had given her Mr. Buns, which made her a nice grownup. Nice grownups didn’t…

Her cot rustled. Something moved beneath her, something that knocked against the fabric and made slight lumps in her sleeping spot that vanished as soon as they appeared. Flutterheart’s namesake skipped a beat. Her breath caught in her throat. She could just imagine one of those black things sliding up under her, oozing its way in under her head, and just waiting for her to dangle her hooves over her bedside before springing out and wrapping those black, slimy tentacles around her and dragging her away. She wanted to scream, but couldn’t. And what good would that do, anyway? Grownups didn’t listen to you when you said there was something under your bed, even good grownups like mommy and daddy and Redheart. Flutterheart’s pulse quickened, tears gathering in her eyes as she considered the very real possibility of being taken away and eaten up, just like the princesses were. Sure, nopony wanted to talk about it, but she just knew that’s what had happened to them. Oh, if only somepony saw…if only somepony else were awake…

“Hey! Hey, kid!”

At first, Flutterheart thought the voice might have been a bit of canvas rustling in the wind, it was so low and growly. But then she remembered there hadn’t been any wind since the cloud had swallowed them up. She guessed the cloud had taken it away, though how that could be she didn’t…

“Kid, c’mon! Y’hear me!?”

Casting a glance to her side, Flutterheart made sure the pony in the cot next to her was still sound asleep. He was. “I hear you,” she whispered so low she almost couldn’t hear herself.

“Good, you know who I am?”

She had to stop for that one. Was she supposed to know the monster under her bed? Was it kinda like that movie mommy and daddy took her to where monsters had a whole business of scaring kids and used their screams to power stuff?

“A-are you the monster that lives under my bed sometimes?” She whispered back, praying that the movie she’d seen so long ago wasn’t just pretend.

“S-sure kid, sure,” the monster didn’t sound so sure himself, which struck Flutterheart as odd. Shouldn’t he know who he was assigned to be a “scarer” for? “Listen kid, I brought somethin’ for ya. Think of it as…a gift for letting me sleep here every now and again.”

“Whatdja bring?”

“Vitamins,” the voice replied. “They’ll make you better.”

“Vitey-mins?”

The voice said something that sounded like “ducking-hay,” and now that she was calming down, Flutterheart was starting to realize how totally normal the voice sounded. The more she listened, the more she thought it sounded like Johnny Alfalfaseed: a stallion they’d learned about in school who planted most of the great, big fields of hay that covered the farmland around Canterlot. Or at least, what she’d imagined Jonny would sound like if she ever met him. Certainly, the monster under her bed was a better Johnny than Trent Showoff in the Canterlot Elementary School play. Trent’s voice had even cracked halfway through his lines! Sure, the monster’s voice sounded a bit muffled, like he was talking through a plastic cup, but still, a very nice Johnny if she did say so herself.

“Listen, kid,” the monster continued. “Just trust me on this, alright? Take these and you’ll feel way better.”

“Mr. Monster?” She asked.

The creature shuffled under her bed. “Yeah?”

“What do you look like?”

There was a long pause, and at first, Flutterheart was almost afraid her monster had left her, but then he came back: “It’s better if you don’t know. Trust me, kid.”

“Well, I think you look like Johnny Alfalfaseed.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah! He’s a really nice pony and he wears blue pants that come up to his shoulders and he’s got freckles and he goes around, planting hay wherever he goes so nopony has t’go hungry!” She said, her voice rising enthusiastically.

To her surprise, he replied with a few chuckles. “Blimey, she thinks I’m a yank!” Came the semi-whispered response. Flutterheart didn’t know what that meant either, so she turned over on her side, and caught sight of the little package of red tablets on the grass beside her cot.

“Mr. Monster?” She asked.

“Mmh?”

“Are those the vitey-mins? There, on the ground?”

The monster coughed, as if it were reorienting itself. Fortunately, it was just one cough among many. “Yeah kid, those’re it.”

“You say they’ll make me better?”

“They’ll help.”

She eyed the small package curiously, picking it up and turning it over in her hooves. The back looked like it was made of some kind of paper with writing on it. She tried to read the writing, only to give up after trying to pronounce “pseudoephedrine” in her head. The front was clear plastic, with little red tabs which rattled as she shook them. They looked so small, how were they supposed to help?

“Just two of those, kid,” the monster said, bringing her out of her careful analysis. “Every four hours until the sniffles go ‘way.”

“Hmm,” she mumbled. Mommy and Daddy had warned her about taking candy from strangers. But then, this wasn’t a stranger, technically. Odds were, this guy had known her a lot longer than she was even capable of remembering! And on another point, this wasn’t candy either, now was it? Still, it was weird he was just offering this up… “Mr. Monster?”

“Yeah, kid?” The monster had been strangely quiet all during her contemplation.

“Why’re you helping me?”

There was a pause, and then a response: “monsters eat up fear, right?”

“R-right?”

“Well, how can we do that if kids are too sick to be afraid?”

“I…I guess you couldn’t,” Flutterheart admitted, her muzzle crinkling up in thought. “Mr. Monster?”

“Yeah?”

“D-does that mean you’ll protect me now?”

There was another pause, this one longer, and when the monster spoke again, she swore she could hear a lightness in his voice, only solidifying the image in her mind of the freckled pony lying on his back with a little bit of hayseed poking out of his mouth and corduroy overalls with the legs rolled up. “Yeah,” he said with a little chuckle. “I guess it does.”

“Especially from the bad monsters? The ones with the black heads.”

“Sure, kid.”

“Mr. Monster?”

A repetition of that weird phrase, “ducking hay, - yeah?”

“Since I know about you now, can I see you?”

No pause this time, none at all. “No. Can’t let that ‘appen, I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” she sighed and huffed. Mr. Monster probably knew best, he was a grownup after all, or at least sounded like one…but…surely a little peek wouldn’t hurt? Perhaps as a way to reward herself when the vitey-mins were down her throat? Mommy and daddy usually awarded her with some alfalfa when she took her medicine when she got sick, it was only fair that she get a reward here too.

With that thought, Flutterheart hurriedly tore into the paper backing and scattered the little red tablets on her cot. She had the tabs in her mouth when it occurred to her: how was she supposed to swallow them whole? Even now, with them in her mouth, she had to stop herself from biting into either of them. And now her gag reflex kept them from slipping any further down.

“Didja take ‘em yet?” Came that gruff voice, sounding a bit like mommy or daddy when she was running behind while getting ready for school.

“I…I can’t swallow ‘em,” she finally admitted, disappointed in herself. Maybe she didn’t deserve that peek after all.

More grownup swears, and Mr. Monster shuffled around beneath her. Something clattered against the ground by her cot, and Flutterheart bolted upright and peered over the edge just in time to see something black rush back into the darkness, leaving behind a funny-looking bottle made out of dark-green plastic and covered in cloth that had a weird pattern, like a tiger’s stripes but all green and black instead of orange and black.

“It’s filled with water,” the monster under Flutterheart’s bed explained. “Unscrew the top and use that to swallow the pills. Wash ‘em down, y’see.”

“Oh,” she answered, scooping up the bottle. She dwelt for a second as she bent low, tempted to turn towards the darkness under her cot and squint just to get a good outline of Mr. Monster, at least confirm that he looked like Johnny Alfalfaseed. But she pushed the thought back and pulled up into her cot, swallowing the vitey-mins easily. Best not to do something like that now. She’d get a vague glimpse of Mr. Monster at best, and then he might slip away to Monster Land. No, if she was going to see him, she was going to see all of him, not just some vague shadow in the dark.

“You take ‘em yet?” He asked again.

“Mmh-hmm,” she replied.

“Thank Kriste,” he mumbled, and she resisted the urge to ask him who Kriste was and why he needed to be thanked. Mr. Monster was almost ready to leave now, soon she’d know exactly what he was. The timing had to be perfect, but she’d know. Mr. Monster wouldn’t be able to help bumping along as he got out from under the cot. If she could catch him when he was still crawling out, but not yet free, she could look at him practically for as long as she needed, with decent lighting too.

“Am I gonna be okay now?” She asked innocently.

“God, I hope so,” Mr. Monster whispered, probably thinking she couldn’t hear. “Sure thing kid, absolutely.”

Flutterheart snuggled up under her covers, grabbing Mr. Bun for good measure. She couldn’t help the contented smile that crossed her face. She’d always wanted to meet Johnny Alfalfaseed! “Thanks, Mr. Monster!”

“Don’t mention it, kid,” Mr. Monster replied. “Seriously, mum’s the word here.”

“Mum’s the…” her muzzle scrunched up.

“Just keep this quiet, you hear? The – uh – other monsters wouldn’t like knowing I did this for you.”

“Okay,” she whispered back, snuggling up tight, curling up in a ball as if she were going to sleep, all while inching towards the edge of her cot. “G’night, Mr. Monster.”

“Night, kid, see ya around.”

She grinned. If he only knew how true that was. But she had to stay still, perfectly still. She held her breath for a while, but then the mucus caught up with her and she launched into a coughing jag, one which ended pretty quickly, thankfully. Were the vitey-mins working already?

Suddenly, she felt the shift underneath her body: Mr. Monster getting ready to pull himself out from under her cot, edging towards her bedside (or cotside, she guessed, her bed was still at home and probably getting very cold and lonely without her to warm it). Just a few more seconds, though, a few more seconds of shuffling and rustling of cloth beneath her, and…

NOW!

She flashed a toothy smile as she grasped the edge of her cot and propelled herself over the metal, poking her head underneath. “Gotch-“

Her exclamation died in her throat, her voice stolen. Flutterheart’s toothy grin morphed into a gape-mouthed, wide-eyed expression of absolute shock. Black bulbous eyes, blank and staring, glared at her with all the hunger and evil of all the monsters in the world combined. Black tentacles covered in rough bumps reached to the edge of the cot, splayed out towards her, ready to grab her and drag her away with those powerful arms behind them.

Flutterheart heard only one thing: “Aww, fuck a cunt…”

If she hadn’t been screaming her head off, she might have mused over having learned two new swear words in a single half-finished sentence.

Thompson was the deadest dead man to ever die in a dead world.

What had started as a well-intentioned, if unsanctioned and incredibly stupid, act of kindness had turned into a little pony screaming and crying her little head off while ponies all around in cots did the same, all adding to the screaming and carrying on as cartoonishly-large eyes became even larger and ponies started sitting up and doing the one thing all ponies were inherently good at, especially in herds: panicking.

“Is that…”

“Oh Celestia! They’re back!”

“AIIEEEEE, IT’S GOT A FILLY!”

“What’s all the…” and the nurse’s voice from before came right back, appearing at the opening to the tent. She was an earth pony, thank Christ: no magic to drag his ass around and throw him against a wall. She had a tramp stamp of that unmistakable symbol for the Red Cross. A nurse pony? He’d seen a few of those during his brief stint in the first Equestria, though not many. At least, they didn’t seem like many compared to the hordes of ponies with radiation burns and shrapnel in their faces and eyes blinded by the initial fireball that destroyed their hometowns. This pony had a pink mane done up in a little bun, one of those little hats nurses always wore (so good on the “nurse” theory) and an expression of dumbfounded shock that swiftly morphed into unbridled terror.

The pony was standing there, clipboard in hoof, the sun framing her in the tent’s flap, her mouth dropping open, readying for a scream. To his shock, he found the carbine’s stock against his shoulder, readying to take a shot. There was a wonderful future headline for him to be remembered by: “BRITISH OPERATION BUNGLED BY ONE FUCKHEAD SHOOTING A NURSE.” Subline: “Details on this atrocious, Geneva Convention-violating act of dumbfuckery on 4A.”

Hey, the politicians could debate the applications of the Geneva Conventions on non-human species all they wanted, as far as he was concerned, shooting a creature that was a mix between a plushie and a healer would be right up there with puppy-stomping and baby seal-head baseball.

“Okay…everyone!” He said hurriedly. “Let’s not do anything rash or silly here!”

Of course, he had to say this last sentence while dodging a clipboard thrown at him by Nurse pink-mane-in-bun, but whatever, he could still salvage this. Somehow.

“Look, I’m just tryin’…”

But she was already turning, hind legs tensing to take off at a dead gallop. In another moment, she’d be tearing ass down the streets, screaming her head off, bringing every able-bodied pony into this tent to utterly annihilate him. Even without magic, the guards would still have spears, and they would outnumber him. He was so, so dead…so dead…

There are moments that define us. Moments that decide who we are: men, or cowards. Moments that choose the path that correspond to our destinies, and decide our fate. In this moment, Thompson decided he would be someone who might live to see another sunrise, and so he turned and bolted, running towards the cut he’d made in the tent like a scared little girl. Unfortunately, that was when a couple of little ponies decided they weren’t as sick as they’d thought they were and bolted to their hooves, glaring as they wielded scalpels from the metal trays at their bedsides. Thompson froze in place. If he went for the jump anyway, they might get a lucky shot on his legs with those blades. And then what? He’d be a sitting fucking duck, that’s what.

His trained mind flashed through his options in a moment. Couldn’t just run outside, as originally planned. No time to cut another hole, and running out through the tent’s normal entrance would take him right in the middle of the fucking encampment. So running was out. But he was not helpless: he was a highly-trained member of Her Majesty’s Special Air Service. Maybe all he needed to do was remind all the little ponies of that.

Channeling his inner Stallone, Thompson whipped the rifle out again and let off a few shots into the canvas roof, ripping a couple small holes as the blasts echoed into the distance. The ponies froze. Under his mask, Thompson grinned. Regardless of who heard it, that sound’s terror-factor was universal. Even the stallions with scalpels froze. Still grinning despite himself, Thompson levelled the rifle on them.

“You li’l feckers move ‘fore I blow yer brains out!” He screamed through the mask. In an instant, the blades clattered to the ground, and the stallions practically climbed over each other trying to get out of the way. Perfect. Now, time to make his escape…except no, wait, shit. He’d just blasted into the air like an American redneck with a new shotgun. Every guardspony in this little slice of hell had to have heard it. If they were smart, they’d be keeping their distance, maybe even have the pegasi patrolling the skies, waiting to swoop down on the strange, black creature before it even made two steps out of the tent.

Thompson had to stop his boots from carrying him away again. Well, this was just super. Perfect. Way to completely bungle a recon mission before it even began.

“Okay!” He screamed. “I know one of you motherfuckers are out there! Lemme know now, or somepony gets hurt!”

Silence. Thompson’s heart pounded somewhere up in his throat. The rifle remained on the tent entrance while his eyes darted around insanely, trying to look everywhere at once. And then: “Surrender yourself now, monster!”

The relief on the ponies’ faces was immediate, especially Miss Pink Bun, just standing there a few feet from the entrance. A twinge of guilt filled Thompson. Someone only felt that relieved when they saw a glimmer of hope out of a terrible, frightening situation. He’d joined the army to be the reason for the relief, not the cause. He cursed himself for winding up in this situation in the first place, but kept his rifle trained over Miss Pink-Bun’s head.

“Right mate, dontcha come in here,” he shouted. “You just stay where you are, and things’ll work themselves out.”

“I can’t let that happen, creature,” came the reply. “Just surrender yourself now, and you won’t be hurt.”

“Yeah, sure, and I’m the bloomin’ Queen of England.”

“I…don’t know what that is. And how are you a queen? A…are you a female?”

“Right…I meant…I’m not actually…bloody hell,” he mumbled, looking around. The dismay was growing on the ponies’ faces, each of them switching their gazes from him, to the canvas flap, and back again. The tension was spiraling upwards again. Sooner or later, someone was going to do something stupid. Time to run damage control.

“You there!” He moved his hand from the grip on the barrel, pointing at the pink-maned pony. She straightened up, her breath quickening, widening eyes looking at him, then behind her, as if somepony might be standing behind her that he was pointing at.

“No, nurse pony!” He repeated. “You’ve rounds to do, right?”

Still trembling on her hooves, she croaked something out that sounded like an attempt at speech, but was choked off. She settled for a simple nod.

“Alright, you can do ‘em,” he growled. “Don’t you get any smart ideas though. I’m bein’ real nice right now, but I can get real mean too.”

The pony’s shivering reached a fever pitch. She turned to the side of the tent, peering over her shoulder with tears in her eyes at whoever waited on the other side. Thompson’s heart sank into his boots, but he kept the rifle at the ready, especially as she received whatever affirmation she’d been waiting for. Nodding, the nurse pony stepped slowly into the room, visibly holding tears back. It felt like a lead fist clenching in Thompson’s chest, watching her walk around the room, robotically going through the motions of checking each fearful, shaking pony’s vitals, changing bedpans and IV bags, everything a nurse was supposed to do. She even offered up brave little smiles for some of the little ponies. It was enough to make a man’s heart melt.

It was while she changed Flutterheart’s IV bag and rearranged Mr. Bun’s position on the bed to something more comfortable that Thompson realized he could not leave things as they were. He could not leave these ponies with the threat of some evil, black creature hanging over their heads, not Flutterheart, not Miss Mane-in-bun, and not even those two stallions with scalpels. It was then he made a decision: to not allow such an image to remain in any of these little ponies’ heads.

It would prove to be one of the worst mistakes of his life.

As the nurse pony finished her rounds, he knelt beside her. She froze instantly. He could almost see her fur standing on end from where he knelt. The rifle rested against his shoulder, ready to rise again at a moment’s notice. All that fell away as tears brimmed in her eyes.

“Nurse?” He asked as gently as possible. “One more thing?”

“Wh-what’s…” she shivered, swallowed. “What’s that?”

He pulled her into a hug before anyone had a moment to think about what was happening. Flutterheart cried out. A few ponies screamed. The nurse went rock-still. Then, amazingly, she relaxed in his grasp. The tension faded. The cords on her neck receded. For bonus points, he even stroked her mane.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her ear, now perked over the mouth of his mask as his chin rested on her head.

“Wh-what?” She stammered.

“I said I’m…”

A flash of movement above him. Thompson’s training kicked in, and in an instant his arms released their grip on the mare as he kicked her away, falling back as a crossbow bolt thudded into the ground between them. With a grunt, Thompson rolled to his feet, the rifle starting its journey back to his shoulder, only to be knocked away by a powerful uppercut. Without even thinking, Thompson’s knife flew into his hands. He kept himself crouched low, center of gravity stable, still on his feet as he backed away. He finally got a good look at his assailant: at the determined look in their eyes, the glare levelled his way, the glint of the sword in the fading light as they moved themselves between the nurse pony and himself, the neat curve of their hips, the glare beneath their elongated lashes…

Waitaminute…

Damn.

Headline tomorrow: “BRITISH SAS OPERATIVE GETS INNOCENT MARE KILLED AFTER BOTCHING RECON MISSION,” Subline: “NO END TO HIS NEVERENDING TRAIN OF STUPIDITY?”

“Okay, look,” he shouted, almost unaware of the knife in his hands. “Could we just slow down and…”

With a cry, the guardsmare lunged, her sword slashing in a sideways arc aimed at his head. Thompson only barely managed to duck. On his back, the sword sang in the air as it came down on a path aimed for his crotch. Again, only barely managing to dodge, Thompson’s legs coiled up, only to come roaring back in a two-footed buck at the mare’s head, knocking her helmet askew. She stumbled back, lifted a hoof to her bleeding nose, snarled, and lunged again. He backed away, knife raised…

There was a sickening squelch.

Thompson looked down, certain he’d just been skewered. Much to his surprise, the mare tucked in close, looking up at him, eyes filled with hate as she trembled. Then the hate faded to surprise and she trembled. She fell to the side, hitting the dirt as one of her hooves wrapped over the growing red stain in her uniform, red liquid pouring out between a small gap in the plating.

Thompson laid very still for a while, the rest of the world nothing but shadows and muffled grunts, something wet coating his waist. He thought he pissed himself at first. It was only after he looked down that he realized he was coated in blood. The mare’s blood.

He looked up again, hoping to escape the massive, pain-filled eyes of the little pony. A gloved hand reached to her neck, feeling for a pulse. She cringed under his grasp. He closed his eyes and thanked God, Allah, and whoever else might be listening, even as he felt her short, pain-filled gasps for air in the moments before she was dragged away and those pain-filled, hateful eyes were replaced with gas masks and assault rifles and fearful shrieks.

Thanks to the masks, it was a solid minute before Thompson recognized his commander standing over him, and another ten seconds before he realized the old man was talking to him.

“What?” He asked.

“I said are you alright, mate?” The other man offered a hand. “You gave us a fright for a while, especially with that gunshot. Thought you were a goner there.”

Thompson sat up, looking over the terrified ponies, over at the unconscious bundle of feathers in the corner that just a few seconds ago had nearly run him through with a spear, and over the mare with the red cross on her flank. She had backed up into a corner and now buried her muzzle in her hooves, her shoulders rising and falling in the jagged motion of someone sobbing quietly. He sighed. So much for whatever goodwill that hug had earned him.

“Fine, ‘m fine,” Thompson grumbled, picking himself up.

“Alright,” the commander offered a hand, which Thompson took gratefully. “Good on you on probing things, though. If you’d just spotted the armor and run, lord knows we’d be sittin’ on our arses another half a year while command twiddled their thumbs. Things worked out though, yeah?”

Thompson peeked to the side, where two of his fellow marines had taken up positions to either side of the tent flap. Through the fluttering canvas, he caught a few glances at a whole line of guardsponies, being forced out of their armor at gunpoint and laying down their weapons in a massive pile. Mares and stallions were crowded together in a single line, twenty or thirty in all with their hooves behind their heads, lying flat on their stomachs under the watchful eyes of the gas mask-wearing marines with rifles trained on them.

“It was fuckin’ stupid, but it worked,” the captain squeezed Thompson’s shoulder. “You’re probably due for a huge reprimand for takin’ that kind of a risk, and then a medal. Thanks to your little distraction, they never even saw us coming. Took the whole camp with no casualties!”

Thompson looked over to the trail of bloody feathers leading to the mare in the corner, already being tended to by the shaking hooves of the mare with the hot-pink bun. “Yeah, no casualties,” he mumbled. “Just doin’ my duty, sir.”

With one last squeeze, the Captain turned to leave. “Report to the center of camp when you’re ready, we’re already settin’ up a command post,” he said over his shoulder. “Oh, and by the by, you can take your mask off now. Command’s reporting that the air’s totally breathable. No contagions to worry about or nothin’.”

As the captain stepped outside, Thompson took a moment to just stand there. His stomach twisted and rolled. He looked over the lines of ponies around him, the wide eyes, filled with fear that made him cringe, ignoring the inane questions of “Masks? They’re wearing masks?” Finally fed up, he pulled the gas mask off and clipped it to his belt, welcoming the cold sting of the air on his face. He looked over the stunned looks and gaping muzzles around him and sighed.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, then he trudged out to rejoin the squad, not even minding the cooling blood on his waist, and not even recognizing the looks on the faces around him as he stepped out of the tent. He didn’t know the term for it, but some of the otaku in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces might have termed the look on the ponies’ faces as very desu-kawaii. Except for some of the stallions, who looked on in shock and surprise, and ultimately, anger.

One finally roared: “What!? How can they look like that!?”

“Shouldn’t they have, I dunno, tentacles or somethin’?” Another chimed in.

“But…” Flutterheart looked up, now totally ignored by the roar of angry, arguing ponies in the chaos left by the black-colored monsters. “Cute? How can monsters like that be so…cute?”

Her question went unanswered as the arguments swelled to a fever pitch. Finally, she just sighed and laid back in her bed, trembling with fear as she realized mommy and daddy would probably be part of the line-up outside. She didn’t even notice that as she sniffled, she did so with clear nostrils and a voice that no longer quivered with blockage from mucus. She only curled up and had one of the most surprisingly deep naps she’d ever had.

Author's Note

Yeah, I know. It's weird, all these chapters in one day. But dang, they just didn't seem to go together very well, not without blowing up one chapter to about 11,000 words. So hey, triple update!

Chapter XXIX: Jerusalem

1345 HOURS
ISRAEL’S “LITTLE EQUESTRIA”

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL, JEWISH QUARTER

“…of Britons returning to their homes, believing them safer with the special ‘clearance zone’ secured in Equestria-Two. The British announcement of a forward base having been established within the area coming as good news to…”

*CLICK*

“…in Dusseldorf being the second deadly attack by Newfoals within the last month, following shortly after the Ambassador Bridge attack. These events now have countries all over the world looking to their own Newfoals in captivity, wondering if…”

*CLICK*

“…still underway here in Dusseldorf, with all personnel having been accounted for, the death toll is officially being placed at one-hundred and fifty-five for last week’s…”

“Twilight?”

The lavender unicorn looked up from her notebook. “Hmm?”

Celestia smiled thinly at her former student, the bags under her eyes growing more apparent. “I’m glad you found a way to tap into human airwaves, and that you can even maintain the spell while focusing on your work, but if you please…”

Twilight blinked, looked over at the magically-conjured screen, saw the headline “155 killed” displayed in blood red, and immediately drew her magic back, dissipating the screen in a second. “S-sorry princess,” she squeaked.

“It’s okay, Twilight,” Celestia insisted, turning back to the window. “It did serve as a reminder for why we are here.”

Few cities had been changed by the Collision Wars quite like Jerusalem. Tokyo had been levelled, Shanghai had been erased, but Jerusalem had, strangely enough, flourished. One of the few places where ponies had attempted neutrality and delegation in place of forced conversion to spread their so-called peace, the city held a new minority in a group of willing colonists with its population of Newfoals. It was this special enclave, surrounded by walls and patrolled heavily by Israeli military units, which had drawn Princess Celestia. She peered through the tattered remains of the curtain on the abandoned hovel they’d found and scowled at the walls towering over her. “Ingenious,” she grumbled. “She was fiendishly ingenious here.”

“Who was, Princess?” Twilight asked, not looking up from the small notepad where she had scrawled several lines of complex equations, having thrown herself back into her work almost as soon as she was certain that Celestia had nothing more to say.

“Her…” Celestia muttered, still in that angry tone. “The other me, the one responsible for this mess.”

The scratching of the Bic pen on notebook paper fell silent. Celestia could feel Twilight’s eyes boring into the back of her neck, but she didn’t turn around. “Princess…” Twilight gasped. “You can’t be complimenting that evil thing, can you?”

“Respect your enemy, Twilight,” Celestia turned to face her former student with a glare on her face like a general surveying a battlefield. “The moment you fail in that is the moment you have lost to them. In other lands, my doppelganger attempted to force the native humans to accept conversion using subterfuge and blackmail. Here, however, she offered a peace long strived for, as well as an escape for those grieving loved ones lost to the constant warring here. In a land such as this, such an offer must have seemed like sweet honey to a housefly.”

Twilight blinked once or twice, then the pen drifted up to tap her chin in thought. “That…does explain the sheer volume of Newfoals in this area,” she intoned. “Sending her own subjects to live here probably only boosted her cause as well.”

Celestia smiled, beaming with pride. “Exactly, my dear student.”

“Still, I don’t know what you hope to find inside,” Twilight joined Celestia’s side to gaze up at the imposing concrete walls, only her ears were folded down and her jaw gaped with fear. “There can’t be many native ponies left from the war…”

“But there are, my dear Twilight,” Celestia’s smile never wavered. “This is the single greatest concentration of ponies on Earth: short of the other Equestria, of course. We can work on an easier cure for the Newfoals living outside the walls while studying the ponies inside. So many ponies living in a major human city? This place might hold the key to the kind of peace that doesn’t need to be enforced by the tip of a sword or the barrel of a musket.”

“Rifle, princess,” Twilight corrected. “The humans use rifles, which have grooves along the inside of the barrel to spin the projectile and increase accuracy.”

“Ah, yes, thank you, Twilight,” Celestia said. The pair stood side-by-side for a while, Celestia eventually draping a wing over Twilight’s shoulders.

Twilight allowed only a few minutes to nuzzle the feathers, then quickly pulled away. “I need to get back to my calculations,” she said. “You know we aren’t going to bust into a place that well-fortified on hope and friendship alone.”

“No,” Celestia smiled over her shoulder. “But it helps.”

Twilight smiled back, then bent over the pad and resumed her work. Celestia let her gaze linger a while longer, watching those bright, lavender eyes dart back and forth across the page. She had been incredibly lucky to find a mare like Twilight. Odds were that even now, Twilight was crunching away at problems and issues that would stump any normal pony within minutes. Who knew what that mind could entertain itself with in its spare time? Who knew how Twilight Sparkle could keep herself entertained with…

“Xenolestia,” Twilight said suddenly, still staring at the page.

An eyebrow rising, Celestia asked: “What?”

“Xenolestia, that’s what we can call her,” Twilight finally looked up at her, speaking in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s a mixture of your name and ‘Xenophobia,’ the fear of strange peoples or customs. Really, ‘Alienophobia’ is more fitting, since that is the fear of alien species, but that doesn’t quite click like ‘Xenolestia’. How would we fit it? ‘Alielestia’? ‘Celestien’? And even then, it makes her sound like she’s an alien, not extremely phobic of them.”

Celestia blinked.

“I know it’s not really creative…at all…” Twilight sighed and rolled her eyes. “Like calling the protagonist of a story ‘Anonymous’ and claiming it’s so anypony can insert themselves in as the main character when really you’re just too lazy to come up with a name, even if the results look completely idiotic the moment they’re put to paper. But I was never much of a writer, so…”

“No no, it’s fine,” Celestia held up a hoof to end Twilight’s tirade and offered a calming smile. “Xenolestia is fine.”

Satisfied, Twilight grinned and returned to her calculations, her forehead wrinkling with concentration. Celestia stood in place, dumbfounded for just a second, then the smile rose on her face again, like a warm fire taking root in a cold hearth during a winter night.

And so, with her back to the window, she never even noticed the white van pulling up to the front gates, just beyond a squat set of buildings. And even then, it was too far away to hear the squeal of rubber as the driver suddenly slammed on the accelerator, or the crunch of the bumper warping around the concrete bollards surrounding the gate. But it was definitely not too far away to mask the tremendous explosion that pumped into the air, sending waves of heat and shockwaves that washed into the tiny, dingy room with ease, tearing the ratty curtains off their rails.

Twilight darted to her hooves as Celestia’s wings reflexively curled around her, the heat and light washing over them as if a second sun had landed in the hovel’s front yard. When the last of the shock had dissipated, Celestia slowly rose to her hooves. Her ears rang, but not loudly enough to drown out the distinctive, faint popping of the humans’ weapons discharging in the distance.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

“P-princess?” Twilight’s eyes swam in every direction as she rose to her wobbling legs. “Princess, what…”

“I do not believe we will need your calculations, Twilight,” Celestia said, her wings fanning in preparation for flight. “Are you still in flying condition?”

Twilight nodded shakily, flexing her wings for emphasis. “I believe so, Princess.”

“Then let us be off.” Celestia darted out the gaping window, her wings extending the moment she was clear of the hovel. Twilight was only a few seconds behind, swooping towards the rising cloud of dust and the sound of gunfire and explosions spreading like wildfire through the compound inside.

The pair swooped over what was left of the front gate, spying the blackened remnants of a uniformed body draped over the flaming ruins of a desk, all covered with brick and mortar dust. Celestia’s teeth clenched as she dropped to the dirt just inside the gate, her ear perking up at a sound that until then had been covered up by the ongoing rattle of gunfire: the screams of a large crowd of people. Her teeth clenched harder, her head swiveling in the direction of the noise as a shield materialized around herself and Twilight.

“Stay with me, Twilight, just keep at my side, it will all be okay.” Celestia panted as she turned and galloped through the dusty streets.

“Y-yes, Princess,” Twilight whimpered. A few seconds later, the sound of gunfire peppering the shield drowned her out. Anything she might have said was lost under the near-constant popping of bullets dissipating under the shield, like ladyfinger firecrackers being set off at their hooves.

Grimacing with the effort of trying to fight both the occasional “Tachyon Inhibitor” as well as the sheer force of the bullets trying to penetrate the shield, Celestia pressed forward. “That building ahead,” she grunted.

Twilight nodded, and verged to the side, pulling them behind a low wall covered in shrubs, completely trusting Celestia’s senses even before she saw the muzzle flashes in the windows of the squat apartment complex straight ahead. With Celestia tucked into safety, she added her own power to the shield and poked her head over the wall. Immediately, the familiar crack-thump of bullets pounding into brickwork echoed by her head, along with a few fizzles from the shield. She ducked back down. “They’re not very good marksmen: I saw the soldiers in the Dusseldorf camp make shots just as far as we are from them, if not further.”

“They must be from one of this region’s terrorist groups,” Celestia replied, her mind already shuffling through the pile of possible candidates she’d read up on. Of course, to target this compound specifically left one candidate at the forefront of her mind. Not that it mattered.

“No matter who they are, they are perfectly placed to ambush any response from the outside,” Twilight whispered, her voice hoarse with concern.

Celestia sighed. “I had hoped it would not come to this again, but if I must, I will,” she fanned her wings out. “Twilight? A distraction, if you please.”

Nodding, Twilight’s horn ignited with magic which flowed through her wings. Fanning them out, a magically-enhanced breeze whipped up around her, screeching through the sand and dust and kicking up a humongous, choking cloud.

“Thank you, Twilight,” Celestia said, swooping out over the top of the cloud and sailing high into the sky. Stay there until it is safe, she ordered through their mental link.

After a few moments, Twilight’s voice came back: I just nodded, and then realized you couldn’t see me nod. So…yeah.

Suppressing a chortle, Celestia rocketed back downwards, pulling up at the last moment to land gracefully on the complex’s roof. Recovering with her shield in place, she stormed across the rooftop, wings tucked behind her. A door opened to the side. A man with a gun peeked out. A side-kick from her hoof later, he was down. She wrenched the door wide open and thundered down the stairs, two more men appearing below her, rifles aimed upward. Wings tucking in, she bounded over the staircase railing and rocketed downward. The men peeked up at her, only to practically bump their noses against her snout as she vaulted onto them, slamming both face-first into the concrete steps.

She thought this was a good point to say something smart. Daring Doo would say something smart here. Oh well.

Bucking the door open, she tucked herself low and crawled along the linoleum, the flickering fluorescents barely lighting her way. Once she’d reached the middle of the hall, she curled up in a ball and perked her ears up, listening.

A mother comforting her crying baby. No.

A couple kids whispering to one another in the local language. Also no.

Two sets of footsteps tensing just beyond the door behind her, accompanied with the rattle of rifle ammo clattering against itself in a weapon’s loading mechanism. Bingo.

Pressing her rear hooves against the wall, she rocketed herself off with a powerful buck, slamming through the door with only a mild magical boost, splintering the cheap faux wood with ease. A spray of bullets careened past her, but then she wrenched the weapons out of their owners’ hands, clenching them tight in her magic to bring the stocks up against their jaws.

The fighters falling, Celestia swooped to their sides, checking pulses and breathing as her magic crushed the rifles in its grip, twisting the barrels completely around as if this were a cartoon and Superman had just gripped some Mafioso thug’s gun.

Taking a moment to pause, Celestia sighed, her wings fanning out and stretching near her body. Twilight, I am inside. I have disabled… she paused, counting in her head. …five of the fighters.

Oh thank…you… Twilight replied awkwardly. Should I teleport to you?

The princess weighed her options, wondering if it would be better to handle things on her own, but dismissed the idea upon spying a telltale series of contrails in the distance. Yes. I will need help to disable resistance in this structure before local military forces arrive.

A split-second later, Twilight winked into existence near her, and Celestia gladly accepted a warm nuzzle before the smaller mare turned to the two men on the floor. “They’re just unconscious…r-right?”

“Of course, Twilight,” Celestia said as she walked towards the window, noting the sigh of relief from Twilight’s side. “Now, I only need you to help maintain my shield while I work to clear out the remaining populace in the building.”

“O-okay,” Twilight concentrated, and a translucent purple shield flickered into existence around her princess. “But how are you going to do that?”

Celestia just grinned. “Luna is not the only one who can assume a nightmarish form at will.”

She took off out the window, chased by the rattle of bullets as she raced higher and higher into the sky, aiming for the sun. Twilight had to squint to keep up, watching the princess disappear into the glare, chased by confused shouting as the chatter off the humans’ weapons died off to an occasional blast. Suddenly, a jet of flame burst out of the sky. The sounds of shooting disappeared entirely, and Twilight’s jaw dropped in horror as a nightmarish face consumed her vision.

A grin filled with jagged, razor-sharp teeth greeted her as she gazed into a pair of eyes with piercing, red-hot pupils that seemed to judge her for every sin she’d ever committed, as if she were staring into the face of a new god that had just been born: one more akin to the wrathful gods of old. Its wings unfurled, curls of flame licking off every feather as heat blasted the building’s façade.

“Run,” this god hissed, her voice seemingly whispering into Twilight’s ear. “Run, this is your only warning. Run, and make this into a good game. Run, and behave like good sport. Run, and maybe your death will be less painful than the others’.”

Twilight suppressed the urge to wet herself as the building filled with the screams of panicking men, women, and children. She turned and pressed herself against the door jamb, peeking out into the hallway to find a stream of terrified humans: men scrambling over one another, women and children rushing in a panic, fighters dropping their rifles in a mad dash for the exits. Her jaw dropping again, Twilight turned just as Celestia alit in the room, daintily spreading her wings out to soften her landing.

Celestia smiled, spitting out a set of plastic fangs and grinned with her normal, pony teeth, letting the fangs clatter across the floor. “It has been far, far too long since I got to do that.”

“Princess…” Twilight gasped. “What was…”

“The Solar Flare Delusion: came in handy during the Dragonland Incursions of 576,” Celestia mused as she trotted towards the door, peeking around the hall. “Takes quite a bit of power, the sort I need to build up over days. And don’t worry about the city panicking over a giant floating terror in the sky: I can localize it to a specific area, such as this building.”

“It was…incredible,” Twilight said, still stunned, her surprise as plain as the dust and dirt caked to her cheeks.

“Do you suppose so?” Celestia smiled as she tapped her chin thoughtfully, glowing beneath Twilight’s praise. “Really now, you don’t have to exaggerate to inflate my ego. It’s alright.”

“No, I do mean…”

And then, something shuffled behind the door next to them. A choked-off sob sounded. The ponies eyed one another. A fine couple of scholars we are, their looks said. In their rush to clear the room, neither had bothered to check behind the closed door off to the side. Screwing up her eyes, Twilight nodded as Celestia took position on the other side of the door. She raised a hoof. Twilight sucked in a breath. Celestia’s hoof dropped, and Twilight bucked the door open.

In a second, light poured into the room, and a group of humans screamed inside, waving weapons. Twilight’s horn charged up, ready to unleash a bolt, but Celestia’s hoof stopped her in her tracks.

“Princess, what…” but she trailed off as she took a second look inside, and realized she’d nearly unleashed a stun spell against a group of children. Two girls in long, full-body coverings (birkas, she thought they were called) and a boy in a long, dirty robe, all holding spatulas and kitchen knives and frying pans and wearing looks as though they were staring down the devil himself. Which makes sense from their point of view, Celestia mused. She could hear Twilight physically restrain a curse word before it left her lips.

Sighing to herself, Celestia turned away from the door, shutting it gently. Twilight eyed her as she trotted towards the door. “Princess?” She asked. “Where are you going? We have to help them!”

“We already have, Twilight,” Celestia replied, her voice quivering.

“But…”

“There is nothing more we can do here,” Celestia insisted. “We can only move on to wherever we are needed next.”

“But they’re still afraid!” Twilight gasped, pointing back at the door with an almost frantic, desperate gesture. “We’re supposed to be fixing that fear, right!? How can we do that if we just walk away from a group of children fearing for their lives!?”

Celestia paused in her walk, just short of the stairwell. Two men still snoozed in the corner, safely tucked away. “Do you honestly think that I could have a chance at allaying the fears of children in this world?” She whispered, her head bowed, her voice shaking. “Here, where I am the monster that haunts their dreams? That conquers their lands and murders their brethren?”

Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but then a little sparkle dribbled around Celestia’s snout and plinked off the floor. Realizing that she was watching her friend and mentor break down, that this was what it looked like for a goddess’s heart to shatter, she did the only thing she could think of: she embraced her. Her smaller, purple wings meshed with the ivory white ones. “You’re not that monster,” she whispered, her eyes closed as the hug tightened.

“I know,” Celestia whispered back. “But I can’t stand being seen that way.”

“Miss pony?”

The pair turned in surprise to the little voice behind them, turning face-to-face with the little boy from the closet. Neither of them moved, worried that the slightest motion might send him scurrying back like a frightened rabbit. As it was, they could see the fearful, wide-eyed way he looked at them, and the way he clenched the kitchen knife in his little hands until the knuckles turned white, and they could tell it was taking all his courage just to stand there and talk.

“Yes?” Celestia finally asked.

The little boy bit his lip, but continued: “Bad men…you make go ‘way?” He asked in semi-broken English.

Again, Celestia nodded.

“Thank you.”

Celestia did not reply, only watched the little boy, wide-eyed, as if she could not believe what she was seeing.

“You make sure sister safe?”

After a few more seconds of frozen, wide-eyed staring, Celestia asked: “I will try. Where is she?”

“She went to check on mama.”

“Where is your mama?”

“At the special hospital, the one for humans maked ponies.”

At that, Celestia’s eyes bugged out. She stood up, pulling free of Twilight’s grasp. The boy flinched back, raising the knife, but thankfully he did not scurry back into the room.

“There is a Newfoal hospital in this place?” Celestia asked, her eyes still wide, her breathing rising and falling in ragged gasps.

After a while, as if piecing together what she said with what English he did know, the boy nodded.

“I thought they were all outside, in the colony. I thought this place was just for ponies and humans!” An edge of frantic panic entered her voice.

The boy shook his head. “Some human-ponies not eat, not come out right. Almost die. They in the outside-place. The rest in here.”

“That colony is just a massive hospital,” Celestia gasped. “The able-bodied ones are in here, where they can be held by walls…of course! Oh Tia, you idiot!”

She stepped towards the boy, easing back whenever the fear rose in his eyes. “My child, where is your mother’s hospital? Can you point towards it?”

Nodding, the boy extended a shaking finger down the hall, out the window to the sea of squat, dusty buildings baking in the desert sun. One building, however, stuck out above the rest: a building surrounded by fencing and barbed wire. And, Celestia thought with a grimace, Likely a Tachyon Inhibitor or two.

“My child, stay inside,” she said, her look growing stern, like a mother giving instruction. This was a look Twilight was only too familiar with. “Lock every door and window you can see and hide like you were doing before. Do not open anything again until the local military restores order, do you understand?”

Nodding, the shaking child slowly turned and walked back into his apartment, grabbing the remnants of the front door and easing it shut. When only a narrow crack remained open, he looked out and peered at them both.

“We will find your sister and mother, and we will do everything in our power to ensure they arrive home safely,” Celestia pressed a hoof to her chest and bowed in the universal sign of a pony making an unbreakable oath. “You have my word.”

The boy gazed out at her a while longer, his wide eyes still locked with hers, then he looked away and closed the door without another word.

Instantly, Celestia turned towards the stairwell, galloping to the roof again as fast as she could. Twilight fought to keep up, her hooves stumbling over the concrete as she scrambled behind. “Princess, wait up!” She gasped. “Why do you think that hospital is in danger!?”

“It’s them, Twilight! It’s the Human Liberation Front!” Celestia gasped as she bucked her way through the rooftop door again.

“What!?” Twilight gasped, recalling the name of the highly-mobile international terrorist group that had formed in the weeks leading up to the war between Equestria and mankind. They appeared to be the only ones who suspected something might be going on with Equestria and the Conversion Bureaus sprouting up everywhere, and the evidence they gathered amidst their numerous attacks on bureaus had actually been what eventually spurned the UN into action. “I-I thought they faded away with the end of the war!”

“Faded, perhaps, but not gone, not completely,” Celestia grimaced as her wings fanned out, ready to take to the skies. “That kind of hatred rarely vanishes on its own. It remains, festering under the surface, feeding off the pain of loss to spread itself and keep destroying and burning all around it. Even without a war to fight, the members of the HLF would still feel that anger, at the UN for not acting sooner, at the ponies that remained, at the Newfoals for what they represent…”

Twilight paused mid-flight, her wings keeping her hovering as she rounded on Celestia. “You sound like this has happened before.”

“It has. Time and again, against countless enemies and in countless forms,” she grimaced. “Sombra was a royal guardspony before he took up dark magic to save his home from foreign invasion. From what I gathered from his brother, Tirek took up the art of magic-draining after hearing about one of his friends being captured and beaten by a group of pony bandits. Time and again, hatred and violence might start off with noble intentions, but it cannot defeat other forms of hatred and evil. If it tries, it only takes that darkness into itself and becomes tomorrow’s new evil, fostering more hatred and more evil to continue the cycle.”

Twilight settled in next to Celestia, keeping pace with her, flapping her wings to keep up. “What can stop it?” She asked after a long, drawn-out silence.

Keeping her eyes locked ahead, Celestia’s reply was almost lost on the wind: “Understanding.”

Chapter XXX: The Hospital And The HLF

For the first time in months, Imani Abboud prayed. She didn’t know who she might be praying to; just anybody who might be listening, really. It started at the back of her mind without her realizing it was happening, right after the first explosion rocked the north wall of Little Equestria. The little voice crying for help from the back of her mind only grew in volume as she spotted the men with machine guns and rocket launchers storming the front door of the hospital, shooting through the paltry defense force stationed up front and killing the soldiers and local militia that hadn’t simply fled. One militiaman even embraced one of the invaders like a brother-in-arms before joining their ranks.

Her prayers grew more desperate as the screams and gunshots grew closer. Her hands closed tight together, the whispering on her lips growing louder and hoarser. And still, the silence in her head was deafening. But this was all she had.

Something hard fell on her shoulder, and she sprang up in fear, whirling around, but the soft, pink eyes of her mother’s nurse only smiled back.

“Redheart,” Imani gasped with relief, hugging the fuzzy body close to her own. “What are you still doing here!?”

“Somepony had to watch the patients,” the ivory mare chuckled, returning the hug. “Especially with Nurse Abdella out with the flu. Without her, we’re left with Baranek, and that bitch couldn’t draw blood from a hemophiliac!”

Imani chuckled at Little Equestria’s most well-known nursemare, but then her eyes widened. “No, Redheart! It’s the HLF!” She gasped. “They’ll kill you!”

“Probably,” the mare shrugged. “The way I see it, they likely have the whole hospital surrounded. I can die in here, helping my patients, or I can be gunned down in the streets.”

Imani’s breath caught in her throat. “Don’t talk like that…please…” she whispered.

Redheart smiled sadly and nuzzled under her chin. “It’s alright, kid, really. I saw enough death in Tokyo to last a thousand lifetimes. This is just payment coming due for us ponies, is all.”

Imani wiped at her face, nodding as the tears started to flow unbidden.

“Hey, none of that now, alright?” Redheart added her hooves to help wipe the tears away. “Look, I’m gonna get more blankets for your mother, you close the door when I leave, alright?”

Imani could only nod, afraid that her quivering voice would only betray her. Redheart left out the door with a last little smile cast over her shoulder, trotting off down the hallway. Hurrying, Imani circled her mother’s bed and closed the door, cursing the lack of a lock or a deadbolt, anything to delay the men outside a little bit longer. She thought about moving the bedside table to block the door, but took one look at the cheap plywood in both and realized the noise of moving the thing would do more harm than good. Besides, the door opened outward, and - oh God help her, there was nothing she could do. Nothing at all.

Standing near the closed door, her head bowing, Imani slowly walked to the bedside, closer to the large-eyed, cyan-colored cretin that used to be her mother. Down the hall, another door crashed in. A few seconds later, more gunshots. But no screams. Okay, that one didn’t have family visiting, at least they wouldn’t have to see a loved one die right in front of them.

A tear rolled down Imani’s immaculately scrubbed cheek as she clenched the creature’s hoof. She always scrubbed herself clean before visiting mother, not that she was usually dirty, but mother always was so picky about her children being clean and not looking “like they just walked off the set of one of those commercials Western corporations use to trick gullible white people out of their money.” Imani smiled at the memory of her mother using those exact words as her sisters and brother scrubbed away at their faces. She wiped at the tear, her grip tightening on the creature’s hoof. For the eighth time that day, she searched its eyes for some trace of the woman that had disappeared one night after going out to get groceries and returned as this thing. For the eighth time, she saw nothing but a dumb animal that would do nothing but sing the occasional praise of the evil bitch that had done this to her. Imani bit her lip. Down the hall, screams preceded another volley of gunshots. That room had had family visiting.

She didn’t fear for herself. She knew who these men were here for. Anything on two legs was perfectly safe, but her mother…those men would likely throw themselves into a fire if they’d been tied to her, just so they could die knowing they took one more Newfoal out of the world. So was this goodbye? At long last? Or did she say goodbye all those years ago when mother had walked out for a late night grocery run? Who knew? Who could say? The question was, what now? What could she say or do that hadn’t already been said or done?

Nobody here deserved this. Nopony here deserved this.

Her thoughts came to a crashing halt at somepony’s scream. Imani bolted upright, staring at the door. She stumbled towards it on shaking legs. Was that Redheart? She’d heard Redheart scream once, during a blood drawing on a Newfoal, when the little prick had shifted right as Redheart had been leaning in with the needle and the sharpened tip had traced a line down her leg. It had healed, but Imani never forgot that scream. Or, she thought she hadn’t. Was it the same? Could she tell? Yes, yes it was definitely her, oh God, oh…

The scream was cut short by another volley of automatic fire. She stopped, her fingers still a few inches from the door. Her hand dropped. The tears flowed more freely.

Redheart hadn’t deserved that. Nopony here did. They were just…empty shells now, why did this have to happen to them? They were all gone, why couldn’t these big men leave their guns at home and just let the families mourn in peace!? Why couldn’t anybody just let her mourn her mother in peace!?

Wait.

Mourn?

That word echoed in her mind. Mourn. As if she was gone already. Like a cancer patient delirious with pain and unable to understand what was happening to them. The image of retrieving the pillow from beneath her mother’s head popped into Imani’s mind, that image followed by one of pressing it to the creature’s muzzle and adding weight. Odds were, she wouldn’t even fight back. Newfoals had almost no sense of self-preservation, so it would be like watching her mother go to sleep, only this time, instead of slowing down and evening out, her mother’s breathing would just sort of…taper off.

…

No.

No, she couldn’t do that. Not to her own mother. Sure, the thought might have occurred to her once or twice, end the desperation once and for all, but she couldn’t! It was her mother!

But was it? Was it really?

And, another question, did it matter if she did it now, rather than wait for the men with rifles to break down the door and do it for her? Wouldn’t it actually be better like this, with her own flesh and blood committing the act, and not some random maniac with a gun?

A few rooms down, the door crashed in. No gunshots this time. Empty room.

She had no time.

“Mama…” she squeezed the hoof in her hand, but already her free hand was reaching around behind the pony’s head, going for the pillow. The Newfoal hardly even moved, letting its head hit the bare mattress as Imani pulled it free. It didn’t even blink. Imani’s chin trembled as she raised the pillow, clenching it in her hands. She held it over the Newfoal’s blank, grinning face. Could she really do this? Would she?

Two doors down, the door crashed in. Gunfire. Screams. No time.

“I’m so sorry, mama,” she whispered, her voice not even making it to her own ears as she slowly lowered the pillow over the Newfoal’s muzzle. At least now, that damned blank stare was gone, but this was just covering her mother’s face. To finish the job, she would need to press. She would actually need to use her strength to kill her mother.

With tears dribbling onto the pillow, Imani straightened her elbows and put her weight on her arms. The pillow straightened under her, the plain, white surface smoothing out in her grip. Her shoulders ached with the effort, and her elbows shook. The Newfoal did not react. The Newfoal did not move. The Newfoal…her mother…

With a gasp and a sob, Imani threw the pillow to the side and embraced her mother. Her cries reverberated through the tiny room. She knew the gunmen would hear her now, but she didn’t care. This was her mother, no matter what a bunch of crazy people with guns said. She wasn’t a monster, she just needed help, if they could only understand that…maybe she could talk to them! Maybe she could still save her mother’s life! Yes, maybe, just maybe…

A loud thump sounded over her head. Her neck craned as she looked up, confused, until the familiar sound of hoofbeats cracked against the roof. Her heart dropped. She knew that sound all too well, during the brief yet violent incursion New Equestria had made into the rest of the city. The pegasi made that sound when they landed on the roofs of houses. Her remaining family had only survived because they hid in the closet and left their mother in the living room, watching the emergency broadcast warnings on the TV with that awful, blank stare. Now, all that fear and helplessness came roaring back as she realized that a pony had just landed on the roof.

Without even thinking about it, Imani ducked under the bed, squeezing in as low as she could. It didn’t occur to her that she had been ready to try and talk to a bunch of maniacs with guns and was now hiding under a bed from a little pony with a color pallet that was an insult to the eyes. It did occur to her, insanely enough, that seven years ago she would excitedly be screaming to her mother that Santa Claus was here, regardless of the time of year, and she had to bite her hand to stifle a giggle that she somehow knew would grow in volume until she wouldn’t be able to control it.

For a few more terrible moments, the hoofsteps sounded above her, easing towards the wall…the one with the window…oh, God no. Dear God in Heaven no…

Next door, the shooting stopped. The men had heard the hoofbeats too, and now they were hiding, waiting. A ridiculous scenario of four men wielding scimitars bursting into the room and chasing off the manic creature now at the window faded from her mind. She was alone.

Four ivory legs landed with practiced grace at the edge of the bed, the window opening and shutting behind them. Once again, Imani prayed to someone she didn’t really think was listening.

Celestia stared down at the little Newfoal, trying to keep her muzzle from twisting in distaste. How anypony could prefer this shallow, mindless, and downright creepy form over the normal human form was utterly beyond her, but then, that would be trying to understand why this ‘Xenolestia’ went to such lengths in the first place. In the end, she knew she probably didn’t want to know, as the answers would likely be enough to keep her up at night.

After a few moments, however, the Newfoal frowned, then its eyes widened. “The impos-“ it started, its muzzle twisting with rage, until lavender bands of pure magic locked around its muzzle, followed by several more that secured it tightly to the bed. The Newfoal’s horn sparked, only to also be restrained in a final band, followed by several lavender padlocks, lavender leather restraints, lavender ropes, and lavender manacles.

Celestia arched an eyebrow, then turned to Twilight, standing at her side with her horn revved up to the max and cords standing out on her neck. “Twilight, don’t you think this might be overdoing it? It is still just one pony,” Celestia asked.

“No chances this time, princess,” Twilight insisted, her eye twitching.

Celestia sighed, but knew better than to question Twilight when she saw that eye twitch. She’d have better luck debating the finer points of Chianti versus Chardonnay with a brick. So, she strode up to the bed, frowning down at the smaller creature lying there.

“Too long,” she frowned.

“Princess?” Twilight asked, her eyebrows hunching. “What are you doing? Change it back so we can move on!”

“That’s the thing, Twilight, it takes too long.” Celestia frowned. “It takes too long and every case must be personalized to reach every individual human. At that rate, it would take years to change every affected human back to what they once were.”

“But…what else can we do?”

The door thudded open, and Twilight and Celestia looked up just in time to find a familiar face. Or flank, in this case, but it helped that this particular pony had a fairly distinctive cutie mark. Redheart backed into the room, peering out at the hallway with a look of terror on her face and a pile of blankets balanced on her back. She said something in the local language that flew right past the other ponies’ ears, though the distinctive pronunciation of something that sounded like Imani stood out to them.

Celestia started to back towards the window, relieved as the draft whispering through her feathers reassured her that she and Twilight had left it open. They’d never get out without the nurse - who so resembled the Ponyville resident it was actually scary - knowing if they’d closed it. Now, all she needed was for Twilight to follow her lead, but she was smart, she’d know enough to glance over and…

“Redheart!?” Twilight gasped. “Nurse Redheart!?”

A curse came within moments of passing Celestia’s lips as the pony turned around, eyes widening even further. Redheart’s jaw dropped, her breath catching in her throat, then her gaze narrowed as rage clouded her vision. The fear swapped itself out with anger so quickly anyone watching it would have thought a switch had been thrown in her head.

“My little pony,” Celestia said, backing up, her wings folding to shrink her body. “Please, I beg of you to remain calm…”

Redheart’s nostrils flared in a way Twilight had never seen before. To her, it appeared as though nothing existed but the princess standing before her. Twilight, the Newfoal, the bed, all faded away into the background. “My. Little. Pony.” Redheart hissed, the blankets falling away from her back as heavily-accented English spat through her clenched teeth. “You dare. You dare say that again, after everything you did to us. After you betrayed everything we were meant to stand for, everything you extolled for the last millennium, after you left us at the mercy of a foe infinitely more powerful than us to go on a suicide run out of pure spite, you dare!?”

Celestia cringed, her memory of an article on the last days of the Collision Wars coming back in full swing. She’d never even imagined it from the pony point of view: watching their Princess sail off at the fall of the Barrier, thinking she was going to do something that would protect them, some new bit of magic that would save them from the human weapons that were now free to rain down upon them, only to learn she’d gone off to make a hateful, last-moment attack that would do nothing but add to the death count on the other side, leaving Equestria open to the nuclear hellfire just minutes away.

“My…Redheart, are you still called that?” Celestia stepped forward, offering her hoof. “I am not…”

Suddenly, a spark ignited in the smaller pony’s eyes, a realization. “Redheart, you fool,” she muttered, but now her eyes narrowed even further, locking in on Celestia’s visage. “You can’t have her.”

Celestia blinked, then cast a glance at the Newfoal, still struggling in its lavender bonds. “Redheart, understand please, we mean no harm. We’re only trying to help…”

“You took her family already!” Redheart screamed, her head lowering, her nostrils flaring. Celestia recognized the earth pony charge immediately, the pony’s instincts taking over in a clumsy, but driven, attempt at a familiar battle stance. “She’s so young and you took everything from her! Well no more!”

Redheart launched herself. Her voice reached a screeching fever pitch: “Not one more, you bitch! You fucking cunt!” She screamed. She threw herself at the Princess. Her hooves lashed out. “Not one more!”

Celestia raised her hooves instinctively. A spell readied itself in her horn, but it was the wrong spell. Oh Maker above, it was a kill spell. No time to switch it. Had to use her hooves. Twilight might help!? No, no time, her magic was exhausted holding down the…

A set of purple hooves launched themselves at Redheart, a powerful midair buck slamming into the nurse’s jaw with the strength of an earth pony. Redheart went sailing into the far wall, crashing into a medicine cabinet and bouncing off, hitting the floor with a loud thump. She was still.

Celestia turned, awestruck, as Twilight settled back on all fours, her horn still glowing with the magic required to hold down the Newfoal, who at least had paused in its struggles to watch in awe as Twilight settled with a long sigh. “Thank goodness I started doing those Tae Bo cardio classes with Rarity,” she muttered.

“Twilight,” Celestia gasped, and Twilight turned to her with a little smile.

“Well, my magic was used up, but my body is hardly useless,” she said, smiling pridefully. “I did place fourth in the Ponyville ‘Running of the Leaves,’ if you’ll recall. I still have the trophy.”

Celestia kept staring, and then she knelt in for a nuzzle. Twilight darted back in surprise, then quickly returned the nuzzle, a contented hum rising from her throat. The restraints on the Newfoal loosened just a bit, but clamped down instantly the moment it tried to move.

“I was not aware it was possible for me to feel more pride towards you, my most faithful student,” Celestia whispered as their faces met. “But you just keep finding new ways to surprise me.”

“I-it was nothing,” Twilight said, pulling herself back to keep the heat rising on her cheeks from betraying her embarrassment to the Princess. “Really, I just had decent enough reaction times, and I knew I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing, even with my magic occupied.”

“Still, that your first reaction was to leap to my defense against an enraged pony speaks volumes of your selflessness,” Celestia said, a contented smile on her muzzle. “I know I’ve said it before, but I wish to reiterate: I’ve always been honored to call you my fellow princess.”

The blush spread to Twilight’s neck. “W-we should hurry things up here,” she said hurriedly. “We’ve stayed in one place too long now.”

Celestia smiled, nodded, then turned to frown at the little pony before her, her mind racing. There had to be something common to work off of, to control and move with. What did they have in common? Well, each human mind was still alive down there, somehow. Dormant, but still thrumming away deep within each Newfoal’s consciousness. So how? Surely, that evil thing wearing her face would have wanted the human destroyed completely, never to be recovered by any feat of magic or science. So why didn’t she? Because she couldn’t, simple as that, and that was because…because…

She thought about a man with tinted skin, leaping after her even though he knew it was far too late to stop her, and impossible to believe he stood a chance.

She thought about a little old mare…no, lady…from England, trotting back and forth to the hospital to visit the man she loved, even though everybody around her said it was pointless, even though every scientific study and every human around her screamed that the man she loved was no longer in there.

She thought about a little boy in a dirty robe, walking up to his world’s version of Sombra, Nightmare Moon, and Chrysalis all rolled-up in one, because he was concerned for his sister.

And she thought about the sort of drive it would take for a species to not lay back and die, to refuse to step forth into the darkness and embrace oblivion, despite encountering all-powerful forces far beyond any they had ever encountered before.

“Will,” she whispered. “An iron will, that is a human. To refuse to accept defeat…of course. Of course!”

“Princess?” Twilight asked, having just dispelled a couple sets of manacles around the Newfoal before them, which allowed it the barest extra inch of wiggle room.

“That was the problem, Twilight!” Celestia gasped, bouncing from side to side on her tip-hooves like a filly who just discovered a new swear word and was itching to try it out. “I was trying to appeal to their good will as ponies, when I should have been appealing to their iron will as humans!”

“Wh-what?”

“I will explain later, just…let me get a good grip…” Celestia trailed off as she eagerly leapt to the Newfoal’s bedside, almost resembling a dog about to play fetch. Her horn ignited as she dug into the creature’s mind, making it go limp almost immediately. Only this time, she wasn’t gentle: she pierced deep into the mind, following the telltale path forged by her doppelganger’s magic, only allowing the sheer, overwhelming power behind it fill her with dread as far as it wouldn’t interfere. That she would turn such power to this… she started, but crushed the thought as she journeyed down so she could focus on the task at hoof.

And just like that, there was a reaction. Something pressed back against her, the mind defending itself, an automated sentry standing guard. Oh, but the power behind that! Yes, this was what she was looking for! The near-invisible tendrils of the human’s mind reached up to her, but instead of recoiling, she grabbed them and flung herself back with all her strength, like a fisherman reeling in the big one. The Newfoal gasped, its back arched where it laid, its eyes widening as it screamed against the gag.

Twilight recoiled, but her magic remained strong, just as she’d been taught. “Princess, what…”

“It’s nothing, Twilight,” Celestia replied, her horn extinguishing as a little smile touched her lips. “Just a mind filling up a body again.” Already, her mind worked, the gears turning, tweaking the spell, making improvements. Yes…this could work…this could make it as easy as…

“Umm…Princess?” Twilight prodded Celestia. Her magic had been extinguished, not that it would be needed for the near-comatose pony on the bed anymore. “We’re here to stop the HLF soldiers, remember?”

“Ah, yes,” Celestia grinned at her. “Terribly sorry, Twilight. It’s been so long since I personally participated in magical research that I forgot how wonderful the rush of discovery can be.”

Twilight smiled sympathetically. “I completely understand, Princess,” she said. A few moments later, gunshots sounded from the lobby below, followed by shouting, as if to punctuate their need to move. Nodding, Celestia joined her student, and they floated down to join in the chaos unfolding under their hooves.

A few minutes after the ponies left, Imani pulled herself out from under the bed. Her cheeks were wet with tears and covered in dust, her light burqa was now more of a gray (why did she have to wear the tan one today!?) and her hands were blackened with the dirt off the concrete floor. But she was alive. That’s what mattered at this point, staying alive.

First, she rushed to Redheart’s side. She bit her lip, leaned in close, and let out a sigh of relief as a rush of breath reached her ear. Redheart was still alive, though in pain. Ironically, the only one who might help Redheart now was Redheart herself. Imani didn’t find this little bit of irony very funny.

She turned to look at the Newfoal in the bed, and the catatonic way it stared up into space. “Mama?” She asked, reaching for it, but then pausing. What if the ponies had done something to her? The Newfoals had been driven to violence by ponies before; what if the moment she reached over, those glazed eyes locked on her and the Newfoal snapped its teeth around her hand?

After a moment of indecision, she sighed and just knelt at the bedside. She hadn’t been able to make out what the ponies were talking about, but maybe they could be a blessing in disguise. Maybe the HLF would be so distracted by the ponies they would forget about the Newfoals. Looking subconsciously at her mother’s blank face, she whispered: “If those…those…assholes want to kill each other, then good.”

The Newfoal’s pupils narrowed. Its lips moved. Imani studied its lips. What was it doing? Was it…was it mouthing something? L-language?

Imani’s eyes widened. “M-mama?” She asked, clenching the hoof again without a second thought. Was that…did that just happen? Or was that a hallucination from a desperate mind? No, this was her last chance; her mother had to be in there!

“Mama, you have to wake up,” Imani hissed, taking the creature by its shoulders. Two massive, blank, saucer-plate-like eyes stared back at her. “Mama…mama, please, I don’t wanna lose you, mama…”

“Your mama is gone, little girl,” a deep voice rasped from the door. Imani bolted up, her eyes widening in terror. She turned around slowly, her gaze gradually lifting, taking in the dusty, torn camo, the hairy, calloused hands, the long, raggedy beard, and finally, the rusty machine gun in the hands of the man standing in the doorway.

She sniffled, her eyes blurring with tears. The moment was here, and she wasn’t as ready as she thought she was. “Please…” she whispered.

“Nothing for it, miss,” the man said, his eyes surprisingly gentle. He kept that gentle gaze on her as he stepped into the room, followed by two more armed men in balaclavas. “They’re just not human anymore.” He stepped around her, standing at the Newfoal’s bedside, the machine gun coming out of its crude sling around his shoulder. One of the balaclava-clad men clamped a hard hand on Imani’s shoulder, his gaze boring into the back of her head. She didn’t even look at him, her tear-filled eyes remaining on the Newfoal looking up at the men with stupid curiosity.

“Please,” she asked again.

“It won’t hurt,” the first man said, the rifle rising to his shoulder. “She won’t even feel a thing, I promise.”

The tears flowed freely now, dribbling down her cheeks. She looked at the bed, sniffled as one of the men pulled a pistol from his belt. “Mama...”

A scream filled the room. Imani whipped around in time to discover that Nurse Redheart had woken up, with a vengeance. The pony's teeth were locked around one of the terrorists' hands. Her hat had fallen off and her bun had come undone, her mane cascading around her shoulders and giving her an almost feral look as she glared hatefully into the gunman's face, muzzle scrunching up as her teeth clenched.

The gunman's wails filled the air as he fell back against the wall, shaking his arm violently, trying to just shake her off, but Redheart was locked on like a piranha. Finally, gaining some presence of mind, the man at her mother's bedside strode over, pressed the barrel of his revolver against Redheart's head, and pulled the trigger.

A scream of horror replaced the cries of pain from the gunman. It took a second for Imani to realize the cries were coming from herself. A bit of Redheart's blood spattered against the far wall. Her head bucked to the side with the bullet, but not as violently as Imani thought it would. It could have been a muscle spasm for how violent it was. The pony's eyes went blank and her jaw loosened, her blood coating the tile as her body landed on the ground like a limp sack of potatoes. Her blood blanketed the front of the first terrorist's clothes, his jeans soaked in it as he held up his hand, Redheart's bitemarks obvious in it. And still, were it not for the blood, she would have looked like she'd fallen asleep, as if the gunshot had only scared her.

Somehow, the bloody bitemarks were what made it all real for Imani. Her eyes went back to the bed. All at once, the fear melted away to sheer panic. That was her mother sitting there, the last hope she might ever have of embracing the woman who changed her diapers and wiped away her tears and scrubbed her face clean every night was sitting right there, with a gun being pressed to her head and a finger with a gnarled, yellowing nail squeezing around the trigger.

All thought flew out of her head. She screamed. She struggled against the hand on her shoulder. She clenched at the wrist, not sure what she was trying to do. All of a sudden, the man’s thumb was in her mouth and she was biting down. Hard.

The man’s howls of pain joined her own feral cries, then something collided with the back of her skull, and the panic disappeared under a rush of pain and darkness. She dropped to her knees, her vision rolling in and out of focus, spots gathering in her eyes. Somewhere far away, there was more yelling and screaming. It took a few minutes of listening to half-muffled cries and semi-coherent grunts, but she managed to stumble back from the edge of consciousness and come around without fainting entirely.

“What the fuck, Mo!?” The first man screamed at one of the men in the balaclava. He obviously wasn’t the man who’d been holding her, as the other balaclava-man was in the corner, clenching at his hand and cursing up a storm. “What the actual fuck!? You just hit a little girl!”

“She was assaulting Jaul!” The other man screamed, levelling a finger at his partner who still cradled his hand, blood running through his fingers.

“Oh yeah, great defense! Assaulting a little girl because she, an unarmed prepubescent, attacked a heavily-armed veteran for the cause!”

“Kids can still be dangerous!”

“She was unarmed, damn you! Just like the pony, you trigger-happy fuckhead!”

“You little cunt!” A new voice rose over the other two, and all three human sets of eyes turned on the man cradling his hand, tears standing in his eyes as he stormed up to where Imani laid. Before anybody could react, she saw the way his shoulder twisted, his hip pivoted, one heavily-booted foot rearing back for a kick aimed at her head. She held her hands up on instinct, a cry locked in her throat before it could even make it out. Once again, she prayed to her old God for deliverance, less a coherent set of words in her mind than an impulse: a desperate cry for help that she was growing too weary to even hope that might be heard.

As the steel-toed boot reared back, the man was knocked to the side by a powder-blue blast of energy that sent him sprawling head-first against the far wall. The other humans in the room stood in shocked silence, then turned to the Newfoal in the bed. Gone was the blank look, the stained bedsheet draped over her waist. In its place was a pony rearing up on its hind hooves, her face a mask of pure rage. With a cry, she turned her horn on the remaining pair of men, sending them flying back in short order, both too stunned to even raise the weapons in their hands.

With all three dispatched, the pony still stood there, panting heavily, her teeth clenching, her shoulders rising and falling. “Don’t you dare touch my children, you filthy bastards,” it hissed.

Imani slowly climbed to her feet, her eyes almost as wide as the pony’s. Instantly, the Newfoal’s gaze softened, looking the girl over. “Habibi, are you hurt? Did they hurt you anywhere?”

Shaking her head, Imani slowly stepped towards the creature. “M-mama?”

With tears growing in her eyes, the Newfoal smiled. “I’m right here, baby. I’m right here.”

More certainly happened after that, between the military men retaking the building and the discovery that the Newfoals weren’t quite so Newfoalish anymore and Imani going home that night to tell her brother and sisters that their mother…their real mother…was well and truly back, but Imani would never be bothered to recall any of it later. She'd just know that, thanks to Redheart's sacrifice, her mother was back, and she was never letting her go again.

Author's Note

Just a quick reminder that dialogue in italics is in a language other than English.

Chapter XXXI: Transmission

Celestia gazed around the abandoned station, drinking in the dust-covered tables, the grimy tiles, and flickering fluorescent lights. “Not exactly a royal press conference, but desperate times...” she mused under her breath.

“Are you sure about this, princess?”

Celestia smiled serenely at her beloved student, an action she hoped didn't betray the way her stomach twisted as she gazed into the passionless, empty eye of the camera, odd as it was. Unlike the massive, bulky black boxes she knew, this device stood barely three inches tall, the majority of which was taken up by a tiny plastic pedestal. “Yes, Twilight, we need to allay the fears of the humans somehow, or we will continue to fail like we did in Germany. And they have devised a most wonderful method of mass communication practically waiting for us to use.”

Still, Twilight bit her lip. “I know some might take comfort in what you have to say, but others...”

“Others will not believe me, I understand, but we need every friend we can get right now, and if there's even a chance that just one human out of a thousand will consider that we are on their side, we must take it.”

“Perhaps, but...” she sighed as she made the next connection for the video equipment. “Those humans aren't the ones I'm worried about.”

“Oh?”

“What about the humans like the ones who attacked us in Israel? The ones that will be waiting for us with guns and bombs?” She shot a worried look to Celestia. “Even if we can take them ourselves, we might hurt some, or other humans could get hurt in the crossfire, and no one will listen then.”

“Those won't be anything we haven't overcome already, Twilight. One way or another, our destiny lies in Tokyo, and it's something the whole world should see, or we risk all this having been for naught.” Celestia nodded sagely as she faced the tiny plastic lens. “Are we ready?”

“Yes,” Twilight replied, shifting her focus to the last pair of cables that she slid into place with a couple of satisfying little clicks. She breathed in, and out, moving her hoof with her breath. With a hum of her magic, a few keys depressed themselves on the small ‘laptop’ before her. “Now remember: with the rate at which this video will be distributed, we can expect billions to see it within twenty-four hours, so remain calm, and do your best.”

“I never do anything less, Twilight.”

“I wasn't talking to you,” Twilight replied with a sheepish grin. “Sorry.”

Celestia stared, then let out a melodious little giggle. “Of course, sorry dear Twilight.”

“Okay,” with shaking hooves, Twilight positioned the camera and pressed a last few buttons, just like the “Youtube” video had shown her. “We can always take another video, so just relax...”

“Still you?”

“Still me, sorry,” Twilight's grinned sheepishly before her focus turned back to the whirring screen before her. “And...on in five...four...three...two...one...”

In a flash, a transformation overtook Celestia. Her back straightened, her wings puffed out slightly to increase her size, her chin rose, and her eyes became blank pools of channeled power. This was no longer the pony who joked and laughed with Twilight to calm her just a few moments ago. This was the pony of a thousand press conferences, who’d seen a thousand kings, queens, and tyrants rise and fall in her time. This was the Princess of the Sun.

“Humans of Earth,” Celestia intoned. “My name is Princess Celestia of Equestria, as I am sure you are well aware. I have come to learn about the horrors that have been committed by one who shared my name and wore my face, all under a banner very much like my own. She came under the guise of love and harmony, preaching a word of neverending order and peace, only for you to discover that this peace was meant to come at the price of your very souls.

“Now, another incident has occurred with another world. My world. And you have every right to regard that world with suspicion and hate. You have suffered greatly, humanity. The peoples of your various nations have been kidnapped and tortured, to be replaced with hollow shells of themselves. What's more, your cities have burned. I wept when I first read of the destruction in Tokyo, and I wept further when I heard about the ‘Barrier’ and its effects on cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong. I am not going to pretend that I can ever heal the wounds left by these horrors. I will not insult your intelligence by saying I can somehow remove the pain of losing millions of your fellow citizens. However, I do have a solution that can give back just a modicum of what was taken.

“Odds are by now you have heard of a Newfoal in England whose pre-transformation mind was returned to him. Perhaps you've already heard about the hospitals in Jerusalem where the same happened to entire wards of bedridden patients. While I am not usually one to tout my successes, as I have always believed that true character is what one does without any reward, I will take responsibility here. I have devised an efficient, magic-based method for restoring the human mind within a Newfoal, and while the body remains a pony's, the mind is saved. I hereby pledge this cure to as many Newfoals as possible, and in return I ask for only one thing, something that was violated thoroughly before and which I know I have no right to ask for.

“Your trust.”

At that, the veneer cracked, and Twilight watched a desperate and tired pony approach the camera, eyes begging. “I need your trust, humanity, and I know I have no right to ask for it. But just this once, please, I beg of you, for the good of both our peoples. Please. Tomorrow I, along with my faithful student, Twilight Sparkle, will begin our journey to the largest Newfoal population, based in Tokyo. I only ask, no, beg, that our way be cleared. That we be allowed to heal this group. I acknowledge that this would also be a prime opportunity for me to garner an army, but please: isn't it worth the chance? To have what was lost returned? To heal just a bit of the wound left behind?

“I am not the monster you currently have locked away. I only ask for a chance to prove this.” She whispered as she backed away from the camera and returned to sitting just a few yards from its blank, emotionless lens. “Two worlds depend on this, on all of you. I can only hope you make the right choice.

“This is the true Princess Celestia of Equestria, I hope to see some of you there,” she smiled thinly, the faintest sliver of hope showing through her exhaustion. “I would love to meet more of you. Thank you.”

Without being asked, Twilight hit the stop button on the keyboard. She silently smiled, nodding to the princess, and then she went to work, using her magic to begin the upload.

“That was good?” Celestia asked, approaching Twilight with trepidation.

“Yeah,” Twilight sighed, biting her lip as she clicked through the different buttons needed to upload their video. “Okay, so we just need to remain calm and wait, there’s really nothing more we can do but wait and hope we’re welcomed, so we just need to remain calm…”

A large, white wing fanned over Twilight’s withers. “You’re still not talking to me, are you?” Celestia cooed.

Twilight cringed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Chapter XXXII: One Lone Filly

Flutterheart should have been scared, she knew it deep down. She should have felt the same way the other ponies looked, with the way they walked around with their heads bowed and ears folded in. After all, the same monsters that had kidnapped not one but two princesses now held them hostage, having overwhelmed the royal guardsponies so easily the guards might as well have been trying to use pillows instead of knives and swords. Not only that, but now mommy had to wear a ring on her horn, just like criminals when they were being hauled off by police ponies, even though mommy hadn’t done anything wrong.

Flutterheart should have been scared, walking outside and in the open, even if it was just to stand in line for another bowl of soup. Because every time she walked outside there was another reminder of the “hyoo-mans” and their occupation in the form of one of their guards, holding their weird, blocky weapons and wearing that bulky green armor. Celestia knows mommy and daddy were scared. Right now, as they walked through the lightening fog towards the food line, mommy and daddy were stopping and ushering her back with their hooves while the sounds of the heavy boots the hyoo-mans wore clopped towards them from the fog. Flutterheart obediently ducked back, but secretly peeked between the larger ponies’ legs, watching the pair of armored green pants come stomping out of the mist, slowly fading into view and then passing by with hardly a pause. As it disappeared back into the fog, her parents’ legs dropped.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” her mother whimpered quietly.

“It’ll be okay, hon,” her father replied, nuzzling her mother. “As long as we stick together as a family, we’ll be alright.”

Flutterheart didn’t say anything, certainly not asking why mommy and daddy were so scared. She could understand why, but maybe if they weren’t so scared, maybe…something. She didn’t know. Maybe they could all be friends?

They finally rounded one of the hyoo-mans' tough, green tents to drink in the backs of a dozen pony heads. Her mommy actually sighed in relief, as if they were little red hood in the fairy-tales, finally showing up at grandma's house. But even though this was the part where the Big Bad Wolf was supposed to show up and chomp at her, she still couldn’t find it in herself to be scared. Maybe it was because there were so many other ponies here? Maybe because the big bad wolf was a cute monkey-thing wearing an apron and ladling out oatmeal?

“Remember sweetie, stay strong,” her mother’s voice cut into her thoughts, and she nearly jumped back from the nuzzle the older mare tried to share. “Just remember to keep your head down, sweetie, it’ll all be okay.”

Flutterheart swallowed and nodded. “Okay, mommy,” she whispered, even as she schemed, preparing herself to recognize the exact moment she could lift her head and catch another glimpse of the hyoo-man chef. She kept her eyes fixated on the dirt ground, now stamped into hard-packed clay by the dozens of ponies that had passed this way. The royal guardsponies had used this same spot to host the distribution of food under their watch, and apparently their new occupiers had seen fit to continue in the same spot, if only for familiarity’s sake. As a result, there wasn’t much interesting on the ground to look at anymore, any plants and bugs had been stamped out days ago. Still, she kept her eyes low, no matter how much it bored her. The line stepped forward bit by little bit, the ponies walking towards the serving table with little more than slight shuffles of their hooves. It took an eternity, at least according to her internal clock, but finally she caught the wooden table legs at the upper edge of her vision. She let a tiny smile of victory flicker across her lips for the briefest moment.

Still, she kept her eyes low as she grabbed one of the many bowls off the table and held it up, trying not to marvel at its metal form. She’d been as surprised as anypony when the hyoo-mans had taken the wooden bowls and wrought-iron pots the guard had used and replaced them with these…she didn’t know what to call them. Whatever they were made of, they were like the wrought-iron pots, but thinner and lighter. She wished she could ask how they were made. Sometime in the past week she had stolen one from the line, subsequently spending an entire day bashing it against the wall, wailing on it with a stick, or throwing rocks at it, trying her very best to break it. Her mother had been livid when she’d walked in and asked what she was doing to make so much noise, telling her she was risking the entire family stealing from the monsters. Her father had only smiled and tucked the dinged-up and dented bowl under their cot, thanking her for their “one tiny victory.”

At last, the soup ladle upended itself over her bowl, the hand clenching it darting in and out from her peripheral vision almost faster than she could see: a blotch of color that was there too quick to make out the shape of fingers and hard, pink nails. Whatever. Her mommy was right beside her, now was not the time. Instead, she took her bowl and shuffled along, an ear perked for just the right moment when her mommy would scoop up her own bowl with an unpracticed scrape, coming from using her hooves instead of her magic.

She turned, trotted off, and there was the scrape. Her mommy was now focusing just on her soup, keeping her eyes on spilling as little of it as possible, and so Flutterheart was finally able to peek over her shoulder.

The human wasn’t quite like the others: same basic build, yes, two eyes, two arms, but the lips were thicker and the nose was broader. On top of that, its skin was so dark! Its eyes were the same white though, and that white contrasted with skin the same color of Luna’s night. She had to suppress a gasp of surprise. They had night humans too!? Or wait, she didn’t see any fangs, but still, humans came in different colors too! She wondered if she would see any purple or green humans, she was getting tired of that peach-white…

She set her mind back to trotting along, practically skipping with pride at her new discovery. They came in different colors too, just like ponies! Maybe they also had different tribes? She would love to see a pegasus-human or a horned-human. They probably had ginormous wings!

Her mommy let out a sigh of relief, and she listened to the rustle of one of daddy’s wings unfurling over her withers. “There there, dear, it’s all over now,” he whispered in her ear.

“I’m just glad the line wasn’t too bad today,” her mommy said. “I thought there’d be less food left since we got there so late.”

Flutter paused. Oh no. “What do you mean, mommy?”

“Hmm? Oh, we just went to lunch a bit later today, sweetie, that’s all.”

Flutterheart bit her lip and looked up through the haze of fog. Celestia’s sun…or maybe it was Luna’s now…stared back at her from directly overhead. Oh no, noon already!? She was gonna miss it! She had to act fast!

“Mommmmyyyyyy,” she moaned. “I don’t feel good…”

“Aww, what is it, sweetie?” The older mare pressed a fetlock to her forehead immediately. “Is it the cough? Did it come back?”

“Nooo, my tummy huuurrrttssss,” she whimpered, wrapping her hooves around herself for good measure while she whined. “I wanna go lie down.”

“But we just got lunch!” Her daddy insisted. “How can you suddenly start feeling bad before you even ate!?”

“Honey, shush!” Her mommy fired back, taking Flutter up in her hooves. “If she says she’s feeling sick, she’s feeling sick!”

Flutterheart had to suppress a victorious grin as her mommy swept both her and her bowl of soup up in her hooves, leading them back to the tent, away from the small hill where they liked to eat their meals, back to the cot-filled tent they were now calling home. Her mother tucked her in tight, making sure Mr. Buns was positioned properly on the pillow beside her, then kissing her forehead. “Better?” She asked.

“Lots,” Flutter grinned. “Thanks mommy!”

The older mare smiled down at her. “Of course, my dear heart,” she said, promptly crawling into the cot beside her.

Flutterheart’s teeth clenched. “Mommy? Whatcha doin’?”

“Oh, just making sure you’re okay, sweetheart,” her mommy replied as she crawled into the cot, pulling a dog-eared book out from under her blankets.

Oh crud. “B-but what about your lunch with daddy?”

“Just on hold until daddy can catch up with our meals!” The stallion said from the doorway, striding in victoriously with their food.

Double-crud! Okay, had to think…hold on! Duh! Getting out of this was so obvious! “Mommy, I-I’m not feeling too good again.”

The mare set her bowl down. “Aww sweetie, what is it?”

“My tummy it…ugh—“ that was all Flutter could manage before she sat up again. “I gotta go!”

“Go?”

She nodded with feigned urgency. “Go!”

A blank stare met her, then her mommy threw the blankets off. “Oh! Go!” She quickly helped Flutter out of the cot and galloped with her for the front exit. With a sinister grin, the filly threw herself to the side, galloping off into the deep mist.

“Wait, sweetie!” Her mommy called after her, already panting. “I can’t…keep up!”

Flutterheart’s sinister grin gained an ounce of victory. “I really gotta go!” She called, still galloping off in the direction of the outhouses. She weaved with practiced grace past rows of tents and around poles driven into the dirt, then stopped and ducked behind one such tent. A few minutes later, her mommy galloped past, panting heavily.

Flutterheart giggled to herself. Making her mommy worry after her like this gave her a funny feeling in her stomach, but the victory still tasted sweet enough where she found it easy to trot away, again weaving through the corridors laid out by the human encampment. Still, she couldn’t help but kick herself for the delay. How late was she now? Fifteen minutes? Thirty? Had she missed him?

Slowing her gait, she crept along the tents, passing from the pony part of the camp, under the signs with red lettering she couldn’t read, but had a little black silhouette of a pony crossed-out by a red ‘X’, which was clear enough. She grinned at yet another successful infiltration, but kept herself low as another human patrol passed, again with those blocky weapons and scary face masks. She held her breath every time one of them passed and she ducked into empty canvas tents packed with storage, flitting between stacks of metal boxes with ease.

In the end, for all her acrobatics, she only made it a couple of rows into the growing human side of the encampment, but that was all she needed. The wall of spiky wire the guardsponies were being kept behind was just beyond the thin layer of canvas in front of her, just where it always was, she just had to hope she wasn’t too late.

A lone human sat in a metal folding chair inside the tent, running a grimy cleaning cloth over the little, blocky object he kept on his person at all times. She sighed with relief as he looked up and smiled at her, patting his lap. With a warm smile back, Flutter trotted into the tent and climbed up, curling on the human’s lap like a cat, and feeling a sense of relief as his fingers ran through her mane, their soft tips caressing her scalp. As usual, for the first few minutes, neither of them spoke.

“I saw a dark human today,” she said suddenly. “It was almost as special as when I saw one of your mares.”

“Women, love,” the soldier said. “We call our mares ‘women,’ and that ‘dark’ human is black, definitely not a ‘darkie,’ please remember that if you remember nothing else.”

“How come?”

“Umm…oi, you wanna hear about years of human tradition, or you wanna hear the rest of the story?”

“Can you continue the story?” She asked.

The man’s only response was to keep petting her mane. “Maybe…maybe I changed my mind about tellin’ the rest.”

“C’mon, you promised last time…”

“I did, didn’t I?” The man chuckled. “Alright. Where did I leave off?”

“Mmm…” she thought for a second. “The Tavern on Tatooing…they just showed up with Oobi-One and Look Skywalker.”

“Alright,” the man cleared his throat, and began the tale once more: “’Mos Eisley Spaceport,’ the old knight said with a grimace. ‘You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in the Empire’.”

“Mr. Thompson? How come the Empire killed Skywalker’s parents?”

The man chuckled again. Her questions were why they were still on Tatooine despite having nearly a half-hour every day for more than a week to tell the story. “The biggest reason is a massive reveal later on down the line, but for now, let’s say Luke is very important to the Empire, and leave it at that.”

“Then how come they didn’t just ask to get close t’him?”

“They’re an evil Empire, sweetie. They’re not really in the business of asking for anything when they can just take,” the man nodded, as if affirming his own logic to himself. “You saw how Darth Vader treated the rebels on that ship? To them, that’s how any empire maintains control.”

“Is that why you guys came here and took away the guards’ armor?” She asked, her voice going very low and quiet for reasons she didn’t quite understand.

The petting paused in her mane, but quickly resumed after a moment. “No…sometimes the good guys have to do something not-so-good when they’re fighting bad guys.”

“The guards weren’t bad.”

The stroking stopped completely. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, kid,” the human murmured. “Your princess isn’t who you think she is…”

“H-how do you know?” She stammered. The conversation had taken a turn she wasn’t used to. “Have you met her?”

“Not personally…” he trailed off.

“Then how do you know!?”

“Because I know what someone like her did,” he hissed at last, and the clenching of his teeth, the sudden violent hatred rising on his face, informed her that the discussion was over. Flutter darted back, ears folding back as a whimper rose in her throat. In a flash, the flaming anger faded from Thompson’s face, and he bit his lip. “I’m….sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I got…I let my emotions…I’m sorry, it’s nothing you should concern yourself with.”

“O-okay,” she said. For a split-second, she considered ending the session then and there, just excusing herself as needing to be back before her parents noticed she was gone, but then his fingers played in her mane again, and once more she found herself unable to move from the spot. Eventually, she surrendered. “So…what was the bar called again?” She sighed.

“Mos Eisley,” he replied, and she could hear the smug smile in his voice well before she turned to see it plastered across his face. “You would never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in the Empire’s outer rim, and here, Luke, Obi-Wan, C-3PO and R2-D2 had to find a pilot to help them escape the Imperial forces…”

He trailed off sharply. He sat up straight in his seat, looking around as if he’d just heard something in the tent. Flutterheart sat up too, her ears perked up. “What’s wrong?” She asked.

“Hold on, love,” Thompson gave her a last scratch of the ears as he set her aside and stood up. His hand went to the long black object, his “rifle” as he’d called it, and scooped it up. Remaining crouched, he approached the tent’s entrance. Flutter stood from her seat, dropping to the ground to tip-hoof carefully behind him, but he ushered her behind his back with a quick wave of his arm. “Stay behind me,” he whispered, not taking his eyes off the canvas entrance, then he started moving again, his feet gliding along the dirt with the grace and skill of a ballerina. Flutter let herself watch for a half-second, then caught up, her body sticking close to the soldier’s heels.

He eased out, his thigh tensed beneath his uniform, and then he peered into the small, dirt avenue just outside the tent. Flutter took the opportunity to peek out with him, her little face poking from between his ankles. At first glance, everything appeared normal. The tents laid empty of everything but supplies, the guardtowers remained as looming shadows in the mist over the lines of tents. Then she perked up an ear. Where was the crunch of human combat boots as soldiers patrolled the supply caches? And now that she looked again, where was the sweep of spotlights from the towers? Where was the buzz from the wires overhead?

“Bollocks,” the soldier cursed. She turned, trying to see what he might have seen (while cataloguing the new swear word for later use). She caught a flash of colored pelt, a cutie mark of crossed swords, and then his powerful hands wrapped around her barrel and scooped her up.

“Wh-what’s going on?” She moaned as he ran with her.

He didn’t reply, just kept running down the street, the little filly under one arm while the other clenched the rear part of his “rifle.” She turned, catching glimpses over her shoulder of a line of ponies at the far end of the street. At first, her face lit up seeing them. Were the humans letting the guardsponies they’d captured go?

Then a shot rang out, and a splotch of red appeared amidst the rainbow of different ponies’ coats. Her heart leapt into her throat again, and the soldier’s pace increased while a whole stream of swears passed by his lips. More shots followed. More red splotches caught her eye. A scream rang out. Flutterheart craned her neck up, seeing the flitting motion of numerous wings high above her head. A siren’s wail filled the air. A shadow loomed over them.

The world reeled.

Flutterheart slowly climbed to her hooves, not remembering falling. One second, she was bobbing with the human, the next she was on the ground. She looked around, spotted a pile of dark cloth along one of the dirt paths, and realized it was Thompson. Before she could go to him, a mare in golden armor descended from the sky, tan wings splaying out as she swooped in for a landing.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” the mare said, offering her hoof. “Nopony’s gonna hurt you, not anymore. You’re safe now.”

The filly gazed up at the massive mare, shivered, tried to peer around the pile of golden armor at the fallen pile of cloth. The mare’s wings flared out, blocking her view. “You don’t have to be afraid of these monsters anymore, okay?” She said.

“I-I’m not afraid….” Flutter said, her voice trailing.

The mare blinked, but gave her a friendly smile as she wrapped her wings around Flutter. “You don’t need to act all brave for me, sweetie, it’s okay to be afraid, especially of the awful monsters in the dark.”

“Th-they’re not…” Flutter started, but trailed off in an instant. The mare whirled around, a short dagger in her grasp. Thompson had stood, looming over them both, the rifle clenched in his hands, the same soft hands that had been gently caressing her mane not five minutes ago. He circled around, the weapon levelled on them as the guardsmare flared her wings, trying her best to cover Flutter. She reciprocated his circling path, pushing them both further from Flutter.

“I’m not gonna let you hurt any more ponies!” The mare cried, her deep, blue eyes flashing in the thinning mist.

“Just surrender now, nobody’s gotta get hurt!” The human yelled in response.

Flutterheart, for her part, felt tears welling up in her eyes. She tried to force them back, to be brave like the guardsponies and mommy and daddy, but it was no use. Her vision blurred, and she couldn’t suppress the loud sniffle and shivering gasps that overtook her tiny body. A high, keening wail rose up in her throat, barely-suppressed by sheer effort. The result was a high squeak not too unlike a rusty door hinge being used again and again, rising from her throat.

Both the human’s and the pony’s gaze drifted towards her, but the pony was quicker. Though she’d only had a few moments, the mare dove across the small space between the combatants, closing the distance in an instant. The human was only just in time to bring his weapon up across his chest, allowing it to take the force of the bone-shattering buck that had been aimed at his ribcage. There was a pained grunt. He threw himself atop the pony. They thrashed, limbs flailing about. Scrambling, the mare went for the closest thing on his gear: a funny little black cylinder shaped like a pineapple. Her teeth clamped around its body. His arm pinned in place between their bodies, the human grasped for the closest part of the weird thing: a little ring sticking out of the cap on top.

More writhing limbs, the human whipping out a funny, little square black object not too unlike the ones Flutter had seen other humans practicing with. There was one shot, and the pony fell back, grasping at the fresh wound in her thigh, her teeth parting as she gasped in pain. Which served only to throw the little black pineapple in Flutter’s direction.

There was a ping. The little black thing bounced across the ground. The pony hit the ground, grasping at her thigh. The human backed up, the square thing in his hands levelled at her, and then the skittering of the little pineapple as it rolled to Flutterheart’s hooves caught his attention. Flutter stared at the object as it bounced off her hoof, too stunned to even move. In a flash, the human moved at a dead sprint. Flutter still stood, rooted to the ground, as he bounded past the guardsmare’s fallen form and slid by the pineapple like he was sliding into home plate. Batting it away as he passed, his body folded around her, powerful arms wrapping her into his embrace.

A second later, there was a boom. A flash of light. A surge of heat washing over her body. She was picked up off the ground a few inches. She was dropped. Her head swam. She blinked and looked around, poking her head out over the human’s form.

A black scorch mark had been baked into the ground. Flutter’s ears rang. The guardsmare stood at the other side of the road, blood gushing from a cut across her forehead and from the hole in her thigh as she wandered dazedly around, trying to shake her head clear. Something warm and sticky touched Flutter’s hoof. It took her a second to realize it was blood, and another few seconds of panicked crying to realize it wasn’t hers.

The crying turned to screaming, and then a set of iron-shoed, blood-covered hooves wrapped around her and pulled her away. One set of hooves was joined by another, then another, and she looked up as she was being dragged off to where the human still lay, curled around his stomach, red seeping from the back of his vest.

“He saved me!” She screamed frantically, fighting against the squad of ponies that had practically materialized around her. “He saved me! He saved me!” She repeated the words like a mantra.

It was only after she saw a few of the guardstallions break off and huddle around the human that she finally allowed herself to be taken into the mist, her eyes red and swollen, her choked sobs echoing into the gray around them. She vaguely heard a pony mention the failure of the “secondary objectives,” but “the primary, at least, was a success.” She wished she knew what that meant. She wished for a lot of things then. For Mr. Bun to be in her hooves again. For her parents to appear out of the fog and tell her everything was going to be okay. For her to be back home again with mommy cooking some of her apple cobbler while daddy pulled weeds in the garden outside.

She wished for a lot of things, even though she knew most of them wouldn’t come true.

Chapter XXXIII: HLF Rising

Los Angeles had been burning for three days straight, and James was tired of hearing gunshots at night. He was tired of the smoke columns rising over his city. He was tired of making these runs for the constant stream of orders The Man kept having him send out. Most of all, he was tired of fighting.

That last one hurt the most. This should have been the most exciting moment since he'd joined The Cause, known to the puppet media as the HLF. For the first time in years, recruitment numbers were up, they were trending on Facebook and their hashtags were all over Twitter. Snapchat and Instagram were lighting up with memes in support of them, mostly crude photoshop jobs of Doom Guy pressing a double-barrel shotgun up to the back of a badly-photoshopped Celestia’s head. They were no longer the crazies screaming on street corners and receiving hundreds of thousands of dislikes and links to parody videos in the comment sections of their speeches on Youtube. They were being taken seriously again! People were looking at them without scoffing again. For the first time since he'd left the Army at the end of the Collision Wars, he felt like he was part of something respectable.

And yet, last night, he'd finished shaving, looked up in the mirror, seen the bags under his eyes, and spent a good five minutes seriously debating just throwing some clothes in a duffel bag and running. Didn't matter where, though he'd always wanted to see New York. Wouldn't have even mattered to him that New York had one of the biggest pony populations on the east coast, New York was on the other side of the country from Los Angeles, and in that moment, that was what was important to him.

No.

No, not just in that moment.

It still sounded fucking fantastic.

He grimaced and cranked up the tunes on his phone, not even bothering to pull it out of his pocket, just closing his eyes and letting Corey Taylor and Slash scream into his ears until they drowned out everything else in his head. He hoped it would help. It didn't. But so the hell what? So the fuck what!? Everyone thought about it every now and again. All the big businessmen and zombified office drones all got those weird urges to just go on lunch break and never go back every now and again. This was no different.

It would pass.

He was sure it would pass.

Did he want it to pass?

He turned the phone up to max volume. He pressed his head up to the window and stayed like that until he got tired of every minor bump and crest in the road whacking his head against the glass, then he sat up straight just in time to catch the Lyft driver snapping his fingers for his attention. Dave pulled the earbuds out. “Yeah?”

“We're a couple blocks away,” the guy said, a skinny rail of a man in a ratty leather jacket and close-cropped hair, contrary to the old stereotype of all cab drivers being fat lardasses in stained wifebeaters. James had actually been a little disappointed when he'd climbed in and saw the driver: this was his first time using Lyft ever, after all, was it too much to ask for a fatass that looked like he drank Bud and hadn’t showered in weeks?

“Thanks,” he mumbled, shoving the earbuds back into his pocket and looking out the window again.

“Hey, dude, you sure you wanna get dropped off here?” The driver asked, stealing glances at James in the rearview mirror. “Dunno if you've been watchin' the news, but it's gettin’ pretty bad this part a' town. Some of the other drivers would've dropped you off a block or two back.”

“Yeah, this is where I wanna be,” James sighed, not believing the words even as they left his mouth.

“Don't look like it,” the driver replied. “Whatcha here for anyway? Is it really worth it?”

“I gotta see somebody,” James said as the car slowed to a stop right at the curb, crunching through a gutter absolutely filled with garbage. He dropped a couple extra fivers in the bony palm the driver held out to him. “Thanks for the ride.”

“S'my job. Hey, listen, if you want I can hang out here while you go inside, if—”

“Thanks, but don't, please,” James replied, not looking at the driver as he climbed out and stepped over the river of trash. He paused on the sidewalk, looking at the squat ranch-styled home with the dead lawn up front. He hovered there for a second, going up on the pads of his feet and coming back down as if debating something with himself, and finally one side apparently won out. He turned back to the kid. “Better yet, forget the address. You'll be a lot better off that way.”

He slammed the door behind him, and whatever the driver had started to say was lost forever. A moment later, the soft whine of the SUV's hybrid engine revving into action filled his ears, and the car pulled away from the curb, fading off until it’s engine was covered up by the distant bark of gunfire and the crackle of a building burning somewhere.

He looked up at the house, framed by a couple of smoke columns rising into the overcast sky from downtown, the distant gunshots and crackle of flame contrasting with the white picket fence, even if that fence was looking chipped and weather-beaten. He sighed again. He could just keep walking. Nobody had seen him pull up, he knew everybody inside would be either watching the back or glued to their smartphones and laptop screens. He could just pick a direction and start walking. He could probably make it all the way to New York by hitching. Didn't Stephen King write a book about a twelve-year-old kid who did just that?

Then again, that kid was white. And a kid. People would be less likely to stop for a black dude in his late twenties. Hell, way things were going, he’d be more likely to get shot by some small-town cop out in Hicksville, USA. Still, it was an idea.

The door squeaked open on hinges that needed oiling back when Dubya was president. A fat Latino guy with the grip of a .44 Magnum poking out of the waistband of his jorts stood in the doorway and looked him up and down, then motioned James over. James stayed on the sidewalk for an extra moment, then walked inside. He even wiped his feet on the welcome mat, not that it would've mattered on the scratched and dinged-up hardwood, but that and the nod he shared with the Latino guy was the extent of the courtesy he was willing to spare for anyone in the house today. Anyone except the man in the basement.

He walked past a living room filled with young guys, mostly in hoodies, some with pistols hanging limply in their hands, one with a stripped-down AK and a polishing cloth that he was running absentmindedly back and forth along the wooden stock, all with their eyes locked on the flickering TV screen in front of them. He only had to peek inside and see that the man in the basement wasn't there to know it would be tuned to CNN, and not Fox. That was good, at least the buildup and outrage in the house would be kept to a moderate amount. Nobody spared him a glance as he clomped over the dirty tile in the kitchen to the reinforced metal door leading to the basement. He was glad for that. He probably wouldn't have even returned a smile and a wave on the off chance one was given to him.

In the basement, he found The Man at his computer, editing another one of his speeches to make it Youtube-ready. His wrinkled face remained locked on the screen as James walked in, its glow highlighting the gray showing at his temples. The eyes, slightly dulled with age but still holding an almost unnatural sharpness, were locked onto the screen with a gaze that James had heard compared with a bombardier's. He disagreed. He thought they looked more like a lion's eyes. Or a falcon. Something big and dumb that knew what prey looked like.

“You wanted t'see me?” James asked.

The Man didn't respond immediately. James knew to wait until he did, and wasn't surprised or knocked off track by the response he got: “What sounds better? 'Burning our homes and families,' or 'Taking our homes and families'? I like burning and the imagery it summons up, but I'm worried it sounds a little melodramatic.”

James didn't miss a beat. “Burning's good, it's not that overdramatic. Besides, people are hungry for that overwrought stuff now. They're scared. Goin' in a little heavy-handed works now.”

“Thanks,” The Man spent a few more moments typing, then he stopped and turned, a massive grin bringing out the crow's feet beneath his eyes. “Jimmy!”

James cringed a little, but let it slide, forcing a smile on his face. “Commander.”

“No need for that kinda formality with nobody around, m'boy, not anymore,” the older man motioned to the folding chair next to the computer desk.

James sat down with a nod of gratitude. “You wanted t'see me?” He repeated.

“First off, lemme congratulate you on all the hard work you've been doing these last few weeks,” the old man said, his focus already back on the computer screen. “You're turning a bunch of gangbangers and thugs into tomorrow's army, I wantcha to know that's you who did that. It's you we'll have to thank when those little fuckers are swimming ashore and there's an armed and trained militia waiting to give ‘em a good ol' American welcome, instead of a bunch of pansy-assed smurfs who'll turn tail and run the first time one of those things lets off a bolt of magic.”

The Man said “Magic” with severe distaste, the corners of his mouth turning down as he pronounced the word. James just nodded his agreement. He knew that was all the input he needed to provide, if even that.

The man closed the video editor he had up, and pulled up Firefox. James cringed at seeing the old browser, long since replaced by the faster ChromeX, but said nothing as he pulled up Youtube. James knew exactly where he was going, long before the video managed to load and the visage of the pony princess appeared. It was the hottest trending thing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Haibu, YesChat, and every other social networking site under the sun right now.

Oddly enough, James tried to tap into that old rage he once felt at the mere mention of the Suncunt’s real name, and found he couldn’t. This was the bitch who’d taken so much from him, who he used to print up pictures of to take down to the range and spend hours shooting again and again, not that it was necessary given how many different cardboard cutouts of her most shooting ranges had up during and after the Collision Wars. Still, when he looked for that old black hatred to summon those fantasies again, of taking a blow torch to that pristine coat and giving that winged whorse a little taste of the hell she’d put his people through, he came back with nothing. Just an endless, empty gray feeling that sucked any and all emotion right out of his body. Easy, this used to be so easy, why was it suddenly getting hard right when he needed it most?

“Trust,” the old man scoffed. “You’ve heard this shit, right?”

“’Course.” Had even listened to it again on his way in. Spent the first half of the taxi ride searching for that old black feeling before turning to Slipknot and Asking Alexandria.

“Can you believe people are buying this shit? After what she did?”

Not her, James almost said, but when the words wouldn’t make it past his lips, he said, “Yeah.”

The Man scoffed. “Yeah, I can too, people are stupid,” he grimaced. “Still, thought most people would have the common goddamned sense to not repeat the same stupid mistakes that started all this bullshit five years ago.”

“A lot of ‘em are,” James said, moving in closer and entering his name in the search bar. A few seconds later, a video with The Man’s face in the thumbnail appeared, and James loaded it up. He pointed to the like/dislike bar. “See that? A month ago, that was almost all red. Today, it’s maybe a quarter red.”

He didn’t stop there, pulling up a couple more stats windows. “Almost all of that was from the last few weeks, after those little bitches popped up outside England. We’ve got more faves, likes, and views than we’ve gotten in the last four or five years.”

The old man grinned at that. “Point taken, HLF’s making a comeback.” His grin faded to a weak smile. “And so’s the PER. Gonna be the Collision Wars again.”

“I like our odds better this time.”

“So do I,” the old man turned the smile on him, clapping a hand on James’s shoulder. “And speaking of England, I’ve been in contact with the old HLF elements there, they’ve got soldiers all over. Melbourne, Hong Kong, Rio, all lighting up now, all ready to raise hell. And maybe even all ready to give that bitch a little surprise when she sweeps into Japan. Might be the Collision Wars again, but you bet your ass when she makes the same moves, we’ll be waiting.”

It was a testament to how his acting skills had grown that James kept a wide, hopeful smile on his face that The Man never managed to see through despite looking right at it. Five years ago, The Man had read him like a book at every turn. Times had changed. “This time when she hits,” he said. “It’ll be different.”

“Blow her ass sky-high,” the older man nodded. “We’re the patriots fightin’ for what’s right. Gonna wait for her to settle in, get all high and mighty on her power, wait for her and her little smiling ass kissers, human and shitbag alike, t’get all cozy, and then…”

Despite himself, James’s smile widened. “Blow her ass sky-high?”

“Damn straight,” The Man clasped James’s hand, pulling him in close. “I wantcha to know right now that you’re gonna be there. You and me, together. We’re gonna stomp that bitch’s fuckin’ face in, piss on that little crown, and stand tall with our chests out for the news cameras and let the whole world know how right we were all along. There’s nobody else I want there. The other boys’ll be good for gettin’ there, but it’s you I want next to me when that moment comes, when the whole world looks up at us and realizes we were right all along.”

Again despite himself, James’s smile morphed into a wide grin, the first genuine one he’d flashed in weeks. “Thanks, dad.”

The Man smiled gently. “No problem, son,” he muttered, maintaining that smile even as he gently pressed a handgun into James’s hands. Colt 1911. .45 ACP rounds, almost certainly. “Now, g’wan, rally the troops. We got a boat to catch if we wanna get to Tokyo in time, but maybe there’s time for one last goodbye to LA.”

James kept up his smile too, nodding even as his stomach twisted. He tried tapping into the black rage for another moment, and finally gave up on that. He shoved the Colt into his waistband, returning the old man’s smile and looking him right in the eyes as they shook hands and saluted one another. Finally, he turned and started up the stairs.

Everyone was waiting for him in the kitchen. All the angry, young, hoodie-clad men that had been watching news in the next room were crowded around the beat-up chipboard table in the middle of the floor. Some had pistols, most had heavy pipes and brass knuckles though. A few even just had their bare hands, though these guys were so big that didn’t make them any less intimidating.

Without a word, James pulled out the black bandanna in his pocket and tied it around his face. The others did the same, mimicking him with only a few seconds’ delay all around. Then he pulled out the gun. Raised it. Pistols, hammers, baseball bats, and even an AK all joined his weapon in the air. He nodded, lowered his arm, then walked out the back door. He didn’t have to look behind him to know he was followed by every man in that living room.

He wished he wasn’t. He wished everybody had stayed behind, and he could just pull up another Lyft, and hop in, and tell the driver to take him anywhere but here, he didn’t care where. San Fran, maybe. Catch a plane to New York?

Maybe.

Author's Note

This...all took way too long to get out there. Yeah, I'm sorry gang, I could make the same excuses anyone might make in this situation, but I'm not one for excuses. All I can say is I'm sorry at this point, and I'll be trying my best to do better in the future.

Chapter XXXIV: Luna's Plan

1400 HOURS
NON-PONY CARE WARD

STARSWIRL MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, CANTERLOT, EQUESTRIA

Thompson bolted back into consciousness with a sudden gasp, wrenching his way out of sleep and back into reality. He opened his eyes, looked around. Seeing to it that he was in a hospital gurney and wearing a large paper smock as opposed to a dungeon floor and wearing shackles, he figured he was back on Earth, probably on one of the international boats patrolling the Portal. He laid back in his cushy pillow and relaxed.

“Thank fuck.” He moaned. So, his vision of being dragged off by ponies to God-knows-what had been part of his delirium after all, and in reality his little bout of grenade baseball had resulted in little more than a quick trip back home. Super. Ideal, really. Now he didn’t have to worry about little fillies too precious for the world and psycho mares with a penchant for firing off magic first and asking questions later.

He moaned, thanking Christ for the magically-enhanced body armor that kept his squishy bits safe. The conservatives could bitch and moan all they wanted, at the end of the day, his soft insides were still inside thanks to the shielding crafted in with every strand of Kevlar. Kept him in one piece, at least, though he wouldn’t be surprised if his brain hadn’t taken a good beating, probably had a concussion. He lifted his hand to rub at the throbbing sensation near his forehead…

…

...He tried to lift his hand to rub at the throbbing sensation near his forehead…

Something rattled. A chain?

He lifted his hand again, this time craning his neck to see. Ignoring the bolt of pain that shot down his side, he locked eyes with a humongous manacle clamped around his wrist. The massive, very medieval-looking, not stainless steel cuff now keeping him to the bed.

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

Welp, so much for his hopes of seeing home with his normal human eyes, rather than a couple massive, freaky, empty-souled dinner plates. If he was lucky, and he wasn’t tortured to death first. Of all the times to not have a dosage of cyanide ready...

He scanned the room for a weapon, giving the chain a good hard yank. It didn’t budge. Okay, so it was just his one wrist that was shackled. He could still reach for stuff. What was within reach? A bedside table with lamp, okay, good, a blunt object. A remote, perhaps for calling a nurse? Useless. They must have locked him down in a civilian hospital. Interesting choice, but still better than a dungeon. At the very least, they didn’t know he was awake, so he had that going for him.

He started to lie down, hoping to at least pretend he was asleep, and then a small gasp sounded at the doorway. Because of course. “Fuck,” he grumbled, turning to find a pale, yellow-coated mare, gazing back at him.

“Okay,” he sighed, reaching pleadingly for her. “Look, I know you got no reason not to, but you can’t...”

“PRINCEEESSSSS!” The mare shrieked, running out the door.

“...do that,” Thompson moaned. Oh, oh dear God. Did she just say princess!?

“Oh, bloody God in heaven Jesus no!” He gasped, and renewed his efforts to yank at the chain. Dear God in heaven. Dealing with Equestrian interrogators was one thing, but the princess!? That mare had a thousand years of experience to figure out the best ways of causing pain without leaving so much as a scratch! He’d heard of hardened men cracking under her within a day! Fuck that! No, absolutely not, fuck that! He had to get out!

He kept yanking at the chain. Had to get out. Fuck this bloody chain! Fuck this bed! Fuck this hospital! And fuck these fucking ponies!

“You are awake.” A regal voice stated at the doorway.

He moaned, closed his eyes. No escaping now. “Thompson. Private First Class. 38459347.” He recited.

“We do not wish to hear such details.”

Wait, didn’t she sound different? He’d heard the evil cunt on plenty of news broadcasts, especially after her declaration of war on Earth, and this didn’t sound like her, even barring the distortion of hearing something through a speaker. In fact, how would she have even made it back to Equestria? Wasn’t she still imprisoned? He hadn’t been out that long, had he?

Figuring he might as well face the music, Thompson turned to face the doorway, and gazed eye-to-eye with a pony he had never seen before. She was a midnight blue, smaller in stature than what he’d expected, with deep blue eyes and a mane that twinkled like the night’s stars, as opposed to the colors of the rainbow. Her jet-black regalia held the form of the moon with stars. If anything, she might have appeared to be the opposite of the princess he knew, though any hopes of mercy from this pony vanished under the cold, analytical look she leveled his way. Still, she had the massive wings and long, pointed horn of a princess. Even so, the question remained.

“Who the bloody hell are you?” He asked, forsaking manners in knowing he was likely seconds from death.

The blue pony blinked at him. She opened her mouth, her brow furrowed. It was as if she’d never been asked that question once in her life for how she reacted, and was now trying to come up with a possible response on the fly. Her attempts were cut short as something crashed outside.

“Rainbow!” He heard a panicked chorus from the hallway while something rocketed into the room. Something rainbow-streaked and terribly fast that swooped in atop a sky-blue blur, shooting by the lunar pony’s shoulder and landing at the foot of his bed.

“Alright, where is he!?” A raspy voice shouted as his eyes finally caught up with and processed the blur, revealing a small blue pegasus scanning the room, looking all around. “Where is that monster!? I’ll teach ‘em for taking Twilight! I’ll...”

She paused, looked up at Thompson, who could think of doing little else besides lifting his hand and giving a little wave.

She blinked at him, squinted, then shook her head. “Oh, ha ha, real funny guys,” she sighed, looking back at the door. “Pinkie, is this you? Did you and Flutters shave a bear or something? I mean, did you really expect me to buy that something this cute was the human, or...”

“Miss Dash!” Moon pony bellowed, her voice booming as if it were amplified by a dozen megaphones. Thompson tried clamping his hands over his ears, but wound up just rattling the shackle when he tried lifting his wrist. For her part, the newcomer’s ears just folded low as she turned, looking at the regal mare like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

The larger pony glared at the pegasus, her impressive wings unfurled. “We und'rstand thy wisheth to holp thy cousin, but we faileth to seeth how charging 'round liketh a madmare shall aid any of our endeav'rs!”

“B-but princess!” The little pony waved its hooves around. “The humans took her! They have to know where she’s being kept!”

“Which is data we shall ascertain for ourselves in speaking with the human.” The royal mare replied, her voice thankfully falling in volume enough to give Thompson’s ears a chance to recover.

“Alright, well bring ‘im in,” the pegasus shrugged. “Get whatever this thing is out of here and...”

“Miss Dash.” The royal stated.

“What?”

The royal mare cocked her head at Thompson, then gazed back down at the pegasus who, in turn, looked back at Thompson, then at the royal, then suddenly whipped around, eyes widening as she stared at him.

“That’s it!?” She shrieked, her raspy voice rising a few octaves. “That’s the thing that’s been terrorizing us all this time!? A six-foot-tall teddy bear!?”

As if that statement was a signal, two more heads poked in: a pink one with hair that seemed to be following its own set of rules for physics, and a purple-maned one with hair that was so perfectly coiffured his mom would have been jealous just to see it.

“Heyyyy, that’s not a monster!” Squeaked a nasal, high-pitched voice from the pink one.

“It is a bit cute, actually,” replied the white pony in an all-too-familiar accent, stepping inside to reveal the most pristine white coat he’d ever seen.

“So this ain’t a joke, pinks?” Said the original pegasus.

“Nope! I’d remember finding something that cute!” The pink one giggled, skipping inside.

“Girls please,” the princess said, her own exasperation matching Thompson’s. “This is a serious breakthrough in a matter of national...”

“Who the fuck are you all!?” Thompson shouted, his mind totally occupied with trying to process the writhing shapes in the pink one’s hair.

The entire room screeched to a halt. All eyes turned on the human as his gaze danced from each mare. Finally, the alabaster unicorn cleared her throat.

“Well dearie, if you must know, we’re the Elements of Harmony.” The unicorn said with a proud, graceful toss of her mane.

“The who-now?” He asked, his head spinning. “We never found anything like that in the other Equestria...”

A low silence descended on the room, practically deafening everyone inside. “I’m sorry,” the regal alicorn said as Thompson started to realize how much of a screw-up he’d just made. “The other Equestria?”

“Oh, bloody hell...” using his free hand, he pulled his blankets up under his chin. “Thompson. Private First Class. ID…”

“Right, enough of this,” the blue horse snorted. “PINKIE!”

Saluting, the small pink earth horse glared stoically and hopped up to the head of Thompson’s bed. Shrinking back, he immediately reached for the lamp and tried to wrench it up, hoping to gain a weapon, only for it to remain stubbornly in place. Of course. Nailed down. No wonder they left there.

He raised his hands, trying to appear non-threatening as the blue royal’s horn charged up and the smaller pink pony glared at him. He doubted it would work, he heard all the stories, but it was all he had left to try. Finally, an aura of night-blue magic engulfed both him and the pink pony, and he…

He…

…

Hehehehehehehehhehehe…everything was so pink all of a sudden! That was really funny to him, for some reason! Wait, wasn’t he really sad and frustrated a second ago? That made no sense, who’d want to be all sad? Who even could be sad in a world that was all pink?

“What’s so funny, Private Thompson?” The big funny blue-pink horse asked.

“Everything’s so pink!” He announced with a loud giggle. “I like pink! But shhh, don’t tell my CO! He already thinks I’m a poof!”

“That’s a funny word!” The small, funny pink-pink horse said. “Poof!”

“It is!” Thompson giggled. “Poof!”

“Poof!”

“Poof-poof-poof!”

“Back on topic!” The blue-pink horse said, lifting the pink-pink pony up in her magic. “Thompson, what is your name?”

“I’m Johnathan Thompson, miss!” He snickered. “I’m with the Royal Marines! We’re supposed to be super-duper serious all the time, which is super boring! But I guess I can get it, since we’re someplace super dangerous and we gotta be reeeaaaallly careful!”

“Someplace dangerous?” The big moon pony said, and gosh she was ever so pretty.

“Mmh-hmm,” Thompson nodded. “Hey, you know what? You’re really pretty, miss.”

“Thank you, Thomspon,” the blue-pink horse nodded. “But why do you think--”

“Do you wanna go on a date?” Thompson asked with a bashful smile. “I make lotsa money from the Marines, and I got a really nice flat in London…well, not London proper, but it’s still super nice and my bed is there and my books are there and my games are there. I have lots of games!”

The other, smaller ponies in the room all gaped at him, but the large blue-pink pony just tilted her head in his direction. “Okay Thompson, we can go on a date!”

“Yay!” He cheered as the ponies all shifted their gape-mouthed stares to her.

“But first, you need to answer some questions.” The blue-pink pony said. “We need to know why you think our land is so dangerous.”

Thompson’s cheer dropped instantly. “Aww, I don’t like questions…” he moaned. “I never was any good at quizzes in school.”

“Just a few quick ones, and we…can go on that date, okay?” The blue-pink pony smiled at him, and Thompson thought he really liked that smile. It was a nice smile. “Now, why do you think our land is so dangerous?”

At that, Thompson let out a long, heavy sigh. The pink hue in his vision faded slightly. “I don’t wanna answer that question,” he whimpered. “Don’t wanna think about her.”

“Her?” Blue-pink tilted her head. “Who is ‘her’?”

“She’s a meanie-head,” Thompson whimpered. “I don’t wanna talk about her.”

“Could she be from the ‘other’ Equestria?” The horse asked, taking a careful step forward. “Is that who you are talking about? Has everything that brought our worlds together happened before?”

Thompson nodded, the pink haze around everything in his vision fading a little more. He didn’t like that. He liked pink. Or…he thought he did. “She came. She had magic, we’d never seen magic before! And the place she brought with her was pretty, even if we couldn’t see it directly,” he whimpered. “She told us it was the magic itself, that it destroyed human bodies as part of its nature. But she lied, because she is a big evil poopy-head. It was her. All her.”

“Thompson,” the now-much-bluer-than-pink horse said. “Who are you talking about?”

“Celestia,” he replied, whimpering as if the name alone could inspire fear. The pink was almost totally gone from his vision now, and he realized he didn’t really like that color after all. Still, the pretty blue horse did ask a question… “She said the only way we could save ourselves was to take the potion, the one to make us into ponies, and that was after the radiation started leaking out and formed the Barrier and started advancing over all the countries and making the humans there all go pop…”

“But Thompson,” the pony said. “That kind of transformation magic would also destroy most of the human’s personality, it would…annihilate them. Turn them into empty-headed cretins.”

“We know,” the pink was gone now, and Thompson leveled a hard glare on the regal pony. “We know, and so do the thousands she forced it upon, if those empty-headed freaks even can know anything.”

Around him, gasps sounded. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” said the small blue pony as she lifted off from the ground and dashed out the window in a streak of rainbows. The pink pony from his bedside deflated, her mane flattening out into something more logically-consistent, but infinitely sadder. Beside her, the white unicorn fainted dead away, her body hitting the ground with an unceremonious thump.

“Thousands?” The large blue horse whispered.

Thompson’s gaze softened at the reactions, but still, he laid himself back on the bed and pulled the covers up. “Thompson. Private First Class. 38459347,” he rasped into the pillow.

Outside the small hospital room, Luna’s head reeled. Thousands… that word played over and over again in her head. To imagine such an atrocity would be carried out just once was an evil foul enough to send the mind reeling, but thousands of times? Over and over again?

She bit her lip. Not even during the darkest days at the founding of Equestria would she have ever imagined anyone committing an act so egregious.

That another Equestria might exist was an insane thought all on its own. That it had made contact with a totally alien world was almost unbelievable. That it had engaged in genocide of such caliber…

“Princess?”

Mere minutes ago, that small voice would have stirred Luna into turning around to ask her little pony what the matter was. Now, it acted like a gunshot at the start of a relay race, pushing her into taking off down the halls of the palace at a dead gallop, not even turning around to see who it was asking for her. Her shoulders twisted as she forced back tears, rocketing through the hospital wing, down the many twisting hallways of the Palace. She made it to the Royal Library, to the little corner where she and Shining had spent so many hours rehearsing a spell in preparation for a mission that, at the time, had appeared like their last, desperate hope.

She pulled out the little picture book she’d used to illustrate to Shining the basics of the spell. It had been a stroke of genius to think of it, really. She’d patted herself on the back many times over since revealing its inner workings to Shining Armor. They were fighting an enemy that knew how to disable magic, right? So why not make it appear as though there was nothing to worry about until it was too late?

She opened the book to the spell, allowing it to immediately flop open to the one spot amidst the dirty, yellowed pages that had practically been dog-eared for how many hours she’d left it open to this exact spot. Her eyes looked over the illustrations, showing a remarkably-detailed closeup of a unicorn’s head, glowing with the beginnings of magic. An arrow led her to the next drawing, where the space once filled with the unicorn’s horn suddenly appeared empty, much to the shock of ponies around her, only for the next panel to illustrate the unicorn taking a bow as her horn reappeared.

Luna bit her lip, scanning the pages. It was a neat, old party trick, not commonly known in modern Equestria since the union of the three pony tribes and centuries of integration had rendered its need utterly moot. The days where a unicorn might want to pass unnoticed through an earth-pony community were long gone, but they were hardly a decade ago from Luna’s standpoint, as was the spell. Of course, nopony had ever performed it for long periods of time, but with Shining Armor’s talent and a bit of training…

She looked up from the page. She thought she had just sent the ruler of the Crystal Empire off on a rescue mission. Now though, it might well be a suicide attack. And she had no way of calling him off.

“Oh Shining,” she whispered. “What have we done? What are we going to do?”

TWO DAYS LATER
ROYAL NAVY FRIGATE, HMS LANCASTER

SIBERIAN COAST, KARA SEA, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Shining Armor shivered. Whether from cold or fear, he was no longer even pretending to guess. He bit his tongue and tensed his muscles, trying to force the chattering in his bones back. If he started shivering, his stallions might notice, and who knew what could happen then?

On the upside, so far everything was going exactly to plan. As soon as his squad was “captured,” the unicorns had been split off from the rest, surrounded by the creatures wielding long staffs. As he’d watched, they’d kept trotting straight on, their heads held high even in captivity. Shining had allowed himself the smallest moment of pride for both his stallions and his successful deception before the two groups were split from each other, forced out to a beach somewhere deep in the fog.

After a short ride in a long boat -- one that resembled an overgrown canoe, had a big hatch up front, and growled like a demon when it lurched through the water – Shining found himself here, in this small, metal cell in the bowels of the ship, with little more than a cot and a toilet that resembled a bucket. It was obvious this was little more than a storage area that had been altered to hold ponies. At the very least, he wasn’t alone: other cells next to his held his fellow non-unicorns. The significance of this was not lost on him. His deception was working perfectly, though he didn’t dare test it by attempting any magic. Maintaining the serene inner state the spell hiding his horn demanded was hard enough as it was.

For two days, he’d languished in this awful place, where the smell from the ship’s septic tank filled his nostrils and his only measure of time was from a small porthole out in the hall, and from the arrival of his meals. Three times daily. Basic hay and oats, but perfectly nutritious and not drugged. Whatever these things were, on top of being adorable and technologically advanced, they also apparently had some measure of compassion in them, whatever that was worth.

“Sir?”

Shining growled at the interruption. “What have I told you about using that term, Private?”

He heard a slight wince from the pony in the other cell. “Sorry, s - er, Shining.”

He sighed. Guess there was a reason this stallion hadn’t signed up for Equestrian Intelligence. Thank goodness they were just trying to keep his magic a secret, and not his rank. “What is it, Private?”

“Well…I was just wondering if you had any ideas on how we’re moving.” The other stallion intoned, keeping his voice low. “The guy in the next cell says he has a porthole he can reach in his cell, and he’s seen us traveling against the wind by lookin’ at the waves, and I keep telling him that’s impossible without magic and I didn’t see no horns on anything in here. Just wanted t’see if you wanted to weigh in.”

Ordinarily, Shining might have leapt at the chance to build a bit of familiarity between his stallions, but at the moment maintaining the inner peace was taking all of his concentration. “No, private, I did not.”

“Oh…okay,” he could almost see the other pony slink away from the bars of his cell, head lowered and ears tucked down like a foal being sent off without any dinner. He suppressed a chuckle at the thought, instead choosing to curl up in his cot once more. Already, the stress of maintaining the spell was draining him, and despite only being awake a few hours he felt ready for a quick power nap just to –

The ship lurched, jarring him out of his slumber. He jerked up to find that the steady feeling of motion he’d slowly gotten used to over the last few days was suddenly gone. Only the occasional lap of wakes against the metal hull remained.

“Sir?” The pony in the other cell asked. “Sir, what was that?”

“I-I…” Shining swallowed, looking up. His heart raced. All thoughts of a nap had completely left his head. “I think we just made land, Private.”

A long silence followed. “Sir,” the voice returned. “What happens now?”

Shining swallowed his fear, lowering his head, an old, determined glare filling his eyes. “Nothing we haven’t been trained for.”

Silence passed among the prisoners for a few hours, then the massive steel door at the end of the hallway clanged open, as it usually did for lunch. This time, however, there was a shuffling of extra boots, the jumble of boxes being brought down into their prison. Soon, guards were opening cell doors, one at a time. One would keep one of those long, black weapons focused on the prisoner while the other escorted them into an oversized cat-carrier, securing each. Shining frowned distastefully as one of the crates was lowered in front of his cell and the door opened, but said nothing, striding into his new prison with his head held high. As soon as he entered, the wire mesh door was shut and latched behind him and he was tossed unceremoniously onto a cart. He sighed, trying to ignore the stench of a half-dozen other stallions who hadn’t showered in days surrounding him. The cart bumped along, and at last he was brought above-deck for the first time since his capture.

The ship he’d been kept on wasn’t like any other warship he’d known: there were no sails, for one. Perhaps this machine was more akin to the steam-powered ironclads he’d heard the griffons were working on? But then, where were the smokestacks? He only saw a giant structure rising from the deck, and it didn’t seem to ooze the familiar black smoke he knew from his few interactions with steam-powered machinery. He only had a few moments to ponder this before he was bundled along, down the gangplank, and onto snow-covered grass.

Ahh, now here was something he was familiar with! Snow, he could deal with. He felt a surge of familiarity as an icy breeze blew through his coat, giving him chills reminiscent of the Crystal Empire. He could almost see Cady standing there, smiling at him as she gazed out from under that adorable, lavender parka she loved to wear…

Lavender… the mere memory of that shade was enough to refocus his thoughts, back to why he was here. Twilight.

He knew it was a long shot, considering the distance he’d travelled. It all banked on these “hoo-mans” having few places to hold POWs, and that they might keep them in one place for ease of guarding them, but if it paid off...he was about to be dropped off without any magic suppression or serious guard detail in the same place they were holding his sister, and his ruler. He had to be sure, though, he had to be sure.

The cart trundled along, pulled through the snow. He grimaced looking outside. He knew a military encampment when he saw one: bipeds in long, furry coats with weapons strapped to their backs hurriedly clearing snow with shovels, their backs to him. A drill sergeant returning with a few squads of recruits from an early morning run. A series of flagpoles flying the flags of many different nations fluttered near the docks. The strict regimen of military life that forced him to suppress another burst of nostalgia: were it not for the distant crackle of hoo-man weapons, he might have been on any military base back in the Empire. Then the cart hit a bump, sending him tumbling to his flank. He looked up, startled, and noticed a totally different set of crates across from his. This pile, unlike his, was surrounded by a series of poles that snapped and crackled with energy. It didn’t take him long to figure out these were his unicorns, and to then extend a hoof in solidarity out one of the small holes in his cage’s door. He bit his lip, watching the dark boxes for any signs of motion, then sighed with relief when a set of hooves all extended from every cage, returning the sign. His unicorns were fine. They were all going to be fine.

His crate jerked to a start once again, but he kept himself upright this time, bracing his hooves against one wall of his prison. Once again, he found himself bumping along past drill fields, rocking with every bump until they passed a set of doors that opened by themselves with a slight, mechanical whoosh.

A blast of heat hit him, immediately warming his coat. Shining inhaled sharply with the unexpectedly hot air. These people must have had a dozen fireplaces going, though he didn’t smell any soot. He perked an ear at the muffled sound of voices from somewhere up ahead:

“You know we haven’t the facilities for actual, smart unicorns! The best we got was Frankfurt, and I dunno if you’ve been watching the news lately, but that’s a fuckin’ bust!” A voice, accented like the soldiers around him and like his own, bellowed. “The only places that kept shit like that around are Equestria and here, and we didn’t feel like sailing an extra couple thousand miles with dangerous prisoners on board!”

He frowned, mulling the words over in his head as the voices devolved into barely-audible hisses and shouting. Actual, smart unicorns? What other kind were there? Just what in Celestia’s name did that mean?

Before he could really mull that over, the crates jarred to a start again, leading him from the well-lit front room to a dingier place, where the tile was dirty and the only light came from yellow-stained, flickering panels that hurt his eyes. The crates came to a stop once more, and a moment later, he heard the clacks of latches being unlocked around him.

“Everyone out!” The familiar voice of a guard from the ship bellowed. “Everyone of you little feckers get out, now! Move it!”

Shining didn’t hesitate, darting out of his crate and onto the dust-covered tile. Immediately, he found himself staring down the ugly, black hole at the end of a human weapon, and his heart stopped for a moment. Then the weapon’s holder backed away, the whole room filling with shouts as each pony was ordered out of their prison. Once the prisoners were out of their crates, the guards backed off to the opposite end of the room. Shining recognized the tactic well: archers would use it if they were in close quarters with an enemy, putting as much space as they could between them and the aggressor to make full use of their weapons’ range. He filed that interesting little note away as yet another door at the end of the room opened and a hefty hoo-man in a fuzzy hat and heavy long coat stepped in, flanked by two more mask-wearing guards, these hefting a larger, skinnier version of the first guards’ weapons.

The first, hat-wearing human regarded the whole group through narrowed eyes, hands crossed behind his back. Shining took note of the holster at his hip with a grip sticking out, figuring this had to be yet another weapon. When he spoke, the hefty man used a thick accent that was almost incomprehensible to his ears, but audible if he strained: “I am Colonel Kravchenko of the Russian Ground Forces, for the people of the Russian Federation,” he said. “You are now my prisoners and responsibility. You will be fed a standard diet for POWs, and treated fairly according to the Conventions of the Geneva Accords. Make one thing clear, though: if you even think of crossing me, trying to escape…”

The man pointed back out the door they were just led through. “Outside is over 200 miles of ice plain. No food. No shelter. You will not survive long out there, especially if purga come, which is often. This is not intimidation. This is statement of fact. This is only place for hundreds of miles where have chance survive, and I rule here with iron fist.”

He lowered his gloved hand. “Here, is only one rule. My rule. Not UN rule. Not Russian rule. Definitely not rule of your pizda queen,” his massive face turned down in a frown as those narrowed, beady, still-kinda-cute eyes regarded the ponies. “Am I understood?”

Shining, for all his hubris, did manage a slight inclination of his head that could be interpreted as a nod. To his relief, his soldiers followed suit.

“Good. Can understand, at least,” the Russian hissed, then turned away, waving a gloved hand to his men. The ponies were urged down a short hallway, down a staircase that looked like it was being held up with more rust than anything else, then down, down, and down. The monotony of their steps echoing twisted Shining’s head, at the very least serving as a nice way to keep the peace inside.

After what felt like minutes, but may well have been hours, they reached a landing. A massive, iron door stood in their way, and one of the humans tapped away at a few buttons, pressing his thumb against a small pad before the door rumbled open. Shining and the rest of his ponies were ushered along in a rush, the hall a blur as they were hurried into plain, cinderblock rooms, one for each of them, each with a heavy steel door. The large, metal portal slammed shut behind him, and Shining was alone again, having moved from a small box on a boat to a small box in a basement.

He sighed. This room wasn’t much of an improvement from the ship: one cot, a toilet that was at least a step up from a bucket but still maybe a degree short of a hole in the floor, and not much else.

Curling up on the cot, Shining perked an ear, listening for any confirmation that his sister might be here while focusing on the breathing techniques Luna had taught him. He closed his eyes. His mind emptied. His breath slowly drew in, then out. In, then out…

And as he curled up, his head resting in his hooves, his ear twitched.

“Hmm...princess?” He asked, sitting up. It was the darnedest thing...he could have sworn he heard…

But that was ridiculous, even if she was here there was no way she could be contacting him, her power would be restrained!

Scoffing, he turned over where he laid, settling in for some shut-eye, never knowing that a couple miles beneath him, surrounded by more chains and concrete than he could ever guess at, a creature wearing his princess’s face was chuckling.

“My dear knight in shining armor,” she muttered, too low for anyone but herself to hear. “It’s poetry, simple poetry, that you are here.”

Author's Note

Yeah, I know, it's been sporadic. I'll tell you what, this fic has been one of the hardest works I've undertaken. Simply plotting out the next chapters tends to be a struggle. That, and I'm also trying to wrap up the Chrysluna fic I've had going for the longest time (not a shameless plug at all I swear ).

So thank you for hanging in there all this time, really, from the bottom of my heart, dear reader. Thank you!

Chapter XXXVI: Back On The Ship

Things were no better on the ship. To say the tension in the room was palpable would be an understatement. It practically filled it to the brim, making the air feel more like a gel you had to swim through. Just walking from one door to the other on the opposite side would feel like running a gauntlet of boxers and black belt Aikido masters while waist deep in a swimming pool. Just breathing was a struggle, for fear of becoming the target of the wrath and fury threatening to boil over.

For the most part, the group had broken into pairs: Lisa sat next to David on one end of the sofa, with Francis and Andre on the other. Akshat sat on the floor between them, using the middle cushion as a rest for his back. Other than that, Felipe and Anton stood on opposite sides of the room, and the disgust radiating off the Brazilian was enough to stifle any and all conversation. The hatred, the sheer rage he had leveled on the Russian, put a strain on even the most stoic in the room. For his part, Anton either didn’t notice or was drunk enough thanks to the flask glued to his hand to even care. He’d apparently elected to spend the rest of his days on this ship in a permanent drunken haze, and while it had never been admirable, it had officially started to interfere with their work. Something Lisa couldn’t tolerate.

“Anton?” She asked, hoping to start off politely before needing to ramp up to screaming in his face. “Honey, why don’t you put that away?”

He blinked to her, a moment of confusion on his face that made her want to grab him by the shirt collar and slam him against the wall. Maybe that would snap him out of his stupor and make him a little less worthless. Then, he looked down at his hand, grunted, and tucked the flask in a pocket, going back to leaning against the wall with the same blank look on his face.

With a sigh of relief, Lisa offered him a small smile and cleared her throat. “I think we all know what we need to discuss here.” Which was ridiculous, they all should have been discussing the video the moment it came out, not nearly a week later! But she wasn’t going to waste time ranting and raving about that when getting Anton and Felipe into the same room had already been like pulling teeth. “Our counterparts from Beijing will be joining us soon, and they’re going to expect a plan of action from us to at least serve as a starting point. If we show up to the table with nothing, it’ll be…unprofessional, to say the least.”

“Asinine”was more the word she’d wanted to go with, but “unprofessional” would also do.

“What is there to discuss?” Anton drawled. “She will appear. UN will blow her up. Back into cage on ship for her. Is all there is to discuss.”

“And maybe this time, the cage will hold,” Felipe spat under his breath.

Suppressing a frustrated growl, Lisa glared at the pair of “men.” “And what about her video? Are we just going to ignore that?”

“Why not? The UN seems perfectly happy to.” Anton shrugged.

“Here, I must agree,” Francis said, raising a hand. “The threat she poses is simply too great to gamble on any sort of risk, especially after Dusseldorf and Detroit. She should be blown from the sky at the first opportunity.”

Lisa turned to him, a slight frown on her face. “And what about the Newfoals? We’re just going to ignore the possibility she might actually save them? We’re just going to leave them as they are?”

“And if she turns them into her own private army?” Andre put in, shaking his head. “I agree with Francis. The lot of you weren’t in Dusseldorf, you didn’t see what they did to the staff there. Japan has seen more than enough bloodshed, and based on what happened to you and Dave, it’s obvious another UN failure could be just the spark needed to have them reject the UN altogether. At the very least, we’d have the HLF screaming for our heads.”

Lisa opened her mouth, then closed it, letting it settle into a thin, scowling line.

“And you all weren’t back in London.” David sat up, finally vesting something into the conversation, to Lisa’s immense relief. “We saw how she handled that Newfoal. We saw a big, empty vessel with nothing going on in its head except love for its ‘Princess’ transformed back into a loving British man who might get to spend his twilight years with his wife. You didn’t see the relief on her face. Why would our...charge do something like that in London and follow up with some weird attack in Dusseldorf? Something else is going on here.”

“Not to mention Detroit,” Akshat pointed out, raising a finger.

“Yes, Detroit,” Francis tittered. “Bit odd that after years of peace, the Newfoals suddenly click on and start another scene of butchery in the name of their princess.”

“From the other side of the world?” David shouted. “C’mon man, think! If she had that kind of power, why isn’t she doing it everywhere she goes!? Why isn’t London in flames? Or Jerusalem? Or hell, why isn’t Tokyo just one, big Newfoal riot right now!?”

“So we should gamble with the lives of everyone in Japan!?”

“You’re having us gamble with the--”

“If what she said is true...”

The new voice’s intrusion was so sudden, so strange, that it shut everyone else up and turned them towards its owner. Felipe remained leaning against the wall, his gaze running over the room, surveying everybody with the intensity of a hawk hunting for breakfast. He raised his hands. “Let’s entertain the notion.” He said. “Let’s pretend she might actually be here to restore the minds of the Newfoals. What do we do then?”

A heartbeat of silence, and then Lisa spoke: “We let her.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. We let her.”

“So to recap,” he stood away from the wall, targeting her with that intense glare. “You want us to tell one of the largest gatherings of military might ever witnessed, a group gathered for the sole purpose of ensuring that the exact situation we’re talking about never happens again, to back down?”

Lisa met that hawk-like gaze with a stoic wall of ice all her own. “Yes.”

The most intense stare-off anybody in the room had ever seen ensued. Nobody spoke. Breaths were held for fear that even the sound of breathing would drag somebody else into the confrontation. Neither side wanted to even hazard a guess for who might win.

And then, Felipe blinked.

“You are a fool,” he hissed, twisting around to return to his spot along the wall.

Lisa sighed, giving the Brazilian a pitying look. She turned to her comrades. “Look, it’s obvious we aren’t going to come to a consensus, but at the end of the day, we have the Captain by the balls. He’s still the bastard most responsible for the escape of one of the most dangerous creatures on the planet. But we still need to present a united front to him. We have to agree on what he does next. Whatever that may be, we need a consensus before we leave this room.”

“Well, why don’t we give it the democratic try?” David said, standing up. “We vote, and we let the majority rule.”

Lisa blinked at him. A look of tense unsurety passed around the room. But Felipe just smiled. “Sure,” he said, a confident grin curling his lips. He locked eyes with the red-faced Russian still standing across from him, who seemed far more interested in the flask in his hand. “Let democracy decide.”

Andre and Francis tilted their heads towards him, then they shared a look. “Alright,” Andre said, a bloom of confidence growing in his chest. “All those in favor of doing something about the intensely-powerful genocidal maniac heading our way, raise your hands.”

He, Francis, and Felipe’s hands all went up. Felipe’s smile lasted right up until he looked across the way, back to Anton, still just standing there, not moving. His smile turned into a confused frown, then a scowl. He waved to Anton, almost reached across to him, but then the Russian looked up. His eyes still held that same, tired, half-lidded gaze, but he wasn’t staring off into space anymore. He was glaring right back.

Felipe’s teeth clenched. Were he not surrounded by seven other people, he might have taken a swing at the older man.

“And...all those for a guarded defensive action to allow the princess to do what she must?” Lisa asked. Hers, David’s, and Akshat’s hands went up. Felipe’s breath paused in his throat, whistling in and out through his clenched teeth, then Chen’s hand went up.

“Well,” Lisa said. “That’s it, then.”

“Disappointing,” Andre sighed. “But we all agreed to this.”

“You’ve killed us all,” Felipe hissed. All eyes went to him as he stormed out, but his gaze remained locked on the Russian, who just casually watched him go.

Chapter XXXVII: Japan At Last

It was finally almost over. Their long journey, nearly at an end.

Celestia gazed out over the sea, and let out a breath through her nose. A few pristine feathers ruffled among her wings. Her back, for once, didn’t ache from sleeping on the ground, though now her wings felt heavy with the extra gristle. Just one of the drawbacks of sleeping on a beach: she was sure she had sand in places she couldn’t even imagine right now. But that was pushed back in the furthest reaches of her mind. She had one last leg for her journey.

As was usually the case, Twilight was up and already wide awake, still watching the tiny screen of the phone, still learning with an appetite for knowledge that could only be described as voracious. Her eyes flicked to Celestia, and she gave a tiny smile, but her focus went back to the tiny screen in an instant. “Good morning, princess.”

“And to you, Twilight,” Celestia replied with a tiny yawn. “Might I ask what has your attention?”

“Just…reading some history,” Twilight said dismissively.

“History? I knew you had a passing interest, but I never knew history to hold your attention like…” then Celestia paused, internally scolding herself. Of course, not pony history. She shook her head with a mild chortle to herself. “What have you learned, dear Twilight?”

“Some…interesting things.” Twilight sighed, sitting up. She shook her head despondently, then met Celestia with a deep gaze, setting the little electronic device aside, much to her surprise. “Princess, are we sure we’re on the right side?”

Celestia blinked with surprise. “Twilight, I would think that should answer your question.” She gestured to the sea, across which they had spied groupings of crumbling towers and burnt structures just the other day, remnants of the devastation wrought by a single mare’s bitterness and hatred.

“I get that, but the more I read of their history, the more I see how she…Xenolestia, might have had a point,” Twilight insisted.

If Celestia had less self-control, she might have scooped Twilight up by a hind-hoof and screamed into her face out of desperation. However, she instead nodded understandingly and gestured for Twilight to elaborate, as she knew her former student would be only too happy to do.

“It’s just…for all the destruction and death wrought by the First Contact wars, did you know it wasn’t even their most destructive?” Twilight said, sitting up and meeting Celestia’s eyes with her own worried gaze. “Not even their most destructive in the last century. That honor belongs to a conflict known as World War Two.”

“Two?” Celestia asked, an eyebrow quirking.

“Yes, their second one,” Twilight rolled her eyes. “And don’t even get me started on the semantics of that, there are actually numerous other conflicts from centuries before who’s scale would qualify them as ‘world’ wars. But nothing we’ve ever known in Equestria even matches the scale of these conflicts. World War Two alone killed nearly seventy million humans, nearly half of them civilians!”

Celestia watched with concern as Twilight laid back in the sand, brow furrowed with desperation. “I just...maybe the wrong side did win here. Maybe they would have been better off as mindless thralls instead of what they are.”

A few moments of quiet passed as waves crashed against the shore near them. Twilight watched Celestia with growing concern. Was her former mentor stumped by this? Was she really so unsure of their actions she was reconsidering everything? Was she about to tell them to turn around and go back, see if they could find a way home through that armada?

Then Celestia waved a hoof to her. “Twilight? Might I see that?”

Of course, Twilight obliged, giving up the tiny marvel with an eyebrow quirked.

Celestia scooped up the phone and began working it, just as she had on another beach hardly a week before. Twilight watched, sitting up in anticipation as her fellow princess worked. After a moment, the tinny sounds of wretched screams and explosions filled the air between them. Twilight sucked in a breath.

“Princess? What’re you...” she cut herself off as Celestia didn’t even look up, eyes glued to the screen. Obviously, she was looking for something, and it wouldn’t do too interrupt.

Finally, a tiny smile spread across Celestia’s muzzle. “Got it.”

“What did you find?”

“Something I saw during the flooding in the plains outside Trottingham last year.” Celestia held the phone out, paused on a video. Twilight could read the title at the top of the screen: “RAW FOOTAGE CHICAGO ATTACKS: RARELY-SEEN! UNEDITED FOOTAGE HLF CONVERSION BUREAU BOMBING.”

“More atrocities?” Twilight asked.

“Just watch,” Celestia smiled. “See if you can spot what I found.”

Twilight’s mind whirled with what a series of floods could have to do with what appeared to be some calamity in an urban area, but she obeyed, tapping a hoof to play the video. It immediately started where Celestia had paused it, opening with a scene of people running in the streets: a doughy businessman with a receding hairline and rumpled suit hurrying alongside a dark-skinned man with a heavy beard and glasses, both looking over their shoulders, jaws agape as they ran. A moment later, the camera panned to the side of a massive skyscraper, with smoke spewing from a huge hole in its side. Debris rained down to the streets below as flames flickered visibly beneath the rolling smoke.

The scene cut to someone wondering down a stairwell. Next to them, a woman in a tasteful blouse and skirt trotted along, head low, mouth shut as she focused on getting down the next flight of stairs. Somewhere far off, an alarm blared, and Twilight realized this had to be taking place inside the skyscraper in the first shot. After awhile, they came to a pause on a landing, where a man in a jumpsuit was crouched over another doughy businessman, this one with blood coming down the side of his face.

“Oh my God, Mike!?” The woman gasped, and the man in the jumpsuit looked up, revealing the “BUILDING MAINTENANCE” stenciled across his chest.

“He took a hit to the head, he’s okay, gonna get him down,” the janitor said, waving the walking couple off. “I got ‘im, just go!”

The pair hovered for a second, then kept moving, eventually being waved along by a security guard on one of the floors, who seemed to be counting heads as people filed past. Eventually, thankfully, the pair reached a lobby, where firefighters filed past in their distinctive black and yellow-striped jackets and sloped helmets, pushing through the crowd trying to exit through the wide front doors.

“This was following an extremist attack on one of...her bureaus,” Celestia says. “This particular Bureau was situated on the twentieth floor of a skyscraper, where a bomb was smuggled in using a man disguised as a maintenance worker. He stopped the elevator on their floor and detonated a large device hidden inside a mop bucket.”

Twilight watched the video one more time, then frowned, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, princess, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking for here.”

“What I always look for during times of distress, my dear student,” Celestia’s smile warmed like the rising sun after a cold autumn night. “People helping people they have no reason to be helping.”

Twilight blinked, then rewound the video one more time. She saw people filing together, looking around in concern, holding the hands of strangers they’d likely never seen before. Here, a woman in a business suit tugs along a bum in a raggedy t-shirt. There, the janitor helping along a rich CEO, now that she got a look at “Mike’s” suit again and realized it was probably worth more than her old treebrary’s annual budget. What’s more, when she closed the video to set the phone down, she caught a glimpse of the account owner’s profile picture, and the likely cameraman: a unicorn stallion, grinning in front of a plain, gray background.

“In times of tragedy, especially those wrought by our own hoof, it is important to keep in mind the good in everyone, Twilight,” Celestia said with a smile. “A few greedy ponies cut corners on a dam that caused a terrible disaster in Trottingham, but hundreds of others rushed to their fellow ponies’ aid. Just like that janitor helped a man who likely turned his nose up at him not a few hours before. Just like a group of firefighters walked into a building while everyone else was busy running away.”

“Just like a random human office worker walked alongside a unicorn stallion to provide comfort and hope?” Twilight said with a smile.

Celestia nodded with a placid smile. “Humanity seems to have a deeper passion for what they believe in, and the lack of overall direction they’ve had in their history, whereas Harmony has always been there to guide ponies in one form or another, has led them to a bloody history that you and I can be grateful to have never known. However, that doesn’t make them evil, Twilight. The wonders we’ve seen them build, one of which you hold in your own hoof! The countless times we’ve seen them lay down their lives for one another in front of our very eyes! And most importantly of all...”

“...the ones just trying to help in a time of need?” Twilight asked.

Celestia only smiled. “There’s beauty here, Twilight. It might be a little dirtier than we’re used to, but it’s there. And it’s worth protecting.”

“Hundreds of people are laying down their lives to do so right now,” Twilight said, standing in the sand and lowering her head with a determined glower. “Thank you, princess.”

“Of course, Twilight.”

Five hours later, somewhere over the Sea of Japan, Twilight’s worries had officially shifted from whether she was on the right side of a growing international conflict to how to defuse said conflict.

Hey, she had to do something with all that worry built up, and she was always the pragmatist.

First of all was just the problem of making it into Japan. From what she could tell, this world’s “United Nations” had designated it some sort of Disaster Relief Zone (understandable given the absolute devastation it had faced). Now, “Disaster Relief Zone” sounded a bit friendlier than “Active Warzone,” but only a hair. Disaster Relief still meant soldiers to distribute supplies, act as police, and watch any sensitive areas that might have survived. And soldiers meant trucks, guns, some of the ‘tanks,’ she had read about, and probably a whole host of things she hadn’t. She tried to remind herself about Jerusalem, how they had managed to break into a heavily-guarded and walled city, but every time she did another voice piped up they had only gotten lucky, choosing a landing time that happened to coincide with a local militia attack.

No such militia existed here, she’d already checked. And this land had way more reason to want her mentor’s head.

Her worries spiked as the distant, green dot of land on the horizon started getting bigger and bigger, slowly growing to dominate the horizon. After a few minutes, the silhouettes of buildings began to sprout from the land’s surface. She swallowed. Soon, it would be time.

She let out a surprised squeal when suddenly, Celestia careened into her side, sending her spiraling towards the sea below. Still spinning, dazed, she hardly fought back as the larger princess seized her around the waist, carrying her the rest of the way to a tiny island, basically a pile of rocks in the sea with only a few gulls for inhabitants.

“Princess!” She gasped, regaining her breath as Celestia took cover with her behind a rocky spire. “What’s…”

Celestia raised a hoof for quiet, and Twilight’s lips practically sealed on their own. She watched as Celestia crept around the spire, peeking her muzzle around it towards the island. “Drat,” she cursed under her breath.

Matching her former instructor’s caution, Twilight crept in at Celestia’s side and eased herself around with even greater caution, carefully working her way up by inches, slowly craning her head until she could just peek around the stone. “Dammit,” she muttered her own curse.

If Celestia heard her or even knew Twilight was there, she made no indication, as her eyes remained locked on the small flotilla of boats shooting ahead faster than any yacht Twilight had ever seen, with a roar she knew could only come from a human engine. At an initial glance, she might have dismissed them as pleasure cruisers, were it not for the great UN logos emblazoned on their sides and the massive guns sitting in their bows. Behind the small flotilla, she could see even more boats, their white contrails tracing them out. From here she still couldn’t tell if they were all UN, but did it matter when they knew humans could communicate through the air with the push of a button?

“So much for sneaking in,” she sighed, sinking to the rocky ground with a thud.

“Just another obstacle, Twilight,” Celestia said with a smile, though it was too thin and too forced to be convincing in the slightest. Twilight could see the way her former teacher’s smile wavered, and understood it all-too-well. They were so close to their final goal, at last within hoof’s reach of the land they had traveled so far to reach. And it was locked down so tight it would be impossible to get any closer.

She leaned back against the rock, drifting into her own thoughts, trying desperately to find some way around this. They could try invisibility spells and teleportation, but that would be rendered useless the moment they walked into those cursed Inhibitors the humans were so fond of. She tried thinking up non-magical ways through, but her only idea there was diving down with Celestia and holding her breath, hoping to swim the entire distance before they ran into an Inhibitor and drowned.

And…now the thought of swimming along with Celestia as merponies and frolicking in an undersea kingdom was stuck in her head. How wonderfully helpful.

“Ladies.”

The mares sprang up in surprise, gazing over to a large stallion with a pure white coat. He stood with the rigid poise of a royal guard. However, rather than golden regalia, his body was clad in the heavy vest, sloped helmet, and ballistic glasses they had come to associate with human soldiers. More surprisingly, one of the humans’ guns was strapped to his side, resting with its barrel pointed at the ground.

“What in Equestria…” Twilight breathed, unable to quite process the combination of pony stallion with human kit.

“Celestia and Twilight Sparkle?” The stallion asked, tilting his head up.

Twilight sucked in a breath, mind spinning, trying to come up with the best way to respond. Was this stallion a friend? Foe? Did the fact that he hadn’t attacked yet mean he was here to help? Or was he just luring them into a trap where there magic could be rendered useless?

Luckily, Celestia was used to being a bit more proactive. “Yes,” she said, pushing away from the rock and striding a few steps closer. The stallion didn’t step back, though one of his ears did give a nervous rustle beneath the bulletproofed meshing. She paused short, gazing down at him with all the gentle kindness centuries of experience could give her. “I am Princess Celestia, and may I ask who you are?”

Though his face remained stoic, there was a pause as his mind visibly shifted around, trying to grasp for a response. He’s terrified, Twilight realized as she saw the big, blank expression in his eyes and the way he had to actually force his tail out from between his hindlegs. Then again, she could hardly blame him. He likely knew just as well as Twilight did how the “other” Celestia dealt with traitors, hay, he probably watched some of the executions and tortures carried out on HLF-sympathetic stallions and mares.

“I am PFC Sunny Daze, with the 1st Royal Guards Detachment,” the stallion said, barely holding down the shiver that visibly threatened to overwhelm his entire body. “I have come to retrieve you in the name of King Shining Armor.”

This time, he did flinch back. If there was a sentence which would have the other Celestia burn him alive in rage, that would have been it. She had tortured another Twilight half to death just for being Shining Armor’s sister, and his ascendancy to the throne following the restructuring of Equestria under UN control likely hadn’t cooled that rage.

However, the princess merely gave a slight nod, that warm smile not even flickering. “We would be most honored for the escort, dear stallion.” She intoned, motioning for him to lead the way.

With a slight inhale, the stallion turned and trotted down the side of the rock, and the princesses followed, reaching a tiny outcropping. He held up a hoof. “Before we go on…” he said, reaching into one of the innumerable pockets on his uniform and pulling out something metallic. Twilight’s breath caught in her throat, but the items clattered to the rocky ground with a hollow sound that put her at ease, just in time to scare the daylights out of her again.

What rolled to her hoof was a magic suppressor. A futuristic one, with a little screen on the side and some circuit boards in place of a keyhole, but still a suppressor. It rolled so one opening faced her, revealing a series of barbs that would have had it labeled a “cruel and unusual device of torture” in Equestria. Something like this in her Equestria would only be used as a centerpiece to a museum exhibit devoted to remembering the cruelty of some long-ago dictator.

“You…have to be joking,” she said, gazing up at the stallion.

However, his stony face told her he wasn’t one for jokes. “You will receive no aid from us otherwise, ma’am.”

To Twilight’s shock and dismay, Celestia had picked up her suppressor, an even larger and more barbaric device that she now turned over in her hooves. “P-Princess!?” She gasped, gaping at her former teacher.

Celestia sighed, eyeing her former student over the metal cylinder rolling around in her hoof’s grip. “It’s the only way to guarantee passage. We don’t even know where to go once we make it to the mainland, Twilight.”

“We’ll…we’ll…” Twilight’s ears folded down, her gaze sinking to the small metal cylinder at her hooves. Suppressing herself with such an awful-looking device felt like willingly joining one of Sombra’s slave coffles heading into the crystal mines. But any other way forward had too many variables, too many unknowns to even be considered.

There was a low, sliding sound, and Twilight only raised an eyebrow as she watched Celestia press the suppressor down as low as it would go on her horn, grunting with discomfort, but not pain. She turned to Twilight and tried to give her a reassuring smile as the little device beeped and emitted a low green light from its LCD screen. Twilight returned the smile with maybe half the believability, then, with a sigh, clamped her suppressor on as well. She could feel her connection to her magic being pinched off, slowly drained away. This wasn’t like when the humans’ Inhibitors were around, where it felt like some part of her had merely gone asleep, as if she’d lain on a leg too long. This felt like severing a part of herself, like tying a cable around her leg too tightly and cutting off bloodflow.

She glared at the stallion. “Happy?”

He only let out a tiny nod, then turned from the mares, pressing a hoof to the radio clipped to his shoulder. “C’mon up, Samudra, we’re ready for ya up here.”

The voice crackled back: “Roll for Initiative.”

“A solid fourteen,” the stallion replied with a visible eye-roll.

Twilight smiled. She didn’t know much about tabletop gaming, but she did recognize one of her brother’s nerdy references. Perhaps she knew this other stallion better than she thought.

After a few moments, a small, metal tube emerged from the water, and a hatch opened up on top. Twilight blinked watching it, wondering if this was yet another human marvel. First metal ships the size of castles, now sailing under the water? How was it they didn’t have any magic!?

Her awe at the machine was only mildly diminished by the cramped quarters inside. Celestia had to keep her head low just to keep the tip of her horn from scraping against the sleek, metal interior and catching on one of a thousand little metal nooks and crannies. “Bit cramped, isn’t it?” She asked.

“Easier to keep things stealthy the smaller we are,” the mare sitting in the cockpit remarked, not taking her eyes away from the open glass before her. She was a cream-coated earth pony in a blue shirt, her mane done up in a tight bun, sitting in a low chair bolted at the front of the ship.

Twilight’s brow furrowed. “Where did you get this ship?”

The mare only smiled. “His Majesty can be a shrewd negotiator. Every country’s looking for a leg up on their neighbors, some are willing to sell us things not exactly allowed under UN Resolutions in exchange for the service of a couple unicorns, or a few books of magic theory.”

His Majesty... Twilight was used to ponies referring to Shining with terms of reverence, of course. Rising to such a high rank in the guard would do that for a stallion. But His Majesty? Associating that level of reverence with the stallion that had played Lady Trottenpot at her tea parties was going to take a long time to wrap her brain around.

Then the stallion clambered down from above, his weapon still slung at his side as he sat facing the royal mares. The hatch shut with a little whine, and her ears popped with a sudden rise in pressure. The ship quaked, then slipped beneath the waves, the water lapping at the viewports suddenly inundating them, the sun completely cut from her view. To say the experience was a bit claustrophobic would be an understatement. This was like being buried alive, complete with a cramped coffin.

The light slowly faded, and the steady hum of the engine behind her filled Twilight’s ears. Despite herself, she found she could only take short breaths, as though subconsciously trying to conserve oxygen. Then a wing wrapped around her shoulder, and she smiled, pulling it tight around herself as she gazed up at the princess. Celestia looked no worse for wear as she gazed down at the smaller alicorn, and Twilight smiled back up at her as their journey beneath the waves continued.

Eventually, the water outside darkened, a shadow visibly shrouding itself over the viewports. Twilight couldn’t help a sharp intake of breath. Of course, she had to figure that wherever the submersible was taking them would be secluded, but now it felt like an extra layer of dirt being thrown over their coffin. The mare pressed a hoof on the radio clipped to her ear. “Samudra inbound.”

A moment passed, and then the radio crackled: “Saving Roll.”

“Nat twenty,” the mare replied.

A moment later, they surfaced, water falling away from the viewports and revealing the deep, pitted rock of a cave. Twilight sucked in a breath. The hatch whirred open once more, and the stallion made the slightest motion to bring his hoof closer to his weapon.

“Up the ladder...please,” he said with a moment’s hesitation.

Celestia nodded, climbing up and out with Twilight trailing right behind, out into a small underground pool in the center of a cave. The moment their hooves touched ground, the whirr of the hatch filled the air once more, and the submersible vanished under the water. Twilight swallowed, and moved to bring up a quick flare on her horn, only to curse as it sparked and fizzled beneath the suppressor, albeit enough to light up the muzzle of a pony in the darkness.

She let out a frightened squeak, darting back. After a second, there was a series of cracks, and a pile of tubes ignited in the dark, dropped by hooves clad in human camo until the whole cavern was illuminated. In the dim, green, flickering light, a few squads of ponies in human gear were revealed.

Surrounded, Twilight realized, not that it mattered much. The only way she knew out was through the pond, which wasn’t much help without the submersibleand her magic. And though she could see open cavern behind most of the stallions, she knew traversing a cave blindly with no real idea of an exit could very easily be a death sentence.

She raised a hoof. “We mean you no harm. We came with you willingly and restrained.”

“And that is the only reason you are both still alive.”

A shiver raced up Twilight’s spine. That voice was so familiar, yet so...cold. Hearing that cold edge in that voice felt like watching Fluttershy suddenly whipping around and pulling off a series of kung-fu moves against a changeling invasion.

Still, she swallowed her fear and lifted her head. “Good afternoon, your Highness.”

Shining Armor stepped out from the darkness in the cave, his gaze cold, his brow furrowed to make the scar tracing down his face and along his neck stand out all the more. Twilight swallowed and tried to meet the stallion’s gaze, yet despite him sharing the same teal eyes she’d known from the day she was born, it wound up being much harder than it should have been.

“Look at me.” The stallion barked, his voice filling the cavern. Then, there was a pause. “Please.”

Her eyes rose. Teal met lilac. Slowly, Shining’s gaze softened, though not as a pony meeting a relative long thought lost. Rather, his eyes met hers as a pony meeting another who was obviously scared for their lives.

“Like I said, if we wanted you dead, we would have killed you already.” He said, though his voice was gentler this time, a hair above normal speaking tone. He turned to Celestia, and the cold frown froze into his gaze once more. “We saw what you did in Jerusalem.”

Celestia opened her mouth, inhaled, then closed it again with a small nod.

“Was London you too?”

Another small nod.

Shining followed the nod with one of his own. “And I am to believe you’re here to do the same?”

“Please,” Celestia finally spoke, taking a step forward. In a flash, the stallions’ weapons all rose, locking on her. Celestia took a step back, but kept her eyes on Shining. “We know of the atrocities she committed.”

At that, Shining let out a short guffaw. “You know, do you? How would you? How could you possibly?”

Moving slowly, cautiously, Celestia poked a hoof back into her wings, keeping her eyes on all the weapons now trained on her. Twilight’s heart leapt into her throat, where it now beat twice as hard as usual. Finally, Celestia’s hoof returned, holding the tiny device they had stolen from the prison ship what felt like years before.

Shining’s eyes narrowed on it, then eased. “Ah. I’m a Nokia stallion myself.”

“Y-you see? That’s how we knew,” Twilight said, her voice coming out in a squeak she hadn’t been prepared for.

Another moment passed, and Shining’s head dipped. “No, you don’t know. Maybe you read the news articles, even listened to a few interviews, but you have no idea how badly she fucked us over, how badly that hurt.”

His gaze wandered away, locking on some far-off corner of the cave. “You don’t know the fear of realizing doing the right thing means not just betraying your kingdom, but also taking on a god. Or what it feels like when that god realizes what you’ve done, and feeling like an ant under her hoof, waiting to be stepped on. That’s all we were, in the end. Ants. She liked watching us scurry around and make trinkets for her. And the humans...I dunno, maybe she got bored with the regular ants? Wanted to try her hoof at crafting life?”

He chuckled. “Too bad her first try at it was every bit a twisted joke as she was. Newfoals...damn, I wish she’d just killed ‘em. That would’ve been better than looking into those eyes and knowing that used to be someone’s husband, or wife, or daughter, or even just some lonely middle-aged accountant who was never good at anything but working a calculator. Even that is just so much more than what’s there in front of you.”

There was another moment of silence, and finally he shook his head. “We were the ones who deserved to be wiped out for supporting her. The fact that Equestria still exists is a mercy. Or hell, maybe it’s a punishment. Maybe we all died when the Barrier fell and the bombs dropped with it, and this is some level of Tartarus where we get to live a sort of half-life at the mercy of the people we wronged, always on our bellies, always reminded of our mistakes.”

At last, that cold gaze returned to the mares in the middle of the cavern. “So don’t take it personally when I tell you, princess, how badly I want to see your brains splattered all over this cavern floor.”

The weapons around them hadn’t wavered in their aim once since their majesty had started talking. If anything, Twilight could somehow feel hooves tightening around triggers ever so slightly more. It would just take a tiny twitch of muscle to end this all here and now.

Yet, Celestia pressed onward. “Yet you haven’t.”

Shining took a breath. “No.”

“Why?”

His eyes drifted from Celestia to...her. To Twilight. Celestia followed them, then smiled warmly. “I see.”

“The Celestia I know never would’ve shared her power. Not in a million years. She never would have allowed another being as powerful as her to exist.” He rose to his hooves. “Plus, the mere fact that she’s alive...”

His voice choked itself off, and he cleared his throat. “I...need to know if that’s her.”

“M-me?” Twilight raised a hoof to her chest. “I’m...I’m me, I...”

“Tell me something that only Twilight Sparkle would know.” He replied, voice low, dangerous. “Tell me something only you could possibly tell me.”

Twilight balked, looked away. “I-I don’t...”

“Then how can I know you’re who you appear to be?” Around her, Twilight heard the sounds of dozens of weapons shuffling, being raised. “How can I know you’re Twilight Sparkle?”

“I-I don’t know...I...” She shook her head. “C-could I tell you something about biology? Or...no, I might get it wrong, biology was never my strong suit…”

Shining Armor’s frown deepened.

“I...maybe my library? I-if your Twilight had a version of one, or--”

“A week before I left for the guard, you took the fall for shattering mom’s flower vase. Why?” Shining barked.

Twilight looked over to him, eyes wide and blank. His glower deepened. The rifles around the royal pair rose. Then, slowly, a smile rose on Twilight’s face. “Because mom said she would keep you from leaving if you broke anything else in the house. ‘I-if you’re too clumsy to hold a jar and not break it, how can you hold a spear and not gore somepony?’” She giggled, forgetting their dire straits in a moment. “And it was her cookie jar, not her flower vase. She hated vases, remember? Said they were just prolonged funerals for living things.”

For a moment, Shining glared, and Twilight wondered if she may have gotten it wrong. What if she’d misremembered? What if things had played out another way in this Shining’s universe? Plenty had happened differently that she already knew of, after all. She thought she could see the rifles rising once more in her periphery. Then, suddenly, his ears folded down. He stepped towards her, expression an unreadable neutral until he was right in front of her.

“Twily?” He asked quietly, and finally she could see the tears shimmering in his eyes.

Seeing him like this, she couldn’t help but have a few tears to blink back herself. “I-it’s me Shiny, I prom--”

That was as far as she got before he lunged forward to embrace her. The rifles all around finally lowered, the soldiers remaining stoic as their king embraced his sister for the first time in half a decade. “I thought I’d lost you...” he whispered, voice quaking.

Twilight choked back a sob of her own. “I’m sorry you went through all that, I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” He gasped. “None of it was. I’m only here because of you and I--” he fell quiet, holding her, sniffles turning to groans, groans turning to sobs, sobs turning to wails. Shining’s wailing filled the cavern, echoing off the walls around him as he finally cried for the pain, cried for his nation, cried for every pony he’d lost in a single day of insanity and nuclear fire. Cried because finally, finally, he’d gotten a little bit back that he thought he’d never have again.

Chapter XXXVIII: Introductions

“After that, we linked up with the rest of the HLF rebels in the Everfree and managed to hold our own until the bombs dropped.” Shining finished explaining.

“HLF? Human Liberation Front?” Twilight arched an eyebrow. “Why would a bunch of ponies in the Everfree call themselves that?”

“Resistance to her rule had been around for centuries in some form or another, the HLF and the war with humanity just finally gave us a banner to rally around.” He shrugged. “Our thought process was if we could divert the evil cun--”

He trailed off, eyes drifting to Celestia, who merely took a sip from her tea. “Oh, don’t mind me,” she said without looking up, muzzle wrinkling at the styrofoam cup she’d just had to sip Lipton from. “After everything I’ve seen in this realm, I’m one-hundred percent in agreement with your assessment of that one’s moral standing.”

After a moment, he gave a quick nod. “--Well, the thinking was that if we could divert a little bit of her attention away from maintaining the Barrier’s spread, we might buy humanity time to figure out a way through it. We never did find out if we were right or not: if the Barrier ever slowed down or if she was even intentionally keeping it moving slowly in the hopes that humanity would just surrender, but it was something. We couldn’t just sit in the woods and hope for help to appear someday.”

“So...why the bombs, then?” Twilight asked, leaning forward. “I never did find a suitable explanation for why humanity launched their nuclear arsenal at Equestria after your Celestia flew to Tokyo.”

At that, Shining Armor rolled his eyes to her. “She didn’t just ‘fly’ to Tokyo, Twilight. She decimated the largest city on Earth. She intentionally killed more people than any human villain up to that point in about the same time it took them to blink their eyes. The mushroom cloud was visible to the fleet surrounding Equestria from hundreds of miles away. After that, I think they might be forgiven a few spur of the moment choices.”

“I’m more concerned with my double’s reasoning for attacking in the first place,” Celestia replied, cringing as she took another sip from her cup. “She was beaten, cut off from her magic, there was nothing for her to gain in destroying Tokyo. And yet, she did it. She burned a city to the ground, and in thinking of why I can only come up with a few answers.”

Twilight leaned forward in her seat, waiting for the explanation. Shining just crossed his hooves. He already knew.

“Spite.” Celestia shook her head. “She burned an entire city and murdered millions because she knew she was cornered and wanted to kill more before she was taken down.”

Twilight sat back down, eyes wide. “That’s just...so...”

“Evil? My dear Twilight, everything we’ve encountered in our journey thus far would indicate she’d do nothing less. Cut off from Equestria’s magic, knowing she’d have only a finite amount of reserves in her body, she’d want to go out in a large way.” She set the cup down with a grimace, hooves folding up under her chin. “The fact that her reserves were still enough to cause so much destruction is rather concerning...were the same to happen to me, I’d have trouble getting a few teleportations in or raising my sun. How did she get so powerful?”

“Questions we’ve all asked ourselves a thousand times since even before the War,” Shining sighed, taking Celestia’s tea and hovering it over to the small basket they’d been using as trash. Around him, his recruits sat on blankets spread out for an impromptu picnic. Every now and again a soldier would steal a quick look at Celestia, quickly turning away when they thought she might glance in their direction.

“As of right now,” he finally finished, turning back to the mares sitting with him. “I have to ask what your current plans are.”

“Right now?” Celestia smiled peacefully, head still propped up in her forehooves. “I just want to use our newfound power to cure as many Newfoals as possible, then hopefully use that to gain the trust of humanity. From there, reestablishing contact with my sister should be easy enough.”

After a moment of staring, Shining Armor snorted. “Oh, is that all? And here, I thought you wanted to do something crazy or impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible with the will to try, Captain.” She smiled and winked at him as she stood. “And a few good friends to lend a hoof.”

Shining smiled as he followed suit, a few of his soldiers moving to roll up his blanket. He gestured to the inhibitors still locked on the mares’ horns. “We’ll get those off on the surface, alright? For now, let’s just get you up there.” His comfortable smile turned into a frown. “It’s...not a pleasant sight, just so you know. Even after all these years.”

“We’re used to unpleasant sights at this point, Captain Armor.” Celestia said with a smile, then caught herself. “Or...that’s King Armor now, isn’t it?”

Shining smiled and nodded, falling in alongside Twilight as the strange group made their way along the cave, backed up by a whole host of rifle-wielding stallions and mares in modified combat armor: a distinctly-human design fit for a pony. The group all trotted through the dark, remaining close, though few remained closer than Twilight and Shining Armor. He kept looking over to her, as if not quite able to line up the image of the mare in front of him with the Twilight Sparkle he’d grown up with.

Eventually he cleared his throat. “So, how did...” he started, gesturing to his shoulders.

After a moment, Twilight turned to stare blankly at him, then suddenly something clicked. “Oh! Well, my friends and I bore the Elements of Harmony for the longest time, and after saving Equestria a few times, Princess Celestia sent me Starswirl the Bearded’s final spell, solving which unlocked the final potential within me to grant alicornhood!”

Now, it was Shining Armor’s turn to stare blankly at her, a look she withered under. “Sorry,” she said. “I forget myself sometimes, it’s a problem I--”

She cut herself off as a chuckle rose up in his throat. The chuckle rapidly turned into full-on laughter that echoed off the walls and bounced all around them, causing a few soldiers to pause in their step. Tears rolled down his face as he guffawed, wheezing with the laughter. “Oh...oh, god above...”

When he finally noticed her questioning look, he just smiled and shook his head. “She used to do the same thing: get lost in her own little world, then take a second to come back down when somepony asked a question, and it’d all come out in a rush, it’s so...it was so...”

Finally, Twilight realized not all the tears were from laughter. A wing fanned over his shoulders, which he looked down at in surprise. She smiled, nodding to him even as her own eyes shimmered with tears. “It’s okay...” she whispered.

He let in a shivering breath, his voice giving a hoarse crack as he cleared his throat. “We...should be coming up top soon. I hope you’re both ready.”

We are, but I don’t think you are, she almost said, but tucked it away, figuring such talk could be saved for later. “We’ll take it from here.” She said, looking up and blinking as the sun overwhelmed the dim flashlights and eerie glow of the devices strapped on the ponies around her.

They stepped out into a concrete parking lot, the ruins of a gas station squatting behind them. Burnt ruins loomed over their heads, making Twilight crane her neck back on reflex as she gazed up at the remains of skyscrapers beneath an overcast sky. Her pulse suddenly rocketed. Her breath caught in her throat. If ever there was the perfect setpiece for an apocalyptic wasteland, this was it.

“That should do it...” Shining said, pulling out a little remote. A moment later, the devices on Twilight’s and Celestia’s horns gave a little mechanical whine, then clicked open and fell to the pavement. “Just head that way,” he added, gesturing down a large avenue lined on both sides by similar buildings. “That’ll getcha to some of the main camps.”

Celestia nodded. “Might we count on you as an escort?”

Shining could only smile and shake his head. “I can’t risk the shitstorm I’d get for pulling something like that, so do keep it under wraps, yeah? I just came to make sure it was her.”

He looked to Twilight, who seemed to glow under his gaze. “Glad I passed that little test,” she said.

Shining just nodded. “That’s also where you’ll be out of range of the Inhibitors we have planted around this parking lot.” His little smile turned into a smirk. “Pardon me, your majesties, just one final precaution in case you lashed out at us the instant the horn inhibitors were off.”

“I would have lectured you had you not taken such precautions, Cap—your highness.” Celestia replied with an incline of her head.

“To you, princess? I don’t think I’d mind being called ‘captain.’” He turned to head back down the tunnels. “And good luck to you both. Believe me, you’ll need it.”

Celestia smiled and nodded, turning down the roadway as Shining vanished back into the tunnel, the entrance half-hidden by broken concrete. Twilight took a breath, hoping to steady her nerves. The rifle wielding ponies nodded to one another, then turned back to follow their leader. However, at her flank, one of them gave a sudden pause.

“Is it true?” The mare asked suddenly, forcing to Twilight to whirl around and face her. “You’re here to fix what she did?”

After a moment of careful consideration, Twilight responded: “We can’t fix everything she did. The dead are gone, and...some things aren’t going to be fixed without hard work.” She gazed up at the scorched ruins of a once-great city around them, ears folding back at the sheer miles of shattered glass and scorched cinderblock stretching up over her head. Finally, she gazed back down at the guard. “But if we can ease a little bit of the pain, I think it’ll be worth it. For all of us.”

After a moment, the pony guard nodded and trotted ahead, vanishing back into the darkness, though Twilight thought she saw a little extra skip in her step as she disappeared. Finally, she let out another breath and turned back to the street.

“It’s time, Twilight,” Celestia remarked. “Are you ready?”

After a moment, Twilight smiled. “As I’ll ever be, Princess.” She said.

Offering up a smile of her own, Celestia took the first steps onto the blackened pavement, and the pair trotted shoulder-by-shoulder into the city.

Twilight couldn’t help an eerie feeling creeping up her spine as she trotted through the once-great city. Scorched towers loomed overhead, their size and frames conjuring images of the great metropolises they had seen in Lon-done, and Duzzledwarf, and Jeroosalim. But the plywood over most of the windows and the blackened, twisted metal exposed all served as reminders of the horrors committed by a mare she could only hope not to know all too well.

She looked around, confident smile fading. Here, an office building, half-collapsed with plywood over the windows. There, a road that was more undergrowth and potholes than asphalt. She shook her head. What little help they could offer seemed totally inconsequential to this scale. Even if the impossible happened and they could convince these people to let them try, what good could they do?

In the distance, a series of tents loomed, all marked with the now-familiar UN logo. A little girl came walking down the street towards them in a dirty set of jeans and an overlarge T-shirt. Then she stopped at the corner, eyes wide. She watched them as they trotted by, Twilight offering a friendly wave and smile. The girl just turned and bolted back down the alleyway.

“Well,” Twilight remarked. “Too late to back out now.”

“You seriously thought we should just turn around at some point?” Celestia chuckled.

Twilight only smiled up at her friend and mentor. “Of course not.”

After another moment’s trotting, Celestia leaned down. “It’s okay to be intimidated and have doubts, Twilight. So long as you keep forging ahead. “

Twilight swallowed, suddenly grateful to have someone who knew her so well at her side. She diverted her path to press in a little closer to Celestia. “Of course, Princess.”

As they approached the camp, Twilight’s ear perked. Her head swiveled, just catching a shape darting back into the shadows of a building, a rush of someone’s shoe behind a tarp before a door slammed shut.

“We’re being followed,” she said nervously.

“Stay strong, my faithful student. We knew this would be coming.”

As they trotted along the paved path into the heart of the camp, more and more people started paying attention to them. Tent flaps shuffled to the side, only to quickly shuffle back in place. Someone dove out of their tent and started running off. Twilight raised a hoof towards them, but Celestia lowered it with a fan of her wing. With a sigh, they trotted on.

In the middle of the camp, Celestia’s horn gave the slightest pulse, and with a tiny gasp, she turned to one of the tents and ducked inside. Without another word, Twilight followed. Inside, in dim lamplight, they saw a chipboard side table with a few decorations, a photo, some blankets and, as expected, a Newfoal sitting up on a mat. Also expected, the Newfoal took one look at Celestia and snarled, opening its mouth to shout, legs tensing to pounce. In a flash, their magic lashed out and pinned the creature down, Twilight even stuffing a discarded sock in its mouth for good measure.

“Oba-san?” A young voice chimed from the flap on the other side of the tent. A little boy crawled in, his dirty head bowed to fit in, but the moment he looked up his eyes widened. Twilight and Celestia sucked in a breath.

“No...fear...” Twilight said, raising a hoof. “We just want to--”

The boy screamed and dove back out of the tent so fast, Twilight wouldn’t be surprised if he’d managed to skin his chin on the ground. She blinked.

“That was...not the reaction I was hoping for...” she admitted.

“Honestly, I’m surprised more of them haven’t reacted like that.” Celestia replied as she lowered her horn to the Newfoal’s squirming head. “Twilight? If you would be so kind.”

Shrugging, Twilight turned in place to add her horn to Celestia’s, and their magic looped out. She hardly even needed to search at all, her power finding the human buried in the pony almost instinctively.

“And on one...two...three...”

With a tiny grunt, they pulled simultaneously, and just like that, their magic flexed back, the Newfoal’s human soul with it. The mare before them sat up, looking around, eyes spinning.

“That’s getting almost too easy,” Twilight giggled as Celestia stepped forward.

“Hello? My little pony?” She asked, trying to make herself appear smaller before the Newfoal as it shook its head.

The mare blinked, looking around, said something under her breath in her native tongue. Then, her eyes widened upon seeing Celestia.

She smiled. “Hello, my little pony.”

The mare shrieked, grabbing a vase off the chipboard nightstand and flinging it at her. Celestia caught it in her magic, only to have to fend off a flurry of blows from the rampaging, screaming mare.

“Well, she’s not screaming ‘faker’ or anything,” Twilight sighed. “She’s going too fast for me to tell what she’s really saying, but I think it’s safe to say she’s human again.”

“Oh wonderful,” Celestia smiled warmly. “That’s good to kn-” She was interrupted by a cracking shot that ripped through the canvas, grazing the back of her head. Celestia stammered and swooned, raising a shield just as the shot was followed up by another.

“Celestia!” Twilight cried as a sporadic flurry of bullets tore into the tent.

For her part, Celestia reeled, but not before erecting a barrier. The Newfoal dove to her hooves, quivering behind Twilight as shots ricocheted off around them. Canvas shredded, wood and cloth vanished in showers of splinters and sparks. Outside, the angry shouts of men filled the air in the spaces between wild shots.

“Please!” Twilight shouted. “Please, just stop!”

“They’re not going to hear you, Twilight,” Celestia grunted through gritted teeth. At her hooves, the mare screamed, shouting in her tongue. The bombardment continued, bullets bouncing off their shield, until finally, they started to peter out.

Twilight looked up. “Are they...listening?”

“Or they ran out of bullets...” Celestia said, maintaining her shield.

Finally, Twilight turned on her back, peering through one of the holes burnt into the canvas. She could see a man in a dirty t-shirt, holding an old chunk of wood she thought sort of looked like the muzzleloaders she’d seen griffons use, but he wasn’t shooting. He looked around, seeming almost frantic and...confused?

“Oba-san!?”

The trio all turned to the small child crawling in through the flap. His breath raced in and out, his thin shoulders rising and falling. But still, he stood there as the Newfoal rose to her hooves. Eyes far older than the face they were set in gazed over the young one, and the Newfoal reached out. The child flinched, taking a step back, so she paused, her hooves remaining in air. Finally, he leaned forward, embracing her hooves as a smile crossed her face.

“Aiko,” she whispered, and though Twilight thought that was a strange name, the intent behind it was so clear her heart warmed to see it.

Tears streamed down the child’s face as if on command. He embraced the mare as her massive eyes watered, and they sobbed together, hugging like family parted, finally holding eachother after years away.

Twilight wiped her eyes, and any doubt about what they were here to do evaporated as Celestia stood up, ushering the child and the mare outside. Her wings fanned, and the shield shimmered around them all, an excellent idea as an errant shot fizzled off it. The child rose, his hands up, still crying as men with guns rushed forward, all shouting at him. More advanced with their weapons trained on the princess, eyes wide with shock, fingers shivering around triggers.

“I...am Princess Celestia of Equestria!” Celestia shouted, silencing the discordant voices around them. She looked down to the young boy, and her smile seemed to drown out the sun above them as he wiped at his nose to turn a small, shaky smile back up to her. “And I am here to help.”

Chapter XXXIX: Attack

Now this was a little closer to the response Twilight had been expecting. The large-tired vehicles that looked like giant tortoises, the men with rifles readied and blue helmets everywhere. Even a couple of those “tanks” had shown up, with the roar of jet aircraft in the cloud cover high overhead. And all of this clearly-capable, highly-deadly, completely-overwhelming firepower was aimed directly at her. She was suddenly getting flashbacks to her confrontation with Nightmare Moon, only this time her only weapons were her good intentions, and she was reliant on the other side listening to reason.

They had just finished the last of the few Newfoals from the tiny tent commune, but word had apparently spread to other settlements nearby, if the small group of people being stopped by soldiers in blue helmets were any indication. Chain link fences were going up in a hurry, funneling the crowd into a single line, where they were held back by more soldiers. Hopefully, that was good, a sign of organization they would sorely need. Less good were the Newfoals squirming in their humans’ arms, spying Celestia between the soldiers and trying to claw their way to her with nostrils flared in rage, teeth clenched and massive eyes filled with more hate than either mare had ever dreamed a pony could hold.

And still, Celestia stood. Despite the guns, despite the tanks, despite the few jeering from the line that had formed up near the soldiers, despite the Newfoals practically foaming at the mouth for her blood, she remained as calm and resolute as ever. A stone wall, staring passively out at the rising chaos around her.

“Princess?” Twilight finally said, smiling nervously to the lines of guns aimed her way. “What’s the plan?”

“I’ve already asked for their trust, Twilight.” Celestia sighed. “I can only wait and see if they’re prepared to grant it.”

A couple helicopters swooped low overhead, wind from their blades whipping through Twilight’s mane. She gaped up at them as they came in for a landing in an open bit of space between tents, still sending a few ramshackle constructions flying. The pony princesses watched, almost disregarding the weapons aimed at them as the contraptions opened up, each disgorging a trio of humans, as well as a few more guards in combat gear and UN blue helmets.

Through it all, Celestia remained in place, still watching despite the trails of dust whipped up around them, still exuding an air of calm control. Her chest remained puffed out. She barely blinked, her lilac eyes remained the cold steel they had always been, even as the six humans approached with their guards flanking around the mares to add to the ridiculous amount of weapons already being aimed at them.

Celestia didn’t flinch as the group from the Illustrious approached, though Twilight had to suppress a gasp at seeing the olive-skinned man from her first encounter with this world’s Shining. “Huh...perhaps this world isn’t as large as I thought...” she figured, realizing she recognized every human in the group approaching them.

The group neared with equal parts trepidation and barely-concealed hatred. Twilight licked her lips and swallowed. It all came down to this, this meeting with the same group that had held her and Celestia not long before. Would that she be anywhere else…

“I take it you’ve been following my work?” Celestia said, voice raised slightly above the whirr of the helicopter blades.

The group paused. One of the darker-skinned men in the back glared at her as if he wouldn’t mind seeing her skinned and turned into a rug for his living room. But the younger man, the one with pale skin and brown hair, stepped forward. “I was actually around in London, are you familiar with a Mrs. Bradford?”

Celestia’s smile could have drowned out her own star. “I am!” She said. “Or at least, with her husband.”

The man nodded, still watching her evenly. “The smart thing to do would be to take you in!” He shouted, voice booming above the crowd. “To see you in chains, make sure the world won’t know the same horror it did five years ago!”

Celestia nodded at this, but her expression never changed. “So why haven’t you?”

He didn’t respond for a moment, but finally he said: “You asked us for trust! And you said you were coming here! That doesn’t sound like the work of someone trying to build an army again!”

Celestia’s smile widened even more greatly, and somehow, Twilight thought she saw a tear form in the corner of her eye, though that could easily be explained away by the dust. “You can speak for all humanity?”

At that, the pale-skinned man guffawed. “Nobody can, least of all me. But we have friends who can at least give you some time to do your work.” At that, his expression turned grim, even more serious than it had been before. “Was what you said in the video true? Can you bring them back!?”

Celestia inhaled, and then, in a voice that sounded above all others: “I can!”

There was a heartbeat of silence, and then, the crowd gathered near the rising fences roared, stepping forward, moving with the Newfoals that thrashed and bit in their arms. The humans turned, saw the soldiers struggling to contain them, more guards moving from leveling their weapons on the princesses to focusing on crowd control, then the pale-skinned man turned back.

“We’re going to keep this organized!” He shouted. “But if you can do it, then we’ll help you!”

That smile beamed its beautiful light, and Celestia stepped forward, offering her hoof. “It is an honor to have your trust, sir...”

“Preston!” He shouted, extending a hand and shaking the hoof. “David Preston!”

She smiled up at him. “Mr. Preston, if I may be so astute, nothing about this seems very official.”

“Well, it’s not exactly!” He replied with a smile that rather suddenly spread to the faces of his co-workers, but for one dark-skinned man who stood in the back, still glowering at her. “But I say screw it, our jobs are probably hosed anyway…might as well go out with a bang.”

With a wave, the soldiers at the newly-erected gates parted, and the first group of people came through, holding friends, relatives, and former lovers, hoping to make them whole again. Twilight let out a shivering breath. “Here we go...” she muttered.

“Stay strong, Twilight,” Celestia said as she ducked back into the tent. “We need our strength now more than ever.”

Twilight sighed as the next group filed in: a young man, carrying a yellow Newfoal in his arms, stepping into the tent. He set the small pony down, letting it settle with big, blank eyes before Celestia restrained it in her magic and stepped in from a flap on the other side of the tent. As it thrashed around for freedom, glaring at them the entire time, the young man stepped back and said something in his native language.

“He said this was his fiance,” the other young man with the blue UN armband and olive skin translated for her. “He asks us please to bring her back.”

Twilight nodded. It was a story she’d heard far too many times to count now. And these were just the ones with relatives. How many Newfoals sat forgotten and abandoned in shelters the world over? How many here languished on the streets, nameless, their friends and family wiped out by the attack? How many didn’t even have friends, and had become Newfoals voluntarily in hopes of a new life? She didn’t know, and a part of her knew her heart would break if she ever found out.

Celestia merely nodded and stepped closer. “Thank you, Mr. Li,” she said quietly as she inclined her horn towards the Newfoal. “Twilight? If you will.”

Twilight nodded, astounded at the patience Celestia still showed even after how many of these they had done. Even with the ease they had developed for it, she was starting to feel the first signs of magical exhaustion creep into the corners of her mind. But still, she dipped her horn low and felt the flux of magical energy that accompanied Celestia’s magic reaching out for her own. A moment later, there was a sound like glass breaking in her mind, and the Newfoal blinked. Celestia smiled and stepped back with her magic dissipating as the Newfoal turned to the young man she’d arrived with.

“Haru?” She asked with lips that quivered with disuse.

The young man instantly sank to his knees, tears in his eyes as he embraced the Newfoal. Turning away, Twilight bit her lip. As the young man’s cries turned into sobs of joy, she thought back to that moment on the beach, when she’d questioned everything they were doing. How had she ever considered that evil bitch right for even a nanosecond? How could she have ever entertained the notion that these empty shells might be better than the fully-sapient monkeys she had seen all over?

As the pair left, cradling eachother, Celestia smiled to her, then frowned at the deep crinkle in Twilight’s forehead. “Twilight?”

Looking up, Twilight blinked. “Oh, pardon me, I was just...lost in thought.”

Celestia could only smile evenly. “We can take a break if you want.”

After a moment, Twilight shook her head. “No. We need to keep going.”

Celestia only nodded with that kind, even smile still on her face. “Very well, but don’t push yourself too hard, my dear student.”

Twilight smiled back, only motioning for the next Newfoal to be brought in.

James’s stomach gave a little twist as he turned to the Old Man. “Now?”

The Old Man grinned back, eyes lit up with a fire that frankly, terrified him. “Now.”

James nodded and slunk back into the shadows, scooping up an iron bar leaning against the scaffolding. He walked along into the construction site, running the bar along the support struts, letting its clanging reverberate through the metal structure. Even as he walked, he heard the shuffling from behind him. Human bodies traced out by the tarps, climbing from hiding spaces to spill onto the walkway behind him, hands reaching, limbs stretching, men and women all quietly rising to their feet to fall in behind the American who led them. For a foolish moment, James thought he could just lead them away. Just keep walking out one of the fire exits and lead them right back to the docks, maybe even charter a boat back to the states. But he knew all he’d earn would be a moment of delay before someone else took his place. Hell, maybe there’d even be someone waiting for him at the docks with knife meant for his stomach. Wouldn’t put it past the Old Man. He turned at the last moment, down a new part of the walkway, heading deeper into the more finished part of the site.

In a large, concrete room, deep within the endless walkways and metal scaffolding, James dropped the bar and stepped up to a wooden crate with the logo for Colt on it. He popped the lid open, letting it creak on hinges rusted from days in a rusty cargo ship’s hold. He let out a breath, letting in the scent of sawdust and cordite. The sleek, black forms of the weapons at his feet greeted him in the dim light. He reached in, wrapped his hand around the barrel, pulled it out. AR-15. Old, but still very dangerous, and plentiful back home. One of the most versatile weapons platforms to ever see the civilian market.

He looked around again, holding up the weapon just over his head. He didn’t even need to look back, as it was grabbed from his hand. He heard the shuffling behind him, the creak of more hinges, the first clicks of magazines sliding into place, of actions being worked and checked, of grenades and extra mags being slid into pockets. His head worked on a swivel, gazing over the multitudes of boxes being opened, lining every wall in the room. Of watching an army of madmen prepping to march.

“Umm...” someone behind him cleared his throat. Without a word, James reached in again, and pulled out the next rifle.

Chapter XL: Ambush

Dave leaned against a lightpole, watching the impromptu line stream by, thumbing the Preston Express on his hip. He’d been nervous, bringing out a weapon like that given the stipulations of the contract he’d signed with the UNCDI way back when, but at the end of the day he’d figured he could play into the stereotype of the well-armed American if anyone asked.

He took a drag off the cigarette between his lips, then offered it up to Lisa at his right. She grunted her thanks, and took a drag herself. Oddly enough, neither she nor the other ambassadors had even asked about it. Maybe the American stereotype was playing to his favor this time around? Maybe. He sort of hoped somebody would ask why it was there though, then he could give a casual little wave and say ‘I’m American.’ Maybe throw in a wink and cocky smile too, would that look cool? Or more douchey?

“What’re you thinking?” She finally spoke up, startling him.

He sighed. “I’m thinking she’s either pulling the best long-con ever, or...”

“...Or this is legit?”

He nodded. “And damn if I want to believe it. After all this time, I want to.”

“But you don’t want to at the same time, because what if you’re just bein’ naive?” She added, watching him through the haze of secondhand smoke. “What if it’s just the naive part that wants to believe the Newfoals can come back, and we can have a relationship with the ponies that isn’t maintained with peacekeepers and foreign aid?”

He blinked after a moment, then took the cigarette back and eyed it.

“Don’t worry, yank. Just had way too much time to think back on the boat, is all.” Lisa assured him with a grin.

He chuckled and put the cig to his lips, giving it another puff. “I’ll take your word for it, at least until ya drop and start spazzing out while screamin’ about the fish in your head.”

She giggled at that. Another group stepped forward. Another set of vacant, multicolored eyes shuffled by. And after a few minutes, another tiny, multicolored shape trotted past with a hoof held in a local’s hand.

“Damn,” he muttered.

“It really is too good to be true.” Lisa added.

Dave was about to turn, to agree, when the hair stood up on the back of his neck. When he turned, he’d noticed something. His head whipped around. For a second there, he would have sworn they were being watched. And not in a good way, but the way a lion eyed up a gazelle in a National Geographic special. But the owner of those eyes had apparently melted back into the crowd.

Old instincts roared into overdrive. Without a second thought, he stepped away from the lightpole, wading through the line, eyes scanning wildly: side to side, and up and down. If he was wrong, he could just head back to Lisa with an apology, maybe say he thought he saw Anton waving him over and didn’t want to bother her. But if he was right…

He paused. A man shifted in a hoodie ahead of him. He stood alone, blending in with the bulging, flowing river of humanity in the line. To most people, the guy was just another part of the tide. But to David, who saw the look in his eyes and the way the man’s hand had bunched up around something in his pockets…

He edged forward, tried to make it a little further ahead, shuffling past tired, old faces that wore hopeful eyes for the first time in years, accompanied by wide, empty eyes that looked at him with absolutely nothing at all. The figure kept shuffling away, deeper into the crowd.

“Hey,” Dave shouted, finally maneuvering his way into a relatively clear spot, hand reaching out. “Hey!”

The man finally paused, and turned. Dave gazed into that hoodie, into those cold eyes he recognized from multiple POW camps during his tour, and then he looked down, and his stomach twisted. He could finally see what the guy had been fiddling with in his hoodie.

It wasn’t a gun.

It was a detonator.

The man wasn’t as fat as he looked.

He had time to whip his hand down to his holster before what felt like the fist of God swatted him off his feet like a fly. And he knew no more.

Andre’s head bolted up, his stomach slamming into the pavement. He had just been gazing out over another group filing out of the tent, leaving for a newer, better life with someone they had thought lost, when the explosion rocked the camp’s entrance. He hesitated for a moment only, then the old instincts from the Legion kicked in and his head started looking all around.

Francis ducked out of the tent, breathing hard. “What the hell is happening!?”

“No idea,” Andre grimaced as a couple of their boys in blue ran past, M4-2’s out and in their arms. “Weren’t...Lisa and David up there?”

At that, a gunshot rang out, followed by a burst of them, the sound of automatic fire unmistakable to their ears.

“Oh...shit...” Francis muttered.

“Guns...” Andre gasped, mind already going back to the pistol on David’s hip. “We need guns. Now.”

An elegant, white head poked out of the tent flap. “What was that?” Celestia asked in surprise. She was flanked by Akshat, echoing her concern. Behind them, Chen peered out with a blank, shocked look on his face.

“Stay in there.” Andre hissed back as he took off with Francis, shouting over his shoulder: “And keep your heads down!”

“We’ll be right back!” Francis insisted, waving the humans back. After a moment, Akshat ducked back into the tent, ushering the princess in with him. That done, the pair ran off, at least somewhat assured that the group they were leaving behind would be safe.

David sat up, his head spinning, ears ringing. He blinked. His head turned slightly to the left, only for a ratchet of pain to shoot up his neck and into his skull. He winced, reached up a hand to touch it, and came back with blood.

Panic started to rise in his chest, even amidst the ringing still circling around in his head, but he fought it back down. Head wounds bled a lot, he knew this. Didn’t mean it was serious. Of course, didn’t mean he was safe either. Just meant he had to not panic, get help.

He slowly pressed himself up, carefully maneuvering to his hands and knees and slowly rising to his feet. His head reeled, and he stumbled with a muttered “Shit.” It finally occurred to him that someone was probably trying to kill him and he should probably arm himself. Again, his hand made it to the pistol’s holster when a loud click sounded behind him. He knew that click far too well, had heard it more times than any human should hear it: the action on an assault rifle.

He turned, hand still resting on his grip, to the grungy-looking teenager with the rifle leveled on his skull. Suddenly, the ringing in his ears vanished, his body sliding immediately into survival mode. His hand left the pistol and rose with its twin.

Holding the rifle by its grip, just inches from the bottom of David’s chin, the teen reached across into his holster, then backed away, tossing the Preston Express to the side. He still couldn’t hear it clatter to the cement, but Dave worried absurdly about what the concrete would do to the custom paint job. He swallowed.

Somewhere in the smoke, Lisa stumbled towards them, limping on one badly-torn leg. She paused. The rifleman stepped back from David, whipped the gun around on her, then quickly switched back to him, keeping them both at bay.

“Fuckin’ stooges,” the teen scoffed, in English of all things, glaring down his sights.

“H-hey...” Dave kept his hands up, trying to look non-threatening. “Listen, shit doesn’t hafta go down like this.”

By talking, the teen kept his eyes on him. By talking, Lisa had a chance to run. Slowly, the rifle’s sights started waving towards him more than they did Lisa. Swallowing, Dave let out a breath. “Look, I’m just trying to do my job here, I don’t...”

“Shut the fuck up.” The kid hissed, eyes focused on him now. That was good. Lisa could get away. Get help. “You fuckin’ smurfs are all the same. Ready to bend over and take it from the white whore all over again.”

Dave kept his mouth shut. Nothing he could say or do at this point was going to keep this kid from squeezing his trigger. He breathed in, and he breathed out, gazed into those bloodshot, manic eyes, saw the kid just psyching himself up. In the end, he closed his eyes. Looking down that barrel and knowing what was about to come out of it was just too much.

The loud crack of a gunshot rang out. Dave wobbled on his feet.

He opened his eyes as the shot echoed off. The teen laid on the ground, wide eyes now sitting on either side of a gaping bullethole in the middle of his forehead. His body gave a final spasm, twitched. The rifle had fallen to the side. Lisa stood over him, smoke drifting off the end of a Glock compact, her eyes a cold steel.

A soldier’s eyes.

“Wha?” He managed as she quickly circled around, looking for his gun.

“No time for questions, Yank,” she said, scooping up the Preston Express from the pavement. “You confident with this thing?”

He let out a breath, and the Marine took over. His eyes returned that steely glare. “Yeah,” he said, plucking the 1911 out of her hand.

“Thank God.” She turned, motioning along the bodies covering the street. Somewhere in the dust and smoke, rapid-fire gunshots echoed back to them. Screams. The wail of sirens. All too familiar.

Nodding, the pair set off, weaving between chunks of concrete and shattered bodies. Familiar instincts were taking over. A pop sounded, something cracked against the building to his left. He barely even looked, just turned and squeezed the trigger a couple times. Someone in a t-shirt with another AR fell with two holes in his chest. A few of his buddies came rushing out of an alleyway. Without another word, he and Lisa darted back into an alleyway of their own. Feet pounding through a puddle. Breathing evening out. The Marine was just about back. Ducking down, rounding a corner, a volley of shots behind them. Head on a swivel, keep looking, keep moving. The pistol rose at a shape in a window. Finger paused. Old lady poking her head out. Jesus Christ, Grandma, you hear gunshots and that’s your first instinct!?

Keep moving. Lisa panting beside him. Had to keep moving in the direction of the camp, meet with the others.

Lisa dove to a wall next to a dumpster, pistol raised over its lid. David rocketed in beside her, covering the far entrance of the alley. Both panted, breaths heaving in and out, their aims wavering just so slightly as the adrenaline finally wore off.

Footsteps ran past the mouth of the alley. Dave’s breath hitched. He squeezed the grip of the pistol. Behind him, he heard Lisa shift, pressing herself down to stay out of the way of any stray shots while keeping the other end of the alley cleared. Three men ran past, all wielding AR’s, none even sparing them a glance. A few moments passed, and David exhaled.

He slumped to the pavement, still keeping an eye on the alley. Water filthy with oil slick seeped into his dress pants, sending a shiver up his spine as it chilled his legs. Still, his head swam. What had...what was that? Lisa wasn’t supposed to do that! She was the grounded town girl from London who sang bad karaoke at the pub every other Friday once she got enough gin and tonic in her, not the cold killer he’d just watched! How did...what did he even say here? What did he even do?

“...you see that old lady back there?” She guffawed after a moment.

He forced back a sigh of relief as he quietly thanked whoever was listening. “Yeah...fuckin’ civvies, man.”

“Like, Christ! You’d think she’d have a few more brain cells after survivin’ this dump so long!” She guffawed.

“Damn, if I heard gunshots and that was my reaction, my gramma woulda slapped me up the back of my head!”

“You’d bloody-well deserve it!”

They cackled a bit, easing off the adrenaline, and then, the switch was thrown again. Her gaze lowered upon him. “Ready?”

He clenched the pistol that much tighter and nodded.

They stood again, Dave ignoring the moistness that made the back of his pants cling to his thighs as they crept along the alleyway. Lisa raised a hand to stop him, and he perked an ear. The telltale shuffle of someone moving along the street. He grimaced, raised the pistol and glanced at her. She nodded, raised her own weapon, and swept around the corner in a heartbeat.

She stopped. Her eyes widened for a second, then her pistol dropped to her side. “For fuck’s sake...” she growled. “Is everyone a secret badass here!?”

David rounded the corner, the pistol lowering to his side. His eyes widened at the sight waiting for him in the street: Andre and Francis, wielding AR’s, likely scooped up from the street. For a second, he thought they might have just picked them up to protect themselves, but then he saw the way they were held: the surety of the grips they held on the weapons, the way their fingers were positioned just outside the trigger guards in such a way to avoid accidental discharge, but allow them to immediately slide back in as needed.

And then there were the eyes.

Did he even need to go into the eyes? The cold calculation of veterans they held? That immediate flat stoicism in the face of fire only training could give?

Unlike Lisa’s outrage, he could only stare at them with bulging eyes and suck in a breath. “Buh?” He managed.

Before he could expand on that nugget of wisdom, a burst of automatic fire sounded in the distance. The pistol rose in David’s grip almost by itself.

“C’mon!” Lisa shouted, her confused outrage apparently forgotten as she dashed down the street, the three men following close behind. David’s head still whirled, but he forced those feelings down in favor of keeping his eyes locked straight ahead. The gunfire continued, telling him an all-out battle had broken out somewhere down the road. And as they passed along a street still covered in smoldering rubble, all other thoughts vanished from David’s mind to be replaced by a need to get out alive.

Chapter XLI: The Russian and the Brazilian

Anton didn’t know who he was fighting from the start. He just knew he’d been walking along the line, keeping an eye on the people waiting to get to their loved ones, then there was an explosion, a burst of gunfire, and the UN mook next to him had gone down with his brains turned into a red mist that hung in the air for way too long.

He also didn’t know how Felipe had jumped into action so fast, scooping up the now-dead UN guard’s rifle to immediately return fire as the crowd devolved into a scattered panic. Now, he was grateful for it. His aging reflexes probably would have died with the UN guard if it’d just been him. But now, he was still standing, still breathing, and most importantly, still fighting.

They ran together, dress shoes pounding on filthy tile along hallways lit by yellowed, blinking fluorescent panels. They turned a corner, pausing just long enough to perk their ears for the sounds of boots on tile behind them. Anton knew they needed cover, any cover. His head whirled around, and settled on a door tucked in the corner of the hall. “There!” He hissed, pointing. Felipe only nodded, shouldering the UN mook’s rifle as he ran. He kept up his momentum long enough to slam through the door into what Anton assumed was a broom closet, dress shoe taking it down with a single kick next to the dinged brass knob. The Russian grunted, ducking down to follow inside. Only instead of immediately bouncing off a bit of shelving as he might have expected, he tripped forward, right into the face of a very surprised elderly man.

“Uhhhh...” he started as Felipe slammed the door shut, breathing heavily.

The man spat out a string of high-speed Japanese. Anton raised his hands. “Easy, easy, we...we didn’t mean to...”

A high-pitched scream added to the yelling, and Anton’s heart sank to see a couple of little girls, no more than ten, gazing up at him from a ratty old futon in the corner. He swallowed. “Oh, God no...”

“Ivan!” Felipe barked, holding the door shut with one hand as something slammed against the other side. “We have company!”

A stray round blasted through the cheap wood. In a flash, Felipe hoisted the rifle up in one hand and he twisted the knob in the other, ducking low. Anton followed suit, ducking on instinct as Felipe threw the door open, blasting away into the startled pair of terrorists waiting on the other side. The sound from the small burst of rounds filled the tiny apartment like it was an echo chamber. The first fell instantly, hitting the filthy tile like a sack of potatoes. The second man, a larger guy in a balaclava, hit the tile, and immediately started wailing. He clenched at his arm, a pistol fallen next to his head, his wails filling the hall as he rolled around with blood pooling around him.

Another shot sounded from Felipe, and he fell still. The little girl screamed again. Anton sighed, watching Felipe nudge the toe of the dead man’s boot out with his foot, then close the door. “Here’s hoping that was the last of them...” he muttered.

The door secure for now, Anton turned to the little girls, still clenching each other, eyeing the old man who now sat silently and glared, hands clenched tightly into fists. Anton sighed, motioning for the girls to rush to their...grandfather? Father? With the radiation poisoning the land, who knew? After a moment, both leapt to their feet and scampered to the old man’s side as he slumped against the wall.

Anton sighed, then holstered the pistol and stood, hands out. “Look, I am unarmed, see?” He rasped. The trio only stared up at him, the old man with that hateful glare, the girls as if he were some Japanese folk legend come to steal them away to some unknown world of spirits. He took a single step forward, but on seeing them cringe, he stepped back again. “Look, I don’t...”

A shot rang out, and the glass in a single, shuttered window in the wall shattered. Something burned across the tip of Anton’s nose, and in a split second, he realized the difference between him dying on the floor of this shitty apartment and still breathing here had been that little step back. His hands went right back to the holster as he fell back, ducking low under the countertop of the tiny kitchenette, even as Felipe whipped up the rifle and returned fire.

Anton breathed. The pistol felt all the heavier in his hands. Then, he whipped up, blasting away. He didn’t care where he was shooting. Just felt good to be shooting. A roar rose in his throat. He let it out. A few bullets out the window, then duck back down. Another burst of bullets rang through the apartment. The Japanese family screamed.

Taking a moment to breathe, he gazed across at the old man, saw the hatred in those wrinkled eyes glaring back from under furry eyebrows. The aging Russian forced himself to meet those eyes, his gaze slowly wandering over the two little girls...so young, dressed in rags, so young…

...not too young to have their skulls split by the treads of a T-90...

He snarled, glared up. “They give up yet!?” He barked.

Felipe looked down at him levelly. “I don’t know, why don’t you poke your head up and find out?”

Despite the cold snarl in his voice, Anton couldn’t help but smile. “Good to know you still have that old sense of humor, comrade.” He chuckled as he scooped up his pistol. Looking around, he reached for a dingy baseball cap lying on the floor, probably knocked there by the frantic dash into the apartment.

“Ah…” one of the little girls let out a despaired grunt, and Anton paused. Sighing, the old Russian reached past the cap, grabbing up an old dishrag. Felipe arched an eyebrow as he started wrapping it around the barrel.

“With any luck, they’ll think Akshat is in here.” He mumbled before poking the barrel up over the countertop. A few seconds passed, then a shot blasted into the apartment. Then a second. With the third, a streak appeared in the side of the rag, and Anton lowered the rifle with a sigh.

“Three shots...thought they would be better marksmen.” He grumbled, uncoiling the rag.

“What makes you say that?” Felipe asked.

“Did you not hear their accents?” He sighed. “Americans. They’re supposed to be pretty good with guns, even the civvies.”

Felipe paused at that, turning to him. “Pretty astute for a drunk.”

Anton only smiled, as if Felipe had just told a joke only he knew the punchline to. “Never underestimate a Russian, even when he is on the drink.”

Felipe looked like he was just beginning to come up with a retort, when Anton raised his hand to quiet him. The pair paused, looked up, listening. A quiet rustle sounded in the hallway, just outside. They glanced at eachother. Anton let out a tiny curse with his next breath, more in his throat than an actual phrase. He raised a hand to the family, and suppressed a relieved sigh when the girls quieted down. A shard of broken glass crunched under someone’s foot. He swallowed, and eased himself back to his feet, keeping crouched low from the sniper.

He bit the inside of his cheek. This could get very bad, very fast. If they were a touch slow, even a sniper as bad as the one covering them could get a lucky shot off. But rushing forward without any idea what they’d be rushing into was even more of a recipe for disaster. His teeth massaged his cheek, gnawing away at it as he tried to remember what the hallway looked like. He knew there was a stairwell, one window at the end...and...was there a broken light overhead, hanging down a little? Or did he see that in a movie the hallway reminded him of? Shit, was he even thinking of the hall outside?

“Anton?” A familiar voice called to him. “You in there, you commie bastard?”

A pause, his brain turning over in his skull. “Marcus! To think this old Russian would be so happy to hear a Yank!”

This was met with a bit of a chortle. “Right back atcha, you Red prick! You got Felipe with ya!?”

“Y-yes!” The Brazilian spoke up. “I’m here!”

“Good!” The doorknob started to turn. “We’ll just...”

“Don’t!” Anton shouted, and was relieved when the knob sprang back into place. “We have a sniper problem in here, he’s got the room covered!”

“Aww hell...” Dave muttered. “You got another way outta there?”

“This room is a fucking broom closet. These people are lucky to have the window.” Anton explained with a grumble. “Our only grace is that our new friends have a shit sniper on their team.”

There were a few moments, some quiet whispering, then Lisa spoke up: “Anton? I’m gonna get you outta there, okay?”

Anton blinked at that. “I have no idea how you think you can do that, but whatever you think you’ve got, go ahead!”

Nothing for a long time, except for the shuffling of feet outside. A door slammed in the next room over. Anton bolted up. “What was that!?”

“Nothing to worry about!” Dave shouted back.

There was shuffling in the next room. Then, silence. Endless silence. He thought he might hear a pin drop. Somehow, he thought he could hear breathing through the wall, something being steadied. The air itself seemed to tense up, ready for release.

Then, a loud crack split the silence, echoing into the distance.

Another long moment, then Lisa shouting: “You’re clear!”

“Really?” Anton shouted back.

“No, I thought it’d be a wonderful little joke to watch your head get blown off,” Lisa said in that natural, sarcastic way all Brits had that allowed you to hear them rolling their eyes. “Yes, you’re clear, now get your ass up!”

Anton and Felipe stared at eachother. Anton shrugged. “O-okay...” he replied at the unsaid agreement that passed between them. Finally, he rose to his feet, hurrying over to the door. His legs stiff, he didn’t move as quickly as he would have liked maybe at the pace of a good jog. But nothing happened, no shots echoed out, no shock to his back and sudden feeling of coldness in his limbs. He just walked out into the hallway to three smiling faces.

He looked at the group. Francis, Andre, David, Lisa, and now, him and Felipe…all armed, all with looks in their eyes that told him they were at ease here. He looked to David, mouth working. “What…”

He raised a hand. “I know, we’re putting some shit together right now. For now, though, we gotta get back to Akshat and Chen.”

“Looking around,” Lisa said dryly, “They might be doing just fine on their own.”

Chapter XLII: Capture

“What’s going on, Princess?”

Celestia didn’t look away from the tent flap. She and the tall, dark-skinned man with the cloth on his head had kept steely glares on the tent’s entrance since the initial attack. There was a glint of silver in the corner of her eye, and she spared a glance to see the long, curved blade sliding into his hand. She kept him in her periphery as she turned and shook her head.

“I don’t know...” she finally said. Her horn ignited to summon the shield that had saved them both not too long ago, but she blinked in surprise as all she got were a few weak sparks. The man turned to her, also surprised.

“T-Tachyon Inhibitors?” He gasped, followed by a long string of words in his native tongue that probably translated to a lot of cursing. The olive-skinned man poked his head in from outside, apparently attracted by his teammate’s cursing.

“Tachyon Inhibitors.” Was all the dark-skinned man said.

The olive-skinned man took a moment to realize the significance of this, then he swallowed, looking over to Celestia. “They’re here for her.”

“Yes.” He stood, ushering his partner inside. “But we cannot let them get her.

“They’ll have the front of the camp covered by now, the only way we get out of this alive is to fight...I think I saw a small ammo dump the other Smurfs were setting up.”

The dark-skinned man turned to him, seemed to process for a second. “How far?”

“Other side of camp, maybe five – ten minutes if we run.”

“If we run...” the dark-skinned man looked at her, his eyes calculating. Celestia met his gaze, then stood, wings tucking in against her barrel, inclining her head towards the flap.

“Don’t look around. Don’t stop for anything. Don’t do anything but run.” He said.

Celestia nodded.

“I mean it: there will likely be many people hurt out there. They could very easily be traps. You must ignore them and keep running.”

“I...” she swallowed. Doing nothing while someone was in danger went against everything she held dear, but if this man was going to risk himself to save her, she had no right to put him in even more danger. “I will try.”

He nodded once, then shuffled out of the tent, keeping his head low. The olive-skinned man did the same. Celestia looked to Twilight, who gave her a nod back, but kept her face in that screwed-up half-tremble they both knew she did when she was just trying to put on a brave face. With a smile and a quick nuzzle, Celestia crawled out of the tent, emulating the humans as best she could. Outside, the tent city had grown eerily silent. An errant breeze whipped loose fabric around, a tent flap nearby waving a bit in the wind. One of the big-tired military vehicles sat in the middle of the dirt path, empty, it’s side scorched from the explosion. The olive-skinned man pointed. Celestia let out a breath. This would be it.

They crept towards the vehicle, heads down, sticking to the side of the path. It almost felt ludicrous: there was no cover here, nothing they could do would make them less visible, even the mud and dirt on her flanks would do little to hide her pure-white coat. Yet here they were, crawling around in this stupid little exercise in futility. They were sitting ducks, and somehow, she saw the humans knew it too.

A cry filled the air, someone saying something in the native language. She folded her ears down, an icy feeling filling her chest. The cry cut off suddenly as they made it to the first destination. Cowering down as they stopped to rest behind the vehicle, she suddenly felt very small. Smaller than she’d felt in centuries. She looked around at the others, fanning a wing over Twilight's whithers, if only to feel like she was doing something.

“Anything from here to there?” The brown-skinned man asked.

The olive-skinned man crouched as he slowly peeked around the corner, and cursed under his breath. “Nothing...just flat road for another hundred meters, then a street we have to cross.”

The brown-skinned man huffed, almost as if he were out of breath, but he focused back on the princess with a look that informed her they were going to make it, didn’t matter if the universe was against them, they were not going to fall short. Simple as that. “We’ll have to run it, simple as that.”

Twilight shivered in Celestia’s grip, but nodded. “We can run.” Celestia said, giving a perfect little smile practiced through centuries of diplomatic overtures.

“Okay...” the brown-skinned man started breathing heavily, his eyes igniting as he turned back, but the olive-skinned raised a hand as they gazed out, towards the squat, cinder-block building just outside the gates.

Celestia squinted. Something was moving in a window. She strained her eyes, thought she could make out one of those blue UN helmets...was it…

A smile crossed her face as hope, real hope, blossomed in her heart. “A soldier! One of them is still here!” She gasped at the small figure in blue waving to them from the grimy panel window.

“Well, that’s a comfort.” The brown-skinned man looked back and smiled at her, the raw edge he’d been working up within himself suddenly relaxing to a sort of tensed ease. “Hopefully, him waving means we’re covered. Keep low, still.”

Celestia allowed a tiny swallow, and nodded as her wing retreated from Twilight’s body. “Stay close, she whispered to the smaller princess, who nodded in return.

“Okay...” the olive-skinned man inhaled. Exhaled. “Go.”

They kept hunched, moving, legs all pumping as fast as they could. Celestia forced her head up, eyes swiveling for the faintest hint of motion. Was that shadow a gunman creeping into position, or was it just being cast by a tent flap waving in the wind? What about that mound? Did she really see the barrel of a gun rushing out of sight behind it?

Don’t. Freaking yourself out, filly. Keep running. Keep pushing.

She almost cried out in relief when the dirt road gave way to that gray stone. They were most of the way there. Here, she allowed her gaze to lock in on the front of the window. The soldier was...still waving at them. Not moving. Still, that smile on his face was a friendly welcome, it almost seemed like he was inviting her in for tea. They picked up the pace. She poured more speed into her movements, her wings twisting behind her to scoop up Twilight as she broke into a gallop, feeling a certain security at the mare’s weight on her back. Up ahead, the humans had broken into a dead sprint, not even looking back as the building’s door drew near. Twenty meters. Now fifteen. Ten. Five…

Even as she reached for the handle and slammed it down under her hoof, time seemed to slow down. She was so close to safety, but a single shot from a gunman she missed could make it all for naught. Her hoof gripped the handle. Twisted. She leaned her weight in. The door wasn’t budging. The door wasn’t budging. The door wasn’t...

The door flew open and the group scrambled inside. She twisted. “Close i--” she needn’t have bothered, as the olive-skinned man whirled around to boot the thing shut. She let out a laugh. “Thank goodness...” she sighed.

“We made it.” The olive-skinned man chortled as he looked up. “We--”

As he looked up, he paused. His eyes widened. One look at that face made Celestia’s blood run cold, though it nearly stopped running completely when that familiar ch-chnk! sounded behind her. Slowly, surely, she turned. The UN soldier stood there, the corner of his mouth quivering and his eyes shining in the dimming light. Three men surrounded him, one pressing an AR to his spine while the other two leveled pistols on the newcomers.

“Oh...” she whispered, suddenly feeling very small again.

He really should have known better. Akshat should have known things were looking a little too good for him. As the man in the UN helmet stumbled towards the group, shoved by one of the gunmen, he cursed himself. Of course it was a trap, fucking of course! A child would’ve seen it! But he’d let his guard down, he’d been playing the part of a civvie so long clearly some part of him had actually believed it. And now look where that got him.

He caught the UN soldier, who trembled in his grasp as the trio of gunmen leveled their rifles on the group. He couldn’t help a slight trembled in his shoulders, staring down the barrels of those guns. The one on the far right took a step back, kicking a duffel bag into view.

“Open that.” He commanded from behind the sights of his weapon.

Eyes locked on him the entire time, Akshat stooped and unzipped the bag. Inside, he found a small ring with barbs coating the interior and a large, heavy collar attached to a chain that could only fit one being in the room. His hands started to sweat.

“Put them on her,” the gunman barked.

Letting out a breath, Akshat slowly stood with the objects in his hands. He fought to keep his breathing even. The princess’s lip trembled, but she closed her eyes, bowing her head for him to reach her horn. Even then he almost had to go up on the balls of his feet to reach, but he got the suppressor over the tip with ease, and then it slid down with only a few momentary pauses as it clamped on. “Further.” The gunman commanded.

Akshat pressed down, cupping both his hands around the ring, putting his weight behind it until Celestia even stumbled back. “Th-that’s it!” He said. “It will not go anymore!”

There was a loud click, and something cold and metal pressed against the back of his head. He could feel it through his turban. For a second, he wasn’t a man standing in a room surrounded by madmen and terrorists, but a little boy running through his village, chasing after a soccer ball as dust caked itself all over his shorts and legs. This was it, he believed. Clearly here was where he died. Then the man stood back, and his foot tapping the dirty tile was like a beacon that brought Akshat back into the present day.

“Now the collar.” The gunman commanded.

Without hesitating, Akshat scooped up the collar. This was easier, as it simply hinged open and had a little hoop for a padlock, already perfectly fitted for the princess’s long, slender neck. As he latched it shut and bent to scoop up a padlock from the bag, a tremble went up his arm from the neck in his grasp.

He stood up again, holding the padlock up, moving slowly to keep from making any sudden moves and making sure his hands were in sight as much as possible. Still, as he brought his hands around to hook the shackle of the lock into the hasp of the collar, he laid his one hand on her. She paused, and her massive, vermillion eyes turned to meet his. Letting in a calming breath, he nodded to her. Her breathing slowly spaced out, evening itself until she closed her eyes and nodded. He felt a twinge of hurt then: those eyes had been the loveliest he’d ever gazed into.

Shaking it off, he quickly clenched the padlock in his grasp. The click as the shackle locked shut seemed loud enough to drown out everything else in the room. He figured if the gunmen had wanted to kill him right then and there, it would have drowned out even the gunshots. But instead, there was the clomp of shoes on tile again. He tensed, preparing for that awful feeling of death pressing up against the back of his skull again, but it never came. Instead, he could feel it hovering a few inches from his back as the gunman reached around him for the princess’s new leash.

He debated attacking just then. This close, there was a chance he could spin around, disarm the bastard and kill the others with this guy’s rifle. But he looked up into the princess’s vermillion eyes again, now open and shimmering with fear. His gaze darted around her to Chen, who seemed focused on the floor, not even glancing up. No. Too risky. These guys might be leading them all off elsewhere, their odds of survival would be better during a transfer than attacking unarmed and hoping to win before they could let off a shot.

The gunman stepped back, and the princess stumbled forward, the chain leash rattling and clinking as he dragged her along. He led her towards the back door as the other two kept their weapons trained on the group. For her part, the princess still stepped regally, her head held high, but someone who knew what they were looking for could still see the tremble in her royal hoofsteps. It made Akshat’s stomach turn to see that kind of fear, perfectly masked as it was.

“You lot are gonna follow,” the gunman explained, still leading the princess out the back while motioning to the three humans and pony that remained. “Any sudden movements, you die.”

Staring down the barrels of the other two gunmen, Akshat didn’t doubt it, not even a little bit.

The group stepped carefully, the UN soldier trembling and needing to almost be carried by Chen at his side. Feet trembled as they passed the gunmen, who did their part by making sure their barrels never even wavered. Twilight still remained as close to Celestia as possible, trailing narrowly behind her, following as they were all ushered out the door to a back alleyway, where a truck idled.

A man with graying hair peered out of the truck, and he flashed a grin of yellowed teeth so large, Akshat wouldn’t have had trouble believing his intention was to eat the ponies. “Gotcha, you cunt,” he hissed, also in English, Akshat noticed. American accents all around. “You white-faced whore, we gotcha.”

Celestia didn’t respond, only keeping her head up as she stepped regally into the truck, needing to bow her head slightly to accommodate her horn. The old man laughed a little more as another man, this one clearly Japanese, stepped out from the darkness in the truck. His cold gaze narrowed on the princess as she was led back. There was a click, and her chain suddenly went taut. They tied her off,” Akshat realized, his nostrils flaring. They tied her off like a dog!

“Well then, missy,” the old man spat, still with that predatory grin. Fuck, Akshat wished he’d lose the grin. “Looks like we’re on top this time around, and you get to hang out in the bottom.”

Celestia just stared straight ahead, her face a neutral mask, even as Twilight tried to clamber up into the truck after her. She turned in surprise, however, when the old man held up a hand.

“Sorry, missy,” the old man said, his grin finally turning to a little scowl. “Royal guests only.”

“B-but…” Twilight babbled. “I-I’m royalty!”

That seemed to throw the old man for a loop. He paused, looking her up and down appraisingly, as if seeing her wings for the first time. Then, his look darkened. “Nice try, but this whore would never share power with someone,” he hissed, raising his boot. “Now, do you need help to get out, or…”

“No, wait!” Twilight insisted, hanging near one of Celestia’s hindlegs. “Wait, I can…”

“Twilight!”

Wings flaring in surprise, Twilight turned to Celestia, who craned her head around to gaze at her. They locked eyes for a moment, studying each other as if to remember everything about how they looked, every little detail about one another. Finally, Celestia shook her head. Sucking in a breath, Twilight nodded back, then slowly turned and stepped out of the truck with trembling hooves.

She did a good job holding back the tears as she stepped out onto the pavement. It was only when the engine revved and the truck pulled away that the first streams of them dribbled down her cheeks and onto the ground. Akshat admired her then. She seemed to be keeping in mind the gunmen still surrounding them, even then, with a pony obviously special to her being hauled off in chains.

Watching the truck round a corner, the sound of its engine drifting away amidst the twisted ruins of buildings, Akshat could focus on the gunmen remaining. Just two in all. He closed his eyes. Of course they left so little behind. They were just a couple harmless diplomats and a depowered pony princess, right? Just a couple of harmless diplomats.

He rolled his wrists, felt the blades strapped there. Just the two: not as many knives on him as he’d had in London, but hopefully enough to get the job done. He felt his breath even out. He just needed that perfect opening.

As the truck’s engine faded away, the two gunmen casually turned back to their prisoners. “Well, that settles that. Time to end this.”

Akshat’s stomach twisted. The pony gasped, ears darting up. “Wait, what!?”

“Sorry all, war is war and all that,” the other gunman said as both lowered their rifles, holding them at hip level. They stood at opposite sides of the alleyway.

Dammit, he could take out one, but he’d have to depend on a knife throw for the other, at that distance it would be tricky…

The UN soldier let out a frightened sob, “Wait!” He gasped. “You don’t have to do this!”

“Yeah,” the gunman worked the bolt on his weapon. “We do.”

“Hey,” the man right in front of Akshat turned to his buddy. His thighs tensed. “Should we split ‘em down the middle? I take the two on the left, you take the two on the right?”

“Not fair!” The other man said, turning to glare at the first man with a petulant look, like a kid hearing his brother’s first suggestion for a sharing schedule on the RC car they both got for Christmas. Akshat braced his feet and let out a breath. “That gives you the pony! You know I’ve always wanted t’get one of those technicolor freaks!”

“Well, I have too! C’mon man, that’s half the reason I signed up!”

“And it’s the whole reason I signed up!”

Akshat’s feet left the ground. A blade sang into his hand.

The gunman started to turn, his eyes bulging in surprise. The rifle started to rise in his grasp. Akshat batted it away with his free hand. One lunge, the knife was in the gunman’s throat. He twisted with his body. Arterial spray gushed out, misted over his face, making him blink. The gunman blinked in surprise as Akshat turned, free hand going for the gun…

He mistimed it. His hand clasped around air. Gasping in surprise, he twisted. “Chen! Run for—”

Arm rising as the other knife slid into his palm in a last, desperate bid to defend himself from the other gunman, Akshat turned, and there was a volley of shots. He grunted, bracing for the pain of impact. He’d had plenty of close calls before, but he’d never actually been shot. Was this what it was like? Did it start with you not even feeling anything? He hadn’t thought so, but maybe it was different for everyone. He’d been intent on throwing his last knife as his final act in the realm of the living, but thankfully, he paused.

Chen was just taking a step back, the rifle upside down in his hands, the other gunman just crumpling to the ground, face blank from the angry bulletholes blooming in his chest and throat from his own weapon. Chen stepped back, sank to one knee in a practiced motion and twisted to fire in Akshat’s direction. The first round plinked into the brickwork where the other gunman had been standing before he stopped himself. His eyes widened.

“Akshat?”

“Chen?”

“…where in fuck’s name did you learn to do that? Where did you get knives!?”

“I…uh…maybe same place you learned Krav Maga?”

Chen sucked in a breath. “It’s…Junshi Sanda…actually…”

Akshat nodded. A bit of blood ran down his sleeve.

Twilight, for her part, managed to look suitably betrayed, combined with her wide, shocked eyes. “I thought you said you were just diplomats!” She gasped.

“Yes…” Akshat said. “Yes, we did.”

A few more seconds passed, and Chen thudded a fist against his chest. “Black belt, third degree. Chinese special forces.”

After a moment, Akshat nodded and thudded his own chest. “Para SF.”

“Indian Army Special Forces?”

Akshat nodded.

Yet another moment passed. “Huh…” Chen managed.

“And...you were specifically told not to talk about it per your contract too, I take it?” Akshat added.

“Yes.”

“...somebody has a lot of explaining to do.” He looked out over the burning ruins of the city. “Think the others…?”

“No doubt. For right now though, we must find them.” Chen gave a thin smile. “Strength in numbers.”

Akshat nodded again, still looking dazed. The pair started back into the UN office first, not even gazing back as Twilight brought up the rear, stumbling in after them. “We need…” she started, still looking half-dazed.

“To return to the others,” Akshat completed for her, smiling as he watched a column of familiar, but now heavily-armed, people walking up the street. “Everything else will fall into place from there.”

Chapter XLIII: Prisoners

As far as captures went, Celestia had been through worse. Sure, this was a level of mortal danger she wasn’t quite accustomed to, but it’s not like she’d never been here before. Her initial battle with Nightmare Moon came to mind, and her more recent battle with Chrysalis at the Royal Wedding. There was another thing: a loud truck bumping along as she was left to languish in chains, surrounded by gunmen, was still a marked improvement over that awful pod Chrysalis had shoved her into. Here, at least, she wasn’t forced to bathe in her collected bodily fluids along with whatever that changeling goo was. Yeah, see? Not so bad.

She tried to keep that in mind to still her racing heart, and to keep quiet despite the bonds around her neck and the blindfold tied tightly around her head. She didn’t know how badly they needed her, after all. She could be one misstep away from a summary execution right here, in the back of this truck, surrounded by dirty metal and heavily-armed strangers.

...maybe she shouldn’t think about that if she was trying to keep calm.

She immediately honed in on the details: the smoke from the small, white sticks hanging from a couple sets of lips which hung heavy in the air, the jostle of the truck on every bump through a pothole, the roar of the engine as it occasionally revved then fell off, the acrid smell of gunsmoke she now recognized so well, drifting off recently-fired weapons just waiting to end her with a twitch of a finger...

She caught her breath. Inhaled, exhaled. Perhaps it would be best to try and empty her mind.

The truck jerked, another left, making for five so far. Her ears perked, but again she couldn’t hear anything outside over the steady rumble of the engine. She didn’t need to worry long. With a jarring thud, the truck jerked to a stop, and then a boot prodded her rib cage. She pressed herself to her hooves, trying desperately to hold back the tremor in her legs. She was jerked along by the collar, and then she was moving, forced into a trot by the steady pull at her new leash.

The ground went from metal, to gravel, then quickly to metal again. Cloth tarpaulins waved around her and whispered against her coat. And then the jeers started: savage woops and hollers, men’s voices ringing out and reverberating against the walls.

“We got ‘er! We got her!”

“Fuckin’ suck on that, bitch! Fuckin’ whore!”

“This is for Detroit, cunt! For all those people on the bridge!”

“Welcome to the HLF, you evil bitch!”

The calls faded behind her as she was bundled down a long, twisting hallway, her hooves echoing against concrete. They paused just long enough for the sound of a door opening, then she was bundled through, where the process repeated. Finally, they stopped. There was a mild jerk on her leash, and the click of a padlock somewhere nearby. She suppressed the need to gulp, knowing that would just irritate the collar against her skin. A hand clamped against her spine and pushed her down on the rough concrete, pressing her down harshly before lifting off suddenly. Boots shuffled away. And then…nothing.

She shifted uncomfortably. “Pardon me, but…what is going on?”

Something small and round pressed against the back of her skull. “We don’t answer to you, bitch, so sit there and shut the fuck up.”

The faintest whimper escaped her throat despite herself, she could only pray they didn’t hear it.

Finally, a door slammed open. Scraping sounded: not combat boots, something more casual on the concrete. No, wait. Two sets of footsteps. Two newcomers.

They stopped in front of her. After another moment, there was a low chuckle. “Well, well.”

The blindfold pulled away, and she found herself gazing into the eyes of a wrinkled old man, a great, big smile showing his yellowed teeth. Not a kind smile, though, it never reached up past the purple bags under his eyes to wrinkle the crow’s feet near his graying temples.

“I can’t even begin to describe how badly I’ve wanted this moment.” He said in a raspy, but firm, voice. “To see you here, right now, under my heel.”

Celestia swallowed. “I’m…I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are.”

The old man chuckled. “No, I expect you wouldn’t. Generals rarely know the names of every soldier they throw into battle, just like gods can hardly be expected to remember every ant they crush. But that’s the thing: sometimes, those ants come together, and they can bite.”

She swallowed again. “No, I-I’m afraid I’m not who you think I am. I couldn’t know you.”

He chuckled at that, shaking his head. “Oh, I’ve heard that old song and dance before, sweetheart. Lemme tell ya: the smurfs might be willing to believe it, but I sure as hell don’t.”

He stood, glaring down at her.

“I remember the promises she made. Global peace and prosperity, harmony with all creatures, and magic…oh the things magic could give us.” He shook his head. “No, I’ve lost too much to listen to anything you might have to say.”

After a moment, Celestia let out a breath. “I’m…sorry, for what she did to you.”

At that, the old man’s eyes blazed. A combat-booted foot lashed out against her rib cage, knocking the air out of her. Pain lashed up and down her barrel. “You’re sorry!?” He bellowed, another kick smashing into her side. “My wife, the woman who helped raise my boy, is dead, and you’re sorry!?”

Wheezing, she tried to catch her breath, the pain feeling like a ring around her lungs, squeezing them. Panic rose, suppressed only by her indomitable will, as a part of her wondered if something had been injured inside and she was now minutes from suffocating. But the pain ebbed and her wheezing slowly fell off as her breathing evened out.

“Sorry,” the old man rasped. Then, that grin rose once more as he turned to the young black man at his side. “You hear that, son? She’s sorry.”

The black man nodded, meeting the old man’s eyes, but not matching his rage. The old man didn’t seem to notice as he turned to grin down at Celestia again. “That’s m’boy, James. Adopted him after we learned ‘Lisbeth – that was her name, by the by, Elisabeth – couldn’t have none a’ her own. She figured if we couldn’t have one ourselves, we might as well give a home to a little one what needed it.”

Panting, Celestia nodded, keeping her head low. “She sounds like a good person.”

The old man huffed, breathing steadily, grin fading. “She was,” he said finally, motioning for the two guards to leave the room. “That she was.”

As the armed pair left the room, the old man turned to a small, metal cart in the corner. “See, I’m not like you, Princess.” He rasped. “Everything I had, I needed to build with my own two hands. I wasn’t just handed a crown on a silver platter, see.”

She had a moment where she thought to make a rebuttal, but thought better of it when the black man surreptitiously raised a hand and shook his head.

“Most people I know, they’re the same way. We humans have to earn our way in this world, we can’t just sing a few songs about friendship and expect everything to fall into place.” Shuffling through a pile of tools on the cart, he retrieved a pair of forceps and a scalpel, which he set aside. “Thing is, losing everything the way I did...when I looked into those big, empty eyes that used to be my wife’s...saw the technicolor abomination she’d been turned into...”

The old man paused, steadied a tremor in his hand, and continued his search.

“I lost her then, knew it before everyone else.” He turned, locked those wrinkled eyes on her as he advanced with a tray covered in medical supplies. “In a way, I’m lucky. She was one of the first, see, and the Potion wasn’t perfected yet. My ‘Lisbeth got to shuffle off her mortal coil and return to the hereafter as a proud member of Homo Sapiens, before the shit really settled in and took anything left of her. And me? I wound up finding a group of people who thought like I did. That things never should’ve gone as far as they did. That just because the bitch was locked up and Equestria got turned into a parking lot doesn’t mean shit was over. The bleedin’ hearts were already callin’ for fair treatment. ‘Equestria is an occupied nation,’ they said. ‘It oughta be rebuilt like one,’ they said.”

He leaned in close to her ear, coffee-laden breath wafting over her. “Damn fools, I said.”

He pulled back, fingers fumbling along on his tray. “Lucky your kind were so damn cute. Made most people wanna forget the war, move on, instead of finishin’ the job. Our numbers’ been in the low hundreds these past few years...”

“Y-you said you lost everything?” Celestia found herself interjecting.

The scalpel came up, faster than his trembling hands would have had her believe. “I did.” He hissed through yellowed teeth.

“Wh-what about your son?” She gasped, feeling the cold steel through her coat.

The grin wavered, but remained strong. “Yeah, you left me that, girly. At least you left me that.”

She glanced to the black man, who seemed suddenly interested in his shoes. Something else was going on there, most certainly.

“Why...why are you explaining this to me?” She asked quickly.

He paused at that. “I’ve dreamt of little else besides this moment since I lost my wife, princess,” he grumbled, yellowed teeth baring. “I’ll savor it however I damn well feel like.”

“Or maybe you just want someone to listen?” She whispered, her voice still somehow booming in the concrete room. “After all that time of being ignored, shouting to a void, maybe it’s better now you have a captive audience?”

He paused, that empty glance still locked on her. The corner of his mouth trembled. His gaze rose to her along with a trembling hand, holding up the scalpel. “Don’t think you can figure me out so easy, bitch.” He hissed, advancing with the weapon.

A strange stillness filled Celestia’s chest, her ability to fear simply overloaded. She let in a slow breath, letting it whisper out her nostrils. “I am...sorry.” She whispered in her new clear-mindedness.

That got him to stop, hand dropping to the side. His eyes narrowed. “What?”

“You’ve lost much, and had a long and painful road because of this...other...” she shook her head. “You need an apology from somepony, and she will never do such, if half the things I’ve read about her are true. I’m sorry.”

He paused for a second. Blinked. He clearly wasn’t expecting that. For a second, just for a second, she thought she might be able to talk him around. Then, he frowned, and continued with the scalpel. “Nice acting, bitch. Almost believed a real, decent being was in there,” he hissed, now towering over her.

“It’s...it doesn’t have to…” she trailed off as he shrugged suddenly, his shoulder giving a tiny flex, and a lance of pain traced along her forehead. Celestia winced, not sure what had just happened, and then a few streams of red cascaded down over her eye from her brow.

“Jeez…” the Old Man sighed. “Still got the speed, but damn if I lost the accuracy.”

He leaned in close, his breath washing over her as the blood flowed into her vision. “That was supposed to take one of your eyes.”

She couldn’t help it. A sudden burst of tears flooded into her vision, blurring her gaze further but washing out the blood. “I-I’m sorry, this...we just wanted to help.” She whispered, barely managing to keep her voice from trembling.

“Aye, I believe ya,” he raised the scalpel again. “Just wanted to letcha know how much your help is appreciated.” He whispered, grinning his yellowed teeth at her.

In that moment, Celestia prayed. She prayed for strength, for endurance. And deep in the back of her mind, where she didn’t want to admit it, a small part of her prayed for rescue.

A bead of sweat dribbled down along Dave’s back as he peered through the dirt-streaked window. Just across the street, a pair of thugs in dirty t-shirts and ripped jeans stood guard at the mouth of a construction site, plastic tarps waving in the wind behind them. They wouldn’t look so out of place in the ruins of old Tokyo if it wasn’t for the militaristic way they stood, eyes scanning the streets, darting back and forth every few seconds; or for the new, sleek black rifles in their hands.

“Well?” Lisa pressed, pushing in at his side.

“Not good,” he grunted. “It’s an old construction site, probably from the first relief wave. So a million miles of twisting corridors and dark corners, with just as many hidey-holes and booby traps, if I’ll guess.”

“A modern fortress...” Anton huffed. “Very wise. Not even UN could break into there, not without long siege.”

“Yep...” Felipe scowled. “So how are we expected to do it with seven people, some scavenged weapons, and a powerless princess?”

Ignoring him, Twilight poked her head up alongside the other’s, peering over the windowsill. “Who are they?” She whispered.

David let out a breath. “Human Liberation Front, probably came all the way here from my neck of the woods, judging from the accents. They were the first ones sounding the alarm about Prin...uh...” he hesitated.

“Call her Xenolestia,” Twilight insisted. “Trust me, I’ve worked that out.”

David turned to her, eyebrows rising. “Alright, Xenolestia. These are the pricks who were first sounding the alarm that something wasn’t right about all the flowery words that one was spittin’ out.”

“Really? I would think they’d be somewhat more...rational.” She said, leaning forward through the window before he shoved her back down roughly.

“Purple stands out around here, in case you didn’t notice,” he hissed. “And you’d think so, but no. After that one was put on lockdown, they quickly cemented themselves as crazies by saying we oughta finish the job started by the nukes.”

She turned to him, confused only for a second, then she drew in a breath. “Genocide.”

He nodded.

She leaned back against the wall. Her eyes widened. Her breathing turned shallow.

“So….what do we do?” Andre asked. He still held Francis’s hand, the pair seated along the far wall of the small room.

“I say we call it a day.” Felipe shrugged. “We did our best, but this is impossible. It’s time to call it quits and wait for reinforcement.”

“You know we don’t have time for that.” Lisa hissed, glaring at him. “They’re probably setting up to broadcast the princess’s execution right now, they so much as glimpse a blue helmet she’s as good as dead.”

“Then what do you suggest!?” He shot back, teeth bared. “That we assault a stronghold that’s almost certainly prepared for us!? Take on a long siege by ourselves against an enemy that has us outnumbered ten-to-one!?”

“We don’t know that...” Dave started.

“Oh, don’t you start now! We all know we’re stupidly outnumbered here! Trying to break through is suicide! At least if we give up now, more people don’t die today!”

David finally stood. “So we just walk away!? We let the only chance of getting the Newfoals back die with those maniacs!?”

“Better her than us!”

“Is it!? We just saw the first glimpses of hope a place like this has had in five years, and we’re just gonna walk away!?”

“You want to die!? That’s fine! Have fun!” He shouldered his scavenged rifle, stepping towards the front door. “I won’t get in your way, you stupid idiot! Just--”

He paused at the door as a high-pitched keening filled the room. All eyes turned to Twilight, still slumped under the window, tears streaming down her lavender cheeks, hooves wiping desperately at them. “It’s too much...” she whispered. “I should’ve been the one taken, not her, Equestria needs her, it’s too much...”

“Twilight...” Lisa laid a hand on the mare’s shoulder as it shivered in her sobs.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but it’s just too much,” she moaned. “There’s all this hate and pain and anger and...and I wish we’d never come here. I wish we’d just stayed on the boat. I wish...I wish I didn’t know what a starving child looks like, I wish I didn’t know what someone who’s clinging to one last shred of hope that someone they loved could be saved looks like, I wish I didn’t know what the Newfoals look like, and I wish I could take all the pain away but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t...”

The hand on her shoulder pulled her into a full-on hug, Lisa allowing Twilight to sob openly into her shoulder. She looked up, helpless, but the others just looked around awkwardly, David included. The closest thing he had to experience in emotional support was helping Chen during his sobbing fit in a London pub bathroom during one of his attempts at a drinking contest with Anton, and even that had only lasted until he passed out on the floor. Something told him there wouldn’t be much overlap between that long night and this much longer day.

“I-I’m sorry...” Twilight shook her head once she’d managed to regain a little control of herself. “I’m just used to having my friends when I have to deal with things like this, or at least my magic.”

“S’alright, dear,” Lisa dabbed at her oversized eyes with the ends of her sleeves. “Shouldn’t need t’worry about that, a lot of us wish for things we’d never hafta see. You got good company here.”

More than any of the others, Anton and David nodded.

“You can blame the Tachyon Inhibitors for your magic at least,” Anton pointed out at the mention of his name. “That’s one thing we know.”

“Tachyon...” Twilight mumbled.

“Yeah, they’re spread out all around the island, nobody here wanted to deal with magic, after...” David stood again, peering out the window with an awkward clearing of his throat. “Anyway, yeah. Odds are they managed to get their hands on one.”

“Probably someone high-up sympathetic to their bullshit.” Lisa sighed. “You never know who’s a nutjob deep down, is the damn problem.”

“Could just be they bribed someone for one,” Anton shrugged.

“Nah, I think the sympathetic politician route’s more likely...”

“That’s it!” Twilight gasped, turning away from the window with a smile lighting up her face, just to be pulled down by the tail again. She smiled sheepishly, tears still drying on her cheeks. “Sorry…but that’s it! If we stop the Inhibitor, I’d get my magic back!”

Lisa sighed, at least grateful that the alicorn wasn’t crying anymore. “Twilight, sweetie, I know you think that helps, but did you miss the part where they’re dug into an area surrounded by God-knows how many maniacs with rifles?”

Her ears still perking, unfazed, Twilight turned to the window, her smile leveling into cold determination. “Then we’ll have to sneak in there and turn it off.”

“Sneak?” Felipe chuckled. “We are an international group of dignitaries, how do you think we’ll sneak anywhere?”

Twilight didn’t respond. Instead she kept that glare up on the plastic tarps whipping around in the wind, on the gunmen scouring the streets for any sign of enemy. Her look didn’t change even when she turned to the others.

“I have an idea. But you’re probably gonna hate it.”

Felilpe seemed to know what it was already, as he turned his gaze upon her, something flashing in his eyes. “No.” He said under his breath.

“You know what would be even more tempting for them than one alicorn prisoner?” She asked, turning back to the group. “Two.”

“No!” Felipe stamped his foot. “Hell! No!”

“Young lady,” Akshat said, finally standing from the corner where he and Liu had been quietly playing cards. “Have you forgotten that just a few hours ago, that same group tried to execute you in a dirty back alley?”

“Yes, but do they specifically know that?” She gestured to the pair still standing guard at the door, obediently lowering her head when Dave motioned to her. “I mean, they wouldn’t advertise to everyone in their ranks what the plan was for us, right? For all they know, capturing one more high-value target can only help the cause!”

Silence reigned in the room, interrupted by Dave drumming his fingers along the rotting wood of the table. “It would let us get close…”

“And what!?” Felipe hissed, glaring at him. “Then they let us just walk right up to their Inhibitor and blow it up!? And I suppose at that point we all ride out on princess-back in time for dinner and drinks back on the ship, eh!? How do we even find the damn thing!?”

“I...can sort of feel the strength of it,” Twilight pointed out. “As we get closer, it feels more...cold. Empty.” She shrugged, letting out a breath as her gaze sank to the others. “That’s the only way I know how to describe it, but I will find it.”

When this was met with thoughtful nods, Felipe raised his hands. “Okay. Think, everyone, just think. Say it works out. Say we make it to the Inhibitor and pull the plug or whatever it has. That’s still just one unicorn with magic, and us surrounded by a hundred terrorists! We’re supposed to believe she’ll tilt the scales by herself!?”

“Sir, I was the youngest unicorn to be accepted into Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.” Twilight said, glaring back at him. “Back home, I represented the very Element of Magic itself. I formed a bond with a small group of friends that has saved Equestria numerous times from numerous enemies of all shapes and sizes. I can tilt the scales.”

The group all fell silent again, if only for a second. “Well, wonderful for you.” He spat, heading once more for the door. “If anyone wants to let me know funeral arrangements before they go, now’s the time.”

“That’s what you said about coming out here.” Lisa pointed out. “You still came.”

He paused at the door, hand rising to grip the knob. He leaned forward, looking as though he were seconds away from just barreling through the door and being done with it, but Twilight took over. “You did it for your friends, didn’t you?” She asked.

His hand slipped on the knob. He paused, arm lowering slowly to his side, as if it had suddenly become too heavy to hold up.

“You did it because you knew your friends would be in danger, and needed your help.” She smiled now, leaving the window to trot closer.

Felipe didn’t turn around. He already knew what he’d see: the others, looking back expectantly, waiting for an answer he knew the angry tears on his face would give away. And that would be so, so much worse.

“I don’t know a lot about this world,” Twilight continued. “That much I’ll admit. But I do know I’m a fast learner, and over the past few years I’ve had a lot to learn about friendship. Look at what it’s allowed you to do. That friendship you have.”

She turned to the group, spreading a hoof over all of them. “Allowed all of you to do! The strength to travel halfway around the world, and stand up for what you thought was right! Then, to turn a situation that seemed hopeless completely around and get out where nobody else possibly could, you did that all together! You made it this far because of eachother!”

Finally, she turned back to Felipe, who was still trying to glare holes into the door. “You’re not going to turn your back on something that special, are you?”

Felipe still stood there. His breath heaved in and out. Anton seemed like he was about to move, but he paused after just a couple steps. Finally, David took the initiative, laying a hand on the Brazilian’s shoulder. “C’mon, Felipe,” he said with a smile. “One more time, for your friends?”

He turned, glared at them all, at Lisa and Akshat and David and Francis and Andre and Chen and…

His look darkened. He pulled Dave’s hand away. “Okay,” he said, looking over the group, his gaze softening. “Not for you though. I do it for me.”

The group nodding, Twilight stood. “Alright,” she said finally, picking up a splinter of wood with her hoof and drawing in the dust that coated the floor. “Here’s how we do this…”

Chapter XLIV: Counterattack

Weaving through the buildings to find a place where he could come out on the street, Dave felt the most relaxed he’d been all day. He could almost pretend he was a kid walking through his friend’s apartment building for a slumber party again, and not about to launch what could well be a suicide mission. The halls weren’t even that much dirtier and run-down than that one friend’s...shit...what was his name...Frankie? Damn, he hadn’t thought of Frankie in years...hopefully that wasn’t a sign, like his life flashing before his eyes.

All too fast, the door to the street loomed before him, and he stepped out onto the cracked pavement. He let out a breath.

“Nervous?” Anton asked beside him.

Clearing his throat, Dave nodded.

“Good. You’re not in shock, it means.” Anton nodded back.

“I find that just taking a nice, long breath and letting it out can be helpful.” Twilight chimed between them, her hooves tapping on the concrete.

Dave’s half-lidded eyes slowly rolled to her beaming gaze.

“Like this!” She announced, demonstrating with a foreleg going to her chest and fanning out at her next breath.

“That’s...very nice, young miss.” Anton looked up to Dave, shrugging. With a sigh, Dave locked eyes with her, and returned the breath, mimicking her same motion. That seemed to satisfy her, a smile lighting up her adorable features. Granted, it did calm some of the shaking in Dave’s hands.

“Okay…” he let out a breath, looked at the others. He gazed over his shoulder, where Lisa smiled and nodded to him. He let out another breath, turned back to the pair. Anton was stepping back, having knotted the end of a ratty old rope around Twilight’s neck. Her eyes rolled up to meet his, and with a final nod, one that seemed to put an end to all the delaying and waiting, they took a step around the corner, heading towards the entrance of the complex.

Immediately, Twilight’s head bowed as he and Anton walked along, pulling balaclavas over their faces. Dave had to admit, she certainly looked the part to him. But would she look that way to a couple of terrorist psychos?

Yes. Yes, she would. She had to.

The pavement crunching under the combat boots he’d scavenged from a dead UN mook up the street, David’s heart pounded in his chest. The guards barely even moved as they approached, their heads turning just enough to watch them draw near. Somehow, that made it all the worse, giving Dave the impression of walking up on a half-asleep bear, knowing that it was just watching you now, but at any moment it could turn and turn you into jelly with a single swipe of its paw.

As they neared, Dave realized there was no way to calm down, no way to stop the shaking in his hands. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. He suddenly took Twilight’s rope, walking a little faster, only pausing when the guard held up a bandaged hand to stop him.

“Hey man, c’mon,” he gasped, his breath wheezing in and out in a way he hoped looked like excitement. “We gotta get in there.”

“Woah there,” the guard broke into a smile. “Dude, where do you think you’re going?”

“To the commander, gotta show this off!” He held Twilight’s rope up, hauling her maybe an inch or two off her front hooves. “C’mon man, look at it! I bet he ain’t seen nothin’ like this before!”

“Hold up,” the other guard stepped forward, an older-looking black guy who’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Why ain’t you already inside with the others?”

Dave’s heart leapt into his throat. “What…?” He squeaked, then an answer practically materialized in his head. “’Cause we were too busy tying this thing up, man, c’mon! You ever seen a little one with horns and wings!?”

The older guard’s smile faded, but the younger turned to him, an eyebrow raised. “Gotta say, I ain’t. That’s definitely different.”

“C’mon, this is big, probably huge!” Dave gasped, not needing to fake the desperation in his voice. “I gotta tell somebody, anybody!”

The older man’s eyes now straight-up narrowed, and Dave couldn’t help his trembling hand drifting closer to his holster. “How come I ain’t seen you around before?”

This time, the lie came to him in an instant: “What, you think we’re UN!? How many white dudes do you see hauling one of these technicolor freaks around out here!?”

That finally broke him, his gaze softening. A short guffaw escaped the older man’s lips. “Hell, you gotta point there!” He chuckled as he finally, mercifully, waved them through.

They shared nods, Dave hurrying them through into the waiting, flapping corridor. Their boots clattered over metal and crunched gravel, and then, they turned a corner and were through. A breath he didn’t know he’d been holding left David’s chest.

“Alright, we’re in…” Anton gasped.

“And now?” Twilight whispered.

“Now, we see how far we can take it.” Dave hissed back. They were already being followed. To his left, something rattled the scaffold supports. To his right, a thud sounded.

“We got another one, boys!” A voice called out as a whoop rose from the shadows around them. Dave let out a breath. The others could start any day now...any time…

Someone scrambled up from some scaffolding to his right, pulling himself up to smile at them. “Damn son, didn’t know princesses came in fun size!” He guffawed.

“Aheh, yeah…” Dave said, sweat gathering under the balaclava.

The man’s eyebrows hunched. “Hey man, where you from? Not sure I know your voice.”

“Uhhh...yeah, I’m one of the newer guys, haven’t had much time to get t’know everyone.” His hand drifted to the holster.

“Well, why dontcha take off the mask? I’m sure everyone wants to get to know the guy who hauled in a princess with just one other dude.” The man turned to Anton, and frowned. “Hey man, I really should know you. You look like one of the old-timers. Whatcha doin’ out there?”

Dave’s grip tightened. Anton’s Russian accent would give them away in a heartbeat, and he had no idea if these people would recognize his face. Sure, he might just have been another UN stooge back at the camp, but the odds of it were too--

A loud explosion sounded from the corridor behind them, followed by a burst of gunfire. “Shitfuck! UN found us already!?” The man pulled a pistol out, apparently from thin air, as a couple of riflemen ran past, shoving by without even acknowledging Twilight. “Get that little bitch inside! We’ll handle this!”

Like clockwork... head spinning at his own luck, Dave jogged ahead, Anton bringing up the rear as Twilight trotted to keep up. After a few more steps, he let out a breath. “Anyone else almost piss themselves there?”

“Almost,” Twi gasped.

“Children, please,” Anton chortled as they rushed along, deeper into the twisting maze.

When the first explosion hit, the Old Man had to pause. He’d only made a few more slight incisions in the cunt’s face and already had her quivering like jelly. Sure, she kept up a brave face, he’d give her that, but she wasn’t too good at keeping the quiver from her wings or the tears from her eyes. Then the compound creaked with a roaring explosion, and he realized something was very wrong.

Cursing, he tossed the scalpel aside, already turning for the door. “Watch her!” He shouted at Jimmy.

“Wait...dontcha need help!?” Jimmy shouted back, always the loyal soldier. It made the Old Man grin even as he undid the clasp on his hip holster.

“Watching her’s more important! I’m not risking it when we’re this close! I’m countin’ on ya!” The Old Man turned, smiled at Jimmy, and Jimmy smiled back with an easy little nod. For a second there, he thought he saw a little unsure shake in that nod, but the Old Man chalked it up to nerves. They were very close to writing their names in the annals of history, after all, nerves were to be expected.

He slammed the door behind him and rushed through the halls, his M1911 clenched in his hands. He brushed past a couple of guys in the hall, barely registering the small equine shape between them as he barreled ahead. Along the way, the Jap fell in at his side. “How did they find us so fast!?” He growled in his heavy accent.

“I have no idea.” The Old Man rumbled back.

“Someone on your side fucked up.”

“How do we know it’s not your side!?”

Their bickering stopped as a fighter slammed back into the corridor ahead of them, two holes in his chest. Cursing, the Old Man popped around the corner, letting off a few shots, ducking back as a couple more rounds whizzed by in response. A shell-shocked fighter fell to his side, eyes wide, breath heaving, surplus Kevlar vest covered in blood.

“You!” The Old Man bellowed, grabbing him by the vest. “The hell’re we doing here, getting potshots taken at us like a buncha amateurs!? The hell aren’t we pushing for!?”

“Th-They gotta sniper, sir!” The kid gasped. “Pecks off anyone what pokes their head out, dude’s a fuckin’ madman!”

The Old Man rolled his eyes, a vein in his temple pulsing as he gripped the kid’s shoulder. “Then why in the hell are we sitting here and not flushing him out!?”

The kid just stared back, eyes wide. Another shot cracked into the burning ruin behind him. The Old Man grumbled, dragging the kid back down another corridor. The shoulder in his grip relaxed, right until they found another group of fighters, weapons leveled, aimed out of any hole they could find and remain relatively safe. Or so they thought, until a crack sounded and another fighter’s shoulder disappeared in a spray of blood.

“You, and you!” The Old Man pointed at a couple of random fighters in the cluster, who stared back, wide-eyed. “You’re gonna flush that sniper out, with the help of your friend here!”

The pair, coming to terms with the random selection, slowly gazed up at him. “B-but sir…”

“Did I fucking stammer!?” He shoved the shivering mass that was supposed to be a soldier at their feet. “You’ll do as I say and we will un-fuck this situation!”

After a moment the trio, still staring at the Old Man, slowly nodded.

“The hell is that look for!? This is your moment, the day we’ve been waiting for!” The Old Man bellowed, clapping his hands on their shoulders. “Now get out there and make me proud!”

With another round of nods, more forceful this time, the group turned to make its way back down the corridor, towards the flaming wreck that used to be the front door. They moved with the purpose trained into them, but their legs shook like men being marched to the execution chamber. They paused just before the flames at the front, gazing at the street before them. One of them gazed back over his shoulder.

“Someone gimme a smoke!” The Old Man shouted, holding his hand out behind him without even looking back. A canister appeared there, and he gripped it tight. “Covering fire!”

As a renewed volley of rounds sounded out behind him, he yanked the pin on the grenade and rolled it out, watching a flood of yellow smoke geyser up into the street. One of the trio looked back, but this time a smile appeared on their face. The Old Man gave a thumbs up. Apparently, that was enough, as the trio broke out into a dead run across the street.

When the smoke finally cleared, the Old Man grinned to see two fighters at the door, only one laying in the street in a pool of blood. The shots still echoed out behind him and calls for more ammo sounded around him, but now they could teach that bastard sniper what-for. He grinned his yellowed grin at the two remaining fighters. Both men looked at eachother, then back at the door, raising their rifles, stepping towards it, kicking it in, ready to show these smurfs what they were fucking with…

And then a towel-head appeared from nowhere and sliced their throats open.

It happened so fast, the Old Man barely had time to piece together what was happening when a brown blur materialized in his view, that fucking towel the only thing he could see from where he stood. There was a flash of silver, and a couple geysers of red. The first kid he’d recruited for this mission turned back to him again, his shirt already soaked in blood as he stumbled out into the street, his rifle clattering to the ground behind him. He reached out for the Old Man, eyes wide and desperate, and collapsed halfway across, right next to the body of his comrade.

“Welp…” the Old Man sighed, turning to the Jap as he stepped deeper into the compound, “At the very least, we confirmed there’s more than one of ‘em.”

“A fireteam!?” His Japanese compatriot shouted.

“Maybe...didn’t get a good look.” He grimaced. “Could be one, could be more, but they’re trained.”

“UN.”

“Probably.” The Old Man growled as more of his fighters appeared from deeper in the site. He waved them along, ordering them to the front immediately. The street outside filled with the rattle of gunfire, with the occasional thud of an explosive. “Whoever they are, we’ve got it under control.”

“As far as you can tell.” The Jap turned away as the Old Man grimaced. “How do we know they’re not hitting us from a different side?”

The Old Man opened his mouth, then he stopped. His jaw dropped. His eyes widened. “Why aren’t they pushing?” He gasped.

The Jap turned back. “What!?”

“Why aren’t they pushing? Why don’t we have people charging us? Why is there only one gunman as far as we know? Why aren’t they trying to sneak in?”

That did it. The Japanese man’s eyes widened.

In a flash, the Old Man reached into the dark, grabbing a cowering rifleman by the collar of his uniform jacket. “You! Anyone report anything strange!? Anyone besides who we got here walk through this door!?”

The rifleman’s eyes were wide, his answer coming in a stammer: “Y-yeah, a couple of our guys! They had another princess with ‘em!”

“Another…” the Old Man’s eyes widened. He turned at the same time as the Jap. “Fuckin’ A-, you gotta be kiddin’ me.”

“They’re still alive. The UN people.” The Jap gasped with him. “And that means…”

“This is a distraction.” The Old Man nodded, glaring back down the hallway. “You hold things down here. I’ll go finish our business with the princess. UN’ll be fighting for a corpse.”

The Jap nodded, eyes narrowing. “Don’t fuck this up again.” He hissed.

The Old Man glared, but turned back down the hall, knowing there was no time to argue as he shot back towards the cell.

Chapter XLV: Death in the Family

“That’s it, then?”

David blinked. “Yeah...yeah it is.”

This was his first time seeing a Tachyon Inhibitor up close. Sure, he’d seen them back during the end of the Collision War, but that was from afar as they were being loaded onto a ship at port. And he hadn’t been much in the mood for sightseeing after the destruction of Tokyo. Now, they apparently had gone through a few upgrades. The thing he’d seen being hoisted up onto the Obama back in the day had looked like one of those Tesla coils the inventor himself had used, complete with an orb up top he could imagine spitting lightning in the background of the mad scientist’s lair in a B-rate sci-fi movie. The humming obelisk before him with a few LEDs on its side looked much more modern, its sleek, plastic body rattling as if to inform him that it was a result of mass production, not the custom slap-dash job hurriedly thrown together he’d known all those years ago.

“It looks like a giant dehumidifier,” he remarked out loud. “Like somebody took something from Dyson and blew it up in photoshop.”

Twilight rubbed her temple with a groan. “So...how do we stop it? And fast, please.”

Anton looked it up and down, then shrugged, raised his rifle, and let off a few shots into its plastic chassis. Before Dave’s ears even had a chance to stop ringing, the LEDs blinked off and the humming came to a sputtering stop. David turned, watching Twilight move her hoof from her temple to her ear. “Some warning next time, please…”

“Was evil machine standing in our way.” Anton shrugged. “All the warning you need from a Russian.”

“Is your, uh…” even after all this time, saying ‘magic’ aloud made him feel too much like a character in a CGI Barbie movie, so he went with the next best thing. “...horn working again?”

Twilight blinked, then furrowed her brow. David felt a light tug at his waist, and looked down to realize the Preston Express had levitated out of its holster in a lavender hue.

“Ha-HA!” She gasped with an adorable giggle, beaming up to the men. “It’s back!”

“Wonderful,” David said, protectively yanking the pistol from the air and shoving it back down into its holster.

“Well? You feel the other princess?” Anton rasped, leaning forward.

Twilight paused, turned, her horn igniting. She gazed down a few hallways, her mane picking up in an unseen breeze. Suddenly, her magic dissipated, her jaw working up and down in terror.

“T-Twi?” Dave asked.

“She’s scared…” she gasped, shaking her head as she turned and bolted down a hallway. “Th-this way! Hurry!”

“Hey, wait!” Dave shouted, jogging to catch up. “Wait! You don’t know what could be…”

Even as he spoke, a few bolts zapped from her horn, and a man slumped over around the corner, body collapsing in the hall, a loud snore leaving his mouth just as David started to wonder if he’d just witnessed a man die.

“Something tells me it doesn’t matter what could be down there,” Anton chuckled, huffing to keep up as they stepped over the snoozing thug.

Dave chuckled back, having more than enough breath to spare for it. Soon, the younger, more fit man took the lead, edging out Twilight even as she directed them along, the subtle turn of her head as he glanced back telling him which moves to make to navigate the maze around them.

He rounded a corner, and skidded to a pause, a couple of thugs standing at either side of a thick door. They looked up as he neared. “Uh, shouldn’t you be…” one started.

He reached for the rifle, nearly clearing it of the shoulder holster before a couple of violet zaps smacked into each guard’s head, sending them crashing to the ground. David gasped, breathing heavily, just barely aware of the rifle in his hands.

“There! Through there!” Twilight screeched.

No time to think. No time to pause. David charged forward, rifle raised, heart pounding so hard it drowned out Anton’s screams to stop. He slammed through the door, watched it give way beneath his weight, rifle already at his shoulder…

There was another shot. Another explosion. James let out another breath, his grip tensing around the pistol. He gazed out into the hallway for the fifth time in the past ten minutes, ducking back in. The Old Man was nowhere to be seen.

“Are you worried about him?”

He turned to muster a half-hearted glare at the sun-princess, the one mare responsible for so much pain and loss. Or at least...someone who looked like her, but this was just pulling the damn thing out at the root before it could take hold. Preemptive strike to protect the species.

Wasn’t it?

“I’m worried about everybody,” he said without really knowing why.

“You have a good heart, I can see that.” The evil bitch said with a warm smile and a nod.

He just looked away. “Shut the fuck up,” he mumbled. “Wasn’t talkin’ to you.”

“Well, I’m right here.”

The pistol rose, but aimed at nothing in particular. It dropped again after a few seconds.

“Your world is...filled with pain,” she started, and at that James almost rolled his eyes. He’d heard this speech before. The bitch had always prefaced her bullshit about ushering in a new world for mankind, about a world without pain, in ways exactly like this. “But…” yep, here it comes. “There is a lot of good here too.”

He turned to her, trying not to look too interested. This was a new twist he hadn’t heard.

“I have seen many things in my journey here,” she went on with a calming smile, not looking at him, just sort of gazing off. “But most of all, I have seen people trying to help. I have seen people holding on with everything they have. When I was imprisoned, I expected a nightmarish race of technology-worshippers, and instead I found a noble race, a civilization that rivals my own, and a people traumatized dearly by a face that looks like mine.”

She finally turned to him then. “I can do nothing about that, but perhaps I don’t have to. Perhaps I can just take a page from your people’s book, and try my very best. And maybe that won’t be enough, or maybe I can be the key that heals a lot of pain. Either way...I know I couldn’t call myself a kind ruler if I did anything less.”

He blinked at that, and cursed himself when the beginnings of tears blurred his vision. He would never admit it, but dammit…it was nice to have someone validate all the work, the struggle, the pain. Something that damned nice, that wonderful, it was like…

For a moment, he was transported back to a time when he’d come home with some godawful craft. He’d never remember what, probably something covered in glitter and macaroni, and how the Old Man could hardly be bothered to look up from his crossword puzzle or from the TV to look at it. His mom though…

His mom before the Newfoals took her…

She was dead now, but if he could have her back…

He wiped at his face. “Wasn’t supposed t’be like this. None a’ this was supposed to go this way.” He whimpered.

“Few things go the way we want them.” She leaned towards him. “What matters is how we react to them, and how we move from there.”

He looked up to her. Then his eyes drifted down to the gun again. She offered a tiny smile. He let out a breath. He’d been thinking about this, just this very question, for so long now. What comes next?

Wasn’t it about time he answered that question for himself?

Suddenly, the door burst open. “Ah, good.” The Old Man grinned his yellowed grin. “Well done, m’boy, well done.”

James visibly drooped where he stood, the pistol sliding back into its holster. “No problem, pop.”

The Old Man clamped a hand on his shoulder, squeezing as his old eyes wrinkled in a smile. “S’finally time. Gonna give the bitch what she’s got coming.”

James looked up. “Yeah, pop?”

“Yeah.” He whipped out his phone, smiling down at the signal. “Four bars…gotta hand it to ‘em, the Japs got their modern essentials up and runnin’ good.”

“Your…phone?” James’s eyes darted to the princess and back. “What about waiting for the camera? For everyone else? Thought we wanted t’do this right?”

“No time for that,” the Old Man hissed, handing the phone over with the camera app open. “UN goons’ll be bustin’ down the door any minute. We wanna do this, we gotta do it now.”

“UN?” James didn’t reach for the phone. “But…the defenses, they’ll take weeks to…”

“They’re already inside.” The Old Man now thrust the phone into James’s hands, forcing it into his chest until he had to take it. “We do this now, or they ruin everything.”

James’s jaw worked up and down. “So…it’s just us? Alone?”

The Old Man nodded and drew his sidearm, wrapping a scarf around the lower portion of his face. “I know you wanted t’be in the video, son, but things didn’t work out that way. I’m sorry.”

James just nodded, still staring at the Old Man, dumbfounded.

The Old Man, for his part, turned on the princess, glaring through his mask. “Just keep it steady, son, it don’t hafta be Hollywood work, but it does need to get the gist across.”

Finally, holding the phone out in trembling hands, James held the phone out and pressed ‘Record.’

The Old Man turned, now standing behind Celestia, her bound frame still giving him plenty of space to be seen. He raised the pistol. “This is a message from the Human Liberation Front, one that all the little technicolor shits the world over oughta hear loud and clear! This is not your home! Earth is ours, not yours! Even if the UN won’t do anything about ya, that doesn’t mean the human race is willing to turn over and show its belly!”

“Please…” Celestia whispered. “You’ll only cause more—”

She was cut short with a cry as the butt of his pistol cracked against her skull, sending her swooning to the concrete. The Old Man stepped forward, leaning with his boot against her neck, the barrel of his weapon pressed to her head.

“You wanna shut the hell up before I shut you up,” he whispered into her ear. Then, he turned back to the camera. “Humanity stands ready, and we are the sheathed sword waiting to lash out. You may think we can be talked to, that we may be all talk, that we can be manipulated into slicing our own throats, but I tell ya now: if you come here, you and every other yellow-bellied species-traitor you get on your side will meet the same fate as this little bitch.”

For emphasis, he drew back, dramatically pulling the pistol up to make cocking the hammer visible, theatrically lowering it in a line with the princess’s head in a slow, deliberate motion. “Now, watch the mightiest among you die.” The harsh whisper came out as his finger squeezed the trigger.

For her part, Celestia’s eyes squeezed shut. In the end, she just couldn’t bare to watch the shot that would kill her. Still, she kept her chin high. At the very least, the world would see how a true Equestrian died with pride. The camera trembled, focused on her face for a minute, then with a rustle of cloth, a shot rang out.

Celestia’s eyes darted wide open, clearly expecting to see the reaper standing over her. Instead, she saw the Old Man, bracing back, watching the pistol clatter to the ground as his eyes widened in surprise. Blood dribbled out from his hand as he held it up, revealing two of his fingers blown off at the knuckle. She watched in shock for just a second, then rounded on the reluctant cameraman.

James had dropped the phone, leaving it resting on the ground, its screen shattered. His hands gripped his own pistol, the barrel now smoking. An acrid smell filled the air. He stared down the sights at his father.

“J-Jimmy?” The Old Man squeaked. “What…didja shoot me for?”

“I-I’m sorry…” he whispered, and the teen felt tears stinging his eyes, blurring his vision even as his gaze remained locked down the sights. “I’m sorry, dad, I’m sorry…”

“S-sorry?” The Old Man rounded Celestia, stumbling past her, still clutching his bleeding hand. “You shot me.” He said, not accusatory, just a statement of fact.

“I-I, yeah, I did…”

The Old Man looked down at his hand, then back at James. “You shot me.” He stated again. “Why?”

“There’s…dad, listen, there’s gotta be a better way.” James whimpered, cringing even as the words left his mouth, but drawing a blank when he reached for better ones.

“A better…way?” At that, the rage James had been expecting made an appearance, his face clouding with it. “A better way!? There is no other way! You know that!”

“Wait, dad…”

“How many!? How many more cities have to get blown to hell before you realize that!?” The Old Man approached, his hand held to his chest. “How many people hafta die!? What, one island nation blown to shit ain’t enough for ya!? We gotta lose the Brits too!? How many before—”

“Get the fuck back!” James cried, the gun now waving wildly. “Just stay the fuck back goddammit, just stay back!”

The Old Man blinked again, and backed up, both hands raised. More blood spotted on the concrete. “Okay. Okay, I’m backed up,” he said evenly, his voice under control again. He took a few deep breaths, steadied himself, and locked eyes with his son. “Jimmy…this is crazy.”

“No, goddammit, you’re crazy! You’ve been crazy!” James screamed now, voice cracking. “Look at you! You bent these kids all around and you fucked ‘em up in the head enough t’follow you all around the world! You convinced everyone you’re the savior of humanity! But you’re just another crazy fucking cult leader! Spat the bullshit for so long you believed it all yourself!”

The Old Man stumbled back as if he’d been shot again. For her part, Celestia didn’t even want to breathe from the tension mounting in the room. A breath hissed out between the Old Man’s yellow teeth. “Jimmy, c’mon…” he said, shaking his head, forcing a smile. “This is all for your mom...”

“You killed mom, you fucking psychopath!” James screamed. His voice rang out in the room, and it sucked all other sound out with it. The tears were flowing free now, James crying, still holding the weapon, his choking sobs the only sound in the room.

That one gave pause to the Old Man. He lowered his hands now. Looked his son over, eyes watery. “You knew?”

Another sob barked. “I noticed the pills went missing right after you left, dad,” he whimpered. “And then ma just happens to have a seizure right after you leave the hospital? Nobody knew shit about the Newfoals, you knew it’d get written off as a conversion side effect, you fucking knew you’d get away with it! You did it, and you knew you’d get away with it! You murdered her!”

The Old Man’s look darkened. Blood spattered on the floor as his hands clenched into fists. “Your mother was already dead.” He hissed.

“But she’d have a chance! She’d have a chance to come back…”

“She was already dead, goddammit!”

“You didn’t know that! You couldn’t know that!”

“Jimmy--”

And then the door burst open, and everything went straight to hell.

In hindsight, David could hardly be blamed for killing the kid. He burst in, saw a teen wielding a handgun aimed at the princess, and he acted. There was no time to judge the actual angle of the gun, no time to notice the old man against the wall, there was only time to raise the rifle and squeeze the trigger. In a burst of rounds, the teen with the gun fell, his hoodie acting as so much tissue paper for protection.

David paused. He blinked. The room remained utterly still.

“J-Jimmy?” The old-timer against the wall gasped, drawing Dave’s attention at last. He raised the rifle again, totally out of instinct, but with the blood gushing out of the old-timers hand, his finger quickly slid out of the trigger guard. Stepping over the princess like she was so much chopped meat, the old man stooped at the body of the kid.

“What…happened?” A tiny voice asked. Twilight. He stood, watching over the room, almost feeling her and Anton in the doorway, her massive eyes beating into the back of his neck.

“I…had to…” he gasped. “I had to, he was…he had a gun pointed at her…”

“He was pointing it at him.” Celestia finally spoke, her voice booming over the room. Dave looked to her, then to the old man, now cradling the lanky body bleeding out on the concrete. Details finally filtered in through his adrenaline-fueled senses: the other gun, covered in blood, lying where the old man had been standing, the scarf around his face, the shattered phone on the ground, all adding up to…

Oh. Oh, God.

He stumbled over to the body. “Move! Set ‘im down!” He barked, rushing to kneel at the kid’s side. He pulled the body from the old man’s arms, his training keeping the rifle close even as he set the weapon down. But the old man did nothing, just made long, wheezing sounds like a man with a baseball lodged in his throat. Wrinkled hands reached up, the old timer falling back while clenching at his thin wisps of gray hair. Still scrabbling, Dave turned the body over on its back, and his heart sank. Despite the days away from the range, his shots had been dead center. The kid’s chest was bathed in red, his hoodie soaked through with it, his wide eyes staring blankly at the ceiling as his mouth hung open.

“Fuck, fuck!” Dave propped himself up on his knees, pressing his hands to the kid’s chest, immediately starting compressions. Blood instantly soaked his hands, pooling up around his clenched fingers. His mind blanked, frantically reaching for the right ratio of compressions to breaths, and he realized, ridiculously, that he hadn’t even checked the kid’s breathing. Some part of him knew he wouldn’t have to. He decided on ten compressions to two breaths.

As he worked, frantically trying to restart a heart that had been turned into a bloody pulp, he barely noticed Twilight and Anton entering the room, Anton holding his weapon as he looked over the old man, but not raising it, locking the door behind him as an almost subconscious move. The old-timer didn’t even acknowledge him, only kept his eyes on David, gaze darting between him and the teen on the ground.

His breathing growing frantic, Dave threw himself into the breaths, even as each one left a coppery taste in his mouth. His own breathing heaved, sweat gathering on his forehead, his heart racing. “Goddammit…Goddammit…” he cursed at first, but stopped as his pulse skyrocketed and little stars started appearing in his eyes, not wanting to waste his breath. He didn’t stop even as the mares joined the little group, Celestia not even bothering to kick off her bonds, letting them slide away from her slender legs as they watched.

Finally, as if it pained him to do it, Anton rested a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. “David.” He whispered.

Dave stopped. He looked up, eyes blank as if he were in shock. His breath heaved in and out. His shirt started to stick to him from the sweat. As he looked from Anton’s serious face to Celestia’s glittering, watery eyes, a wail filled the room.

“Jimmy!” The old man sobbed, falling over the body, hugging it close to him, blood soaking his shirt. “Jimmy, you were s’posed to be there until the end, oh god…”

David had never heard an old man sob like everything he ever valued had just been set on fire in front of him before, and he hoped he would never hear it again. He just kept rocking back and forth, repeating that name like the body would just spring back to life and return the bear hug he was squeezing into it. As he kept at it, the hand on Dave’s shoulder squeezed.

“Princess is safe,” Anton said simply. “Let’s go.”

After another moment of staring, David nodded, slowly rising to his feet, collecting his rifle. The quartet turned, heading for the door, away from the sobbing man cradling the body of the kid. Anton raised his weapon, ready to charge back out the door.

“My son too…you bitch…”

The group turned as one as the Old Man stood, one arm cradling the body as he glared directly at Celestia. “You took my wife. You took my boy. You took everyone. Now, there’s nothing left.”

Celestia only stared back sadly, her vermillion eyes watering.

Letting out a shaking breath, the Old Man sighed. “At least that means I have nothing left. This is a good death.”

It took David a second to realize what was happening, and another moment to realize he couldn’t see the Old Man’s other hand. He thought he heard the beep of electronic circuits connecting, of a radio signal broadcasting, of a final buzz of electricity pulsing through a detonator hidden in the room, but surely that was just his imagination playing tricks on him.

A titanic roar tore up from the other side of the room. His breath was knocked from his body. A blinding flash. The hum of magic. A shield in front of him. But…

Anton wasn’t in the shield.

He’d started towards the Old Man.

Brave. Stupid.

Dead.

David reached a hand out. A fireball reared up, engulfed the room. Both old-timers vanished in a wall of fire. Lightning shot up his arm. And then, there was no more.

Chapter XLVI: Revelations

Lisa had learned early on that Mr. M, on top of being a self-righteous UN prick, had an incredible talent for showing up at the wrong times. For instance, right after the massive explosion rocked the HLF compound. The sonofabitch must have been watching, waiting for just the right moment to swoop in and gather up all the pieces to paint a picture of a fuck-up of epic proportions. She grimaced as they swept through the halls, shell-shocked fighters raising their hands as a tidal wave of blue rolled over them. When this was all over, Mr. M could see to it that every last one of them spent the rest of their lives in a very small hole in the ground, maybe next to that bitch in Siberia.

Next to her, Felipe nudged her shoulder. “Do you feel like a small bird being sized up by a housecat whenever that M guy looks at us?”

She sighed. “Of course, just glad to hear you feel it too.”

“Everyone!” Francis raised a hand, flanked by a couple of UN riflemen with their weapons slung over their shoulders. “We...we found it.”

“Oh thank God,” she sighed, trotting close. “Francis, what--” she cut herself off as the grave expression in his eyes gave itself away. “Oh God, Francis, what is it?”

“Just…” he drew in a shaky breath, leaning against the wall. “David and Anton, they…”

He trailed off as she zipped around him, past Andre, who smoked a cigarette with a shaking hand as he curled up on the floor. “Anton!? David!” Lisa screamed, squeezing past a half dozen more riflemen, through a charred doorway and into the twisted, burning ruins of a room.

She coughed, a scent like asphalt tar baking in the sun hanging heavy in the air, mixing with the smoke. Someone in a UN uniform sprayed a fire extinguisher over a couple of smoldering corners. A huge hole had been torn into the metal on the other side of the room, and in the middle sat...oh God…

She covered her mouth. In the middle sat a ribcage: charred, black, with a few bits of meat hanging off it, slumped over a smaller leg, still clad in a sneaker and with a few scraps of denim hanging off it. If she tilted her head just so, she thought she could make out a scrap of cloth with a patch on the torso’s shoulder, whether it was UN or HLF though, who could tell? She stood there, transfixed by the gore, hardly able to process it, only snapping out of her stupor when a couple of UN mooks tried to shuffle by with a stretcher.

“Move!” They shouted, making her step back out of reflex, eyes finally dragged off the gory mass in the middle of the room. She glanced down at the charred bit of meat visible at the head of the stretcher as it passed, and gasped audibly when she realized she recognized it. The skin was all charred, the nose was now a sunken crater, and the chin was blasted away, but the gaping eyes revealed a hazy blue that could only be Anton’s.

“Wait, please!” She shouted, forcing the UN guys to pause while she sank to its side. “I know this man!”

“Jesus, what!?” One of the mooks shouted. “Then fuckin’ get outta the way, he’s hanging by a thread!”

Eyes wide, Lisa nodded, stepping back again, only to feel a tug at her shirt. Her gaze sank back to the mishmash of charred meat that had once been her friend and coworker, that hazy eye now locked on her, a wheeze echoing up his throat that was probably an attempt to grunt.

“Wait…” she gasped as her shirt slipped from his grasp. “Wait!” Twisting on her heel, she leaned over the body as the men holding the stretcher came to a stop. The eyes blinked at her. “Anton!? Anton, can you hear me!?” She gasped, struggling to keep her voice soft, yet still audible over the hiss of fire extinguishers and crackling of flames.

For his part, Anton’s eyes flicked down along his body, the trembling hand reaching for something on his waist.

“What…” she started, reaching under the blanket. Searching with her fingers along his waist, she pulled out a mangled mass that was once a pistol, and some extra mags for his rifle. “This!? You want this!?”

Another wheeze, his eyes darting side to side, like a head shaking no.

Grunting in frustration, Lisa threw the weapons away, pulling back the blanket now, her eyes widening. One thing had remained relatively whole: his flask. The flask that had been his partner since the day the Princess had first slipped from their grasp, its simple steel design allowing it to stay whole.

Her hands settled on it, her fingers slowly wrapping around its form to pluck it from its clip and raise it to his face. “This?”

His eyes widened, then darted up and down.

She sighed, unscrewing the cap. Looking at his face, she didn’t think his mouth could even retain liquid, but if the old Russkie wanted a final drink to send him off, she wasn’t going to deny him. She lifted the flask to the blasted meat she thought his lips might have been, but they remained stubbornly closed. Her fingers started to part them, thinking they might have been sealed shut by the heat of the blast, but then she noticed his eyes darting side to side again.

“You...wanted this for me?” She asked.

Finally, frantically, the eyes nodded.

“O-okay Anton,” she gave a wan smile and tucked the flask into a pocket. “I have it. You uh...I’ll see you later, okay?”

The eyes slowly drifted back to center again, and just as the stretcher started moving once more, she thought she saw them give a final side-to-side dart. But that could have been her imagination. She sighed, her hand running over the solid shape of the thing in her pocket.

“My...deepest condolences.” Mr. M’s voice informed her from behind. She clenched her teeth. The bastard shouldn’t have been there. This was a moment for them, for the London crew, he should have just gone back to his nice, cozy office, and let them have it.

“That is...appreciated, Mr. M.” She said tactfully.

“Your other friend, the Yank, is not as bad off, but it’s still not good. Most of him has been taken back to the Illustrious.”

She sucked in a breath. Most of him!? She wanted to whirl around, grab the little bastard by the neck, and squeeze until he told her what the fuck that meant, but knowing how far up a creek they already were, she only lowered her head. “Thank you, Mr. M.”

She stood there until he turned to walk away, but damn him, he paused at the door. “I thought I saw him give you something at the end there. What was it?”

Knowing there’d be no arguing, she held up the flask. “A keepsake.”

“Ah.” And that was all. He stepped outside again, and was gone. After standing there another moment, she silently walked out of the room. The hall outside had apparently become an impromptu meeting space for the others, Akshat and Chen having made their way here from the other parts of the compound. After a moment, Akshat’s hand rested on her shoulder, his deep, dark features furrowed with concern.

“Is it...what’s happened to them all?” He asked, the whole group leaning forward.

Lisa sighed. “I don’t know where the mares are,” she said. “But Dave is back on the ship, for what it’s worth. I think he’s okay. Mostly.”

He nodded, a collective sigh going through the group. “And...Anton?”

Her gaze darted up, her eyes wide. “He just went through here, didn’t you guys see?”

Felipe sucked in a breath. “That was...that was him!?”

It occurred to her that she’d only recognized Anton because she happened to notice his eyes, which were open at the time. If they had closed…it could only be for the final time. As that little fact dawned on her, a tear trickled down her cheek. “I...he gave me this, before they...took him away.” She whimpered as she held up the flask.

The group all watched. A wet cough shivered out of Felipe’s body, his hand covering his face. Lisa kept her eyes on the flask. She shivered, then started to unscrew it.

“Is that the best idea…” Francis started, but Andre held out an arm to stop him, which quickly turned into a hug. Beside them, Chen slowly sank to the floor, leaning against a wall.

Lisa didn’t know what else to do, so she raised the flask in a pantomime of a toast. “I...just hope they pull through,” she sighed. The group all nodded, and she tilted her head back for a swallow. The moment it hit her tongue, she gasped, a bit of liquid spurting out around the neck of the flask, just short of actually spitting the stuff out. Lowering it, she let out an actual cough.

“What, is it that strong?” Andre asked with a weak smile.

With another cough, she shook her head, raising the flask again. “Coke.” She choked out.

The group as one focused their attention on her. Chen rose to his feet again. “Like...liquid cocaine?”

Still shaking her head, letting out a few more coughs, Lisa wiped at her mouth. “No, like Coca-Cola.” She gazed at the flask, then took another sip, smacking her lips. “There’s no alcohol, it’s just fuckin’ Coke!”

“So what, he was just putting on a show!?” Felipe shouted, his shock melting away beneath a sudden surge of fury. “Why!? Why would he do that to us!?”

“There’s no reason,” Akshat said, “Unless the show was not meant for us.”

As she lowered the flask from her lips, it gave a rattle, and she paused with a start. She raised it again, this time tilting it to the light.

“The hell was that?” Akshat started.

She stared a while longer, then upended the flask, cupping her hand beneath it as lukewarm soda fizzed out. There was no denying it anymore as the syrupy scent filled the air, overwhelming the smell of tar that hung around them: the contents of the flask had all the alcohol content of a breath mint, and three times the sugar. But that little find was quickly subsumed when a tiny Micro SD card in a plastic case ran out into her hand and floated in her cupped palm.

Shaking off the rest of the cola, she held it up for all to see, as if it was a jewel she’d just pulled off of Anton’s body.

“Now, what the hell is that?” Akshat asked.

Blinking, a few things clicked into place for Lisa. “Something he went to great lengths to keep secret. He wanted everyone to think he was an alcoholic so the flask would be a part of him, it’d fade into the background…”

“...and nobody would ever think to look at what was inside,” Felipe gasped, gazing up at the SD. “What could be so important he would go so far to keep it secret?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, quickly pocketing the card and turning back down the hallway with a stoic glare. “But we’re going to find out.”

His pulse rose in his ears…

Gimme a clamp! Someone gimme a clamp! This guy’s gonna bleed out!

…and fell. Something scratched at the edge of his thoughts, something important, maybe. Well, maybe not so important, if he couldn’t even remember it. His pulse rose…

Fuckin’…find the vein already, man!

I’d like to see you try! Okay…okay, that should do it…thank God…

…and fell. His hand gave a twinge of dull pain, like he’d been lying on it too long and slammed it in a door. He grimaced. Something important was going on there. He sucked in a breath…

All we can do now is wait. God damn…hate to be him when he wakes up…

David…

And his eyes fluttered open, squinting against the harsh fluorescents. He stirred, grunted in pain as another jolt stabbed up his arm. He raised his good hand to cover his eyes, keeping the other hand under the sheet.

He inhaled, a little click sounding in his throat. Damn, he was parched. As his eyes adjusted, he started to drink in the beds around him, the EKG machine beeping somewhere, the IV stand at his bedside with a tube running into his arm, but most of all, an only-too-familiar gentle rocking around him. This wasn’t just a hospital, this was the med bay on the Illustrious.

He slowly turned on his side, and the tension rising in his chest finally released. Lisa sat there, slumped in a hard, plastic chair, eyes closed, shoulders rising and falling with her nasally snores. Oddly enough, he could only find it adorable: usually, he’d find it grating.

He tried to call for her, but all that would come out was a series of clicks. He paused, breathed, gave a labored swallow, and finally managed to croak: “Lisa…”

Even though to his ears, it sounded like a dying frog’s final ribbit, Lisa stirred. Her eyes flit open and her head rolled around on her shoulders in an attempt to find a position that resembled normal. She brushed back a sweaty tendril of hair and gasped in relief.

“David!”

With what he hoped looked like a smooth little smile, he managed to rasp out: “Hey there, sleepin’ beaut--” before a coughing jag rocked his frame, forcing him to sit up until dizziness forced him back down.

For her part, Lisa stood, running a hand along his shoulder. “Easy there, Yank, easy...you’ve been out a couple days.”

“A couple days!?” He gasped between dry, hacking coughs. “What...what happened…”

He searched his own memories, but came up empty handed. He remembered running through the corridors with the smaller princess and Anton, he remembered hearing gunshots and running towards them. And then, just flashes...a door...gunshots...an old man sobbing over a kid...the shimmer of a shield, and…

Oh. Oh Jesus Christ Almighty God...

“Anton!” He gasped, sitting up. Ignoring Lisa’s gentle attempts to get him to lay back down, he whirled on her. “Wh-where is he!? He’s okay, right!? He’s fine!?”

She let in a quick breath, her eyes watering. It told him all he needed to know.

“Oh...oh my God...” he gasped. His other hand lifted out from under the sheets to join its partner at his forehead, pressing.

“He was mostly gone by the time we got to him, just...clinging on, barely…” Lisa sputtered, the words just tumbling out. “It took everything he had left just to see us one last time…”

He was barely paying attention. She faded into the background as he realized his arm, the one where his hand had been aching so much, was at a different angle than its twin. It had to travel longer to make it to his forehead His eyes darted open as his arms slowly sank. Around then, he realized Lisa had stopped talking.

“David…” she started, but too late. He was staring at the impossible: at the bloody gauze over his arm, ending in a stump just short of where his wrist was supposed to be. He flexed, and a pang went up his arm informing him of where the stitches were. But...his hand was sore! How could it be sore if it was gone!? This was a joke, had to be, some sort of trick of the eye...

And then he remembered: phantom pains. He’d read up on them before his deployment, part of some morbid late night reading he’d done on guys that’d rolled over IEDs. Some fluke in the nervous system trying to tell the brain that something was wrong. Guys who lost limbs felt it all the time, usually pretty soon after, too.

He stared at it awhile longer, Lisa watching with her hands over her mouth and a piteous look in her eyes that he hated. He hated it and already knew he was going to have to get used to it, just like he’d have to get used to stares from kids whenever he stopped by a McDonald’s or went shopping for groceries, and painkillers that were more likely to give him a lifelong addiction, and dealing with the VA and surgeries and physical therapy and psychological counseling and stares and hooks and stares and stares and pity and stares and...

He fell back in the bed, chest heaving.

“The…shield she raised for you was only meant to keep the explosion out, not keep anything in…” she explained in halting, stilted gasps. “You reached right out of it, there…there wasn’t anything left…the bomb just…”

He settled back down, breathing heavily, staring up into the fluorescents. His eyes unfocused. His mind blanked. A tour in Afghanistan: a stint in the Korengal, literally the most dangerous post the US Armed Forces had to offer, and he came out unscathed. And now, here, with the UN, at a time that was supposed to be peaceful, he had been changed in a way that would be permanent, and that everyone was going to see for the rest of his life.

Lisa talked more. He didn’t listen. After awhile, she left, and took that damned piteous look with her. He stared for a long time after that. He stared until a nurse came over to inject something into his IV, and finally, he stopped staring as his eyes drifted shut against the beginning of tears.

All the terror, all the pain, watching a body bag being pulled back on his ship...it was almost worth it, the Admiral mused. Almost worth it to see this: Mr. M with his face buried in his hands. It was likely the only good thing to come of the whole fiasco. Well...that and the “subjects” were finally secure below decks again, for all the good that would do when the footage of them working in the refugee camp came out.

After a moment, the Admiral set his flask down before him. M lifted his face out of his hands. “I don’t drink on the job.” He said, trying to sound like his usual scolding voice, but the slight waver gave him away.

“You might want to start.” The Admiral said, tapping the security feed showing the hall just outside his office.

Mr. M glanced up. He blinked. He picked up the flask and took a swig, still sipping even as the bulkhead crashed open and the six remaining members of the UNJDI team stormed in, helmed by Lisa, who didn’t so much as sit into a chair as stormed into it, glaring across the desk at the pair.

M sat up a little straighter, straightening his arm to distance himself from the flask still in his grip. “You are not authorized to--”

“Lisa Townshend, British Special Air Service,” she said suddenly, cutting him off.

Mr. M balked, wide eyes darting from her to the remainder of the team. “That...this is very much against the…”

“Akshat Laghari, Assam Rifles.” Akshat put in.

Mr. M turned to look up at the Indian with widening eyes. He earned a dark glare back. The group didn’t stop.

“Chen Li,” Chen put in, also glaring. “Leishen Commando Airborne Force.”

“Andre Robert, French Foreign Legion.”

“Francis Zimmerman, GSG-9.”

“Felipe Santos, BOPE.”

As each member of the team named themselves with their military organization, Lisa counted each off on a finger. When the group standing there had finished, she continued counting: “David Preston, United States Marine Corps, and...and Anton Sokolov, Spetsnaz,” her voice choked up just a hair when she said this final name, then set her hands down on the armrests, still glaring evenly, her legs crossed as she sat. “Eight diplomats for an elite crisis-management team? Please, how about eight jarheads left in an office and forgotten about?”

Mr. M said nothing. The Admiral plucked the flask from his hand and dragged a few swigs down.

Because nobody else was talking, Lisa kept the initiative: “You plucked a bunch of soldiers out of their respective services and plunked ‘em down in the middle of a random office building in London, told ‘em if they sat still and were nice and quiet they could play at bein’ diplomats and emergency managers, even told ‘em not to reveal their military backgrounds so’s they couldn’t put two an’ two together. Why?”

Mr. M raised his hand to his lips, then looked down in surprise at his bare palm.

“First of all, what clued ya in?” The Admiral asked in his stead.

“You mean besides the fact that we’re still breathing despite the HLF’s best efforts?” Lisa sneered, then from a shirt pocket she pulled out the MicroSD, flicking it onto the table. “Anton made this before he died, and made damn sure we would get it. Tucked it in a flask filled with Coca-Cola. It’s got all our files in it: files the UN used in our selection process.”

M balked at that, staring at them wide-eyed as the Admiral chuckled. “Knew we wouldn’t waste our time keepin’ tabs on an old rummy, faked his alcoholism...” he shook his head. “Wily old bear.”

Lisa turned to him from M. M was obviously still going to play tight-lipped, but whether it was the drink, what they’d had to endure in Tokyo, or just the fact that he was old and tired of listening to paper-pushers from far-off office buildings telling him his years of combat experience were wrong and they knew what was best, the old man was giving up answers. “Okay,” she said. “So we’re not diplomats. We’re just a bunch of ex-soldiers sent to the far corners of the world to stare at each other in cubicles. Why?”

“Well, think about it,” the Admiral replied, downing another gulp. “It was after the Collision Wars, mankind needed the UNJDI more than ever, but the HLF had agents everywhere looking for UN throats to slash just outta pure revenge. I mean, there was that bombin’ at the New York headquarters, the mob lynchings in Nairobi, the militant strike on Beijing…and it goes on and on and on…”

“And...where do we come in?”

“It still ain’t obvious?” The Admiral leaned forward, grinning with his yellowed teeth as his scotch-laden breath washed over her. “You lot are the bait.”

The whole room turned to him. Nobody dared to move. Finally, Chen spoke up: “What?”

“Dontcha get it? We set you up in big, flashy buildings with big, fancy UN signs up front, didn’t that strike you as odd? Didn’t it occur to you that the UN would wanna keep its important staff safe? That if you were so important, you’d be somewhere a little more secret? Or wait, maybe you never thought you were important,” he grumbled, adding another sip from the flask. “Good, at leastcha weren’t that stupid.”

Another moment, and Lisa’s eyes lit up, her face falling. “Oh my God. We were bait to lure the HLF out.”

The Admiral grinned. “Bingo. Worked pretty well, too. Caught a few shitheads over in Rio a couple years back when they attacked and tried to take hostages, those fuckers got the surprise of their lives. Then there’s you, Hadji,” he tilted his flask in Akshat’s direction. “You and that little stunt you pulled in London with the Yank. That was enough to convince the UN t’keep the ruse going a little while longer.”

“You…” her teeth clenched. Her fists curled up on the armrests of the chair.

“You painted bullseyes on our backs.” Felipe hissed, stepping forward, his glare speaking of bloody murder. “You had us parade around for years to keep the HLF distracted from the actually important people. Why? We didn’t give enough for our countries? Our service meant nothing?”

“Of course it did!” The Admiral guffawed. “It meant we knew you had the skills to actually hold off the bastards long enough for us to get there and round a few up.”

“You placed soldiers’ lives in the line of fire without telling them,” Lisa hissed, her nose wrinkling in pure revulsion. “That’s disgusting.”

“Oh, but it worked!” The Admiral gasped, turning in his chair as he pulled out a remote. The TV showing the hallway outside flicked over to a new image: the side of a familiar wall inside the HLF compound. A young man bleeding out on the floor. David working furiously to restart a pulverized heart. “You think a buncha diplomats would’ve made it that far!? A normal UN negotiations team would’ve all died out there, and the pretty ponies’ executions would be scoring a few millions views on YouTube right now.

The Admiral leaned back, took another sip. “It might’ve been monstrous, might’ve left some bad tastes in some mouths, but it worked. It. Goddamned. Worked.”

The group all remained standing, all not moving, probably because each knew if they tried to move they might try to strangle one or both of the men on the other side of the table.

“So…” Lisa whispered. “Everything we did was a lie? The work we did, all the administrative shit we had going on with the Second Emergence…”

“Light administrative work done with a sense of urgency to maintain the illusion of importance,” he shrugged, sipped. “No more, no less.”

“You fucker…” Felipe hissed between clenched teeth, his fists balling up so hard his arms shook. “You fucking fucker…”

“Look at it this way,” Mr. M sighed, finally speaking as he leaned back in his chair. “You got to be on the frontlines for everything. From start to finish...you were there.”

A heartbeat passed, and then Felipe was upon him, fists flying, teeth bared, a roar rising from his throat. The others took a second to react, to grab him as every single ounce of the rage he felt came out through his fists, his kicking feet, his gnashing teeth. M sported a black eye and a bloody nose when it was all over, but managed to straighten his coat out, even as his breath heaved and blood stained his undershirt.

“You’ve just assaulted your superior in the UN, sir.” He said between gasps.

“Fuck you and fuck the UN!” Felipe shouted as he was dragged bodily out of the room, Andre and Francis holding his arms while Chen tried desperately to maintain a grip of his feet.

Looking shellshocked, Lisa just watched them leave with a thousand-yard stare. Her gaze rolled up to Akshat, the only one in her team remaining, and back to the pair sitting with her around the desk. After some time, she finally spoke: “I hope you both live long enough to regret ever being born.” She said. She said it without malice or hate, just with the most factual deadpan possible, like she was telling them to wear a sweater next time they were on-deck because the air was a bit nippy outside. Then, she rose from her chair and headed for the door. Akshat held it for her. She nodded her thanks, walked out, and he followed, neither of them looking over their shoulders at the pair.

The Admiral sighed and looked over to M, now pressing a tissue from the box on the desk to his bleeding nose. He let out a chuckle. “Gotta say, you take a punch a lot better than I thoughtcha would.”

M looked up, looked ready to say something, when the door burst open. The Admiral immediately recognized his rear admiral, and frowned. “Son, can’t you see we…”

“I’m sorry, sir!” The other man gasped, snapping into a salute. “It’s...Siberia sir, there’s been a development..”

When he was finished talking, the Admiral found himself wishing for a flask a little more full. In fact, they all did, knowing what was now heading their way.

Chapter XLVII: The Gun Fires

In her cell nearly a mile beneath the Earth’s crust, the Princess hated.

It was all she had left to do, really. All the scheming had already been set in motion. So all she had to occupy herself was her hate, her musings, her thoughts of Xinjiang wiped off the face of existence, of Tokyo in flames, of humans screaming pitifully from their cells as their former comrades held them down at her orders, gazing at old friends and brothers and lovers like they were nothing in their new, empty eyes.

An ear flicked. Muffled voices beyond her sight: “God, I hate coming down here...” one of the monkeys said in its guttural native tongue.

“Everyone does,” another voice. “It’s like standing too close to a nuke.”

A tiny smile etched its way across her muzzle. A nuclear warhead. Such an interesting toy, and a testament to the lowly status these creatures held: a group of barbaric tribes that should have surrendered to her light all those years ago. But next to her? A firecracker, like what foals would have been given during the many festivals celebrating her greatness.

“No...no, not like a nuke.” The other voice filtered through to her, picked up by ears focused under scant bits of magic even through the dozens of meters of steel between her and the outside. “A nuke is something we made. You know it can be controlled and regulated and shit. This is like a plague, like smallpox in some lab.”

Silence from the outside, then a grunt of assent. Her smile widened.

“Christ she’s been busy this month...damned converters are shot over here.”

“I bet this circuit board has you beat!” Came a chortled reply.

“Oh Jesus, that thing looks like a pancake! They should’ve had us down here yesterday!”

“You can thank Command and their infinite wisdom for delaying.”

The smile widened and deepened. Sure, you could thank Command. After all, it was the Colonel’s idea to delay her prison’s tune-up until midnight of the next day. They had been so very busy these past few days, of course, and it was about time the night crews got a little more experience maintaining her cells. It wouldn’t do if one shift was the only one that knew all the intricate ins and outs of the Tachyon Array keeping her contained, what if there was an accident that incapacitated them all right around her monthly maintenance check?

That this little midnight check coincided with the shift change for the guards around the Colonel’s new prisoners likely never crossed his stupid little monkey mind.

“Okay, breakers one and two off! Half-power for maintenance!”

The dim lights inside the cell flickered. Wings flaring in their restraints, the Princess gazed upwards. “Time to move, my knight in shining armor...”

For going on a week now, Shining Armor had waited.

Based on the shuffle of motion outside, he’d been able to nail down a somewhat-consistent schedule for the patrols in the hallway. It was hard keeping track of time, but he had nothing but time to count seconds and piece things together. He was able to figure out that around midnight, a shift change happened. It was pretty consistent, and left the hallway unguarded for nearly twenty minutes. This meant he had one window in the dead of night he knew he could work with. As a unicorn, he knew he could pop the other cell doors in that time, then he’d have a whole host of his fellow soldiers to use however they might see fit. After that…

Well, there was the problem, wasn’t it? It’s not like he could expect to find a main control room with “Princess Holding Cell” marked off with an X, if she was even being held here.

He blew his mane out of his eyes, grimacing at how unkempt it was getting. If his old drill instructor saw him now, he’d be sent to the barber and given latrine duty for a week! He chuckled, figuring he even knew what the old stallion would say: “Armor! I don’t care if you’re banging a princess, here you will—“

My captain~

Shining bolted upright in his cell. “Princess!?” He gasped, looking around, ears standing straight up. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he waited, hoping, praying for something else, some confirmation that he wasn’t just going stir-crazy inside this little cell. The air seemed to gain a new power to it, an electricity he hadn’t noticed before. After a few solid minutes of silence, however, the only thing echoing in his ears was his own heartbeat.

He sighed, setting his head down again. Damn. His imagination trying to give him some hope, had to be...

Captain...

“Princess!” He bolted upright, standing in his cot. Okay, no denying it that time! She was real! Absolutely real! “Princess!?”

No response. Shining sucked in a breath, gazed up. Based on the timing of his last meal, midnight was approaching fast. He’d literally counted the seconds since then: best way to maintain that inner peace and keep his horn hidden. Now though…

Well hell, that peace was screwed anyway.

Leveling a glare upon the metal door, he pulled away at the illusion around his horn, assuming a battle stance as he waited for the sound of boots on metal. He didn’t make any sort of signal. He knew the noise would be all his stallions would need to leap into action. He just had to wait.

The metal shutter opened to allow a tray of food in. Shining unleashed his magic.

A string of curse words howled in that guttural language as lightning flitted through the slot. Focusing, Shining forced his magic against the hinges of the door. Even from the other side, they bent after only a few seconds of wrenching at them. Snarling, he dove from the bed, twisted, and bucked the door with all the strength in his frame: considerable given his guard training. The door fell away like cardboard, and he strode through.

A soldier in one of those odd hats looked up at him, stunned. He opened his mouth to scream, but no words came out, courtesy of Shining’s magic. Shining dove forward, slamming a hoof into the guard’s forehead, knocking him out before—

…finish him…

He looked around, eyes wide, then his gaze slid back to the soldier. He realized with sudden revulsion that his hoof had found its way to the creature’s throat, and had been moments away from pressing. He stepped back, let out a shivering breath. The guy was no threat to him, why did he even consider that!?

Suddenly, red lights flashed. Alarm bells sounded. Cursing, Shining whirled on his hooves, casting his magic out against the doors to the other cells. In a flash, his Earth pony and Pegasi soldiers rushed into the hallway.

“Captain!” His second gasped, an Earth pony with a cream coat that rushed into the hallway, still half-asleep, a hoof at his brow in salute. “What’s…”

Shining raised a hoof for quiet. The ponies immediately all stood at attention, locking eyes with him. “We are going to free our comrades in arms, stallions.” He announced, stating it, leaving no room for doubt. “And then we are going to free our princess. Am I being clear?”

“Yes, sir!” The stallions bellowed. No questions asked.

Good, he didn’t think he’d be able to answer them.

Upstairs, down the hall. There is some equipment in front of the room. Smash it.

Shining grinned, confidence blooming in his chest as he gazed up at the gaping door to their cells, left hanging open. He didn’t even question the carelessness of it, he just moved, shooting up the stairs back to the surface, following the instructions of his princess. Two guards rushed him, holding those long weapons, but a quick wrench of his magic and both were thrown carelessly against the walls. He dodged between them as his stallions made short work of them, side stepping their splayed-out longcoats as he dove for the door at the end of the hall.

The tile whizzed beneath his hooves, accompanied by the thunder of his soldiers. Twisting corridors and dizzying turns were apparently of no consequence to the voice whispering away in his head. Just before the next corridor, she gasped for him to stop, crane his neck just so, and fire off a bolt. He did so, and a group of humans came stumbling out the other end, stunned and no match for his soldiers. They carried small devices resembling the ones used to restrain his unicorns days before. If they had used them, they might have--

Shaking off his shock at his good fortune, Shining Armor thundered along, right over the unconscious bodies of his former captors. Alarms blared in his deafened ears. Red lights shone against his white coat. His comrades barely had time to shout warnings before the voice in his head informed him of where to shoot, and before he knew it, another body would be splayed out in his path, dazed by a stun bolt. It became automatic: Run. Listen. Fire. Move on.

If there was ever any sort of suspicion at the darker tone the voice took every time he left one of the soldiers breathing, it was cast aside.

Left. Down the maintenance hall.

“LEFT!” He announced a moment before wheeling into a harsh 90° turn, not even questioning it as he slammed through a door, sending a creature in blue coveralls sprawling. Unarmed as he was, Shining didn’t even bother using a stun bolt on him, instead turning to the pile of hoses and metal racks and strange, humming equipment and blasting it all away with a few perfectly-aimed shots from his horn.

He wheeled around, intent on returning to the hallway, but found himself stopped. He turned in surprise to find one of the creatures with an appendage around his hind hoof, gazing desperately up at him.

“Don’t let her out...” he groaned. “You can’t...”

Shining’s ears folded back as his brow raised. The conviction and fear on this person’s face was palpable, the way he desperately clawed at the hindleg, the way he begged the stallion with his eyes. Was this the path he was meant to take? Was there something else going on, some piece to the picture he was missing?

Then, rather suddenly, something warm slipped into his brain. The warmth settled over his mind, emptying it. His vision filled with red. His lips twisted into a snarl. This...thing was daring to insult his princess! His sovereign! The one upon whom his nation’s fate rested! The one pony in the world that held the hearts of millions, and who had been stolen from him unjustly!

“How dare you.” He hissed dangerously. His hoof stomped, coming down on the filthy ape’s fingers with a series of pops and squelches. The creature screamed as he whirled on it, clamping its lips shut with his magic.

“How dare you!?” He bellowed. “How dare you voice such lies about a goddess!? You unworthy, lowly cretin! You pile of scum! You…you...”

“Captain!”

Shining blinked, turned to the door where the voice had sounded. His head spun. His hooves gave a twinge of pain. He looked down at them, and gasped.

The creature beneath him now wore a series of cuts and bruises all across its face. Both eyes were swollen nearly shut with beaten, purple skin. A bloody tooth lay next to a trail starting at the corner of its swollen lips. Breath wheezed in and out through bloody nostrils.

He turned back, realized he was talking to a unicorn who was now staring at him as if he were an escaped convict with a shiv. “G-get one of the medics!” He gasped. “S-someone who knows healing magic! Hurry!”

“Sir, do we really have time for that!?” One of the unicorn newcomers shouted, but a glare from Shining was all he needed to know that yes, they sure as shit had time for that. One of the unicorns rushed through, a pale-grey mare with her horn already aglow.

“Just set things to rights so he doesn’t suffocate while we’re away,” Shining spat, ignoring the growling voice in his head insisting for him to just move on, leave the monkey, let the scum die a slow and painful death. He trotted back out to the hallway, where his soldiers stood at attention, crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder and saluting in the flickering light from the panels above. After a few moments, the mare returned from inside the tiny room.

“It’s done,” she announced. “He’s stable.”

They’re coming. The voice hissed with no small amount of venom.

“Move!” Shining shouted, whipping his head around to lead the group further into the maze of metal corridors and tile. His body followed his princess’s direction automatically now. Left. Right. Right. Straight. Down. Down. Down.

Stop.

They had arrived at a metal door set in the wall. It could have been one of a dozen other maintenance closets they’d passed. Thanks to his princess, Shining knew better. He burst through. A group of the creatures were just standing there, dressed in the tell-tale jumpers of maintenance personnell. A quick stun spell, and they were no longer a factor.

As the humans fell away, a box revealed itself, behind their bodies. One with a lightning bolt on it, and three, thick cables leading down into the floor.

Level-Five spell...right into the middle leg…yes, my knight, yes!

His horn charging, Shining Armor slammed all his might into what may have been more than a level-five spell. The humans, still dazed, locked their eyes on the blue bolt, eyes wide and mouths agape, as it slammed into the power box with a loud pop. For a second, nothing happened, and Shining bit his lip, afraid he’d messed up somehow. Then, a loud bang sounded around the corner, followed by a series of heavy thuds, and finally, the lights dimmed.

“Oh pizdets, chto vy nadelali…” one of the creatures exclaimed, eyes still whirling from the stun spell.

Deep in her cell, the princess grinned as the lights went out.

”The hell was that!?”

“Some sorta power surge! Oh God, it took out the couplings over here!”

“Aww fuck, Jesus, zapped my thumb…fuck! Fuck we lost them here too! Oh shit!”

“Stay calm, we can swap ‘em out, we can…”

“No you can’t.”

All talk silenced itself as the princess felt her strength, her true strength, return.

“You’re already too late,” she purred as the air in the room simmered with heat.

Shining turned a questioning look on the creatures in the room, but was interrupted before he could say anything by a colossal thud that shook the floor beneath his hooves. Dust drifted from the ceiling with it. At the same time, a sinking pit formed in his stomach.

“Ona svobodna!” The cry rang out among the small group of humans. They all darted to their feet, ignoring their pony captors completely as they ran for the door, practically running each other down in a mad dash to get out. “Ona svobodna! Ona svobodna!”

“Hey, hey!” One of the earth ponies shouted, holding up her hooves to stop them. “Where do you think you’re going!?”

The men either didn’t hear her, or didn’t care to. They literally bowled her over, massive frames checking her out of the way as if she were made out of paper. One even took a flying leap, landing impressively at the bottom of the stairs before darting to his feet, screaming as he tried to maintain his lead on the others.

“Captain, can’t you stop them!?” One of the stallions shouted. When no response came, he turned to his commander. “Captain? I said…”

He trailed off, noting the look on his leader’s face. Shining stood rooted in place, jaw agape, eyes widening in horror. The voice in his head had risen to a cackling flicker, like the roar of a wildfire. A wicked cackle played out hoof-in-hoof with the image of cities burning, a blighted hellscape beneath a blazing sun that consumed everything beneath it. A deep rumble sounded, and based on the gasps and folded ears around him, Shining figured that was real, not a part of whatever horror was being broadcast into his head. A sudden, stabbing pain materialized in his temple.

“C-captain?” One of the soldiers, a guard Shining knew had been part of his personal team for years, whimpered. His ears folded low as he turned to face him. “Wh-what is that!?”

The rumble grew into a deafening roar. The stone floors shook. Cracks formed within it. A pipe suddenly exploded with steam, right in the face of a recruit who screamed and dropped to the floor, clutching at the burnt-off mess of flesh and fur where the side of his face had once been. Someone screamed for the medic ponies to get to work. Shining Armor just watched, mouth agape, eyes wide and gazing to some far-off place he couldn’t quite see.

Then, all at once, the rumbling stopped.

Silence fell over the group. Even the burnt stallion stopped screaming. Everyone, ponies and humans alike, paused where they were and looked at the cracks in the floor.

“What was that?” Somepony asked again.

Shining opened his mouth to talk, but was interrupted:

My knight in shining armor~

The ground ripped open at his hooves. Steam poured from the fissures. The rock reared up as something broke up through the ground towards them, tossing a pony carelessly against a wall. Screams filled the tiny room as the rock rumbled, then started to glow, starting off at just red, then rapidly moving to orange and melting away from them.

“What is that!?” Somepony kept screaming. “What is that!? What—“

Then, the floor exploded. A few ponies standing too close to the fissures were blown to bits instantly, a disembodied hoof sailing away and slamming against the far door. More screams filled the air, and Shining realized the metal stairway the monkeys had been trying to climb was suddenly red hot, their skin sizzling and boiling away as their shoes and clothes ignited. And still they tried to climb, fueled by terror, pushing on skin that turned to char. Heat poured from the fissure in waves and, for a moment, Shining mused that he must have just unleashed an active volcano.

Finally, a hoof burst through the stone, melting it away. Shining’s eyes widened, then he had to close them on reflex, as the hoof shone with a blinding light. The screams from those around him were drowned out by the roar. He was thrown back against the wall, sliding down to his rear, unable to move. He let out his breath, then instantly regretted it as the air he let back in scorched his throat and burned his lungs.

He opened his eyes, and realized in an instant he was looking at the devil.

She looked like his beloved Princess, stood like her too, ethereal mane and all. She had the same coat, the same muzzle, and a rainbow-colored mane, albeit one that shimmered with rolling waves of stunning colors and sparks of power that flitted from her like lightning. However, her wings glowed red-hot where they were folded against her slim frame. The air shimmered off her body in heat waves. His head gave another twinge of pain, and it was only now he realized he was experiencing magical feedback from the sheer ambient power being thrown into the air.

But most of all, there were the eyes.

He knew Celestia’s friendly, loving gaze from years in her personal guard. This creature met his look with sunken, red orbs that had darkened spots serving for pupils, a haunting gaze that held nothing for the rest of the world but pure hatred.

“My knight in shining armor,” she intoned. “Thank you for releasing me.”

Behind her, a fresh round of screams had started up. Apparently, one of the monkeys had finally lost his balance and planted face-first on the glowing-hot metal. The mare that could have been Celestia’s doppelganger turned to this distraction and, with a slight grimace, inclined her head slightly, her long, ivory horn sparking with power. Instantly, the small group on the stairs burst into flames, screaming as they flailed in their death throes, skin bubbling and melting away.

The doppelganger watched them burn, taking in every agonizing second of their suffering. She only turned back to Shining when the last of the screams had stopped and the last human fell back down to the concrete, skin resembling a coal left on a campfire too long. The thing met Shining’s gaze with a placid little smile. He took one look at it, and felt just the slightest little release from his bladder.

“Wh-what is that?” The stallion gasped again, raising his hooves defensively over the blackened scorch marks burned onto his face. “Who are you!?”

“My little pony,” she purred, turning that placid smile onto him. “Don’t you recognize your princess?”

“Y-you’re not her!” He gasped. “You can’t be! You’re some kinda…demon! A monster!”

Her lips curling with distaste, the creature bent her head again. This time, flames roared into existence around her, forming a ring. Fire engulfed everypony else, and they screamed. Hooves flailing, they screamed. Coats blackening, they screamed. Skin and eyeballs melting from the heat, they screamed. And they screamed. And they screamed.

All except for him.

All except for Shining Armor. And…his princess.

He fell to his flanks, shaking his head, neck craned back as he watched the creature approach in horror. The mare tilted her head, studied him, seemingly unaware of the ponies around her screaming as they burned.

“My my, you look just like mine,” she mused, grinning. A perfectly normal grin, he noticed. Somehow, it looked even worse than the fangs he’d imagined.

He opened his mouth, tried to say something, but only managed a quiet moan.

“Well, my knight, it looks like you’ve reached your journey’s end.” She cackled. “You’ve saved the princess from the evil monkeys, so you know what happens now?”

In spite of the sheer terror stabbing cold icicles into his chest, Shining managed to shake his head.

“Haven’t you read the stories?” She asked, then puckered her lips. “This is the part where the princess kisses her brave hero.”

It was only after she started towards him that he realized her lips were glowing white-hot and smoldering with heat.

Before long, with the skin on his forehead peeling back and his white coat turning black, his screams joined his former soldiers’.

Her kiss finished, the Princess set her knight in shining armor back down on his hooves, tucking him away. His screams had stopped, which might have meant he knew the same peace as his former comrades.

No matter. She didn’t need him anymore.

She breathed in fresh, free air for the first time in far too many years. Years that had been stolen by the stupid, thousand-times-damned monkeys. Cursed creatures. Their world could have been the first to know her true light, could have become beings fully capable of basking in her glory without distraction, without thought for anything less than her holy might and will. But they chose resistance, and now her Empire laid in ruins.

She had thought long and hard about what would come next, but in the end knew there was too little she could glean about the goings-on in the world, even with her influence cast out over the Newfoals and the weaker minds. She could fly to one of this nation’s nuclear silos. She was certainly familiar enough with underground human facilities, and at close range she could instigate an attack. Turning humanity’s world into a radioactive cinder with their own weapons held a certain poetry for her. Hell, if she did that she might just have enough time to fly to her home and retake her throne, rebuild from the ashes, and give that traitorous little shit of a former guard captain a taste of what his counterpart just experienced.

Ahh, but no…she knew long ago that her people no longer held the love for her they once had. A few years without her propaganda ministries had seen to that. An unruly nation was every bit as deserving of death as any under that cursed UN flag. Still, ripping off Shining Armor’s legs while the human world burnt to a crisp held a certain attraction…although there was always the off-chance they would refrain from retaliation. Even if the other nations of the world saw a few warheads heading there way, there was always a chance someone would see her being free and put two and two together. Humanity had an unfortunate way of surprising her. That they had held her captive for so long was testament to that.

No, she had been locked away for too long. The nukes were a good idea, but for what they had done to her, she wanted an absolute guarantee that every one of those cursed monkeys would die screaming: their cities turned to ash, their works laid low and set to glorious, cleansing flame.

So, she closed her eyes, and gazed up, up at the world.

A snarl crossed her face. Despite her intentions, she couldn’t help shifting her attention to her homeland. UN columns marched in her streets, human soldiers patrolled the villages and hovels. And yet, her own citizens, those who didn’t lamely lower their heads at the passing patrols, looked to them with gratitude. Gratitude! In fact, some had even stricken friendships with them!

With a thought, she stopped the heart of a random mare as she sat down to a game of poker with a group of women in some UN office built in the ruins of Canterlot. Indeed, things were even worse than she suspected. While there were still those who held some love for her in their hearts, her little ponies welcomed the humans. It made her sick. The old fanaticism she needed was gone, replaced with a bunch of mules bowing before the monkeys.

So, what of the usurper’s world? She who would turn her own perfect little Newfoals against her?

Her sneer turned into a growl as she dismissed the thought. Such a world would be too weak-willed, every bit as spineless as its ruler. The inhabitants would look like her little ponies, but they would be groveling mockeries of her glorious Empire. No, better to burn the whole thing away, let the survivors rebuild from the ash.

Her ear pricked. Something had caught her attention on the human television waves. A doomsday cult? Ahh, of course, these always popped up, the primitive monkeys always thinking their world was coming to an end, especially whenever there was a…

Her eyes opened. She gazed up, straight up from where she stood. A dark chuckle rumbled up her throat. “Simple serendipity,” she said, staring directly up through the miles of corridors and machinery and all-too-squishy humans between herself and the outside. Grinning, she flared her wings.

Chapter XLVIII: War On Humanity

The first sign that anything was wrong came when a stallion failed to salute Shining Armor as he returned to his control room, having just made it back from Japan. In fact, the stallion didn’t even seem to notice him, instead fiddling with his phone, repeatedly hitting redial, then growling in frustration when he only heard a recorded message about network capacity. “C’mon, mom and dad...c’mon...” the stallion growled as he slammed the redial button so hard the plastic casing gave a stressed creak.

Shining made a mental note to get in contact with the mobile carriers about expanding Equestria’s network when he finally reached the small room. He took one look at the first screen he could see, and his eyes widened. His brain rocked with panic before he reeled it back in with the thought that this had to be a movie. Yes, his subordinates must have seen he would be gone for the day and decided to slack off, that had to be it. Thing was, the room wouldn’t be in a panicked uproar if that was true.

The king stared in horrified shock through the haze of second-hand smoke at what appeared looked like an asteroid impact. His jaw dropped as the mental gears turned and he realized that no, this was not a movie, his subordinates weren’t slacking off, and they were all here watching a horrific explosion turn one of the most important facilities on the face of the Earth into a miniature volcano. Smoke poured from the titanic crater and out into the atmosphere, the vague outlines of sparking cables and melted catwalks that had once been a very expensive billion-dollar facility barely visible among the smoldering wreckage.

He knew he had to act, had to move, had to consolidate resources and prepare press releases and evaluate readiness and contact the UN and a million other things that would ensure his people’s place in the new and horrifying world that had just been released, but all he could do was stare at the blinding streak of light rocketing into the stratosphere. Only when the smoke on the screen had started to clear and the streak was a pinprick of light mixed with a fading spot in his eye did he finally find his voice again:

“H-how long ago was this?”

“L-less than an hour, sir.” The mare at the console stammered. She pulled a cigarette from her lips and tapped the ashes out into an already-full tray on her desk. “We would have told you sooner, but you were still on the sub back from Japan, and…”

She didn’t need to finish that sentence. And he’d been on radio silence to run the UN patrols. He needed to talk to Twily…

“What assets do we have in Japan!?”

“Way ahead of you sir, and…more bad news…” another mare gasped, quickly pulling up a screen that showed a refugee camp in flames, a CNN camera focused on a bloodstained UN helmet in the middle of the road before the twisted, smoldering ruins of a front gate.

Shining fell into a chair, head shaking, jaw dropping, eyes wide and transfixed. He’d needed to evac Japan and fast. The movements of Equestria’s sovereign could only go undetected for so long…but what the hell had he missed during his hours under the ocean?

When his eyes finally broke free of the screen, he realized everypony in the room was looking at him. No, not just looking…waiting for him to do his damned job. His eyes hardened, his mouth clamping shut. There wouldn’t be much time to act. “What do we have left in Tokyo?”

“A few agents with surveillance drones...”

Shining cursed through clenched teeth. “Alright, have them put eyes on the compound. I want to know where the VIPs are now, you hear me? And I want to know where they’re gonna be.” His eyes rolled back to another screen, another channel showing the smoldering crater that used to hold her prison. “Also get in touch with every surveillance program we can. We need to know where that bitch is headed. Put the UN on high alert if they’re not already.”

He suddenly stood, turned to walk out of the small room.

“Sir?” A pegasus stallion asked as Shining started out the door. “Where are you going?”

“There’s nopony she wants dead more than me,” he replied, nudging the door open with his snout, not looking back, unable to keep a tremble from his hooves. “Everypony within any sort of proximity to me is in danger.”

The stallion’s ears folded down, his wings giving a ruffle. “Your highness…”

“Sir, you might wanna belay that!” The first mare gasped, her eyes huge, transfixed on her monitor as she scrolled rapidly through the small mountain of data coming through. She eased herself back, head shaking slowly, pupils retracting. “The...humans already found her.”

Shining rocketed to her side. His fear seemingly forgotten, he started scanning the screen. “Who found her? The CIA? FSB?”

“No sir,” she whispered breathlessly, not even turning to look at him. “NASA.”

That gave him pause. His head swiveled to the mare, then back to the screen, then back to the mare, and back to the screen.

He lingered on the screen.

Behind the scar tissue, his eye twitched.

“Oh my God…” he whispered.

“…full-blown panic in the streets of Moscow today, much like every other major city on the planet, with multiple space agencies confirming a new direction for the path of Ceres V…”

The screen flickered.

“…it appearing that in this new phase of the war against humanity, the being formerly known as Princess Celestia has hijacked the trajectory of the comet and redirected…”

One more time, the screen flickered.

“…a full-blown extinction event that will result in the end of life as we know it, similar to the crater known to have triggered the death of the dinosaurs…”

With the click of a button, the screen went dark. Lisa gazed into the black mirror left behind while lowering her arm. In it, she watched Andre and Francis hugging, she saw Chen staring blankly into its blank depths, she saw Akshat watching with silent tears, and Felipe simply curled up on one of the cafeteria tables, huddled into a ball.

Somehow, despite all the pain she found in the eyes of those around her, the two empty seats in the vacant cafeteria hurt the most.

“So…that’s it then.” She whispered. “The bitch escaped, and now, we lose.”

“N-no…” Chen shook his head. “No, it’s…the UN’s been talking about a nuclear strike, it…”

“Oh, get real, Chen!” Felipe shouted, lifting his head up from his knees. His red, puffy, tear-streaked face greeted them all. “Don’t you get it!? It’s a planet killer! Even if they somehow manage to nuke the bitch, we’re still dead.”

“N-no…they will crack it in half and…”

“And then we’ll just get hit by two halves of a giant fucking rock, along with some radioactive magma,” he bellowed, curling up again. “We all starve to death in nuclear winter instead of just getting blown up by the atmosphere igniting itself. Goodie.”

“It…can’t…” Chen looked around, desperate, his wire-rim glasses hanging off one of his ears. “It can’t end like this, after everything…we were gonna petition the UN, get Celestia out, cure the Newfoals, save the world…”

“Save the world? Us?” Felipe scoffed, and curled up again. “Didn’t you hear anything the Admiral said? That wasn’t our job, not even close.”

“So we give up?” Lisa hissed. “That’s how you wanna honor Anton? After everything he gave up to make sure we’d know the truth, you wanna just crawl away and die?”

Felipe rounded on her, dark eyes blazing with that old rage. “Woman, you are treading in a place you shouldn’t, I’ll…” he cut himself off with a breath.

“You’ll what!?” She snapped.

“Lisa…” Akshat started, reaching for her, but she brushed him off with ease.

“No, no! I wanna hear what he was gonna say!” She shouted, her voice rising over the din of the television. “You’ll fucking what, you little ponce!? You’ll--”

And then there was a knock at the door. Despite themselves, all eyes turned to it, widening as it opened. David stood there, though he was hardly recognizable. His hair was a tousled mess, and week-old stubble infested his face. He was clad in a filthy hospital gown, and in his hand – his remaining hand – everyone could see an IV stand. He wheeled it in ahead of himself, seeming to need it almost as much for the support as the life-giving nutrients being siphoned into his bloodstream. But most of all were the eyes. He had never held a look that screamed “joyous” or “childish innocence,” but they had always been sharp, and at least held some amount of humor. Now they were just...blank. Blank and tired.

He stumbled for a second as he walked into the room, and in doing so brought his arm up to regain his balance. They could all see now: see where his arm simply ended in a bandaged nub, and the moment he looked up he could see what they all saw. And somehow, even more light left those eyes. Lisa didn’t look away, knew breaking her gaze would make it worse, and prayed that she held no pity in her look, no awkwardness, no fear. Prayed even as his shoulders sank all the more. David was a defeated man, and he clearly knew there wouldn’t be time to try and put the pieces back together.

He finally stopped in the middle of the room, halfway between the group and the TV mounted on the wall. He slowly turned, neck craning back to drink in the TV, then slowly returned his gaze to the group at the tables. He gave a weak little smile, and hooked a shaking thumb over his back. “You believe this shit?” He rasped. “Same thing on every channel. And they wonder why nobody watches cable anymore.”

A weak chuckle passed by his lips, which quickly turned into a coughing jag. Akshat and Lisa tried to follow up with their own laughter, but it was forced even to their own ears. In fact, Lisa had to stop herself from rushing up to help the American, only pausing short of rising from her seat when his eyes opened again and glared right at her.

“’I’m leaving,” he mumbled. His breath wheezed in and out of his chest. It seemed to be taking all of his effort just to keep from crashing to the tiled floor. “Don’t wanna die on this tin can.” He said this with some finality, then turned, trudging back towards the door. This time, Lisa did get up.

“David…” she whispered, a hand reaching for the sleeve of his gown. “Wait.”

He paused. His shoulders rose and fell. “There’s less than a month left, Lisa,” he sighed. “What do you want me to wait for?”

She stood there, clearly expecting words to come, something to encourage them, inspire them all to take action. When nothing of the sort came, he continued his trudge. “S’been nice,” he managed, and he shut the door behind him.

Chapter XLIX: Guaranteed Survival

As far as captures went, Thompson figured he was doing alright. Of course, considering the last round of the Collision Wars, anything above being tortured for the entertainment of hordes of fanatical guardstallions was “doing alright.” So, low bar to clear, and compared to that shit he’d rocketed right over it anyway.

For one, Flutterheart was back. Apparently, she had unleashed an unholy screaming fit as soon as she had recovered from her stint within the Emergence Zone, and refused to stop until she ‘found out what happened to Skywalker and Den Kenahbi.’ So she was now on her way, escorted under heavy guard for a daily mandated “storytime.” However, this also meant she needed an escort, as there was no way anyone would approve of a filly sitting with a literal prisoner of war unsupervised. So now, he had a small orange pony curled up at the end of his bed. He didn’t know what she was supposed to do if he did do something untoward, but he did know she made the best damned apple cobbler he’d ever had in his life.

From what he’d gathered, this orange pony was one of the “Elements of Harmony,” one of the ponies who could use some ancient artifacts to defend Equestria when needed. Sounded like a rejected draft for a fantasy writer’s half-baked story to him, but in a world that apparently needed multiple princesses of the horns-and-wings variety, maybe that wasn’t so crazy to them. Ugh...now he was really regretting not pirating the old MLP show, odds were this world was closer to it than the one he knew, but damn if the show didn’t become almost impossible to find after the end of the Collision Wars…

“Somethin’ buggin’ ya, sugarcube?”

Thompson sighed. Ahh, that damned accent, her one flaw. “Nothin’, just lookin’ forward to storytime, s’all.”

The mare turned, her brilliant green eyes shining at him as a little smile met her freckled face. “Y’know, you could have all the storytellin’ you want. We could even get that shackle offa yer, uh…”

“Wrist.”

“Right, that. Letcha walk around a li’l, y’know all you’d need t’do fer it.”

That little smile still played on her cheeks, but Thompson just shook his head. “Until I got the okay from a superior officer, all y’can have is my name, my rank, and my identity number. We’ve been over this.”

“I know, just thought I’d try again.” She shrugged, curling up in her spot again with a sigh.

“Mr. Thompson!”

Thompson’s eyes lit up as the filly bounded in, hopping up to his hospital gurney from between a pair of guards. “Flutterheart! Aintcha a sight for sore eyes!”

She giggled, sliding in beside him as the guards took position near the doorway.

“So, where’d we leave off, love?”

“Umm…” her adorable little muzzle scrunched up as the filly put actual thought into this. “I think Dark Vader was telling Lando about altering the deal?”

Thompson chuckled. He thought about correcting her pronunciation of “Darth” for a moment. Only a moment. “Right,” he said, clearing his throat and looking up.

Though the orange pony remained curled up, he noticed one ear perked from under her hat. He also noticed the guards hunching over a little closer to the door, their heads angled slightly so one ear could face the room. Thompson smiled. He always thought he’d had a knack for this storytelling thing. Nice to have confirmation.

“I have altered the deal,” he intoned, cupping a hand around his mouth to add to the effect. “Pray I don’t alter it…again…”

He trailed off as the guards’ backs suddenly went ramrod-straight, foretelling the arrival of the night-blue Princess. Luna was her name, and her existence confirmed that Alicorns weren’t nearly as rare as she had tried to make them out to be. It did ground him a little, knowing that. Suddenly, the creature hidden beneath the Siberian tundra couldn’t be from some other plane outside of the Equestria they knew, but could actually be just another pony, albeit a rare breed considering the power she obviously held. Still, the Solar Tyrant’s rants about the dangers of imprisoning a goddess lost that much more potency once he sat and thought about the blue mare’s existence for awhile.

And he had a lot of time to sit and think about it. Outside of bathroom breaks and the occasional jog in the hallway outside, he hadn’t been allowed to leave the hospital gurney. Amazing what even a grunt like him could come up with given enough time to themselves.

“H-howdy, Princess!” The orange mare at the foot of his bed said, having darted from curled up like a little pony-cat to standing straight, her head inclined respectfully.

“At ease, fair Applejack,” Luna said.

Thompson watched as said mare’s chest deflated an inch and her chin rose to at least allow her to see some small part of Luna’s face. Thompson’s stomach gave a minor twist at the sight: so eerily similar to the posture he’d assumed automatically during the few times the Queen had made it somewhere nearby. Still, when those cold, blue eyes scanned over the gurney to him, he just inclined his head.

“Princess,” he said casually.

“Thompson.” She replied, leaning against his bedside. “How fare ye today?”

He gave a miniscule shrug. “Leg’s still a bit stiff, still get headaches sometimes.”

“Ah, yes, good…” she trailed off. Her massive eyes darted from him. There was something bothering her, but she wasn’t quite sure how she wanted to broach it.

“So…” he started, figuring he might take a stab at what it could be. “How goes talks with my people?”

She let in a breath for half a second, obviously caught off-guard by that. “It’s…fine. Just ironing out the details.”

Liar, he thought with a little frown. He knew they weren’t talking to his people, no way would something like that be in the “ironing out the details” phase already. But if that wasn’t what was bugging the horse princess, what was?

“Umm…P-Princess Luna?” Flutterheart spoke up, raising a little hoofsie. “Izzat all you needed Mr. Tomson for? I wan’ him to get back to the story.”

The Princess stared, obviously needing a moment to register being told to buzz off by a toddler. Thompson couldn’t blame her, he needed a few moments himself. Finally, she cleared her throat. “No, actually, I did need to ask him something.”

Sighing, Flutterheart picked herself up off the bed and started for the door. “Okay, but hurry up already! Storytime’s s’posed to end when the big hand on the clock reaches 12…” she said, pointing to the wall clock to make sure everyone knew what she was talking about.

Luna giggled. “Yes, madam.” She said with a theatrical bow, which seemed to gain Flutterheart’s approval as she strolled out, Applejack following swiftly behind her.

“Oi! You heard ‘er.” Thompson grinned. “We’re on a serious timetable now.”

“Well, now that I know, I’ll try not to take up all of your time, Private.” She replied, stepping over to the gurney’s side. “I just...wanted to talk a little bit more, really.”

Thompson sighed. “This again…”

“I just want to know what your people are like,” she insisted. “Your weapons are astounding, your methods of communication and gear confounding, anything you could give us…”

“Princess…”

“Have we not proven ourselves worthy?” She asked, leaning forward. “Have we not shown we are not the tyrant you dealt with?”

His gaze darted away. “Princess, I get you’re probably a lot more fair and just than I’m givin’ ya credit for. Hell, what I’ve seen, you’re more approachable than half the talkin’ heads back home. But my training is very clear. If we’re captured, we aren’t to give away any information besides…”

“…name, rank, and identification number,” Luna sighed, rolling her eyes. “Trust us, we know.”

“Oh, you’ve heard this song already?” He chuckled. “Push comes to shove you can try the pink one again.”

“If your body wasn’t already accustomed to fighting it off, we would.” She sighed despondently, laying her head on the gurney’s railing.

At that moment, it took everything in Thompson’s willpower not to lean over to give ear scritchies. Fortunately, another guard in full armor galloped in just as his hand started to really twitch, their hoof already rising to their brow in salute. “Princess! There’s been another development in the forbidden zone!”

Luna bolted up as Thompson’s heart sank. If his people were coming for him, then things might be about to get a whole lot shootier in this city.

“What’s that?” Luna gasped, immediately turning to the newcomer.

“They…” he swallowed. “The creatures on the other side. They want to make contact!”

Luna’s eyebrows rose, her gaze drifting from him back to Thompson. Then, she smiled. “Well, mayhap it took them awhile, but it appears as through thine superiors wish for thy return.” She said before her horn lit up and she vanished from view, leaving the soldiers sitting there to stare at one another awkwardly.

“Ummm…” Thompson trailed off, staring at the soldier, who just stared back, wide-eyed. After awhile, he finally spoke: “There’s a li’l filly out there, if you wouldn’t mind sendin’ her back in.”

“...right…” the guard sighed, turning back to the hallway, apparently already used to shifting from “deliverer of dire news” to “errand boy” at a moment’s notice.

Thompson mused on that little observation. “Huh...good company there, mate,” he muttered as the sound of armor shifted out in the hall.

This...isn’t what I envisioned for a human invasion...

Despite herself, Luna remained as she was. The guards at her side consisted of the entire garrison that had been watching the swirling mass of fog since Day One. They numbered in the lower hundreds, their training and skill unmatched in the world, their devotion to Harmony and the Crown unquestionable. And yet, as a set of shimmering lights approached in the fog, she couldn’t blame them for the rattling, fearful tremble of armor, for the telltale sound of hooves grinding as they nervously tightened around spearshafts. The enemy was as dangerous as it was mysterious, even to her, and most of the ponies around her didn’t even know they had one of them in custody. She could only imagine what they felt as the lights coalesced into beams shining from head-mounted gadgets. More tiny demonstrations of human technology, more reasons for that sinking feeling of being way over their heads.

As usual, the humans approached in their bulky, yet silent, gear: the shining lanterns the only hint of their approach. Heavy boots tapped on the ground, their weapons carried across their chests. Yet, they numbered only five. Luna’s teeth clenched. Someone was only this self-sure strutting into enemy territory when they already had the upper hand. The next few minutes were going to be decisive for her people, and probably not in the best way.

Taking a final breath, she approached the masked men. “Equestria welcomes you, visitors from--”

“We’re keeping this short.” The man in the middle, the apparent leader, interrupted as he reached into a zippered pocket on his chest pack. One of her soldiers stepped forward protectively, but Luna waved him back while the leader produced a small, rectangular object. With a tap, the object lit up, and after a moment of staring at a blank, white frame, Celestia appeared onscreen.

“C-Celestia!” Luna gasped, then instantly cursed herself for showing so little restraint with her emotions.

The solar alicorn had seen better days. She sat behind a pane of glass, her hooves restrained to the floor in heavy shackles. A metal collar sat latched around her slender neck, and as she picked up her head, Luna realized her ethereal mane was tangled and tattered in places. “Luna,” she rasped, and a smile crossed her chapped lips.

Realizing this was the real deal, not just some image, Luna leant forward. “Are you hurt!? Are they treating you well!? What do they want!?”

Celestia shook her head sadly. “There’s no time. Just give them what they want, please, Luna. It’s…it’s only right.”

Despite the rage flaring in her chest, Luna glared up into the red lenses of the soldiers’ masks. “What are your demands?” She hissed, only barely-suppressing the urge to add ‘foul cretins’.

“We have people coming.” The man replied, pocketing the tiny device again. “You will provide for them.”

“The impudence…” her wings flared. “You would have us supply the forces invading our lands!?”

“The alternative is the summary execution of your sister.” The soldier rasped back. “If we cannot get what we want from you, then she has no use to us.”

Luna glared into the little, red lens. A trembling breath left her powerful frame. Still, her heart beat in her frame, so hard she was surprised her wings didn’t tremble with each beat. “How do we know what you just showed us was not some form of trickery? That our sister isn’t already dead?”

Even as she swallowed the lump formed by that last sentence, the man replied: “You don’t. But this is the only chance you will ever have of seeing her alive.”

Luna’s hooves trembling in their silver slippers. Her mind raced. Saying no was…unthinkable. The very thought of never seeing her sister again…she would likely collapse into tears the moment this meeting was over. Celestia was irreplaceable for her people, her nation: a symbol of hope and harmony that had gently guided Equestria for millenia. But could she really hand her nation over on a silver platter? Seriously agree to roll over and allow the enemy to hold a knife to her people’s throats? No, she couldn’t…

“Princess, we’re with ya.”

She turned in surprise to see Rainbow Dash standing at her side, her head lowering, her eyes narrowed upon the imposing figures before them. Behind her, as always, the four remaining friends, backed her up: Pinkie glaring from behind a party cannon, Applejack flexing her legs with a few practice kicks, Rarity wielding her sewing scissors threateningly, and Fluttershy hiding behind Rainbow and shivering, but still very much present.

“We’re all with ya!” A call sounded up from the ranks of stallions surrounding them, along with cheers that rose from their lines. Spears rattled, shields rose. The pair beside Luna formed up before her, and in doing so, came slightly closer to the menacing figures.

“Back the fuck up!” The newcomers shouted, their weapons rising. Luna’s heart stopped. They kept shouting, as did the faithful ponies around her…all trusting in her, knowing they stood for harmony and Equestria. They stood ready to take on the unknowable and exceedingly dangerous.

Her gaze slid over the stallions and mares around her, all cheering, all rallying. Before them, the five mares, the five heroines chosen by harmony itself, spat out their own bitter curses, their voices all a cacophony.

And then she turned back to the humans. Their weapons rose. Their cold, steady eyes watched through red lenses.

Her ponies were ready. And they would die. Yes, they might win in the end, but the enemy was fierce, mysterious, and unbelievably powerful. How many of her ponies would die if things started here? How many ponies just today? How many more in the days, weeks, months, years to follow?

Her wings flared as she strode out in front of her soldiers, wings flaring to form a barrier of feathers between the two sides. The cheers and rabble-rousing around them died as all eyes locked on the Lunar alicorn. “Alright,” she said, staring into those red lenses.

Silence reigned for a few seconds. Around her, the ponies stared in shock, mouths hanging open. The humans remained with their weapons at the ready. For a second, she thought the shooting might start anyway. But then, the leader reached up to his ear, pressing a button. “Central? This is Six-Talon,” he announced. “We’re clear down here.”

She heaved a sigh of relief as Rainbow nudged her. “Hey, Princess,” she said. “I don’t mean t’question your decisions or nothin’, but uhhhh…”

“What the heck are you doing!?” Pinkie put in, still straddling her cannon.

“What Tia would want us to do,” Luna replied, smiling to the mares. “No matter what, she would wish for us to choose the option that preserves the most lives. We are certain of it.”

The ground rumbled. Luna’s head whipped around, turning to the deep, swirling mist to see what appeared to be a set of massive glowing eyes. She blinked back in surprise as the rumbling grew closer.

“Yeah? Well, here’s hopin’…” Dash trailed off, starting to back away as the massive eyes drew closer, accompanied with a low growl. The ground under their hooves trembled, the eyes approached, and then a hulking metal beast emerged from the mist, growling and squealing as its wheels crunched along the packed dirt.

“Is that a…cart?” Rainbow asked.

“What kinda cart don’t need nopony pullin’ it?” Applejack put in.

The machine continued along, belching foul smoke that tickled the ponies’ throats, making some of the soldiers cough. “Weapons down,” one of the human soldiers barked.

A pegasus landed, helmet up, spear leveled. “You don’t tell us what to d—”

“Corporal Skywrite!” Luna barked. The pegasus turned on her, ears twitching, head lowering. Luna met his gaze with an even glare. “You will stand down and obey.”

“But, Princess…”

“Now, Corporal!”

Trembling, ears folding down, the pegasus heaved a shaky breath before finally laying down his weapon. Around him, his fellow guardsponies offered a similar display of surrender. Luna felt something cling to her leg and looked back to find Fluttershy holding herself there. She wished badly to pull her into a hug, but knew they needed to give off a display of utmost dignity. Now, in this darkest of hours, she needed to show herself unbowed. Equestria would not see her belly turned up and exposed for mercy.

If the humans noticed this display, they didn’t show it. Their eyes remained on the great metal cart as it slowed, idling along into the field, before coming to a stop just behind the squad of human soldiers. A couple more soldiers, still half-hidden in the fog, climbed out and pulled down the rear gate, offering hands up into the behemoth’s dark belly. Luna wondered what new, terrifying wonder would be introduced here and now. What tool was about to be shown to keep them all subjugated?

And then, a little girl carrying a stuffed bunny in her arms stepped out, helped down by the soldiers as she splashed into the mud with bright yellow boots and a neon-pink poncho. She was followed by a younger couple and a very small, little, old lady in a sunhat.

“What…is that?” One of the pegasi gasped.

Another guard watched, gapemouthed, stepping over his discarded spear as the little girl ran past, ushered along by the urging of her parents. “Oh my gosh, it’s adorable,” he gasped as she sped by, pausing to gape right back at him before her parents caught up and forced her past. Her eyes remained on the line of guardsponies, beaming a gap-toothed smile all along their ranks before the small group disappeared over a hill, the little old lady being escorted by one of the soldiers.

“I’m sorry, but what was…” the Corporal started, but was interrupted by a column of the inexplicable creatures. An entire column of adorable bipeds built like the inexplicable soldiers they’d known, young and old, fat and skinny, darker and lighter, all dressed in unknown clothing as they funneled from the truck.

“They have fashions outside of that drab camo!” Rarity cooed, watching the line. “Ooh, I do hope we can study their clothes at some point…”

“Pets.” Fluttershy gasped, watching the small animals hauled along in cages and on leashes with the group. “They have pets too!”

The soldiers cleared their throats. When the small group of mares turned, their eyes widened to see more headlights approaching from the fog, dozens more, backed up by hundreds behind that. A cacophonous roar rumbled in the air, accompanied with the sounds of thousands of wheels thundering towards them.

After a moment, Fluttershy stammered again. “B-blankets!” She lifted into the air. “W-we’ll need lots of blankets!”

“And candy! And noisemakers!” Pinkie gasped, her cannon suddenly disappearing.

“Apples!” Applejack gasped. The Element-Bearers took off in all different directions, leaving a stunned princess to watch the waves of incoming refugees.

“This…is what you need?” She asked, looking up into the red, opaque lenses, finally noticing the faintest traces of small, shimmering eyes behind them.

“Things got…complicated at home.” The leader sighed.

A knot clenched in Luna’s stomach. Her hidden Ace, her Guard Captain, appeared in her mind. “Complicated?”

A moment of silence. “You will house our people,” the demand repeated.

With growing dread, the princess nodded. “That we will,” she replied while wondering just what was going on on the other side of that swirling bank of fog. “That we will.”

Celestia let out a breath. “There…” she sighed as the laptop shut before her. “Equestria will save as many as we can.”

“Oh, we know they will.” Mr. M replied, standing to leave the small cell.

Celestia let in a shivering breath, watching the human leave so quickly. “Please, you must let me…”

“All I must do, Princess, is guarantee the continuation of the human race.” M replied, not even breaking stride for the door, shutting the new portal behind him with a loud, final thump.

Author's Note

Again, my apologies for the lateness on these updates. I actually have some pulled ahead now, so hopefully the next updates won't be nearly as delayed

Chapter XLV: Two Weeks Later

TWO WEEKS LATER

“…with another batch of refugees bound for the British mainland, escaping ongoing riots…

A loud tap, followed by a click.

“…complete and total breakdown of law and order here in Seattle, with similar reports coming from Houston, Portland, Chicago, Seattle, and…”

Another heavy, clumsy tap, followed by another click.

“…absolute chaos at the docks in Rio today as a fistfight among evacuees turned into a full-scale riot…”

“Miss Pinkie Pie?”

Pinkie blinked in surprise, head whipping around to stare up at the British Naval officer currently looking down at her with a patient, but stern, gaze.

“Is there not something better you could be doing?”

“B-but…it moves! And there’s nopony inside it!” She gasped, hooves wrapping around the set. “It’s so fun and cool and…”

“And a very loud interruption in a patient ward.” The tall man waved his hand out over the long rows of cots filled with pensioners, ailing hospital patients, and bedridden invalids, swept up in the initial, panicked response to the government’s plans for evacuating their world. He let out a long sigh. “If you had to do that, couldn’t you have done it in the officer’s mess again? This is meant to be a place for quiet.”

Her mane deflated, Pinkie drooped. “Oh, alright…sorry…” she intoned as she turned towards the front door of the makeshift barracks.

Only to be stopped in her tracks by a very loud, very raspy, very British voice: “Oi! Don’t you be goin’ nowhere!”

Pinkie paused, turning to the source of the voice: an older gent in his nightgown, sitting up in one of the beds, hands on his hips. The officer sighed: “Sir, please, you need your rest, if you—”

“What’s your name and rank, son?” The old, scowling man barked. “Speak! Don’t make these old eyes figure it out from your insignia!”

The officer gave pause at that. “LTJG Thomas, sir, with the—”

“Lieutenant Junior Grade, eh?” The old man reached under his mattress at that, rifling about for a second with shaking, wrinkled hands.

“Sir, I really must insist—”

“Shut it! I’ve just about...ah!” The old man’s face lit up as he finally pulled his hand free, producing a small, brown case with a yellowed grin. “Now, I suppose I outrank ya, don’t I?” He said, opening the case to reveal a Commander’s epaulettes.

The officer snapped to attention in an instant, working on pure instinct. He bit his lip. Even retired, the word of a superior officer held a lot of sway in the armed services, and he damn well knew it. “Sir, I…”

“At ease.” The old man rasped, smiling like a cat that just caught a mouse while it was rounding a corner. “Now, why don’t you take a second and look around ya? I mean, really look. Notice anythin’?”

Of course, the officer did as he was commanded, head swiveling on his neck. Around him, small kids played with noisemakers and pinwheels. Invalids ran their hands over small plushies about the size of keychains in their clumsy, uncoordinated hands. Even the resting patients wore party hats with small smiles on their faces. The officer’s gaze slowly turned back to the old man, and he nodded.

“Dontcha think you have somethin’ more useful to do than bothering a fine, young lady just doin’ her part for the less fortunate?”

The officer nodded, turning on one heel and promptly marching away with perfectly-even, rhythmic strides.

Pinkie, meanwhile, sat up near the old man’s cot, her mane now fully reinflated. “Where can I get one of those?” She giggled. “You turned him into a robot!”

“Ah, it’s a lot more bother than it’s worth, trust me,” the old-timer smiled, stroking at her ear. “Still gives me a kick to see one of them pencil pushers straighten themselves out when they see it. Don’t let ‘em get to ya, love. Lot a’ those guys just ain’t got nothin’ better to do than bother people actually doin’ some good. We love ya way too much here to letcha go, so anyone gives you more trouble you just point ‘em my way, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she smiled. “Didja want an extra pillow or anything?”

“Nah, but before ya go…” he reached under his mattress again, this time pulling out a single, wrapped Werther’s original. “Have a little somethin’ for the road.”

“You’ve got candy under there too!?” She gasped, accepting it happily.

“Nah, that’s just a trick all humans learn when they hit 55.” He chuckled, tucking himself away. “Bon voyage, miss.”

“And a happy day to you, mister!” Pinkie giggled as she skipped away, out of the building, now sucking on the candy. “Ooh, butterscotch!” She murmured as she hopped along makeshift dirt paths, past row after row of tents in what was turning out to be a growing city. Tents stretched out to the horizon; she didn’t know where the humans found time to sew so many! But they weren’t the tents she was familiar with, they were these big, blocky white things that resembled something Twilight might have described from her travels to Yakyakistan…

Twilight…

That was enough to take a little bit of the spring from her step. Twilight was still MIA, and despite asking the humans super-duper nicely, everypony -- or should she say, everybody – either got super mean about it or apologized and said they had no idea what she was talking about. She sighed. Odds were, nobody had any clue about Twilight, not even the mean ones. She’d probably have to go to Humanland to find her, and based on the large amounts of sticky wire they were running along the beach, that wasn’t likely to happen.

So, she was just gonna have to keep doing her best here, and that was all. Making people smile was her forte after all, and whatever Twilight was dealing with, Pinkie just had to trust she could handle it.

She rounded a corner, reaching a massive collection of picnic tables setup beneath a towering canopy. Here, a whole collection of life gathered, the drab greens and blacks of soldiers interspersed with the more colorful clothing of the civilians, and even further with the colorful coats of ponies. Even still, it didn’t take her long to find the table she was looking for, they had agreed on a place after all. And even if they hadn’t, the collected coats of the other four still stood out.

“…talkin’ about jets that can break the sound barrier, and I keep askin’ when those are gonna be able to race me and nopony can give me a straight answer!” Rainbow Dash huffed.

“They prefer the term ‘nobody,’ hon,” Applejack pointed out, taking another bite of her apple fritter.

“Oh, whatever! Seriously! They tell me about something that fast and can’t give a straight answer on when they’ll show me? Worst buncha teases I ever…oh, hey Pinkie.”

“Heya girls,” Pinkie sang, sliding into her seat with the others, having already scooped up a bowl of ration stew cooling near the front of the tent. “How’re you doing?”

“Oh, just wonderful, dearie,” Rarity sang, leaning forward with a flip of her mane, looking just a tiny bit more ragged now than before. “It seems everyone is quite welcoming to an extra bit of color in their humble abodes here, and I’ve been able to talk about the latest in fashion trends on a whole other world! How many fashion extraordinaires can say that, now?”

“Yeah, and you should see the hits some of the guys throw when they’re roughhousing!” Dash added, a hoof punching the air for emphasis. “When this is all over, I’m totally goin’ toe-to-toe with some!”

“A-and I’ve gotten to help care for so many pets!” Fluttershy finally put in. “I just helped someone with their gecko, turned out the little dear just wasn’t getting enough sun! I was able to put in recommendations for UV lighting with the supply officers!”

“Now hold on,” Applejack raised a hoof. “Don’t y’all think we’re gettin’ a li’l comfy here? I mean, these seem like some mighty fine folks we’re workin’ with, but at the end of the day, we’re the ones gettin’ invaded on account a’ they…”

“Well I just learned humans are magic too!” Pinkie interrupted. “The old guy I was talking to was able to turn people into robots and make candy appear from thin air!”

“Are none a’ y’all even hearin’ a single word I’m sayin’?” Applejack sighed as the conversation barreled ahead without her. “I swear, it’s like y’all forget we’re bein’ invaded here! What’s—”

“Miss Applejack?”

Applejack turned in her seat, looked around, and realized who she was talking to was much lower to the ground. She leaned down to a small, human girl, currently clad in cartoon unicorn pajamas that were only mildly insulting to Rarity’s senses. “Aww, well hey there, sugarcube!” She smiled. “What brings ya over here to our neck a’ the woods?”

“My mommy says we’re s’posed to say thank you to people who do nice things for us, so…” the little girl held up a crude, vibrantly orange crayon drawing featuring an orange blob with small, yellow and brown blobs atop it. “I drawed this for you.”

“Aww, thank yashug, I’ll cherish it forever!” Applejack smiled, patting the girl on her head and tucking the drawing up in her hat. The girl, for her part, beamed a gap-toothed smile and skipped off. “Now if that ain’t just the sweetest thang I…”

She paused, turning back to the table, the other mares watching her with half-lidded eyes and knowing smiles. “Do as I say, not as I do, huh?” Dash cooed.

“Aww, nuts to the lot a’ ya.” Applejack huffed, crossing her hooves over her chest.

The mares all giggled together, even making AJ crack a smile. Eventually, they settled into an easy silence, at least for a minute. Fluttershy eventually spoke up: “Did any of you hear about Luna bringing up more volunteers to handle the humans?”

“Yeah...” Applejack shuffled uncomfortably in her seat. “Bein’ right accomadatin’, she is...”

“Oh, get off it already,” Dash chortled.

“It ain’t about us bein’ invaded! I ain’ttalkin’ about that...” Applejack sighed. “It’s just...y’all think she might be tryin’ to do somethin’ besides help the humans?”

Pinkie leaned forward at that, setting aside the jellybeans she was adding to her ration stew. “What do you mean by that?”

“It’s just what she’s doin’...it’s like she owes ‘em.”

The table all got quiet at that. Over the days when the tent city was first being built, they had managed to glean from the humans just what was going on back on Earth: some terrible criminal had escaped, and from the sounds of it, could spell doom for their whole world. The trickle of refugees here were nowhere near to the vastness of their planet, and would represent all that was left when this villain finished things off. It didn’t take the missing member of their group to figure out what Applejack was talking about: the timing was just too perfect, their worlds making contact, and then some super-powerful villain breaks out and threatens the planet?

“Applejack...” Rarity said, her tone cautious. “You’re not implying what I think you’re implying, are you, dear?”

“I ain’timplyin’ nothin’,” AJ said. “I don’t think Luna’d do a consarned thing t’harm a fly, much less a whole species...least, not on purpose.”

She wanted to say more, clearly, and PInkie was the one to lean forward and prod for it. “Buuuuttt...”

“But...last few weeks with Twi and Princess Celestia gone’s been awful scary. For all of us. Can’t imagine what it’s been like for Luna, losin’ a sister like that. Dunno what I’d do if’n the same happened to Applebloom. So maybe what she done wasn’t on purpose, but maybe she did somethin’ that weren’t fully thought through.”

The table fell silent again, but this was a heavily pregnant silence, one that they were all too afraid to break outright. “Applejack,” Rarity finally spoke. “What you’re implying could have some truly terrifying ramifications.”

“That’s why m’onlytellin’ you girls,” the farm pony finished off the last of her stew and finally stood. “S’just a buncha observations. Maybe that’s all they are, maybe they ain’t, but I do know spreadin’ rumors and hearsay ain’tgonna do nopony no good anyhow, alright?”

The group all slowly nodded, though Pinkie kept her face down, focused on her stew.

“Alright,” she nodded, standing up with her bowl. “See y’all at dinner, keep yer chins up.”

One by one, each mare made their excuses and left the table, the jovial tone the conversation had started with now long forgotten. Pinkie was the last, focusing on her stew long after it grew cold. Her brow furrowed, her focus absolute. Eventually, she rose, discarded her stew, and turned from the tent, heading towards Canterlot castle with nothing short of sheer will in her eyes.

“All I’m saying is it’s worth a shot!” Thompson shouted, exasperation heavy in his voice. “The UN doesn’t know these ponies like I do, they’re being damned-well cowardly about this!”

“And all I’m saying is one possibility guarantees at least a chunk of humanity will survive, the other has us rolling the dice with some newcomer because she’s like…really nice, and totally won’t just pack all her shit up, turtle up, and tell us all to fuck off the moment she’s out. Which, by the way, considering her treatment, is something she is pretty likely to do.” The Lieutenant sighed, turning to walk out of the tent. “Son, there’s some shit not worth the risk. Either way, a coupla military guys as low on the totem pole as us are wasting time even talking about this.”

“Talking’s all there’s left to do…” Thompson mumbled, looking away, turning just in time to walk into a wall of blue fluff.

He stumbled back, eyes rolling up in surprise. “P-Princess!” He gasped, thumping his chest to still his racing heart.

“And a good afternoon to you too, Private,” Luna said with a smile. “Have your people had any troubles so far? Have you enough supplies?”

“The uh…stuff you’ve been cookin’ in the royal kitchens has been more than enough to supplant what we got,” he said. “Thanks.”

“But of course. What of medical treatment? Have you enough gauze? Medical packs?”

“Those’re all fine, just fine…”

“Then housing. Surely, you must be short on…”

“Princess!” He gasped, which finally earned a moment of silence. “We have more than enough hooves working with our hands on the ground out there, s’all just fine. Believe us, if we need anything at all from ya, you’ll be the first to know.”

Luna let out a long breath. “Okay…apologies, we are just…doing our best to ensure our sister remains safe.”

Thompson rocked back on his heels. “Yeah…I…look, I know you lot would be doin’ your best even if it weren’t for that, really, I believe ya, but Command…”

“Believe me, we know all too well the mistakes one can make out of fear.” She smiled thinly. “’Tis okay, Mr. Thompson, we just wish we could do more.”

He let out a long-suffering sigh. “We all do, Princess, believe me. I’m not enthused about what’s about to happen back home, that bitch ridin’ a space rock right into it and all…”

“We can agree there…we just…want to save as many as we can.”

“I believe ya, but the rest back home? They been burnt by trustin’ ponies before.” He let out a long, measured breath. “A lotta people died when the Barrier hit the Chinese coast, and a lot of ‘em blamed the UN for not doin’ their due diligence with…her. That’s how we wound up with those HLF psychos.”

She nodded, turning away to trot out the opposite end of the tent. “We’ll…go check on how the kitchens are getting along.”

“Aye, I’ll leave ya to it,” he said, watching her leave. He turned, and let out a grateful sigh when he caught a shock of pink through the tent flap. After glancing over his shoulder to make sure the Princess was gone, he scampered to make his way over to it. “Pinkie!”

“Heya Mister…” she started, but at his urging, quickly remembered herself and quieted down with a giggle. “Oops…heya, Mister Thompson.”

“How’d ya find me all the way out here? This place is bloody massive right now!”

“Easy! I just used my Pinkie Sense’s newly installed human-locator!” She explained, as if it were the most obvious thing possible.

His brow hunched at that. “But there’s thousands of us all over the place now.”

“So ya think,” she replied with a wink.

He blinked. “Well, ignoring that damned terrifying idea, howsabout you get to tellin’ me what you’re here for, eh?”

“I was actually looking for Princess Luna, and figured you might know where she is!”

“And…just what brought you ‘round to that idea?”

She shrugged. Thompson sighed. It was the most sense he had ever managed to get out of the little, sugar-fueled ball of random. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Actually, you would be right. Why dontcha head through there? She just walked that way.”

Beaming, Pinkie skipped by. “Thanks, Mr. Thompson!”

“Aye, sure,” he replied, scratching his chin, wondering why he suddenly felt like he was little more than a scene transition between more important players. But the feeling faded as the pink one skipped off, so he stepped out into the sunlight to continue his duties.

Of all the duties Princess Luna had taken up in the past few weeks, this was her least favorite. What made it the worst was that this was no duty of the crown, or of nature, this was an obligation of family. More importantly, it was an obligation of the heart. She sighed, bracing her hoof against the door before her. “The heart…” she muttered, her chin giving the slightest quiver before she pushed through the door and walked inside.

“I know it’s you, Luna,” a voice from the sole piece of furniture inside; a plain, four-post bed, hissed.

“Cadence…” Luna rasped. “Please…I just wanted to check up on you.”

“Fine. You checked up on me. Satisfied?”

Luna shook her head slowly, sadly. “No. No, I’m just…sorry.”

“Sorry?” The bed’s lone occupant sat up. Cadence’s eyes wore heavy bags, still bloodshot from crying. Her yellowing teeth clenched, her cheeks baring patches from makeup she’d not yet bothered to wash off. “You’re sorry!? The love of my life is dead! Shining Armor is dead, murdered by a genocidal monster you helped release! And that’s all you have for me!? That you’re sorry!?”

Luna let in a shivering breath. “We were doing what we felt best for our sister and our kingdom…we knew nothing about the other side…”

“Oh, so you sent him into the great unknown. Great, glad his last role was as a test dummy!”

“He was only meant to make contact with our sister, we had no idea—"

“You sent him. To die.” Cadence hissed, a dark glare locked in on Luna.

Luna gulped, her head bowed. “We erred.” She whispered. “We know this.”

Cadence’s teeth grit, that dark glare flaring on her visage. She rose from the bed, powerful hooves clomping over the floorboards, but when she reached the other alicorn, she stopped just short, choosing to glare hatefully into Luna’s midnight-blue gaze. “Be glad that I don’t wish to complicate matters with the humans,” she growled, Luna wincing as if each word was a lash at her back. “Because otherwise, I would be severely tempted to make sure they knew how that monster escaped.” She whirled around, trotting for the door.

“C-Cadence?” Luna started, reaching for her. When Cadence didn’t even stop in her trot, Luna’s hoof slowly lowered to the ground. “I-I’m sorry…”

There was no reply, and she knew the conversation was over. All Luna had left was the clatter of metal on metal, unending conversations, and wails of children from the refugee camp growing outside.

And around the corner from them, Pinkie sobbed. Her mane had fully deflated, all its springiness straightened out as her massive, blue eyes welled with tears. It was as if the full gravity and horror of what the world – and not just her world – faced was only just weighing in. The mass death looming on the horizon, the destruction of so many peoples, the agony of those who couldn’t escape…all of it because of them. Because of their actions.

Curling up into a ball, Pinkie cried, because she didn’t know who to pray to.

Chapter XLVII: New Plan

At long last, the door fell open and a bleary, red-eyed American stepped through. In a moment, Lisa was on her feet. “David…” she gasped.

“I…found him in the hallway,” Chen said, looking visibly uncomfortable and only too eager to rejoin Akshat at the stove.

For his part, David cracked a small smile as he stepped over the foyer. “Hey Lis—” He managed to get out before her arms locked around him. For the first time since he’d arrived, and probably for longer before, a genuine smile crossed his face, only to sputter out within a few seconds.

“I knew you’d make it,” she whispered, giving him one last squeeze before forcing out a cough. “Though you could’ve showered before coming over, jeez! Remind me to Febreeze the couches when you leave!”

He sighed, slumping out of her grip, whereupon he saw the new plus-one in their midst. “Uhhhh…”

“Yes…hi,” Shining Armor said, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. “Ummm…it has been awhile, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah…” David guffawed. “Last time I saw you, you were screamin’ something about...liars, if I’m not mistaken? I tried to look the word up and that’s all I got.”

“That’s pretty accurate, actually…” Shining coughed. “A lot’s happened since then.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Everyone, to the living room?” Lisa insisted, putting the awkward conversation out of its misery. “I swear, this will all make way more sense. You can decide if you wanna stay or leave after you hear us out.”

The group meandered from the kitchen, Akshat taking the time to move his curry off the stove and turn off the burner first. They all gathered in a small living room, which consisted of a couch, a recliner, a Smart TV, and a dying houseplant, along with a few chairs taken from the kitchen just for this occasion.

“Just squeeze in, everybody,” Lisa said. “And sorry about the cramped space, this place wasn’t really meant for parties.”

“It’s the apocalypse, mon chéri,” Andre said, holding up a half-filled shot glass of whiskey. “Any gathering with alcohol is just fine.”

“Right,” she smiled, her gaze sliding over them. Over the people she had come to know and love like brothers over the past few years. Over six people who had started out as coworkers but, through boredom at first, and then through the adrenaline of battle, she felt she had come to know better than most of her own family. They weren’t what they were when they began, and her gaze lingered not only over David but on a blank space along the wall she somehow just knew Anton would have been leaning against. She could actually see it: him leaning there, a big dumb smile on his old features, his flask tucked in the crook of his crossed arms, and the image made her tear up just the slightest bit. But still, they were all there. When she called, they answered, every single one. That was what mattered.

For a moment, an awkward silence reigned, and it finally occurred to Lisa she hadn’t actually prepared a speech to kick things off. Fortunately, there was at least one member of the group used to public speaking, and so, King Shining Armor stepped up: “We all know why we’re here. I’m not going to pretend to even come close to understanding what you’ve all been through.”

“I read your autobiography, love,” Lisa said quietly. “If anyone in the world gets it, it’s you.”

For a moment, Shining’s shoulder flexed, as if he were about to reach up to run his hoof along the scar granted him that one fateful day. David visibly cringed where he stood at the back of the room. The small gap left by one person never seemed larger than in that moment. Eventually, Shining shook his head. “Yes…perhaps I misspoke then.

“We’ve…all lost something fighting against evil,” he continued. “This whole world has, and in trying to keep the pain of that loss at bay, we’ve…made some mistakes.”

“Keeping the princess locked up was a mistake,” Felipe grumbled, his teeth clenching, his body tensing as if squeezing the words out was painful. “But what else could we do, after…”

Shining held a hoof up. “No need to continue that sentence. We’ve all made mistakes these past few days, but we did what that evil bitch never could: we matured. We recognized them and moved on. Problem is, your UN…hasn’t.”

“It’s not our UN anymore, remember?” Akshat said, a big smile splitting his beard. “We’re persona non grata, where they’re concerned.”

“Yes, and that’s our greatest ally right now.” A sinister little smile crossed Shining’s muzzle. “All of us. The UN wants to pretend you don’t exist, which means its eyes are off you right now. And it helps that right now they’re so focused on the evacuation efforts to the new Equestria, as well as…on me.”

He sighed, rolling his eyes.

“You have no idea the headache it took to get here undetected.”

Now Akshat leaned forward, his darkened, calloused hands rubbing together. “You sound like you already have a plan.”

Lisa and Shining exchanged a look. It was now or never. “We have a way to get Celestia…the new one…off the Illustrious.”

Felipe scoffed. “A fully-armed aircraft carrier in the middle of the largest armada ever assembled? Now I know you speak of suicide.”

“Not with a diplomatic envoy en route,” Shining pointed out, a knowing sparkle in his eye. “My helicopter could land on the deck if I so wanted.”

“Yeah, great,” Felipe rolled his eyes. “We’ll get to be within a few decks of her before onboard security annihilates us.”

“Not if we have a man on the inside,” Lisa interrupted, and with that, she produced a cell phone: the small, disposable kind mostly kept in business by drug dealers and cartels worldwide. It glowed as Shining took it up in his magic’s grip, the speaker amplified as it began to ring. Finally, looking over the group, he pressed the button to pick up.

“You blokes all there, then?” A familiar British tone drolled.

Shining Armor sighed as the reaction swept the room, Francis actually falling out of his chair as the men pressed to the walls of the room backed up against them, as if they were trying to hide from the speaker. “Admiral Peters!?” Felipe shouted.

The room fell silent as the Admiral’s voice crackled out. “Good to hear from you lot, too,” he chuckled. “The apocalypse treating you well?”

Felipe’s eyes darted from the phone to the door and back again, fully expecting a SWAT team to bust in and haul them all off.

“Right, a bit tongue-tied, I see.” He chuckled dryly. “No problem, lady and gents, s’pose I’d be a wee bit flabbergasted myself.”

Stepping forward with the phone, Shining surveyed the room. “The Admiral is going to make sure security is light and busy with other duties while we make our way aboard.” He announced. “We’ll be able to head down to the Princess and get her loose with ease.”

“If he’s had such a change of heart, how come he doesn’t just let her out himself!?” Felipe spat, his anger finally overriding his fear.

“Because I can’t get to her,” the Admiral replied. “Nobody can, except for the UN stoolie out here. Things have been modified around yon Princess’s cell since you all parted ways with my ship, there are now a dozen biometric and encoded locks between me and her, all specially keyed to Mr. M’s telemetry and vocal patterns, all of it totally automated.”

“UN’s not taking any chances this time,” Lisa sighed. “It’s as simple as that. The Admiral can get us aboard without being blown to smithereens, but everything after that is up to us.”

“But how do we know we can trust him!?” Felipe advanced on the phone, glaring right into it as if his seething anger could broadcast through the line. “How do we know you won’t just blast us out of the sky and take credit for disrupting a terrorist plot!?”

For a few minutes, the only response was the Admiral’s rolling laughter, but he regained himself just as the group started to grow uncomfortable. “My dear boy, our literal doom is heading this way at several times the speed of sound. Do you really think any of us can afford trust at this point? At least this way there’s a chance it can all be avoided.” He chuckled again. “Besides, either you fail and the world dies in fire, or you succeed and take the blame for disobeying orders while my career emerges intact. Win-win.”

“We get to be your scapegoats,” David rasped, a little semi-smile showing a corner of his yellowed grin. “This all goes tits-up, you can just blame us.”

“Very on-brand for you, Admiral,” Andre hissed.

“You’ll find that’s one thing consistent with me,” the Admiral continued, his voice growing as cold and hard as granite, the mirth fleeing. “And that, that, is why you should trust me. Because I, for one, have no plans to spend the rest of my days with my people as a group of refugees occupying another land. If the UN even plans to evacuate me before the meteor hits, which I doubt. And because I have no intention of sitting around and waiting for death alongside billions of others, I can firmly say I am willing to try any alternative, up to and including aiding you in the liberation of our next best hope. Now, what say you?”

After a moment of silence, Felipe chuckled. “Okay, let’s say we get past the largest flotilla ever assembled on whatever credibility Armor has left, then we land and make it below decks. What then? The Admiral just told us it’s impossible for anyone to get past the added security below decks. Do we ask M nicely?”

Lisa and Shining exchanged looks. With a final nod, Shining bent to open the briefcase. “We’ve established with the initial escape of the princess and my sister that there is a way through even Tachyon containment, but that way requires two magic users.”

“A single unicorn could never get through it,” she said, her eyes sharing an apology as finally, she unlocked the small suitcase cuffed to his fetlock and withdrew a small flask. A clear liquid bubbled inside that seemed to shimmer with its own iridescence, as if it glowed faintly. Lisa had half a mind to turn off the lights and draw the curtains to see if it did. “…but two could.”

The reaction was instant. Akshat backed up a step. Chen actually jumped up onto the counter. Francis grabbed Andre and the pair held eachother, backing into the living room. “Do not tell me that’s what I think it is!” Akshat screamed, clinging to the cupboards as if he could phase through them and put more space between himself and the flask.

“C’mon gang, I heard you all were veterans,” Shining chuckled. “I thought you would’ve seen the Conversion Serum before.”

“Seen once, when it was being combined with industrial-grade acids to neutralize it and seal it off in a concrete bunker!” Chen spat. “That shit was all supposed to be destroyed!”

“You really think one of the most advanced chemical weapons ever devised, a weapon so powerful it had the entire planet shitting itself in fear, would’ve just been destroyed?” Shining chuckled. “C’mon, you know the powers-that-be have always had their own agenda. Even if this stuff wasn’t the most powerful piece of psychological warfare ever created, reverse-engineering it was the best bet at a cure.”

“Wait…you’re not seriously suggesting…”

“We are, Chen,” Lisa sighed, stepping forward. “Even with Shining, it isn’t enough. We need two unicorns for them to make it through the barriers and free the princess.”

“Then what the fuck!?” Felipe hammered a fist against a wall. “There’s a million of the little bastards out there! Let’s just grab one of them! Or hell, what about Shining’s retinue!? You’re telling me there’s not a single unicorn in his Equestria we can trust!?”

“My retinue approaching UN space has only ever consisted of human guards,” Shining cut in. “Any other ponies stepping off the chopper would be arrested immediately. We need someone who can step onto the Illustrious a human, and head down a pony.”

Felipe’s mouth gaped open and shut like a fish out of water, his mind racing, his eyes wide. He reached desperately for a reason, any reason to shut this all down. None came.

Shining nodded, looking over the group. “For this to work, for the rest of humanity to be saved…one of you will have to lose their humanity.”

“You’re insane!” Felipe shouted, stabbing a finger towards the King.

“You have a better way?”

“This is insane!” He threw his hands in the air, glaring at the others. “You all see that, right!? It was crazy enough to think we could free the princess ourselves, but this…this is madness!”

“I know,” Lisa sighed, standing. Her stature wasn’t defiant or angry, just…resigned. Her sad eyes met with his. “But it’s all we’ve got. We need every advantage we can get, the princess is our only shot at saving the world and you know it. She’s the only one powerful enough to stop that crazy bitch and divert Ceres.”

“But giving up our humanity!?” Felipe shrieked. “After we fought so hard to retain it!? After everything she took from us!?”

“It’s not giving up our humanity.” David finally spoke. All eyes locked on him as he hobbled closer to Shining and sank to one knee, a hand wrapping around the bottle. His dull eyes ran over the fluid inside, his rasping breaths filling the silence in the room. “Don’t you get it? Whoever does this is making the ultimate sacrifice for the rest of us. They’re giving themselves up for a shot at saving the Earth.”

Shining gazed into those dull eyes as David rose again, plucking the bottle from his hooves. He held it to his chest, cradled like a baby.

“Whoever does this isn’t giving up their humanity. They’re saving it.” He rasped, walking over to his spot, leaning against the wall.

After a moment, Lisa stepped forward. “I know we can’t ask you to take this risk, but we’re out of options here. I know it’s unfair, but we’re operators. One of the things you figure out from boot camp is that life isn’t ever fair. That sometimes, it’s just the way the dice land. Well, we’re about to roll the dice here, only this time we’re playing for the whole bastard thing.”

Silence filled the tiny apartment. All eyes glanced side to side. Eventually, Lisa left, and after some rummaging around in the kitchen, returned with a pack of party straws, probably bought from a dollar store for a party that never happened years before. Looking around, she whipped one out, then pulled out a pair of scissors, sliced a little off the end, and stuck it in her closed fist.

“Really?” Akshat chuckled. “Drawing straws?”

“You’d rather use a random number generator?” She shrugged.

After a moment, he sighed, then stepped forward, plucking another straw out of the bag and sticking it in her fist. Turning back to the others, he shrugged. “We either die here, or die fighting. What difference does it make? At least here, it’s a roll of the dice.”

After a moment, Chen stepped forward, also placing a straw in Lisa’s fist. “Would be the first time risking my life felt fair anyway.” he mumbled, walking back to his seat.

Andre and Francis were next, though at first the pair seemed to be restraining each other, they wound up looking into one another’s eyes, and understanding passed between them. They made their way up, together plucking a straw out of the pile, and together adding theirs to Lisa’s fist.

Felipe was right behind them. He glared hatefully down at the straws, then up at Lisa. “Promise me something right now.” He hissed.

She blinked. “What’s that?”

“If it’s me, that when it’s all said and done and we’ve saved the world, you’ll put a bullet in my head.” He swallowed then, and beneath the glare, Lisa could see the trembling lip, the tears standing in his eyes. “That bitch took something precious from me back during the Contact War, and I’d rather die than be one of those little cunt-worshippers for a second longer than absolutely necessary.”

“I second that…” Chen whispered, Akshat nodding.

Despite everything, Lisa grasped his hand, tears standing in her own eyes. “Of course, love,” she whispered. “Of course.”

Nodding stoically, Felipe turned, heading back to his own seat. Lisa let out a shaky breath, gazing down at the straws in her grip. Never before had a few drinking straws weighed so much. “Well,” she sighed. “That just leaves…”

The toilet flushed. All eyes turned to the bathroom as David stepped out, switching off the sink as he went. He gazed up, blinking in confusion. “What?”

“Oh hell, don’t make me explain this again…” Lisa sighed.

At that, Dave let out a wry chuckle. “Don’t worry, I heardja through the door,” he said, casually dropping the vial in Shining’s hooves as he strolled over to Lisa, grabbing up a straw. “Of course I’m in.”

As he shoved his straw into her fist, he gave pause, his hand closing over hers. “After all this ended, I was gonna ask you on a proper date."

She smiled at that. “Chin up, Yank, there’s still time. Though I must say, you’re gonna need a shave and shower before I go anywhere with you.”

He let out a wry chuckle at that, one which had a wet little quiver at the end. Figuring it was merely the shame he felt from having spent their time since the Illustrious inside a bottle, she gave his hand a final squeeze before parting, leaving him to stumble over to a bare patch of wall.

“Well, everyone,” she whispered. “This is it.”

A darkened hand wrapped around hers, and she looked over to see Akshat’s smile peering through his heavy beard. “This is it."

Chen’s hand joined his. “Together.” He whispered.

“Together,” Felipe added, his hand joining theirs.

David’s joined them. Francis and Andre’s hands were last, by mere virtue of them being entangled on the couch just moments before. “Together.” They all said in unison.

Shining Armor stepped back, letting out a quivering breath. How his old Princess could have deemed this species worthy of extermination, he would never know.

Then they all took a step back, each holding a straw. With a final bite of her lip, Lisa turned her hand up. The others did the same. Her eyes swirled. Drank in every straw. Compared them to her own. Her head swam with a moment of panic. Finally, finally, the butterflies that had been boiling up in her stomach settled back down again. It wasn’t her. She would get to hang onto her humanity; hopefully for as long as she may live. But then, who…

“Well…fuck…”

She blinked, looking up at the short, little excuse of a straw clenched between two of Felipe’s fingers. He sighed, gazing down at it, trying to look nonchalant but failing to disguise the little tremor in his grip.

“No,” Chen said. “No, that’s not fair, we should…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Felipe quivered, the straw dropping to the threadbare carpet. “Remember what Akshat said? It’s the most fair thing we’ve ever done.”

“But…you? You shouldn’t…”

Felipe held up a hand. “Not fair would be me backing out now,” he said, looking each of his fellow diplomats…no…his friends in the eye.

“We’ll…we’ll tell the world,” Francis said, his straw dropping to the filthy carpet, his gaze avoiding Felipe’s. “When it’s done, we’ll tell the whole world what you did here. You volunteered knowing what it meant. You’ll be a hero.”

Felipe forced a smile. “Maybe they’ll even put up a statue in Rio, eh?” He chuckled. “With a fountain, so people can throw coins at me and make wishes.”

He took the bottle from Shining, gazing at its contents. It seemed duller now, as if it knew it contained his doom. He held it to the light, glared up at it, but as he stared into its depths, his breath came as a quiver. His gaze ran around the room, like a little boy being told his dog had been killed by a car while he was away at school. He felt a grip on his arm, and found Lisa there.

“I know,” he said with a thin smile as he returned the potion to Shining Armor. “I’m saving it.”

“The world will know your name.” She whispered.

“Yes,” he chuckled. “Just make sure it’s Felipe Alonso Diaz, not…Sprinkleshine, or whatever I become.”

The whole room shared in a chuckle at that. All but one: David tucking back, his arms crossed, a shiver racing through his spine.

Chapter XLVIII: The Prodigal Sons and Daughters Return

Chopper beats thrummed over and around everyone, the Equestrian Super-Chinook thumping over the pristine waters of the Pacific. One wouldn’t guess that the fate of two, if not three, worlds would hang in the balance over the horizon – just a few minutes away if the wind didn’t turn against them – but there it was.

David’s fingers clenched the straps holding him in place, the specialized prosthetic resting next to his stump. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his intact hand: fiddling with the straps and buckles of his tactical vest, drumming on his knee, running along the cap on his standard-issue canteen. That he’d be back in proper kit again like this was downright unbelievable. Nobody had resisted his demands to join the team on the Carrier, and after all, why should they? He was as much a part of this as the rest of them, and besides, if all went well there wouldn’t be a need to shoot their way through anyway.

His racing eyes went to the modified prosthetic, and hardened. All doubts about him coming had vanished later on when they’d gone out behind Lisa’s apartment building to take a few potshots at some of the empty cans and bottles that had been gathering there. He noted despite putting a dozen rounds down range, he never even heard sirens all throughout the evening. Suppose even the Metropolitan police had better things to do than chase up on noise complaints these days. Either way, with this modified prosthetic he’d knocked down every can at a hundred yards dead-center with an old AR someone had brought along, and his good hand could repeat the same maybe eight times out of ten with a pistol at fifty yards. That was good enough for everybody, apparently.

He remembered when it would have been ten out of ten times...

“David?”

He perked at Lisa’s hand on his thigh, and looking down, realizing it was still bobbing up and down. His calves tensed, his heel knocked annoyingly against the metal belly of the chopper, audible against the sound dampening. He paused, letting his leg relax. “Sorry...”

She smiled. “Don’t be, love. We’re all a wee tense.”

A moment or two passed after her hand retreated where he wished for her to be touching him again, mercifully ending when Akshat spoke up: “After this, do you guys want to go for some food of the homeland? There’s a curry place near the old office that gets it...maybe...half-right. I took Liu there once or twice.”

“Don’t do it.” Liu spoke up with a grin, shifting uncomfortably in his own army surplus camo. “I couldn’t even move from the toilet after!”

“Oh, is that your excuse for taking so long in the crapper every time?” Lisa jabbed.

“You guys remember when this job was boring?”

All eyes turned to David when he spoke up. He had a small smile on his face, which immediately relieved the small bolt of tension that had spiked at the sound of his voice.

“Yeah!” Andre laughed. “I miss those days so much!”

“You guys remember the time we celebrated Liu’s birthday?” Francis added with a chortle. “By smuggling in that cake?”

“The wine cake!” David laughed. “I knew we’d fucked up after my first bite!”

“In my defense, it wasn’t supposed to be that strong!” Felipe put in with a little smile.

Lisa hammered a fist against her seat and laughed. “I knew that was you, you cheeky bastard! Always the quiet ones!”

“Oh, that wasn’t as bad as Anton’s--” David realized his mistake the moment the name passed his lips. If it wasn’t for the sinking feeling in his own gut, the look on the others’ faces drove it home. He straightened his seat. “--Anton’s...uh...birthday party.”

“Yeah...” Liu whispered. “I didn’t know it was possible to get that sick...or drink that much without getting sick.”

“Anton was...he was old school,” Lisa said, her voice also low.

“A-A different breed...” Andre said, his voice watery, a hand wrapping around Francis’s.

“...did anybody go to his funeral?”

The helicopter thudded on quietly. In its belly, a moment of quiet understanding passed among a group rediscovering its friendship.

“We should...send him off right,” Lisa said. “Do something to remember him by. Pour one out on his grave. Something.”

“It would be right.” Akshat said. After a moment, he offered his hand to the middle of the group, leaning forward in his seat. “For Anton. When it is all said and done.”

After a moment, LIsa’s hand joined his, then David, Liu, Felipe, Andre, and Francis. “When it’s all said and done. For Anton.” They repeated.

“Two minutes!” Came a hoarse voice from the cockpit.

David leaned back in his seat, twisting his head to peer out the porthole.

“Alright then, ladies,” Lisa said, scooping up the rifle at her feet and loading a fresh mag. “Are we about ready to save the world, then?”

A chorus of grunts followed her. “Bloody neanderthals,” she giggled as Dave twisted in his seat to peer out a window, gazing over the fleet far below.

Somehow, the fleet had become even more impressive since the last time they’d sailed over it: the flat, blocky shapes of multipurpose destroyers crowding the water between the more traditional missile cruisers, covering the waves below seemingly out to the horizon. It seemed with little else to do, the UN had decided that the bulk of its remaining military power would go to guarding its hostage, held in the center of the fleet within the beating, radioactive heart of the Illustrious herself. David swallowed, his hand clenching his weapon. The awed silence around him, at least, told him he wasn’t alone in his disbelief at the number of ships below them.

A hand squeezed his shoulder. He didn’t need to look up to know it was Lisa. No words of encouragement just yet, though. The time for that had ended.

He turned back, running through his gear one last time: working the charging handle on his rifle, buckling any dangling straps he could find on his gear, counting the mags buckled down, and finally, running a reassuring hand over the canteen on his hip, his fingers shaking over the plastic neck.

“We just got clearance!” A voice rose up from the cockpit, Shining Armor turning in his seat.

Lisa let out a breath. “This is it.” She exhaled, falling back in her seat. The sleek, black rifle in her grip gave a slight creak as her gloved hands tensed around it.

“Yeah,” David sighed, his fingers finally leaving the neck of the water canteen. “This is it.”

The Admiral’s aged fist clenched around the bottle. It all came down to this. One last desperate bid to keep the fools from killing themselves. He eyed the regular Scotch in his glass, and with a frown, reached for his desk drawer before he managed to stop himself.

No. No, this was too important. That bottle could wait.

“Admiral?”

Peters jolted slightly, then cursed himself as he slumped in his chair. “Yeah?” He slurred.

M frowned at him from the door, his nose wrinkling with a mild bit of disgust. “We have received word that Prince Shining Armor himself is requesting to land, something about engine trouble. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this, would you?”

The Admiral shrugged, blinking blearily against the lamplight.

“I’ll take that as a no,” M sighed, turning to march out the door. “I’ll give them the all-clear.”

“Jus’ one thing,” Peters mumbled. M paused in the door as Peters nudged the shotglass in his hand along the desk. “Have a li’l tip. Fer ol’ times sake.”

“I wasn’t aware we had any old times,” M growled.

“Then for the simple fact that the end of the world is approaching.”

“I really should…”

“Is a li’l nip really going t’do that much to ya? C’mon, a sip even…”

After a moment, M turned on one heel, marched up to the desk, and, maintaining eye contact, scooped up the shot glass and downed it in a single gulp. Peters smiled as M glared down at him. “This isn’t up to your usual quality.” He said.

“Well ‘scuse me, princess! S’the end of the world, case y’didn’t know.” Peters grumbled.

M glared a moment, then with a cough, set the glass back down on the desk. “Keep out of trouble,” he hissed before marching out of the office.

In a moment, Peters straightened, wiping at a spot of drool from the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, and fuck you too, ya pencil-pushing ponce,” he muttered as he circled around the desk and marched out into the hallway, buttoning his jacket and tucking his shirt in as he walked.

Well, they’d landed, and they weren’t a pile of flaming scrap at the hands of one of a hundred anti-air missile batteries that absolutely could have wiped them out.

So far, so good.

David couldn’t help but tremble as he stepped out, a prosthetic hand disguising his stump clenched around the rifle’s foregrip. For a second, just as his feet touched the deck, he wasn’t in camo and heavy goggles to disguise his face anymore. He was in the cheap dress shoes and tie again, stepping out for the first time, wondering how in the span of a few days he’d gone from a mostly-ignored slacker shoved into an office to be forgotten to facing down what, at the time, felt like the ultimate evil: the greatest threat ever posed to mankind.

Now, he and that exact same group of people were gambling everything on that same creature being the only hope mankind had.

Life was funny.

He fell in line with the others, the ocean spray hitting his goggles as the group formed up in standard guard formation around Shining Armor. The mist fogged up his goggles, kicked up by the whirling chopper blades, making him wipe at it every few minutes. David drank it all in: the feel of the sun’s warmth even through his heavy surplus gear, the weight of the vest on his shoulders, even the way the rifle in his hands clattered off the prosthetic at its own odd angles. “Not a bad day,” he mumbled.

If anyone heard – highly unlikely over the roar of the waves and the still-winding thump of the S-Huey's rotor blades – they didn’t reply. Instead, they looked ahead as a couple men in uniform marched up from the superstructure.

“Prince Shining Armor!” The first sailor inclined his head. “We were surprised to hear you wanted to make a visit.”

“Well, thought I’d get one last little lick in, it being the end of the world, and all!” The Prince shrugged. “Besides, the rotor blade balance has been off for awhile, you won’t believe the surplus junk we have to fly now that the UN’s in crisis mode. Would your mechanics be able to take a look at it?”

David let out a shivering breath, and heard the others do the same. Of all the people in this little show they were putting on to have a speaking role, he was infinitely grateful it was the politician. Whether they died in a hail of gunfire or quietly made their way down to the lower decks would be decided right here, right now.

The sailors stood there for a second, weighing options, taking risks into mind. David’s heart sank as one of their hands sank to the pistol on their hip, a thumb flicking a strap off the grip of their sidearm. “I’m sorry, sir,” he started, and without thinking, David’s thumb flicked off the safety on his rifle. “But we’re under strict—”

“Belay that.”

All eyes whipped around to none other than Admiral Peters himself, striding from the command superstructure like a man half his age. He approached with the type of confidence only decades at sea gave. Both sailors fell into an instant salute, turning on him as he approached.

“What’re you boys doing? Holding up a foreign dignitary like this!?” He barked.

“But…sir, we have strict orders about who can come aboard and…”

“From who? The UN?” A growl rumbled up the old man’s throat. “You take all your orders from them now? And I’m just an old, useless drunk!?”

The sailors exchanged glances. “We…thought the new chain of command…”

“…has always ended with your Admiral, boys,” he waved his hands dismissively. “Now, step aside so I can show our guests around!”

The pair gave a final salute, sharing unsure glances as they marched back to the superstructure.

“And one more thing!” The pair gave pause as Peters gestured to the first sailor’s hip. “Lock down the sidearm, soldier, unless you’re planning to go target shooting with the waves.”

Without glancing down, one of the sailor’s hands moved to redo the clasp on his pistol. “Thank you, sir,” both announced before they moved out of earshot, back down the tarmac.

A breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding wheezed through David’s lips. “Jesus Christ…” he muttered.

“No, but I’ve been told I look like him.” Admiral Peters gave a crooked, wrinkled smile. “See the resemblance?”

“Pardon me for saying so, Admiral, but I had no idea you could still summon that kinda fire.” Lisa gasped, almost slouching in her bundled-up kit.

“Yeah? That getcha to take back any of the shite you said behind my back, when ya thought I was too drunk to hear?” He asked with a yellowed grin.

With a guffaw, she shook her head. “Maybe about half.”

“Yeah fair,” he said, turning back to the superstructure. “Well, y’bunch of prettyboys wanna stand around jerkin’ eachother off all day? Or can we finally get to savin’ the bloody world?”

Chapter XLIX: Loss, and Conversion

David hadn’t been sure what to expect, but it sure as hell wasn’t a damned vault door. All hastily-riveted steel and massive hinges, just waiting for Scrooge McDuck to pop it open for an afternoon swim. Of course, this one had a numbered keypad as opposed to one of those massive combination locks with the giant pointless handles, but he supposed not everything was going to look like he thought it would.

“Bloody hell,” Lisa mumbled. “It’s like they took a door off Sotheby’s and just wielded it in place.”

“HSBC Bank, actually,” Peters said, striding towards the lock.

“Wah...seriously!?”

“They needed something to keep the Princess contained a lot more than they needed something pretty,” he said, his brow furrowed as he squinted at the keys. “It gets the job done.”

“Contact!” Felipe gasped behind them. He’d been posted up to watch around the corner. Now, all eyes turned on him, widening in horror as footsteps tapped down the hall towards them.

Lisa felt around for the Admiral’s shoulder. “Get us in there.”

”I’m trying!” He gasped. “The cypher says this is what it should be for another two hours, at least!”

“Unless the cypher changed, dear Admiral.”

Everyone gave pause at that, every stomach hitting the floor at the sound of M’s voice. The sound of tapping footsteps drew nearer. Felipe readied his weapon, frowning down the sights. The tapping of leather shoes was matched by the shuffling of more boots clomping along towards them.

“No...how...?” Lisa moaned, her shoulders slumping hopelessly even as the rifle automatically rose to her shoulder.

“You didn’t really think a stunt like this could work, did you?” M chided as he rounded the corner, flanked by a couple of soldiers. Peters’ nostrils flared, but he stayed silent. Somehow, nobody in the small aisle thought Peters giving the command would make anyone drop their weapons. “Or did you really think I wouldn’t notice that little purchase you made back in port, Admiral? A disposable cell phone? Really?”

Peters balked as the group paled. “He bugged it...” he moaned.

“Right you are, and from there I pieced two and two together from King Armor’s timely arrival.” M tsked, the confident grin on his face never looking more punchable, never wavering as he neared. “Though I doubt he’ll retain that title for much longer after this. Not to worry, you can all share the same cell and watch Ceres end it all when the UN gives me a free pass to New Equestria.”

Lisa’s jaw clenched. “You let us get this far so you could get on a lifeboat!?”

“The world’s ending, madam. Proving to the UN that our usefulness can extend beyond this little boat is all that matters. You can all drop those weapons: I have a full battalion ready to fall upon you, and without the code, trying to fight now would be pointless. You’re cornered.”

Felipe reached to his pack, hand wrapping around the neck of the bottle of potion, but Lisa stopped him with a hand. “It takes time for it to kick in. He could rush us and gun us all down while you’re halfway transformed.”

With a shivering breath, he lowered the bottle back into its pocket.

“M? Listen,” David spoke up, his M4 dangling from its sling. “You gotta realize this is the only way. I mean, evacuating to Equestria? How sustainable do you really think that is?”

M’s eyes narrowed on the American, though he stifled a yawn. “It doesn’t matter what I think, and it matters even less what a crippled t-terrorist thinks.” He spat. “Whatever bullshit you’ve dreamed up, you can save it for your celly.”

“The princess can take her!” David insisted, his arm sinking to the side. “You know she can!”

“If...she’s not in cahoots with...her...” M let out a gasp, his face paling. He pulled out a kerchief and dabbed at his forehead. At this point, even the guards at his side were starting to look over at him in concern. The kerchief fell from his hand. “Then...we lose the one thing...we have to bargain with...”

Lisa’s head tilted curiously, but by then, a wide smile was stretching across the Admiral’s face. “Whatsamatter, smurfette?” He chided. “Can’t handle your drink?”

M looked up at him, eyes wide. Stooping to try and pick up the kerchief, he instead stumbled forward. “Sir!” One of the guards gasped, but M paid them no mind.

“P-Poison...” he grunted, glaring with eyes that swam and rolled like the sea outside, a dribble of spit racing from the corner of his mouth.

“I have the antidote, M! It’s hidden on the boat!” Peters shouted, stepping forward, his eyes blazing with a fury that hadn’t been seen in his eyes in decades. “You won’t find it in time if I don’t tell you where it is!”

The whole group blinked in surprise. The guards took a step back, leaving M on the floor, breathing heavily. “Bastard!” He gasped, smacking the palm of his hand down.

“Very much so. Clock’s ticking!”

Breathing heavily, M’s head sank. He chuckled. “Bloody bastard,” he grunted as he pushed himself up. Behind him, a dozen or so boots hammered against the metal, but he knew they would do him no good. “One-two-three-four-four!”

Lisa facepalmed even as she turned to dial it in. “Christ amighty God, it’s a bloody Spaceballs moment...” she murmured under her breath.

Andre and Francis kept their rifles up, aimed down the hallway at M while the rest of the group watched Lisa work with bated breath. When she keyed in the final number, there was a pause where many a stomach dropped and many a breath halted, and then a loud buzz sounded followed by a green LED lighting up, accompanied with the hydraulic hiss of numerous locks sliding out of place. “Oh thank God...” she muttered as the door slid away.

“Peters!” M growled, quivering on the floor. He flipped over on his back, breathing hard. “You got what you want, you bastard! Where’s the antidote!?”

As the door opened just wide enough to allow Lisa and Shining to slip through, the old man looked back with a grin. “I’m just an old drunk, M. Why would I know somethin’ like that?”

M coughed, choked. “Peters!” He bellowed, but the Admiral had already turned away, heading for the widening gap in the door creaking open. “Peters, you bloody bastard!”

As the opening widened, allowing most of the group through, Peters paused, looked back over his shoulder, and grinned.

Darkness closed in around M. Francis and Andre were still watching the hallway, but in that moment, they became secondary to him. All he saw was that old bastard, grinning at him. One of his guards crept forward to pull him back behind the corner and to some semblance of safety, and in a flash, M suddenly knew what was going to happen.

He was going to die. Not in the safety of New Equestria, but right here, on this stupid, pointless boat. He was going to die.

But he’d be damned if the old bastard wasn’t coming with him.

As the guard hauled him back, M suddenly crouched, twisted. In a flash, the guard was an armored, living shield. His mouth twisted in an O of surprise. M’s hand raced to his holster. The first shots from Andre and Felipe’s rifles tore into the guard’s back. M’s hand came up with a sidearm. “Peters!” He bellowed. A few more rounds cracked around him. One winged his shoulder.

Peters stopped. He turned. The smile faded from his face.

The pistol barked twice.

M screamed, even as the first few rounds from Andre finally hit home, tearing off the top half of his index and shattering his middle and ring fingers, but now it was in pain and triumph.

Both his shots struck the Admiral dead center.

David let out a surprised yelp as Peters slumped back against him. Outside, M’s pistol hit the floor in a spray of blood. More shots rang out, the remaining guard opening fire as Andre and Felipe finally pulled back to duck inside with the rest of the group.

The Admiral laid on the floor, a large bloom of red spreading across his chest.

“Shit,” Andre hissed.

“Get the bloody door, you dumb poofter!” He coughed.

After a pause, Andre whipped around, dialing the code in and waiting for the first hiss of hydraulics as the door started to close, then letting off a few shots into the keypad. As a final thought, he tossed a flashbang over his shoulder before ducking inside with the rest of the group.

A few more shots cracked wildly into the vault as the door closed, then it hissed shut with an air of finality. They were inside and safe, but not whole.

Peters laid on the floor, the angry red blossom now coating the entire front of his chest. He spat angrily, sourly. “Probably the most accurate shots that pencil-dicked paper-pusher ever took in his life!” He said through a painful grin, red staining his teeth.

“Move aside!” Francis screamed, already pulling a roll of gauze from his field pack, but the Admiral only hissed and held up a hand.

“My lungs are fillin’ with blood, nothing short of a damned cardio unit’ll save me.” He grumbled. “Dammit, of all the ones to die first, really didn’t want it to be me...”

Lisa knelt at his side. “That was terribly brave, sir.”

“First brave thing I’ve done in decades,” Peters gave her another red grin, this was genuine. “All that time fallin’ in line with the smurfs, finally got to tell ‘em where to shove it.”

“At least you got M in the end, sir.”

“Naw,” Peters chuckled. “I just roofie’d him. Bastard’ll be fine in a few hours...sans a few fingers, I think. I’ll have you to thank for that.” He added with a smile up at the group.

“Sir...” Shining Armor stepped forward. “Is there...anything you want us to do?”

“Yeah,” he looked up at the pony. “Save us. From ourselves. Keep those idiots from ending everything outta fear.”

He smiled again.

“And get me a drink for the bloody road, will ya?”

To no one’s surprise, David leaned down with a flask, from which the Admiral drank greedily. “Whiskey...” he whispered. “Didn’t know it could be so sweet.”

“It’s just some bottom-shelf Jack...” David whispered.

“Nectar of the bloody gods.” The Admiral whispered. That smile remained on his face, yellowed teeth stained red. “There’s better stuff in the top drawer of my desk, once ya…get to it…” the light slowly left his wrinkled eyes. And he faded away.

The group all stared at each other. Akshat muttered a short prayer as Andre crossed himself. The rest left them to it. They knew what needed to be done: the next doors needed to be overcome with magic. But not just any magic. They needed another unicorn.

Felipe withdrew the potion, held it up to the dim light of their small, metal chamber. He let out a long breath. For some reason, he thought the liquid seemed dimmer here, as if it didn’t shimmer the way it had back in the apartment, but he chalked it up to the light inside the vault.

He looked over the group, the only people he could possibly call friends, and uncorked the bottle. Lisa. Akshat. Francis. Andre. Chen. David averted his gaze at the last second, unscrewing the cap on his canteen and downing a swig. Felipe couldn’t blame him.

“We’ll remember you,” Lisa whispered, her voice cracking.

Felipe nodded, his hands shaking as he brought the vial up.

“This is unfair.” Akshat whispered.

“No it’s not,” Felipe smiled. “Remember what we said back in the apartment? It’s the most fair thing we’ve ever done.”

“Do you...want to say something before you...” Shining motioned to the bottle.

Felipe bit his lip. Closed his eyes. Thought for a minute or two. The gentle hum of the carrier felt like it was trying to lull him to sleep, only interrupted by another swallow from David taking a swig off his canteen. He really, really hoped it was just water the guy was chugging, but knew he wouldn’t hold it against him if it wasn’t.

What could Felipe say? What did someone say here, at the end of the road? What could possibly summarize an entire life?

All at once, he knew.

He opened his eyes again, a curious smile on his face. “Fanfiction.” He croaked.

“What?” Lisa asked.

“Fanfiction. That shit you heard me working on the whole time I was in the office? I was writing fanfiction and uploading it to a secure server at home. That’s why I was always so cagey with my work.” He gave a trembling smile.

“What kind of…” David started, then his eyes widened. A grin spread across his face as he slammed his fist against the bulkhead. “No damn way!”

Felipe grinned. “What can I say? The show just really appealed to me, and Fluttershy is ultimate, S-tier waifu.”

Akshat was the first to burst out laughing, but the others followed in quick succession. The whole room laughing, the tension easing, Felipe holding up the vial like it was a wine glass and he was giving a toast.

“Username TrapSpeaks420!” He guffawed. “Look me up some time!”

That got more roaring laughter, all except for Chen, who paused to blink in surprise, even as the others slowly calmed, the laughter dying down. Still riding the high of it, Felipe realized he would never have a better time to get the potion past his lips. Without further ado, he raised it the final few inches to his face, held it up in toast to the others, and poured its contents down his throat.

He lowered his hand, the bottle empty. He let it clatter to the floor. A shivering breath passed his lips.

The whole room stood in sudden, solemn silence. The residual smiles on everyone’s faces had long faded away. Now, they only waited. Like in the final moments before a prisoner’s execution, they waited.

After a moment, Chen spoke up: “You’re really TrapSpeaks420?” He asked.

Felipe blinked, looked over at him. “Yes?”

A thin smile stretched Chen’s lips. “I’m your biggest fan. A Princess and Her Queen was a masterpiece.”

A hollow, half-hearted version of the laughter that had filled the room moments before made its rounds, ambling calmly where the previous laugh had swept through them like a tidal wave. It settled into an uncomfortable silence, ebbing away as Felipe shifted on his feet. After another minute, Shining blinked.

“It...should be doing something by now.”

Felipe looked around the room in surprise. “Oh...oh shit, don’t tell me it was a dud!?”

Lisa stood, rushing over to feel his forehead. “Do you feel anything at all?”

“A bit shaky, but…” he cleared his throat, took a few hops, rubbed his stomach, then looked desperately around the room. “Oh damn…does anyone know if these expire!?”

“I was so relieved when you drank it and nobody said anything about needing to douse yourself, or something.”

All eyes turned to the American as he spoke up; David leaning against the bulkhead, downing the last few swigs off his canteen.

“Was worried if I had to empty it over myself, someone would’ve noticed and tried to stop me,” he said, his head bowed, tucking back in his collar. “Drinking it was easier. Didn’t even taste all that bad...little sugary, but not bad.”

Only now did everyone see the way he trembled, how his eyes were a little bit bigger, and where before his surplus uniform had fit him perfectly it now seemed to be spilling over him, like a child trying on daddy’s work coat for the first time. The canteen slipped from his hands, and a few drops from inside shimmered with powerful magic in the dark. He gave an all-too-wide grin.

“And here, I was worried for nothing.”

“David?” Lisa asked, stepping towards him. “Wh-what did you do?”

He let out a breath. “Something better than leaving it up to chance. Something more useful than a drunk with a missing hand.” To emphasize, he held up his stump, and all eyes widened. He followed their gaze to find a soft, still-forming hoof in the spot where his nub used to be, coarse hair growing along the length of his arm. “Huh...yeah, that’s pretty fast.”

Cursing, Felipe rushed to David’s side. He stepped on the bottle, stumbling as it shattered beneath his boots. Even so, Akshat beat him, holding the American by his shoulders. “S-someone help me with him!”

“It…won’t do any good…” Shining gasped. “He drank the whole thing. It’s all over his insides…”

“David!?” Felipe howled, butting in beside Akshat.

Dave turned to him, his lips peeling back into a forced smile.

“Why, dammit!?”

“Wasn’t gonna be much use. You know that…” David shook his head on a neck that was slowly elongating. “Shouldn’t have let me go to the bathroom with it. Dumped out my whiskey and smuggled it out in the flask.”

“Oh my god…” Lisa gasped, reaching for the trio, but not doing much else. Even Akshat and Felipe appeared powerless, grasping his shoulders and shaking but apparently unable to do anything else. What was she going to do? What could any of them do?

As a glossy sheen formed over David’s growing pupils, Felipe looked him in the eyes, baring his teeth. “Not fair, you bastard.” He hissed.

David offered up an eerily-large grin, wincing as his remaining fingers fused together. “Cry me a bucking river.”

Chapter L: A Final Meeting In A Cell

Celestia was used to being held prisoner. She was used to being beaten and tortured, perhaps more than most would assume of a globally-respected sovereign. But she wasn’t used to being hated. Not to being used as a tool and bargaining chip. Not to the horrors she had lived through these past few weeks.

Not to feeling so alone.

She sighed, pacing to the other end of the cell, her head aching from the strain she’d had it under. No matter how she looked at it, there was no way out of here. Despite all her best efforts, she was still this world’s villain, and the real villain was literally riding the apocalypse her way.

She let out a breath. The buzzing of the electrical lighting above seemed to rise up in her ears. “What do I do?” She asked aloud, if only to have a sound besides that damned buzzing. “What can I do?”

“Join me.”

Celestia sucked in a breath and whipped around, nearly bumping muzzles with another ivory snout. The mare before her could have been her twin sister, down to the ethereal, waving mane. There were only two differences she could see: the doppelganger was at least a couple hooves taller than her, and those eyes…her eyes were easily the coldest she’d ever seen on anypony. Sombra himself had held more warmth and love in his gaze than this mare’s cold, dark lavender pools.

Celestia paused for only a second, then her expression eased back into a cool neutral. Both mares regarded each other, heads tilting in evaluation, almost in sync. She spoke first: “We are…eerily alike.”

“What’s so eerie about it?” Her double shrugged. “We knew we were but two sides of the same coin.”

She paused, keeping her voice steady and even. “I only say eerie because I had made certain assumptions about the appearance of one so monstrous. I had hoped not to stare into the heart of evil and find a mirror.”

The dispassionate, cold glare that met her own sent shivers down her spine. “Evil? Was it evil to want Equestria to be strong? To gather so much power as to never be harmed again? To become a kingdom that no other nation would ever dare challenge?”

“You mean to become a cold, uncaring tyrant who subjugates her world with fear?” A puff of breath left Celestia’s nostrils. “Yes, it was.”

“I suppose one who chose weakness would think so, would make the mistake of conflating power with evil.” She tilted her head. “Celestia, since I acquired this much power, do you know how many successful attacks have taken place against Equestria or her little ponies? Zero. Not a one. Few villains have lasted long enough to ever pose a threat to my ponies.”

“If you are so powerful, then why do you fear the humans?” Celestia’s teeth clenched.

“Fear them!? I do not fear them!” For the first time, the thin veneer of cold calculation cracked, as the doppelganger whirled on Celestia with a burning fire that ignited in reddening eyes. Then she caught herself, cleared her throat, took a step back. “I didn’t fear humanity, I pitied them. Celestia, you’ve been among them, surely you’ve seen their self-destructive capabilities. I mean, look around you!” The double spread a hoof around the tiny cell. “You’re the best asset they could have right now, and look where you are! Locked in a cage, all from the sheer terror of you joining me! They are ruled by their fear, and it has inspired them to do terrible things.”

Despite herself, Celestia rolled her eyes. “Oh yes, please, go on.”

That rage threatened to boil over again. “You mock me!?”

“Of course I mock you,” Celestia scowled. “The evil villain monologue? You couldn’t be more cliché if you tried. Have you a single original thought in your head!? Are you really so dense that even now you can’t see you’ve become the villain, even in your own story!?”

The double reared on her, towering over her, their eyes meeting. “Ignore me at your own peril, whelp. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Or did you not notice the small memorials throughout Germany around the Dusseldorf camp? Did you ignore any article to do with human history from before my great crusade?”

For the first time, Celestia faltered. Her eyes darted away for a moment. “No. I did not…”

A smile crept onto the other’s lips. “Horrifying, isn’t it? I bet your world, despite your lack of ability to protect it, never saw anything close to the Rape of Nanking, or the Tulsa Riots, or the Katyn massacres. Just a few of their thousands of atrocities, innocents butchered for the crime of being different. Tell me, do you honestly think your ponies would be any different? You’ve seen mankind’s power. Do you, in your weakened state, think you can protect every single mare, stallion, and foal?”

Celestia gazed off into a far corner of the cell.

“I can give you power.” The double whispered. “The avenues I used to attain this much magical ability are still open. Just think what the two of us could do together. We could reshape this world from the ashes.”

“The ashes?” Celestia turned on her. “You preach protecting your ponies, yet still wish to annihilate them?”

The double waved a hoof. “Collateral damage, nothing more. You know, even with the evacuees in Equestria, that this will weaken humanity. With our power, we could return to your Equestria and rebuild anew. We could create a world forged in our image. Earth will not be uninhabitable for long. We could build a paradise of any sort that you’d want.”

Finally, the double took a step back, tilting her head, looking into Celestia’s eyes, like a teacher waiting for their student to arrive at the correct answer on their own.

“It’s all up to you what the world looks like after this, Celestia. You just have to say yes.”

Celestia drew in a long breath, let it leak slowly from her muzzle. “You speak about a new world for our ponies, yet you stand up there with the full intention of letting yours die. You could shield them, but instead you’re going to kill them with the rest.”

The double said nothing, a dark look taking over her features.

“You are nothing but a liar.” Celestia met those cold vermillion pools with a steely gaze of her own. “You never cared for your little ponies except for how they could serve you! You’re going to kill them with the humans!”

“Even if I do, you know I’m right!” The double screamed, wings spreading to their impressive span. “If we leave things as they are now, it’s only a matter of time! Humanity will overrun us like cockroaches in the burnt-out ruins of this world! When they’re done destroying each other, they will drag us into the abyss with them! We either crush them now, or wait to be subsumed in a mass of hands clutching spears and rifles!”

“No!” Celestia shouted defiantly.

The double stopped, gazing down at her, wings folding back against her body.

“Yes, humanity has made plenty of missteps in the past, and their power is frightening…but where does that power come from?” Celestia waved a hoof around. “Look around you! Yes, this was all built out of their fear, but look past that! We are on a ship made of steel, the size of a city. Did you miss that magnificence!? Haven’t you seen their cities!? Listened to their music, read their books!? Yes, I’ve seen them at their worst, but at their best, they outshine us.”

The double’s wings flared. “Is this some joke!? Outshine us!?”

“I met a little old lady who had spent the past few years visiting the husk that was once her husband every single day, and the joy I saw when he had returned to her was far greater and more powerful than anything you’ve ever done in your miserable existence. During my journey around the world, I saw the scars you left behind, and I saw people living within those scars, eking out an existence, forging new lives amidst the ruins of what you left them. Destroy humanity, you say?”

Celestia’s wing’s spread, and though they weren’t as wide as the other’s they still possessed a radiance beyond them. A smile crossed her face.

“Neither you nor I possess the power.”

The double glared down her nose at this smaller, smiling version of herself, who’s eyes danced with a mirth she had never known. “This is what you believe?”

“With all my heart. They shouldn’t be destroyed, simply because they are. They exist, they live, they love, and just like all sapient life, that means they should be preserved. If you need a reason to not murder billions, then perhaps it is you who should be destroyed. Me? I believe in friendship and harmony. They will serve us well in the new world, the one that I will forge.” She tilted her head. “Why, what do you believe in?”

“Nothing but myself.”

“Ah.” Celestia folded her wings calmly and coolly. “Then when the inevitable comes, you shall die for nothing.”

The double stared into her eyes, her head slowly shaking. “You are…hopeless.”

“I will take that as a compliment.”

“I should have known,” the doppelganger sighed, gazed upwards, up through the endless corridors of steel and plastic to where Celestia assumed her body stood, poised on Ceres’ surface as it rocketed towards doomsday. When those eyes regarded her again, they weren’t filled with that old rage, just…a certain sense of exhaustion. “We really are nothing alike.”

Celestia let out a breath. “You’ve no idea the relief it gives me to hear that from you.”

The double shook her head again, almost pitifully. “Fine. You can die with the rest. It really is for the best you’re here. I won’t be bothered with finding your corpse if its under miles of ocean water.”

“What would you even want it for?” Celestia snorted. “Sentimentality?”

“More…posterity.” The double sighed, shaking her head before her eyes started to close.

“One last thing before you go.”

The doppelganger paused, not even turning to look at her.

“As far as villain monologues go, I give you a seven out of ten,” Celestia smirked. “And just so you know, I gave Tirek an eight.”

The doppelganger remained in place for a few extra minutes, then sighed, her swan-like neck craning back as she looked to the sky. Then that cold gaze leveled on Celestia again. “I’m going to enjoy peeling the skin off your face.”

And then, just like that, she was gone. Celestia sighed. That…wasn’t particularly illuminating. Her doppelganger was simply too far gone, too hurt inside to possibly be reasoned with, though considering they thought their best option for the world was turning a race capable of sapience, love, and compassion into a mindless horde of worshipful zombies, that was pretty obvious from the beginning.

The way forward was clear. She had to break out of here and stop her doppelganger from destroying three worlds in a single fell swoop. But the only way to do that was…

“M!?” She shouted, her hooves pounding on the massive, steel door. “M!? Please, you have to listen to me! The world doesn’t have to end now! I can help!”

Nothing but silence replied.

“M! For the sake of all that is holy, please! She’s a madmare! I’m…I…”

She slowly sank to her haunches, a long breath heaving out of her body that rose and fell with her withers. Her head sank. “I just wanted to help…please…I know you’re afraid, and it’s okay to be afraid, but just let me help.”

Minutes passed in that awful, grating silence, with nothing but the buzzing of the lights as her companions. Despite knowing she couldn’t sink into despair, her head only hovered lower and lower until it rested against the impenetrable metal of the door. Her chin quivered.

And that was when something reverberated throughout her skull. A hum, a familiar shift in the air…

Celestia picked her head up, blinking in surprise, then pressed it against the steel again, this time with an ear perked to it. Her brow hunched. Was that just her mind playing tricks on her, hoping against hope? Or…

No! No, it wasn’t! There it was again! A smile crossed her muzzle as hope bloomed in her heart. Another hum! Like…like…

“Like a teleport,” she whispered breathlessly, hopeful tears standing in her eyes.

Then, there was a flash, a sudden flux of magic, accompanied with an arc of familiar, light blue electricity. “Shining!” She gasped, standing up from the floor. Yes! It was Shining Armor, her royal guard captain, her beloved nephew-in-law, and…who was that?

She tilted her head, watching this other newcomer: another unicorn, with a sandy mane, a well-built frame, and a bullseye for a cutie mark? The newcomer bolted to his hooves, and she gasped in surprise. Instead of the warm, loving eyes of a pony, she found the blank stare of a Newfoal, which instantly transformed from hope to a rage-filled glare upon seeing her.

“Y-you’re not her!” The Newfoal gasped, its horn already charging up for an attack. “He’s a liar! You’re not her! You’re…”

That was all he got out before a hoof slammed into the back of his head and he dropped, Shining Armor standing over him with a piteous stare. “Oh, David…” he sighed with a heavy accent.

Celestia knew that accent as well. “Oh,” she said, letting out a breath as Shining Armor gazed at her from behind a deep, burnt-in scar. “I see, you’re not…my Shining Armor.”

Shining shook his head slowly, carefully. “I…think we got off on the wrong hoof?” He said with a small, sheepish smile.

At that, she rose from her spot on the floor. “Does that mean this is…”

“A rescue mission, princess.” He finished with a thin, shaky smile.

It appeared to her like it burned with the radiance of her own star.

“Before we go, however,” he gestured to the unconscious stallion on the ground. “Could we...help him?”

“Oh,” Celestia said with a sad smile. “I’m sorry, but it requires the power of two alicorns to override that curse. Was he…”

“David.” Shining sighed, his gaze sliding over the unconscious stallion with a long, slow sigh. “The American. He risked everything to get me here.”

Celestia raised a hoof, resting it on his shoulder. Her horn glowed as she dipped it to his. “Then let’s make sure to end this quickly.”

Chapter LI: Final Escape

Back in the first chamber, Lisa sighed, keeping her combat knife balanced by its handle on the end of her finger. Around her, the others busied themselves however they could: checking and rechecking mags, twirling their few unspent rounds between fingers, trying (and failing) to teach themselves how to juggle using ammo casings, and in Francis and Andre’s case, holding each other. After so long in the dim light, survival now just meant staving off boredom. Of course, it didn’t help that nobody had thought to bring a book.

“Blimey, just like bein’ with the service,” she sighed. “Two percent action, ninty-eight percent being so bored you’ll wanna run headfirst into a bloody bulkhead just to ease it.”

“Indeed,” Akshat chimed in next to her, having successfully balanced a spent casing on the tip of a bullet and now looking to build a crude ammo teepee out of their unspent rounds. “Except the stakes were never this high during my time, I don’t know how much world-saving you did.”

“Aye, not much, I’ll give ya that,” she giggled.

“Hey everyone, I just had a thought.” All eyes turned to Felipe, who’s activity of choice had apparently been staring up into space to contemplate the meaning of existence. After everything with David, nobody had seen fit to question him on that. “How will we know if things went alright in there?”

That made everyone stop their activities dead. The only sound that followed came from the tinkling of falling ammo, Chen’s latest attempt at juggling ending at the three he’d had going. That had been a very good question. They had watched Shining Armor and...David vanish in a puff of unified magic. That was all. Who’s to say they weren’t instantly shredded by the Tachyon Inhibitors the moment they winked out of existence? Or hadn’t overshot and found themselves in the cold, dark waters beneath the Illustrious? Or that David hadn’t just gone psycho Newfoal and stabbed Shining in the throat the moment they were away?

All this and more buzzed through their heads, but the only concern that got a voice was;

“Did anyone think to bring snacks?” Andre piped up, still holding tight to Francis as they sat, leaning against the bulkhead.

“If you did, I hope you saved some for the rest of us.”

There was a voice to make everyone freeze in their tracks, as if the room itself had just sucked in a breath. Lisa leapt to her feet as a familiar, white unicorn revealed himself with a gentle glow of his horn, the light illuminating two other muzzles flanking him: one beaming, pale and white, the other a light tan. Shining smiled, his eyes holding a mirthful light that all who knew him would have found strange on his face.

“David!” Lisa rushed past him to the unconscious Newfoal, not even acknowledging Celestia as she gazed him over. She pressed a finger to his throat, and sighed to feel a pulse there. “Thank you...” she whimpered, holding his body to her.

“I’m...sorry to say I cannot do anything for him alone.” Celestia sighed. “Whatever magic humanity has to suppress my power, it is easy pickings compared to the wretched curse left by my counterpart.”

“Ah...explains how we were never able to overwhelm it by ourselves.” Akshat nodded sagely, his dark eyes rolling over to David’s body.

“But there is hope. My counterpart and I can defeat yon curse easily, and there are others back home.”

“Others?” Chen breathed. “How...how many are you?”

“Quite a few more than my counterpart would have ever imagined, I’m sure.” She giggled. “Speaking of, I think it was about time we executed the next phase of your plans.”

This was followed by a very long, awkward silence that told her all she needed to know. “Frankly, your highness,” Akshat said sheepishly. “We never imagined we would make it this far.”

“Oh good.” She giggled, her horn glowing. “So, I won’t be stepping on any hooves when I tell you my plan. Just making sure.”

M was past furious. Past mere anger. He was ready to call in high-explosives to open that damned vault door. He was ready to crack the Illustrious in half if only for the knowledge that every one of those traitorous bastards would have a slow, agonizing death by drowning.

“I said I’m fine, goddamn you!” He shouted, sitting up in bed and pushing the probing nurse away as he whirled on his guards, cradling his bandaged hand. “Where are we with entering that damned vault!?”

“The damage to the operating mechanisms was...extensive, sir.” A guard who’s name he’d already forgotten sighed. His face spoke of the knowledge that this would be his life right up until the bitter end, and he was only still here on the distant hope that the ship might get within doggy-paddling distance of a port crammed full of booze and hookers before the comet hit. “The engineers say it’ll be at least another hour.”

That got M to settle down. “Another hour...good...good…” he chuckled. “And here, I was worried the end of the world would come before I could slap them all in chains.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alright, someone get me the Security Council,” M said, sitting up and wavering a little as his head swam. “We can still spin this right, show the UN there’s still people over here worth savin’...hell, if we say they never made it to the door, who’s to say otherwise? We’ve enough phone chatter to put Armor away, and if we delete the security footage it’s his word against ours.”

The grunt, who clearly thought the little time left before the end of the world would probably be better spent on hookers and booze, only gave a silent nod of agreement.

If M knew where his subordinate’s mind really was, he didn’t show it. His mind was already working on the case he was about to present to the UN. Why yes, Mister Secretary-General, we were a little suspicious of King Armor...I’m sorry, former King Armor when he showed up, but we just couldn’t turn down the leader of the Equestrian Administrative Zone, could we? Why yes, we did try to round up the terrorists, but wouldn’t you know it they all went down fighting, what could we do? Why yes, Secretary, I am aware of how well we contained this, all things considered, and while we’re talking, wouldn’t ya mind...

At that point, a powerful boom rumbled through the Illustrious. The grunt looked over to M as he paled. “Tell me that was the reactor melting down,” he moaned.

A few minutes later, the answer arrived in the form of a navy sailor, who didn’t even bother to salute. “Mister M, sir!” He gasped. “The prisoners have just escaped! What do we do!?”

M stared up at the ceiling, falling back on his cot. He blinked a few times. After some quiet contemplation, interrupted by the occasional shout begging for orders, he let in a long, slow breath. “The Lord hates me…” he sighed. “That’s what this is, right? Proof that God hates me?”

“God damn, I need a drink,” the man beside him moaned.

“How’s everyone doing?!” Celestia sang back.

“Desperately trying not to wet ourselves, your highness!”

With another musical giggle, Celestia swooped through the air, wings spread as alarms blared through the fleet around them. Water fanned out around her as her wings glided just above its surface, splashing against the hulls of ships.

“When we are clear of the fleet, we’ll take off for the sky!” Shining Armor shouted from just behind her, his hooves spread as he fought to maintain the small bubble holding himself and the small group of humans/former humans. Speaking of whom...

“C-can we make that soon?” Akshat moaned, looking over at the Newfoal. Even unconscious, the queasy, green pallor entering his fuzzy cheeks was becoming obvious.

“You’re kidding!” Lisa giggled. “The big, tough Marine is getting seasick!?”

“Apparently so...” Akshat closed a large hand over David’s too-large eyes. His gaze slid from pony to human. “What if he wakes up?”

“That won’t happen.” Shining butt in. “I already got the drop on him, now it’s just maintaining the spell.”

Akshat sucked in his lips, looking a bit uncertain, but he knew there was no retort for that. He wasn’t a unicorn, or anybody who had studied up on Equestrian magic. He was a soldier. He could only lay back and trust the magic-users knew what they were doing. He was already relying on one of them, after all. Besides, the way Lisa held David’s body to her, it was clear she understood what would have to happen if things went to hell with keeping him restrained. She knew what she might have to do. No reason to bring any of it up.

An eerie silence fell over the group, only masked by the ongoing hum of the bubble of magic around them, plus an occasional hum from Shining as his horn renewed the spell keeping David unconscious. The fleet vanished behind them, giving way to open water. Celestia swooped, and finally, they descended upon a small archipelago.

“You’ll be safe here until my return,” she intoned, the bubble popping and dropping the humans and unicorns onto the sand.

Lisa slowly pressed herself up to her feet, dusting off her fatigues as she met the princess’s eyes. “And if you don’t?”

Celestia sighed, looked up at the dim light slowly growing more visible in the sky. “Then if I could borrow some of your humans’ trademarked cynicism: it won’t be your problem for terribly long, now, will it?”

“Eh, fair.”

“Wait...” Shining Armor pulled himself from the pile of limbs and galloped through the sand to face her. “That’s it? You’re...just gonna fight her?”

She sighed, looking up. “Either I do, or she murders billions. But the longer I wait, the more likely it is I won’t be able to divert Ceres after the battle. This is what I must do.”

“Princess...”

She turned, finding Lisa standing there, fatigues already covered in sand. Her legs trembled, so used to the gentle sway of the carrier already, but she met Celestia’s gaze with a steely resolve. “I...don’t think there’s any words to express how sorry we are for not believing in you, and how grateful we are...that you’re here after all the fuck-ups and bollocks, just to fix yet another fuck-up, it really speaks to you. To who you are.”

She raised a hand to her brow in a salute, her steely gaze never wavering.

“Thank you. From all of us.”

She blinked down in surprise, finding the rest of the group standing in salute, even Shining Armor. “If you had been our princess...a lot of pain would have been avoided.” The King announced.

She smiled at the group. It was a thin, wan thing, starved for any reason to be, but there nonetheless. “Thank you all. For your faith. Your determination.”

“Is there anything you needed before you...go?”

She pondered a second, her neck craning back up to the light, eyes glazed in thought. “Actually...” she said. “There might be one thing...do any of you have one of those phones?”

Twilight blinked as she entered the light. Just a moment ago, she’d been languishing in her cell, the incessant buzzing of human lighting her only company. Now, she was being rushed along, her hooves barely able to touch the metal floor as a pair of guards hurried with her through narrow hallways, past vault doors and cell doors and the other various portals that had been built to contain her. It all ended – quite anticlimactically, she thought – with a plain, wooden door that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the back of Sugarcube Corner.

“Listen, you need to tell me what this is about,” she insisted. “I don’t...”

She trailed off to a familiar voice: “...again, on all channels, in the hopes that this reaches the appropriate ears...”

Twilight gasped, galloping from her captors’ grips. “Princess!?”

As she rounded a corner, she found a large control room, filled with consoles and doodads and many important-looking humans in uniform all staring gape-jawed at the big screen in the middle of the room.

And there was Celestia.

Not the fake one who’s influence they had fought this entire time, but the real one. There was the proof that she was alive, finally! Finally!

Twilight stumbled forward. “Princess, I...”

“...I’m heading off now, I’m going to do my best. In the case that this isn’t enough, I’m urging all my fellow Equestrians: open your homes, open your hooves, humanity is not what you think it is. They need us, more than the Crystal Ponies needed us, more than the changedlings, this is a people in their most desperate hour of need. We have not failed with such charity before, and we will not now. I have faith in you, my little ponies.”

Twilight’s ears folded down, her mind blanking after being cut off. Of course, she couldn’t hear her, this was a one-way stream. Silly...

“To my little ponies should I fail: fight on. Friendship and Harmony will always win in the end, even if it all looks hopeless, even if it seems impossible, resist no matter the outcome. To my nobles, it has been a pleasure working with you, should I fall here, my sister, Luna, will take the throne as a Monarch. I have the upmost faith in her abilities. She will lead in my stead. To humanity: I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry that we failed, but know that we tried. We will build a new world at the end of it. Together, if you’ll have us.”

Twilight’s ears perked. Wait, if she fell? She gazed up into those vermilion eyes, blinking harshly. Was this...it wasn’t, right? This wasn’t a last will and testament...

Was it?

“And most of all, to my dearest friends and family. To my niece, Cadence, to my sister, Luna. And yes, to you, Twilight Sparkle...”

Lilac eyes met vermilion. It was as if Celestia knew exactly where to look to see her most precious student: her colleague, hero, and best friend. As their eyes met, Twilight could finally see the tiny tears gathering in the corners of Celestia’s gaze as she whispered:

“I love you. I love you all.”

Two trails appeared on Twilight’s cheeks. “I love you, too.”

Then the image of Celestia swallowed once. “Wish me luck, everyone.” She gave a thin smile, and then she was gone.

Twilight stepped forward, placing a hoof on the screen. “She...wanted me to see that, didn’t she?” She said with a trembling voice.

“It was one of the requests she made when the transmission began.” One of the soldiers said, and she heard his voice trembling too. After a moment, she heard him shuffle in beside her. “Miss Sparkle? Can she do it? Can she stop her?”

Twilight gave a tiny smile that felt alien on her cheeks, but looked just fine in her reflection on the black screen. “You heard what she said,” she whispered. “Friendship and Harmony always win in the end.”

Chapter LII: Final Battle

Author's Note

Just the epilogue remaining, really. Thank you all for hanging in there. It's been fun.

Chapter LII: Final Battle

Space in this universe wasn’t quite what Celestia remembered. As opposed to the dark, cooling embrace she knew, this was a harsh, unyielding vacuum where little could survive. Fortunately, having surpassed the need to breathe centuries before helped orient herself, even if her eyes required the use of some magic to keep them in her skull. Surpassing Earth’s gravity, in turn, was simplicity itself. She had rocketed away to the upper reaches of the atmosphere in no time at all, and soon was able to turn back and view the planet in its entirety.

And what she saw was beautiful.

Wisps of clouds cascaded wildly over the deep, pure blues, so deep they could rival even her sister’s eyes. Dark greens and yellows from the land, interrupted by dots of gray here and there, spanned out to the darkness of night on one side of the planet. A side that was interrupted by small, yellow lights.

Humans making their way in the darkness. Billions of them.

“I will defeat her,” she muttered with a few shreds of the air left in her lungs. “I will save you all, or I will die trying.”

She whipped around, searching the infinite black. Ceres wasn’t hard to find. Every satellite in orbit was pointed at it after all, unable to do anything but watch the doom hurtling towards Earth. Not to mention the...simply titanic amount of magic waiting for her out there.

Despite herself, a fist of dread tightened in her stomach. She suddenly felt like a filly gazing up at the towers of Manehattan for the first time. For a second there was a driving urge to shoot back down to the planet, fly back to Canterlot, and lock herself away in the deepest vaults she could find. But she closed her eyes. She refocused. The moment passed. And then, she shot off into the great void.

For its unbelievable speed, the burned and scarred surface of Ceres presented a surprisingly stable platform. Its bulbous, frozen form hurled through space at somewhere past the speed of sound, so Celestia had to compensate, propelling herself backwards with her magic in an attempt to lessen the blow of landing. As it drew near, a few teleport spells meant she landed perfectly, matching her momentum with the rock.

She shivered. This was it.

Looking around, she didn’t see her opponent immediately. But that was fine. The Other knew she was here. She just needed to bait them out. Her horn glowed, sending telepathic messages out in all directions: “I can hardly blame you for all of this. Monsters are rarely born, they’re made, after all. That’s what makes it harder to be angry with you.”

She gazed behind her at the blue, glowing dot slowly expanding in her vision.

“Something broke you, didn't it? Something years ago that you just couldn't handle, so you spread it around: all that hatred and all that pain, breaking everypony around you until you broke everything. You shattered Equestria and twisted her around into something she was never meant to be, but that wasn't enough, was it? You had to go and do it again to another world."

Her eyes narrowed. Her lip trembled in disgust. She’d warmed up, now time for the gut punch.

"No, I see what this is: a child's tantrum, because you stopped maturing however many years ago and became the selfish, shattered infant before me. You got used to watching everyone around you break and bend under sheer force of power. And when Earth didn't break, your hatred only grew deeper. You resolved to break it for the simple act of defying you. For not turning over and showing its belly like everything else in your miserable life. You even plotted the death of your own people for the simple act of turning away from you once you were no longer looming over them! You never once stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, you're the monster. And of course you didn’t! Because here's the thing you clearly didn't figure out in all your years spent twisting and breaking and destroying everything around you...”

She took a long moment, steadying herself.

“Just because you're hurt does not mean you get a free pass to hurt everyone else. Your pain is no excuse."

"Are you quite done?"

Celestia worked her withers, her shoulders rising and falling in a mimic of a breath. "I could scream at you for a thousand years for the sheer catharsis of it, you evil, twisted, wretch; but it would be about as productive as sending Discord to a 'Manners and Etiquette' course. So yes, I'm done."

"Good."

The Other appeared before her in an instant teleportation spell. Despite weeks spent in deep space, their coat remained the same, pristine white, their mane still flowing with unbelievable, wild magic. Their fetlocks remained untrimmed from her time in prison, adding to the feral look. And then, most frighteningly of all, they grinned. It was not a good grin. It was the grin of something with bright, glowing eyes hiding in a bush, watching some oblivious prey animal walk right into its claws. The power oozing from their blazing form, the sheer magical prowess...what forsaken pathways had this mare gone down that Celestia had never even considered? What horrors had they allowed into their heart to reach this height? The wicked creature could probably fill a tome of the atrocities they’d needed to commit, and Celestia couldn’t decide if she’d want to read it or not.

"Because for that outburst, I'm going to track down your little student and burn her alive. Even before this asteroid hits, I'll personally see to it that she dies screaming in agony."

Celestia kept her gaze even with her Other’s. Her viridian eyes wavered.

"I want you to know that. Just in case I end up killing you here, I want your last thought to be the knowledge that your student will die with her skin on fire, her coat blackening, and her eyes evaporating out of her head."

Celestia's wings tensed, ruffled. Her legs tensed. Her head lowered, sparking with magic. "In that case, when I win, I'll be saving the Earth by shattering this asteroid with your skull. It appears thick enough to do the trick."

Her Other nodded. “Those aren’t bad as far as final words go.” They shrugged. Then, in a flash, they whipped around, hind hooves lashing out in a magically-infused buck leveled at Celestia’s throat. Only a quick teleportation to the side kept Celestia from having her larynx crushed instantly, earning her a few meters to let loose a pair of magical blasts. Most normal ponies, even particularly-talented unicorns with shields prepared, would have been killed instantly by these blasts. Her Other tanked them, barely even flinching, their gaze still leveled as they dissipated against her.

Another shiver went up Celestia’s spine.

“You’re going to die here,” her Other hissed.

Instead of replying, Celestia unleashed another flurry of magical blasts, aimed at the Other’s head. They barely did anything as her opponent charged, insane rage honing their pupils to pinpricks, their chest heaving in the vacuum with pure adrenaline.

Celestia backpedaled, and the battle for three worlds carried on, with Celestia only hoping that things were going well enough on the surface…

When she finished her recording, the Princess told them the rest of the plan. They didn’t like it, it depended on way too many people who’d already demonstrated shit track records in doing the smart thing and not reacting with fear, but in the end it was all they had. When she took off, Francis sighed. “Did everybody get that?”

“Elements of Harmony, super secret magic death ray, depends on a buncha young people like every situation in the Power Rangers,” Lisa said, nodding.

“The Elements of Harmony are not like...” Felipe hissed, trailing off in disgust.

“Oh, sorry,” Lisa said with a cheeky grin. “Don’t wanna upset the brony.”

“Look, the point is she just gave us a shot at making the idiots finally listen.” Francis held up his satellite phone. “Let us just wait and see.”

A few minutes of solemn quiet later, Lisa sighed. “Okay, think we have a chance now, you guys?”

The group nodded as Shining reached for the phone, dialing in a number he knew. “Do you remember what you are going to say?”

“Mostly…” Lisa smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry, it’s a wee bit intimidating. I’ve never talked to someone this high up the ladder before.”

“I mean,” he gave a small smile. “You are right now.”

She chuckled as the phone rang. The group waited, squeezed in tight, hoping, praying, until someone finally picked up:

“You’ve reached the office of the General Secretary, state your name and business and...

“This is King Shining Armor, I must speak with the General Secretary immediately.” Shining said, closing his eyes. “Authorization XQC-82 invoked.”

After just a moment, the person on the other end of the line popped his lips, far too nonplussed for the groups’ liking. “Alright, give us a second,” they said, and finally, the line clicked over.

After a few more minutes, a voice clicked in with a slight Asian accent. “This had better be important, Armor, you know how busy we are...”

“General-Secretary Watanabe?” Lisa cut in, rushing to sit beside the phone.

There was a click. “Yes, who am I speaking to?”

“My friend, General-Secretary.” Shining replied. “Listen, we know about the transmission. I was just with the princess.”

“You...were with her?” The Secretary’s scowl could have melted the phone’s speaker. “Armor, if you had anything to do with this--”

“We have an idea, General. The princess is already free, but there’s a good chance she won’t be able to win up there.” Lisa cut-in. “That’s why we need you guys to--”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence as a rock whipped out, slamming into the back of Shining’s head. He didn’t cry out, instead slumping over silently. The sat-phone went flying. All eyes turned to the source of the rock.

David – or really, the newfoal formerly known as David – sneered. “Her majesty will not accept you monkeys interfering.” He rumbled, his voice low, his horn sparking with magic that danced around his head and cast his face in shadow.

“Oh shit,” Francis gasped, drawing his pistol. But he paused. That was David, one of them! One of the few other people who had been there since the beginning! They couldn’t...no, they couldn’t!

“Dearest!” Andre shrieked.

Francis holstered the pistol and grimaced. Either they all made it through alive, or none of them did.

Ahead of them, Akshat had already scooped up a hunk of driftwood from the beach. Chen raised his fists. Lisa drew her own pistol, then ejected the mag and turned it around to hold the barrel, the grip now a blunt object. The newfoal glowered with dumb hatred as the group fanned out, surrounding it. “We know you’re in there, David,” Lisa hissed. “We ain’t givin’ up on you. Not for the whole world.”

His horn flared. “Bring it, you stupid monkeys!”

And a new front in the battle for three worlds opened up.

Magical blast incoming. Shield. Reply with jab to ribcage.

The battle between the doppelgangers had only been going for a few minutes, and already Celestia felt the beginnings of magical exhaustion in her body. Every flap of her wings for distance, every blow she had to tank, every hoof strike she attempted, was beginning to wear as a dull ache in her joints. And still, she felt as if she were fighting a brick wall.

Jab ineffective. Hoof trapped. Headbutt incoming. Dodge. No...dodge blocked...her magic...PAIN!

Celestia reeled, her brain feeling like it had unmoored itself in her skull. Her blood hovered in the black vacuum around her. She blinked in surprise. It had been awhile since an opponent had drawn blood, though she would be lying if she said she hadn’t expected to bleed a little. In fact, she expected to bleed a lot more before this all came to an end.

Here she comes, oh gods--

Her Other lunged at her like a white tsunami. Celestia could only dig in her hooves, shoulder check, pray it did some damage. Based on the magically-endowed buck to her chest, it did not. Her magic flickered, tanking the hit, her ribs creaking. A few more hits like that...

Coming back around...

The Other powered through a wild loop, bearing down on her at just over Mach 3. This hit came even harder, slamming into Celestia’s ribcage. Out of desperation, she reached out with her magic, only to feel the Other slip through at the height of yet another loop. Celestia’s horn sparked uselessly. No...she needed more magic, she just needed to hold on...

A third and final loop sent her sprawling back across the blasted rock, slamming into the far side of the crater.

Have to adjust...have to change...

Scrambling, Celestia hurled herself over the lip of the crater. A burst of magic at the back of her skull told her the double was already propelling themselves at her, trying to catch up. The moment she was out of sight, a small illusion spell camouflaged Celestia, her coat taking on the dark, mottled appearance of the rock. She galloped into the heart of the crater and pressed herself down, wings splaying, hiding herself just as the Other peered over the lip.

The Other tutted, shaking their head, a small smile on their face. “Giving up so soon?” They mocked.

Celestia remained utterly still, years of mental conditioning kicking in as she went away, to someplace inside herself, willing her body to be as the rock around her.

“I suppose that’s fair. You didn’t have the wherewithal to reach the heights your little ponies deserved, why would you be able to see this through?” The Other chortled as they descended the slope into the crater.

A pinch of anger rose at that, but Celestia didn’t rise to the bait. If she could get the timing right...maybe there was still a way to turn this around...

“If you’re still around, I would like to bring up one point: that all the chatting we’ve had? About...well, everything? It doesn’t matter. It’s utterly pointless.” They shrugged as they neared Celestia’s position, eyes still scanning around. “The simple fact of the matter is you have nothing to back your side up but empty, vapid words, and running like this only proves it. You’re nothing but a cowardly little worm, too scared of power to seize it, and because of that every one of your simpering, sycophantic little ponies is going to die.”

The Other paused, their back to her.

“They’re going to burn alive, Celestia. And it’s all your fault.”

Without a word, Celestia leapt from the dust, moving like a scythe through the vacuum, hooves outstretched, aimed at the back of her double’s neck...

The Other whipped around in a blur, faster than Celestia could see. Vermilion eyes locked with vermilion. They grinned insanely.

“Wha--”

“Case in point.”

A hoof slammed against Celestia’s throat, magic gripping tight. The Other slammed her into the dust, head-first, the grip never loosening for even a second, the back of Celestia’s head digging a small hole into the rock. Another spurt of blood came up as something popped in her neck.

“Did you really think you could hide from me!?” The Other bellowed, slamming a hoof into Celestia’s snout.

Then another.

“I was tracking you every second!”

Another blow landed. Celestia’s magic flickered.

“You really thought you could just hide!? From me!?”

Another blow. A tooth came loose. Blood drifted into space.

“From! Me!?”

Celestia coughed. The world around her faded. She started to get up. Another magic-infused hoof slammed her back down. Dust and blood drifted all around her. The Other scoffed.

“I must say, weakling, this display has been even more disappointing than I imagined it would be.” They chortled, finally taking a step back. “This? This is what you brought to bear before me?”

A hoof slammed into one of Celestia’s wings. She howled in agony as a sound like a bundle of dry twigs snapping reverberated through her skeleton. Her Other gazed down at her with a look bordering on outright disgust.

“Pitiful. I don’t know why I tried to reason with you, you’re even worse than the humans. You’re a mockery of me. A pathetic image not even approaching my glory.”

The Other mounted her again, propping up Celestia’s chin on her hooftip.

“I’m not going to use my magic on you, Celestia.” The double hissed, holding Celestia’s bloodied face on the tip of one hoof. And despite the burning rage still in her eyes, their voice was cold and utterly detached when they spoke. “You’re not worthy of a quick and painless death. I’m just going to keep hitting you and hitting you until something breaks. I’m going to beat you to death, Celestia. I’m going to kill you by inches. I’m going to break you bit by bit for daring to mock me with your existence. And when it’s over and you’re choking on your own blood, desperately clinging to life for just those few, extra, precious moments, I want you to remember the billions you failed. I want you to realize that everyone down on that little blue marble is going to die: every disgusting human, every pitiful little worm you called your subjects, and all the little traitors cowering around them, will all die because of your failure here.”

“A-ah-ah...eeeh...” Celestia started. Blood pouring down her snout, it took a moment for the Other to realize she was trying to talk.

The Other let up on the pressure. “What was that?” They asked, nothing more than simple curiosity in their tone. What could this mockery of an alicorn possibly have to say?

“A-at least...” Celestia sputtered up blood, a smile appearing on her face beneath the blood and gore. “At least I...kept your attention...long enough for...”

The Other didn’t hear the rest of what she had to say, as a brilliant, blue light slammed into their from the side. They whirled, paused. A smile crossed their face as they met the gaze of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.

“For...my family...to arrive...” Celestia sputtered with a grin.

“You!?” The Other scoffed, shaking their head. “You became an alicorn!? Of all mares, you!?”

“Not just any alicorn.” Cadence dropped her head, her horn glowed dangerously. “The alicorn who’s husband you killed.”

The Other met her gaze, their stare dead-eyed, passionless. Then, something clicked. Their face lit up. “Armor!?” She gasped, a hoof cracking the molten rock where they slammed it down. “You became a princess, and Armor became...”

If there had been any atmosphere at all on Ceres, it would have echoed with waves of rolling laughter. As it was, the Other had to make do with slapping their hoof up and down, eyes bulging as they brayed without any grace.

“Tell me, did you two happen to crank out any maggots that I now have to crush? I mean, just to ensure the whole fetid bloodline is good and dead.”

Cadence’s only response was a machine gun cavalcade of blasts, bouncing off the Other’s shields. The pink princess’s head lowered as she advanced, horn charging and firing time and again, over and over. The Other couldn’t even get another word out, so focused on reconfiguring their shield, making sure no blasts found their mark.

“Sister!”

The shout went up over the rock, and the Other turned. Their eyes went wide. Their jaw slack. “It...no, it can’t...be...” they muttered as Princess Luna descended, plowing into the crater at Celestia’s side and hurrying to her. That was all Cadence needed. A particularly powerful blast slammed into a weakpoint the Other missed. The shield shattered, and a powerful burst of magic slammed into their jaw. They turned, their eyes blazing against Cadence, who grinned with some satisfaction at the spurt of blood running down their muzzle, bloodying gritted teeth.

“Lu-na...” Celestia groaned as Luna poured healing magics into her battered form. “So good...to see you...just wish it...”

“Hush, sister,” Luna pulled Celestia’s head from the small tomb the Other had buried it in. “Let us take care of yon monster, you just rest.”

Celestia nodded, easing herself back down. Luna tried to make her comfortable, but with nothing but blasted, molten rock around her, she had to make do with just laying her out along a relatively-level bit of rock, where she might not slide further into the crater. With a final hush, Luna turned to the battle still raging.

Cadence pressed forward, her initial blow giving her some confidence in the battle. But the Other’s power was simply too much, too overwhelming. Not only were they blocking hits, they were returning them, hit for hit. Soon, Cadence was backing up, their positions in battle reversed as she found herself only capable of squeezing off a few hits between dodging and shielding.

Fortunately, their attention completely on Cadence, the Other was almost totally blind to a hit from the other side. Luna noticed, and capitalized.

A flying, magically-infused hoof crashed into the Other’s muzzle from the side, Luna a blue dart against the black. Blood misted into the vacuum, as the almighty buck added to their already wounded nose. “You--bitch!” The Other shrieked into the psychic link. “When I’m done with her, I’ll...”

They paused as Luna swooped overhead, landing with perfect grace at Cadence’s side.

“L-Luna?” The Other gasped.

Luna’s eyes narrowed. She lowered her head. Her magic ignited. Her wings fanned: one to shield Cadence, the other Celestia. “Thou hast stolen enough of our family. Continue thy assault at the cost of thine life!”

The Other’s eyes darted from Celestia, to Luna, then back again. Finally, their shoulders rose, then fell. “I see...you’re just another weakling.” When their eyes opened again, the surprised shock was gone, replaced with cold steel. “So you’ll die with the rest.”

The way the group all attacked simultaneously, from all directions, you would think they had coordinated it. The six charged with everything they had, with debris picked up, with furious cries for what was lost and what they still had to fight for. All futile. A simple shield held them at bay, and pulsed back at them, sending them sprawling. David laughed. “Sticks and stones, that’s it! That’s all you monkeys have left! My Sun will burn you away!”

“David, please!” Lisa screamed desperately. “We don’t want to hurt you!”

The newfoal’s lips quivered, as if it had just bitten a lemon. Then he whipped around, his magic like a concussive wave. A huge clap sounded. A tsunami of sand sent Chen sprawling, flailing helplessly into the surf. Even as he got up, David laughed, turning to Francis and Andre with a wave of pebbles. Francis shoved Andre away, and the Frenchman screamed as the German howled in pain, his body wracked with little holes like he’d been shot with buckshot.

“Pathetic!” David announced. “I was awakened today, barely an hour ago! And you worthless lot can do nothing before me! Equestrian Magic makes us superior in every way, shape and form!”

Francis grimaced as Andre helped him up. “Wish there was more of old David in there…he didn’t talk this much.” Andre grumbled.

“Maybe there really is nothing left…” Francis wheezed, the hand not supporting his lover going to the pistol still in its holster.

“Don’t you dare! Lisa would never…”

A rattle of gunfire interrupted him. The pair looked up as David backed off, four hooves stumbling, fear in his gaze as Lisa had scooped up one of the carbines and unloaded it in his direction. She screamed as burst after burst of automatic gunfire crashed into and fizzled against the shield. A few shots made it through. All went wide. All peppered David’s hooves, making him dance wildly, almost comically.

“She’s missing…even if the shield fell she’d miss,” Francis gasped admirably as she coolly slammed a fresh mag in and unleashed another bombardment. Her lips were twisted into a determined rictus, her eyes aflame.

“...if David does not survive this, we should see if she’s open to a throuple.” Francis muttered, drowning out Andre’s protestations by drawing his pistol and adding to the cacophony.

Gunfire and creosote filled the air. The group cursed in their native tongues. David howled with pain and effort. Nobody noticed Akshat coming up behind him, least of all the newfoal. The Gurkha uttered a silent prayer in his mind for his blow to fall true as he raised a rock over his head. There was a final apology. Finally, the rock came down with all the impressive strength Akshat could muster.

He hadn’t noticed the slight shimmer just behind David’s head. Not until his blow glanced off it.

Maintaining his shield, David turned on Akshat. The rock slipped from Akshat’s grip and he offered a sheepish smile, like in some cartoon. “I really thought that would work,” he said, as if defending himself.

Snarling, another torrent of sand shot up. Akshat went flying now as the others were blinded. “This is everything!?” David shouted. “This is who the impostor must rely on for rescue!? You’re all pathetic! Stupid, incomprehensible apes, all meant to end before her might! We are the inheritors of this planet! The descendants of an empire millenia long! You stand no chance before us!”

When the dust settled, the group all rose to their feet, and paused. Lisa, at first, looked around, then ahead, and swallowed. Her rifle hovered before her, barrel leveled.

David grinned. An eye twitched. “Case in point: you had millenia to advance, and all you came up with was a better way to throw rocks at eachother. A way that I now master, albeit a bit more crudely than one of our glorious unicorns might.”

Lisa raised her hands. “I really, really hope this is just her screwing with your head, yank,” she scoffed as the others backed away a step. “Dating you will be a lot harder if you’re really this long-winded.”

David scoffed. “What makes you think I would want any relations of the sort, ape?”

“Ohh…I’m thinkin’ you’ll be changing your tune before the day is through.”

David frowned. His eyes darted all around. He counted: one, two, three, four, five, six little monkeys, all behaving. He cursed himself that he couldn’t hold them all at gunpoint, but his glorious form was rather new, after all. The bottom line, though, was that there was no way they had an ace up their sleeve…

Wait…

His eyes widened as they darted to the spot where Shining and the sat-phone had fallen. Both were missing.

“Oh, no…” he whimpered.

“You think he figured it out?” Andre chuckled.

“I think he just did,” Akshat said.

“Wh-when?” David stammered.

“Oh, Armor regained consciousness right around ‘bring it, you stupid monkeys,’” Lisa said with a little smile on her face. “Everything after that was just a distraction to buy him time to relay the message we needed to the UN. Hopefully, by now, Miss Sparkle is on her way to where she’s needed.”

“No…” David looked up at her, ears folded back, lip quivering. “I…failed?”

“Quite spectacularly too,” Akshat said.

“But eh, maybe not?” Liu shrugged, his hands still up. “We’re just a bunch of stupid monkeys, remember? What do we know?”

David’s panicked eyes shot around, as if he might find Shining and obliterate him with the sheer firepower at his disposal, as if there was a way to still turn this around. “No, no I didn’t fail!” His eye twitched, his muzzle twisted into a rictus of a grin. “I can still kill you! The impostor’s personal friends!” He shouted. The lever action on the rifle worked itself. Lisa swallowed: the cha-chink of a round being chambered never sounded so loud in her ears. A bit of her life flashed before her eyes.

David grinned. He sucked in a breath.

And all at once, the rifle dropped worthlessly to the ground.

“Wh-what?” He stammered again. He tapped into his magic. His horn flickered worthlessly.

“Oh right, almost forgot to mention,” Lisa chuckled as she stooped to pick up her rifle. “Looks like our ride’s here.”

David whipped around. On the horizon, the flotilla that represented the Illustrious’s carrier group streamed towards them, dozens of ships dotting the horizon. Overhead, jets screamed, streaking past, sending intel back: eight passengers waiting. Six humans, one king, and one very, very distraught newfoal.

“Noooo!” David shouted. “This isn’t over! It can’t be! Her light guides my hoof! Her love embraces the world! She will be felt by…”

He fell silent as without a word, Shining strutted up from behind a dune and, with practiced ease, knocked him out with a blow to the back of the head. “Apologies, but this one apparently did not know when to shut up.” He said with a good-natured smile he worked hard to keep from becoming a grimace.

Smiling back at him, Lisa raised her hands again as the first landing craft streamed from the flotilla towards them. “Not really, but he knows when a lady needs a light.”

Celestia pressed herself up, the weak gravity allowing her to stand with little difficulty. Actually moving took effort, though. She managed to pull her head around to the battle without too much dizziness. The Other had absolutely thrashed her, she wouldn’t be surprised if she had a concussion. But even with their numbers, Luna and Cadence were barely holding the bitch back.

Luna darted in, magic flying, another hoof aimed at the Other’s chest. The Other vanished in a second, teleporting a few inches to the side, replying with a backhoof of her own. Luna rolled with the blow, barely avoiding a decapitating hit, grunting with the force that still made it to her neck.

For her part, Celestia cursed, seeing the Other use a move she herself had used before. And through it all, the Other had maintained a shield to the side, blocking every magical blast from Cadence without any effort. Cadence’s teeth grit, she leaned in, her face ignited with more and more raw power. Celestia wanted to chide her, her spinning head keeping her from telling her to calm down, that her anger was warranted, that their enemy would only take advantage--

Her eyes widened. Too late...

Despite Luna constantly darting in, looping away, taking the occasional blow, despite maintaining a shield against Cadence, the Other was still multi-tasking with her magic. A lone shard of stone slowly wrenched itself free of the ground, just behind Cadence. She didn’t see it. She was pouring too much magic into her horn, not seeing the obsidian blade literally being carved behind her.

“C-Caden--” Celestia stumbled, reaching for her. Cadence didn’t hear, pouring more and more raw power into her blows without any tact or skill, clearly wanting to just magically grasp the Other and slam her into the rock again and again until her head was just pulp. “Cade...Cadence!” Celestia tried through the link again as she galloped ahead. Her head swam. Her eyes spun. None of it mattered. She had to make it to her beloved niece, before that rock darted forward into Cadence’s unprotected back, she had to--

The rock flew.

In the blackness of space, the black, bubbled rock of the knife looked like the faintest pinprick rushing through the vacuum. Even as she galloped, Celestia knew she could never beat it. Her horn ignited, but the surge of pain in her head made directing the magic into a teleportation spell or a shield impossible. The streak was nearing her niece, whipping at her. She was going to die. She was going to die in mere milliseconds, she was...

A blue streak met black.

Celestia paused, barely able to comprehend what had just happened. And in the mental link between them, Luna let out a single, pain-filled grunt.

Cadence whipped around, her eyes wide. Blood and blue feathers hovered in space. Behind her, Princess Luna hit the rock, blood blossoming from the fresh wound gored into her torso.

“Luna!” Celestia screeched frantically, galloping past Cadence’s shocked form, nearly bowling her over as she frantically ran to reach her sister. She cradled Luna, pressing her close to her body, more blood staining her ivory coat. “Don’t worry, Lulu, I’m here, I’m right here…”

“Auntie…” Cadence squeaked, realizing where her anger had gotten her as she watched Luna’s blood mix with space dust. She stood in shock for only a moment, then slowly turned, her face slowly morphing into a mask of rage as she turned on the Other, who also stared in shock.

“You,” Cadence said, and then she darted across the space between them, closing the distance in milliseconds, all four hooves slamming into their muzzle. “You monster! One of my family wasn’t enough!?”

The Other reeled, coughed, stumbled. “I didn’t…”

Another blow slammed into their chin. “Shut! UP!”

As the fight raged on behind her, Celestia poured the trickle of healing magic left in her body into Luna’s form. If she had any breath left, she’d be holding it here, and sighing it out as Luna’s wounds healed just enough to staunch the bleeding. “Thank Heavens…” she moaned, laying her sister out in the dust. “It’s okay Luna, we have this.”

The Lunar princess just moaned, her eyes barely stirring. “Celestia…” she rasped into the mind link, clearly the limit of what she had left.

“Husshhhhhh…” Celestia quieted her, then turned back towards the battle raging on. “Rest, Luna. Your sister will protect you.”

Cadence, meanwhile, kept raining blow after blow, hit after hit, the Other seemingly cowering before her. Her magic flared, fueled by righteous fury, everything she had left pouring into her next hit. The Other had gotten their defenses up, but there was no reply, no sudden reversal this time. Cadence’s shoulders heaved, a sweaty tendril of pink mane floating up before her. “Fight...back, damn you!”

A dark chuckle filled the space between them, which finally gave Cadence pause. “Why bother?” The Other chuckled. “You’ve just defeated yourself.”

Cadence took a step back, and then a wave of dizziness crashed over her. No...no! She had to have more magic than that! She couldn’t have exhausted her magic reserves so soon!

Except she absolutely could have, with weeks having gone by without her exercising her magic, and then squandering what she had left metaphorically slamming her head against a brick wall. Beside her, Celestia lunged, darting for them. Too late. A crack sounded. A supersonic force slammed into the shelf of Cadence’s chin. Her head wrenched back. Blood sailed upwards in a geyser. Were it not for her Alicorn biology, Cadence’s neck certainly would have shattered. As it was, Celesita could only hurry to catch her niece and hope there was something left. Cadence swooned against her, her jaw very obviously broken, a few teeth missing. Cadence’s eyes opened weakly as what remained of her magic flickered pathetically, barely keeping her alive in the vacuum of space. Her eyes flickered open.

“Auntie…” she rasped into the mental link. “I’m so...I’m so…”

“Rest, my dearest niece.” Celestia said with a quick hush, laying her in the dust. “You gave me time to recover, that’s all I needed.”

Celestia planted a small kiss to Cadence’s forehead, then laid her out on the rock. She finally lifted her head into a glare locked on the Other. She slowly stepped around Cadence, spreading her wings, putting a barrier between the downed princess and the Other.

The Other smirked. “Verily? You still stand there?” They shook their head. “I must say, I’m at least impressed by your willpower. Futile as it may be.”

“Love and friendship are never futile, creature,” Celestia lowered her horn.

“Seriously!?” Her doppelganger, again, broke out into a laugh. “The world hates and fears you! Your most powerful allies lay bent and broken before you! I am mere moments away from burning down the world to rebuild it in my image! I just finished beating you into a pulp, and now with less magic and more wounds, just how do you think this is going to end!?”

“Two of.” Celestia replied.

The doppelganger frowned. “What?”

“I’m merely correcting your speech.” Celestia said with a little smile. “Two of my most powerful allies lay bent and broken. Or did you already forget about the other one?”

The doppelganger glared at her. Then, their eyes widened in realization as they turned back to the Earth. Somewhere on the horizon, a dim light began to form.

Shortly after being called over to confirm that her teacher was, in fact, not trying to destroy the world, Twilight found herself bundled up into one of the massive, fat-bellied winged machines the humans used to move lots of heavy things very, very quickly. She was given a helmet and a water bottle and told to keep quiet, which she did.

If she’d known where they were going, she could have saved them a bit of trouble and teleported herself. But stepping onto the dirt, makeshift runway and out into an only-too-familiar field, her heart fluttered into her throat.

“Equestria...” she breathed. It felt like decades since she’d last seen it. She couldn’t help herself, pulling off her helmet and breathing in the air, which smelt...quite a bit like the base she’d left, actually. Engine exhaust hung heavily in the air, along with the smell of a thousand grills working overtime to feed the steady stream of refugees pouring in.

Her ears folded. Despite her best efforts, Equestria as she knew it had apparently changed. But there was still time. The change didn’t have to be for the worse. Things could be better, for everypony...no, for everyone.

“Why did you...” she started, but the soldiers hurriedly bundled her off the plane, half-carrying, half-dragging her down the landing ramp towards the castle in the distance. As they stormed ahead, they started shooting past a fence, clearly hastily erected in still-marshy soil. Through the chain link, she could see eyes turning up, and quickly looking away. Until she caught sight of a little filly somewhere in the crowd.

“H-hey...it’s Twilight!” She gasped. “Everypony! I-it's Twilight Sparkle!”

All at once, the crowd started parting, allowing through the shorter figures of the ponies gathering at the fence.

“It is! It’s Princess Twilight!”

“Princess Twilight will fix this!”

“Princess! Princess!” They all started cheering, to the confusion of the men and women around them. Twilight wanted to offer some sort of support, something to assure everyone that things would be okay, now, but she was bundled through the doors of Canterlot Castle before she could say anything.

Even here, humanity’s touch was clear. The Great Hall, once the initial introduction to Canterlot for numerous dignitaries, was now little more than a storage area, packed with wooden crates that read “5.56x45” and “MEALS READY TO EAT,” all as she was bundled into the throne room.

And there they were.

Her friends.

“Dunno what was so important, I practically had t’be mare-handled here,” AJ scoffed.

“Tell me about it, I have legs and wings, y’know,” Rainbow added. “I didn’t...Fluttershy, what’re you lookin’ at?”

Fluttershy had been facing the doors, and so was the first to see Twilight burst through the doors. Her jaw dropped, eyes widening and watering.

“Girls...” Twilight whispered.

The room fell silent instantly. Five sets of wide, amazed eyes turned to her, jaws agape, most eyes watering. Pinkie was the first to break the silence: “Twilight...”

“Girls!” Twilight burst from the soldiers surrounding her, dashing into the group fast enough to make Rainbow’s head spin. They fell in on her, all embracing, all pulling eachother in, all trying to talk at once.

“Where’ve you...oh gosh...”

“Darling, I hope they let you treat your mane...so glad you are okay...”

“You wouldn’t believe what’s been going on here!”

“H-how was Earth? I hope it was nice...”

Only one voice was conspicuously absent. Twilight had noticed Pinkie’s deflated mane when she walked in, and had hoped it would reinflate soon, but Pinkie only looked at her with the same deflated look, and even now she looked ready to pull her into a hug and sob into her shoulder.

Noticing the look, Pinkie held up a hoof. “Later, Twilight, later...”

Someone loudly cleared their throat, and when the mares looked up, a very official-looking human in a green suit looked them over from the doors. “I hate to break up the reunion, but you were gathered here for a reason.”

Twilight’s eyes widened. She figured it out immediately. “The Elements of Harmony...” she whispered, whipping back around to her friends. “Girls, we need to get the Elements!”

“What?” Applejack gasped. “Sugarcube, y’just got back! Can’t we take a moment to...”

“There’s no time!” She gasped. “Didn’t you see the broadcast?”

The other mares all looked at her, eyes blinking in wide incomprehension. “Broadcast?” Dash asked. “What’s that? And how’re we supposed to watch it?”

“Of course,” Twilight rolled her eyes, already missing a world where a single message could reach thousands with the click of a button. “There’s no time to explain! Celestia is in danger, she’s fighting to fix this and we need to help her!”

That got their attention. Rainbow was the first to swoop up, of course, plopping herself right down directly in front of Twilight. “What’s the Princess need!?” She gasped.

Somewhere on the horizon, a collection of light gathered.

Somewhere on the horizon, a rainbow formed.

Somewhere on the horizon, the Other saw their doom forming.

“No…” they gasped. They whipped around in a panic. “The Elements…you still have them!?”

There was no response. The Other whipped around again, but only saw the infinite black and the scarred surface of Ceres. Celestia, and the prostrate forms of the pink and blue princesses, were all gone. “Celestia!?” They gasped. “Celestia!? What is this!? What have you done!?”

The emptiness pounded in their ears.

The Other slammed their hooves into the rock. “Answer me, god damn you!”

The silence still echoed, their ears ringing. They whipped around to face the Earth again, the rainbow of energy still gathering, still building. A ray of light shot off randomly into space, and their stomach sank. “Celestia!” They cried out in fear.

“That’s Princess Celestia to you.”

The Other’s gut clenched as they turned, wings flapping, suddenly all too aware of what was happening. Celestia had kept her distracted, not even noticing the barrel of the massive gun being wheeled in their direction, too distracted with what they’d thought would be their final triumph. And only now, now that it was too late, did she see the gun being cocked.

The rainbow shot out like a solid beam of pure, harmonious energies. Laughter, Loyalty, Honesty, Kindness, Generosity, and of course, Magic, all there, all blowing away any remaining doubts for what they were. The Other’s attempts to flap away from the massive blast of pure energy appeared pathetic before the raw energy: an ant trying to flee a tsunami, a bunny’s paws batting at the jaws of a wolf. They flapped their wings a few times, they looked over their shoulder, and they screamed as they were engulfed.

It felt like a colony of fire ants had taken next under every square inch of skin. Like their soul was being torn in half. Like they were being undone at a core level. A few minutes passed that felt like an eternity, and the Other wailed into the uncaring void. When it all passed, they were left gasping for air, having to rely on their alicorn constitution to keep from suffocating.

But that was all.

Their breathing spells were gone.

After a few panicked minutes, they remembered the spells for sustaining themselves, and tried to cast them. And nothing happened. Their horn fizzled pitifully, and nothing else. They drifted gently back to the flickering surface of Ceres, still trying to reach into themselves, but the overwhelming might they’d always felt at their core was suddenly gone.

They were alone and cut off in the deepest parts of space.

“What—is this?” They stuttered.

“Your magical core has been amputated.”

The Other whipped around and snarled at Celestia. The little wretch had obviously teleported in! Well, it didn’t matter, they’d end this right here! The Other’s hoof arced around in what had to be a decapitating strike…

The hoof hit Celestia like a wet noodle slapping concrete.

“Wh-what?” They gasped.

Celestia, bruised and battered, turned and spat another globule of blood out. She let out a cough that rumbled through the ground between them. To the Other, the beaten Alicorn, unable to even correct the tufts of her coat that were out of place, appeared like a pillar of solid concrete. “I already told you.” She coughed. “The Elements have amputated your core. Everything you’ve done to increase your power, every atrocity and every unspeakable sacrifice, is now undone.”

The Other reeled. No…it couldn’t be true! They’d done too much, come too far! “Impossible!” They shrieked, a hoof slamming into Celestia’s cheek.

Her hoof sank into flesh, and that was it. Celestia didn’t even flinch.

The Other fell back, looking down at the useless appendage, then back up at Celestia. “Why? Why even come up here? If this was just the plan all along…”

"Couldn't take the chance that you would see them gathering and do something to stop it." Celestia coughed, an implacable grin rising across her muzzle.

"But...you could have thought of a dozen other things to distract me! You could have teleported a few nuclear warheads up here courtesy of the monkeys! Why come personally!?"

Another cough racked Celestia's frame. But that smile never left her lips as she rose. She took a step towards the Other. With a tiny gasp, the Other took a step back. Celestia shambled closer. "Because after all this pain, after all this agony, after everything you've done, I couldn't live with myself not ensuring your end personally. I needed to do this with my own hooves, my own power, and personally see to it that you could never harm another soul again."

The Other took a step back, and their flank collided with a rocky outcropping, trapping them. Their head swiveled around to it, then whipped back around to Celestia.

Celestia closed the distance. "Besides, I wanted to see the look on your face when you realized you were beaten. And you know what?” Her smile turned into a positively wicked grin. “It was worth it."

"C-Celestia..."

"Remember what I told you when this fight began? How I was going to save Earth?"

There was a moment of confusion on the Other’s face, then their eyes bolted wide open. “Y-you were joking!”

“I assure you, I was every bit as serious as you were threatening my student.” Celestia’s eyes narrowed. Her horn glowed, warming with power.

The Other shrank against the rock. “Y-you don’t have nearly enough power to pull that off!”

“Even if I don’t,” Celestia snarled, hooves seizing the Other, her cursed doppelganger, by the shoulders. “I’m going to enjoy trying.”

“Celestia!”

Celestia tuned them out. Everything had been said. Everything had been done. Now…

Now it was time to set things right.

Since the destruction of the prison in Siberia, every telescope on Earth, in orbit and not, had been pointed up at the impending doom driving on towards the planet. And so, humanity was perfectly placed to witness what happened next.

It started as a blinding flash, right in the center of the rock, followed by a massive light that drove deep into its core. For a moment, it seemed like that’s all that would happen. But then, the light appeared all over its surface. Shooting out, cascading into the void. Four channels appeared in an X-pattern radiating from the initial point of light as fissures opened all over the stony face..

And then, Ceres shattered.

It was so strange to the engineers, scientists, and various military officials watching. They had never seen so much destroyed in so brief a time. It took many of them a moment to adjust and realize that what their eyes were seeing was even real. In the space of a few moments, a giant hunk of rock and celestial gas was rendered into a few showers of debris streaking through space.

And then, the cheers went up.

Humanity, as a whole, cheered that death had been averted. Praises went up to various gods, fists were pumped into the air, and a cloud that had settled on every city dissipated. Jubilant cries rang out in every tongue, from every nation, in every corner of the globe, even before scientists announced that each one of those streaks would burn up and dissipate far up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Except for one corner.

In the throne room in Canterlot, dozens of generals, soldiers, dignitaries, and ponies gathered around one lone mare as she spoke into a microphone, waiting as she asked the one question that still burned brightly, even after everything that happened:

“Celestia?” Twilight asked, working hard to keep the quiver from her voice and only partially succeeding. “Princess Celestia? Are you still there?”

Celestia sighed. For real, this time. That final blast had propelled them all forward into the upper atmosphere, and while air pressure was maybe at a hundredth of an atmosphere, it was still there. But it was over. She’d done it. There was still plenty to do, but the worst was behind her.

“A princess’s work is never done…” she grumbled, then a smile crossed her muzzle. It was time to put a cap on everything.

With a flap of her wings, she righted her trajectory, swooping over to one of the larger rock fragments as it ignited in the thickening atmosphere. There, as if they had been cradled for a little nap, Cadence and Luna slept soundly, deep in a magically-induced coma. Their recovery would be made all the easier for it.

Celestia embraced them, wincing as the motion sent a jolt of pain through her barrel. She wished she could join them, but rest still had to wait. For a little while.

She closed her eyes. There was still some to be done, but she could take this moment to rest with her family. Surely, she had earned that much. Finally, she pulled away. “Thank you,” she whispered, and with a small pulse, she used a tiny bit of her pitiful remaining reserves of magic to send them home. That done, only one task needed to be seen to.

As the rocks around her started to glow red with heat, Celestia approached one in particular. One she could still feel some amount of connection to.

The Other…Xenolestia…her double…her evil twin…whatever she wished to call them, laid there. They glared back at Celestia, though with the blackness singed into their coat and the strange angles their limbs remained splayed out at, it was obvious that was all they could do: just stare accusingly.

“It could have been beautiful. What we built together…” the Other rasped into the psychic link.

Celestia shook her head sadly. “If you say so, but I have my doubts.”

The Other scoffed. “Someone like you could never understand.”

“Then help me to understand.” Celestia held out a hoof. “Help me understand who you are, why you are the way you are. We can still build something together, and so what if it’s not what you had planned? It will be something. It will be ours.”

The Other looked from the hoof being proffered and back up into Celestia’s eyes. For a moment, something broke. The hatred and anger and stupid wall of arrogance slid into the back seat, and someone else came forward that hadn’t been able to in a very long time. “Oh my God, you’re the real deal, aren’t you?” She gasped. “That’s why you still have the Elements, isn’t it? You’re the genuine article. The one and only. You’re actually what the myths said we were meant to be.”

Celestia kept her hoof level, her eyes wide and pleading.

Instead of even reaching out, however, the mask slid back on. The arrogance and anger came back, but this time, the Other just chuckled darkly. “I never stood a chance,” she laughed, despite the obvious pain it put her in. “Oh my God, it was all a final joke being played on me from start to finish! This was never going to end any other way! I didn’t stand a single, solitary chance inhell!”

“Princess…” Celestia whispered, her hoof still extended.

The Other paused, locked eyes with her. “Protect Luna, she’s your heart.”

Celestia cocked her head curiously. “Luna?”

The Other only held her gaze for a few extra moments. And then, her hoof lashed out, a pile of meteor dust clenched in its grip. Celestia gasped, coughed, having to pause as grit entered her eyes, hack up the dust that went down her throat. When she was able to open her gaze again, the Other was already gone.

“P-Princess!?” Celestia gasped, her eyes whirling around. “Princess, wait! You’ll burn up! At this speed, without your magic…”

She clamped her jaw shut, looking around wildly. She blinked some last bits of grit from her eyes. And then, a scream filled the void.

Celestia’s eyes locked downward, to a particular rock. Another scream echoed up to her. “Princess!” She shrieked, the air now thick enough for her to scream for real as she swooped down to the chunk of rock.

There, the Other had spread herself out over the front of the asteroid. Her coat flickered. Her lips were already blackened and peeling back from her teeth, her eyes bugged wide from her eyelids burning away. And still, her gaze locked with Celestia. In between screams, she managed to shout: “Don’t stop this! Don’t you dare!”

Celestia, already reaching for her, paused in her grip, and let out a small breath. Finally, she reached out again, but only to give the hoof a final, gentle squeeze. Then, she pushed away. She watched, flapping there in space, as the rock careened towards the Earth. The screams echoed off into the void, unending, the voice behind them fraying, going sore.

And finally, cutting off abruptly.

Celestia hovered there awhile, the remnants of Ceres cascading through the air around her, and finally, she turned towards home.

Chapter LIII: Return

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

How does one summarize a new world? The birth of a new life, a new way of thinking? Perhaps they start with the little moments, from the tiny things to the large. There is new knowledge to be gained, new challenges to deal with...

...there is much said about the death of Celestia’s sister during the Nightmare betrayal, as it’s called in Equestrian history. The death of the fabled Princess Luna is what saw a sudden shift in Equestria, not just in domestic and foreign policy, but in Canterlot itself. The princess herself became quiet, more sullen, according to the journals of several staff members that were recovered from a vault hidden deep beneath Canterlot castle which survived the nuclear scouring. Gone were the days of warm tidings to even the most lowly members of waitstaff, replaced with a scorn and a curt tone that set even her most trusted advisors on edge. Gone were the days of polite greetings to foreign dignitaries. Such a sudden shift raises the obvious question: could the death of her sister have caused a momentous philosophical shift in how Celestia and, by extension, Equestria dealt with all threats? Did this way of thinking lead the nation down the path that would see Celestia declare herself Empress not two-hundred years later? Or, perhaps, was there a confluence of factors which...

“Twilight?”

Twilight perked up. “Hmm?” She glanced up, right into Applejack’s freckled muzzle as the latter cocked her head. The sun shone through Fluttershy’s front window, and Twilight suddenly remembered where she was, and how weird it was she’d just flopped into one of Fluttershy’s armchairs and started reading like it was her own den. “Oh, goodness! Sorry, sorry, I was just doing some reading on...”

“Sugarcube, I can read, I know what you were readin’,” Applejack shook her head. “Yer tryin’ to find answers what ain’t there.”

“But it says right here--” Twilight started, holding up the book and gesturing to the cover, which read Empress Celestia: An Origin Story.

“Hon? Do yourself a favor and set the book aside.” Applejack planted her hooves on her hips, raising an eyebrow. “That book is just more eggheads like you speculatin’, tryin’ to find an answer what’s real obvious to anypony lookin’ in.”

Twilight sighed, but listened to her friend, setting the book on the coffee table beside her. "What’s that?” She asked. “Why did she...cause so much pain? Kill so many?”

“It really is easy,” Applejack said, resting a hoof on her friend’s shoulder. “Some apples is just bad. Ain’t no good reason fer it, just are. Sure, you can prolly come up with a whole mess a’ reasons for it, but in the end, you’ll just make your head spin and have nothin’ to show for it but a whole host a’ theories. Did Luna dyin’ help make her what she was? Probably. Ah’ll bet not havin’ a sister around to set ‘er right all that time didn’t help none. But what if she was sorta that way before? What if that’s why the Elements killed ‘er, not send ‘er to the moon like they did here?”

Instead of calming down as she’d hoped, Applejack watched Twilight start to perk up, her eyes widening with the possibilities, and she let out a long sigh.

“But how would we know? How would we know without a time machine t’go back there and see fer ourselves?” She continued.

Twilight raised a hoof, her jaw dropped, and she put it back down. Her head hung loose on her neck. “So we just...won’t ever know? Then, what do we do?”

“What do we do?” Applejack snorted. “Sugarcube, y’really wanna know?”

Twilight nodded enthusiastically, her whole body shaking with a need for answers.

“We go outside and we see our friends,” Applejack said, taking her by the hooves and hoisting her up out of the chair. “We spend time with ‘em while we wait fer the humans to arrive, like we said we would, an’ we have ourselves a watercress sandwich and some chit-chat with the ponies we love.”

Suddenly hauled up to her hooves, Twilight stumbled and opened her mouth to object, then realized how absolutely right her friend was. With a nod, she gave a small smile and sighed. “Okay, I...think I get the picture.”

Applejack smiled back, and with a quick hug, the pair finally set out from the small den, through the door, and out onto Fluttershy’s front lawn.

There, the other mares were already waiting, chatting amiably as they always did. Rarity salvaged a few sips of her tea as Dash had already shoved her muzzle full into the teapot and started drinking like an elephant dying of thirst. Applejack rolled her eyes. “I, uh...swapped out today’s drink a’ choice with some of my old cider stock,” she explained. “Seemed like a good time fer it.”

Twilight chuckled. “Thanks, Applejack.”

“I’m just grateful I got any at all,” Rarity said, sipping daintily at her cup. “Here, when we settled on having this soiree at Fluttershy’s, I was half-worried Discord would pop up to fill it with frogs or some such nonsense.”

“Oh, he’s on time-out,” Fluttershy said. “Ever since we found out he’d run off to the human lands to feed off the chaos of their unregulated dreamscape for several months, the princesses have been pretty mean to him...”

“Mean,” Rainbow snorted, prying the teapot off her muzzle. “Yeah, that’s one word for it. I hear Celestia almost dropkicked him into the sun when he showed up in the throne room and the only thing he had to say for himself was ‘what’d I miss’?”

Twilight giggled again at the thought of their local demigod showing up in vacation attire, still wiping suncreen off his nose as he waltzed past disassembling human units and evacuation points with nothing to say for himself but a nonchalant “What’d I miss?” Then, she was interrupted when a loud explosion shook the forest nearby. She darted to her hooves, only to chuckle and shake her head as a pink cloud puff rose over the woods, accompanied by confetti and streamers. “Ah, I see the humans found one of Pinkie’s party mines.”

“It is a good warning to make ourselves presentable,” Rarity said, hurriedly sitting up to pull out her makeup mirror and touch up her mane. “Though I do pity the poor dearies that have to go through it; they’re probably tired enough as it is, and I doubt many of them still have the energy to deal with Pinkie by the time they make it this far.”

“Ready yourselves, girls,” Twilight said, grooming her feathers herself.

A few minutes later, the humans arrived in the tree line, each dressed in a cap marked “ROYAL MAIL,” each carrying a large rucksack, each clad in a red uniform with red shorts made nearly unrecognizable by a smattering of pink confetti and dust. Their leader, a rather gruff-looking, mustachioed man with bags under his eyes, hauled a familiar pink package.

“Ooh! And do humans like cake!?” Pinkie gasped as he carried her along with an arm wrapped around her barrel. “Wait...do humans even have cake!? You do know what cake is, right!? Please, oh please tell me you know!”

Without looking at her, the man paused before the group, holding PInkie up with both hands. “How do I make this stop?” He asked.

“Oh, you don’t,” Twilight giggled.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” he sighed, setting Pinkie down before taking out a note-card and clearing his throat. “Princess Twilight: as the representative of the Royal Mail, and of all postal services of the nations of man, we are here with a formal delivery from Earth: may these notes lead to inter-dimensional peace and prosperity for our peoples.”

Twilight nodded. “And I, as a princess of Equestria, humbly accept. May these parcels bring our people closer together.”

That nodded, the postman dropped his sack, along with the others. “Alright, I don’t have names and faces down yet, so if you could help us out and just call when you’re called, it would be greatly appreciated.” He held up the tag on the bag he was holding. “Rarity?”

“Oh, goodness,” Rarity said, blinking rapidly at the large bag as he hauled it over to her, dropped it, and returned to stand with the others. “I must say, I’m quite appreciative of any fan mail, I didn’t think I’d see so much so early in my career!”

Nodding to her, the postman held up the next bag placed at his feet. “Applejack?”

“Aww shucks, that’s awful sweet t’see!” Applejack said, a blush on her freckled face.

“Rainbow Dash?”

“Ha! I’m just surprised it isn’t bigger!”

“Pinkie Pie?”

“All that’s just from humans who want to talk to me!? Wowee!”

“Fluttershy?”

“Oh goodness, I’m just glad some of you wanted to...”

“Fluttershy.”

“...c-correspond, um...that’s quite a lot, but...”

“Fluttershy.”

“...b-but, goodness gracious! I-I didn’t think so many...”

“And....Fluttershy, Fluttershy, Fluttershy.”

“...Eep.”

As Fluttershy cowered behind her wings at the small mountain of mail set before her, the friends all giggled. Humanity had an obvious favorite, and the irony of it being the most cloistered of the group wasn’t lost on anypony. But then, they noticed one of them didn’t have a bag at all, and the remaining postman’s hands were empty.

“Oh...shoot, Twi, Ah’m sorry,” Applejack said, looking over to the princess of the group.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Twilight said, smiling as she waved her friends off. “Humanity has been through a lot because of the alicorns, it doesn’t surprise me that they’re not quite ready to see one in a positive light.”

“That’s a nice, mature way to face this, young miss,” the postman smiled back, making his mustache bristle, but as she was about to reply he pulled out a walkie-talkie and keyed it in. “Bring it.”

Twilight was about to ask what he’d just called for, when the low thwip of human helicopter blades chopping through the air filled the sky. From behind a mountain, a pair of massive Super-Chinooks appeared, their double rotors thumping like a giant’s footsteps. Rainbow Dash looked up in awe, not quite able to comprehend the sheer mass being suspended above her head, as the pair of metal monstrosities approached; between them, a shipping container the size of a noblestallion’s estate, suspended by cables.

The massive choppers slowly lowered the crate to the ground, their blades whipping up the trees as the wind absolutely destroyed their manes. Rarity was the only one to even notice, Twilight too in awe of the sight as the postmen first guided the crate into place, then released the cables suspending it and waved the helicopters off. She stared, her mind still not quite able to keep up as the doors squealed open on rusty, metal hinges, revealing an avalanche of letters, packages, and little notes covered in heart-shaped stickers.

Snatching up a few of the letters that flitted out, the postman turned back to her. “If you want, ma’am, we can keep a few of us here to help go through all this.”

Twilight swallowed. “I would appreciate that, thank you.”

...there are old things to be mourned, for no new life comes without loss, and that loss deserves to be acknowledged and grieved for...

Twilight swallowed the lump in her throat. Beside her, Celestia and Luna stared straight ahead, though Celestia noticed enough to offer a comforting hoof. This all felt so...impersonal. The stoic faces watching every moment, the cameras with logos for CNN and BBC drinking it all in, the crowd of diplomats and generals waiting for the ceremony to conclude, all so unlike the small, personal funeral they’d held not even a week before.

But this was important too. For healing, for more than just her family.

The Russian colonel turned from the wall, the guardstallion next to him standing aside to show the last of the human names carved into it, still warm with magic. There were so many names, more than Twilight would have imagined for a single base, although for an incident involving her, she was told this was actually a pretty light casualty list. Somehow, that news did not make her feel any better when she heard it.

A chill breeze swept up, a few flurries whipping through the scorched concrete, and Twilight pulled the collar of her coat further up. Around them, standing amidst the ruins of that one’s old prison, a memorial went, the names of those lost on that terrible day carved into rock in a single ceremony. Here, humans worked alongside ponies to get hours of work done in seconds, the names forming as soon as the colonel finished reading them.

The final line was drawn under the last human name.

56 people died on that wretched day, right here on this spot. And they weren’t even done with names yet.

There was some resistance to adding the ponies here. After all, if it wasn’t for their escape attempt, she never would have broken out and the reason for a memorial would never have happened at all. Then, CCTV camera footage showed her final kiss goodbye to Shining Armor. After seeing his final moments, Russian authorities quietly added these final names to the registry, and families from Equestria were quickly invited.

“Starlight Gold...” the colonel read, the name sizzling into existence behind him. He continued, sounding the names out with the help of phonetic pronunciations before him. Choked-off sobs echoed up from the crowd with each new name. The ponies were apparently having a harder time with keeping their emotions in check than most of the humans.

“...Lilac Dreams...Cloudblazer...Moonbeam...” the colonel sighed, closed his eyes, as if he didn’t quite want this ceremony to end. As if he knew with this last name, people would be able to walk away, be able to forget. Still, he opened his eyes and took a final breath. “...and finally...Shining Arm--”

“Wait!”

Cadence’s voice rang out from the crowd, startling everyone. Soldiers stirred to attention. Humans bolted upright. Even Celestia and Luna gasped, straightening where they stood. Some of the older civilians here to remember their sons glared at her as she parted from the crowd. She paid them no mind, striding up to the massive block of stone. The human and the pony that had been hard at work this ceremony both paused to look back at her. Cadence, resplendent as always in a black dress and veil, held up a hoof to them.

After a moment, both nodded, and the human held up his chisel, still sparking with magic. Cadence turned to the stone, looked it over, and then in the same format as the other names, coming as close to the same lettering as her untrained hoof could, carved “SHINING ARMOR” into the stone face. That done, she set the chisel down and returned to the crowd, head bowed. Some might have said it was out of respect, but Twilight saw the tears dribbling out from under the veil. She turned, seeing the scornful looks turn to sorrow around her. This was a time of grieving. For everyone here.

As Cadence approached, Celestia fanned a wing out over her withers. “I’m so sorry, dearest...”

“You have nothing to apologize for.” Cadence interrupted. She walked on, towards Luna. The pair faced one another, Cadence maintaining a glare as Luna shrank.

“Mi Amore, I’m...I’m so...”

After a moment, Cadence’s eyes watered. It was as if the anger had been a wall, holding back a tidal wave of grief, and it was finally crumbling. She fell forward into the Lunar princess’s embrace, and a wave of quiet sobs wracked her body. Suddenly, it didn’t matter the stares they were getting from the rest of the crowd or the CNN and BBC cameras swooping in, all Twilight saw was her sister in desperate need of comfort. She rushed to her embrace, and found Celestia already there, opening a wing to let Twilight in. Tears welling, Twilight stepped in close, and suddenly these were not four heads of state standing at the head of a crowd, but four members of a family, mourning for one of their own.

...there is forgiveness to seek, but also new connections to be made. A new world doesn’t mean just loss, after all...

Thompson sat on the edge of his couch, letting out a long breath. The camera covered the courthouse steps where none other than the very nice, very blue pony he had spent a few weeks in captivity with was expected to appear following her hearing. It was meant to be a formality, he heard, very few things done as a head of state during a time of war could be tried anywhere but the ICJ, but apparently, she’d been quite insistent.

He let out a long sigh. “Making trouble you don’t need, Princess...” he muttered under his breath. But according to all sources, she’d all but barreled into a courthouse, demanding to be tried.

Thompson grimaced, shifting on his couch. He debated grabbing a beer from the fridge, but realized he didn’t want to miss even a millisecond of what was happening on the TV. He wasn’t quite sure why he was so invested in this, maybe it was just because she’d been so nice during his captivity in Canterlot, but most of all he was hoping this would just be a quick and speedy affair that the courts hurried through to make the Princess feel better about herself.

“...and...there she is.” The reporter said as the doors opened and Luna trotted onto the courthouse steps, surrounded by a small cohort of human guards. They started pushing back the crush of reports who mobbed her as soon as she hit the steps, and she kept her head down as the reporter Thompson was watching fell on her like a vulture. Questions flew back and forth, demanding to know if this was some form of goodwill stunt, if Luna had been pressured into this by the UN, if this was indicative of friction between herself and the other princesses due to her involvement with the Russian escape incident...

Thompson sighed and held up the remote, ready to switch back to Netflix for a few hours of brain-melting slop: one of the few luxuries he’d actually missed while a captive of Equestria. Nothing like being in a medieval-styled society to remind you of the comforts of modern technology.

The thought died on the vine as suddenly, the camera panned up, showing Luna swooping into the air in a flurry of blue feathers. Caught off guard, the cameraman barely kept up as he captured her sailing off into the sky. Thompson’s thumb paused over the remote as the camera lost Luna in the sun. “What the...” he muttered, not quite able to process what he was seeing.

And then, there was a knock on his door.

Thompson switched the TV off, body running completely on autopilot as several neurons tried and failed to fire at once. He dropped the remote on the couch as he rose to his feet. His thighs cramped up from disuse, but he didn’t notice. He crossed from the living room back down the hallway to the front door, not even glancing into the peephole as he turned the knob. It was as if his mind was actively avoiding what he knew, deep down, was on the other side.

He opened the door. Luna looked at Thompson. Thompson stared back.

With an awkward shuffle of hooves, Luna smiled up to him. “I heard you have...games?” She said.

With every ounce of brain power remaining in his skull, Thompson replied: “Bwah?”

...but sometimes, when the whole world is shaking on its axis, it really is best to return to your roots and remember the people that have been with you from the beginning. Because sometimes, the phrase “The more things change, the more they stay the same” is the greatest comfort of them all.

0945 HOURS

UNITED NATIONS JOINT DEFENSE INITIATIVE: WESTERN EUROPEAN REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS

LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM

“...and...that’s it folks! The last of the fog has dissipated, and Equestria is now formally here on Earth, existing in two planes of reality at the same time! With the threat of inter-dimensional sickness now abating, Princess Celestia is believed to be ready to approve the first travel visas for...”

*CLICK*

“...with Equestria pledging another half-billion bits to rebuilding efforts in both the original kingdom of Equestria and the Tokyo metro area...”

*CLICK*

“...but for real, Celestia and Luna? NNF! At that point, it’s not even incest anymore, it’s art!”

“Lisa?”

Lisa bolted upright in her seat. Akshat smiled back at her.

“We’re here.”

Lisa let out a breath. The whole van ride from her flat had held a weird intensity to it, silence having fallen over the group like a weird cloak that none of them wanted to take off. But now, as she tucked her phone away in her purse and shuffled out of the van, she craned her head up at their old office building. The UN insignia had been removed: one of the caveats they’d had in return for their silence, but it was still there.

She let out a breath. “Damn...I can’t believe this.”

“Believe it.” Andre said, stepping out beside her. “We made it back.”

The group shuffled out around back to the elevator, ignoring dust and dirt from weeks of neglect and a riot or two. The city streets had been much the same: London was still recovering from the chaos caused by her escape, but already the streets looked a little closer to their old grime, some windows already being covered in plywood or actually replaced. They reached the lift, the tension rising again with them as they crowded inside and the doors creaked shut behind them, the dented stainless steel baring stains from decades of abuse. The elevator reached their old floor, creaked, groaned, and finally opened the doors with a little ping.

An old set of cubicles sat under some half-flickering lights. After a moment, Francis reached out and flicked the switch, and most of the remaining panels returned to life, though some needed replacing. A musty stench hit their faces all at once, forcing a few noses to wrinkle.

“Huh...home sweet home...” Chen commented.

“It’s...a lot smaller than I remember.” Felipe added.

“That’s the whole world though, isn’t it?” Someone at the back of the group said. “It’s all smaller now, after...everything. And coming from me, that’s saying a lot.”

The group parted to allow the shortest of the bunch through: a sandy-maned stallion with a cutie mark of a heart set over a shield, and wearing the most adorable little necktie any of them had ever seen. He looked over his shoulder and smiled the old, self-assured smile that for awhile, Lisa had feared lost. David trotted back to his old desk, climbed up into his old chair, and frowned. “Well, I guess some of it’s bigger,” he grumbled. “Crap...I’m gonna have to order specialized supplies. Do they even make hoof-friendly keyboards?”

“I’m sure we can figure something out, Yank,” Lisa said, having followed him into the office to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Can’t have you using your widdle hoovesies as an excuse forever.”

Dave grumbled. “Y’all are acting like I didn’t totally save the world and busted the princess out myself.”

“One, you didn’t do it yourself, King Armor was with you,” Akshat pointed out as he walked back to his own desk. He pulled his chair out from his desk and swatted some dust away, the leather creaking at his grazing touch. “And two, you then tried to kill us immediately afterward. As far as this group is concerned, we are even-steven.”

Dave blew out a breath. “Fine, jeez, I can’t even ride the ‘self-sacrificing hero’ thing with you guys for a month? Makes me wish I’d let Felipe drink the damn potion instead.”

“Oh, but you’re so cute like this!” Lisa gushed, wrapping her arms around his withers from behind. “Like a plushie gained sentience!”

David blushed. “I will admit, it’s definitely upped my game a bit,” he chuckled, looking up to see Andre and Francis at the edge of the cube farm, staring in at it. “Guys...”

All eyes turned to them as they stared down the cubes. Their hearts sank as a realization swept through the room. Shortly after stepping out of the elevator, they had all gravitated towards their own desks, each wanting to check on their old workspace as soon as they could.

Which meant one would be empty. The one Andre and Francis held eachother while standing over.

David put his forehooves up on the divider wall between them, ears folding as he stuck his head into the tiny space. The desk was a bit sloppy, with some papers scattered around a tiny shelf, a couple boxes of paperclips, and a small paper cutout of a Russian flag scotch-taped to the wall. A filing cabinet sat nearby, filled with the debris of a life lived in this tiny space.

A life ended.

For all of their sakes.

After a moment, Akshat stepped towards it, started straightening some of the papers into a proper stack, but David raised a hoof.

“Let’s keep it,” he said quickly. “We’ll...track down his family, see if there’s anything here they’ll want, but other than that we’re the only ones who’ll ever be here. So let’s keep it.”

Akshat nodded. Perhaps it wasn’t the healthiest thing, holding on to someone’s old desk like this, but nobody had the guts to counter the person who was standing there during Anton’s last moments.

After a moment, the group standing at Anton’s desk turned away, and David sat back down. A silence as heavy as a curtain fell over the group. Finally, David wheeled himself back in his chair. “I’ll...get the coffeemaker brewing. I think we all need it.”

“Oh...one half-and-half, love,” Lisa shouted after him.

“Yes, dear.” He called back.

Meanwhile, Akshat leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, brow creased. “Did...anyone remember to empty the coffeepot out before we left?”

He had his answer when Dave opened the door to their breakroom, and his little muzzle promptly wrinkled up. “Change of plans, who’s ready for a Starbucks run?”

At that, a wide grin broke out over Akshat’s face. “I take it that’s a no.”

“Christ, maybe we need to pick up some bleach while we’re at it.” Lisa sighed, standing up from her desk. “We could let the place air out anyway, it’s rather stale in here.”

“Now that, I agree with,” Dave said, trotting back to her. “But hell, it took so long to get here, why don’t we just make it afternoon drinks?”

“You want to hit the pub? In the middle of the afternoon!? And on the UN’s dime!?” The grin never left Akshat’s face. “I can’t think of a better way to spend the day, who’s buying?”

“I think the hero who saved the world should have all his drinks comped!” David said, sitting up on his haunches and crossing his forehooves. “It’s only fair!”

Akshat looked around in feigned shock. “I should agree, but when did Shining Armor get here?”

“Oh piss off!” David grunted, blowing air from his nostrils.

“I shall buy,” Liu said, already rising from his seat and looking over his shoulder as he walked to the elevators. “This time. Someone else can buy next time.”

“At the end of the day, isn’t the UN paying?” Andre asked.

“All the better,” Lisa said, also already heading for the elevator. She was halfway there with the others when she noticed her side distinctly lacking in pony husbando. “Daaave? Ya comin’ or what?”

“Just a minute!” He shouted from the other side of the cube farm, then turned back to where his attention had been, to the drawing hung up on the wall: the unflattering caricature of Celestia with the dart sticking right out of the eye. Once, a thousand years ago, he had been proud of that shot, taken from all the way across the office on a caffeine-fueled dare. But now...

With a small smile, his horn glowed, plucking the dart from its place and levitating it over to the nearest desk. He straightened the picture out, smoothing down one of its creased corners with a hoof. Finally satisfied with his work, he turned toward the door, flicking the lights off as he galloped to join his friends.

Author's Note

Thank you for coming with me on this journey. It's been a long one, I think it's no exaggeration to say completing this story has been one of the most difficult endeavors of my life, but I felt an obligation. To both it, and to you, dear reader. So thank you. For your criticism, and for still being here.

And with that, I think it's time to call it. I really feel like I've grown as a writer here, in the fandom, but now I feel like it's about time I exercised my creative talents elsewhere. I just want to thank you all before leaving: thank you for your own stories, and thank you for being here, all the way to the very end. Thank you for your time, and your patience, and thank you for being a reader.

Chapter I: Old Wounds

0945 HOURS
UNITED NATIONS COMBINED DEFENSE INITIATIVE: WESTERN EUROPEAN REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS

LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM

As the American liaison to the UNCDI regional headquarters for all of Western Europe, one would think David Preston's life would be a little more exciting. Well, maybe that was a poor choice of words. He knew when he got the job he'd probably never get to use the firearms training provided to him by his dear old Uncle Sam, and that more likely than not, he would wind up sitting at a desk in a non-descript office building somewhere with a decent view of the Thames. And he'd been mostly right: if he leaned his chair back far enough and craned his neck a little, he could see the Thames flowing in the bay window at the end of the little row of cubicles he called home. Not only that, but if he did a one-eighty in his seat, he could see the Eagle’s Eye through the massive bay window on the front of the building, along with an eagle’s eye view of a couple piers sticking out into the Thames. So he got the view part right, at least. The thing was, he just thought there'd be more to do.

Oh sure, he'd been asked to do all the right things to maintain appearances for the good ol' U-S-of-A. He was still considered a diplomat, after all, even though the US embassy was technically a couple of blocks over. He'd gone to all the right parties, dressed in the fancy-ass threads that cost more than some people's mortgage payments back home, even got to say a few words to the press (all pre-scripted for him, of course), but that was it. That was the extent of his responsibilities! The parties and the statements to the press and the occasional appearance at Parliament or Buckingham Palace were the most work he ever got. Other than that, there was just sitting at his desk, googling his own name, practicing his dart-throwing skills with the target tacked to the south wall (the one with the eagle’s eye view), and this: standing at the urinal, trying desperately to tell his body it had to pee.

He grimaced as he zipped himself up and headed over to the sinks, the automatic sensor flushing the urinal, despite its water still being as clear as it had been when he'd walked in. Too much time on his hands: that was the problem. Not any of that "overactive bladder" shit the drug companies kept trying to make people believe they needed pills for. Just too much time sitting in his high-end office chair, staring at his computer, being perfectly aware of every one of his body's needs because there simply wasn't anything else going on to distract him. Oh sure, it was nice that the vast majority of the diplomat stuff was still handled back at the Embassy, but couldn't they throw something his way!? Surely, they didn't think he was too incompetent to handle an Excel spreadsheet!

Running the water and working up a good lather of suds, he thought back to the small two-bedroom house in Michigan he'd left for this job. It wasn't much, but it'd had enough space in the living room for both a decent-sized TV cabinet and an office desk with chair. The kitchen would never have been featured in Better Homes and Gardening either, but it had been everything he’d needed. A stove, a fridge, even a breakfast nook! Not much by anyone's standards all told, but more than enough for a bachelor straight out of college with a degree in world history. Sure, the apartment in Westminster was nice, and even came with a 62" plasma-screen TV that put the 32" analog he'd left in the States to shame, but there was something about owning your own land, having an entire building you could call "mine," that had always appealed to him, even if said building could comfortably fit in his new apartment.

Snapping back to reality, he looked down and realized he'd had the water running over his hands the entire time he'd been lost in thought. The lather was long gone, the skin on his hands now a deep red from the heat. Sighing, he pulled out some paper towel and used it to switch the faucet off. The heels of his well-polished Italian shoes tapping on the tiled floor, he waltzed back into the main office, where he and his fellow "diplomats" did all of their nothing. There were eight cubes in all, just sitting in the middle of the room. One each for the permanent member states of the new United Nations Security Council, including the UK for reasons that were beyond him. Not that he was complaining: Ms. Townshend, like everyone else in their little group, was young, perky, and if she didn’t mind him saying, not too bad on the eyes either. Not that he’d ever go after her, hell no! The scandal of two diplomats in a newly-formed global organization having romantic interests? The Chinese and the Russkies would have a field day! Hell, they might even pull their diplomats out, which would be a damn shame. Anton and Liu were two of the best drinking buddies he’d ever had.

As David walked out of the bathroom and turned the corner, he fully expected the usual setting to greet him as he walked back to his desk. Francis would have his feet kicked up, the heels carefully placed as far away from the German flag decal posted to one wall of his cubicle as he could manage. He would be arguing with Andre about some niggling thing, the Frenchman switching between French, German, and English with a fluidity to make David’s head spin, the passion in his voice such that a few blonde curls might drop over his sky-blue eyes.

Next to them would be lovely little Lisa Townshend (shit, alliteration? He should’ve been a writer). She’d be occupied with her smart phone, her fantastic legs folded to serve as a platform for her hands as they tapped away on her knees, her gaze only looking up to encourage the German and the Frenchman to “kiss and make up already,” a statement that would make both men turn to her and stammer hopelessly, their faces growing deeper and deeper shades of red as they talked and blubbered where mere minutes ago they had been switching between three languages with the kind of ease that only came with a lifetime of practice. Again, why she was here in the Brits’ own embassy was anyone’s guess, but he wasn’t gonna complain. If the Limeys wanted to pay a diplomat to serve on their own soil, then hey, good for her for landing the best job ever, and good for them for snagging a girl that looked like she belonged in a Revlon commercial, sans a few gallons of makeup.

Felipe would be typing away at his desk, trying his level best to ignore the arguing and smart-assed quips while working on whatever he thought would make his homeland proud. The poor thing: he probably believed he could do anything for his beloved Brazil from his forgotten little desk half a planet away. At least, that’s what everyone assumed. Nobody spoke Portuguese, so for all they knew the documents he spent hours quietly typing up could be spy reports on NATO military positions in Northern Europe. They probably weren't, but the way he worked on them you'd think they held the cure for cancer, only decipherable after a few dozen pages of Portuguese had been typed up, zipped up, and sent to his home in Brasilia.

Next came Anton, the senior member of the group, though he was barely out of his thirties. The Russian would have his tattered old Orioles baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, snoring away, his lips pursing out above the fuzz of his thick goatee with each exhale. That is, if he wasn’t heartily debating the virtues of Vodka against Sake with Liu, the Chinese diplomat who was almost as young as Felipe, yet had drunken each and every one of the group under the table at some point during their stay here. David had tried his level best to keep up with the kid at a few points, but in the end Anton was the only one who ever managed to remain conscious with him through an entire night. A fact that had immediately forged a deep camaraderie between the men only surpassed by soldiers in war.

That just left Akshat: the Sikh Indian who David could always – always - tell was coming in. Thanks to the angle he sat at and the wall divider that only served to cut off his view of the doorway, the tip of the Indian’s turban was just barely visible as he walked in, allowing the American to shoot a pre-emptive greeting Akshat’s way. Everyone else, meanwhile, was completely covered and only visible in the split second after they opened the door to walk in, and so received a generic "Morning" when he saw the plain oak door open and slowly shut. David probably could have gotten away with this little secret for a few more months, if it wasn’t for the day Andre came in a few minutes early and wound up walking in right next to his Indian counterpart. If David had just looked – if he’d just gotten off his lazy ass and prairie-dogged over the divider like every other office man on the face of the planet – he might have noticed the racial faux pas coming and been able to dodge. Instead he looked up, saw the upper knot of that turban bobbing up and down, and as was custom muttered “Hey, Akshat,” without even acknowledging the Frenchman.

Now that he thought about it, part of it was Andre’s fault too. If the guy had just shrugged his shoulders and trotted to his desk, the entire incident would have passed like any other day at the office. Instead, he just had to crack a grin and say something along the lines of: “What? No greeting for the froggy?” That inevitably led to a bit of back and forth which, in turn, led to David being forced to confess his little trick for knowing when the Indian was walking in ahead of time, and that led to David being accused of being a typical, racist-ass American by everyone present.

“But it’s true! He’s the only one you can see over my wall!” He’d cried defensively.

“You sure we towel-heads don’t just all look alike to you, you fucking prick!?” Akshat had cried, his teeth bared, his jaw clenched in rage.

“Okay, goddammit, before you go ripping on the big, evil American, why don’t we just let someone else see if I’m right?”

Either out of good luck or bad, Lisa had been out that day with the sniffles, and when she showed up to work bright and early the next morning, she found Dave in her usual spot. After he'd told her he just wanted to switch spots for the day to “mix things up,” she’d shrugged her shoulders and slumped into his desk, too exhausted from her still-visible cold symptoms to argue. Then, seeing her in the right position, Akshat and Andre had walked in, side-by-side, just as they had the day before. Her reaction, served while digging into the pockets of her suit jacket for another wad of tissues, was both the absolutely perfect and the absolutely worst possible thing she could have said:

“Oh, hey Akshat, did I miss anything?”

Akshat didn’t say much for a few weeks after that. It took a very nice chocolate cake emblazoned with the words “From the racist shitheads you put up with” in pink frosting letters for him to even start talking to them again, and even then it was another week before he started responding to Dave’s bored attempts at conversation.

Other than that bit of drama, life in the nondescript office building proceeded without any ceremony. It didn’t help that all the budget sunken into the building seemed to have gone to the cubicles, with a bit leftover for the bathrooms. The “lounge” consisted of a Coke machine and a few beat up chairs in one corner, and the walls were devoid of even that cheap wall art or those inspirational posters which lined the walls of every other office building in the northern hemisphere. Then you had the cubes: high-end office chairs, oak desks, and a top-of-the-line desktop with an Outlook account they never used, constantly whirring away next to a big red phone that never rang. The phone, in turn, had the name of their nation’s respective capitol printed on it in big, white lettering. Besides that, there was the bathrooms, the dartboard they had tacked up on the rear wall, and the view.

David fully expected to spend his few remaining hours of the day staring at his computer screen, the map of the world he used as his wallpaper staring back at him until it was seared into his retinas, his eyes occasionally drifting to the big, white “WASHINGTON” stenciled to the phone near his elbow. So imagine his surprise when he found his seven counterparts gathered in front of one screen, their eyes transfixed on the glowing image before them.

“Hey guys, what’s up?” He asked snidely, taking note that it was Akshat’s desk they were all gathered in front of, the Indian himself sitting in the one swivel chair there was room for. “Somebody post another cat video on…”

“SHH!” Lisa turned around just long enough to shush him, immediately turning back to the screen.

David arched an eyebrow at that. In the half-second he’d had to study Lisa’s features, he could have sworn he saw fear in her eyes. Not just fear like you might feel walking past that one darkened alleyway on your way home at the end of the day, either. This was the kind of terror you saw confronting an old, childhood fear, like the dog that but a few bite marks in your arm at age five or the tone your Dad used when he was a few whiskeys past caring about whether or not you went to school with a black eye. “Lisa,” he repeated, desperate to see her face again, just to confirm what he saw.

She turned on him, brow hunched in frustration. “What, David, what do you want!?” She barked. Her tone was impatient, but behind that was the same fear he thought had been there, and his stomach clenched at the sight.

“Oh my God, Lisa, what’s wrong?” He asked, his mind racing through a few of the things online that could have confident Miss Lisa Townshend so scared: a huge terrorist attack in Trafalgar Square, or an outbreak of Ebola in Shropshire. Or wait. Oh God, there was also that, but that was impossible! That couldn’t possibly happen again in…

“It’s happening again, David,” Anton grumbled, his voice like a four-by-four pickup going over loose gravel. “You’re not going to fucking believe this, but E-Day is happening again.”

David felt the tips of his fingers go cold as his fists clenched. The color drained from his face, and the cautious apprehension he’d felt on seeing Lisa’s expression threatened to explode into full-blown terror. “God, no…” he mumbled. “Where?”

"The North Sea! Just south of the Shetland coast!" Liu barked, waving his hand dismissively for the American to quiet down.

"The North Sea..." he trailed off. His legs quivered, and for a second he thought his knees would buckle and send him crashing to the linoleum, but by sheer luck and that old belief that fainting was unmanly, he managed to stay on his feet. His mind wondered back to the glowing map on his screen. He could point to the spot if he wanted to, but somewhere behind the panic and disbelief just starting to settle in his mind, he knew the most that would accomplish would be a nice, greasy fingerprint in the middle of his monitor. "Jesus H - that's in our backyard!"

“Who’s handling this?” Liu asked, tearing his eyes away from the screen long enough to look at the people around him. A bunch of blank stares answered him. “Well, c’mon! It’s on the news! Someone must be handling this!”

“They are,” Lisa again, except now she was back at her own desk, staring at a few open browser windows. Apparently, while the men had all remained staring at the single computer screen like a bunch of slack-jawed idiots, she had returned to her desk to actually ‘handle this.’

Behold: humanity’s best defense in Western Europe, tasked with keeping one of the most industrialized and heavily-populated regions on the planet from falling to the enemy, Dave mused with a grimace.

“The SAS has a platoon in the area on maneuvers,” she continued. “They’re diverting to the emergence zone now. ETA ten minutes.”

Anton was the first to finally shake off his shock and return to being the highly-paid professional they were all supposed to be. “That’s good, but we’re supposed to be monitoring the international response. We need the support of NATO, and we need the rest of the Security Council convening now.”

“I’ll…check on the American response,” David added, his voice shaky and timid, and he honestly couldn’t say if or when it would be cool or confident or even just normal again. “I’m sure we’ve got something in the North Atlantic we can send over.”

“Good, that’s good,” Anton grimaced, and David could swear there was a touch more gray in his beard than there had been that morning. “Monitoring is all we can do right now, at least until…”

No sooner did he say this when a loud, shrill noise filled the office. Every eye went to the big, red phone on the next desk over, labeled “BERLIN” as it buzzed again, the shrill chime acting as an alarm to announce an end to the slow, safe, boring world they had all come to know and love. Moving slowly, like a man ordering his own execution, Francis returned to his desk, picked up the receiver and pressed it to his ear. "Jawohl?" He asked, somehow keeping the nervous shaking that racked the rest of his body from entering his voice.

What followed could only be called an auditory bombardment, courtesy of some politician in the Bundstag back home. The fact that a few, encrypted satellite transmitters were capable of delivering such an absolute onslaught directly into the German's ear was a testament to modern technology. Through it all, Francis just kept nodding, eventually sinking into his chair with the look of shock on his face anyone gets when they've just seen a school shooting announced on the local news.

Then the ringing filled the air again. NEW DELHI this time, the little phone sitting in the middle of the impromptu gathering now sounding in everyone's ears. Akshat blanched white, his beard drooping to his chest as he slowly scooped up the receiver. A half-second later, LONDON joined in, then MOSCOW, WASHINGTON, BRASILIA...

The calls came in rapid-fire, people all over the world needing to know what other nations were doing, how they were doing it, did they need any extra manpower, were the Tachyon Inhibitors ready for a counterattack, and on, and on, and on. David finally snapped out of his trance with the others, turning on one heel and nearly tripping over his own feet to get moving. He had to resist the urge to throw Liu out of the way, the young diplomat nearly knocking him over in the rush to get back to his own desk. Then David rounded the corner, twisting himself to aim back towards his desk, once again almost tripping over a few chair legs before hitting his desk like an all-star baseball player sliding into home.

"Yes!?" He gasped, followed quickly by: "Yes sir...no sir...no, sir, so far there haven't been any incursions made by the anomaly...what was that?...yes sir, that would probably be..."

"Da, da, everyone!" Anton yelled over the clamor erupting in the office. "The Mudderland has a few fleets readying in the Karelian Peninsula! They should be at sea by the end of the day, along with the Finns! They’re gonna blockade Scandinavia!"

"We've got German reinforcements setting sail for Scotland!" Francis yelled. "They say the Spanish are right behind them!"

"Merde, the French are militarizing ze English Channel! They're letting immigrants and refugees over for now, but they're already stretched to ze limit! They might close the border!"

"We should setup a map...we gotta keep track of all this..." Lisa said absently, distracted with the entire council of ministers screaming into her earpiece.

"No time! The Brazilian President just asked if he should declare a state of emergency, and I have no idea what to tell him!" Felipe groaned.

"US Air Force units are in the air over Wales!" David screamed over the growing chaos, a finger plugged into one ear, the other wishing it was plugged against the screaming politician on the other end of the line. "Every single one of their bases in Europe is going on Full-Alert status, and I’ve got cross-chatter debating whether or not to shut down commercial flights over North America!"

"Jesus, it's the Collision Wars all over again!"

"Stay strong, people," Anton barked, somehow writing down orders from the Russian President at the same time, his free hand still cradling the phone. "This is what we're here for! This is the whole reason the UN trusted us with this job!"

"Hey, who the hell isn't answering their phone!? Dat ringing is driving me nuts!"

A loud thump punched through the room, shocking everything into stillness. Seven sets of eyes turned to the dartboard, where the gang spent many a drunken, merry old time "mocking the old bitch." Liu, the quiet little diplomat from China with the uncanny ability to swallow any kind of alcohol with hardly a buzz to show for it, grasped the dart where he had plunged it into the picture, tearing it out of the plaster so hard one of the thumbtacks holding the picture up popped out. Now, the picture sat askew on the wall, supported only by the dart pinning it in place, which in turn was supported by the diplomat’s ironclad grip. He clenched his fist until his knuckles turned white. "Never again," he hissed, then he finally took a few steps back, looking at his handiwork. He surveyed the picture tacked up on the wall, the one covered in pockmarks from a thousand nights’ worth of drunken attempts at making the exact shot he’d just landed, then turned back to the group. "Never again."

The stunned quiet continued for only a few more minutes, and then Lisa nodded in agreement. "Never again."

"Never again," David heard himself say.

"Never again," Anton.

"Never again," Francis.

"Never again," Felipe.

"On my life and honor as a Frenchman, never again," Andre.

"Show-off dick," Francis muttered, and then everyone returned to their duties, Liu jogging back to his desk to gasp a few scattered apologies in Chinese to his phone. The office fell right back into the strange, organized chaos that would almost certainly be the norm from this point forward, all except for David, who stole a quick look over his shoulder at the picture tacked to the wall, now only held in place by the dart embedded into the wall. Princess Celestia's smiling visage greeted him, a picture downloaded off Deviantart in the days before the Collision Wars. Her one eye, once filled with that little sparkle it always seemed to have in the cartoon, now only filled with a few inches of metal from where his colleague had stabbed her. The background behind her sparkled a neat pink, as if she were charging up some pretty little spell on behalf of her pretty little ponies. Her mane drifted in some unseen wind, suspended by more of that whimsical magic which had seemed so pretty and wonderful just a few years ago, but now summoned a wave of mild nausea from the pit of the American’s stomach.

"Never again, you evil cunt," he hissed under his breath before hitting the button to respond to the next caller waiting in line.

Chapter XV: Setting Things Up

No matter how optimistic the conscious mind might be, there is always some part of us that knows how bad things are about to get. The conscious mind can hope and believe in a better tomorrow, but a deeper, darker part of the mind always knows what is really about to happen. The man waiting in the clinic on the test results for the strange lump he’d found behind his testicles during his morning shower. The woman walking through the dark alleyway in the nasty part of town in the middle of the night when she hears a rapid set of footsteps behind her. And now, the pony princess waiting in a Plexiglas tube surrounded by enough wiring to make Starswirl the Bearded himself fall into conniptions. As she stood there, locked in place with nothing but the beeping from the device around her neck to occupy her, she looked at the armored door leading into her cell and dreamt of the moment when it would burst open and Twilight and Luna would fly through, brushing the machinery aside to hug her and tell her everything had been a huge misunderstanding. All this even as the black pit twisting in her stomach told her it was far more likely to end with her learning of Canterlot’s destruction through another slip of a human’s tongue.

Though she kept a brave façade, the Solar Princess felt tears burning just behind her eyes. For all she knew, Twilight was currently being tortured for information and human armies were sweeping across her lands, killing everything that got in their way. And could she blame them? Based on her brief encounters with both them and the ponies of some…dark…twisted version of her beloved Equestria had suffered greatly at the hooves of some…other…

How? How could this have happened? Was this other world like that land she and Starswirl had journeyed to so long ago? No. Based on what she knew, based on the trauma she had seen, it was far worse. Maker above. She had to get out of this cell and find out what that might have been!

The door opened again, and this time her head rose to watch it. She had learned her lesson. There would not be a repeat of Shining Armor’s surprise appearance at her side. There was a few soft beeps and a mechanical clunk, and then another human strode out of the darkness to stand there, his breath coming in heavy gasps, sweat dripping off his darker complexion, and a look of hatred so pure in his eyes that if she didn’t know better, she might have assumed he had been possessed by Sombra himself.

She met his anger-filled eyes with her own, tired vermillion pools, and the pair began one of the most intense staring contests in history. Though it felt like centuries passed, it took Celestia less than five minutes to realize she would have to be the one who ended this infernal silence. “Well?”

The man with the dark complexion halted his breath. For a second, she thought he might have died standing like that, his hands clenched into fists, that dark glare forever imprinted into his gaze, as if the sheer force of his rage had simply stopped his heart. Then, his breath came out in a long, drawn-out sigh as he reached into his pocket. She cringed, shying further away from the glass, her eyes squinting as she braced herself for whatever blow might come next. Instead, she found herself looking at a tiny version of herself, suspended on a tiny chain.

Her eyes widened, and she drew closer to the glass, peering at it curiously. Honestly, with the little chain and the beaten, worn look it held, she couldn’t help but feel it to be an apt metaphor for her situation. Though compared to this thing, she might as well have been spending the day at the spa. It looked like somepony had been stomping on it, and she could swear there was a scorch mark where the cutie mark should have been. Still, despite the tangled mass of mane and the marks where the humans’ strange, rubber soles had met with the tiny, glossy figure, it was impossible to mistake a face that she had seen in the mirror every morning for over a thousand years. Even if it was small and a little bit mashed in.

The human pressed the figurine up to the glass, his breath coming in heaving sighs again. His glare alone spoke murder, spoke pain and hatred, but it also spoke something else…desperation? She didn’t have time to think about that one: the human’s hand had gone to a keypad set into the base of her glass prison, tapping wildly, growing more and more frustrated with each keystroke.

“No, NO!” He screamed, slamming a fist against the glass. She felt like telling him not to bother. That if she couldn’t even scratch it, he didn’t stand a chance, but any words she might have had were caught in her throat as he began beating the glass, over and over again, attacking with a level of savagery she hadn’t even seen during the darkest hours of Equestria’s formation. Discord had never shown anything like this. Tirek or Sombra perhaps, but even those had been magic attacks. She had never seen someone attacking something with any kind of zeal until she saw this human slam his fist into that glass until his knuckles bled, a bandaged wound reopening.

Finally, he stopped. Not because of the pain, that much was obvious. A creature with a look like that in his eyes was beyond feeling pain. Instead, she could tell it was because of exhaustion. Sweat drained off his brow, funneling down his face in torrents. She thought some of that might have been tears, but between the blood smeared over the glass and the sweat mixing in all over his face, it was hard to tell.

The human kept himself braced against the glass, one hand still clutching the figurine, pressing it to the glass. Suddenly, Celestia felt the strangest urge overwhelm her better judgment. Her instincts screamed for her to draw away, to avoid the angry predator before her at all costs, but a thousand years of healing wounds and bringing ponies together told her otherwise.

Before she knew what she was doing, she slowly leaned forward until her muzzle touched the glass, the motion happening so quickly her nose nearly smeared against the clear surface. With that complete, it was far easier to press her lips to the glass in front of the bleeding hand and close her eyes, falling into a kiss, letting this single act of compassion sweep her up until her fears were forgotten. She drew back and opened her eyes again. The human’s hands were off the glass again, his eyes narrow with suspicion, the bleeding hand cradled in its brother like it had just been burnt. Or perhaps he had realized what he had just done to his hand once the anger had left him and his senses had returned. Ever the optimist, Celestia hoped for the latter. Ever the pragmatist, her body braced itself for the former.

“Better?” She asked, offering a smile barely strong enough to lift the corners of her mouth.

He didn’t respond, he just stood there. His breath still heaved, though not as badly as it had before. Where before, it rushed in and out of him as if the mere act of drawing it into and out of his lungs was meant to be some sort of blow against her, he at least had calmed to the point where every noise coming from his body didn’t sound like an attempt to phase through the glass and wrap his hands around her throat.

“Where did you get that?” She posited.

Once again, his breath stopped. Once again, she thought he might simply have died of sheer rage where he stood. Then he exhaled sharply. “From someone worth more to me than the whole world put together.”

There it was. There was her way in. Celestia swallowed her distaste at what she was about to do: it seemed so very manipulative to use her intellect this way, but desperate times called for desperate measures. She needed three things: to escape, to find out what made this species’ previous collisions with…someone else’s little ponies so traumatic, and to ensure Twilight was safe, not necessarily in that order. If everything went perfectly, if the little plan still forming at the back of her mind worked out, she might get all three of those things in one fell swoop.

“Someone I love like that is in trouble,” she said, hoping her eyes showed every scrap of emotion she felt. Her voice trembled as she spoke, and that hateful, manipulative part of her noted how this could only serve her purposes. For a moment, she hated herself for thinking that. “Someone I value more than all the gold in the world might be in danger, and I need to know she’s safe.”

The human kept that even glare on her, then snorted and walked away, stomping towards the cell door. “Please,” she said, first at a whisper, then at a desperate cry: “PLEASE!”

The door slammed shut, and once again, Celestia was alone. However, for the first time since being locked in this awful place with nothing but the beeping of the machinery and the occasional beating/interrogation to keep her company, a small bit of hope bloomed in her heart. Just be okay, Twilight, she thought to herself. Everything will work out if you’re okay…

And if she isn’t? That small knot in her stomach asked. She didn’t respond. She just kept whispering to herself: “Just please be okay, Twilight. Oh Maker above, please be okay.”

Felipe walked out of the airlock looking like a man after a week in a warzone. He slumped against the metal door as it rushed shut behind him and locked into place with a series of grinding clicks, his face a map of utter exhaustion. He let his breath out in a long, drawn-out sigh.

Anton was standing over him.

“Enjoy your chat with the pretty pony Princess, tovarisch?”

Felipe didn’t even have the energy to raise his head.

Anton just sighed and offered his hand, which Felipe accepted gratefully. Then, with a powerful jerk of his arm, the Russian yanked him to his feet. Stumbling, Felipe was totally unprepared for when Anton gripped his injured hand, forcing the fingers open and grabbing the Celestia figurine. In his surprise, the only thing Felipe could do about it was give a strangled “Uh…no…”

Anton regarded the figurine with cold, analytical precision, turning it over in his hands. Felipe reached for it, but allowed his hands to drop. There was no point. The secret was out now, for better or for worse. His gaze sank to the floor, his hands hanging loosely like cold, wet noodles at his sides.

Anton held the figurine up by one leg, pinching it between his fingers. Felipe sighed once. “What was their name?” Anton asked suddenly, and with a tone so gentle the only thing that would have surprised Felipe more would be for the Russian to peel his face aside and reveal Twilight Sparkle herself.

Felipe’s eyes drifted up, widening. “Wh-who?” He asked, the only words he could manage in his utterly, completely, emotionally drained state of mind.

Anton’s eyes softened. “The person who used to own this doll,” he replied quietly.

Still with nothing more than that exhausted look on his face, Felipe locked right with Anton’s eyes. The Russian arched an eyebrow. A man as young as the one before him shouldn’t have held such a tired look. These were the eyes of an old man after a lifetime of hardship, perhaps living on the streets or with the memories of past horrors. These were not the eyes of a man barely out of boyhood.

“Marta,” Felipe rasped, his Adam’s apple bobbing with a long, hard swallow as he met the Russian’s eyes. “The best maninha a guy could ask for.”

“The riots in Rio…” Anton said, nodding his understanding.

“The mob got to the family home before I did,” Felipe explained. He couldn’t quite figure out why he was explaining. Maybe he had finally grown tired of holding it in. Maybe it was all finally coming out, whether he liked it or not. But here it was. “Someone threw a Molotov through the kitchen window. She was doing her homework there, she…”

He gasped, took a few shaky breaths. “…she was in too much pain from the flames to move, and then the roof gave…she…she was still holding that,” he said, motioning to the Russian’s closed hand. “Her favorite show to watch with her Filly.”

“And the man who did this?” Anton asked.

Suddenly, the old steel entered Felipe’s eyes, his gaze rising from the floor. He tacked off what happened to the man who burnt down his home and killed his sister like he was listing off a supermarket checklist. “Tracked him down, found out where he slept, put a pillow over his face, put a .45 against the pillow, and squeezed the trigger until it clicked dry.”

Anton nodded again, presenting the figurine to his coworker, keeping it standing on his palm as he held it out. Without a word, Felipe grasped the tiny bit of plastic and shoved it in his pocket, his gaze sinking to the floor again. The Russian clapped him on the shoulder, startling him. “C’mon,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “I just got a message on my mobile. Apparently, the others are dragging the Prince over to the Admiral; let the old man chew his ass out for a while.”

Felipe’s eyes lifted at that, the beginnings of a smile actually starting to tug at the corners of his lips. “Think he’ll leave enough ass to boot off his ship?”

“One can only hope,” the Russian laughed as he led his counterpart out into the hallway.

“By the way,” Felipe said, his voice still low, but a lightness to his tone, as if something had been lifted from it. “Weren’t you concerned about leaving me alone in there with her?”

“I figured if the Yank could handle it, you could,” Anton shrugged. “Prince Shining Armor’s attack has proven that we can do damn near anything to her as she is now. If anything, we are more a danger to her.”

Felipe nodded with that, listening to their footsteps echo down the hallway behind them. “I see that, but that’s not what I meant. I must have looked…bad, walking in there. Weren’t you concerned for the prisoner?”

“Not particularly,” Anton snorted, winking as he held up a small handful of nuts, bolts, and wires. “Besides, I’m not sure that keypad lock works so well without these.”

Felipe just smiled back, shaking his head.

“What, can you blame me for taking precautions after the last visitor?” Anton muttered, shoving the fistful of junk back into his pocket. “I used to be mechanic of sorts, will be easy to put it all back together. Trust me, this is what I used to do for a living.”

Felipe did trust the older man, now more than ever, which is why it would be so heartbreaking when later on, he would be walking through the hallways and discover a single misplaced bolt lying in the middle of the tile, standing on its head, as it had been ever since it was placed there.

Chapter XXXV: Tokyo Nights

1700 HOURS

UNITED NATIONS SPECIAL DISASTER RELIEF ZONE

TOKYO, JAPAN

From the moment she met him, Lisa knew she didn’t like Mr. M. The good feeling she’d been riding after returning to the Illustrious following a long overdue exercise of her trigger finger hadn’t lasted long thanks to two things: the news of the sheer scale of the devastation in Dusseldorf, and the arrival of the lanky, gray-suited man that now sat beside and above them. It wasn’t anything to do with Mr. M in particular. He didn’t come off as a typical G-Man, all business and robotic reaction. He also didn’t come off as a spook. At least, not entirely…wait, that was it!

There was one thing about him that reminded her of a spook, and it was the eyes. He carried himself like any other man but for the eyes. It was like those cold, green eyes were laughing at you, like he knew something you didn’t and just wanted to lord it over you. Under any other circumstance, Lisa might have almost tricked herself into buddying up with Mr. M, maybe laughing about his ridiculous codename over a few drinks together with the others, if only it wasn’t for those laughing eyes.

And of course, it wasn’t just that. There hadn’t been much drinking done in the small cafeteria the UNCDI team had been given, barring the flash Anton kept sipping from. Still, that didn’t keep Felipe from trying to stare the old Russian to death from wherever he stood whenever the pair were in the same room together, and that in turn led to Anton rapidly excusing himself whenever Felipe made an appearance. Or just taking a few extra sips from that damned flask.

Lisa sighed. Between their new babysitter and whatever the hell happened between her teammates while everyone else was gone, tensions had been rising on the ship. The previous days as they made full steam towards Tokyo had been so filled with anxious energy that she’d taken to hiding herself in her cabin, or strolling the deck where sailors could ogle her ass, anything to get away from the others.

She sighed, rubbing her temples. This was so fucked up! Here they were, in the partially-rebuilt ruins of Tokyo, surrounded by UN tank convoys and food lines, in a city overflowing with Newfoal refugees, on the verge of a visitation by a possibly-genocidal demigod, and she almost felt like she was on a vacation! Anything that got her away from the heavy atmosphere below the decks of the Illustrious felt like it could be a vacation! They were supposed to be on their A-game, dammit! They were supposed to control a situation involving a horse goddess and a million civilians out for blood! How were they supposed to handle any of that if half of them could barely stand to be in the same room!?

“Thinking about our new babysitter?”

Lisa smiled at the voice. The one thing that hadn’t changed, at least, was David. In typical American form, he’d apparently remained oblivious to whatever had lodged a small forest up the others’ asses, and had managed to even join her on one or two sunset walks along the deck. He’d even worked up the stones to ask her out once they made landfall! Sure, the date destinations in a place like Tokyo were limited, but the fact that he’d gotten the guts to try again sure as hell went pretty far with her.

“Actually, no,” she said, taking David’s offered hand and hoisting herself up off their bench. “Our teammates, truth be told, if you can even call them that anymore.”

He nodded. “You felt that too, huh?”

“Felt it!? You could see it from space!” She enthused with a roll of her eyes. “The Great Wall of China was built with more subtlety in mind!”

He nodded again. “I agree.” Oh good, obviously he was experienced with keeping a girl happy. “I dunno what happened with the others, but Jesus, it’s like Thanksgiving at my aunt’s house every day in there. The one who divorced the uncle for touching my cousins but still lets the bastard show up drunk every year.”

She beamed at that. “A wonderfully dysfunctional family,” Lisa cooed, resting her head on his shoulder. “It’s nice to find someone you have so much in common with.”

“At least they got him to stop playing Santa ‘round Christmas,” he sighed with a shiver. “Not sure how other families do it, but I’m damn sure Santa isn’t supposed to ask you to talk about the first thing that pops up when he gets you on his lap.”

She giggled at that, letting the comment hang alongside her breath, visible in the cool air. Seeing that, she could almost trick herself into believing they were anywhere else, maybe even back in London. That the noodle vendor down the way didn’t have his shop setup in front of the scorched ruins of his old building. That the elderly couple leaning against each other on the bench next to them had all their fingers, and skin that hadn’t been horrifically scarred by solar blasts. That the kids having a snowball fight beneath the light of a flickering streetlamp weren’t all blind, and that they all had warm homes to go to and not drafty UN-supplied canvas tents. She could gaze over at his face, at that easygoing gaze he had looking out into the darkening Tokyo evening, and just enjoy what she was getting more comfortable with calling a date.

Finally, as they turned a corner to take in a long column of refugees lining up to accept blankets from a group of men in Japanese uniforms, with the occasional light-blue UN, her grip loosened on David’s hand, and the light feeling in her breast dissipated. She gazed over to David, and was disappointed to see his shoulders sink. However, he did manage to soldier on admirably, turning to her with a smile and a light little laugh to his voice that almost didn’t sound forced.

“Well, looks like some people won’t be going cold tonight!” He said.

She suppressed a cringe and nodded. To her surprise, his smile faded. “Ugh...sorry, that sounded way more...cringey than I wanted it to.”

She blinked in surprise. “No, it was...um...nice...”

He deadpanned at her, clearing his throat.

“...it was like you were trying to ape a Hallmark card,” she said with a dry smile. “Don’t do that again, it’s not a good look for you.”

“I’ll try to resist, m’lady,” he said.

She was about to sock him one to the shoulder for channeling his inner neckbeard when something twinged in the corner of her eye. She looked up. A pale man looked back at her. His oval eyes hinted at least at some Asian descent, but his skin gave him away as having at least one white parent. She tried to scan over the line, keeping the man at least in her peripherals. Her mind, the part of her mind that had been trained to pick Taliban targets out of crowded markets in Kabul, then PER targets out of embassies back home, went into overdrive automatically. Was it the way he stared? That could be explained easily. She was a white woman in a land where those were still pretty rare, and maybe he was just gawking at the novelty of someone with a similar skin tone, and that was what set her off. She just didn’t like being gawked at is all, who did?

Was that it?

Maybe.

But maybe not.

“Dave, sweetie,” she said, tugging at his sleeve, fully intent on guiding him around the line to give the guy all the space she could, but Dave had stopped moving. She turned, looked up at his face, and realized something: the man hadn’t been staring at her. He’d been staring at David. The two were engaged in a staring contest that possessed all the subtlety of a sledgehammer through a plate-glass window.

She wanted to roll her eyes. Of course. Of course David had been too Alpha-male to let something like this go.

“David,” she said insistently. “Let’s keep moving, it’s just a creepy guy, c’mon.”

He turned to her, looking surprised that she’d even named what had distracted him so suddenly, then letting out his breath. He’d realized all at once how stupidly overt he’d just been. Still, he apparently couldn’t resist stealing another glance back at the man, and then his brow furrowed. His eyes scanned the line in a methodical way she might have found admirable in any other circumstance. Lisa turned, whipping around to run her eyes over the line. The man was gone. Where did he--

“REMEMBER DETROIT!”

A barrage of gunshots filled the air. Lisa whipped around to face the stand, in time to see the first uniformed body hit the ground in a mist of blood. And then the orderly line turned into a chaotic stampede so fast, she almost didn’t see the first panicked body in time to step aside, narrowly avoiding being bowled over. Doing that, she lost her grip on David’s hand, just as they were both inundated.

“David?!” She choked out as a hand whipped into her gut. She tried to peer over the tide of panicking, wailing people, only to earn an elbow to the ribs for her trouble. At last, the adrenaline kicked in and she weaved her way into a small pocket of empty space. A man with crooked glasses and a bloody nose clawed towards her, not paying attention as his flailing, panicking hand scratched into her cheek. Hissing, she swatted him away, then narrowly dodged a backhanded slap from a skinny little elderly woman. Another barrage of gunshots sounded, followed by more panicked cries. She automatically moved with the tide, knowing that to stop would mean getting dragged under and trampled. Shit. It was a crush. She was in the middle of a crush, and to stop would mean death under the soles of her fellow human beings.

“David!?” She called again, voice trembling with panic and hating herself for it. She knew it would be impossible for him to hear her over the constant shouts and cries around her. The voices of the mob filled the air, pushing out all other sound and drowning her words seemingly just a few inches after they left her mouth. She focused on keeping her eyes forward, fighting down the swirling rise of panic and staying on her feet with the crowd, stealing only the occasional glance around on the off-chance that she might see David…

There.

Holy shit, there he was!

David was only separated from her by a few people! His eyes were locked ahead too, but…something was wrong. Hold on, why was he doing that odd little limp-thing? Shit. He might have caught a bullet in the leg, or maybe twisted his ankle when the crowd hit them. Either way, he was barely keeping up, maybe one good shove would topple him over. And lo and behold, here came an overweight guy in a scruffy beard: his wide, panicking eyes focused behind him as he pumped his fat legs to move faster and put more distance between him and the shooter. The guy was coming right up on Dave, not even watching where he was going and maybe seconds from slamming into him.

Of course, she grumbled, adrenaline kicking into overdrive. Tensing her entire body, she pressed herself off of one foot, bursting to the side in an explosive bout of energy aimed at the gap between two people. In a moment she was at Dave’s side. Grabbing his sleeve, she forced him sideways, dodging the panicking asshole while bracing her shoulder to take his weight.

“Jesus!” He gasped. She grinned. He’d gone from running alone to having a human crutch in no time at all. His eyes rolled around in a panic-bleary daze to lock on her. “Lisa!?”

“Eyes up, Yank!” She shouted.

Startled, he could only obey, moving with the crowd. Another burst of rounds echoed through the evening air, and the pace picked up. Somehow, she managed to muscle through, focusing all the strength in her smaller frame in keeping up the pace while still lending at least a little support to David. She was so focused on keeping her breath regular and her endurance up that she didn’t notice the line of riot shields waiting for them until she was nearly bouncing face-first off of them.

In a flash, Dave used their shared grip on one another’s shoulders to wrench her aside, putting himself between her and the shields while simultaneously cushioning the blow with his own body. He let out an ‘oof’ as they hit. A second later, he reversed their positions, cushioning her from the rest of the crowd as it crashed into the shields like a tidal wave against a levee.

“Jesus Christ…” Lisa muttered in sheer surprise, her face pressed against the shield.

“Shyeah,” Dave grimaced as a middle-aged office drone bounced off his shoulders, grunting with the effort. Fortunately, the point of the stampede had been dulled. The line of riot shields followed by the timely arrival of SWAT sweeping the square had somehow sapped the panic out of the crowd, which Lisa wondered at until a nightstick jabbed into the side of her ribcage, followed by a quick string of Japanese urging her away.

“Alright, alright!” She insisted, standing away, relieved when the crowd didn’t throw back against her like a tide. David was forced up as well, and he cringed with pain. The tide broken, the riot officers were now very keen on maintaining a certain amount of distance between themselves and the crowd.

“God above, that was fast,” David muttered, looking over the long line of black helmets and Kevlar armor. “Cops in this town must be quicker on the trigger than the LAPD.”

“They are when they are ordered to be.” A prim voice snapped in perfect English. Lisa suppressed a groan, a feat which David fell just short of accomplishing. A moment later, the line of police parted slightly, and another string of insistent Japanese urged the pair through the gap. A few of the more desperate refugees broke out with them: a bum with a blind, wild-eyed stare and a younger guy with all the fingers missing from one scarred hand, but the cops let them go, and Lisa lost sight of them as she turned to face the owner of the voice.

Mr. M stared back with those laughing eyes, the ones mocking her with something she didn’t know, dangling it in front of her like a mean-spirited kid holding a steak just out of reach of a chained dog. He regarded them with that empty smile on his pale, skinny face, a face that always seemed to have a sheen of sweat glistening on it, even now, despite the cold.

“Hey,” a new voice said. Lisa turned, blinking in shock. Anton gave her a sheepish smile, the old Russian crammed into a suit that bulged around his frame for how small it was. At his side, a certain, surly Brazilian nodded at her.

“Anton! Felipe,” she sighed. “It’s...good to see you.”

“Yeah, we were...worrying,” Anton said carefully, as though he might accidentally say the wrong word and a bomb standing near them would go off.

“Are you done with your walk now?” Felipe asked, his eyes wondering over the crowd, over the blood on the ground, anywhere but his fellow UN stooges.

“Yeah...” Dave sighed, looking himself over for any scratches. “Gotta get checked out anyway.” The hesitation in his voice was palpable: David knowing he needed to get back to their ship, but also knowing it meant a return to slammed doors, to watching Anton slink off to the cafeteria with his head down, and to having to put up with Felipe sulking in his room, all while the other diplomats did their best to pretend the others didn’t exist, pairing up in an apparently-random fashion.

It was so painful and awkward it made Lisa yearn for another family dinner. Even the kind David’s family no doubt had whenever that one uncle showed up already in his Santa costume and with a blood-alcohol content above the legal limit.

Sighing, her hand closed around his. “C’mon, Yank,” she whispered. “Let’s just go. Our little walk is over.”

He looked over her shoulder, gazing forlornly at the haggard, tired crowd of people now being searched by men in black Kevlar armor, then nodded. “Yeah. Not much to be done here anyway.”

As the couple turned away they, like everyone else in the square, failed to notice the pair of shadows racing along behind the smoldering, trampled-on remnants of the other stands, sticking to the dark corners of the square before making their way into an alley, lit only by a couple of flickering streetlamps for a second before rounding a corner and disappearing with the Tokyo crowds.

Things could always be worse. For some reason, James had forgotten that back in the States. He should have known he’d be pining for LA the moment the cargo ship he and his “army” were being smuggled on pulled into Tokyo Bay. Yet, he’d remained so blissfully unaware in the days after their departure from the States, only letting it hit him full force after he looked out over the railing and saw the burnt-out remnants of a skyscraper towering over a UN camp distributing MREs, all within view of one of those damned bullet trains that managed to survive the blast.

Suddenly, Los Angeles in flames didn’t seem so bad. Especially not after stepping out on the docks and immediately being inundated with dozens of grubby kids with their hands out.

The ones who’d still had hands, at least.

Now, trudging along through the hastily-rebuilt brickwork that formed most of Tokyo’s alleyways, he couldn’t help but feel some new sense of gained perspective. Even with the riots in LA, he’d never been more than a ten-minute walk from some real grub, and the skyscrapers at least still looked nice even with the cars burning at their bases. Here, there were entire districts that still didn’t have much to burn, and the skyscrapers served as little more than towering shantytowns for the displaced.

It was hardly any surprise, then, that when they landed his dad’s contacts had greeted them with not only open arms, but a few dozen handfuls of fresh recruits just chomping at the bit to prove themselves. Just like the one he was picking up now. Just like the one he knew was behind the gunshots and screams back in the marketplace, though some part of his mind revolted at the idea.

He sighed, leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes. He wished he’d brought his IPod, dammit, some Ace of Spades would go far in clearing his mind right now.

Feet crunched along gravel, walking rapidly. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know it was the guy he was meant to pick up. A man only walked that fast through a dingy place like this when they were trying to get away from something. He knew that walk well enough.

“You ditched the gun, right?” He asked, still without opening his eyes.

The footsteps stopped. James could hear the other guy’s breathing, almost hyperventilating, all keyed-up. The rush of what he’d just done...James wished he could say he didn’t know that feeling as well as that walk.

“’Course I did,” the other guy barked in a heavy Japanese accent. “I’m not stupid.”

“Wiped your prints first?”

“Didn’t have to,” there was a slight smacking sound: latex on skin. “Gloves, man.”

James nodded, pressed away from the wall, opened his eyes at last. The other man fell in step behind him without being told, and they walked down the alleyway, stomping out on the street. Outside, beat-up Toyotas merged with gleaming-new Bentleys and Hondas, a strange mixture flowing along the blackened streets. The pair pushed past a group of beggars and a street vendor that damn near shoved a handful of peach blossoms in their faces. James’s face didn’t change. Two blocks away, at least a dozen people had lost their lives. Back here, business as usual.

Same shit, different country.

He wondered absentmindedly when the local news circuit would start running news of the attack as the sidewalks grew narrower and less crowded, eventually giving way to a sea of buildings that looked like they’d been under construction for years. Scaffolding grew around him like a forest of plastic and metal.

He squeezed his way in through a couple of two-by-fours. Ignoring the rustling of feet stomping along above him, he kept up his pace, weaving through the maze of tarps as if it were already second nature, keeping his head low to avoid crossbars. He turned a corner, somebody appeared in his path, casually swinging down from an upper level before slipping off into the darkness behind one of the tarps. James paused for only a second before continuing on. The Old Man was waiting for him.

Deep in the heart of the scaffolding, he came out in an old warehouse, or so he guessed it to be based on the crates and cardboard boxes that served as tables and chairs. The Old Man was talking to their Japanese counterpart: a six-foot tower of muscle that seemed to defy every stereotype James had ever had about the Japanese. The man turned to him as he walked in, looking him over with one dark-brown eye, the other a milky white from the same radiation burns that left a deep red scar along the side of his face. Most other men would shiver. James just returned the look with his own thousand-yard stare.

Finally, the Old Man looked up. “Jimmy!” He shouted, stomping over with a broad smile bunching up the silver hair on his temples. Clamping a hand over his shoulder, the Old Man led James back over to the Japanese man. “Kaito, this here’s my boy, and my second in command. Been with me every step of the way, since the li’l twats took his ma.”

“Pleasure,” Kaito said, holding out a hand that could envelop a soda can.

“Yeah,” James said, shaking the hand while holding eye contact.

“He’s really been good with keeping the guys in line. Hell, he’s just got back from that field op you suggested,” the Old Man clapped James on the shoulder again, grinning like a dad at his kid’s high school graduation. “Speaking of…”

“Yeah, it went good dad,” James smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Riku ditched the gun after too, like we drilled into him.”

“Good, good,” the Old Man looked over James’s shoulder to grin at the Japanese man that had followed him back. “This was his trial by fire of sorts, good to know he can keep it together.”

“Are your…’trials’ through, then?” Kaito asked, those cold eyes thankfully passing over James to slide over the Old Man. “Are you satisfied that our men are capable?”

“Ayuh, Kaito.” The Old Man replied, the prideful beam still radiating off his face. “Hope ya didn’t mind, I just needed to make sure your boys knew their own asses from holes in the ground.”

“Then we are ready to proceed when the Princess arrives,” Kaito said plainly.

The Old Man’s smile widened as a deep, cold feeling in James’s gut twisted. “And damn good thing, too! Nothing but a buncha smurfs out there!” The Old Man spat. “Fuckers will probably welcome the cunt with open arms.”

“Then we will have a welcome of our own,” Kaito nodded. “My contacts in Equestria inform me they have what we need.”

“Ayuh?” The Old Man’s smile turned lower, like a stovetop burner being set from high to medium. James’s stomach gave another twist to see it. “Good, good. So when the inevitable happens and the bitch shows her true colors…”

“…We’ll be ready,” Kaito replied, extending a hand. “Together.”

“Together.” The Old Man gripped the hand and shook, glancing to James at his side.

James said nothing. He didn’t betray the sinking feeling in his gut. He just smiled and nodded, all he was good for. Smiled and nodded at the Old Man, even while he was wondering if it was too late to find a boat for New York or London.

Chicago, even?

Maybe.

Chapter XLVI: Gathering Together

It seemed ridiculous, going to Tae-Bo when the world was supposed to be ending, but Lisa knew that keeping your chin up in a crisis situation could depend on something as mundane as a routine. She just felt lucky to have found a Tae-Bo instructor in the city that felt too “zen” to let something as “simple as the destruction of his physical form on a single plane of existence” keep him from his duty (his words, not hers, of course). This was something the Service had taught her: routine wasn’t just a distraction, but it gave one an outlet, a way to clear the mind even in the worst of situations.

Still, that didn’t make the rest of the class any less empty, or the studio any less dusty from lack of cleaning staff. She sighed as she pulled her bag filled with street clothes out of her locker, rapidly suppressing the memory of the shower stalls. You’d think at least one guy would stick around to get the scum off the shower drains...she usually showered at home, but tonight she’d had to do it here, simply had to.

London’s streets weren’t much better than the floors of her Tae-Bo studios. Where there wasn’t someone covered in piss, deep in a days-long bender, there were discarded condoms, liquor bottles, and whatever else the few still-working garbage men hadn’t gotten from the overflowing trash bins. London had never been a particularly clean city in Lisa’s experience, but now you could tell: the people were giving up any pretense of keeping appearances.

When she opened the door to her building, a naked man ran gibbering out, down the sidewalk and around the corner, screaming something about his pants in eternal flames. Lisa sighed. Shit like that had become all too common, mostly from the people who figured: “Well, the world’s ending, why not run naked down the sidewalk?” Then of course there were the people who decided to try crystal meth for what would be the first and possibly last time without any idea of where to get it from or how to handle the high, not taking into account mountains of really bad stuff hitting the streets with the rest of the world having the same idea and demand going sky-high.

She stepped through the grimy lobby and walked up the stairs under flickering lights. Couldn’t trust the lifts these days, God no. Still, when she reached her floor, her thighs straining, she couldn’t help but let out another long breath.

“Please, oh God, please…” she whispered, stepping out onto her floor. Her heart leapt into her throat with nervousness. If she was wrong...if things weren’t as well as she hoped…

She turned a corner, heard voices from her flat, and heaved a sigh of relief, hurrying to close the last of the distance and rush in through the unlocked door.

“You came!” She gasped with relief.

Akshat, who was adding the finishing touches to a basic tikka masala sauce on her oven, looked up at her in surprise. “You...didn’t think we would?” He asked with a smile carving through his thick beard, his spoon smacking at Chen’s hand as it moved to add a dash of onion.

“Actually, we didn’t come yet, but give us a few minutes and your bedroom and we can fix that!” Andre shouted from her living room, a loud smack informing her Francis was here too.

She didn’t care about decorum, she just instantly slumped across the kitchen floor, half-stumbling until she could wrap Chen into a deep bear hug, her bag still lying forgotten in the foyer. Chen, for his part, returned the hug, taking a sip from his beer behind her back as he did. “What else was there to do? Might as well see things through with friends.” He informed her with a smile, then a frown. “Though it was odd to find the place empty and unlocked…”

She giggled, pulling away. “Sorry, Tae-Bo. I was so nervous I couldn’t just sit here and wait for you all.”

“So you left your apartment unlocked?” Akshat gasped, looking up from his pan.

“Nobody’s breaking into flats anymore, not when the stores are all open-season.” She giggled, wiping at her eyes. “Besides, I’m pretty sure any man who tried would find he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.”

“Right,” Chen chuckled, then noticed her looking around and sighed. “We are still missing two.”

Her smile deflated. “Ah.”

“Felipe didn’t respond to my text, and David…” his eyes softened. “I...found him in a pub downtown. He looks like he just crawled into a bottle after leaving the ship and hasn’t crawled out since. He’s special to me too, Lisa, but we can’t wait on him.”

“Well, cheer up then!” Andre insisted, having appeared from the living room and trying to smile despite the immediate drag the mood in the room had taken. “All that means is we need to save the world twice as hard so he has time to make himself better, right?”

“Speaking of…” Francis poked his head in. “You still haven’t actually gone into detail about how we are supposed to do that, fraulein. It seems silly to expect that from a group of people who are only avoiding a messy court martial by virtue of the rest of the world being in flames.”

“Well, to put it simply, it’s based on one fact,” Lisa looked around the small room, tensing. This was it. This would be where she found out if she had a team or a lonely suicide mission. “That our salvation is currently in UN custody.”

To her surprise, the group only shared a round of nods. “We all know that,” Akshat said. “Hell, most of the world knows it. Unfortunately, the only one who doesn’t seem to know it is the UN.”

“They’re shit-scared.” Chen scoffed. “After Tokyo, the world is watching everything going on with the Illustrious for even the smallest sign of incompetence. That, and they don’t wanna lose their one bargaining chip with Equestria...”

“Is that what you brought us here for?” Now Akshat turned back to his cooking with a scoff. “Because even if there is a way to stop the apocalypse, one can hardly expect five former soldiers to do anything against an aircraft carrier.”

“Seven,” Lisa crossed her arms stubbornly. “There will be seven former operators here.”

“Not my point.”

At that, Lisa smiled. “You didn’t ask what else we could expect.”

There was another knock. Lisa perked, turning to open the door, and heaving a sigh of relief as Felipe stepped through. Akshat’s and Chen’s eyes widened.

The Brazilian shrugged at them both. “What?”

“Nothing, just…” Akshat smiled. “Glad to have you back, my friend.”

“I’m just here because I was curious to see what insanity Lisa dreamed up to get us all killed.” He shrugged, heading for the living room in his shoes. “Whatever she’s got must be better than waiting for the meteor.”

Nods circled the room, and a few minutes passed where Akshat could cook in silence. Finally, he sighed. “And then there was one…”

“He’ll be here.”

“He didn’t even bother going home after they dropped us in London. He was too determined to dive into a bottle,” Akshat turned fully to meet her gaze. “The man you knew is drowning in a lake of whiskey, Lisa.”

“He’ll be here,” she insisted, but even she held an unsure look as she gazed at the door. After some time, Chen sighed and brewed her a cup of coffee, which she accepted gladly. She was still sipping at it when another knock sounded at the door.

Lisa was up in an instant, racing across the kitchen floor, socks sliding on the tile like a kid expecting a package seeing the mailman walk by. She twisted the knob, the door opening slowly, so slowly, revealing…

An empty hallway.

“Ahem.”

Her eyes slid down, and when Akshat, peering past her legs, saw who was waiting, he nearly dropped his curry, Chen having to rush to right the pan as it clattered from his hand. Lisa, for her part, allowed a moment of disappointment on her face before it lit up again.

“King Shining Armor,” she said, stepping aside to allow the stallion to trot past. “So glad you could make it.”

“Oh, don’t worry, it took some finagling but I was able to free a spot within my schedule.” He shrugged, trotting to the kitchen table under the shocked gazes of everyone inside, his heavily-accented voice sounding like a baritone in the kitchenette.

“King…” Akshat gasped, Chen now just standing aside with the pan still suspended just over the burner.

“Please, it’s just Shining now,” he shrugged, placing a briefcase on the table. A small chain ran from it to a cuff on his hoof. “Seems silly to consider titles during the apocalypse, if you ask me.”

After a few more moments of staring, Shining cleared his throat.

“So...Miss Townshend…” he said, turning to the owner of the apartment. “While I appreciate seeing your home, I do have to ask when we should start...going over things.”

“In a moment,” she insisted. “We’re waiting for one more.”

His eye searched over the room, frowning, his mouth about to open to ask the obvious, but a quick look at the frantic gestures from Akshat to ‘zip it’ as it were told him perhaps a bit of patience was called for. “Sure...though if your friend is much later, I would have to ask if we could perhaps get started without him and just fill them in when they arrive.”

After a long moment, she let out a despondent sigh. “I suppose that’s not unreasonable...”

Around then, Chen stood away from the counter and handed the pan off to Akshat. “You know what? I need some fresh air,” he sighed, stepping for the door.

“Okay...do hurry back!” Lisa insisted, to which Chen just raised a hand as he slipped on his shoes and walked out in the hallway.

It made it all the more a surprise when he turned to the stairwell, wondering where he could go that could at least give him a few extra minutes’ break from the apartment, and saw David’s face pressed to the glass in the door.

“David…” Chen breathed.

Somehow, a few nights had done little to help the American since Chen last saw him. If anything, it was obvious he’d only gotten worse: the bags under his eyes that much deeper, the stubble coating his chin and neck that much thicker, and Chen just knew the scent of whiskey would be clinging to him. On top of that, Chen could see the coat that had been used as an ashtray, a burn mark here and a sweat stain there telling him it had been even longer since Dave had even thought about laundry.

The pair stood there, David’s long, empty gaze meeting Chen’s, not staring him down, not making eye contact, but looking right through him. How this was the same man who had survived with Akshat during the attempted kidnapping here in London, and later slipped right into the belly of the beast in Tokyo with his head held high and little more than a gigantic set of balls to protect himself, would later confound and terrify Chen. These weren’t the eyes of that man. Somehow, David had been transformed into someone who knew he had a few decades on the street ahead of him, and didn’t care if those decades were cut short.

After staring at each other way too long, Chen finally reached for the doorknob, allowing the door to open and for the scent of a dozen stale downtown pubs to waft in. “Thanks…” Dave rasped. “Door must be jammed.”

“Yeah...rest of us got in just fine…” Chen breathed, still trying to reconcile the image of his former coworker with the wreck of a man standing before him.

“Eh...guess I shouldn’t’ve been late,” Dave shrugged. “There uh...booze in there?”

After a moment of thought, Chen nodded slowly. “We found some whiskey in a cupboard.”

“Whiskey girl, eh?” A wry smile crossed David’s face. “I always knew there was something I liked about her. But on a fundamental level, y’know? Not just the smokin’ bod and the fact that she can kill a man from a mile away.”

After a moment, he reached into a pocket and pulled out a lone cigarette, the ending all bunched up and the tip burnt off already, and it occurred to Chen that it might have been plucked off the sidewalk right outside. My God, he’s gone full classic American hobo, hasn’t he? Just wúyèyóumín, straight through and through. For an instant, he fully expected Dave to turn to him and ask if he had a light like some stereotype in a Western action movie, but thankfully after patting himself down David managed to produce a cheap Bic lighter, from which he managed to produce a sputtering little flame.

“David…” Chen started. “You look--” and then immediately cut himself off. Fucking shit, why did he go with that!? What was he supposed to say!?

“I know,” David chuckled. “I doubt Ralph Lauren’ll be returning my calls anytime soon.”

He held up his hand, showing off the cheap metal claw he’d apparently chosen to replace it.

“And here I thought I had a real chance at being a hand model for ‘em. Or wait, is that even a thing Ralph Lauren does?”

Chen averted his gaze. “S-sorry…”

“Don’t be. I know what I’ve done to myself.” Dave shrugged, took a drag off the cigarette. “Whole party’s inside?”

“Yeah...Lisa too,” Chen whispered, let out a breath. “David, I…”

“Chen, don’t.” David held up a hand. “Jesus Christ, spare me the niceties, alright? Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Don’t tell me you wish things’d been different. You know as well as I do that shit doesn’t help anyway.”

They finally approached the door, David just pausing short of the frame. Chen stopped with him, slowly looking the other man up and down, at the worn-out look in his eyes, the dirty, stained clothes he wore. He snorted out a laugh. “I mean, there are worse ways to die than surrounded by friends,” he said with a shrug.

“Yeah,” Dave sighed, still staring vacantly into the peephole. “You could slit your wrists in a bathtub in a Holiday Inn Express.”

Chen snorted out another quick laugh, forcing it out. Dave didn’t join him, just kept staring ahead with that same expression. Trailing off, something dawned on Chen. “You’re speaking from experience, aren’t you?”

David said nothing, just kept staring ahead, and in doing so told Chen everything he needed to know. It hit Chen just how warm it was outside: far too warm for the heavy jacket and gloves Dave had on. Almost as if he were hiding a few things.

Slowly, the wide-eyed, dawning surprise transformed itself. Chen’s eyes blazed as his teeth grit. In a single motion, his hand whipped out and grabbed David’s filthy, stretched-out shirt collar, not quite hoisting him up, but certainly making him a little lighter on his feet. “You son of a bitch,” he hissed. “You don’t give a shit about anything in there at all, do you!? You’re only here because you figured out you didn’t have the balls to pull the trigger yourself! Hoping a UN goon will get the job done when you can’t!?”

The hollow look in David’s eyes was all the response Chen needed.

“You fucker…” Chen hissed. “If this is just one drawn-out suicide, couldn’t you have the decency to do it where we can’t see!? Or what about Lisa!? Does it bother you at all someone who actually gives a shit about you might wind up seeing you die!?”

In his ranting, Chen hadn’t noticed the shaking in David’s remaining hand as it clenched into a fist, or the look that came over his eyes. Not until it was too late. He raised a hand to Chen’s shoulder, and suddenly, bucked forward. Surprise came over Chen again, and for a second his training flew out the window as David wrapped himself around him. He tensed for a blow. Only it never came. Just soft, quiet sobs as David’s shoulders rose and fell with long, shivering breaths, his hands wrapping around the other man as desperate tears soaked his shirt.

Chen stood there for just a second, then his grip finally released David’s shirt, his arms coming around to return the hug as he was clung to like a piece of driftwood next to a drowning man. “David…” he whispered, his eyes drifting shut as the soft buzzing of the flickering fluorescents drowned out the sobs.